Unplugged (26 page)

Later, I did some digging into Tiffany’s past. I didn’t even discover a speeding ticket. Which, in the end, only made me more suspicious. I mean, what kind of person doesn’t speed? Certainly not anyone who’s lived in Los Angeles for more than an hour.

I dropped my head onto my desk and considered committing caloric suicide, but once I’d wandered into my kitchen and surveyed my culinary domain, I realized I was going to have to concoct another means of doing myself in, as there were only a few spears of broccoli and half a bag of spinach leaves with which to terminate myself.

I ate a broccoli bush while I stood in the open door of the refrigerator. Memories rampaged through me. How had Jed and Garlic known I would be at the Safari? Had they been the ones to call me in the first place, or had it really been Solberg? Maybe they had tapped his phone, but I didn’t even know if that was possible with a cell. So perhaps someone had overheard my truncated conversation with the Geek.

But who—

The answer popped like bubblegum into my head.

Bennet.

My stomach dropped at the thought.

Had Bennet known it was Solberg on the phone? Had he sent the goon duo to question me? Had he meant to have them kill . . . ?

But no. I was being ridiculous. Bennet was attractive and had eyes that twinkled like . . . some sort of body of water. He couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. Besides, he couldn’t have heard Solberg’s words. So he’d have no way of knowing where I was going. . . .

Unless he’d followed me.

The idea spiked the hairs along my arms and neck.

What if it was Bennet who had embezzled money from NeoTech? What if Solberg found out and called to . . . warn me?

The idea of the wriggly little Solberg trying to save me instead of attempting to crawl into my pants sent my head spinning, but maybe the time he’d spent with Elaine had changed him. It was possible. Pershing had said he had known about her cats for years, but only now warned her to do the right thing. Maybe it was the same with Bennet. Maybe Solberg knew he was embezzling, and warned him to come clean before it was too late. Maybe Bennet had threatened Solberg. Maybe Solberg had been lying low ever since, but came out of hiding when he found out I was involved.

Then again, there was no way to positively identify the voice on the phone. It may not have been Solberg at all. That fact made me feel a little better. If the truth be told, I wasn’t sure which would be worse—owing Solberg or being murdered by Bennet.

Actually, neither option sounded that great, which made learning as much as possible seem prudent.

After several minutes of brain-shattering thought, I called the Safari. A man answered on the second ring.

“Hello,” I said, and hoped to hell I had remembered our waitress’s name correctly. “May I speak to Grace, please?”

“Grace?” said the voice, then, “Hey, hurry up with the soup. If it’s not cucumber, we serve it hot.” He was back on in a minute. “Grace Hyat?”

Hyat. I scribbled the name onto a scrap of paper I’d fished out of recycling. “Yes,” I said.

“Damn it!” he cursed. “I said sautéed, not charbroiled.” Whoever I was talking to was in serious need of public relations training . . . or a rabies vaccination. “What do you want?” Probably both.

I was feeling more empathy for Grace by the minute. I was also dead sure Cujo was not about to allow me to talk to his browbeaten waitress for anything less than a court order, but I gave it a try anyway. “I’m her cousin, Jules Montgomery . . . from Fresno. I’m only in town for a couple hours, and I was hoping to—”

“She’s busy,” he said, and hung up without another word. You gotta like a man who doesn’t draw out the good-byes.

I didn’t bother changing clothes before hopping into my Saturn and driving to the restaurant. It seemed to me there was no time to waste.

The Safari was hopping with the mealtime crowd. Apparently, America had whetted its appetite at Thanksgiving and saw no reason to stop gorging anytime short of Christmas.

Maybe I would have been wiser to wait, but I had no way of knowing when Grace would work next, or if she’d survive the rush.

I caught a glimpse of her serving a table of eight.

The hostess approached me with a notepad and a million-dollar smile. Or maybe about five grand. My parents hadn’t given a lot of thought to dental care. I’d first seen an orthodontist about eighteen months ago. He had trotted out a list of necessary procedures as long as a fishing rod and told me the cost of his services. I had opted to continue eating instead.

“Your name?”

