Murder Under Cover (12 page)

 

Over an hour later, Robin lay on my living room couch, her left eye swollen closed and most of her cheek dark red and bruised. She was holding a bag of frozen peas to her face and whimpering only a little. I knew I had bruises, too, but nothing compared to Robin’s. Her face would turn black and blue and purple over the next twenty-four hours, and it wasn’t going to be pretty for a week or so.

I walked to the kitchen sink and filled a plastic bag with ice and wrapped it in a soft cloth. When I laid it on the other side of her poor face she grimaced, then whispered, “It’s too cold.”

“That’s why we call it ice.”

“Funny,” Robin murmured.

“We want the swelling to go down, sweetie,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry it hurts.”

“Me, too.”

“We’ll only leave it on for about ten minutes at a time.”

She gave a determined nod. “I can take it for ten minutes.”

“We shouldn’t have gone outside,” I lamented. “You wouldn’t be hurt if I hadn’t insisted on getting out of here for a while.”

“Who knew she was watching the place? Freakazoid.” She groaned. “Hurts to talk.”

“Then stop talking.”

“You wish,” she murmured, but then settled into the couch and let the ice pack do its healing.

The first thing I’d done once we got inside was call my mother to ask for the best remedies for Robin’s wounds. After getting a full list of items from Mom, along with lots of woo-woo advice to purge Robin’s karma of bad juju, I quickly called Derek to tell him what had happened. He offered to stop at the health food store on his way home to pick up everything Mom recommended.

I read off the list. Sage tea, good for both drinking and soaking with a compress to reduce swelling and heal bruising; vitamin K cream to accelerate healing; arnica to banish bruises; and chunks of fresh whole pineapple, which contained an enzyme that also helped reduce bruising.

Mom also recommended grinding up parsley for its anti-inflammatory properties, but I blew that one off and slipped Robin a couple of ibuprofen instead. And as a bonus, I still had some Vicodin in the medicine cabinet to help knock her out later.

Personally, I’d popped a Xanax as soon as we got inside. I was a nervous wreck.

I expected the whack job who attacked Robin to be behind bars very soon. Earlier, two policemen had arrived on the scene to find Robin and me still squatting on top of her. After taking our statements and the statements of several brave people who’d stepped forward as witnesses, they’d arrested and handcuffed her. She might’ve revealed her full name to the police, but she kept glancing at us, noticing we were listening to her every word, so she would give them only her first name, Galina. All we were able to glean in the short but really fun time we spent with her was that she was a friend—lover?—of Alex’s and clearly blamed Robin for his death.

An ambulance arrived and two paramedics rushed over to check out our battle wounds. Despite her everswelling eye and bruised cheek, Robin refused to go to the hospital and had to sign a waiver to that effect.

As the EMTs packed up their gear, a black Lincoln Town Car cruised by slowly, then stopped on the opposite side of the street. The windows were blacked out, so I couldn’t see inside the car, but I knew instinctively that whoever was sitting there was watching us. It gave me the willies.

Robin noticed the car, too, and so did Galina, who began screaming like a banshee at them. The driver drove off slowly, and Galina, despite being handcuffed, turned around to flash her middle finger at it. I had to give her points for her passion.

The car was too far away for me to make out the license plate number. The driver might’ve been an innocent lookie-loo, but I doubted it, given Galina’s reaction.

I asked the policeman to contact Lee or Jaglom and let them know that they would want to interview Lunatic Galina in connection with Alex’s murder. The one officer got Inspector Lee on the phone right then, and I could hear her barking orders through the officer’s earpiece.

Galina fought the officer who tried to push her gently into the back of the patrol car. So it wasn’t just us; she was angry at everyone. Her anger and passion reminded me of someone else in my life, but my head was so full of strange puzzles and weird facts at the moment, I couldn’t remember who it was.

As I watched both police officers struggle with her, it occurred to me that maybe she was the one who had killed Alex. Maybe she was a jealous lover who’d seen him going out on a date, followed them back to Robin’s place, where she killed him in a rage, and trashed the apartment. Now she was stalking Robin. She might’ve even trashed Alex’s apartment.

