Murder and Mayhem (12 page)

“Can’t do that. The hospital people will want their bed back at some point.” Montoya jostled him lightly. “And do you want your grandfather to find you like this? The old man will sell your kidneys or something if you’re not awake to catch him.”

“God, it’s like you know him. Trapdoor spiders hang posters of that man on their webs as inspiration.” Rook opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. The room was searing bright, digging into his eyes and gouging out what little sense he had left in his skull. Blinking, Rook made out the Hispanic detective looming over him. Smirking, he muttered, “Nice as you are to wake up to, if we’ve fucked, I don’t remember. Shit, I feel like I’ve been microwaved to death.”

“Yeah, you’ll be fine. You’re already complaining.” Montoya shook his head and pulled out of Rook’s view. “You were starting to swear at someone in your sleep. I figured it was time to pull you up out of it.”

As hospital rooms went, it was a nice one. There were comfortable armchairs and fine art on the walls, a private sanctuary Rook was certain his grandfather’s name had a hand in securing. For all he knew, the old man was somewhere nearby, pulling strings as Rook lay in a stupor, strung up like the puppet he was becoming. Still, it was better than most places he’d recently been, including the dull green cell he’d had courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department.

But it was just another prison—although it certainly came with better eye candy than the vomiting heroin addict he had for company while Montoya and his partner tried to pin Dani’s death on him.

“What happened?” He tried sitting up, propping himself up on his hand, but his elbow folded in on itself, plopping him back into the bed. His memory fuzzed in and out. He recalled walking into Potter’s Field, then Montoya sneaking up on him, but the rest of it was caught behind a gray veil. “Shit, a bit dizzy here. Why am I in here?”

His arm ached, and his face seemed stiff on one side. Touching his cheek solved the question of why he couldn’t move his nose. A stretch of gauze and tape went from his jaw up to his cheekbone, and from what Rook could tell, Boris Karloff’s makeup artist had gotten a hold of him, wrapping him up tight with yards of bandages and more tape.

“You were shot.” Montoya skirted the bed again, reaching for a cup of ice chips. “Nothing serious. Crease on your cheek and a dimple on your arm. Went through the meat—”

“Went through the
meat
?” Rook felt the blood leave his face. “Like through my arm? Then what?”

“Then you fainted. Manfully. It was very manly. Medics thought you might have passed out from the pain. Or it could have been when you hit your head on the floor. They’ve checked to see if you’ve got a concussion, but other than a lump, nothing major. Just rattled your already shaky brain.” The detective jangled the cup at Rook. “Here, bend your head forward. I’ll tilt it up so you can get some in you. No food for a while.”

“Screw the… whatever the hell that is. Who the fuck shot me?” It wasn’t pretty, but Rook’s voice suddenly jumped a couple of octaves. A brief flicker of memory slithered around Rook’s brain, mostly the painful hit he took when Montoya took him down. “Wait a minute. I hit the floor because you
tackled
me. What happened to just screaming
duck
or something? Next time I’m under you, I better be fucking awake for it, Montoya.”

“Chances of that happening are none to never, Stevens. And I tackled you because someone was shooting at us. Well, you in particular. We don’t know who the shooter is. By the time the uniforms got around to the front, the place was chaos. Guy could have been standing right there in the crowd, watching the whole thing, but we’ll never know.” Montoya jiggled the ice again. “Get some of this in you. You’re dehydrated as it is, and IVs only do so much.”

Rook took the ice chips, slurping up a mouthful when Montoya angled the bottom of the cup. Chewing was difficult. The gauze and tape sculpture on the side of his face felt like he was a fossil being prepared for transport, and chewing only made things worse. Rook swallowed and shook his head when Montoya brought the cup back up.

“No, I’m good. Too fricking cold.” He shifted in the bed, then reached for the bandage on his cheek. “Stitches under here?”

“Butterflies, I think. What are you—?”

“This.” Rook tugged at the bandage, steeling himself for the eventual pain, then ripped it clean off his face. He got a quick thrill out of Montoya’s wince. “For my next trick, I’m yanking this needle out. Now who do I talk to so I can get out of this place?”

