Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) Read online

  “Did you two have an argument?”

  He sounded professional and disinterested, but he was watching me as if I’d driven Max to road rage. Maybe I had.

  “He never answered his phone that afternoon, and I wanted him to give me a ride,” I said, trying to avoid the flaming angry place in my mind. “I left messages. I got mad and yelled at him.” I could do this, open the door to yesterday, if I took one small step at a time. I’d been really angry. Apparently, so had Max. “I think I told him it was over between us. I’d had a pretty rotten day.”

  The detective nodded curtly. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Clancy. I know what it’s like to lose a partner, even if you’re mad at them at the time.”

  My loss. Max really was dead.

  Schwartz shattered my self-defensive illusion that he might still be alive.

  Laughing, taunting, cynical Max—dead.

  I wanted to weep, but I’d shed all my tears last night.

  Still, I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I’d never see him again. Maybe the message in the mirror was throwing me off. Coming back to haunt me after he was dead would be the kind of annoying antic Max would pull.

  “I don’t even know where they took his body,” I murmured, willing to be distracted by an attractive cop who thought I was guilty of enraging my boyfriend. Even talk of funerals was preferable to revisiting that ball of flame.

  “They’re performing an autopsy to see if there were drugs or alcohol in his system. He was traveling pretty fast for a city street. Are you sure he hadn’t said anything to you? You didn’t even have a brief exchange?” he demanded, pushing me with his tone.

  I rubbed my brow, hoping that would clear away the red haze that kept me from recognizing this man as a potential enemy. “I talked to Max in the morning, and we’d discussed where we were going last night. That was the last time I heard his voice, except on voice mail.”

  “He didn’t live here?” He jotted a note.

  “He had his own place.” My hand shook too badly to pick up the glass as I dared the question I had to have answered. “Did he really try to kill me?”

  “Other than your voice message, we can’t find any motivation,” he said stoically. “Our experience says, though, that in domestic violence situations, when a man’s authority is defied, he can sometimes lose control. Did the two of you ever become physically abusive?”

  Startled, I glanced up and met the detective’s neutral expression. There was a question I could answer with clarity. “Do I look like an idiot? He was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier. I’d be dead by now.”

  Except Max was the one who was dead. I could see his point. Maybe he was thinking I did something to the car, but everyone knew Max was the one who worked on it. I wanted to remember Max on his bike, his hair flying in the wind, carefree and happy, not the face of rage I’d last seen.

  Schwartz glanced skeptically at my damaged leg, and I bristled. “Max didn’t do that, the cops did.”

  The good detective knew better than to follow that lead, and backed off by jotting a note.

  “I’d like to see him, if I can,” I requested.

  “I wouldn’t advise it. Burn victims look like hell,” he said bluntly.

  The room spun, and I gripped the counter to keep from falling. Or upchucking.

  I’d told Max to go to hell.

  And he’d gone—in a spectacular ball of flame.

  • • •

  “May I call someone?” the detective’s voice asked from somewhere far above me.

  I held a hand to my whirling head and realized I was sitting on my couch. Had he carried me there? I couldn’t remember. I shook my head at his questions. I had no life, no one to call. Until now, I’d liked it that way.

  “I’ll be fine. I think the doctors gave me something to make me spacey.”

  “Some drugs can be too strong if you’re not used to taking them,” the detective agreed, handing me my glass of water. “I don’t think you should be alone.”

  It was on the tip of my sharp tongue to ask if he meant to spend the day with me, when the doorbell rang. I glanced up, and Schwartz took that as a signal that he could answer it. Alpha males, I thought blearily. They liked taking charge.

  “Good seeing you again, Miss Isabel,” he said, opening the door. “Isabel is your last name, isn’t it?” I could almost see Schwartz checking his notebook, but I didn’t want to turn my head to see.

  “Cora? What are you doing here?”

  To my memory, Cora had never visited. She worked at a detective agency Andre owned. I hadn’t even known she knew where I lived, but I guess detectives knew that kind of stuff—witness Schwartz knowing her.

