“You think they’ve found anything at the motel yet?” I asked.
“They’ll call me if they do. In the meantime, just relax a little.”
Relax. Right. The problem was I was getting
But even as I was attacked with serious guilt (the likes of which I hadn’t felt since I’d confessed to my grandmother I hadn’t been to mass since Easter) I didn’t let go of Ramirez’s hand. I didn’t step away, and I didn’t protest when his arm curled around my waist, his hand resting on the small of my back. I was so going to hell, wasn’t I?
Luckily my eternal soul was saved as Ramirez’s cell phone chirped to life on his belt. He picked it up, glancing briefly at the number before answering it without so much as a look of apology in my direction.
“Ramirez,” he said, stepping off to semi-privacy at the far side of the yard.
I wandered back over to the picnic tables, sitting on a bench as I watched Ramirez talk. It was hard to tell in the dark, but I thought I saw his Bad Cop face return, the lines of his jaw tense, his eyes that impenetrable dark cloud again. I wondered if the call had anything to do with Greenway. Maybe CSI Guy had found something useful after all. Then I wondered if Ramirez would share it or just tear out of here with a “go home,” again. It was hard to tell. He’d almost seemed like a real person a minute ago, but back into cop mode, I wasn’t sure.
“He works too much.” Mama came up behind me, offering a glass of water. I took it gratefully, not admitting even to myself how heated dancing with Ramirez had made me.
“Always that phone going off. Always the beeper. Clint works at the teddy bear factory in Industry. Now that’s a good job. Go to work in the morning. Make the bears. Come home at night and see his wife and kids. Good steady job.”
“Jack’s good at his job.” What irrational idea made me suddenly defend Ramirez, I have no clue. But I did. “He’s a good cop.”
“You better make sure those condoms don’t break. You marry this one, you’ll never see him.”
Unfortunately, it was a little late for the broken condom talk.
“Mama,” Ramirez said, coming up behind me. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to go.” He flipped his phone shut, the hard look still in his eyes.
“Oh, so soon?” Mama’s face fell. Then she shot me an I-told-you-so look.
“Sorry, Mama.” Ramirez leaned down to kiss on her on the cheek. “I’ll call you this weekend.”
Ramirez grabbed my arm and steered me back toward the house. I barely got out an, “It was nice to meet you,” before I was propelled back through the chatchki laden house to the front door.
I didn’t like the urgency in Ramirez’s movements any more than I did the hard line of his jaw. My stomach was rapidly sinking like quicksand.
“What?” I asked as soon as we were out of earshot of Mama. “What’s happened? Is it Richard?”
His eyes narrowed at the mention of Richard as he shoved me out the front door and practically ran to his SUV.
“What? What is it?” My voice was rising into the range of hysterics now and I had terrible visions of attending Richard’s funeral beside Cinderella. “Please tell me what’s going on?”
He stopped. “It’s Greenway.”
“They found him? When? Where?”
“Just a few minutes ago. In a dumpster behind the motel.” He paused. “With a gunshot wound to the head.”
Chapter Eleven
I blinked hard, digesting this information.
“But he was just alive,” I protested. “He shot at me.”
“Well, he’s not shooting anyone now. Get in your car and I’ll follow you to the motel.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “You want me to go with you?”
Ramirez turned around and fixed me with a stare. “You’re going to follow me anyway, aren’t you?”
I hated being this predictable. “Yes.”
“At least this way I can keep an eye on you.” He turned and strode to his car.
I tried to get over my shock and clattered to my Jeep, quickly roaring it to life as Ramirez made a u-turn and waited for me to pull out. I did, retracing our drive back to the freeway with Ramirez’s headlights as a constant companion.
The drive back to the 5 and west to North Hollywood took over half an hour. Long enough for the implications of this latest development to sink in. If Greenway had been shot, that meant someone had to have killed him. All this time I was assuming that Greenway was the one who’d killed his wife. But if that was true, who’d killed Greenway? Three people knew where Greenway hid the twenty million. Two were dead. I clenched my teeth together to keep them from chattering as I did the math. That meant only one was left.
Richard.
I focused on the task of driving through the late night traffic to keep my mind from rolling this fact over and over like a snowball out of control. There were two possibilities now staring me in the face, neither one particularly pleasant. Either Richard was in a dumpster of his own somewhere or…
Richard was pulling the trigger.
That thought sent a chill straight through me, prompting me to flip on the heater despite the seventy plus temperature outside.
The Richard I knew folded his socks into perfect pairs in his drawer, drank non-fat milk, and had asked permission to even kiss me the first time. The Richard I knew did not shoot people.
Then again, the Richard I knew didn’t have a wife either.
As Ramirez tailed me onto the 134 another horrible thought occurred to me. Dana and I had heard shots earlier. At the time we’d assumed Greenway was shooting at us. But what if it was the other way around. What if someone had been shooting Greenway? Oh my God. That made Dana and me earwitnesses to a murder. I had a sudden vision of me in the witness protection program, wearing some really horrible
I pulled into the parking lot of the Moonlight Inn, Ramirez close behind me. Again, residents were out on the balconies, men in stained robes and women dressed uncomfortably like myself. Metallica stood outside his office talking with a uniformed officer who was making notes in a small black book. I parked my Jeep and got out as Ramirez pulled into the spot beside me.
Metallica spotted me, his eyes round and pupils suspiciously dilated. “That’s her!” he shouted. “That’s one of those crazy ho’s I told you about. They killed that dude!”
The officer looked up, one hand instinctively hovering over the gun holstered at his hip.
“I got it.” Ramirez appeared at my side, waving to the uniform that he had the “crazy ho” under control. He leaned in close to my ear, his voice low. “Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do.”
I bit my lip. No kidding.
Ramirez steered me past Metallica and into the cockroach infested _ront O__ice. He sat me down on a hard plastic chair as he leaned against the Formica counter, arms crossed over his chest. “Looks like paperwork’s inevitable at this point. You better tell me what went on here tonight.”
I tried to read Ramirez’s expression in the flickering glare of the Moonlight’s neon sign. No luck. I couldn’t tell if I was currently being questioned as a suspect, witness, or just a cute little pain in the ass.
I’d watched enough TV dramas to know that when the cops put on their we’ve-got-to-talk face, the first thing you do is call your lawyer. But considering my lawyer was currently nowhere to be found, I cracked under Ramirez’s steady gaze and told him everything, right down to the look in Dana’s eyes as she’d grabbed a handful of Metallica’s shirt.
