Unzipped (28 page)

I felt him tug at my panties, felt his erection shift between us, and wiped my hand across my nose, trying to hide the traitorous emotion.

I knew the minute he knew. He stiffened beneath me. All of him. Not just the good parts.

“McMullen?”

I hid my face against his shoulder.

He shifted slightly, trying to see me. “McMullen?” His voice was soft.

I sniffled again, then bit my lip and swore like a fat linebacker in the heat. But only in my head. “I’ve got a little bit of a cold,” I said. “Sorry.”

For a moment I could feel him trying to believe my lame-ass lie, then, “What’d you have to drink?”

“I told you, I’m not—”

He rolled me onto my side. I tried to stay where I was, but I’m so light . . .

We lay side by side, touching here and there. It was hard to avoid eye contact, but I reached down and pulled up my skirt, baring all . . . or at least most.

His gaze lowered, darkened, held. “Jesus!” His voice was raspy with emotion. And in that moment I thought I loved him.

My eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Christ!” he said, and before I could stop him, he was on his feet and dragging me with him. “You’re drunker than . . .” His gaze dropped like lead to my breasts. His jaw flexed. “Shit!” he said and, turning on his heel, he marched out the door.

24

There is no greater hell than realizing you’re in love with the guy you hate.

—Elaine Butterfield,
when her nemesis bested her in a high school debate

I
SAT STRAIGHT UP in bed. I was certain my insomnia wasn’t due to sexual frustration. I hadn’t really wanted to do it with Rivera, anyway. He’d accused me of murder, for crying out loud. No self-respecting woman would want to do it with a guy who had accused her of murder, even if he was as hard as a Greek statue and . . .

I yanked myself out of bed and tottered across the floor. I was barefoot. I was also naked. And why not? It wasn’t as if some crazed officer of the law was going to barge in and take advantage of me. Hell, David would have been a more likely candidate. And far more desirable. He actually had a brain.

My pacing brought me to the kitchen. The air from the freezer felt good against my face. The ice cream felt even better on my taste buds.

But the truth hurt. I had probably read David’s intentions entirely wrong. He probably had no interest in me, either. Maybe Rivera was right. Maybe I had been a little bit drunk. And maybe that had colored my perception somewhat. David’s fiancée, the fabulous Kathryn LaMere, probably had no reason to be jealous of me, as David had intimated. Okay, not intimated, said right out loud.

I sat down with the ice cream carton and felt sorry for myself. I mean, I wasn’t chopped liver. I looked down at my boobs, examined them philosophically one at a time, and nodded. Not bad. I straightened in my chair, sucked in my gut. Okay. I scooped up another spoonful of ice cream and decided that
I’d
be jealous of me.

Bitch. If she had a lick of sense she would be, too. In fact, she must be. What kind of red-blooded American woman would let a guy like David fraternize with another woman and not worry? The answer came with disturbing speed: Kathryn LaMere, a woman who was young, gorgeous, classy, and smelled like . . .

I stopped masticating. She’d smelled like Jivago. I was sure of it. Or Shalimar. Okay, perhaps I wasn’t quite so sure. But maybe she’d been the woman in Bomstad’s house. Maybe she’d wanted . . . ummm . . . I hit brain freeze for a second. But then it all came storming in: She was insanely jealous—of course she was. That’s why she felt such a need to pretend to David that she wasn’t. I plowed up another load of ice cream and thought harder. Not only was she jealous, she was probably a murderer. She’d probably killed Stephanie Meyers because David had been interested in her. And then Bomstad. Well, okay, Bomstad didn’t exactly tie in. But there was a lot about Bomstad that didn’t make sense. Maybe they were having an affair and the Bomb had threatened to tell David. So Kathryn, knowing about his heart condition, had loaded him up on Viagra and sent him to me. Because, yes indeedy, she was jealous of me, too, and was hoping to implicate me in Bomstad’s death.

The insanity of the entire idea was not lost on me in spite of the fact that I had just consumed my weight in alcohol and ice cream. Still . . . I closed the carton and took a seat in front of my PC. I typed in Kathryn LaMere and after a grinding hesitation, her engagement photo popped onto the screen. Yep, she was still gorgeous and classy and young. I continued to search. There was something about a Feed the Children banquet where there was a picture of her spooning up mashed potatoes to an underprivileged crowd in East L.A. Her hair was upswept and her expression demure. I had never quite managed demure. I’d tried it once for the senior prom. Dad had asked if I was constipated.

