Not One Clue (8 page)

“Maybe I’ll reserve judgment.”

“The backseat,” he suggested again. His deep voice rumbled against my pheromones, but I tried to remain lucid.

“Isn’t there some kind of law against that sort of thing?” My tone didn’t sound very lucid.

“Only if you get caught. We won’t get caught.”

He was doing something tricky with his fingertips, stroking my back in a manner that rocked me to the tips of my toes.

“I’m a screamer,” I said.

He eased back half an inch. “What’s that?”

“When we do it,” I said. “I plan to scream.”

He murmured something. I’m not sure what it was but it sounded kind of naughty.

I swallowed and found a modicum of self-control. “And I don’t plan to do any screaming in a parking lot. Not unless someone has a gun,” I said.

“I could get my Glock,” he offered, but I was already pulling regretfully out of his grip. Adjusting my clothing, I sashayed away, sure my little ruffled skirt was rocking. Just as sure he was watching.

8

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

—
Sigmund Freud

I
felt kind of powerful as I shimmied through Joe’s sliding doors. I didn’t look back. Cool me.

The grocery carts were mating in the entryway. I rudely pried one from its partners and proceeded into the store. The produce section, as colorful as Mardi Gras, called to me. The peppers looked ripe and sassy, the lemons firm and shapely. I picked one up.

“Take two,” Rivera said over my shoulder. “They’re small.”

I turned to him,
über
-controlled, one brow raised. “I was hoping otherwise.”

He exhaled his derision and pressed the extra lemon into my hand. “I believe you saw me showering.”

“Did I?” I said. “I hardly remember.” I skimmed the bananas.

He reached for a plantain, long and dark and thick. “Shall I attribute your forgetfulness to dementia or post-trauma?” he asked.

“How about to disinterest?”

“Not until you’re dead,” he said.

I gave him a look.

“And you’re not dead.”

I fluttered my lashes. “That may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Meet me in the backseat and I’ll recite poetry,” he said, and weighed a Bosc pear in his right hand. His fingers curled tantalizingly against the firm fruit.

“It would almost be worth it to hear the dark lieutenant spouting Longfellow.”

“I was going to quote Browning,” he said, “but if you think Longfellow more appropriate …”

Our gazes met. A fork of electricity sizzled through me, but I managed to pull my attention away and move on.

He followed. Like I said, stalking … titillating.

“How are you stocked for meat?” he asked.

I smiled to myself. “Laney’s a vegetarian.”

He lifted a link of sausages. “But you’re strictly carnivorous.”

“You don’t know me, Rivera.”

He snorted a little. “I’ve saved your ass too many times to be mistaken.”

“There’s more to me than my ass.”

His gaze burned me. “You think I haven’t noticed?”

“The possibility crossed my mind.”

“I know where all the parts are.”

“Hmmff.”

“Climb in the backseat and I’ll prove it.”

“I think I’m noticing a recurring theme.”

“I always knew you were brighter than you seemed,” he said, and handed me a jar of honey.

I handed it back. “Too bright to play grab-ass in the backseat with Robocop.”

“If you’re worried about room, we could lower the seats, utilize the trunk.”

“You
are
a romantic,” I said, and wheeled my cart into the bakery department.

“I thought you should know,” he said, and handed me a package of dinner rolls. They were golden brown, creased neatly down the middle, and sexy as hell.

I put them in the cart, but did not caress them.

He handed me a twelve-pack of vitamin water he’d gotten from God knows where.

I gave him a look.

“We’re going to want to stay hydrated,” he said, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

It was then that my phone rang … a tinny little rendition of “Holding Out for a Hero.” I paused. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been saved from the dark lieutenant’s dubious advances by a phone call. Or how many times I’ve been pissed at my bad luck. Our gazes caught. He shrugged, pragmatic.

“Better now than when we’re in the trunk,” he said.

Pulling out my cell, I snapped it open. “Hello.”

“Christina McMullen?”

I scowled. The voice was breathless and rushed. But it seemed too soon for another catastrophe.

“Yes?”

“Christina, this is Ramla Al-Sadr.”

“Ramla.” I focused on the conversation, momentarily forgetting how the lemons had felt against my palm. “What’s wrong?”

There was a pause. Usually when there’s a pause in one of my conversations someone drops dead. “I am not sure.”

So far so good, then.

“I received a call from a strange man.”

Getting worse. “There are a lot of them out there,” I said, and shifted my gaze to Rivera. He was scowling. Maybe his coppie-sense was buzzing. Or maybe he was always scowling when he wasn’t thinking about being naked in the backseat of a Saturn. As for me, I was struggling to keep things light, but I could already feel the muscles in the back of my neck cramping up.

“He said I must go to the airport at once,” Ramla said.

“What airport? Why?”

“He said he would call with more information later.”

“And you don’t know who it was?”

“No. But I cannot go to the airport, Christina,” she said. “My husband, Taabish, he is gone for the business. I am in Simi Valley with my children and cannot leave them.”

“You think this has something to do with your sister?”

“I do not know what to think.” There was a pause. “My sister, she has no passport,” Ramla said, and began to cry.

I tried to console her, but the truth is that overt displays of emotion make me itchy. We Midwesterners are more comfortable with snot than with tears. It’s a condition that conflicts almost constantly with the sappy Celt in me.

In the end I promised Ramla I would go to the airport in her stead and wait for the man to call her again. I snapped my phone shut and dumped it back into my purse.

Rivera’s eyes were shooting sparks. “You don’t have to try so hard,” he said.

“To prove I’m nuts?” I guessed, and wondered rather dismally what I had gotten myself into.

“Give the lady a beer,” he said.

