Love Game (12 page)

“I hope the cop tears him to pieces,” Ruth said.

But there was no evidence of Spencer tearing anyone to pieces. In fact, there was no evidence of him at all. His voice had receded and then grown quiet.

“Detective Cumberbatch,” I said. My voice came out like a little girl’s, meek and small, but it spurred him on. With all his strength, Remington pulled at
the metal wall. It gave way by inches, making a horrible sound.

That’s how it turned out that the only one who could save us was busy on the other side of the room when the door finally opened.

WHILE REMINGTON
focused on his task, the door opened with a bump and a clang. We screamed in unison—all except for Remington, who was up to his shoulders in mangled wall.

“Throw something at him!” Bridget shouted.

“What? We don’t have anything,” I said.

Ruth pushed Luanda toward the door. “Give me a
hand,” Ruth told me. “Let’s toss Luanda. There’s a good heft to her. She’ll knock him out, for sure.”

Luanda struggled against her, but it wasn’t necessary. Luckily, we didn’t have to javelin-toss Luanda at whoever was coming through the door.

“All right, folks. The cavalry has arrived. Rellik skedaddled. Everybody out.”

Spencer stood at the door, his shirt torn, his hair mussed, his pants smeared with plaster, and a big self-important grin on his face.

Ruth was the first one out, and we followed quickly behind her. I breathed in big, greedy gulps of air when I stepped out of the panic room and then gasped in shock when I saw who else was in the basement with us.

Mavis, Felicia, Mrs. Arbuthnot, and the two men from the other panic room were alive and well and staring at us like we, not they, were the ghosts.

“Holy hell, they’ve risen from the dead,” Ruth said.

“We were never dead,” Mrs. Arbuthnot announced.

“I was beaten up,” the man in the suit said. His face was bruised, his nose bloody, and he was working on a big shiner.

“And we were tied up,” Felicia added.

They were dirty but not nearly as much of a mess as we were.

“Did you have furniture?” I asked.

“Two recliners and a few folding chairs,” the man in the suit replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I knew they had recliners,” I told Remington. “We picked the wrong room.”

I wasn’t totally correct about choosing the wrong room. Sure, we were locked in without furniture, almost
plastered and suffocated to death, and we looked horrible—sweaty, plastery, and badly dressed—but the folks in the other panic room went through real terror.

“He told us we were going to die,” Mrs. Arbuthnot told us. “He kept coming in and out; each time was worse.”

“He beat me up,” the man in the suit repeated.

“He had a gun,” the other man added.

“You look familiar,” I said to him. “Yes, you do,” Lucy agreed. “Where have we met before?”

“I broke into her car for her,” he said, pointing at me.

“Uncle Harry’s security guard!” Lucy said, remembering. “Hi, I’m Lucy Smythe.” She put her hand out, and he shook it with his left hand. Lefty. I flashed back to the couple of days I had worked at Lefty’s Five and Dime in Fresno. They had every gadget and gizmo for left-handers. I couldn’t use a thing in the store.

“Kirk Shields,” he introduced himself.

“And I’m Frank Richmond, and I need medical care. I was beaten,” the man in the suit informed us yet again.

As if Frank Richmond had magical powers to summon medical care, the sound of sirens reached us.

“Oh, good, an ambulance,” he said.

“Actually, an ambulance, fire truck, three police cars, and a police cruiser,” I clarified. I had a lot of experience with emergency services.

“I want to hug everyone, but my hugs are too
powerful. They can have a negative impact,” Bridget said.

“You can risk it with me,” I said. She hugged me, and Lucy joined in. I felt a wave of gratitude for my friends. We stood, supporting one another, as we trembled with the relief of being alive.

Spencer had cleared the house, finding no sign of Rellik. He escorted us upstairs, where the paramedics checked us out. Spencer had his police investigate the panic rooms, which were now the scene of the crime.

There were murmurings of sending us all to the hospital to get checked, but I refused to go. Besides anxiety, a bursting bladder, and plaster on my face, chest, arms, and in my hair, I was fine.

Once I refused to go, the rest of the group followed me like revolutionaries from a scene in
Les Misérables
. Even Frank Richmond refused to go to the hospital, accepting only the paramedics’ care.

Our group of eleven filed into the paddy wagon to go to the police station. I was last in line, behind Bridget, who had decided to brave disaster and hug everyone, after all.

“How about you, Spencer?” I asked, before I climbed into the van. “He cracked your head pretty good. You don’t want another episode like last time.”

“Why? Are you planning on giving me another visit?”

“I’m covered in plaster,” I said.

“Is that what this is?” he asked, flecking a bit of dried plaster off my cheek.

“What did you think it was?” I asked.

“Pinkie, with you the list is so long.”

He was right. In the past few months I had fallen into just about every gross substance known to man. I was a walking disaster. “The list isn’t long,” I told him. “Take that back.”

Spencer smirked his annoying smirk. “Get in the van, Pinkie.” He put his hand out. I slipped my hand into his, and he guided me into the van. There was the usual electric current I felt when I was in close contact with Spencer, but this time there was something extra. I caught his eyes, and I knew he felt it, too.

“Uh,” I said.

“The van,” he croaked, tugging me up into the back.

“Oh, I forgot, I have to pee,” I announced, but it was too late. Spencer had slammed the doors shut, and the van started toward the police station.

THEY TOOK
our statements in batches. Spencer, Remington, and Officer James started with Mavis, Felicia, and Mrs. Arbuthnot, questioning them in separate rooms. Bridget, Lucy, and I made ourselves comfortable in the waiting room.

