Love Game (9 page)

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Bridget moaned again. “I really am a whore.”

“No, darlin’,” Lucy said, clutching at her chest. “That man could make any woman think naughty thoughts. I’m thinking a whole slew of ’em.”

So was I. I bit my lower lip. Remington had hid a lot under his polo shirt and cotton Dockers.

Bridget rubbed her eyes. “Nope, he still looks like The Rock.”

“Like a Greek god,” Lucy corrected her. “He’s Hercules. He’s Adonis. He’s—”

“He’s Remington Cumberbatch, the new police detective,” Ruth said.

Lucy put one hand on her hip and leaned into me. “Oh, is that what folks are calling a ‘new police nerdy fella’ these days?”

Suddenly Remington Cumberbatch stopped running. I thought at first the sight of Luanda had made him stop in his tracks, but his attention was fixed on the middle of the road. I glanced around to see who he was looking at.

“Don’t bother,” Ruth said. “He’s looking at
you
, kid.”

OUR EYES
locked. I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. He was the definition of cool, not because of the tattoos but because he was unflinching, unfathomable, unblinking.

And he was hot.

He stared at me, his chest heaving with the residual exertion from his run. He was wondering either why I was wearing an eighty-year-old woman’s velour
tracksuit or how quickly he could take it off me. The thought made me break out into a fit of giggles.

“Oh, Lord, here we go,” Ruth said. “Don’t worry, Bridget, you’re not the whore. Gladie is.”

The flipper turned off the hose and engaged Remington in conversation. I noticed that Rellik sucked in his stomach and sort of puffed out his chest while he spoke to the detective. After a moment he waved us over.

Ruth stayed in the middle of the street, looking from Rellik standing next to damp Luanda to Grandma’s house and back again. “Frying pan or fire? Frying pan or fire?” I heard her mumble.

Our little group walked the rest of the way across the street and formed a circle on the lawn. I said hello to Mrs. Arbuthnot, even though we had never been introduced, and I was careful not to make eye contact with Remington.

Luanda pointed at Mrs. Arbuthnot. “She aggressed me! She violated my chi!”

Mrs. Arbuthnot rolled her eyes. “You tried to light me on fire,” she said calmly.

“I did no such thing!” Luanda stammered and sputtered. She balled her hands into fists and stomped her foot.

“Since you’re all here early, we can start the tour now,” Rellik suggested. His smile was still plastered on his face, and he wasn’t any more attractive in the light of day. Still, he was very hospitable and very proud of his house, and I had to hand it to him for trying to distract the women from doing any more damage. “The men have the day off, anyway. Permits,” he said with a wink.

“Not everyone is here,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said. “Mavis and Felicia are planning to come. Mavis has a good camera, and she’s going to take pictures for our responsible-growth report.”

As if on cue, a light-blue Volkswagen Beetle drove up and parked on the street in front of us. Mavis stepped out of the passenger side and Felicia from the driver’s side. I wondered who was handling the cupcakes while they were away.

“We’ve brought cupcakes for everyone,” Mavis announced, holding up a white bakery box.

Rellik clapped his hands together. “Perfect. We can enjoy them after the tour. I’m sure you ladies will see we’ve respected the historic nature of the area.”

“How did you like the book?” Felicia asked me.

“Uh,” I said.

Rellik was anxious to start the tour. “Remember to watch your step. We try to clean up as we go, but this is a construction site, and there are tools and nails everywhere.”

He looked at me and winked. I thought I heard Remington snicker, but when I looked at him, he was deadpan.

And hot.

Lucy tried to maneuver around me to get closer to Luanda, but I hopped in front of her and slipped my hand through the crook of Luanda’s arm.

“So, I’ve always wanted to know more about talking to dead people,” I lied.

Luanda’s face brightened. “They’re talking to me right now,” she said.

I jumped away from her. Yikes. I hoped she was
lying or at least off her rocker. I didn’t need any more dead people around me.

First on the tour was the living room. Just two months ago it was crammed with furniture and knickknacks. When the owners moved out, the house went from dilapidated to more or less ready for a bulldozer. But in only a couple of days, Rellik and his crew had transformed it.

Walls had been knocked down, forming an enormous great room, and the kitchen that had been stuck in the sixties was now a gorgeous area of stainless steel and granite. It was a lot of work done in a short period of time. It wasn’t exactly a reflection of the historic nature of the area, and I wondered if Mrs. Arbuthnot was going to blow her lid.

The house looked different, but a creepy feeling of dread still wormed its way up my spine and niggled at my stomach.

Or maybe that was the two bagels, pot of coffee, and cherry Danish I had for breakfast.

“I’m picking up vibrations,” Luanda announced, and pushed a lock of wet hair off her face.

“Why? Did she Taser you when she gassed you?” Ruth asked, and laughed at her own joke.

Outside, the pool had been drained, and the plaster was half blasted off. A large machine lay at the deep end, with a large hose attached to it. Bags of plaster peppered the pool deck.

“This is going to be some house,” Bridget noted.

Two men joined us in the back. Both were middle-aged, one dressed like a lawyer, and the other in casual clothes. The second man was very familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him.

“Oh, good, you’re here. The house is almost there. Get your checkbooks ready,” Rellik said with an exaggerated wink. He smiled and shook their hands. Potential buyers. They talked numbers for a moment and then joined our tour.

I never knew house flipping was so fast. The house had been run-down for decades, but within a few days it was halfway to being on the market and ready for a feature in
House & Garden
magazine.

“I can’t wait to show you this next part,” Rellik said. “We’ve actually made a basement.”