“Chrissy,” I said, “but I’d like to wait for a table by the window up there.” I pointed to where I’d seen the harried Grace.

She gave me a pitying look. I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d glanced at my attire and decided I was homeless, or because I was obviously deranged. “I’m afraid that might be quite a wait.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m dieting anyway.”

She gave me a smile with less wattage, scribbled a note in her ledger, and moved on to the couple next to me. They had a fractious toddler with a runny nose and a gleam in his eye that promised to wreak havoc on their dining experiences for the next fourteen years.

Meanwhile, I jockeyed my way toward the fake-leather bench near the door, not wanting to miss my opportunity should someone be called into the inner sanctum.

It took almost half an hour before a stretch of vinyl opened up. I wiggled my butt onto a corner and waited some more. The general populace, I noticed, was considerably better dressed than me. In fact, the toddler had me beat, but at least I didn’t have a snotty nose that I habitually wiped on my sleeve.

Forty-five minutes had passed by the time I was led to a table.

I ordered a hot water with lime in concession to my growing waistline and my dwindling finances. They never charge you for hot water. I’d learned that during my pregraduate days, when I’d considered McDonald’s a four-star restaurant.

Grace arrived with her childishly embellished notepad and an apparent headache. Maybe I was wrong about her head, but my own was beginning to throb. I think it was the toddler.

She still wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and her expression was weary behind her professional façade. As far as I’m concerned, waitresses should be canonized at the earliest possible opportunity. “What can I get for you?” she asked.

I didn’t waste time on preliminaries. Instead, I put a twenty-dollar bill on the table and caught her gaze. “Do you remember me from last Friday night?”

She narrowed her eyes a little as if wondering why the hell she always got the weirdos. “You left early,” she said. “I believe you were with a gentleman.”

“The scumbag,” I said, and made sure I added a nice dash of vitriol.

Her eyebrows were perfectly groomed. They rose in twin arcs.

“He’s the first guy in three years I introduced to my son,” I said. I’m not a liar by nature. Well, okay, maybe I am, but I was sure Grace didn’t care if I gave her the real story. I was also sure, judging by her degree of fatigue, that she’d empathize with my fictional maternal situation. “Little Tony loved him like a father.”

She was still staring.

I gave her a scowl as if she was slow on the uptake. “Bastard’s cheating on me.”

“Ohhh.” She nodded, cocked a hip, and let the notebook drop to her side.

“I got a call from a friend while I was here last time. She’s been sick every day of her third trimester, but she was really bad this time. Hacking up her lungs. She had to go to the hospital. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just let her go alone. Her rotten husband was nowhere to be found.”

She nodded again. I felt a spark of something between guilt and pride and sisterly camaraderie.

“So I hop in my Saturn and take her to Huntington. And meanwhile Tony’s idol is steppin’ out with his ex.”

I shook my head and gazed out the window. I would’ve liked to have been able to conjure up a few fat tears, but it was no use. In lieu of the moisture, I bit my lip and scrunched my face. “I hope I’m wrong. For little Tony’s sake.” I zapped my attention back to her. “But I owe myself the truth.” I took a deep breath and straightened my back bravely. “That’s why I came to see you. ’Cuz I gotta know. Did anyone meet him here after I left?”

She thought back for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “No,” she said. “He rushed right off after you did.”

“Rushed off?”

“Within seconds. When I came back with your orders, he apologized, dropped a hundred on the table, and took off.”

“He didn’t eat his . . .” I paused. “A hundred . . . dollars?”

She shrugged. “He might be a bastard, but he’s not a cheap bastard. It works that way sometimes.” She scowled. “Believe me. Anyway, he didn’t ask for change or anything, just charged out of here. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t see him in the parking lot.”

Why was he in such a hurry? I wondered wildly, but I remembered my little Oscar-winning performance and continued on. “I bet he went to her place, then. Couldn’t wait another second. Did you happen to remember which way he headed?”

She exhaled a laugh. “You kidding? Half the time I can’t remember my own name.”

I
got a burger at In-N-Out because I could. Wendy’s is better, but you can find them anywhere.

