All Things Considered Page 7

  The cashier, a friendly-looking, overweight brunette, smiled at Ryn as if they were sorority sisters. Would she be so friendly if she knew her customer’s identity? One by one, Ryn laid her five-pounds of Friskies Cat Chow, the pack of Super Kotex, and the extra-large Butterfinger on the conveyer belt.

  Bozo sighed. The sound ricocheted through the deserted store and carried the stink of garlic and tomato sauce. Ryn held her breath until he stopped sighing. He made an unintelligible remark to another steroid creep who charged up with a six-pack of Coors and his sleeveless blue work shirt open to his navel.

  Ryn turned back to pick up the copy of The Enquirer and caught Bozo nodding toward the Kotex. El Creepo bobbed his shaggy brown head up and down as if he’d broken his neck. He snickered with his mouth open and emitted another whiff of garlic as he dug Bozo in the ribs.

  Her own neck muscles twanged. She stared him straight in the eye. His bottom lip twitched, but he shrugged and dropped his gaze. She waited a nanosecond and then turned to the cashier dragging her items across the scanner. In that split second, she caught The Enquirer’s second lead: STONE WALL LOVER ON LAM.

  A fuzzy picture, at least fifteen years old, taken before Ryn ever heard of Stone, wavered in and out of focus. The reporter’s name leaped off the page. Garrett (aka The REal) McCoy. What a small world. McCoy was the vampire who had dug up the police records of Stone’s arrest and community service sentence after Ryn pressed battery charges two years ago. Had Jericho given The REal a scoop?

  Apparently, neither Bozo or El Creepo made a connection between her and the picture. They were too busy pumping their packs of booze over their heads. Their biceps bulged. The exercise mercifully kept their mouths shut. Ryn fumbled for her wallet, taking more time than necessary. Dammit, she’d forgotten to stop by the ATM on her way into the store. She pulled out her ATM card.

  “Oh, fer god’s sake!” Bozo sputtered, dumped his twelve-pack of Heineken onto the conveyor belt, and pointed at the overhead CASH ONLY sign.

  “Getting an early start of the weekend?” The cashier threw him a flirty smile.

  Ryn wanted to gag. Mister Bozo Stud Muffin smelled as if he’d eaten a nutritious breakfast of dead pizza and needed the beer to balance out the most important meal of the day. She clamped down on her back teeth and slid her card through the ATM machine.

  “Headed for Half Moon Bay to catch the surf,” El Creepo volunteered.

  Whether it was his accent or his smell or Ryn’s sudden anxiety, but for what seemed a decade, her mind blanked on her password. The cashier kept a shaky smile in place, but Bozo and El Creepo exhaled in exaggerated unison. One of them started humming the theme from The Twilight Zone. Standing in line for three minutes evidently stressed their attention span. The humming grew louder as the second cretin joined in.

  Ryn’s password popped in her fingers. Rage surging through her hands and elbow as she punched in her code. The two morons gave each other a fist bump. The cashier amped up her smile an instant before the ATM flashed: CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE.

  Their patience pushed to its limit, one of the young gentlemen made a rude noise.

  Jaw locked, Ryn fished out her spare fifty-dollar bill. The cashier grimaced and pulled out another fifty from the register and held both fifties to the light. Despite the shuffle of feet and groans from Beer Boys, she took her time. She squinted, pursed her lips, compared again. Satisfied Ryn wasn’t passing counterfeit money, the cashier scribbled her initials on the second legitimate bill, counted out change, and bagged Ryn’s items.

  Ryn tucked the receipt in the back pocket of her jeans and refused to move away from the credit card reader until the cashier loaded the plastic bag into the metal grocery cart.

  Bozo drawled, “How long ya think it takes for cold beer to get hot standin’ in the express lane, Chance?”

  Ryn wiggled her fingers over her head like a beauty pageant contestant. “Have a super day.”

  The boys broke up. They snorted and guffawed and slapped their thighs. Ryn wheeled her cart to the magazine rack a few feet beyond the end of the checkout stand. She picked up a DIY rag and turned to the front-page article. Five Easy Weekend Home Improvement Projects. She figured she’d find a dozen or so projects she could start and finish in a couple of hours to work off the energy boiling in her veins.

