Love You to Death

by Grant Michaels

  “It’s probably just as well, darling. Stay warm tonight and get some rest.”

  “Same to you, doll,” I said with a note of envy.

  Click.

  Yes, I was slightly jealous of Nikki and her ardent, handsome, financially successful young lover. I was feeling old, unwanted, withering on the vine. Tobias tugged at my trousers.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  Back to reality.

  While the pizza baked, I threw together a quick salad. At least part of our dinner would be dietetically sound. Tobias would have nothing to do with the vegetables though. His idea of vegetables was potato chips. I told him if he wanted them, he’d have to go himself to the corner store for them. When he made for his coat, I stopped him.

  “You’ve already painted the town tonight, buster. I’ll go get the chips. You don’t move. Clear?”

  “Yup.”

  When I returned, the terrorist child from hell had already started watching Bambi II. It turned out to be pretty erotic and explicit, but I figured it was only consenting cartoon animals cavorting in the comfort of their own forest for the benefit of two insignificant human voyeurs. Once we’d eaten—and I’d had a double bourbon—we both fell asleep on the couch, while the animals played on.

  I was awakened by the sudden sound of white noise whooshing at me when the tape had finished. I tucked Tobias in to sleep on the couch while I took the bed. This time, I laid my robe across the covers, hoping that would remind me to put it on tomorrow morning. Sugar Baby joined me shortly after I lay down. As she squashed herself up against my thigh and started purring her lullaby, I wondered, Is this what parenthood is about? It seemed like lots of concerned activity that signified nothing.

  I turned my mind back to the mysterious poisoning of last night. I wondered about Dan Doherty and Prentiss Kingsley. Were they together in Abigail? Was Liz Carlini with them? And what about those other two from the Gladys Gardner factory, Mary Phinney and John Lough? What was their strange connection? Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. Perhaps I’d even find some answers.

  9

  CHARM-SCHOOL DROPOUTS

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING I took Tobias to Nicole’s place at Harbor Towers. Yes, I knew it was her day off and that she’d planned to spend it alone with Charles. I also knew that since I wasn’t picking Tobias up as originally planned last night, I had no business there at all. But I had plans of my own that day, and they did not include dragging a young boy around with me. I had to convince Nicole to look after Tobias. I figured I’d tell her what Branco had said last night, embellishing it to make the threat of court action sound more immediate.

  On the way to the waterfront I realized I was in a good mood, since I was noticing the beautiful side of a winter day in the city. Last night’s storm had long passed, and all along Marlborough Street the bare, black-barked trees stood in high contrast to the blue sky and the new white snow. When we arrived at Nicole’s neighborhood, even filthy Boston harbor, the featured vista of the waterfront, looked appealing in the clear early light.

  It was just after eight o’clock, so I knew she and Charles would be home, probably still in bed. Invading forces know the advantage of surprising their quarry as it lies abed. The doorman recognized me with a friendly nod, and let Tobias and me enter. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t though. Nikki and I have keys to each other’s pads.

  When I knocked on the door, Nikki answered it from behind. “Who’s there?”

  “Me.”

  She opened the door and saw Tobias and me.

  “You mean ‘us,’ ” she said with a scowl.

  Tobias smiled charmingly. “Hi, Uncle Nick.”

  “Sorry if we woke you, doll.”

  “What is it?” she asked coolly.

  “Can we come in?”

  She eyed Tobias and was already suspecting my motives, so my suffering-Stanley act had to be convincing. Fortunately, from what I could hear in the background, Charles was already in the shower, so my timing was perfect.

  “Nikki, I’m in trouble. After last night’s urban adventure with our little renegade …” I glanced at Tobias, implying that he’d caused my latest dilemma. “Lieutenant Branco put me on probation. He says if anything like that happens again, the C-O-U-R-T will take action.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Nikki, you know how busy it can get at the shop, especially if you’re not there to direct traffic.”

  Nicole pondered a moment, then spoke. “Yes, Stanley, and it will be extra busy today, since Leslie just called me.” With extra emphasis she added, “Which is the only reason I’m up at this hour on my day off.”

  “What did Leslie want?”

  “She won’t be at the shop today.”

  “Another fit of vapors?”

  “Her car wouldn’t start, with the snow and all.”

