Loose Screws Read Free Page A

“You don’t expect me to believe your husband was gonna move into this hamster cage with you?”
    I ignore the derision in Nicky’s voice. Okay, so between all my books, my plants, the full-size drafting table, the computer and all its attendant crap, the TV and stereo, a sofa bed, two chairs, my exercise bike, a coffee table, a bistro set, and five pieces of matching, packed Lands’ End luggage, things might seem, to the uneducated eye, a little cramped.
    â€œI decided to hang on to it, in case I needed to stay over in the city from time to time. Most of my clothes are out at our new house, howev—” My jaw drops. “You mean they think I have something to do with Greg’s disappearance?”
    I’m usually a little quicker on the draw. I swear.
    At that, Nicky perches on the edge of my Pier One coffee table (and if you breathe a word to my clients that my apartment is done in mass-market kitsch, you’re dead meat) and looks me straight in the eye. “What I thinkdoesn’t matter here. God knows, it wasn’t me that came up with this asinine theory. And that’s all it is, believe me. In any case—” he digs around in his coat pocket for a scrawny little notepad and a Bic pen “—nobody’s accusin’ you of anything, okay? It’s just that, well, seeing’s as he stood you up, you do have a motive. I mean, should…”
    He stops.
    I grip the edge of my sofa bed (Pottery Barn, cranberry velvet, three years old) and make myself focus on Nicky until there’s only one of him. “Hey. I went ballistic back there,” I say, swatting in the general direction of midtown. “That wasn’t faked. I can’t fake anything,” I add, which gets a quick hitch of the pair of eyebrows across from me. “Besides, even I know you can’t have a murder without a bo—” I burp “—dy.”
    Tell me that didn’t sound as blasé as I think it did.
    Nicky is looking at me as if he’s not sure. But then he says, “Nobody’s sayin’ anything about murder, Ginger. I’m just tryin’ to fit the pieces together. All anybody wants is to find this guy and get his frickin’ father off our case.”
    â€œWell, why point a finger at me? ” Sober, I can do high dudgeon with the best of ’em. However, considering the definite possibility that my speech is slurred, I’m probably not pulling it off as well as I might have hoped. Nicky’s long, dark, silky eyelashes sidetrack me for a second, then I say, “Sure… now, I have a motive. After he stands me up. I didn’t before this afternoon. I mean, come on …why would I want to do in the man who gave me my first multiple orgasm?”
    I try clamping my hand over my mouth, only I miss and smack myself in the chin.
    Nicky puts his pad and pen away. And in those crystalline eyes, I see…awe. Respect. A pinch of what I’m afraid to identify as challenge. And I find myself thinking, damn, there’s all this hot, sizzling testosterone in the room, and I’m feeling really sorry for myself, which is closely followed by my wondering what might have happened if he had called me, all those years ago. Only then I remember that Nicky is a cop, for one thing, and that his family is even crazier than mine—which is going some—and that I havealready had all the craziness I can stand for one lifetime. Oh, and that, according to Paula, her brother-in-law apparently has a penchant for giggly, jiggly twenty-year-olds.
    And that, had events unfolded as planned, I’d be—I glance at the clock over my stove—less than fifteen hours away from my initiation into the Mile High Club.
    I’d been really, really looking forward to that.
    Venice, too.
    â€œSo,” Nicky says, all back-to-business. “You got an alibi for after when you last saw Munson?”
    I think, a task that doesn’t