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“I don’t think I do.”

“Well, people like to be . . . flattered. You know, have their egos stroked. But Christina, Ms. McMullen, she just says things flat out.”

“So she’s confrontational?”

“Confrontational?” She seemed to consider that for an instant. “No. I wouldn’t call it that. Just . . . forthright.”

“Then, in your opinion, she’s got nothing to hide?”

“Sometimes she bites her fingernails.”

He laughed. “Nothing else?”

“The truth is, she’s too good for her own good.”

“Then you won’t mind if I go through her office,” he said, and suddenly footfalls were rapping across the floor.

My mind spun into overdrive, and although my professional image quailed at the idea of diving under my desk, my sense of survival insisted I do just that.

“Well. Ms. McMullen.” He was standing in my doorway, his tone as dry as aged chardonnay. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

And so I had been right again. He was a shitty actor and a sarcastic son of a bitch to boot.

“Mr. Riverman.” I tried hard to imbue my tone with the same cocky nonchalance as his, but I might have fallen a bit short, since I was simultaneously dragging myself out from under my desk. My chair scooted away, but I managed to wrangle it under control and slip between the cushioned armrests. “I didn’t realize we had an appointment.”

He didn’t bother to address that. “You should keep your employees better informed. Ms. Butterfield seemed to believe you weren’t in today. But maybe you were under your desk when she checked. Did you lose something?”

My mind scrambled for a dozen excuses before I realized he was toying with me. So I crossed my legs as if I hadn’t a care in the world and hoped my ears wouldn’t burn off my head like fried tortillas.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Reverence?”

A tic jumped in his jaw. I almost smiled. “When I was reviewing my notes I realized I had neglected a few relevant questions. You don’t mind if I ask them now, do you?”

“Well, actually—”

“Good,” he said and, reaching back, closed the door in Elaine’s face. Her expression as it swung shut was beyond surprised. Elaine hadn’t been closed out since she was five years old and knocking on the “boys only” clubhouse. “I’m going to need a list of Bomstad’s friends.”

“As you know, Mr. . . .” I shook my head. My father had once suggested that I was possessed by the devil. In the last few days there had been little enough to prove him wrong. “I’m sorry. What was your name again?”

He gave me a predatory smile. “Rivera,” he said. “
Lieutenant
Rivera.”

“Right. But as you know, Mr. Reever, I can’t give out that kind of information. Client confidentiality.”

“Which is, of course, superseded in a murder investigation.”

“Murder! You said yourself that Bomstad overdosed on Viagra.”

He shrugged with minimal effort, as though I wasn’t quite worth the energy of real movement. “That was the original assessment. But further analysis suggests a trace of some additional chemical elements in the wine.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “What elements?”

That carnivorous smile again. “I’m afraid that’s confidential information, Ms. McMullen. But certainly you can understand my concern, and my need to determine who might have had access to the wine.”

My first thought was to drop to my knees and beg him to believe my innocence, but I managed to stay upright.

He sat down on the edge of my desk and crossed his arms. “I don’t believe he purchased the wine himself.”

My throat felt dry, my hands clammy. “Any particular reason?”

“Several, actually. The Bomb made a good deal of money, and while he had a host of personal foibles, frugality wasn’t amongst them.”

I waited.

“A seven-hundred-fifty-milliliter bottle of Asti Spumante retails at about thirteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. That’s pretty cheap. But you’d know that, what with your previous experience.”

I shrugged, feeling itchy. “I delivered drinks,” I said. “That doesn’t make me a drinker.”

“Really? Even after all those years of being in such close proximity to it?”

“You’re in close proximity with crime on a daily basis,” I said. “That doesn’t make you a . . .” I paused. “But I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

His lips twitched. “But you know something about liquor.”

I shrugged. “Just what any woman knows. It makes men act like asses.” I batted my lashes at him. “Might you be a drinking man, Mr. Rivven?”

He squinted his eyes, as if he might smile, but didn’t. “What’s your drink of choice, Ms. McMullen?”

“I like root beer,” I said. “Mug. But I prefer it in ice cream.” There was no way he could have known I liked Spumante. Was there? And why the crap would he care unless he really thought I’d killed Bomstad?

