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He whimpered and I winced. Breaking hearts was never easy, but I forced myself to be strong, to turn and look him square in the eye.

Unfortunately, his eyes had rolled back in his head. And the whimper I thought I’d heard was actually a snore. His fuzzy head lay half cocked against the rest behind him and his mouth was open and drooling.

Wouldn’t you know it? I couldn’t even keep the Geek God awake. Which was fine. I mean, it wasn’t like my ego needed stroking or anything. Still, I have to admit, for just a moment I fantasized about reaching across the leather seat and twisting his nipple until he screamed.

But I was generally against torturing unconscious men, so I just skimmed the Porsche’s sleek panels, pushing buttons until I found his GPS.

The drive was easy as pie then. I zoomed up the 405, zipped along the 101, and wheeled into Solberg’s driveway like 007 on speed. We came to a shuddering halt in front of his three-car garage, where I turned off the engine and waited for him to be jolted into awareness. It only took a moment.

“Whir im I?” he grumbled, his head doing asymmetrical circles on his wobbly neck.

“Time to get out.”

“I don’t feel great.”

“Really?” I said and hardly even grinned.

“Think I might be sick.”

Panic struck. “Not in the Porsche,” I rasped. The car and I had bonded. Lunging outside, I sprinted around the sleek grille, hauled open the passenger door, and yanked him out, but apparently the jerky movement didn’t do much to settle his stomach, because in a moment he was ralphing into the azaleas.

I turned my back and tried not to follow suit. Finally Solberg moaned. I heard him flop down on the walkway beside the shrubbery and chanced a glance in his direction. “Maybe I shouldn’t a had them shots before I picked you up.”

I believe it’s generally accepted that geniuses are the stupidest people on earth. “Come on. Let’s get you inside,” I said, trying to keep my eyes averted from the azaleas, but he had already slipped over onto his side.

I stared at him a moment, cursed in silence, and glanced around. It was a good neighborhood and a nice warm night. He’d probably be fine right where he was, I told myself. But my brother Pete had once passed out in my mother’s peonies. I had spotted him beside the shrine of the Virgin Mary when I’d peeked out to see if anyone was necking in the backyard and I’d thought it an okay place for him to spend the night.

Mom had emphatically disagreed, and my bottom still remembered the lesson. In the McMullen clan, it’s acceptable to drink yourself into oblivion but criminal to leave your brother facedown for the neighbors to gossip over in the morning. The irony didn’t elude me then or now, and yet I still felt a need to haul the ragged-assed little geek to his feet.

“Come on,” I said, dragging him along with an arm around his waist. “Wake up. I need your security code.”

He just managed to mumble the numbers before his head slumped against my breast. I considered dropping him onto the concrete to make sure it wasn’t intentional, but he seemed to be staring into the interior of his cranium, so I let it pass and pushed the door open with my foot. A chrome-and-crystal chandelier blazed in the gargantuan foyer. The house ran off in monochromatic sterility in every direction, not a couch or a blanket in sight.

“Where’s your bedroom?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. I gave him a little jiggle.

“Bedroom,” I repeated. The word seemed to bump a few frazzled neurons together.

“Up,” he croaked, and I stared up the mountainous steps and began to climb. By the time I’d reached the top I was breathless despite Solberg’s minuscule weight and my own extraordinary fitness.

As I shuffled him down the hall, I noticed that only one of his feet was paddling. The other dragged behind him like a dead duck. I shoved open the bedroom door and tossed him onto the mattress.

Unfortunately, he dragged me with him, and with a drunk’s unerring accuracy, landed with his hand on my right boob.

“Babe,” he mumbled, squeezing.

My breath came back in a rush. I shot to my feet, and it could be I kicked him in the shin, but I’d hauled his bony ass all the way upstairs without so much as a word of thanks.

Grumbling to myself, I found a phone on his glass bedstead and picked up the receiver, intending to call a cab, but from that vantage point I could see his Porsche far below. It gleamed cobalt blue in the overhead lights, looking sexy and ultraelegant. But didn’t it look a little lonely, too? Forsaken? Maybe I should take it home. Of course, if I did, Solberg would eventually show up to retrieve it, which meant another encounter of the weirdest kind.

