One Hot Mess (5 page)

But he drew back, pulled up his jeans, buttoned them in place.

I'd like to say on my behalf that I didn't shed a single tear. Though, in truth, I might have whimpered a little.

“The senator,” he said, and stared at me.

“Senator?” I cleared my throat and straightened. I felt cold suddenly. I wouldn't say that Rivera hates his father,
but… well, he
hates
his father. “What makes you think it is he?”

He stared at me askance. Maybe it was my phraseology. Sometimes people are uncomfortable with proper sentence structure.

“Him,”
I amended.

“Christina,” called the senator again.

“Were you expecting him?”

“No.” My voice squeaked. I disciplined my expression and vocal cords. “No. Why would I be?”

His brows lowered, he backed up a pace, putting distance between us, canting his head slightly, eyes narrowed. “When you mentioned a hot date I didn't think you meant my old man.”

My jaw dropped. “I
didn't
mean him.”

He was still watching me, eyes dead steady. “No?”

I grabbed my shirt from the counter beside me. “What the hell's wrong with you?”

“Then why is he here?”

Yanking my shirt over my head, I jumped off the counter, pulled my shorts out from under his foot, and actually considered biting his ankle on the way up. “How would I know?”

“He didn't—”

But suddenly the back door squeaked. I gasped even before he called my name again. “Christina, are you here?”

Rivera jerked toward the door, pushing me behind him as he did so. I was pulling on my shorts and swearing and panting all at the same time. I'm a real humdinger at multitasking.

“I do not mean to bother you.” I could hear his footsteps in my living room. “But—” He stepped into the
kitchen just as Rivera Junior pulled on his shirt. I threw my underwear in the nearest drawer, zipped my fly and jerked my head up just in time to see their gazes clash.

“Gerald!”

“Senator.”

There was a moment of hot silence, then: “I am sorry. Christina's door was left unlocked. I worried that something was amiss,” said the elder of the two.

As for me, I was peering past Riveras arm like a tipsy cockatiel.

“That why you came by?” he asked.

They stared at each other. “As far as I am aware, there is no law against me visiting a friend.”

Rivera glanced back at me. “You two buddies now, are you?”

I stepped out beside him, cleared my throat, and resisted checking myself to make certain my garments were firmly in their allotted positions. “Hello, Senator.”

“Good evening, Christina.” He gave me a stately nod. “I am sorry to disturb you. As I said, I worried that your door was unsecured and thought I had best check on your well-being.”

“Oh.” I wondered a little dimly if it was possible for a face to burn right off its head. “That was very thoughtful of you, Senator.”

He made a dismissive motion with his hand. “It was nothing. I was in the neighborhood, after all.”

“Really? Well, it's so nice of you to worry on my account, but as you can see, your son was kind enough to—”

“Cut the crap!” Rivera snarled. “What the hell's going on here?”

I shifted my eyes from one to the other, a million thoughts cruising drunkenly through my hormone-washed head. I didn't want to cause more problems between them by blurting out the senators earlier proposition to me. Neither did I want to break a trust with the older Rivera, and I wasn't all that crazy about the idea of admitting that I had agreed to horn in on a situation that some might consider the business of the police department. “Nothing's going on,” I said. “Your dad just stopped by to—”

“You sniffing after her, too?” Rivera asked, turning to his father. “That what this is about?”

The senator's back stiffened. “I'll not have you using that profane—”

“Wasn't Rachel enough? How 'bout Salina? Hell, you got her killed. I would think that would just about—”

“You blame me for her death?” The senator's voice was deadly low.

Rivera laughed. The sound was coarse and nasty. “She sure as hell wasn't
my
fiancée anymore, was she?”

“Still looking for others to blame, aren't you, Gerald? It is so like you to be unable—”

But suddenly Rivera launched forward, grabbed his father by the lapels of his blazer, and thrust him up against the wall. “What the hell are you doing here?”

They glared at each other, eyes spitting, lips snarling.

“My whereabouts are none of your concern,” rasped the senator.

“They are if you're in this damn house.”

“I believe Christina can decide which of us—”

“Oh, for God's sake!” I said, stepping forward and grabbing Rivera's fist. He had a death grip on his father's coat,
but adrenaline or just plain pissiness made it possible for me to pull his hand away. “He just came by to ask me for a favor.”

“Christina!” hissed the senator, but I ignored him.

“Yeah?” Riveras mouth jerked. “Is this the kind of favor where clothing is optional?”

“What are you?” I asked. “Twelve? He wants to talk.”

A muscle jumped in his cheek. “About what?”

I faltered.

“We have a mutual friend,” said the senator, and smoothed his jacket into place. “I but came to inform Christina of her condition.”

“Really.” Rivera didn't turn toward his father but kept his whiskey-burn gaze on me. “What friend is that?”

My lips moved. My mind was absolutely immobile.

“I do not think that is any concern of—” the senator began, but Rivera interrupted again.

“What's her name?”

The image of a dismembered corpse flashed through my mind. “Kathleen,” I said.

“Kathleen what?”

“Cahill,” lied the senator.

“What's wrong with her?” Rivera asked.

“I have sworn to keep her condition quiet so that she is not bothered by those—”

“What's wrong with her?” Rivera asked again, and turned his glare on his father.

The elder man lifted his chin with arrogant defiance. “If you must know… the young lady is with child.”

“Yeah?” Rivera smirked. “You gonna be a daddy again, Senator?”

“She is the daughter of a dear friend who has—”

“So was Salina. It didn't stop you then.”

Silence plowed into the room, then: “Still bitter that you cannot keep a woman for yourself, Gerald?”

“You goddamn bastard,” snarled Rivera.