“Why would you do that?” Ruth asked. “No basements in Southern California.”

“Rellik Construction aims to please.” Rellik steered us down a hallway and through a door leading to stairs. “But this is no ordinary basement.”

Downstairs were two metal doors, sitting side by side.

“A dungeon,” Ruth said.

“A bomb shelter,” Bridget guessed.

Rellik shook his head. “No, they’re panic rooms. They’re going to be the finest ones in America. Go ahead, get in.”

There was a flurry of enthusiastic shuffling toward the two rooms. Something about the idea of a spot for the express purpose of hiding was irresistible. And it was the perfect setup for a married couple—his-and-hers panic rooms.

I had to admit I was envious. I would have loved a place to go when I panicked, which was pretty regularly.

I couldn’t wait to get inside. I envisioned a wet bar and satellite TV. I pictured an endless supply of chips
and a really comfortable recliner chair. Maybe the flipper would let me hang out and escape the menagerie I was saddled with. I could be safe in a panic room. Nobody could throw me off a balcony in a panic room.

We shuffled into the rooms, separated evenly into two groups.

“Don’t think I forgot about you, woman,” Lucy warned Luanda. Luanda had elbowed her way in first—there was a trail of water behind her—and Lucy was fast on her heels.

“I’m not sure I like this,” Ruth muttered, but either her curiosity got the best of her or she thought her bat was inside, because she didn’t hesitate to follow Lucy.

Bridget’s attention was fixed on Remington. Her head was tilted up, and her mouth hung open. Her eyes darted from tattoo to muscle and back again. There was a lot of both. I figured she was battling her internal feminist voice, and she was probably coming out on the side that ogling men purely for their physical beauty was only fair play.

Remington, however, was distracted by other things. By the room. By me. He turned to me and opened his mouth, as if to say something, but as soon as I entered the room, the flipper interrupted.

“There you go,” he announced. “All in. What do you think?”

But he didn’t give us a chance to answer. The door closed behind me with a click that was a little on this side of ominous. The room filled with a red light, and the only sound was an annoying buzzing, like mosquitoes. We collectively held our breath, but the door didn’t open again.

The room was plenty big for the six of us, but it was bare, like the inside of a soup can. The floor was cement, the walls metal, and the door looked like it could protect Fort Knox.

Remington stepped around me and jimmied the door, but it was locked down tight. He banged on it with his fists, but it didn’t budge. After a moment Ruth ran at it, shoved Remington aside, and started to scream for everything she was worth.

“Open the goddamned door!” she yelled, her claustrophobia obviously kicking in. A couple of rollers flew out of her hair and beaned Luanda in the head. “Very funny, Rellik,” Ruth hollered. “Open the door!”

If Rellik was playing a practical joke, he was taking his own sweet time with the punch line. Ruth calmed down long enough to put her ear against the door. But the only sound was the low-level buzzing.

“This is not happening,” I said. Denial has always been my first line of defense. Unfortunately, my second line is chocolate, and there was none in the panic room. My third line is a lime margarita with extra salt, but I wasn’t seeing any of them around, either.

Ruth threw her arms up, making her housedress rise to reveal her knobby knees. “Trapped!” she yelled. “Trapped like a rat on a ship!”

“I’m sensing negative energy,” Luanda singsonged, stating the obvious.

“I’ll show you negative energy, you man stealer,” Lucy threatened.

“Really?” I asked Lucy. “You’re going there now? When we’re locked in a tin can?”

“Why are we locked in the panic room?” Bridget asked.

“Isn’t it obvious, darlin’?” Lucy responded. “There’s no way to get out.”

“No, I mean, why would he do that? Why would he lock us up?”

Bridget had a point. Why would Rellik the flipper lock six people in a panic room in the basement of his remodel? What was the point? Even serial killers killed one at a time, didn’t they?

“Maybe it’s a mistake,” Bridget said. “Maybe the door closed by accident, and he can’t get it open. It’s a panic room, after all. Maybe he can’t get in. Maybe he’s yelling on the other side, telling us he’s getting help.”

“Oh,” Ruth said. Her body visibly relaxed, and our communal freak-out went down a few notches. Bridget made a lot of sense. Maybe it took a diehard atheist not to jump to conclusions. I sat down on the cold cement floor with my back up against the wall.

“I guess we’ll be here awhile,” I said.

“Call for help on your phone,” Ruth told me. But I didn’t have my phone. My phone was at the bottom of a canyon. Bridget’s phone was dead in Grandma’s kitchen, next to Lucy’s phone, which she had left in her Birkin bag. Ruth was still in her housedress, and I doubted she even owned a cellphone. Our eyes shifted to Remington.

“Off duty,” he said, and patted his naked, hard six-pack to show he was pocketless.

“How about you, witch lady?” Lucy asked Luanda. “You got a phone hiding in that getup?”

“I don’t need phones,” Luanda said. “I commune on a deeper level.”

“We’re at a pretty deep level now,” Ruth said.

“I guess we’ll have to be patient,” said Bridget. She took a seat next to me, sitting cross-legged on the hard floor. She wore wool slacks and a cotton sweater with a stain on her chest. Coffee, by the looks of it. Big circles under her eyes were outlined in the red light.

My legs lay stretched out in front of me, a slip-on sneaker on one foot and the nylon boot on the other poking out of the bottom of Grandma’s tracksuit. We weren’t the most fashionable group. Except for Lucy, we looked like a group of homeless people or perhaps a circus troupe. It occurred to me that the other panic room was the well-dressed room.