I continued the search and came up all but empty.

Hmmph. I sat back in my chair and ruminated. All the info I had found on Ms. LaMere had taken place in the past two years. Where had she been before that?

Maybe in the back of my mind I hoped she was playing a shell game, conning the innocent elderly out of their pensions in Trenton, but then I remembered her accent and did a search of the LaMeres in Europe. There were several hits. None of which turned out to be her.

Curiouser and curiouser. Not that I was a techno genius or anything. But David’s fabulous fiancée looked like she came from wealth. One would think I would be able to find a few tidbits about her sailing with the Kennedys or having high tea with the queen.

I shut down the computer and stretched. Still naked. Still looked pretty good, I thought, and wobbled back to bed.

Sleep finally took pity on me. Alcohol is a sedative for some people. For me it’s copious calories.

By morning, I had a splitting headache and had come to the realization that I was an idiot. David’s high-priced fiancée was about as likely to commit a murder as she was to dance on the moon.

Still, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, even after my final appointment, when the retiring Mrs. Feinstein confessed she had been a bunny in a former life. I’d always suspected it anyway, I thought, and turned off my office light before wandering into the reception area. It was Elaine’s night to work late. I glanced at her, remembering my promise to Solberg and feeling guilty down to my salmon-colored Aldos.

She looked up as I fiddled with some papers in the file cabinet.

“So . . .” I kept my tone casual, because that’s what I do when guilt is gnawing at my guts like a piranha, or when I need a favor I can never repay in this lifetime. “How was your date the other night?”

She leaned back in her chair. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I have no idea why I felt the need to lie, but I think it has something to do with being raised Catholic; everything’s a sin, therefore it’s best to lie about it. “I was just wondering about your date.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you have fun?”

There was a pause, then, “Have you seen any more of the dark lieutenant?”

“This has nothing to do with Rivera,” I said, but my face felt as if it might be melting.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Laney!” I gasped, and she laughed.

“All right. I’ll play along. My date’s name was Brad. He drives a ’96 Corvette, has an on-again, off-again spot on
Days of Our Lives,
and can do twenty-five one-handed push-ups in as many seconds.”

“Wow. You know all that?”

“I knew all that in the first fifty seconds.” She crossed her arms over her chest. It was a nearly impossible feat. In elementary school, she’d been hopelessly skinny, wore glasses as thick as my wrist, and sported braces reminiscent of the Union Pacific. I missed that ugly little girl. “What do you need?” she asked.

“Can’t I just take an interest in your—”

“Mac . . .”

“Okay!” I snapped. “I need a favor. All right?”

She stared at me, brows raised. Mine tend to shadow my eyes like hungry vultures. When she raises hers, she looks like a startled Garbo. “You all right?” she asked.

“Oh, crap,” I said, and collapsed into a chair. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you need?” she asked, and scooted her chair around the corner of the desk and up to mine. “Come on, spill it. It can’t be that bad.”

I knew for a fact she was wrong, but I told her anyway. “I’ve got this . . . friend. His name is J.D. He’s—”

“Sure.”

“What?”

“I’ll go out with him.”

“He’s five foot seven.”

She shrugged.

“And obnoxious.”

She smiled.

“Brays like a jackass,” I said and she laughed out loud.

I don’t care if Laney’s got boobs that would make Pamela Anderson bitch-slap her surgeon; I love her madly.

S
olberg?” I said, speaking into the mouthpiece. “I—”

“No.” His tone was petulant and not very pleasant, but I hadn’t expected him to be ecstatic when I called. I could hear him bombing a space station in the background.

“I haven’t even asked you anything yet.”

“And you might as well save the oxygen.” Another target exploded. It was often said that men who didn’t get laid were fabulous at electronic games. He could probably join the international circuit. “’Cuz I ain’t gotten a call from E—” He stumbled over the name. I rolled my eyes.

“Elaine?” I supplied.

“Yeah. She ain’t called me yet. So there’s no way in hell I’m going to do another favor for you. Not after you kidnapped my Porsche and—”

“She said yes.”

“’Bout got me—What?” he rasped.