“Stop it,” I said, and grabbed his arm, but maybe I was trying to restrain the wrong Rivera.

“Are you so weak that you cannot accept a little competition?” asked the senator.

Riveras lips twisted into a grin, brows lowered over deadly eyes. “You want competition, old man, let's—”

But at that moment I pulled a plate from the sink and slammed it against the counter. It crashed into a hundred satisfying shards.

The jerks jerked toward me in unison.

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” I gritted, and slammed my gaze from one to the other.

“He—”

“He—”

“Shut up!” I ordered, stabbing a finger somewhere between them.

The senator recovered first. “I apologize for my son,” he began. “I see he has not yet learned—”

“We don't have a mutual friend,” I said, and turned my gaze from the older to the younger Rivera. Usually, runaway honesty isn't a problem with me, but the blatant lies of father to son had frayed my nerves. “The senator has asked me to investigate a death.”

Rivera's brows jerked into his hairline. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just informally, of course. He thought the police department might be too—”

“What death?”

“That's not the point here,” I said, tone calculated to soothe the wild beast. “It simply—”

“What fucking death?” Rivera growled.

I straightened my back. “Kathleen Baltimore's. But I believe her death took place well out of your jurisdiction.”

He stared at me a second, then threw back his head and laughed. “Jesus, McMullen, who do you think you are? Columbo?”

“No.” I may have mentioned before that I hate to be laughed at. But being laughed at by a braying clod like Rivera makes my blood hurt. “I realize—”

“You're lucky to still be breathing after that last fiasco.”

“Well…” I could feel my temper rising toward the boiling point, but I diluted it with common sense. Two irate idiots were enough in one kitchen. “Thank you for your profound—”

“You damn well better thank me. I've saved your ass more times than a fucking firefighter.”

“I don't think it proper that you speak to a lady in that tone,” said the senator.

“And you!” Rivera rounded on his dad with a sharp snort. “What the hell are you thinking? You got some hot deal cooking? Maybe one of your asshole friends offed another of your asshole friends and you want to know what's what? Decided McMullen here is expendable?”

“A woman has died,” the senator said, tone stiff and holier than hell. “I did not know her, but I feel in my heart that it was not—”

“Heart!” Rivera laughed again. The sound was about as pleasant as the rumble of a road grader. “You don't have a fucking heart.”

“Rivera,” I said, but he turned toward me, spewing vitriol.

“So you were willing to lie for him, too, huh?”

Emotion was splashed across his face like acid—anger and hate, but there was more. There was hurt, injured hope.

“I didn't lie,” I said, voice quiet.

“So you had no idea why he might be stopping by.”

It had been such a small lie. The littlest fabrication, engineered to keep him calm. I opened my mouth, perhaps to say something to that effect, but maybe my lips knew better than to spout something so asinine.

He stared at me for an eternity, then he turned away.

“Rivera,” I said, but he just kept walking, through my foyer and out of my life.

ICKY GOLDENSTONE took a seat on my therapy couch at 8 a.m., and settled his right ankle over his left knee. He was lean and black with a smile that could light up the universe and a glare that could stop your heart. I suspected both were employed with some regularity on the fifth-graders he taught at Plainview in Tujunga.

“Hey Doc, how goes the rat race?” he asked, and watched me as he settled back against the cushion. He'd been a client for just under a year, but we'd covered some pretty rocky ground in that time.

“Pretty well,” I said.

“Yeah?” His teeth were aligned like little white soldiers. “You winning, then?”

I crossed one leg over the other and smiled. I liked Micky, had since the moment I met him. “Pretty even odds, actually,” I said.

He shook his head a little. “Then you're ahead of the game.”

“Trouble at work?” I asked.

“No.” The answer was straightforward, solid. Our gazes struck and locked. I braced myself. I have clients who come in to chat about their acne or their hangnails or their difficulty paying the mortgage on their million-dollar homes. Micky Goldenstone wasn't one of them. “I found her old man.”

I drew a careful breath through my nose and pushed my own suddenly minified troubles behind me. Yes, Rivera had acted like an ass, I had had to force the senator out of my house, and I was still peeing at the office, but I didn't have burn scars from my father. I didn't wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and I didn't have guilt so deep it ate my soul like battery acid.

“The man Kaneasha was living with,” I said.

He didn't bother to nod. He was already immersed in the past. Immersed and sinking deeper. I could tell by his expression, his darkening dialect.

“Cig,” he said, and sat in silence for a moment, eyes narrowed.

“Did you speak to him?”

He remained silent, looking at nothing.

“Micky,” I said.

He drew back almost seamlessly. “Yeah. Yeah. I talked to 'im.”

“And that's how you learned—”

“He's a—” He stopped himself, gritted his teeth, making
a muscle bunch in his jaw. “They ain't together no more.” He nodded. “She left more'n a year ago. Maybe 'cuz he beat the crap out of her.” He shrugged. “Maybe not.”

I had a thousand questions, but so did he. I let him run.

“He admitted it. I didn't ask. Hell! I didn't wanna know. But he was proud. Fuckin' crackhead can—” He burst to his feet and twisted away raw energy tightly bound. “Can—”

“Micky” I said, soothing.

“Can beat the shit out of woman half his—”

“Micky,” I said, raising my voice.

“What!” He turned toward me, hands fisted, eyes burning.

“Sit down please.”

He did so, but his eyes were still burning, his hands still fisted.

I watched him, letting him calm.
Hoping
he'd calm. “Her abuse at the hands of her boyfriend is not your fault. It was—”

“That's bullshit!” He watched me, then inhaled deeply, making his nostrils flare. “I was the one that raped her.”