  I’d heard that excuse plenty before. Whenever it displeased Leslie to drive into town during winter, her car conveniently didn’t start, even though it was one of those Swedish jobs that claims to thrive under glaciers or inside icebergs. Leslie had a kind of “let the city folk take care of it” attitude toward discomfort or inconvenience, and I often wondered why Nicole kept her on, since she was so unreliable. Perhaps it was her genius with scissors. When Leslie is cutting, there’s a maelstrom of flying hair and combs and clips. You almost can’t see the customer for all the Brownian motion around the chair. But the results are consistently stunning. After all, she cuts my hair.

  Nicole said, “I’m afraid you’re facing double-duty today, without Leslie or I to hold your hand.”

  “Leslie or me, doll.” But Leslie’s unexpected absence would complicate my plan to take time off to make my personal rounds that day, and I didn’t want to tell Nicole that.

  “That’s all the more reason I need you to baby-sit, just for the morning. Please?”

  “Stanley, don’t start again.”

  “Nikki, you were going to take him last night. Just pretend you’re doing me the favor now, a little later.”

  “Chaz and I have plans.”

  “Didn’t you already do most of that?”

  She frowned. “I’m trying to be hospitable.”

  “I’d say he’s had his share of the open door today.”

  “That’s uncalled for.”

  “Nikki, I need your help now. Charles can have it any other time.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  That stopped me. “You’re going to ask Charles if you can do me a favor?”

  Without answering, she left Tobias and me standing in the foyer and headed up the stairway to her bedroom on the upper level of the apartment. I wandered with Tobias into the vast living room with its lowered floor and stratospheric ceiling. The entire room was basically the northeast corner of the building, and it provided an unimpeded view of the city and the open harbor. I could hear Nicole’s and Charles’s muffled voices from the open door of a bathroom in a faraway corner of the penthouse.

  Nicole returned and said lightly, “Chaz thinks it is a better idea for us to have Tobias this morning.”

  “A better idea than what, doll? Is he afraid that I’ll turn Tobias gay? The police share the same horror. Then again, cops and lawyers come from the same mold.”

  “Stanley, do you want me to take the boy or not?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  We agreed that she’d bring Tobias to the shop after lunchtime. She and Charles would entertain him until then. I left them quickly, without having coffee, since I was supposed to open the shop. Actually, I just didn’t want to see Charles, all pink and clean and lean from his shower. I’m often uncomfortable when meeting my friends’ bedmates, especially after they’ve been rutting like goats, and more especially if the bedmate is someone I don’t care for, and most especially if he’s cocksure and relentless about it. Somehow it makes the couplings between friends and their sex-pets seem tawdry. I guess I was feeling my old protectiveness for Nicole, that she deserved bette
r than the conceited young lawyer she’d taken up with for the past few months. My only consolation was that her winter affairs never lasted beyond the first thaw of springtime, and that Charles, like the others, would probably not be a permanent fixture in our lives.

  On the way to Snips Salon I once again felt the great relief of having Tobias off my back. I opened the shop and called the answering service at once. What a happy surprise to hear all the out-of-towners canceling that day, all because of last night’s storm. Even the winter weather seemed to be helping me, causing things to fall into place so that I’d be able to get away later without too much trouble. True, I’d make less money today, but I could make that up another time.

  Mid-morning, when local business started picking up slightly, a male client came in to see Leslie, the absent and snowbound stylist. I explained that she wasn’t in today, but since I recognized him as a former customer who used to keep regular appointments, I offered to take care of him myself. He hesitated, then asked for the next best stylist after Leslie. I told him that I was the salon’s lead stylist, before Leslie. When I suggested that he might want to reschedule with her after all, he opted to have me do his hair. It was a good decision, since it needed color work badly.

  The job was simple for a master: Apply perfectly mixed color to his longish brown and grey roots. The soft, amber blond would match the rest of the older color work, which had held up pretty well considering all the time he’d let pass since his last visit. Leslie’s expert cut had held up well too, except for two “holes” on either side of the man’s head. Leslie couldn’t have done anything so clumsy, and I wondered how the man’s hair had got that way. As I sectioned the hair to apply color, I noticed a pair of small, pink scars within the shorter hair, one diagonally forward above each ear, and another behind each ear, just back of the occipital bone. Each scar was about an inch long. Recognizing their significance, I casually asked if he’d been on vacation, since he looked so rested and, I couldn’t help adding, somewhat younger. He described in surgical detail the happy time he’d spent at a tropical oceanside resort, but he didn’t admit to the beautifully executed face-lift he’d recently had.

