One Hot Mess (12 page)

That was it, just
another
apology for the nocturnal visit that had so rudely torn me from the precipice of ecstasy and thrust me back into the abyss of celibacy. Not that I was resentful or anything. But if he didn't want me to investigate, why hadn't he said so at Caring Hands?

I scanned the rest of the card for more, but there was nothing else. Just his grand, sweeping signature. I read the words again, though, and noticed that the word “death” was a little blotchy, as if he had altered it.

Mulling, I bent to retrieve the fallen paper. It was a check. For ten thousand dollars.

My heart jolted. My eyes popped. I lowered myself to a kitchen chair and did a little careful breathing.

After that I did a lot of pacing—through the spanking-clean living room back to the spanking-clean foyer. Into
the spanking kitchen, back to the foyer. But no matter how many times I looked, the check was still there.

It was mine for the taking. What would it hurt? Rivera wouldn't care. He had already dumped me. There would be no impassioned speeches about accepting money from the devil. No explosive arguments about my bad judgment. No absurd questions about where I had been.

Sespe. I shook my head. What on earth made him think I had gone to …

But suddenly my mind clicked away from sprawling notes and mouth-watering checks.

Sespe, Rivera had said. I had heard something on the radio about a death in a little town called Sespe.

And the senators note—it almost looked as if it had originally said
deaths
instead of
death.

Holy shit
, I thought, and quit my pacing.

Someone else had died.

DIDN'T GET TO BED until well past three a.m. that night. But even then I couldn't sleep.

There had indeed been another death. A drowning. It had taken place in Sespe, a sleepy little town best known for its production of a work boot called Ironwear. It was fifty miles from where Kathy Baltimore had died.

Emanuel Casero had been on his way home from the pub on Wednesday night. Friends said he was a bit inebriated. They had offered to drive him home, but he opted to walk, as he always did. This time, however, he never reached his destination.

A passing jogger had found his body facedown on
Sespe Creeks rocky shore at 5:47 on Saturday morning. There was no sign of foul play.

No. No sign. Just a drowning. Everyone had liked Manny. He was a joker, a good time. He'd been a member of the Yellow Jackets bowling team and a staunch supporter of the Republican Party.

Uncomfortable thoughts rolled around in my head like fractious bottles of nitro.

A staunch supporter.

Although I had searched the Internet for some time, I found nothing to suggest that Casero had worked for Senator Riveras campaign. Still, it seemed spookily coincidental.

I stared at my ceiling, willing myself to sleep and failing miserably.

It has been said that there are no coincidences. On the other hand, there must be thousands of “staunch” Republicans in California. Eventually they were likely to die. Casero's death probably had nothing to do with Kathy's.

But if that was the case, why had Senator Rivera sent me the note?

Was it really to apologize? Or had he sent it with the express purpose of dropping a hint about the second death? Perhaps he knew of my difficulty in leaving well enough alone. After all, he certainly had been privy to my idiocy involving other crimes. Despite advice to the contrary, it had seemed physically impossible for me to ignore the death of his fiancée. Neither did I quite manage to let the police handle the investigation of the Viagra-induced linebacker who had so rudely expired in my office.

I sat upright abruptly, waking Harlequin, who lifted his enormous head for one instant before flopping it back onto my legs like a fifty-pound bag of flour. But I barely noticed.

Maybe the senator had given me the check as added incentive, thinking I would then feel obliged to see my mission through to the end. Maybe he thought I was too moralistic to accept payment for a job not completed.

I snorted at the thought.

Harlequin twitched an ear as if I were a bothersome fly.

Scrubbing my eyes, I wished I had never gotten involved with a cop. Or, if I had to do something so idiotic, why couldn't I become enamored of someone like Officer Tavis? On the other hand, what kind of cop encouraged people to call him by his first name? Not the Los Angeles kind of cop, that was for sure. I was always surprised the LAPD guys didn't have monikers like Officer Rage or Lieutenant I'll Tear Your Head Off.

I refused to think about it anymore. No more thoughts of dismembered bodies. No more thoughts of blue-tinged faces being nibbled on by crayfish.

But I knew I was fooling myself. What kind of person could put those kinds of gruesome images behind her and fall into blissful slumber?

My kind.

I was asleep before I was horizontal. Dreaming before Harlequin even started to snore.

“m thinking about getting married,” said Mr. Lepinski.

“What?” I jerked as if electrocuted. In my fatigue-induced imaginings there had been cops. Two of them. One dark and one fair. Both horny as hell and both wearing handcuffs.

I straightened in my chair and chastised myself sternly. I had made a solemn vow to forget about men completely and focus with singular concentration on my career.

