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“And you were seeing him for an impotency problem.” He shook his head. “Oh, the irony.”

“Yes.” I felt a little sick to my stomach. “I had myself a good laugh over that one.”

He smiled gently, then leaned forward and tsked. “Well, you needn’t worry. I’ll speak to the board personally and vouch for your character.”

“Would you?” I hope I didn’t look like a love-starved puppy, but puppies need love, too.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Chrissy. We can’t dictate what our clients do, much as we’d like to.”

“That’s what I said,” I said, remembering my conversation with Rivera.

“I once had a middle-aged homemaker come to a session stark naked,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

He raised a well-manicured hand with an earnest expression. “God’s honest truth.”

“What did you do?”

He took a drink. “I suggested the Atkins diet.”

Perhaps laughter really is the best medicine, because I felt instantly better. Screw therapy. I should just hire a stand-up comedian.

“It’s good to see you smile again,” he said, and rose to his feet.

I stood up beside him. “You’ve been a huge help.”

“What are overpaid psychiatrists for?”

“I suppose I’ll still have to file a report for the board?” I asked and bravely managed not to wince.

“I’m afraid so,” David said. “But I’m certain they’ll be lenient. When one works with disturbed people one has to expect disturbed behavior.”

“He
was
disturbed. I just didn’t realize how deeply.”

“I was talking about you,” he said.

I must have looked stricken when I turned at the door, but he laughed and took my hand again.

“I’m joking, Chrissy. You’re one of the best therapists I know. Not all bogged down with that psycho-babbling mumbo jumbo. You’re intelligent, empathetic, insightful . . .”

I suddenly felt all squishy. I’m a tough little soldier and all that, but it had been a hell of a week. “Maybe you could adopt me,” I said.

He smiled with what I hoped was sincere fondness. If I can’t have unbridled passion I’ll settle for affection any day of the week. “I’ll see how Kathryn feels about it.”

I glanced at my shoes. Sincere emotion sometimes makes me uncomfortable. A former boyfriend had once told me I had no feelings at all, but then he had cried during
Toy Story
. “I really appreciate your help,” I said.

“No problem. Really. The board will understand.”

I gave him a plucky smile. “I hope the police are as enlightened.”

“I am certain they will be,” he said and kissed my cheek. “They’d have to be crazy to think you had anything to do with Bomstad’s death.”

I
think you killed him,” Rivera said.

“What!” I stood in my vestibule in my stocking feet. The door remained open behind him, letting in the Saturday morning sunlight. I was wearing my Eeyore pajamas. James had given them to me for Christmas and though my silk nightgown was more fitting for my professional persona, Eeyore was a hell of a lot cozier. Well, the top was, anyway. My bottoms had gone A.W.O.L. I had settled for a pair of nylon shorts that couldn’t quite be seen past the donkey’s dangling tail.

Rivera shrugged, as if he didn’t really care if I had strangled Bomstad with my favorite thong. “I think you gave him the Viagra, then got him overexcited. Whether his death was intentional or not is yet to be determined.”

“Yet to be— That’s crazy.” My heart was beating like a Sudanese war drum beneath Eeyore’s hangdog expression. “I had nothing to do with his death. He—”

“He died in your office,” Rivera argued. “Obviously you had something to do with the situation, even if it was merely adding stimulus.”

“Listen . . .” I have some Irish blood in me and it was starting to heat up. “I didn’t do anything to contribute to Bomstad’s death. In fact—”

“Do you always dress so provocatively?”

I glanced down. My skin was as white as Elmer’s glue. My leg hair needed harvesting and my socks didn’t match. But it’s funny what turns some guys on.

I looked back up at Rivera. He gave me a flat stare.

“I was referring to the dress you wore with Bomstad,” he informed me.

“The dress . . .” I squinted at him. There were a half a dozen emotions bubbling around inside me. I could no longer sort one from the other. Suffice it to say, Saturday wasn’t sizing up to be a hell of a lot better than Friday had been. “First of all, it wasn’t a dress. And secondly, I was not
with
—”

“Were you aware he’d been arrested for statutory rape?”

I think I actually stumbled back a step, and I may have taken the Lord’s name in vain.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“No!”

“So you considered your relationship exclusive?”