“You are going nowhere, Stevens. The doctors want you in here for observation. I’m hoping it’ll stick.” Montoya’s expression went unreadable, but his eyes were hot. “Would kind of be nice to know where you are for at least twelve hours. Can’t seem to keep you in jail long enough to question you, and now it looks like someone’s trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, it’s a laugh a minute around me.” Rook gestured to the stack of machines near him. “This doesn’t work for me. I want out. Or am I under arrest again? Still? Again? I’m not even sure what the hell is going on anymore.”

“What’s going on is your car was picked up on a traffic camera as the light was turning red about the time Dani Anderson was being killed. The timeline for you killing her doesn’t add up, so you’re free and clear.” The detective pulled a metal chair up, then sat down. “So you’re either the luckiest son of a bitch, or you can somehow drive from Santa Monica to Hollywood in thirty minutes.”

“Not at nine o’clock at night on a Saturday. Shit, I don’t think you’d be able to do that even after the apocalypse and all the roaches are left driving Dodge Darts.” He lay back, unsure about the lightness in his chest. Dani was still dead, and someone killed her in his shop; that much he knew. Relief was a great thing, but the hole in his arm told him he wasn’t out of the woods yet. “Fuck, then who killed her and the Betties? And why the hell shoot me?”

“Don’t know,” Montoya admitted. “And that diamond she had? They’re testing to see if it’s fake. One of the lab guys called shenanigans on it.”

“Yeah, usually more than half of them are. You’d be surprised how many fakes I got doing jobs—” Rook blinked. “Shit. What the hell do they have in that IV?”

He’d broken. A cup of ice chips, a set of hard broad shoulders, and a rolling hot accent and he’d broken. Montoya grinned at him, catching the bandage Rook flung away. Montoya’s sweet act and the lump on his head did him in. That or he was getting soft and lazy. He’d been so careful, denying everything and admitting nothing, refusing to give the cops even a whiff of maybe to latch onto. And he’d just handed Montoya a thread to hang a confession on if the detective chased it far enough down the rabbit hole.

“I know you’re a thief. That’s not a surprise. I might not have caught you at anything, but I’m not stupid, Stevens. You’re just slippery,” the detective informed him. “I just didn’t think you were a murderer. Hank and I… well, mostly me at first, but something was off from the beginning. I wanted it on you. I did. For all the shit you pulled in the past, but this one—this one isn’t on you. So while formal charges aren’t dropped yet, it looks like Camden and I are back at square one.”

“And the cops shooting at me? At the store?”

“
That
is under investigation. Call came in that there was a gunman. You were there, and someone saw… something.” Montoya had the grace to look abashed. “The first detective on the scene thinks it was one of your props. There’s a few issues. IA is going nuts with it.”

“Told you I didn’t kill her.” Rook scratched at his cheek, careful not to dislodge the butterfly bandages affixed to his skin. “Any of them. I just don’t know who did or why.”

“What can you tell me about the Betties? You said your assistant, Charlene, knew them, but she’s been hard to find.” Montoya rested his elbows on the edge of Rook’s bed. “Tell me where to go, Stevens. Who knew them? Who
are
they?”

Rook eyed the IV needle piercing his arm and nodded to the door. “The Betties? Shit, spring me out of here, Montoya, and I’ll tell you everything I know. Hell, most of it might even be the truth.”

Archibald Martin proved to be Montoya’s savior. The elderly man arrived just as Rook was mounting his campaign to be set free of his hospital bed, and a flurry of angry words from Stevens’s grandfather quickly set the matter to rest. Satisfied his now informant would be someplace he could be found, Dante headed home, leaving Stevens behind in his hospital room.

It was Dante’s bad luck that Rook Stevens didn’t stay there in spirit. Out of sight and out of mind didn’t seem to apply to Stevens, and despite everything Dante did to distance himself from the long-legged thief, Rook slithered right back into view.

The man clung to his thoughts, flashes of sexual heat and frightening worries mingling in Dante’s mind until he was left marinating in a perplexing soup. He wanted Rook. There was no denying that. Being around the man made Dante’s skin itch, and even as bullets were slamming through the air inches above his head, his body responded to the press of Rook’s spine and shoulders against his belly.