  “Pretty Boy is concerned, and what concerns Legrande, concerns me.” With a long-legged sway, Cora crossed to the couch and gracefully wiggled to the seat beside me.

  I thought the detective’s eyes might pop out. Cora had an hourglass figure that she liked to flaunt in skintight leopard spots. Tall, toned, and possessing the photogenic coloring of an African goddess, Cora was all that I was not, physically, at least. She wore her tight curls cut close to her head to emphasize her exquisite bone structure. I wore my mousy brown hair in bangs and shoulder-length hanks that hid my sallow, narrow face and unprepossessing features.

  “You’re here because Andre sent you?” I asked. That seemed hard to believe.

  “I’m here to see how you’re doing. You scared our butts off. Besides, my shithead boss was worried his receipts went up in flames. We had a big check come in yesterday.”

  I almost smiled as Schwartz lost his glazed look of lust and jotted notes. Cora’s elegance was only skin-deep. She had a smutty mind and a potty mouth and looked at the world through black lenses. She was actually holding back for the detective’s sake.

  “Miss Clancy might have a concussion,” Schwartz said. “She almost passed out just now. Can you stay with her for a while?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m going to start hunting attorneys in case that car accelerating was Ford’s fault. Want to send me your report when it’s ready?”

  Schwartz looked uncomfortable, then nodded curtly. “I’ll see what I can do.” He jotted something on one of his note pages and handed her a business card.

  Cora took the paper, tucked it into her cleavage, and winked. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  I almost smiled as the detective cleared his throat at the promotion she’d just given him. The entertainment value of watching these two was almost worth my aching head.

  “Detective,” he corrected.

  “Lieutenant shortly,” Cora said with assurance. “My mama was a voodoo queen. I know these things.”

  I did laugh then, then caught my head to keep it from falling off.

  “Sorry, Detective, I wish I could have been more helpful,” I said when he turned all that tempting masculine concern in my direction. He really was good-looking in a Nordic god sort of way, but I was carrying enough guilt without his suspicion carving out my guts.

  “I’ll leave my card on the table in case you think of anything else. Take some aspirin, at least,” he said. “And try to stay awake for a while.”

  “Just let me know about Max,” I whispered, tears welling. Even if Max was a bastard, he’d been my bastard. We’d had some good times together. I didn’t let too many people into my life. His loss was a gaping hole.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Schwartz tipped an invisible hat and let himself out.

  “I like that man,” Cora announced when he was gone. “You could do worse. You did do worse.”

  “How do you know Schwartz?” I asked, ignoring her painful comment.

  “Works for Andre, of course. If you hung around the Zone more, you’d know that. Now let’s get you up and functioning again. What are you going to do now?”

  “Go to bed,” I said firmly.

  “Uh-uh, hon. If you have a concussion, you’re staying awake. Let’s call lawyers for fun.”

  She pulled the latest s
hiny piece of technology out of her designer purse and began pushing buttons.

  I just leaned into the worn sofa and stared at a cobweb near the ceiling.

  My boyfriend had tried to kill me.

  Did I really want to know why?

  Was I a candidate for aluminum-foil-wrapped colanders to stop the voices whispering guilty in my head?

  • • •

  It didn’t take long for the media to find me and jar me back to the concrete jungle.

  Thinking of Max, I stupidly answered the first phone call out of habit. When a reporter from a local TV station began identifying himself, I left the cell open on the table and walked away.

  Cora correctly gauged the incident, stood up, and began stuffing her collection of phones and computers into her oversize, rhinestone-encrusted purse. “Let’s get you out of here, get that hair of yours did, and take your mind off things.”

  I hadn’t had the energy to check any more mirrors. I crunched my now silky-dry hair between my fingers and didn’t recognize it. It felt like hair in a shampoo ad, the kind where the model tosses her long tresses and they fall in sleek, sexy waves to her shoulders, not one flyaway strand out of place. Sexy was so not me. I’d probably get long hair caught in a meat grinder.

