Not One Clue_ A Mystery - Lois Greiman [67]
He gave me a peeved look just as Aalia ventured into the living room.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant.” She nodded solemnly, cute as a frightened kitten. “I am well and sorry to disrupt your evening.”
I raised my brows at her. The woman had almost been abducted by her nut job husband. To my way of thinking the cops should damned well be disrupted.
“Perhaps …” She glanced at me. “Perhaps I could make the lieutenant some tea?”
Tea? Sure. Maybe she could whip up a little tiramisu, too, while she was at it. “Of course,” I said. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”
She hustled away.
“How come you didn’t offer me tea?” Rivera asked. He was still gazing at the spot where she had disappeared into the kitchen, but some of the flat-eyed grimness had left his face.
I kept the growl to myself. “Maybe because I was still a little fatigued from saving her ass.”
He glanced at me, eyes sparking with humor, and I scowled down my irritation. Everyone was a frickin’ comedian.
“What happened?” he asked, and the grin disappeared.
I exhaled noisily, and realized my hands were shaking a little. “When I let Harley out in the backyard I thought I heard something near the garage. I assumed it was just Bryn making out with her latest and greatest, but then I realized something was wrong.”
“So you hustled back into the house where it was safe, right?”
I paused for a moment, then, “Maybe not immediately.”
He scowled, but continued without pulling out the cat-o’-nine-tails. “What did you do immediately?”
It was hard to decide how much to tell him. Sometimes he gets a little miffed when I do things that some might misconstrue as stupid.
“I had my Mace,” I said, remembering that little tidbit with pride.
“Your …” He swore, then gritted his teeth and held up one hand, as if that little gesture might prevent him from bursting into spontaneous flame. “What else can you tell me about the car besides the fact that it was dark?”
I shook my head, trying to remember, but I don’t usually notice cars. Unless it’s a Turbo Cabriolet. I’d sell my left boob for a Turbo Cabriolet. What do left boobs go for these days?
“Was it black?”
I thought about that for a second. “Maybe dark blue.”
“Full size? Compact?”
“Kind of medium.”
“Older model or new?”
“Holy crap, Rivera, I’m a psychologist, not a mechanic.”
“Did the bumpers look rounded or was it more boxy?”
“Rounded, I think.”
“Was the car running?”
“Yeah. He had a driver.”
“Was he armed?”
I squelched a wince. Here’s where it got dicey. “The driver or the—”
“Damn it, McMullen! Did someone …” He made a circling motion with his hand. “… in this vicinity have a weapon.”
I paused, then nodded.
He looked mad enough to eat iron. “What kind?”
“What are my options?”
“Semiautomatic? Cannon? Crossbow?”
“I would have noticed arrows.”
He wasn’t finding me particularly amusing … again.
“I think it was a handgun,” I said.
I could see a dozen questions boiling up in his eyes, but he skipped over them for a moment as he pulled out his cell phone. Flipping it open, he punched in a number. “What’d you do to your hair?” he asked.
“Nothing special.” Actually, I had crushed it under a wig for a few harrowing hours, then loosed it on the world. Apparently, it was now fighting back, because it sprang away from my head as if it were freshly permed.
Someone answered on the other end of the line, but Rivera didn’t shift his Dark Man attention from me.
“This is Lieutenant Rivera. I have an armed Yemeni man heading north on Opus in Sunland. He’s driving a dark, newer-model sedan.
“Name?” he asked.
I shook my head, but Aalia appeared in the doorway. “Ahmad,” she said. “Ahmad Orsorio.”
Rivera shifted his gaze from me to her. “Can you describe him?”
“He is cruel.”
Rivera nodded, not mocking.
“How tall is he?” Rivera asked. Apparently, he wasn’t one to deal in moods or signs or phases of the moon.
“Perhaps six foots tall by American means,” she said.
He ran through a list of questions and she answered dutifully. After a few minutes of relaying