  Bozo strutted through the checkout line, the beer carton tucked under his right armpit.

  “Have fun at the beach,” the cashier called.

  “We’ll be thinkin’ of you when we catch the big one.” Bozo waited at the end of the counter for El Creepo to slap down his driver’s license and a ten. Bozo caught Ryn eyeing them. He snapped his fingers and patted the fly on his tattered jeans.

  She estimated six or seven feet separated the end of the express lane from the magazine rack. What in the hell made guys like Bozo so cocky—coming on to her as if they were belly button to belly button in a bar?

  He made a silly monkey noise and handed his beer carton to El Creepo. As if she had a crystal ball, Ryn saw exactly what Bozo was going to do next. Listing to one side, he dragged his knuckles on the floor. Of course, he just had to brush against Ryn’s butt with his empty hand.

  He flashed her an ain’t-I-cute grin and swaggered in his monkey gait toward the automatic glass doors. As they swung open, he rose upright, scratched his armpit, and then, beat his chest a couple of times with his left hand, making lower primate ululations.

  El Creepo brought up the rear, slapping his thigh, and responding with his own monkey mimicry.

  Open-mouthed, the cashier stared at them, shook her head, and started scrubbing her scanner. Boys will be boys.

  Something in Ryn’s brain snapped. The magazine in her hand started to shake like the last leaf in winter. She inhaled, waited, inhaled again. After both monkeys hip-hopped through the exit, she picked up her plastic sack and followed, quickening her pace as the door slid shut.

  Bozo’s twelve-pack sat on top of a seven-foot pyramid of Coke cartons near the entrance. He fished in his front pockets while El Creepo hunched over his cupped hand to light a ciggie.

  In the two-inch, custom cowboy boots, Ryn stood six feet. She weighed a hundred thirty. Down four or five pounds from her normal weight since she’d more or less stopped eating since finding Stone’s body—but maybe up a pound or two the day before she expected her period. Despite too many sleepless nights recently, her reddish-gold curls and pink skin made her appear fragile and younger than her forty-six years.

  Stone had teased her from day one about the eight brown freckles and sliver of space between her two front teeth, declaring they gave her a Huck Finn cuteness. He even wrote and dedicated a song to her, SEXYFRECKLES.

  The song went platinum in six weeks, but she’d bet The Monkey Boys would ralph if she told them the year she was born.

  When she rammed El Creepo in the heels with the grocery cart, she put all one-hundred-thirty pounds behind her lunge.

  “Goddamn,” he yelped, arms flailing as he tried to keep from crashing into the Coke display.

  Two twenty-four-can cartons tottered and dropped onto his shoulder.

  Before he could recover, Ryn shoved the grocery cart at his hips with enough force to twist him around. His knees buckled, and he slammed into the middle of the pyramid.

  The entire display collapsed under his weight.

  “You bitch,” Bozo yelled. “Why the hell doncha watch what the fu—”

  Ryn slashed the edge of her right hand into his hard belly. He gurgled and doubled over. She clapped him over the ears with both her hands and kicked him in the shins with her steel-toed boots.

  He didn’t sound like a monkey when he started barfing.

  Shoulders back, tasting the honey sweetness of euphoria, she lifted the plastic bag out of her cart, looked both ways before crossing the street, and trotted to the other side. She cut through the empty city parking lot and headed for her apartment near the library.

  Half a block from Safeway, she
shifted the grocery bag to her other hand and glanced over her shoulder at the supermarket. An elderly man with a cane was talking to Bozo and El Creepo. They held their stomachs and shook their heads. Neither of them seemed to have it all together yet.

  Two hands appeared in the door at Monique’s Fashion to turn the OPEN sign to face the world. Ryn stepped inside and bought a blue baseball cap embroidered with The Other LA.

  The sales clerk said, “With your gorgeous red hair, wouldn’t you rather have a sun visor?”

  Ryn smiled, paid the fifteen dollars in cash, put the cap on with the bill pulled down to her eyes, and stepped onto the sidewalk. A siren wailed from near the Safeway, and the euphoria erupted in a long laugh. She covered her mouth. The laugher slowed. Logic returned between snickers.

  What the hell had happened to her? Suppose the police had shown up while she was showing up The Boys?