Of course, if Galina had killed Alex in a jealous rage, surely she would have killed Robin, too. She didn’t seem like the type to rein in her emotions at a time like that.

So she probably wasn’t Alex’s killer, but she might’ve been the one to ransack Alex’s apartment. Now she was stalking Robin because . . . she thought Robin killed Alex? Or she thought Robin knew something? Or she thought Robin had something of hers? Or Alex’s? Why?

The jealous-lover scenario worked for me. I just wished I knew what she was yelling in Russian or Ukrainian or whatever language she’d been spewing.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the jealousy angle worked only until I got to the part where Alex had drugged Robin. Why? I played it out a few more times but couldn’t get Galina to fit into the bigger picture, and I wound up back at the beginning of the puzzle.

Really, nothing made sense when combined with the fact that Robin had been drugged by Alex. Maybe I was trying too hard or overlooking something obvious. I couldn’t figure it out, and I found myself rubbing my temple to rid myself of the headache that was cropping up. It was a minor ache compared to Robin’s, though, and as I watched her struggle to find relief in sleep, I vowed to track down the bastard who’d killed Alex and ruined Robin’s life. And I would make him pay.

That night, after I’d made sure Robin was asleep, I walked into my bedroom and stumbled into Derek’s arms. I didn’t know I was so close to the breaking point until my eyes blurred with tears and I felt myself shaking.

“God. She could’ve been killed,” I said. “The first strike was such a shock, and then she was hitting Robin in the head, punching her hard. There was blood.”

Derek shushed me, rocked me, whispered nonsensical endearments in my ear as if I were a child who needed consoling. And in that moment, that was exactly how I felt. Still shaken from the murder in Robin’s home, now I was worried about her safety. Derek walked me over to the small love seat under the window, sat down, and pulled me onto his lap. And held me.

I couldn’t remember any man ever holding me in his lap, not since I was five years old, and the man was my dad. It was a strange moment for me. Sweet, but strange.

When I was finally able to speak without whimpering, I said, “It took a while, but between us, we managed to kick her ass.”

Derek chuckled. “I always said you two were tough. Did the woman give you any idea why she came after Robin? Did she say anything?”

“Just what I told you earlier,” I said, and sighed. “She kept shouting at Robin in a foreign language. The only English she used was when she called her a ‘keeller,’ accused her of killing Alexei.”

“She had an accent, obviously,” Derek said.

“Yes. A thick one. Russian, Eastern European, something like that. It was classic Boris and Natasha.”

“Boris and Natasha?”

I blinked at him. “Come on. Rocky and Bullwinkle? That had to make it to England at some point.”

He frowned. “Rocky the flying squirrel and Bullwinkle the moose?”

I laughed softly. “Exactly. So there were these two silly spies, Boris and Natasha. Anyway, never mind. But Galina sounded like Natasha. Right out of a spy movie, like
From Russia with Love
. You know?”

“Ah, yes, of course.” He smiled. “Darling, can you remember any of the words or sounds she spoke in her language?”

At that moment I realized his mood had shifted subtly from consoling lover to interrogator. And I was okay with it. Interesting.

“Yes, she kept repeating this one phrase, and now I can’t get it out of my head. It went something like, ‘
date-eh it-eh om you
.’ I’m probably saying it wrong.”

“ ‘
Date-eh it-eh om-you
’?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“ ‘Give it to me.’ ”

I glanced around. “What?”

“That’s what she was saying. It’s Ukrainian. ‘Give it to me.’ ”

“ ‘Give it to me’?” I said, puzzled. “Give
what
to me? What does she want?”

“I have no idea.”

“Me neither.” I stretched my muscles, felt the ache in my back from grappling with Galina. “God, she was insane.”

“You’re in pain.”

“I’m in better shape than Robin.”

“Did you take something to help you sleep?”

“I took a Xanax a few hours ago, but that wore off. Just a few minutes ago I took some over-the-counter pain stuff. I didn’t want anything too strong.”

He frowned, kissed my cheek and my temple, then brushed his lips over mine. “I’ll make sure you sleep.”

“Will you?” I smiled.

