river.
We had to fight our way out past the balloons, wishing the guy luck, but I was pretty sure he heard nothing past the white noise and glee in his own head. Mike had a similar look on his face when Mad Dog Junior was born, and considering she was a pretty kick-ass kid, I tended to smile like that too once in a while.
“I wonder how Marlena’s childhood was,” I pondered, shoving my hands in my pockets while we waited for the nurse on duty to finish with the two women in front of us. “Like, did her grandfather explain to her the difference between Monet and Manet and how to tell when a painting was fake?”
“Have you ever considered seeing a doctor about that brain of yours? Because you wander off places that make absolutely no fucking sense,” Bobby muttered at me under his breath. “She obviously did okay, because she’s a goddamned district attorney. Unless she’s pulling the longest con ever and set up her career just so she could get Grandma and Grandpa out of jail when they got caught. For all we know, they’ve got a château down in Belize they’re paying off.”
“Let’s just see if he’s in the same room and—” I stopped when a noise made me look down the hall and the double doors separating the waiting area and the nurses’ station were flung open and our quarry emerged.
The clip of quick-stepping heels beat a machine-gun-fast staccato against the hospital’s hard marble floor. Marlena Brinkerhoff moved like a shark cutting through the currents, her face cold and set into a stony mask. There was more than a little bit of fire in her enormous baby blue eyes, and her gaze flicked over me as if she had never seen me before in her life. She was dressed to kill in a pinup-style librarian’s tweed skirt and a red liquid silk shirt so fluid it clung to her breasts, flowing over their plump curves as if woven from water. Pushing past a small gathering of people waiting by a row of uncomfortable-looking chairs, recognition finally broke through her focus when she saw my face.
She stumbled.
Nothing so graceless as to twist her ankle or miss a step, but there was a slight hesitation before she brought her foot down again. Her pause was only long enough if you were looking for it, and I was certainly looking for it. She was just as beautiful as she had been the first time I’d seen her, but something had changed. The sweet, devoted granddaughter act was gone, and in its place was something much more dangerous and probably much more real.
“There’s our girl,” I muttered at Bobby. Breaking off from the line, I stepped into Marlena’s path, bringing her up short before she could reach the elevator doors. There was a bit of murmuring from the people around us, but we were now far enough away from the orderly line to be considered no longer another supplicant waiting to speak to the attending nurse. Smiling, I said, “Hello, Marlena. My associate and I were just coming to see you and your grandfather. I had a couple of questions I needed answering and was hoping you could spare some time.”
The tightening at the corner of her eyes told me time was the last thing she wanted to give me. In fact, I got the distinct impression that if Marlena had a pair of metal chopsticks secreted somewhere on her body, she would’ve done her very best to shove them into my eyeballs in the hopes of punching through my skull and out the other side. That impression didn’t go away, even when she gave me what should have been a charming, glittering smile and then held her hand out to Bobby to shake.
If I were Bobby, I would’ve checked her rings to make sure they didn’t have tiny needles tipped with poison before I took her hand.
“I really don’t have the time,” she said with another tight smile. She shifted her body, angling it slightly, and very quickly glanced back down the hall. “I’m actually very late. I’m meeting someone downtown. One of the district attorneys from the Los Angeles office. And my grandfather is really in no shape to speak with anyone. Maybe next time call ahead and I can make more time.”
“We just need—” I began, but Marlena shook her head, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’m sorry. But I have to go.”