Unscrewed by Lois Greiman Page A

After all, he knew Mr. Granger was my last client until evening. He probably knew what size pumps the poor guy wore.
    I said nothing. There are few things that make one seem more intelligent than silence. I’d learned that from shrink school and three garrulous brothers.
    The senator was still watching me. He drew a deep breath, as if reaching into his reserves for strength. “To the best of my knowledge, Gerald and Salina hadn’t seen each other for more than a decade when I began seeing her. He had been married and divorced. I believed, at the time, that he was through with her, that he had moved on,” he said.
    My stomach cramped. “You
believed
?”
    He sighed. “Salina is not an easy woman to forget.”
    Tell me how gorgeous she was again,
I thought.
’Cuz that’s never going to get old.
“Was he still in love with her?” My tone was, I thought, beautifully casual.
    The senator watched me, gaze hard and steady. “What do you know of Salina Martinez, Ms. McMullen?”
    I resisted squirming. This wasn’t exactly where I’d hoped the conversation would go. I mean, I wasn’t thrilled to be locked in a Town Car with a possible murderer, but it seemed preferable to telling Rivera’s father that I’d never heard of Salina until I’d seen her dead on his living room floor. It might suggest that my supposed boyfriend had been less than completely forthright with me.
    “That she can ride horse bareback?”
    He laughed. “What else?”
    “What should I know?” I asked, hedging.
    “That Gerald did not kill her.”
    Silence echoed in the car, like secrets wrapped in darkness.
    “You must believe that,” he said.
    I went with the intelligent silence idea for a moment, then, “Where were you at the time?”
    Surprise showed on his striking features. If he faked it, he was as talented as he was handsome. But then, he’d spent more than a decade in Washington and no small amount of time in L.A. What isn’t faked? “Tell me, Ms. McMullen, do you think
I
may have killed her?”
    I didn’t say anything. Not so much for intelligence’s sake as to keep myself from cutting my own throat.
    He dropped his chin as if to study me more closely. “So that was the reason for your hesitation over lunch,” he said. “I assumed it was a wise woman’s usual reservation about seeing an unknown man alone.”
    He watched me in silence. I waited for his denunciation.
    “How brave you are,” he said instead.
    Huh?
    “To think I may have had a hand in a woman’s death and still accompany me here.”
    Umm…
    “You must care a great deal for my son.”
    “You didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him.
    Outside the tinted windows, the world seemed strangely quiet.
    “I was on a plane, Ms. McMullen, and I did not harm my fiancée. Nor shall I harm you.”
    I refused to fidget, but it was a close thing.
    He smiled wryly. “My driver would never allow it.” He flicked his gaze toward the front seat. “Would you, Roswald?”
    “No, sir,” came the answer.
    “There, you see. He is very old-fashioned that way. The last time he had to clean blood off the seats, he said…” The senator made a halting gesture with his palm. “…absolutely no more.”
    My breath caught in my throat and he laughed.
    “I joke,” he said, then, taking my hand between his, he sobered handsomely. “I would never have harmed my Salina.”
    He was probably telling the truth, but how the hell was I supposed to know for sure? Was his act a little pat? A little too well cued? The woman he had planned to marry had just died on his hardwood floor. Shouldn’t he be inconsolable?
    “Indeed, I loved her quite desperately.”
    “And she you?”
    He smiled mistily. “It is difficult to guess the heart of another, is it not?”
    It was a corny statement, and I would have liked to mock the sentiment, but he was right. I once had a boyfriend who convinced me of his undying adoration three days before sleeping with the stripper from his best