Howard Lepinski was lying on my therapy couch. For the first several months of our acquaintance, he had barely relaxed enough to remain inside his own skin, but he had unwound considerably since then. I eyed him now, wondering if he had changed more than I realized. He had come to me as bony as a supermodel. Did his arms seem a little less stringy? Was his expression a little less stressed?

“Married,” he said, glancing toward me, his eyes luminescent behind his hefty wire-rim glasses.

I forced myself to focus, even though the cops in my dreams had been wearing nothing but their duty belts … well, and the handcuffs. “To Penny?”

He nodded shyly, and then, to my amazement, his face quirked into what I thought might be a grin. Though in actuality I had no reference point. Lepinski wasn't known for his sparkling personality.

“How long have you and Penny known each other now?” I kept my tone steady, using my best shrink voice. It was designed to make him remember that his wife of twenty-some years—who I assumed had, at one point, also made him smile—had recently done the fornication fandango with the deli guy. Which, in turn, had precipitated Lepinski's visits to me. Though I had needed half a box of NoDoz to get to that point.

He sat up and looked at me.

“Three months and twelve days,” he said steadily, but I didn't relent.

“How long did you know Sheila before you wed?”

He blinked, just a little reminiscent of Mr. Magoo. “Two years and twenty-seven days,” he said. Mr. Lepinski is an accountant. Numbers are his sanctuary.

I nodded sagely. “Perhaps it might be wise to wait, then, and make certain—”

“I don't set an alarm anymore,” he said.

I mulled that for half a second and came up empty. “I beg your pardon?”

His eyes were shining again. “Since Penny,” he said. “I can't wait to get out of bed in the morning.”

“Maybe you're just getting adequate sleep.” While in connubial bliss, the former Mrs. Lepinski had been known to wake him during the night to discuss his shortcomings.

“She calls me first thing in the morning, just to make sure I'm all right.”

“That's nice,” I said, tone coolly professional. “But I want you to keep in mind that it is often considerably easier to live with someone when you don't actually
live
with them.” The truth was, I didn't want to see him hurt again. He was a strange little man, but I had figured out fairly recently that he was a pretty good egg, and I was sure my caveat had nothing to do with jealousy on my part. Even though I myself am awakened each morning by a dog with a bladder the size of a threshing machine.

“She says it's okay if my voice is all scratchy and funny from sleep.”

“She's a photographer. Is that right?” I asked, unnecessarily checking my notes.

He nodded. “Portraits. That sort of thing. To pay the bills, you know. But she likes nature shots. Wants to start her own gallery someday.”

A-huh! So she was just looking for some poor sucker to finance her hobby! She was a gold digger. Okay, Mr. Lepinski probably didn't have a lot of gold to dig, but it
was safe to assume that he had more than a portrait photographer with an artistic bent.

“An artist,” I said. “That must be a very different life from that of an accountant.”

He scowled a little. “I suppose so.”

I held his gaze, imparting skeins of wisdom. “You're quite a… pragmatist, Mr. Lepinski. Some might even say you're set in your ways.”

“I suppose so,” he said again.

“Do you think you're ready to cohabitate with someone who might…” I shrugged. “Store their peas near their carrots?”

He blinked and pressed his knees together, mannerisms reminiscent of the early days of his therapy, but then he drew a quiet breath. His lips twitched again.

“She makes me laugh,” he said.

And I couldn't think of a damn thing to complain about.

ey, Pete,” I said.

I was still sitting in my office when I made the call to my brother. The day had been filled with problems regarding family and loved ones and friends, making me wish I had some of each.

My kin live a couple thousand miles to the east in a strange, windy land called Chicago. Pete is the middle of my three brothers. Usually I have a rather unfavorable adjective in front of the word “brothers,” but not tonight, which tells us all a little something about my current mood.

“Hey, sis,” he said. “How's it hanging?”

“All right. How's little Christianna?” Some months previous, he and his wife of approximately two minutes had
named their newborn after me. Maybe because I had saved his sorry ass from a bevy of “friends” who were intent on killing him.

“She's great.” There was enthusiasm in his voice. “Cute as a bunny.”

“Yeah? Put her on the phone.”

“I realize you wouldn't know this, Christopher,” he said, “but babies can't talk.”

“I just want to hear her breathe,” I said, and then wished I could haul back the words; I didn't want to hear babies breathe. I didn't even like babies.

“You okay?” Pete asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed, a little touched by the concern he didn't bother to hide. It wasn't as if I were nostalgic for a more traditional Christmas or anything. But I had heard that a Santa-garbed bell ringer had recently collapsed from heat exhaustion outside the Macy's in Pasadena, and maybe I secretly thought God intended Santa to be cold. “I guess I'm just tired.”

“You sure?” he asked. “'Cuz you sound kind of sappy. Like you're human or something.”

I scowled into the phone and wished I'd called Jack the Ripper instead. “Let me talk to Chrissy” I said, and he laughed.