Unzipped (17 page)

The following day, Tuesday, I had Elaine cancel my appointments and I drove out to the Lions training complex in Napa. I was wearing black rayon slacks and a form-fitting black blouse to cover my blossoming bruises.

By the time I reached the backfield I felt hot and irritable, but I’d consoled myself all morning with the idea that I’d get the opportunity to see hunky men in football gear.

Instead, I saw two guys throwing up and a three-hundred-pound nose tackle guzzling Gatorade. Most of it missed his mouth and ran down his bare belly like water down a flume.

The ugly side of professional sports.

I shifted my gaze to the front of the field and soothed my own fractious stomach. Sunglasses are lifesavers. You can stare like the village idiot without anyone being the wiser. Unless you lose the battle with your stomach and hurl on you shoes.

Or drool.

Off to the left a trio of guys were dressed in black and silver. The closest one wore shorts and a full-body sweat. He was pointing across the field. Muscles danced like magic in his upper arm. Without even turning my head, I could see he was built like Tarzan, all long, sleek muscles that gleamed in the sunlight.

I was just considering how to inform him that I was Jane when I spotted Bob Limmerman. He was a stocky little man with a flattop haircut and a stride too long for his stubby legs. His picture on the Internet had made him look like a toad. As it turned out, the photo had been flattering.

He was just dismissing a harried middle-aged woman when I approached him.

“Mr. Limmerman,” I said, and smiled as I thrust out my hand.

He glared at me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Christina McMullen.”

The glare deepened. “The broad on the phone.”

At least he hadn’t called me a shrink. “The psychologist,” I said.

“I told you, I got nothing to say.”

In fact, he had said just that, but I had called his secretary and informed her I was a reporter doing a story about the Lions’ charity work. She had told me where I could find Mr. Limmerman. The trickster in me, created by genetics and honed by desperation, had come out to play.

“I’ll only take a few minutes of your time,” I said, withdrawing the hand. These people were not, it seemed, avid hand shakers. What kind of WASPs were they?

“I don’t have a few damned minutes,” he said, and turned toward the two story brick building behind him.

“I’d like to talk about Dana,” I said.

There was a hitch in his stride, but he kept walking.

“To you or the press,” I added.

He turned like a bulldog, his head tucked into the folds of his neck. I felt my mouth go dry and tried not to pee in my pants as I held his gaze.

“In my office,” he said, and I went, head held high as I stepped out of the blistering heat. It was cool and dim inside. Linoleum tapped beneath my heels. To my right a fan burred softly from someone’s office. I still had my sunglasses firmly in place. I couldn’t see a damned thing.

“What’s this bullshit?”

When I removed my shades, I found that Limmerman had entered his office. I did the same. He seated himself behind a battered metal desk. Two battered metal chairs occupied the opposite side and one battered metal stool stood against the wall. Consistency. I liked that.

“I don’t want to make any trouble for you,” I said. “I just have—”

“Then get the hell off my field,” he snarled, and smacked his palm against the top of his desk. It echoed like thunder. So that was the advantage of all that metal. Intimidation. And it was working marvelously. My bladder felt like a nine-year-old’s water balloon.

“One of your players is dead,” I said and was quite relieved that my larynx still functioned. “I would think you would want to know why.”

“I know why,” he rasped, leaning onto his desk like a hyena over a fresh kill. “It’s ’cuz Bomstad couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

“So he didn’t have an impotency problem?” Maybe it’s strange that I kept returning to that question, but I had been counseling the man for months for impotency.

“Impotency!” Limmerman barked a laugh. “You must be one hell of a psychiatrist.”

“Psychologist,” I corrected. “Someone sent him a bottle of wine. Any idea who might have done that?”

He snorted through his nose. I wondered vaguely if it had once been broken or if he should just be considered congenitally unfortunate. “There were half a dozen bimbos spreadin’ their legs for him every time he left the field.” He glared at me as if my entire gender was to blame, but I didn’t feel like shouldering the burden. Even for a Catholic that seemed unjust.

“What were their names?” I asked instead.

“What?”

“Their names,” I repeated patiently, as if I were talking to a deranged psychopath. It wasn’t much of a stretch. “Even bimbos who spread their legs have names.”