  “I need a car, not a cut,” I said, surprising even myself. I’d been mourning a killer and going paranoid over mirror writing, when I should have been worrying over my loss of wheels. I needed to set my muddled head straight. “I can’t get uptown to classes from here without a car.”

  “Go put on your hottest dress. I’ll take you to Sam’s Salon. And then we’ll go car shopping. You want the best price, you gotta make nicey with the slime.”

  “The bank won’t loan me money,” I protested.

  “We don’t do bank loans in our part of town,” she said scornfully, as if I were a naïve farm girl. “You just pretty yourself up and we’ll find something.”

  Did I really want to know what kind of loans the Zone preferred? Probably not.

  “Why are you bothering with me?” I asked, still resisting. “Andre isn’t interested in whether or not I get to class.”

  “Let’s just say there are a lot of people invested in what happens to you. You’re one of us now, girl, and we take care of our own.”

  When I didn’t move, she marched back to my tiny bedroom, pulled back the curtains that served as my closet door, and began rummaging for appropriate attire.

  “I’m not one of anybody,” I argued insensibly, following her and taking a baby-doll nightie out of her hand to shove it back in the closet. Max had given me that. “I’ve only worked for Andre for two years. I didn’t even live in this state before that. I don’t invite people over, and they return the favor. So tell me what’s really going on.”

  She pointed at the mirror over my crummy dresser. “You go look, hon, and tell me what you see.”

  I didn’t want to. I had a horrible premonition that I’d grown horns and a tail.

  She found a shimmery bronze sundress I’d bought for two bucks at the consignment store but hadn’t dared to wear because it revealed too much of my scars. She shoved me in front of the dresser mirror and held the dress up so I could see how I looked.

  My usually lank, mousy brown hair hung in rich mink-brown waves to my shoulders. Even the bangs I’d cut with fingernail scissors fell in come-hither lengths to one side of my face.

  My sharp nose, crooked teeth, short eyelashes, and blah brown eyes remained unchanged, but who would notice if I tossed that glossy mane?

  In disbelief, I reached out a hand to my reflection.

  The instant my fingers touched the glass, the mirror darkened, and a smoky image of Max appeared superimposed over mine.

  4

  Pulling my hand back, I choked on a scream, swayed, and the blur disappeared.

  I was hallucinating.

  Noticing nothing wrong, Cora picked up a brush to stroke my hair into obedience, not that it needed much. Just like in the model ads, with a few strokes it fell in perfect waves to my shoulders. There was so much of it now, somehow.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I whispered, thinking she would say that we grow hair that eats our brains and then we go mad, which was why she was being so nice to me, out of pity.

  “It happens to all of us working in the Zone, sooner or later, but this hair effect is a real winner,” she said without a shred of sympathy. She apparently did not see vengeful hallucinations in mirrors. “Wish I could get me some of that. Now put on the dress and let’s give Sam a thrill.”

  “What happens to all of us?” I grabbed the brush and the dress and headed for the bathroom, not daring to look in my dresser mirror again.

  “We light up at night like the buildings,” she called after me. “That’s a metaphor!” she added, not so reassuringly.

  “I have radiation poisoning?” I asked as I peeled off the tank top and looked for a radioactive glow in the bathroom mirror. For a moment, I’d stupidly forgotten the backward writing. It was still there. No neon glow, though. I turned my back on my reflection for fear Max would show up again. Hallucinations brought on by guilt, I unprofessionally diagnosed, without bothering to explore why I should feel guilty.

  “No one’s died of blue glow yet,” Cora replied, leaning against the hall wall. “The Zone isn’t radioactive. We’ve just been inundated by chemicals. Maybe you got into a shampoo goo spill. The Acme plant makes chemicals for beauty products, among other things.”

  Shampoo goo. Right. More likely I’d accidentally dropped Max’s acid and my life was just one giant delusion. I would try to refrain from leaping off tall buildings in any attempt to fly.

  I wiggled into the shimmery spandex dress Cora had chosen and didn’t care if I looked like a ho or if my scars were ugly. I wasn’t checking the mirror to find out.