  Fat chance the cops would believe she’d never assaulted anyone before.

  Tucking her hair under the cap, she laughed out loud, remembering El Creepo’s face when she rushed him. If there was any justice in the world, both he and Bozo would be surfing their weekend in the ER.

  Fine with me.

  She pulled the Butterfinger out of her sack, ripped off the wrapper, and enjoyed a mouth-explosion of chocolate—almost as powerful as that explosion of adrenaline with The Boys.

  Maybe the Los Altos police would buy PMS as a rational explanation for her momentary insanity. And maybe Adam Jericho was right.

  If she didn’t kill Stone, it wasn’t because she was incapable of murder.

  Chapter 10

  “Come in.”

  Do not laugh. Ryn stood in the doorway of Dr. Colin C. Comfrey, Director of The California Sleep Disorder Institute (and Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Stanford University), and bit her tongue to keep from laughing hysterically.

  Leftover adrenaline from The Monkey Boys. Her scalp tightened, but her imagination veered off to the shrink’s long, skinny neck. The anatomical wonder belonged in The Guinness Book of World Records.

  Hoping to stop her freefall, she pinched the inside of her wrist. Smudges under his piercing black eyes looked like cooked prunes against his chalk-white skin. A prissy, manicured goatee and slicked back, ebony hair added to her impression of Sigmund Freud.

  You’re losing it. She took the first step into his office, dominated by a huge mahogany desk. Did he and Danny come from the same universe?

  “Come in,” he croaked and rose from behind his desk with such slow-motion lassitude that Ryn figured she’d caught him napping. Extending his right hand seemed to sap whatever reserves of energy he didn’t use for holding up his giraffe-neck.

  He nodded toward a wing chair opposite his desk and pointed to the black scarf wrapped halfway around his neck. He rasped, “Sore throat.”

  “Sounds bad. I can come back tomorrow—”

  He waved his hand and popped a red cough drop. The instant the medication touched his tongue, a strong odor of Wild Cherry and eucalyptus filled the office.

  Ryn murmured something unintelligible.

  Dr. Comfrey cocked a waxen, doll-shaped hand behind one ear.

  “Too bad.” Too bad I can’t reschedule. Ryn leaned forward and added in a clear, audible voice, “Your sore throat. Too bad.”

  He nodded and sank into his leather chair.

  “Did I just fail the first test?” Had she shown enough empathy about his sore throat? “I’ve never gone to a shrink—if you can believe it. Except for Stone’s therapist, I’ve never met a psychiatrist. A surprise because in LA, we have more shrinks than wannabe movie stars. Do I get a handicap for my inexperience?”

  He chuckled and the cough drop clicked against his teeth. “I can believe you’ve never been to a shrink. No, you didn’t fail a test. Do you want a handicap?”

  “Not really—depends.” In the background, she picked up an almost atonal chanting. Some of the tension from her encounter with the monkeys loosened the muscles in her neck.

  Comfrey patted his throat. “Depends on what?”

  “On … several things,” she drawled. Doc Comfrey’s languor was contagious. Her head sat heavy as a bowling ball on her shoulders.

  “Okay.” In slow motion, Comfrey removed a burgundy Mont Blanc fountain pen from the inside of his black undertaker’s suit jacket.

  “I didn’t realize anyone still uses pens,” she said, taking a mental head slap. What was she thinking? Chatting about fountain pens?

  “Unless you object, I’ll also record our session.” He uncapped the pen, laid the top on the shiny desk, and tipped his chair a few inches from his middle drawer.

  “No objection.” Ryn had a dèjá vu moment of watching the white Bronco crawl across the I-405. Comfrey’s torpor bordered on exhaustion. Which of them was sleep deprived?

  He removed a six-by-nine-inch, green spiral notebook and opened it flat in front of him.

  Did the police find Stone’s notebook? Or the melatonin?

  A sibilant sigh escaped Comfrey’s lips, and Ryn caught a glimpse of the shiny, wet cough drop on his pink tongue. “What do you think I can do for you, Miz Davis?”

  Slumped down in her velvet wing chair—so far down, her neck stretched up on the chair’s back, Ryn could barely keep her eyes open. A maroon leather couch on the periphery of her vision called her name. Hippos danced on her eyelids.

