Burning September (16 page)

“She did.”  And she was asking for it, insulting me while wearing leopard print heels.  I took the keys from his hand and circled to the driver’s side.  “Thanks for going over everything with me.”

“Yeah.”  He bobbed his head stupidly, reminding me of cartoon characters trying to shake off little chirping birds circling their heads.  “Yeah, I’ll see you on Wednesday.” 

I slid into the Challenger’s cabin, watching her watch me through the windshield as I buckled myself in.  Maybe the car had me channeling Caroline, her supremely superior aura that washed over her whenever her presence had caused raised hackles.  But she would have added a simpering
Oh my, look at those lovely heels
in the type of voice that could make one feel about two inches tall. 

I peeled out of the lot, flipping up the sun visor and knowing Caroline would have also tipped her head back and laughed before telling me she wasn’t so sure she could buy my
I’m not territorial about my things
line.  She would have salivated for the chance to show this woman how insignificant she was, without having even the slightest interest in Kyle. 

I didn’t know if it was the PR practice, the car, or the piece of Caroline’s spirit which had recently possessed me, but I’d never been less frightened of my looming crises than I was then, driving home to feed Nicholas.

***

Kat,

What a bitch.  I know the type you’re describing, and who the hell even wears leopard print heels anymore?  Classless.  You may have been right about the stripper thing.  If I were you, I’d go out of my way to knock her down a few pegs.  Get a little too cozy with her boyfriend or something, it’d drive her batshit. You’ll apparently have to spend a lot of time with Kyle, so I bet every time she sees you with him on TV, her head will explode. He already seems to like you a little more than seems usual in that kind of relationship.  How hard could it be?  I don’t want to hear a word about me being mean, either, I need to get my kicks somewhere, because Mr. Ferret has been a little depressed these days.  Had a meltdown during lunch a week ago and haven’t seen him since.

I’m glad you’re feeling better about this whole media blitzkrieg, even though you’re going to be playing the part of Czechoslovakia.  I don’t know much about public speaking, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say do not imagine everyone in their underwear. What retard came up with that line? 

Has Jeff mentioned the New Artist Spotlight event to you yet?  It’s almost about that time for it to happen, it’s always in late February.  I’ve gone with him a few times.  I can’t promise it’ll be a ton of fun, but it doesn’t hurt to get yourself out there.  If he doesn’t mention it in the coming weeks, you should bring it up.  You need to get your foot in the door, and Jeff’s a good way to go about that. 

You better name that Challenger sometime soon.  I’m going to assume it must be a female name.  You never hear about a car named Bob.

C.

***

“You’re getting better.”  Professor Lawlis planted his metal leg into the floor and pushed his swivel chair back.  “I should be charging you.”

I shook a curtain of hair behind my shoulder.  “You wouldn’t.  You feel sorry for me.”

“This is what I get for being sexist.  Signed myself up for free lessons indefinitely.” He took the guitar from his lap and propped it against his desk.  “I saw your sister’s attorney on TV over Christmas break.”

“I did, too.  His shoes look even more expensive off camera, in case you wondered.”

“She’s pretty.  Your sister, not her attorney.  Doesn’t look like the type of girl who’d have to kill her ex to soothe her broken heart.  More likely she’d move to the next name on her list.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud how much I wished that had been the case.  She could have spared us all a lot of grief and just torched his car.  “Have you done a lot of public speaking?”

His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.  “No.  Public playing.”  He knocked on the guitar.  “Some public indecency, when I was younger.  Public intoxication; I wish I could say that happened when I was younger.  But no public speaking.”

“Well, you teach classes. Isn’t that public speaking?”

“I teach overindulged kids an elective course that makes them write lousy heartbreak-soaked lyrics to bad music.  A bunch of moron nineteen-year-old boys who wear beanies when it’s a hundred degrees and play at coffee shops.  That does not equate to public speaking, not by a damn sight.”

Those students reminded me of another lousy lyricist slash drug dealer who burned to death in his house. “I’m going to have to speak at a press conference for Caroline.”

“And you’re understandably nervous.”

“Way more than understandably nervous.”