Rain drops spun wet pinwheels on his windshield as Dante turned onto his street, noticing his next door neighbor hadn’t brought in her trash bin. After parking his truck, he retrieved the elderly woman’s cart before shuffling his back into place by the garage. Shaking the rain off his jacket and hair, Dante let himself into the back door and smiled when he smelled Manny’s
carne guisada
simmering in a Crock-Pot on the kitchen counter.

“
Mijo
, is that you?” his uncle called out from the living room. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“I was planning on it, tío.” He toed his shoes off, then slid them into the plastic shoe hanger hooked over the mudroom’s back door. Padding into the front room, he spied his uncle sprawled out in a recliner, his feet tucked into a ratty pair of bunny slippers. The television was on, but the sound was muted, leaving Dante with a silent tableau of two older Latino women overacting a scene involving a red vase. “How long until it’s ready?”

“About an hour. I thought you’d be later, but here you are.” Manny looked up from a word-search puzzle book, peering over a pair of half-moon reading glasses. “Are you busy, or do you have time to help your old uncle?”

“Find me an old uncle, and I’ll be happy to help him.”

“Flatterer, but I shall take it.” Manny preened, patting at his silver-shot hair. “I need some help with my hair. I always miss the back. Silly, no?”

“Let me go change, and I’ll be right back down.” Dante shrugged off his jacket. “Anything you need, tío.”

Twenty minutes later, he found himself snapping on a pair of latex gloves and waiting for Manny to settle on a short stool. His uncle ruffled the hem of the plastic cape he’d draped down his shoulders, then swung up onto the seat, wiggling until he was comfortable.

“I am ready.” Manny flung his arms out. “Do your worst to me, for I shall not talk.”

“Can we not say things like that?” Dante admonished his uncle. “Don’t you remember having a black streak down your nose for two weeks the first time I helped you do this?”

“Ah, I remember that. Try not to do that again. It’s bad enough I can’t do my own hair. Evidence of incompetence doesn’t reassure clients.” His uncle sniffed. “I just told everyone it was an elaborate ash ritual gone horribly wrong. Hair only,
mijo
. Hair only.”

Armed with a comb and a brush, Dante parted his uncle’s thick hair and began to dab hair dye along the line. A few minutes in, Manny began humming an old song from the ’70s, and Dante joined in for a moment, stopping when Manny sneezed. Dante blessed him absently, murmuring in Spanish as he daubed the brush back into the dye for another pass.

“Thank you for doing this for me. I know this isn’t how a young man should be spending his Friday nights. There are a lot better things to do besides help a fat, old Mexican get rid of his gray hair.” The tinge of sorry in Manny’s voice made Dante stop.

“You’re not fat or old.” Dante made a show of examining Manny intently. “The Mexican I can’t refute, and I don’t know why that would be a bad thing, gay or straight. Weren’t you the one who told me there isn’t just one type of gay? Just like there’s no one kind of person?”

“
Mijo
, look at me. I became your
abuelita
when I wasn’t looking.” The older man rubbed a hand over his chest, crinkling the plastic. “I even had the breasts, but, well, the cancer took those. Which I suppose is a good thing,
no
? Or I’d be catching them in my belt when I put on my pants, just like Mama’s.”

Dante pulled out another stool, then straddled it, ignoring Manny’s alarmed protests of getting dye on the vinyl seat. Facing his uncle, Dante leaned in, tugging at the cape to catch his attention.

“I am going to say this again, and I want you to remember this, tío. I am here because I want to be here. We are
familia
. I am a better man for having you in my life. The day they closed their hearts against you is the day they threw away a gift God gave them, proving they are blind and stupid.” Montoya lightly tapped his uncle’s head with the brush as he began to protest. “Uh-uh, I hear you talk like this, and I think I hear my grandfather or my own father, and that is not who you are. Remember, tío, they tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

“I know… I know,” Manny murmured. “I feel… old sometimes. It’s hard sometimes to look in the mirror and see…
me
. That old queen, you know?”

“You say queen like it’s horrible to be that. If you want to be a queen, then be one. If you want to be a go-go boy, be that too. You are who you are, Manny.” Dante placed a hand over his uncle’s, gripping the man’s fingers tightly. His uncle sniffed again, then wiped at a tear on his cheek with a twist of his arm. “I am proud of the man I call tío. And if he wears high heels sometimes, I just wish he wouldn’t break his neck going down the porch steps, but I will kill anyone who says anything against him.”