  “Short Stuff, you got what it takes!” Cora crowed in triumph as I hobbled out in bare feet. “You got any heels?”

  “I limp, remember?” I showed her the hanging shoe rack behind my bedroom door. “The only way I can wear heels is if one is higher than the other. Otherwise, I break my neck.” At five-two, I used to wear heels all the time. No longer.

  “These ugly things match.” Cora held up a pair of cork-soled, wedge-heeled sandals with a fat bronze flower over the toes.

  My espadrilles, the reason it had been so easy to knock me down the stairs in the fall that had broken my leg in three places. I’d been so damned proud of those consignment store treasures that day. Rioting in sandals had probably been pretty stupid. Trusting an angry police officer, even stupider. Just looking at them now returned that painful memory of iron bars, concrete stairs, and fat arms shoving.

  “They’re Clarks and made for walking.” Annoyed at myself for letting a memory stop me from wearing pretty shoes, I slipped them on. “Tell me how this will get me a car.”

  “It’s magic, baby.” She whistled the tune of the old song and headed for the door.

  Grabbing my cell and keys and adding them to the metal-reinforced purse I slung across my chest, I stomped after Cora. It’s pretty hard to sway sexily when one leg is longer than the other.

  Radiation magic, maybe, to go with the hallucinations. Fine, I wasn’t comfortable in my own home anymore anyway. Obviously, I was ready to do anything to ensure I finished my classes. I’d be accepting e-mail prizes from Nigeria next.

  • • •

  I was disappointed when Sam lopped off inches of my newly glorious hair. I’d rather liked the feel of all that heavy weight falling on my neck and swinging coquettishly. But I had to admit, the curly look suited my skinny face, and the highlights set off my naturally bronze coloring.

  Thick, shiny brown curls softened my square jaw, making it almost look as if I had cheekbones. If hair like this was what shampoo goo got me, I wasn’t complaining. Better yet, the mirrors in the salon reflected only me, with no Max in sight.

  I couldn’t afford Sam’s prices, but he assured me the first cut was
free, that he’d make it up when I had to come back every two weeks. I knew I couldn’t afford to come back, but once I had wheels, I wouldn’t need to put on a show, so I didn’t worry about it.

  While Cora drove us to the used-car lot, I got my head in a little better working order. “Can you track government license plates?” I finally had the sense to ask.

  “Sure, those are easy if you’ve got someone on the inside, and we do. What you need?”

  “I want the guy who almost killed a couple of kids yesterday, crushed all their books and computers, then drove off.” I could think about kids and justice far more easily than I could think about balls of flame.

  “I heard about that. Be interesting to know which big dog is slumming in this part of town and why, but you know you can’t do nothing about it, don’t you?”

  She was probably right, but I needed action to take my mind off my hallucinations. “One step at a time,” I answered. “Let’s just see who it is, if we can figure it out from a partial.”

  Tina Clancy, girl detective. Worked for me.

  “Give me the make and model of the car and we can narrow it down.”

  “Big, black, shiny,” I replied, biting back a smile. For just a second, it almost felt normal to be bantering with a friend.

  She punched my arm and veered her beat-up Mini Cooper into a used-car lot.

  I wasn’t much for putting myself on display. I preferred my mousy camouflage so I could stay focused and get my work done. But Cora seemed to think I’d get a better deal if I strutted, so I did my shrimpy best. With only my rent money in my checking account and no collision insurance on the Escort, I couldn’t imagine affording more than a bicycle. Maybe I could sue Max’s estate and get his Harley.

  Where did that ugly, spiteful thought come from?

  “Hey, Joe, Andre says my girl here is good for a thousand. What’ve you got for us?” Cora asked the portly, balding gentleman waddling from the glass-walled office.

  Andre said I was good for a thousand? Was he planning on docking my pay? I’d have to quit buying groceries, if so. Maybe I should give up school and find a real job. It wasn’t as if I would even be allowed to take the bar exam with my record. Would Schwartz look up my riot-inciting arrest and conclude I was violent enough to drive Max to murder? Even I was beginning to suspect me, and I didn’t have a suspicious mind.