On the other hand, I mused, if I had possession of his car, he could probably be convinced to do more investigating, despite the fact that I hadn’t exactly lived up to his fantasies thus far.

Truth was, I was in deep shit. Rivera was heading up a lynch mob and I had no intention of being at the end of the rope when it swung. The more information I had, the better off I’d be, and if that meant I had to take a Porsche home for a visit . . . well, so be it.

5

Men are like beer. Some are bold and some are smooth. But every damn one of ’em has a big-ass head full of air.

—Lily Schultz,
owner of the Warthog, after her husband’s third arrest for indecent exposure

M
ONDAY WAS A BITCH. Although I’d mostly agreed with David’s advice to take the day off, I managed to force myself into a relatively dignified ensemble and drop the Saturn off at the dealership for a six-month-late tune-up. I took a cab home; then, after a few seconds of intense soul-searching, I fired up Solberg’s Porsche and cruised to the office.

Elaine was there, fielding phone calls and rescheduling appointments, but she was wide-eyed and craning her neck at the parking lot when I walked in.

“Wow!” she mouthed, though she never quit her sympathetic
um-hum
ing into the receiver. Elaine is the kind of person who can write a dissertation while simultaneously finding the antiderivative of a polynomial expression. Unfortunately for the cerebral community, she has boobs big enough to ski on and eyes that scream bedroom in five different languages. She has a sultry voice, a nonexistent waist, and an ass that would make J.Lo cry. It was that lethal combination that had convinced her to head to fame and fortune in La La Land. I had no burning excuse to accompany her, except that I had received my Ph.D. while concurrently discovering my latest beau flagrante delicto with my ex-roommate. And seeing as how Schaumburg, Illinois, didn’t seem particularly appreciative of my stellar qualities anyway, I’d packed my bags and headed to Hollywood, where everyone needs a shrink.

“Holy fuck!” she said, punctuating the words with the click of the receiver into the cradle. I stared at her. Elaine’s father was a Methodist minister which had, heretofore, prompted her to confine her expletives to things like “ah, shucks” and “that’s a darn shame.” I could only assume she was practicing for one of the many roles she would never get. Elaine couldn’t act worth a damn. “What the hell is that?”

“Oh.” I’m pretty sure I had the good grace to look sheepish. “I’m just borrowing it.”

She gave me a look as she hustled around the end of her desk. “Someone lent you his rocket ship?”

I may have grinned just a little, but I’m sure I was deeply ashamed of myself. “It’s a Porsche.”

“No shit! Was it the Bomb’s?”

“What? No! Why would I be driving a client’s car?”

“I thought maybe the rumors were true and you really were doing him.”

“If your father heard you he’d turn over in his grave,” I told her.

“He’s not dead.”

“Well, this would kill him. What kind of role are you up for?”

“One that pays,” she said and turned toward me with a lusty sigh. When she did that around men, they slobbered like Pavlov’s dog. “I need to get a decent . . .” she began, but just then the phone chimed up.

She answered it on the second ring. “L.A. Counseling.”

I could hear the roar on the other end of the line quite clearly, and though the words were indistinct, the tone was self-explanatory. The caller seemed to be experiencing a high level of frustration. In other words, he was pissed as hell.

But Laney didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, her voice perfectly modulated to soothe, “it’s extremely difficult to understand you when you scream at that decibel. What did you say your name was?”

The voice lowered to a dull shriek.

“Mr. Solberg, my apologies, but Ms. McMullen isn’t in today.” She lifted her electric green gaze to mine with absolute innocence. “Stole your Porsche. I’m certain you’re mistaken, Mr. Solberg.” Her tone was a perfect meld of unqualified certainty and quiet affront, which was amazing, because I’d seen her at auditions. She wasn’t going to be the next Meryl Streep. In fact, Pamela Anderson had nothing to fear. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Ms. McMullen is the consummate professional. But if you’ll give me your phone number I’ll make certain she calls you at her earliest convenience.”

Thirty seconds later he’d given her six methods of contacting him and proposed twice. It was like that with Elaine.

She hung up the phone and crossed her arms over her gravity-defying chest. “Tell me.”

