Free Unscrewed by Lois Greiman Page A

car?”
    He said nothing.
    “You were on your way to his house, geared up for a confrontation. Maybe you—”
    “I know it doesn’t make sense,” he gritted.
    “Okay.” I rested my butt against the counter and stared at him, trying to look casual, but my nerves were cranked up tight. “What’s his motive?”
    “You sound like a fuckin’ whodunnit.”
    “Why would he want to kill her?”
    Emotion crackled in his eyes. “The senator likes to call the shots.”
    I blinked, trying to align my mental picture of Miguel Rivera with his son’s. They were miles apart, shifted at odd angles. I searched for a question. “What shots?”
    “It wouldn’t have been the first time she threatened to leave him.”
    “Is that what she said? On the phone? That she was leaving him?”
    “She said she needed a change. That things were going to be different.”
    “What did that mean?”
    He shook his head. I could see the grating uncertainty in the way he held himself. It didn’t fit the image I had of him.
    “You think she was leaving your dad for someone else?”
    “I don’t know what the hell to think.” He paced the tight confines of my kitchen. “When I heard her voice, the strain in it, I should have asked. Should have…Damn it.” He drew a careful breath. “I should have been thinking.”
    But he had rushed off instead, rushed off to the woman he’d maybe once loved, maybe still loved. The thought blistered my gut, but his eyes did worse. They burned my soul. I don’t like it when eyes do that. “You wanted to help,” I said.
    “Did I?” He stopped pacing, huffed a laugh. “I remember thinking,
This is one the old bastard can’t win.
”
    “Salina, you mean.”
    “Maybe I was just going to gloat.”
    I considered denying it, but he would see through that. Hell, he was a soul burner. “Maybe that was part of it,” I said.
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “You feeling sorry for me, McMullen?”
    “I can be nice if I want to.”
    “Hasn’t happened before.”
    “Yeah, well…” I reached into the bag again. “I’m scared, remember? Maybe I’m just trying to keep you from strangling me.”
    I realized in an instant that I wasn’t the least bit funny and cranked my eyes toward him. But he snorted and leaned his hips against the edge of the counter, relaxing marginally.
    “Old man is as rich as Judas,” he said. “And he’ll be richer yet when his stocks take root.” He shook his head.
    “Stocks?”
    “Computers, pharmaceuticals, makeup. The senator is everywhere. Bastard can smell money before it’s even minted. Always gets what he wants.”
    “Always?” My hand closed mindlessly around a can of something.
    He turned toward me. “Maybe not always. There was my birth, not to mention some petty theft in middle school. But joining the police academy…” He shook his head, almost laughing at his own thoughts. “I think that was the one that really burned his ass.”
    “He didn’t want you to be a cop.”
    He laughed. The tension was beginning to creep back in. “I was Miguel Rivera’s son.”
    “What did Salina see in him?”
    The tendons in his wrists tightened as he gripped my counter. “What do you see?”
    “Besides money and power?”
    His eyes crackled. I was going to have to quit being honest.
    “You think he’s for real?” he asked. “You think the face the public sees has anything to do with the living, breathing Miguel Geraldo Rivera?” He laughed. “Fuck it, he can seem like a peach, can’t he? Hell, if it were all a lie, I’d marry him myself.”
    “That’s illegal. Even in L.A.,” I said, and stuffed whatever I was holding in the top cupboard.
    He stared at me. The noose of tension tightened a notch. “You actually fell for it, didn’t you?” he asked.
    I felt itchy. “Fell for what?”
    “Oh, yeah.” He laughed. “You swallowed his act whole. Hook, line, and fucking Evinrude.”
    I stayed calm. Go, new Chrissy. “Was he instrumental in your