“Kid, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t be nervous to do that.  You’ll do fine.”  He watched me chew my bottom lip for a few beats.  “If you could sucker me into free lessons with those big baby doe eyes, you can do anything.  It’ll be over before you know it.  Talking to reporters with ridiculous hairdos?  You’ll have to work harder trying not to laugh.  Piece of cake.”

I nodded over the guitar I clutched, staring at the grains running through the wood floor until my vision glazed.  After blinking a few hundred times, I looked up at him.  “Public indecency?”

“Stupid drunken bet between Army buddies, it’s a long, embarrassing story.  Public intoxication after my wife left me.  That was a bad year.” 

I didn’t know if I could use that opening to dodge his temporarily sidelined defense and score a touchdown, but he wouldn’t have mentioned it if it were that sore a subject, right?  “Did she—I mean, how—why did she leave?”

“PTSD.”

“Hers?”

“Mine.  A souvenir from Iraq.  That and a metal leg.”

I felt my heart migrate into my throat.  I didn’t know which was worse, having your leg blown off by a suicide bomber or driving your wife away during the aftermath.  I was a grump because of a measly murder accusation—suddenly I felt like I had little right.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have asked.”  I wondered if he still loved her, this ex-wife of his, and whether she’d tried hard enough to put the pieces of him back together.  A missing leg couldn’t have made her run; he wouldn’t have married a woman that superficial.  Had it been nightmares, violent episodes, general crabbiness?  I’d heard the horror stories of the war, but never had a living, breathing one stared me in the face.  It didn’t seem like he had PTSD, just a healthy dose of cynicism. 

He crossed his arms over his paunch.  “You didn’t ask. I told.  And I’m sorry your sister killed her ex.”

I strummed the guitar strings loudly.  “Allegedly.”

“Right.”  He grunted through a small smile.  “Allegedly.  Look who’s all ready to take on the reporters?”  

***

“If you ruin that sweater, Gemma’ll kill you,” Kyle said idly, watching me pick at a loose thread on my cardigan. 

“If I were Gemma I’d have killed you the moment you sent me out to buy a cardigan,” I countered, shifting carefully on an overstuffed chair in the Four Seasons conference room.  The kind of chair that looked comfortable but was so rigid it felt like a boulder. 

He cracked his neck, draped his arm over the back of my chair, stared off into space.  The buzzing hive of reporters stood just behind the double doors.  I wanted the flunkies Kyle had stationed there to keep them closed forever.

“Gemma thinks I’m little orphan Oliver.  She loves helping me.”

“You’re twenty-nine.  I wouldn’t care that you’re an orphan.  Who isn’t?”

“Maybe it’s my boyish good looks.”

I rolled my eyes so hard I rather thought they’d get stuck in the back of my skull. 

“You look good.”  He patted the back of my chair. 

“Thanks.”

“And you’ll do fine.”

The jury was still out on that one.

We sat off to the side of the conference room in a row of chairs hugging the wall.  More had been lined up into neat rows before a small stage that held a podium and two other chairs.  My own village square, complete with a guillotine (or microphone).  T minus ten minutes until I screwed everything up with my voice alone.

“It sounds like there’s a million of them.”

He followed my gaze to the double doors, but I doubted his mind had conjured the same image mine had: throbbing crowd, clouds of hairspray, shiny bared fangs.  “There’s not.”

“But it sounds like it.”

“There’s not.”

“You’re not very soothing.”

“Hey, I tried soothing.  You wouldn’t go for it.”  He smiled a little at my annoyed grunt.  “I’m going to have Gemma sit up there with you.  She’s soothing, and a little old lady up there won’t hurt.  I won’t introduce her.  Let the people wonder who she is.”  He caught my chin in his hand.  “Look at me for a minute?”

I looked up.  He picked a stray eyelash off the side of my nose. “Guess Gemma shook this loose when she was powdering your nose. Wanna make a wish?”

I shrugged one shoulder.  “World peace?”  He still cupped my chin, staring down at me, so close he could probably see everything I was thinking. 

“It doesn’t count if you say it out loud.”

I prayed to any deity within earshot that I wouldn’t ruin this and be forced to watch repeats of my failure on the seven o’clock news. 

