Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

“Then he takes his squeeze down to the Biltmore bar and gets blasted on high-dollar champagne-people saw them together, packing away champagne and caviar. Maybe she turns him down, too, ‘cause when she leaves him alone, he goes up to his office-he’s juiced, he’s depressed, and his wife already told him she didn’t want no more of what he has to offer-he gets out his old twenty-two and tries to eat it. Hell, he can’t even do that right.”

“Maybe he changed his mind,” I said. “Maybe he just wanted to find out if anyone loved him.”

The lieutenant looked at me as if I had just farted or something. Ralph pulled me closer, whispered in my ear, “If I’d known how much you liked high-dollar champagne, I would have taken a couple of cases with us to El Salvador.”

I said to him, “Do you still fuck chickens?” Then I moved on, thinking about how variable truth truly is. How many thousand people were standing in Dealy Plaza the day Kennedy was shot? How many of them can tell you, with provable, incontrovertible certainty, what happened? Forget about why.

What do we ever know, anyway? Except what we want to believe, based on what someone wants us to hear.

What was Wyatt Johnson up to the night he was shot? I didn’t know. Someday, Charles Conklin might come clean, maybe for a good book or movie deal, or to make a deal the next time he’s picked up. If he does, whether his intentions are good or bad I would never trust what he has to say. I would never know. Not knowing is always the hard part for me.

In my own mind, I was fairly certain that both Hanna Rhodes and Jerry Kelsey had been eliminated to keep them from floating their own versions of events at an inconvenient time: fouling up a high-dollar wrongful imprisonment suit, injecting too much truth into a political campaign, messing up evangelical profiteering, impeding a fast climb up the career ladder.

Cheap motives for such costly results. Three dead, one I had killed myself. The surviving players weren’t walking away unmarked. The self-inflicted crease in Marovich’s broad brow was only the beginning of his problems. Jennifer was going up before the Bar Association, and the police were trying to put together a conspiracy charge against her.

The county fired George Schwartz for taking a job when he was out on disability. There was a fraud charge against him, and a lien to recoup the disability payments.

Charles Pinkerton Conklin? The D.A. decided not to retry him for shooting Wyatt Johnson; he had already served more time than most murderers draw. I knew it was only a matter of time until he tripped himself up again, went back inside. I regretted that he couldn’t be hung with a big sign like a cigarette warning label: Association with this man may be hazardous to your health.

Mike rang a gong to announce that he had done all the damage to the food that he intended to do. Lyle had arranged the remains on large serving trays, disguised the worst of it with sprigs of parsley and lilies made out of turnip slices and carrot sticks, and set it all out on paper-covered plank tables.

When Mike walked away from the smoke, I went over to him. His face ran with sweat and he reeked like a fireman after a slaughterhouse fire. While our guests queued up to the long serving table, I took Mike by the hand and led him into the house and up the stairs, hugging the wall so that the upstairs tourers could become downstairs diners.

“Sure, I’ll take a shower,” he said, fondling my butt through my skirt, “if you’ll get in with me.”

“You know I want to, baby,” I said, helping him off with his apron and shirt. “But if I do, you know what would follow and all those poor people would be stuck in the backyard till the sun came up waiting to say good-bye to us. It could get really ugly down there. Just this once, I think you better solo.”

“Okay,” he said, taking off his pants without help-though it broke my heart-while I ran the water warm. When he handed me his pants, my eyes were not on his outstretched palm, or on the little gold box he offered me. “Something for you,” he said.

“I need to get back to our guests,” I said, and fled without going within two feet of that little box. I had to stop in the bedroom to wipe my own streaming eyes, to get some air.

At that moment, I loved Mike so much that I could barely contain my passion for him. All evening I had hardly been able to keep from jumping him-apron, spatula, smoke, and all-right there in the middle of things. But that damned gold box chilled me. For the second time.

I powdered my nose and fluffed my hair, got another breath of barbecue-scented air, and ran down to the backyard.

Lyle set down a bowl of fruit salad and intercepted me as I walked across the patio. He led me by the hand into the kitchen and handed me a wet towel.

“Aren’t you having fun?” he demanded.

“Of course. It’s a great party, Lyle.”

“Then what are you crying about?”

I draped myself on him and buried my face in his neck. “God, I miss you.”

“Not that much, you don’t. You two fighting?”

“No.” I wiped my face again. “Mike’s pushing this marriage thing.”

“So?”

“So, I’m not ready.”

“The new tenants like the house,” he said. “I told them I would talk to you about a lease. What do you want me to say?”

I stood up straight, blew my nose into a paper napkin. “I’ll lease it for two years, four months, three weeks.”

“You have to face things, Maggie,” he said. “Don’t put it off too long.”

“Maybe I exaggerated about how much I miss you.” I walked outside again.

As soon as the sun went down, the air grew chilly. I thought about going upstairs for a sweater, but hesitated when I saw that Mike was not down yet.

Michael was filling a plate for Sly when he called my name. “Where’s Dad?”

“Cleaning up.”

I followed Michael’s gaze up to the balcony. Mike was standing there, leaning on the railing, looking down at me. I helped Sly butter a roll, then excused myself.

Mike was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. I walked into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his breath hot against my ear. “I was teasing. I didn’t mean to upset you like that.”

His chest heaved under my cheek. I opened the top two buttons of his fresh shirt, ran my hand inside along his smooth, hard chest.

“What’s in the box this time?” I asked.

He laughed, an embarrassed little laugh. But he handed me the damn gold box again. I opened it, like before. Found a gold key inside, like before.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Back door key this time.”

I wrapped my arms around him. I think it was letdown that I felt. The only reality I knew at that moment was how I felt about Mike Flint.

“We should go down,” I said.

When Mike said, “Why?” and began working on the zipper of my skirt, I couldn’t think of a single reason.

Wendy Hornsby is the Edgar Award-winning creator of the Maggie MacGowen series. A native of Southern California interested in writing at a young age, she first found professional success in fourth grade, when an essay about summer camp won a local contest. Her first novel, No Harm, was published in 1987, but it wasn’t until 1992 that Hornsby introduced her most famous character: Maggie MacGowen, documentarian and amateur sleuth.She has written seven of the MacGowen novels, most recently The Paramour’s Daughter (2010), and the sprawling tales of murder and romance have won Hornsby widespread praise. For her closely observed depiction of the darker sides of Los Angeles, she is often compared to Raymond Chandler. Besides her nine novels, Hornsby has written dozens of short stories, some of which were collected in Nine Sons (2002). When she isn’t writing, she teaches ancient and Medieval history at Long Beach City College