“I spoke with a—” He checked his notes. “Mrs. Lily Schultz.”

“You called Lily?” Maybe I sounded as shocked as I felt, because his eyes were gleaming like a crazed werewolf’s.

“She said you’d sometimes have a glass of wine after your shift.” Perhaps he was waiting for me to confess and throw myself upon his mercy, but my mouth was too dry to speak and I strongly suspected he had no mercy. “She mentioned that you liked Spumante,” he added.

I was going to be sick, right there in my own office. But I swallowed hard and raised my chin. “I didn’t send Andrew Bomstad the wine,” I said. “I didn’t know he had it. I didn’t tamper with it, and I certainly didn’t kill him.”

Rivera’s eyes were as steady as a snake’s. “Of course not,” he said. “But I thought you might be able to help me ascertain who did so I can let you get back to work.” He glanced around as if assessing every detail of my diminutive office. “Or whatever it is you do here.”

“Shall I assume you disapprove of me?” I asked. “Or that it’s mental health you detest?”

“Although I’m sure you did a wonderful job with the Bomb, I think sometimes your . . .
profession
. . . can do more harm than good.”

“Would you suggest my clients all pull themselves up by their bootstraps instead, then?” I asked.

“Or have a stiff drink,” he said, “maybe of Asti Spumante.”

I tried to think of some snappy rejoinder, but I was out of spunky witticisms. He stood up, managing, once again, to loom.

“I’ll need a list of Bomstad’s acquaintances,” he said. “Anyone he might have confided in.”

“As I told you—” I began, but in that instant he pulled a plastic Baggie from his pocket. Inside was a piece of card stock, two inches by four inches and creased down the middle. He held it out to me, but there was really no need. I have excellent eyesight and I could see the words scrawled across the paper in dark, fluid letters.
“For tonight. C.”

“Someone sent him the wine,” he said. “Someone with the initial
C
.”

Perhaps I should have responded, but the floor had just fallen out from under me.

“Any comments . . . Christina?”

Holy crap! Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.

“Ms. McMullen?”

“I always knew I should change my name,” I said.

He watched me.

“Maybe to Xenia. To avoid confusion.”

“You’re maintaining that you didn’t send the wine?”

“Repeatedly.” My mind was clicking away a mile a minute, but it was all ridiculous. What possible motive would I have to murder my own client? Which was a question the irritating Rivera must certainly have asked. I felt my blood pressure simmer down to a rapid boil. “But I’m sure you know that,” I said. “Otherwise I would have already faced a firing squad. Most likely the highly acclaimed LAPD has already found the culprit.”

He said nothing. I tried another smile and managed, yet again, not to ralph on my shoes.

“His diary would surely attest to the fact that he and I had a strictly professional relationship.”

The silence lasted a second too long. I almost grinned for real as the truth of the situation dawned on me. He knew nothing about the journal Bomstad had begun years before I met him. The journal where he’d recorded thoughts and deeds. The journal which, I was suddenly sure, could exonerate me.

True, the Bomb had turned out to be a lying scumbag pervert, but even lying scumbag perverts keep notes for posterity. “You did find his diary, didn’t you?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure how to read his expression. There was definitely irritation, but there was wariness, too, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a flicker of grudging surprise hidden carefully behind his double espresso eyes.

“There are several avenues yet to be pursued,” he said.

Several avenues. I would have laughed out loud if I could manage to swallow.

His gaze narrowed the slightest degree. “You’re a relatively attractive woman, Ms. McMullen. Did it ever occur to you that Bomstad may have employed your services simply because he wanted to get into your pants? That maybe every word he told you was a lie toward that end?”

In light of recent circumstances, I had wondered something disturbingly similar. And although the question certainly deserved some consideration, it was the words “relatively attractive” that I fixated on. It was childish, but the phrase made me want to yank out his short hairs with a tweezers.

“Whether that was the case or not,” I said, pursing my lips and using my most professional/anal-retentive tone, “the fact remains that he did not, as you so tactfully put it, get into my pants.”

“Terribly disappointing for you, was it?”