“Laney said she’d go out with you.”

“God’s truth?” I heard something plastic clatter to the floor. “You ain’t lyin’?”

“She agreed,” I repeated. “On two conditions.”

“Yeah?” His tone suggested there wasn’t a lot he’d refuse to do, short of self-mutilation.

“First you have to check out another person for me.”

“Done.”

“Don’t you want to know who it is?”

“Is it the mob or something?”

“No! Why would it be—”

“All right then, what’s the second condition?”

I scowled and switched gears. “You don’t lay a finger on Laney.”

He was silent.

“You hear me, Solberg?” I asked. “If she gets home with a hair out of place, I swear, I’ll staple your balls to your joystick.”

H
e brought me an entire file the very next evening. I looked through it as he shuffled from foot to foot on my tilted stoop. His findings consisted of a half dozen Internet pics and nine pages of information. I skimmed them, then glanced up. He’d left his Armani at home. His blue jeans hung askew on his skinny hips, and his button-up shirt looked like it’d seen better days.

“This is all about the last twenty-eight months of her life,” I said.

“Listen . . .” He bobbed to his opposite foot, pushed his glasses firmly back up the oversized bow of his nose, and gazed up at me like a nearsighted flamingo. “That’s everything I could find.”

“How hard did you look?”

“Didn’t sleep last night,” he said.

I glanced up, ready to scoff, but then I noticed the dark circles etched beneath his horn-rims. “Something wrong?” I asked.

He grimaced and shuffled again. “She’s hot.”

I knew he meant Elaine, but I wasn’t sure what that had to do with his insomnia. Then, “Oh,” I said. “You spent the whole night searching?”

He shrugged, shuffled again. It made him look kind of young, and almost,
almost
likable. “I wasn’t tired anyway,” he said.

“You spent what . . . nine hours on this search and . . .”

“Fourteen,” he corrected. “Started soon as I got home from work.”

I stared at him. I’d seen desperation before, but it was usually in my bathroom mirror. “You spent fourteen hours on this and didn’t find anything about LaMere’s early years?”

He shook his head.

“Childhood . . . adolescence?”

“It wasn’t there,” he said. He sounded panicky. I hoped he wasn’t going to cry. “I swear. If it had been I’d have found it.”

“No Social Security number or—”

“No,” he said. “Nothing. It’s like she didn’t exist before 2003.” He scowled, shuffled, scowled. “Do I still get to go out with . . .”

I heaved a sigh. “Elaine, Solberg. Her name is Elaine. Why can’t you remember that?”

I sifted through the papers again, and when I looked up, he was blushing, red as a radish.

“Solberg?”

“I call her Angel,” he said and scuffed his sneaker against my crumbling concrete. “You know. To myself.”

25

Just when you think you got life by the tail, it’s likely to whip around and take a hunk outta your balls.

—Glen McMullen,
upon learning about Chrissy’s impending birth

E
LAINE WENT OUT with Solberg that Saturday.

I spent the majority of the evening staring at Kathryn LaMere’s photos. They didn’t give me much more than a roaring headache and an aching sense of inadequacy. There was one of her at a charity function with David and one of her at the beach in the summer of 2002. She was wearing a netting cover-up over her two-piece, but her lack of cellulite was still obvious, even when I pulled out a magnifying glass.

But sometime during my quest for imperfection I noticed an ultrafaint circle above her left breast. Or at least, it looked like a circle, though upon closer inspection, I was pretty sure the circle was a tattoo. And that was baffling, because the Kathryn LaMere I had met just didn’t seem to be the tattoo type. Besides, I had seen her in a bone-colored silk blouse and hadn’t noticed even a trace through the sheer fabric.

I looked at the photo again. It was a grainy newspaper shot, and though the story hadn’t actually been about her, she was listed as one of many who had enjoyed a hot day seaside.

I sat back, ate another carrot stick, and refused to fantasize about German chocolate cake. Why would a woman like Kathryn LaMere get a tattoo? And why would she have it removed?

I looked again. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a tattoo at all, but what if it was? What if she was a raging lunatic who had met David, realized he was loaded, good-looking, and sophisticated, and decided she wanted some of that action? What would she do? She’d adopt a classy persona and get rid of the competition, i.e., Stephanie Meyers. But wait a moment, what about David’s first wife?