“Get the hell out of my office.”

“Was he seeing anyone whose name began with a C?”

He leapt to his feet. I quivered to mine. He strode around the corner of his desk, but before I could dash for the door, it opened behind me.

“Mr. Limmerman.” A Hispanic man stood there. He was about my height, and stood very straight. He wore a full linen suit. The creases in his pants were as straight as little Marines. It’s amazing what you notice when your eyes are about to pop out of your head. “I was told we have a guest.”

Limmerman stopped about six inches from me, fists clenched and eyes disappearing into the folds in his face. I wasn’t sure but I thought there was a little bit of spittle escaping from his lips. My gaze sprinted from one to the other. The room went absolutely silent, then, “Get her outta my sight,” Limmerman said, and lumbered from the room.

I considered trying to stop him but I was too busy calming my giddy bladder.

The Hispanic guy inclined his head. “My apologies,” he said. His elocution was very formal, almost old-world, and hell and gone from Bob’s angry growl. “I fear Mr. Limmerman took Andrew’s death very hard.”

I stared at him, trying to determine whether or not he really planned to sell that line.

Apparently he did, because his expression never changed.

“I don’t want to cause trouble.” I’m not sure why that idiotic platitude seemed worth repeating.

“This is very comforting,” he said and raised his hand, palm up toward the door. “Please, accompany me to my office. We can speak there.”

His office matched his personality. It was neatly decorated in Southwest art and old artifacts. An asymmetrical pot of rusts and browns occupied the corner of his antique desk. He motioned toward a plush chair upholstered in earthy tones, then disappeared through an open doorway and returned with two SoBes. I’d always appreciated the lizard wisdom. “Please, sit,” he said and handed me a bottle. It felt wonderfully cold against my palm. I wondered if I looked as flushed as I felt. “Tell me what I can do for you.”

I blinked. I couldn’t quite remember the last time someone had said those exact words to me and it took me a moment to dredge up an appropriate response—God bless you, kind sir seeming a bit over the top.

“I am—was . . .” I corrected, “Mr. Bomstad’s therapist.”

“Ms. McMullen,” he said and took the chair not far from mine.

I must have given him my stupid look, because he laughed.

“I prefer to be well informed.”

“About what?”

“Anything that pertains to my team.”

“But he’d been off the team for some months, hadn’t he?”

He spread his hands and smiled fondly. “He was still part of the family.”

I couldn’t help remembering how Bomstad had looked as he’d sat on my couch, his pants open and his cock as big as a prize plum. What kind of family was this man raising here?

“Good,” I said, “then you’re just the guy I want to talk to.”

He inclined his head graciously, as though he couldn’t wait to be helpful, and though I tried to shift gears, it kind of threw me off my stride. I won’t say I missed butting heads, but at least in that game I knew the rules.

“Were you aware that Mr. Bomstad was seeing a therapist?” I asked.

“Indeed, yes,” he said. “While he was with the team, at least. I had, in fact, encouraged him to do so, as I do with all our players.”

No shit. “May I ask why?”

He shrugged, just a slight lift of well-proportioned shoulders. “Football is a very physical game, Ms. McMullen.” He sounded a little like the
Fantasy Island
guy when he said my name. Have I mentioned my obsession with the
Fantasy Island
guy? “It is demanding. Exhausting. Brutal even. And that is not considering the effects of the fans.”

“The fans?” I thought I knew what he meant, but I liked listening to him speak.

He gave me a smile. His eyeteeth were a little crooked and his molars were sharp. It gave him almost a Tom Cruise look. Tom Cruise with a tan and an accent. Yowsa.

“I’m sure you are aware of the difficulties associated with . . . How is it said? Stardom.” He waved a hand. “The fame, adoration, the money.”

I thought about my cracker-sized abode and failing septic system. “It sounds hellacious.”

He laughed. He had a nice laugh.

“Our players are not . . .” He paused, thinking. “Let me say only that they live by the strength of their arms, Ms. McMullen—” He made a fist. “And not by their mental prowess.”

“I’m not sure I see your point, Mr. . . .” I paused for him to fill me in.

“My apologies again,” He spread his fingers across his chest and inclined his head. “Where are my manners? I am Miguel Rodriguez. You may call me Rodney if you like.”