I almost said no. I should have said no, immediately and emphatically with a good deal of righteous indignation, but I’d been raised Catholic. Lying is tantamount to murder, and it was that moment’s hesitation that lured that wolfish grin back to Rivera’s lean face.

“Hoping he’d be the one to end the dearth?” he asked.

It took me a moment to realize he was referring to my sex life. I think it’s safe to assume no one wants her sex life referred to in terms of deprivation.

“
If
you can manage to find the diary,” I said, gritting my teeth around the words, “I’m certain you’ll ascertain that my behavior with Mr. Bomstad was the epitome of professionalism.”

He paused, doing nothing but watch me, and for an instant I was sure he could hear the blood pounding like panicked rhinos in my veins.

“If you think of anything to add to your statement, the L.A. Police Department would greatly appreciate it,” he said and, turning away, walked out the door.

Elaine materialized a moment later, looking wide-eyed and a little discombobulated. Apparently, she was no longer Silvia T. Gilmore, Attorney-at-Law. “Remember when Zach Peterson said he’d found your panties in Matt Montgomery’s car?”

Sadly, I did.

“But he was lying about the whole thing so you’d tell him how far you’d really gone with Matt?”

“Uh-huh.”

“This is similar.”

I thought about it in something of a haze. “Except a misplaced pair of panties isn’t likely to get me ten-to-life in Folsom.”

“True,” she agreed, scowling into space. “And Peterson didn’t have such a great butt.”

6

Maybe knowledge
is
power, but it’s damned hard to
think
a burglar to death.

—Glen McMullen,
in defense of the Beretta under his pillow

T
HE NEXT FEW HOURS were a blur. By five o’clock on Wednesday my eyes felt gritty and my skull too tight for my brain.

Elaine opened the door a crack. “All is well?” she asked. Her enunciation was strangely stilted, I noticed. She wore her hair tacked up with knitting needles and spoke with the palms of her hands pressed together.

Either she was an imposter or she was practicing for the role of unassuming Japanese secretary.

“I’m fine,” I said, too tired to inform her that she was neither Japanese nor unassuming.

She stepped in, mincing slightly. “You know, my friend, the drought only makes the lotus bloom brighter.”

I already missed Silvia T. Gilmore, hard-ass attorney-at-law. “Uh-huh. But there’s an irritating policeman who thinks the lotus killed its . . . client.”

“I believe you are mistaken, madam.”

I glanced up, hoping to believe despite her ridiculous diction.

“Indeed, I think he is, how do you say . . . crushing on you.”

The singular lunacy of that statement launched me irrevocably back to reality. I laughed out loud. “I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t crush me into powder.”

“Don’t be crazy,” she said, then drew herself back into character and corrected, “That is most unlikely, madam.”

I sighed and managed to push myself out of my emotional quagmire for a moment. “When’s the audition?”

“It is in three weeks’ time.”

God help us. “Tell you what, if I get the electric chair maybe you can watch the execution. It’ll give you insight into the justice system.”

She allowed a prim little smile. “All will be well for you. This I promise.”

“Because of my good karma?”

“But of course. That and because the handsome lieutenant has a boner for you.”

My jaw must have dropped, because she laughed, then gasped as she checked her watch. “Oh, crap! I gotta run, Mac. Sorry. Want me to stop over tonight?”

“No. No.” I was trying to digest her words. “I’m fine.”

She gave me a look, hand on doorknob.

“Really,” I promised, but an hour later as I skimmed Solberg’s Porsche up the 405 toward home, a thousand frazzled thoughts zipped through my overtaxed brain. None of them were ecstatically happy; I was basically being accused of murder, my car was still in the shop, and at any moment I might be charged with grand theft auto.

And yet, I wasn’t ready to relinquish the Porsche. It was my most promising investigative tool and I had even more to investigate now. I needed to find some “
C
” person who might have wanted Bomstad dead.

Mind pumping, I pulled into my needle-sized driveway. Getting out on the cracked, slanted concrete, I wrestled my garage door into submission and carefully pulled the little blue roadster inside. It was a snug and somewhat aromatic fit. Maybe when my house had been built they’d only needed room for two goats and a wheelbarrow. As it was, I was hard-pressed for enough space to pull the door shut and pad around the sleek fenders to reach my kitchen entrance.