“I didn’t hear it ring,” Helpful Receptionist said.
Bunny crossed her arms over her chest. “Me neither.”
“Vibrate,” I mouthed to them as I nodded and made appropriate listening noises. “Uh huh… sure… right…”
I’d like to think my acting skills would have been pretty convincing if my phone hadn’t picked that moment to start ringing the William Tell overture.
Bunny smirked. “I think your phone is ringing.”
Damn. Note to self: I sucked at undercover work. “Uh, I gotta go.” I made a break for it, through the front doors and down the street. All the while being serenaded by the William Tell Overture still trilling from the cell in my hand. I rounded the corner and made it to my Jeep, quickly locking the doors against any killer Marilyn Monroes before I picked up my call.
“Hello?” I breathed into the phone, the unexpected sprint causing me to pant like a golden retriever.
“Hey, it’s me,” Dana’s voice came through. “Listen, I just remembered something else about Carol Carter.”
“What?”
“She’s on location in Canada right now.”
Does my friend have timing or what? “Yeah, I just found that out.”
“Oh. Sorry. Well, listen, I got a call for an audition tomorrow and I was wondering if I could come over in the morning and borrow something to wear. It’s a campy sixties thing, kinda modern
“Sure. Mi closet es su closet.”
“Thank, hon. Oh, Sasha’s calling me, gotta go.” And Dana hung up.
I flipped my phone shut and took a moment to get my breathing under control again before hopping back on the 10 toward Santa Monica. Unfortunately, my day had been a bust and I was no closer to knowing who killed Greenway than Ramirez was. All I’d accomplished was alienate a pissy porn star and discover that Richard’s lawyer was an old-school chauvinist. I wasn’t even fully prepared to cross Carol Carter off my list of evil girlfriends. Sure she had an alibi, but what if she’d hired someone to bump Greenway off? I know, I was grasping now, but I was desperate.
I stopped at Von’s on the way home to pick up a frozen pizza and another liter of Diet Coke. Then somehow a dozen Krispy Kremes jumped into my cart, along with another pint of Chunk Monkey. I didn’t fight it. I figured my dismal encounter at the Platt Agency called for major calorie comfort.
It was dark before I pulled up to my studio. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed not to see Ramirez’s SUV gracing my driveway again. As much as I hated the fact we fought over everything I did, at least it beat the silence I knew was waiting for me inside.
I opened my door and flipped on the lights. Then tripped over something on the floor.
“What the-?” I looked down. It was the crushed EPT.
God I hated that thing. That thing had started this whole mess. I had a married ex(ish)-boyfriend sitting in jail, a sexy cop showing up at my apartment at all hours, a killer Barbie running around shooting people, and
And the worst part was, I still didn’t even know how I felt about it. A baby. I mean, I guess I wanted a baby someday. Who didn’t like babies, right? Babies were cute, soft, cuddly. I mean, I’d be a monster not to want a baby, right?
The awful thing was, I kind of did want a baby. I got this warm Florence Henderson feeling when I thought about it that scared the crap out of me. But Florence had had a loving husband, a house in the suburbs, and Alice. I didn’t have any of those things. I wasn’t sure I could do family right now. At least, not alone.
For some odd reason, the image of Ramirez’s family popped into my head. The big backyard filled with laughing children. Mama’s soft, smiling face. The battered pinata hanging from a tree limb. Ramirez, holding his little niece on his lap, his pants sticky with lollipop fingerprints. The air thick with the scent of empanadas and sugar cookies. Then music. And dancing. And the feel of Ramirez’s body against mine as we close danced…
I groaned. I picked up the EPT and threw it in the trash can under my sink. There. One less thing to think about.
I was just contemplating whether or not I should take the can out to the dumpster in the back of the building, when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered.
There was a pause on the other end, but I heard breathing.
“Hello?” I tried again, envisioning Richard trying to make a call while rapists and murderers breathed down his neck.
Only the voice I heard wasn’t Richard’s. It was a woman's.
“Greenway deserved what he got. Leave it alone. Or the next bullet’s for you.”
Chapter Eighteen
I froze, the receiver still glued to my ear as the line went dead. Ohmigod. Had it been Bunny? Andi? Thong woman? I couldn’t tell. The voice had been kind of muffled. It was a woman, that much I knew. And she was pissed.
I shivered and quickly replaced the receiver as if she could reach through the phone and shoot me as easily as she’d done Greenway. If ever I needed confirmation that Richard was innocent, that was it.
How had she gotten my number? How did she even know who I was? Did she know where I lived too?
I ran to the front door and checked the lock. Still in place. I unlocked and relocked it again just in case. Then I checked all the windows and shut the blinds. I had the irrational urge to hide under my futon. Instead, remembering my own stint crouching in Richard's closet, I quickly scanned mine. I was relieved to find no one hiding in my seasonal sweaters.
After checking the lock on the front door one more time I sat down on my futon and turned the television on really loud. Trying to fill the now menacing silence with
I was truly getting freaked out.
What I needed was a weapon. Something in case Homicidal Barbie tried to break in during the night. Like a sharp knife or a heavy wrench. Unfortunately, since I didn’t cook or do carburetors, I didn’t have either. My eyes scanned the room for anything heavy enough to conk a Barbie on the head. I grabbed my dusty thighmaster from the closet and jumped back onto my futon.
Nope. Still didn’t feel safe.
Reluctantly, I pulled Ramirez’s number out of my purse. I stared at it. The right thing to do was call the cops, right? I mean, I’d just received a death threat. This was the sort of thing cops did. Respond to calls like this.
Only, after the way we’d verbally sparred this morning, I didn’t really want to be the one to make first contact. I mean, I didn’t want Ramirez to think this was just some excuse to call him. If I called him first, that made me the loser right?
I bit my lip, deciding which was worse, being a loser or being Barbie prey. I grabbed my cordless and dialed the number. It rang once. And then I chickened out and hung up. Shit. I was a loser.
The phone rang in my hand and I jumped about three feet in the air. My hands shook as I pressed the on button.
“Hello?” Oh God, please let it be a telemarketer.
“Maddie?”
No such luck. It was Ramirez.
“Oh, hi.”
“Did you just call me? Your number came up on my caller ID.”
I cursed modern invention.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Sort of.”
