“But did he kill her?” I asked. “Could a father be so depraved?”
“It happens all the time.”
We held on to each other as we walked back to the car. After we had left Mrs. Sinclair’s, I had only made it around the first curve in the road before I lost the double-cheese Bingo Burger we had picked up at a drive-through on the way to Pasadena. I had eaten it before I knew that a burger franchise was the going price for kindergarten-age blondes.
Times had been hard for the Metranos. I had seen where they lived, a lot of little girls packed into tight quarters. A lot of shoes to buy in that family, and food, and doctors, all on the earnings of a coffee-shop waitress. I’m sure there was a sense of desperation. A case could be made for a certain nobility in the gesture of handing over one of the children to a rich family to give her privileges and opportunities her parents could not provide. And giving more to the other four girls as part of the bargain. Grimm’s Fairy Tales stuff again.
The wicked witch in this story was George Metrano’s affair with a craps table. If it had been me, I would not have been able to swallow the bread a deal like that had put on the family table. Maybe that was why George had this compulsion to lose it all. I’m no Freud. I couldn’t explain what he had done. Even thinking about it had made me ill. If he had any human feeling at all, he must have suffered. I only hoped that every waking moment for the last ten years had given him the same torment his wife had suffered when she lost her child. Her torment times ten.
Mike’s city car rattled down the hill. The shocks were shot, the torsion bars worn. All the bouncing and swaying did my queasy stomach no good. I rolled down my window and gulped air, my hair blown back away from my face. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, so it was a surprise when I opened them and found myself in the garage of Mike’s condo. He was in my open car door, gently pulling me by the hand.
“Come on, baby,” he said. “Let’s put you to bed.”
I got out, shaky when I stood up, still half asleep. We went into the condo through the connecting door between the garage and the kitchen and I walked straight to the answering machine on the counter next to Mr. Espresso for messages.
Lyle had called. Everything was fine. My grant administrator still wanted a report. Guido had called to say that he had a picture for us and was driving over to deliver it. If we weren’t home, he would stick it in the front door. Before Guido’s message had clicked off, Mike was on his way to the front door.
I stayed to listen to the rest of the messages. Casey called, bubbling. She had an audition with the Joffrey Ballet. She needed money for new toe shoes.
When Casey hung up, I heard the deadbolt on the front door clunk a second time and Mike came back waving an envelope with “Love, Guido” scrawled across the front.
“You ready to see this?” He slit open the envelope with a steak knife and pulled out a single four-by-six color snapshot. He showed me the face of the man who had slashed Mike’s tires. It was almost cartoonish, this computer-manipulated composite, but the face was whole and recognizable. I had only seen George Metrano once, the afternoon in the morgue with Leslie, but I knew him.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“Afraid so. George Metrano.”
“At least now you know he’s not in Baja with Elizabeth, not if he was in town this afternoon.”
“Damn. It’s so much easier to take out an asshole below the border. We’ll just hope he rabbits when we catch him and we’ll shoot him on the fly, huh?”
“I’ll help you.” My voice sounded thick. “What did he possibly have to gain by killing her?”
“If. If he killed her. Maybe the question is, what did he stand to lose if he didn’t?” Mike rubbed his face wearily, rasping the whiskers on his chin.
I touched his face. “If Mrs. Sinclair was correct and Elizabeth inherits nothing, then who is Randy’s heir?”
“I could make a pretty good guess.”
“Check it out, will you?” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.” He chuckled. “Anything else?”
I looked inside the envelope. “Guido only gave us one print.”
“One’s all we need. It stays with me. You’re retiring.”
“Retiring for the night, you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” He slipped George back into the envelope. “I have to get on the horn and make arrangements. I’ll come tuck you in later.”
“Wake me if I fall asleep,” I said, yawning. I kissed his cheek and headed for the bedroom. I was tired, but I knew I couldn’t sleep; I had seen the face.
Mike had unpacked my duffel, hung up my two clean shirts with his, put my dirty clothes in a pillowcase on the closet floor, lined my shoes up next to his. I had never seen my shoes next to his before. Somehow, the sight touched me.
I fussed a bit, cleared away yesterday’s newspapers from the bed, smoothed the quilt. This would make four nights in a row in the same bed. I liked the number.
With nothing else to do, I brushed my teeth, stripped off my clothes, and ran a hot shower. I was standing with my head against the tile, steamy water pounding on my spine, when Mike opened the shower door.
“We’re waiting for the head shed to work its way through diplomatic channels,” he said. “As soon as the connection is made with the federales, I’m going into the office to make the call.”
“I want to go with you.”
“You can’t. The boss will be there.”
“No fair.” I tried to pout, but I had water pouring in my eyes. The best I could do was squint and puff out my lower lip.
He laughed. “Don’t use all the hot water. I need a shower, too.”
“You can get in here with me.”
“I’d like to, but I wouldn’t be able to hear the phone.”
“Will you scrub my back?”
“Hand me the soap.”
I gave him the soap and my back. He started with my shoulders, massaging with strong fingers slippery with lather. I felt the tight muscles release. It was so delicious and so relaxing it was all I could do to stand upright.
He worked down my back, occasionally letting his hot, soapy hands slip around front, teasing. He circled my waist so his thumbs could work the knots in the small of my back. I was saying bright things like ooh and aah, writhing to direct him. Then he was all of a sudden in the shower with me, in his clothes, his body pressed tight behind me.
His lips nipped along the base of my neck, giving me goose bumps despite the steam billowing around us. He ran his tongue along the back of my ear, followed the stream of water that sluiced over my collarbone and down my breast, where he held his hand like a dam.
I turned around then, and began working on the annoyingly small buttons of his wet shirt. He worked my buttons with amazingly skillful tongue and fingers. I thought suddenly of something Guido had said, about making love to a man as experienced as Mike. I didn’t care where Mike had learned what he knew. As long as he kept doing it. With me.
Around one, the summons came from headquarters. We were dry by then, napping on top of the quilt when the phone jolted us awake. Elizabeth was being held in a Baja jail as a courtesy, but the federales in Cabo San Lucas wouldn’t hold her for very long.
While he dressed, I made Mike coffee and a sandwich and then kissed him goodbye. Very Dolly Domestic. And sweet. Until I had a flash of life with Mike, but without Lyle. Leaving Lyle would be like leaving one’s widowed mother alone. My stomach started to rumble again. I sat in the kitchen and stared back at the red light on Mr. Espresso, hoping for some revelation to come.
At two, when nothing had resolved itself, I slipped into a few more clothes and some shoes and went for a drive, a change of scenery to sort things through.
In the middle of the night, when there isn’t construction going on, the freeways become free ways. Once I realized where I was headed, I was impatient to get there. I pushed the little rental Toyota up to ninety, slowed to maneuver around a slow drunk, then hit the pedal again.