“Yes.” He stood, lifting me as he rose, and carried me to the bed. It delighted me, flustered me. I buried my face in the smooth skin of his shoulder.

I’d never been much of a girlie girl, never gone in for sugary sweet bedroom accessories like my sisters had. There were no frills in here, no lace, no froufrou brass bed with ornate curlicues. Instead, my room was furnished in pale woods, crisp whites, a light green love seat with green and white pillows. The effect was cool, clean, appealing. To me, anyway. But now I felt outrageously feminine as I lay next to Derek on cool white sheets. He was so big, so masculine, so intense.

“You’ll sleep now,” he said.

“I’ll try.”

He shifted to hold me, fitting me against him, my back to his front, until we were aligned perfectly together.

“You’ll sleep,” he murmured in my ear, and I no longer doubted whether he was right.

But before I drifted off, I remembered something I’d forgotten to ask him. “Do you mind that Robin is staying here with us?”

“Of course not.” One of his hands rested on my stomach and the other smoothed a path down my side until it rested lightly on my hip. “I offered to move back to my hotel because I thought she might be more comfortable if I weren’t here.”

“No, it makes her feel safe to have you near.” I rested my hand over his. “I like your being here, too.”

“It’s settled then,” he said, his breath ruffling my hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Early the next morning, Robin emerged from her bedroom and walked slowly to the couch just as Derek was about to leave for a run around the neighborhood. I winced when I saw her face.

“I know I look like hell,” she muttered. “And oh, joy, I feel like it, too.” It took her a few seconds of careful maneuvering to sit comfortably on the couch.

“I think the swelling has gone down,” I said, studying her.

“Maybe a little. But my face still looks like a punching bag.”

“Let me see it.” Derek sat on the coffee table in front of Robin and gently touched her cheek and temple around her swollen eye. Yesterday, that whole area was dark pink, but today it was mottled black and blue and purple.

While Derek examined the bruising, I filled a small Ziploc bag with ice and wrapped it in a clean dish cloth.

“The swelling is better today,” he said. “And the blood has clotted where the capillaries broke, so it’s already healing quite well.”

“And yet it’s hideous,” Robin murmured, and took the ice bag from me. “Go ahead. You can say it out loud.”

“Never,” he said, smiling as he ran his knuckles along her undamaged jaw. “You’ve been heroic through it all. Yes, you’re a bit battle scarred now, but within a week you’ll be healed and back to your beautiful self.”

She shifted her gaze to me. “He’s good at this.”

I smiled and nodded, so grateful he was there. Nothing like a gorgeous man telling a woman she’s beautiful to make her feel better about life in general.

“I’ll be back with bagels and cream cheese in short order,” Derek promised before enveloping me in his arms and kissing me soundly.

Just for a second or two, I melted right into him. Then I walked with him down the hall to the front door and kissed him once more before sending him off on his run.

“You’re domesticating him,” Robin said when I returned to the living room.

“Domesticating?” I said, and laughed at the very idea. Derek was way too dangerous to ever be called domesticated. Shaking my head, I said, “Not likely. He still seems wild and untamed to me.”

“Don’t worry. He’s still got that ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe going for him, but he’s turned into a pussycat around you.”

Good to know
, I thought, but said, “Don’t ever say that to him, I beg of you.”

“I won’t. But he’s still a pussycat.”

I smiled. “To be honest, ever since I first saw him, I’ve thought of him as a big jungle cat. A panther. Or a jaguar. Always on guard, always on the hunt.”

“Panther works for me. Very sexy.” She sighed and laid her head back against the cushion. “It’s just nice to see what a real man is like around the house.”

“Now, that I totally agree with. But just so you know, he’s not completely perfect—he sometimes forgets to take out the trash.”

“What a beast.”

“Isn’t he?” I said. “And you would never know it, but he reads car magazines obsessively. You know, with articles about tires and steering wheels? Can you imagine?”

“That’s unexpected. But it’s kind of manly.”

“I suppose,” I said with a laugh.

Pookie jumped on the couch and meowed at Robin. “Hey, speaking of big jungle cats,” she said, pulling the cat into her lap and stroking his back.