Cannes police headquarters was a new, modern building of glass and marble, with comfy armchairs in the waiting room. The desk sergeant, Fred Lytton, got us some water and made sure we were as comfortable as we could be in our sweaty, plastery clothes. I had suffered the worst of it. Grandma’s velour tracksuit was torn and covered in dried white sludge. Her jacket, of course, was still wedged in the
vent in the panic room. I was left in the pants and a white T-shirt.

“You sure look pretty today, Underwear Girl,” Fred told me. “I mean, Ms. Burger,” he added. My underpants were pretty famous among Cannes law enforcement, after an unfortunate accident back in August, but Fred had been warned against referring to it. “I like your hair like that.”

“It’s plaster, Fred,” I said.

“It’s pretty, like an angel.”

My hair hung down in long, hard white strips. “Do you think Bird will have to cut the plaster out of my hair?” I asked Bridget. Last month Bird had chopped Bridget’s hair into a short bob after most of it caught fire. It suited Bridget, but with my curly hair, I would look like Tinker Bell on acid.

“I think if you soak it long enough, it should come clean,” she said.

Lucy adjusted her cashmere dress. She didn’t have a hair out of place. It dawned on me I should aspire to be her. She was pretty, well dressed, rich, and had a bitchin’ car.
Had
a bitchin’ car.

Meanwhile, I had a car that was tied together with twine, I was wearing my grandmother’s clothes, and my only paying job was to unmatch Uncle Harry, which in my line of work was the definition of epic fail.

“How’s Julie, Fred?” Bridget asked. “Last time I saw her, she was coming out of the clinic with a bandage on her face.” Fred and Julie were my first match, and they were perfect for each other in a mousy, scared-of-their-own-shadows kind of way. Julie was
Ruth’s grandniece and a sometimes employee at Tea Time.

“Oh, that,” he said. “She had a run-in with a seagull.”

“Not a lot of seagulls up in these mountains,” Bridget noted.

“Julie seems to attract them,” Fred replied, as if he were listing just one of her marvelous attributes. “And bears,” he added.

“Bears?” I asked.

“California brown bears, mostly,” he said. “Although there was that one grizzly. That was a hairy pickle, I can tell you.”

Ruth made her way toward us, yelling at various cops as she walked. Impatient. Her curlers hung at weird angles. We were a motley crew, and it was time to go home.

She took a seat next to Lucy. “Are there bears in Cannes?” I asked Ruth.

“Only around my niece. She’s the pied piper of wildlife and broken teacups.”

Luanda floated around the precinct, moaning and singing something that sounded like “Moo, moo, moo.”

“She’s communing with cows,” Lucy said.

“She’s in some kind of trance,” Bridget said.

“She’s bat-shit crazy,” Ruth said.

“Stop tickling me under the chin with your feathers, lady!” one of the officers yelled, and swatted her away.

“I never did get my Slugger from that house,” Ruth complained. “It sure would come in handy.”

“It sure would,” Lucy agreed.

Luanda did a couple of pirouettes and arrived at the front desk. “I see love in your future,” she told Fred.

“You do?” he asked.

Warning bells went off in my head. “What are you doing?” I asked her.

“I know the perfect woman for you,” Luanda continued, ignoring me. “She’s been married a few times before, so she has a lot of practice.”

“Hold on a second,” I said, rushing the front desk.

“Ms. Burger matched me with Julie. She’s my girlfriend, but she’s never been married,” Fred said, as if he was rethinking Julie’s suitability.

“She’s not the one for you,” Luanda assured him.

“What?” I screeched.

“Just because a person says she’s a matchmaker doesn’t make her a matchmaker,” she told Fred. Ouch. I checked to see if I was bleeding. Luanda had hit pretty close to the target with that comment.

Luanda riffled through her layers of clothing and took out a soggy business card. “Take this,” she told Fred. “I’m having a meeting tomorrow night at seven. I’m doing a group matchmaking session. I’m a believer in bulk.”

Fred took the card and studied it. My mouth had dropped open, and I couldn’t get it closed. Luanda floated away to “moo, moo, moo” in the processing room.

“Gladie looks like Marie Antoinette just before the blade came down,” Ruth said. “Quick, say, ‘Let them eat cake.’ ”

Bridget wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “Are you okay?” she asked me. “Don’t listen to her. You
made a great match for Fred—I mean, if I believed in the archaic, misogynistic, trade-your-daughter-for-a-goat tradition of courtship and marriage.”

“I’ll hit Luanda, if you want,” Lucy offered. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“Damn that missing bat,” Ruth complained.

I’m not a violent woman, but I wouldn’t have minded having Ruth’s bat at that moment. I understood exactly how Grandma felt about Luanda. It wasn’t only that she had moved into my territory and was messing with my matches and hard work, but I worried that she would screw up Fred and Julie and rob them of a lifetime of love, which in my heart of hearts I was sure they would live with each other.

The air changed suddenly, like the atoms had rearranged themselves and transformed the normal police-station air into a cloud of liquid heat.

“You ready?” Remington had appeared at my side, his voice deep and soft, like a really light and fluffy molten lava cake. I licked my lips and breathed in his musk. He had changed into a tight Cannes police T-shirt, which stretched over his muscles.

“Ready?” I breathed.

“I’m going to take your statement.”

“Oh,” I said. I took a step toward him and tripped over my feet, falling forward into his arms. He held me close a little longer than necessary.

“Are you kidding me?” Spencer had popped his head between us. “You don’t waste any time, Pinkie. Making the rounds?”

I pushed away from Remington. “Look who’s talking.”

Spencer tugged at my arm. “Let’s go. I’m taking your statement.”