I took a deep breath, gathered my keys, my nerve, a little bit of sanity. “Not right now,” I said. “I’m driving … to the airport.”

“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll head on home. Catch a rerun of
Friends
, maybe surf for porn. Then tomorrow I can enjoy your obituary with my morning coffee.”

“I thought you didn’t drink coffee.” I turned away, but not before I saw him grind his teeth and follow me.

I
drove as fast as the traffic on the 110 allowed.

“Tell me what she said.” Despite Rivera’s dissertation on how he planned to spend his evening, he was sitting beside me, in the Saturn’s passenger seat.

“A strange man called her,” I said.

“I got that part.” He was using his patient tone. I hate his patient tone almost as much as I hate Brussels sprouts, which, by the by, barely deserve to be classified as food.

“Then you know about as much as I do.”

“I’ve got to tell you, knowing some stranger has called my next-door neighbor rarely prompts me to rush to the airport.”

I gave him a look. He gave it back. Grumpy as hell. Maybe he really
didn’t
want to read my obituary in the morning paper. So I told him the whole story about how Ramla had been worried about her sister in Yemen. How I had promised to look into things. How I had even farmed the problem out to Brainy Laney, only to learn that things were looking up for Aalia and her hubby. I didn’t leave out any salient points. Hardly.

“So this guy’s been knocking her sister around for years,” Rivera said.

“I believe so.”

“And your neighbor honestly thought the bastard had suddenly been canonized?”

There may have been a certain amount of carefully restrained vitriol in the statement. I had to assume it was brought on by the thought of wife beaters. He had never seemed sexier. Except maybe in the shower. “I take it you don’t think people can change.”

“It generally takes a high-caliber handgun and a believable threat.” He was glaring out the window.

“Maybe his conscience got the better of him.”

He turned toward me, eyes flat.

I shrugged, seeing something in his gaze that suggested he had witnessed more of the seedy side of life than I had realized. “Or maybe Aalia owns a handgun,” I said.

He sighed. “Then why the call from the stranger?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“Couldn’t we have wondered that from the backseat?”

I examined him. Someone honked his horn and shouted an obscenity as he sped past in a convertible, but I barely noticed. It’s one of the many valuable skills I had learned since moving to L.A. “I think you protest too much,” I said.

He lowered one brow.

“I think you want to help her,” I said.

He snorted. “I’m just hoping to keep you alive until we test your backseat.”

I
snorted.

“What did she say about a passport?” he asked.

I blinked. As it turns out, that was one of the few salient points I had neglected to tell him. Damn him and his coppie-sense. “What?” I said. See how I did that? Smooth as glass.

He was watching me evenly. “At the end of the conversation, I thought she said something about a passport.”

“Did she? Oh, yes,” I said, and wondered vaguely if people were still struck dead for lying or if their noses just grew like willow branches. “She said she got hers.”

“The sister.”

“Yeah.”

“Without her husband’s consent.”

I shrugged. “Things were better between them. Maybe they were planning to travel together.”

His brows lowered even farther. But before they could descend into hell, my phone rang. I gripped it like a lifeline, grateful for the interruption.

“Hello?”

“Christina.” Ramla sounded breathless. I was just wheeling into short-term parking at LAX. “She is here.”

“Aalia?”

“I have just received the call.”

I glanced nervously at Rivera. He was glaring again. Or still.

“From whom?”

“He did not say.”

“Did you ask?”

“He did not seem to wish to tell me.”

I heard Rivera swear. The same words zipped through my brain. I mean, I’m naturally the trusting sort, but folks have attempted to kill me a few times and that’s put something of a damper on my optimism regarding the inherent goodness of the human spirit.

“Why?” I asked.

“What?”

“Why do you think he wouldn’t tell you?”

“I do not know.”

“How much do you know about Aalia’s husband?”

“Ahmad? He comes from a favorable family.”

The same could be said of Ted Bundy. “Anything else?”

“The Orsorios are a wealthy, intelligent people. We thought it a fine match when first he asked for her hand. We had no way of knowing of his cruelty.”

I gripped my cell a little tighter as I pulled into a parking spot. “Do you happen to know if
Ahmad
has a passport?”

There was a long pause fraught with a butt-load of bad vibes. “He travels a good deal.”

“Beyond Yemen, I suppose you mean.”

“New York City. Washington, D.C. He is an important man with Sanaa Oil.”

“I see.” That in lieu of a bunch of bad language.

“And is not without friends among your government, I think.”

A little of the bad language leaked out.

“You are worried that it is he who called. That he hopes to confront those who would assist my sister,” she guessed.

“The thought crossed my mind.”

She drew a carefully controlled breath. “I will find another to care for my children and travel to the airport myself.”

It was tempting as hell to take her up on her offer, but her kids had eyes as big as softballs. They were like two-legged basset hounds at a sad movie. And besides, Ahmad wouldn’t recognize me. I hoped. The same couldn’t be said for Ramla.

“Don’t do anything just yet,” I said, then, “Did the stranger say what flight your sister is on?”

She told me.

“Can you describe her for me?”

There was a pause. “I cannot ask this of you, Christina. It is too big.”

“Describe her,” I said. My voice sounded gravelly, but when Ramla next spoke, her own was the reverent whisper of a terrified sister.

“She is beauty itself,” she said, “when the bruises heal.”

The butterflies in my stomach somehow morphed into land mines. My eyes met Rivera’s. His sparked amber-colored flame. “If she’s here, we’ll find her,” I said, and clicked the phone shut.

9

In this country, if one dresses well, it matters little if her soul belongs to the devil.

—
Ramla Al-Sadr, on American fashion