I wanted to swear at him, but I thought verbally abusing a cop might be a bad idea at that juncture. So I plopped down on my steps and stared blankly. I’d been doing a lot of that lately. It had been about as effective as anything else in clearing up my current debacle.

“Listen. I don’t want to see you hang for this,” Rivera said, changing gears and firing up his good-cop tone. “You probably didn’t mean any harm. I just need to know the truth.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

“That seems like a lot,” I said.

“I’m not your enemy, Ms. McMullen,” he murmured, squatting in front of me. He rested one wrist over his knee. The denim there had faded to gray. “We can work together on this.”

“On what?”

“Figuring out Bomstad’s death.”

I scowled. Something didn’t quite add up. “I thought he died of a Viagra overdose.”

“But that isn’t generally lethal, is it?”

“Neither is breathing, but my great aunt died just last month. No known cause.”

“How old was she?”

“A hundred and two,” I said and nodded, thinking back. She’d always smelled vaguely of mothballs and garlic.

He gave me something that might have passed for a grin, in the canine family. “Bomstad was wealthy, successful, and . . .” He seemed to be searching his politically correct vocabulary for a moment, but coming up short. “Truth is, he was a first rate dumb shit,” he admitted. “But he wasn’t quite bright enough to know it.”

“I’m not sure I understand your point.” Or any point. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever understand a point again.

“Why would he take Viagra when he knew he had a heart condition?”

I searched my well-educated memory banks. “Some men place an inordinate amount of value on their ability to . . .” I paused, scrambling for the perfect textbook phrase.

He waited, watching. “To what?”

“Copulate.”

He could take the Lord’s name in vain without blinking an eye, I noticed. Either he wasn’t Catholic or his mother had seriously shirked her duty as primary guilt-giver. “Is that what you call sex?” he asked. “Copulation?”

“It’s a professional term.”

He snorted. “All right. What led you to believe he had trouble . . . copulating?”

“That’s why I was seeing him. Remember?”

“I do,” he said. “But the two hookers he hired on . . .” A notebook appeared from nowhere for the second day in a row. He flipped it open. “. . . Tuesday said he didn’t have any problems in that area.”

I know I should have been prepared, but I felt temporarily breathless. “He hired hookers?”

“He liked multiples.”

But his shoes were Italian! “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You ever tried it?” He had a deep, smoky voice. Probably perfect for bullying suspects and poor innocent psychologists.

I gave him a blank stare.

“Multiple partners,” he explained.

“I meant, it makes no sense that he would hire me. Why waste his money, confess . . . things most men don’t like to confess when he didn’t even—”

“What kind of things?”

I paused. Had he intentionally gotten me riled before asking that question? “That’s confidential,” I said.

“What have you got to hide, Ms. McMullen?”

I stood up to gain the edge. He did the same, immediately looming. So I stepped onto the stair behind me, giving me the slight advantage of height. It didn’t do much good. The nice-cop persona hadn’t stayed around very long.

“I don’t have anything to hide, Mr. Reever. What I have are clients that expect me to honor my agreement to keep their cases confidential.”

“Deep dark secrets, are they?” he asked, leaning forward slightly.

I resisted leaning back. “Yes,” I said and remembered Mr. Lepinski. Pastrami or ham. “And not to be aired to the general public.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Ms. McMullen, I’m not the general public.”

“No,” I agreed. “Most people are far more congenial.”

“I can be congenial,” he said, but his present expression suggested otherwise. “Or not.” There was a blatant threat in the murky depths of his eyes. But I pulled myself out of the quagmire with magnificent strength.

“I’m a professional,” I said with dramatic conviction. Eeyore’s tail waggled a little when I spoke. “And I won’t be bullied into divulging intimate details.”

“How intimate?” he asked, crowding me a little.

I swallowed hard. I’m not a small woman, and I like to think I’m no wimp, but this guy probably ate psychologists as appetizers. Still, who was he to come barging into my house at all hours of the day? I raised my chin and stood my ground. Our faces were inches apart. For a cop he smelled pretty good. “How would you like to be charged with harassment?” I asked. My voice hardly shook at all, but he didn’t exactly shrivel under the threat. In fact, he chuckled.

“Lady,” he said. “I can tell you’ve never been harassed.”

“I’ve been harassed plenty,” I snarled back. In retrospect I see that it’s kind of funny what gets my dander up.

“Of course,” he said, and grinned.