***

Kyle didn’t look nervous as he stood behind that podium.  He didn’t look like anything, really.  Calm but severe.  No smile, steely eyes, one tapping finger on his right hand.  A totally different person who looked like he’d never laughed a day in his life.  You almost forgot that his blond hair made him look like he should have been in high school. 

He took the microphone off its stand and waited until the murmuring died down.  “My client’s sister Katya wanted to make a short statement to clear up the misinformation the Orange County police department has been releasing.  She’ll open the floor to take questions for five minutes afterward, and any follow-up requests for interviews should be sent to my attention, Kyle Cavanaugh at the offices of Singer & Harrison.”  He walked out from behind the podium and surrendered the microphone.  Gemma’s wrinkled hand contracted on my knee cap.  I felt like if she removed it, I’d fall apart.  I needed to sap strength from someone. Maybe I’d become an emotional vampire.  Caroline told me what those were once and laughed until she cried. 

I’d never held a microphone in all my life.  I never wanted to again.

I cleared my throat.  The noise ricocheted off the walls like there were three congested Kats onstage.  “Thank you all for coming.  This whole…”  I sucked in my bottom lip and let it slide slowly from between my teeth.  If Kyle hadn’t trained me not to glance at the floor by rapping on my knees with a ruler back in his office, I would have been watching the carpet instead of the reporters.  Their hairdos weren’t as strange as Professor Lawlis had led me to believe, but one of them had hair like Caroline’s.  I focused mainly on her.  The familiarity was comforting, like Gemma’s touch. 

“This whole thing has been a nightmare.  The police have turned Caroline into something she isn’t.  My sister raised me.  Our mother died when I was three, and my father was an alcoholic.  He died seven years later, but it didn’t change my life much, since Caroline had always been the parent in our household.  She’s always been responsible.  She didn’t have any other choice, really.  She’d grown up knowing I was her job, that raising me was her responsibility, and she was great at it.  I know it’s kind of cliché to say your sister is your best friend, but she
is
my best friend, and always has been.”

The Caroline-haired woman smiled softly, holding eye contact, but I broke the spell before it became conspicuous. 

“They’re saying she’s a monster, but a monster wouldn’t have given up her life to take care of a little girl who really wasn’t her problem.  Especially not for someone like Brian Calvert.  I know when somebody dies, they’re automatically turned into a saint, but he wasn’t.” 

A few eyebrows arched.  I fought the urge to blow out an annoyed sigh—Kyle had threatened to spray me with Axe when I’d done it during our rehearsals, back in his office. 

“Not by a long shot.  My sister turned him down the first hundred times he asked her out.  He started stalking her.  Showed up at her art galleries and our condo, something tons of people can attest to.  Eventually she gave in, thought his persistence was kind of cute, even though he wasn’t her type.  She didn’t realize until later that he sold drugs, that he wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to associate with.  So she cut it off.  She could…” I trailed off, staring into the blinding white abyss of camera lights and bright reporter teeth.  “She could have had anyone she wanted.  Literally anyone.  She has everything going for her.  For the police to assume she killed him, and for no reason, is ridiculous.  Their relationship lasted three months, and it was never exclusive.  Anyone could have done this, but the police didn’t look any further than Caroline.  They didn’t care when I told them I knew for a fact she wasn’t guilty.  They told me I was a liar.  A sad little girl who clearly didn’t even know my own sister, like I was some naïve idiot with the IQ of a squirrel.”  Kyle’s shoes crept into my peripherals.  I hoped I wouldn’t get a talking-to for veering off-script.  “They were nothing but dismissive when I gave them my statement.  They know perfectly well their evidence doesn’t support Caroline’s guilt.  She was just the easiest scapegoat.  If it’s always the husband who kills the wife, I guess they think it’s always the ex-girlfriend who kills the drug-dealing ex-boyfriend.  And I can’t do much to help her if they don’t listen, but I have to do
some
thing.  I have to tell all of you the truth, because the police haven’t been interested.  I can’t go to class every day, knowing my sister—my mother, really—is getting screwed because of sheer disinterest in anything resembling the truth.”