But I really liked the name Miguel. And he had great eyes. I gave myself a mental slap before I forgot why I was there. “And what exactly is your position with the Lions, Mr. Rodriguez?”

He smiled, maybe because I had refused to use his pet name. But I secretly hoped that it was because I was so damned adorable he couldn’t help himself. “I am the community relations director. My job is to make certain our players stay out of trouble. A task at which, sadly, I often fail.”

I remembered my panting terror as Bomstad chased me around the office, jeans undone and my success fully exposed.

“Indeed,” he continued, “I have been meaning to speak to you, Ms. McMullen.”

“In regard to . . .”

“To offer my apologies.”

Just how much did he know? “For what exactly?”

He looked troubled, as if he didn’t care to touch on such a delicate subject, but whether it was for my benefit or his own was impossible to guess. “I consider the players’ failures my own failures.”

I could remember the feel of Bomstad’s hand on my breast. “Ever have trouble sleeping at night?” I asked.

He smiled again, but his eyes were sad. “Indeed, quite often,” he said. “But there are not so many failures as one would think. The press . . . they publicize the bad and often forget the good. For while our players may be sometimes boisterous, they are, basically, good at the heart.”

“And what of Mr. Bomstad?” I asked, and remembered screaming as he dragged me backward by my hair. “Was he basically good at the heart?”

His soulful gaze held mine. “You are, perhaps, better equipped to answer that than I.”

“You know how he died,” I said.

He spread his hands. “Sadly, yes.”

“You know about the statutory rapes.”

For a moment I thought he might argue, say something stupid like “alleged” statutory rapes. But he didn’t.

“Again, yes.”

“Why didn’t you do something?”

“I sent him to seek help.”

Ahhh. And how to explain this. “I’m afraid Mr. Bomstad was not entirely honest about his troubles, Mr. Rodriguez.”

He sighed. “I feared as much. Indeed, I suggested . . .” He paused.

“What?” I asked, but he shook his head.

“My intentions matter little. I failed Andrew and I failed my employers.”

“I don’t think you can take your clients’ failures as your own, Mr. Rodriguez.”

“And you,” he said, watching me with his dark, soulful eyes. “Do you not do the same?” He had that Spanish pathos that tends to make American women go soft in the head. “But I digress. You have come here for a specific purpose.”

I firmed up my cerebellum and nodded primly. “Yes,” I said. “I had a number of questions to ask.”

“Then, by all means, ask away.”

Really?
I thought, but caught myself before I spoke. “Do you know who, if anyone, Mr. Bomstad was currently seeing?”

He looked troubled again. “I fear Andrew’s relationships were rarely monogamous.”

I almost laughed. Knowing what I now knew about the Bomb, I would be surprised to find he limited himself to one species. “A list of names would be fine,” I said.

He watched me in silence for a moment. “May I take the liberty to ask why?”

I considered a host of answers and settled tentatively on the truth. “Since he died in my office, of rather . . . irregular causes, some suspicion has been laid at my door. I would like to absolve myself of that suspicion.”

“Yes, of course,” he said slowly, “but how would this information you request help you in your endeavor?”

“He came to his final session with a bottle of wine.” I exhaled carefully. In for a penny, in for a pound. “The wine had a card signed with my first initial.”

I hurried on, feeling an irresistible need to explain myself, though God knows I should have learned better by now. “I had nothing to do with Mr. Bomstad’s death, Mr. Rodriguez.”

He actually looked offended on my behalf. When the Lions hired a PR man, they went all out. “Of course you did not. The police, they are simply . . . overzealous at times.”

“Overzealous,” I agreed, remembering Rivera’s looming accusations.

“Again,” he said, taking my hand in his. His eyes were intense and full of old-world sorrow. “I apologize for any troubles Andrew caused you.”

But apologies, no matter how charmingly delivered, weren’t going to keep my ass out of jail, or get me back into the good graces of the Board of Psychology. “I need information, Mr. Rodriguez,” I said.

He studied me in silence for a moment, then nodded. “I will look into the matter and telephone you . . . unless you would rather call me.” He relinquished my hand with seeming regret and pulled a card from his coat pocket. “A lady like yourself, you must be cautious, yes?”