  “Sorry.” She tried to push her spine upwards, but her body didn’t cooperate. Had she popped an artery in her brain this morning meting out justice to The Monkeys?

  Colin Comfrey rose from his chair—lazy as smoke from a dying fire. He rounded his desk and took Ryn’s wrist. His baby-soft fingers closed over her pulse. An invisible wire tightened around her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes. “What’s wrong with —”

  “When did you last eat, Miz Davis?” Comfrey’s voice sounded tinny and far away. When she didn’t reply, he snapped his fingers under her nose and repeated the question.

  Her heart rammed her ribs, and her breath hissed in her chest. She grabbed the arms on the chair and tried to inhale. Sweat poured off her. Her brain—a stalled elevator—lurched but went nowhere.

  “Head between your knees,” Comfrey ordered. She obeyed but when he moved behind his desk, she glanced up. He barked, “Down!”

  A whisper of sound—a drawer?—followed by paper crinkling. The aroma of strong, pungent cheese made her mouth water. Her stomach rumbled. Warm fingers tapped her bottom lip. She opened her mouth and chewed a tidbit of salty cheese he inserted. Finished, she swallowed and opened her mouth with baby-bird expectancy for more. He added a cracker. After several repetitions of the combo, her head stopped pounding and the roar in her ears died.

  “What happened?” She waved away more cheese.

  “I’d say your blood sugar must have dropped. Functional hypoglycemia, as we call it—unless you’re a diabetic.”

  Ryn shook her head. “I haven’t eaten too well recently.”

  “Did you eat on your drive from Beverly Hills to here?”

  “Uh … part of a bag of peanuts from a vending machine in Santa Barbara yesterday.”

  “You left Beverly Hills more than forty-eight hours ago.”

  “The traffic … I wanted to make it to Santa Barbara. I wasn’t hungry.” Didn’t want to risk someone recognizing me at McDonald’s. “I had plenty of bottled water.”

  “Danny said the cook packed you a cooler filled with food.”

  “Yes. I wasn’t hungry.” If she confessed she’d left the cooler on a street corner a few blocks from a long-term Ventura parking garage, she’d have to then explain she’d rented a non-descript Camry to continue the trip to Santa Barbara.

  “You had a cooler of food. Why’d you eat from a vending machine?”

  “My hotel room was on the second floor. No elevator—”

  He frowned and his facial wrinkles folded in on themselves. “The Biltmore doesn’t have an elevator?”

  Shiiiit, Dan
ny Big Mouth. Her mind raced with what to tell and what to leave out. “I didn’t stay at the Biltmore. I was worried about reporters.”

  “How would they know you were registered there? How would they even know you left Beverly Hills?”

  “Have you ever been a murder suspect, Dr. Comfrey?”

  His silence provided the answer she’d already figured out.

  Teeth clenched, she said, “I guarantee, being under suspicion of murder will stoke your paranoia. Being a suspect in a high-profile case … do I need to say more?”

  "Freud said, ‘the paranoid is never entirely mistaken'." Comfrey tented his index fingers under his chin. “Did you think Danny would leak where you were staying?”

  Probably not a good idea to say yes since he and Danny are boyhood chums. “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying mistakes happen. The policeman on the case tried to bully me into remaining in Beverly Hills. Threatened to arrest me. Danny forced him to back down.”

  Comfrey gave her a rueful smile. “I always knew Danny would become a lawyer—from the summer we were ten and he plea bargained with my mother—and won—to let me play outside after she’d grounded me for a week.”

  “And I’m grateful he stood up to Lieutenant Jericho.”

  “Is that why you haven’t called him since you left Beverly Hills?”

  “I didn’t call him because I was tired when I got here.” She waited a beat, decided what the hell, and said, “I was in no mood to talk to him. I’d about decided I wasn’t going to keep our appointment, and I didn’t want his opinion that I’m crazy.”

  Comfrey jotted a single word in his notebook. “So, why did you show up today?”

  Ryn laced her fingers together but stopped short of wringing her hands and stared beyond him into far space, hearing the argument with Stone two weeks before his death, time traveling back to each frame in their melodrama

  “I want you to get braces for that damn space between your front teeth.”

  She laughed. “You’re kidding.”