“You ever juggle five margaritas, two Bloody Marys, and a zombie in a mob of middle-aged perverts?”

He gave me the old one-brow raise, and I immediately wished I hadn’t started down that road. I was standing there with an Eeyore tail on my back, for God’s sake. How much more did the man need to know?

“Either you were a circus performer,” he guessed, “or you worked in a bar.”

I glanced outside, but I probably couldn’t outrun him even if I got a fifty-yard head start. “I was employed in a drinking establishment for a short time, to help defray my educational expenses.”

“What establishment?”

I paused, but it didn’t matter if he knew; he’d never recognize the name. “The Warthog,” I said. “In Chicago.”

“Sounds elegant. How long did you work there?”

“I don’t think that’s pertinent information.”

He raised a brow. “How l—”

“Twelve years! Okay? Twelve years.” I may have sounded a little defensive, although there is nothing at all wrong with working at a bar . . . if you don’t mind having your ass groped like a Georgia peach.

His expression was predatory at best. “And in twelve years you never met a guy who rocked your world like Bomstad?”

“I met a thousand guys like Bomstad,” I said and did my best to stare him down. “I met even more like you.”

“Yeah?” He crowded again. “How so?”

“You don’t hold the patent on arrogance, Rivers.”

“You think I’m arrogant?”

The Irish in me bubbled. “And obdurate.”

“Obdurate?” His lips twitched, and it was that damned suggestion of a rottweiler grin that got my back up.

“Controlling,” I snarled, “and just fucking obnoxious.”

Okay, my own control had slipped a bit, and in the back of my mind some tiny element of reason suggested that perhaps I should not be swearing at an officer of the law. But the words were out now.

“Fucking obnoxious,” he repeated and moved in closer still, though I would have sworn it was impossible.

Angry? Was he angry? I hadn’t meant to make him angry. The little voice mildly suggested that I take it back before I understood police brutality up close and personal, but my mouth wouldn’t form the necessary words. So I stood frozen in place and wished to hell I had learned to keep my mouth shut when my brother Michael had shoved my face in our neighbors’ sandbox twenty-some years before.

“Sometimes I’m obnoxious,” Rivera said, “and if I’m lucky I’m fucking.” I nervously reminded myself that he wasn’t a huge guy, but he seemed pretty good-sized close up. His eyes had narrowed to dark slits. A muscle jumped in his lean, bristled jaw, and I found, strangely, that my lungs had somehow forgotten how to inhale. “But . . .” He leaned in. “I am never both at the same time.”

His lips were nearly touching mine. My knees felt like Jell-O. His mouth quirked. My lungs ached. Nerve endings danced like fireflies up and down my frozen form.

Holy shit, he was going to kiss me!

“Don’t leave town,” he ordered and turning on his heel, left me standing on the steps like a beached trout, gasping for breath and wishing to hell I hadn’t taken the bait.

4

Maybe curiosity did kill your cat. But it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on the neighbor’s rottweiler just the same.

—Elaine Butterfield,
wondering why her “steady” suddenly smells like Shalimar

W
HY?

It was three o’clock in the morning. Questions ran through my mind like tequila in a west Texan’s veins. Why would anyone see a therapist for a problem that didn’t exist? Why would a man say he was impotent when he wasn’t? Why would that same man take an overdose of Viagra? And why, for pity’s sake, would he choose my office in which to drop dead?

I had no answers. Only more questions that sent my mind spinning off in a dozen baffling directions. What had Bomstad hoped to achieve with his supposed subterfuge? Would the board blame me for this horrific fiasco, and did Rivera really think I was responsible for Bomber’s death?

True, there was still a tiny, pathetic part of me that was flattered Rivera might think a man like Bomstad had been attracted to me, but mostly I was mortified to learn that despite thousands of dollars of tuition and a zillion years of night classes, my ability to judge men hadn’t improved one iota. It was terrifying, as were Rivera’s suspicions, because there was one thing I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt: Men like the lieutenant didn’t care about anything except mounting a trophy on the wall. I knew the type. Any cocktail waitress worth her tips had witnessed the scenario a million times: A man saunters into her bar. He’s feeling good, confident, on the prowl for the perfect woman, but as the hours slide by and Heidi Klum once again fails to appear, he becomes less particular. Willing, in fact, to settle for anything with boobs and a dab of mascara.