Once home, I checked my answering machine.

Mom’s voice filled the room, telling me to call her. I didn’t. The next message was from my optometrist. The last was a hang up. I checked caller ID. It had been someone from E.U., whatever that . . .

My brain cells popped into order. Someone had called from Electronic Universe. I dialed the number with spastic fingers.

A man answered on the second ring.

“Yes.” I felt breathless and tense. “This is Christina McMullen. Someone called me from this number.”

There was a moment of silence, then, “What was it in regards to, ma’am?”

“I’m not certain.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid—”

“Rex,” I said before he could hang up. “I think it was Rex. Is he there?”

There was a pause before he said he’d check, and did so. In a minute he was back on the phone. “I’m sorry. Rex seems to be gone for the day.”

“But he was there earlier?”

“I’m not sure actually, and we’re just about ready to close up for the evening. You’re certainly welcome to call back tomorrow.”

“Can I get a message to him?”

“He might be in tomorrow.”

“But what about tonight? It’s extremely important.”

“I don’t have his home phone number.”

“But you must be able to get it.” My thirty-second boyfriend had once compared me rather unfavorably to a bulldog. It may have been this type of behavior that prompted the comment, or the drooling when I’m stroked. “Can you find it and give him a message?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean—”

“This is a matter of life or death.”

“All right.” The life or death caveat gets them every time. “Give me the message, I’ll try to get ahold of him.”

“Tell him Christina McMullen called. Remind him that he tried to contact me and tell him to try again as soon as possible,” I said, and left my phone number.

“That’s it?” He sounded deflated. Maybe he’d expected a message from the president or something.

“It’s urgent.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and hung up.

I was wired after that. I mean, I didn’t know if Rex had called because he’d spotted Solberg or because he remembered my cleavage kindly, or even if he’d called at all. Maybe it was just E.U. trying to sell me an electronic . . . can opener or something. I paced for a while, but it didn’t do me any good, so I settled back into my previous plan.

It didn’t take any great detective abilities to find Bennet’s address. Any doofus with an L.A. phone book could have done as much. But it took a doofus with some severe mental-health issues to continue with my harebrained plan. I seemed to qualify.

I showered quickly, shaved my legs, cut both knees, stuck tissue to the lacerations, and squeezed into a topaz-colored skirt that stopped mid-thigh and looked like it had been shrink-wrapped to my hips. I then donned an ivory-colored cami. It was beaded at the top and showed every ounce of cleavage I could hoist up under my collarbones.

I curled my hair, overdid my makeup, and checked my mace. But since I didn’t know what I was looking for, I decided to believe it was in serviceable condition and shoved it into my purse.

I chose a pair of sandals with heels that could have been registered as lethal weapons and headed for the door.

When I stood on my stoop, I saw that the morning clouds had withered away and the sun shone merrily down from a crystalline blue sky. It was warm for the end of November. Or maybe there were other reasons I was sweating like a linebacker.

I turned on my heel, marched into the bathroom, and slathered on another layer of underarm protection. Then I grabbed a bottle of Bordeaux and marched resolutely out of the house.

Two minutes later, armed with false bravado and suicidal tendencies, I was heading east on the 210 with half of the rest of Los Angeles’s populace, assuring myself I was perfectly safe, while smoking like a house on fire.

My hands had almost quit shaking by the time I reached Ross’s townhouse. It was a quad. Made of stucco almost the same color as my skirt, it boasted jacarandas and eucalyptus set beside quaint, arched doorways, but I was determined to slither into his serene domain and lie my ass off. Again. I closed my eyes and tried to think of other ways to ferret out the truth, but no brilliant ideas flashed to mind. So I levered myself out of the car and onto my fashionable heels.

The trek across his front yard took my breath away.

I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. I waited all of five seconds, then let out a puff of relief and turned away, ready to bolt for home.

“Chris?”

I jumped, plastering my back against the rough wall and breathing hard.

Ross Bennet stared at me from five feet away. He was wearing blue running shorts and nothing else. Well, shoes and maybe underwear. I couldn’t tell. But his chest was bare. That much I was pretty damn sure of.