Arizona Heat

“You never liked Alex,” Greer accused.

“You’re just figuring that out?” I countered. I took a half-empty bottle of white wine from the fridge next, uncorked it and poured two glasses—one for me and one for Greer. Mine was slightly fuller than hers. Okay, I was guilty of pie-napping, but I’d had a harder day than she had, so I figured it was fair.

Greer poked at the remains of the purloined pie with a beautifully manicured fingertip and made a face. “Yuck,” she said, accepting the wineglass I offered.

I softened a little. “I could send out for a pizza,” I suggested.

Greer took a sip of wine and made another face. “At least you didn’t steal this from me,” she said. “My God, Mojo, how can you drink this stuff? It could double as nail polish remover.”

I was used to my sister’s wine snobbery. Her fruit-of-the-vine arrived in fancy crates, the elegant bottles artfully labeled and cosseted in wood shavings. Mine came from convenience stores and, if I was really feeling swank, supermarket closeout shelves. I usually got the boxed kind, in fact, with the handy-dandy little spigot built right in.

I didn’t stoop to answer Greer’s gibe. I simply opened the freezer compartment on my refrigerator, took out a frozen lasagna, single serving, low cal, low carb and low flavor, and handed it to Greer.

“Am I supposed to eat this?” she asked, raising both her perfectly plucked eyebrows this time.

“Since I only have one other option to suggest,” I replied, “I’d go with eating, yes.”

She blinked. “Do you have to be so nasty?” she asked.

I sighed. Shoved a hand through my hair, which was standing out around my head like the mane of some deranged lion because I’d fallen asleep while it was still wet from my shower. I’d probably need a whip and a chair to tame it. Maybe even a Weed Eater.

“Sorry,” I said. “Bad day.”

Greer slapped the frozen dinner down beside the casserole dish. “I suppose you think mine was wonderful? My life is a mess. Just last week I was accosted by an unknown assailant. My arm was broken. I haven’t heard from my husband—for all I know, he’s lying dead in the desert somewhere—”

“I went to a seven-year-old girl’s funeral today, Greer,” I said. Definitely trump card, but of course I didn’t take any satisfaction in the victory.

“I forgot,” Greer said, deflating. She pulled back a chair and sank into it.

“I wish I could,” I answered.

Greer downed another slug of wine. Squeezed her eyes shut, and shuddered.

A little background on Greer. For one thing, she wasn’t Greer Pennington any more than I was Mary Josephine Mayhugh. My abductor/mother, Lillian, had rescued her from a bus station in Boise when she was thirteen—more like sixteen, though she never admitted it—and unofficially adopted the runaway into our unconventional little family. I’d never known what or whom she’d run away from, but Lillian probably had. She’d have sent Greer back to her folks right away if home had been a good place to be.

Recently Greer had admitted she was being blackmailed, at least to Jolie and me, and she’d hired me to find out if her doctor husband was cheating on her. I’d followed up on a few leads, but with all that had been going on, I definitely hadn’t earned my retainer.

I suspected, of course, that the broken-arm attack was connected to the blackmail, but I couldn’t prove it.

I opened the freezer box, popped the contents into the microwave and pushed the appropriate buttons. While Greer’s supper nuked, I drew back another chair and sat down across from her.

Her eyes swam with tears as she gazed into her wineglass.

“Sooner or later,” I said as gently as I could, given that my nerves were still quivering from the jolt she’d given me by gripping my big toe while I was sound asleep, “you’re going to have to tell me the truth about who you are, Greer.”

She gave an odd little giggle, followed by a hiccup. “Greer,” she repeated. “Do you know where I got that name? Off a late-night movie on TV, starring Greer Garson. It was called Julia Misbehaves, and I almost went with ‘Julia,’ but ‘Greer’ had more pizzazz. I wanted to use Garson, too, but Lillian said that probably wouldn’t fly. So I settled for Greer Stewart.”

Considering how little Greer had told me about herself in all the years I’d known her, this was a revelation. I shouldn’t have felt hurt because she’d obviously confided in Lillian, though probably not to any great extent and with a generous peppering of lies, but I did. Once, Greer and I had been close. Then I’d married Nick and she’d married Alex, and things had changed between us.

I had no clue why.

We’d both been playing parts, of course. And somewhere along the way we’d forgotten our lines.

“Who were you before you were Greer?” I persisted very quietly.

For a moment I actually thought she was going to tell me. Then she shook her head. “I know it sounds corny—like something from the late show—but that person doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Anything more from the blackmailer?” Talk about something from the late show. How often does a question like that come up in normal conversation?

Not that I’d know a normal conversation if I fell over it.

Greer bit her lower lip.

The timer on the microwave dinged.

I got up, pulled out the rubber lasagna and set it down in front of the woman I still thought of as my sister, for all the strange distance that stretched between us. I gave her some silverware and refilled her wineglass.

Tentatively she picked up a fork and jabbed it at the lasagna. I knew she was avoiding my eyes, and I was prepared to wait her out. I’ve got staying power—I once camped in front of a furniture store for three days to get the free couch they were offering as a prize at their grand opening. I was on the news twice, and Lillian, alarmed by the publicity, came and dragged me away fifteen minutes before I would have become the proud owner of an orange velour sectional, complete with built-in plastic cup holders.

Just one of the many reasons I have to be grateful to her.

“Greer?” I prompted.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I’ve heard from the blackmailers—plural.”

“When? What did he—they—say? Was it a letter, a phone call, an email? Black-and-white eight-by-tens of you in some compromising position?”

Greer skewered me with a look. “This lasagna,” she said, “is worse than the wine.” But she kept eating. And she kept drinking, too, though I’d already lost interest in the vino. It did taste like vinegar.

“How am I supposed to help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”

“I didn’t hire you because I’m being blackmailed. I hired you to find out if Alex is cheating on me.”

“He is,” I said, silently saying goodbye to the five-thousand-dollar retainer she’d given me, not to mention the other five I would have gotten when I turned in a definitive report. Actually, I was in pretty good financial shape for the first time in my life, because my demon ex-mother-in-law, Margery DeLuca, had forked over the proceeds of a life insurance policy Nick had taken out, in a fit of fiscal responsibility, with me as beneficiary. Still, Greer’s payment represented my first earnings as a private investigator and for me that was meaningful.

Greer stiffened, peering at me over the lasagna and the cheap wine. “Do you have proof?”

“No,” I said.

“Then the case isn’t solved, is it? Maybe now that people aren’t trying to kill you, you can get back to work.” This was a reference to recent misadventures—so recent, in fact, that I still had little gummy bits of duct-tape residue on my wrists and ankles. I’d soaked and scoured, but they just kept appearing, as though they’d been hiding under my skin.

“Greer,” I said.

“What?” She sounded testy. Could have been the leather noodles and the rotgut, but I didn’t think so. Greer had been defensive, to say the least, since she’d stolen Alex Pennington from his first missus, closed down her hard-won interior design business and become the classic trophy wife.