“I just borrowed it,” I said, but there was a twist of guilt in my gut that made me hungry for dark chocolate. Being fresh out, I shambled into my office, trying to ignore the spot from whence they’d removed Bomstad’s dead body.

She followed me in. “Tell me everything and start at the beginning.”

My head was starting to pound. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Christina Mary McMullen,
nothing
is what’s been going on with you for the last year and a half.
Something
is when you steal a guy’s Porsche and park it smack dab in front of your office building!”

I considered arguing. In fact, I opened my mouth to do just that, but finally I plopped my head onto my desk and groaned through my eyeballs. “Holy crap, Laney, I’m in deep shit.”

She grabbed a chair and scooted it across the floor. I could hear it being dragged along. “Because of the Porsche or because of the dead guy?”

I moaned again, but the front bell rang simultaneously, interrupting my pity fest. And it had promised to be a good one.

She lifted one finger in a request to hold that thought, donned her professional persona like a feather boa, and marched through the door.

“Can I help you?” she asked, but the next voice brought my head up like a muskie on a hook.

“Lieutenant Rivera.” There was a slight pause. I assumed he was showing her his badge. He had a tendency to whip the thing out like an Olympic medal. “I need to speak with Ms. McMullen.”

“Lieutenant . . . Rivera is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m sorry, but she didn’t feel up to coming in today.”

“That’s understandable.” His voice was unmistakable, as deep and dark as I remembered in my nightmares. “She’s been through quite a shock.”

“It’s a terrible shame. I’m Elaine Butterfield, by the way,” she said. I could imagine her extending her slim hand and wondered if he would pass out when her arm squeezed up against her breast. She’d dropped better men with a hello. “Elaine Butterfield.”

“You’re her secretary?” So he’d survived the handshake. Impressive, but I was still betting on Elaine. She’d been called Brainy Laney in elementary school. About the time she started filling out, the middle-school boys had thought of a few less cerebral monikers, but she’d had the last laugh; she’d only dated outside the district, operating on the idea that fraternizing with your schoolmates was tantamount to incest.

“Secretary and actress,” she corrected, but her tone was, as usual, self-deprecating.

“Is that what you were doing on . . .” He paused as if to check his notes. “August twenty-fourth?”

“Audition,” she said. “For one Silvia T. Gilmore, Attorney-at-Law, tough but with a soft side. You have a very nice smile, Lieutenant.”

I rolled my eyes. Rivera’s smile made him look like a cannibal at a fat farm, but maybe he’d given her the genuine article. I was almost tempted to peek around my door frame just to see if there was such a thing.

“So you weren’t in the office when Bomstad arrived last Thursday?”

“Had to make it all the way across town. You know how the Five is once we working slobs punch out.”

“But you’ve met Bomstad before. On previous visits?”

“He seemed like a nice guy.”

“How nice?”

“Clean fingernails. Nice shoes, that sort of thing.”

“And what about his relationship with Ms. McMullen?”

“She liked his shoes, too.”

“Anything else she appreciated about Mr. Bomstad?”

“He paid his bills on time.”

He paused a moment as if trying to figure her out. I almost wished him luck. Elaine was an enigma in 38C’s. “So she never said anything about dating him?”

“Dating him!” She laughed. The tone was perfect. “Certainly not! She’s the consummate professional.”

“Bomstad was thought to be a good-looking man.”

“Wasn’t he just.” Her voice sounded dreamy. “I have to admit to fantasizing about dragging him into the broom closet myself.”

Her acting skills may leave something to be desired, but she could lie like the devil himself. Elaine needed another man hanging around her like I needed a tub of lard stuck to my ass.

“I didn’t know there was a broom closet here.”

“Luckily, there isn’t,” she said, and laughed again.

He chuckled in return. I canted my head at the sound, but I was pretty sure I had heard right. “So you’d say theirs was a strictly professional relationship.”

“Ms. McMullen and Andrew Bomstad? Absolutely.”

“And what of her character?” he asked. “Would you say she is, generally speaking, an honest individual?”

Elaine paused. I could almost feel him lean in, ready for the kill.

“Please speak freely, Ms. Butterfield. I’ll make certain none of this gets back to your employer.”

“Well, if you want to know the truth . . .” Another pause. “I think she’s too honest for her own good. Do you know what I mean?”