  By late morning, the place was humming with enough worker bees to handle the flow of local customers into the shop. I was booked too, but they were coincidentally all clients from my B-list, the whiners and the lousy tippers. Seizing the moment, I relegated my bookings to Ramon, who was always eager to build his own clientele from the shampoo sink. The only drawback to letting Ramon work on my clients was that there’d be so much to undo after his work. We obviously didn’t respond to the same muse.

  I headed out on the first leg of my fact-finding mission that day, a visit to Liz Carlini. Again, I didn’t call first, hoping to catch her off-guard. Lies are more difficult to hide when a person is on the defensive. Since Liz was a client, I found her unpublished address in the private directory I keep on all my customers. She and Prentiss lived in Chestnut Hill, so I took the Riverside train, which even in winter is one of the more dependable lines of Boston’s MTA, an ancient and misnamed rapid transit system that supposedly links Metropolitan Boston to its many suburbs. From the Chestnut Hill station, it was a short cab ride to their house. They lived in a small mansion—an oxymoron, I suppose overwrought with pilasters and porticos, but in Chestnut Hill, you showed your wealth, not your taste. Nature helped today though, with ice-glazed tree limbs and soft new snow on the ground. The driveway and sidewalk had been meticulously cleared and were bone dry. Obviously, both pavements were heated. No nasty, noisy snowblowers for these folks. Just flick a switch.

  I hoped someone would be home, since it was almost eleven o’clock. I stepped onto the portico and rang the bell, which caused a large dog to start barking inside. Reflexively my body tightened. Dogs and me ain’t the best of friends. They tend to bite me, even after the owner claims, “She never bites.” Then, seconds after Fido or Fidina has had a taste of my tender Slavic flesh, I hear the owner say, horrified, “She’s never done that before.” Luckily, both my skin and my nerve don’t scar easily, but I still don’t take naturally to dogs.

  Liz answered the door herself. She was fully dressed for the day. all perky and ready to face life squarely, which probably isn’t too hard when you’re wealthy. The big dog standing near her wagged its tail vigorously while it sniffed and licked and nipped lightly at my hands. I instinctively pulled away. My hands are. after all, my livelihood. Liz seemed pleased to see me there.

  “Vannos, what a surprise. Is everything all right?”

  “Sure, Liz. Why not?”

  “Well, after that trouble the other night … She paused. “And … well, I’m just surprised to see you here in person. You’ve never been out here before, have you?”

  “That’s true, Liz. and I apologize for not calling first, but I was riding the train this morning—you know, it’s so rare we get a day like this in February—and I just thought I’d come by and see how you were doing, especially after that trouble the other night.” I purposely used her same words, a ploy to build trust. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Not at all. Come on in. I was just about to make myself another espresso. Would you like one?”

  “Sure.” I love espresso.

  She led the way to the kitchen, and the big dog gamboled back and forth between us. Liz noticed me keeping my distance from the beast. “I’ll put him outside if he’s worrying you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Dogs like my blood.”

  “Oh, he’d never bite,” she said as she let him out. But when puppy-dog found himself outside without me, his anticipated mid-morning snack, he barked and squealed to be let back in, pawing and scratching against the sliding-glass door.

  “Too bad, pooch,” I said, watching him from the safe side of the door. “No warm blood today.”

  Liz’s kitchen had been remodeled recently with expensive European appliances and cabinets, and I was happy to sense a feeling of use instead of just show. While Liz prepared the coffee, I gazed out over the spectacular backyard, though estate lawns might be a more correct description.

  As I turned back into the kitchen, I happened to notice, squeezed up between the cookbook shelf and the bottom of the overhead cabinets, the distinctively decorated sides of a lavender-colored box. The purple irises meant it was a box of Le Jardin chocolate. After the murderous mishap the other night, I could understand why the box was tucked away, out-of-sight-out-of-mind.

  “Is Prentiss home?” I asked.

  Liz clumsily dropped the coffee basket on the counter, spilling the fine dark grounds everywhere on the hand-glazed ceramic tiles.

  “He’s out now,” she said shortly and grimaced as she swept up the spilled coffee. “He had an important errand to run. Did you want to talk to him?”

  “Well, yes … and to you, too. As I said, I just dropped by to say hello and find out how you were doing. The other night was pretty hard on all of us there. Sometimes it’s helpful to share feelings with others after suffering a calamity together. I sounded like a recovery group facilitator.

  She nodded. “It’s true, Vannos. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” Then she said with a secretive look, “And I think I know who did it.”

  “You do?”

  “I have a theory.”

  It figured she would. With every other success in her life, Liz Carlini probably imagined herself a brilliant detective too. She refilled the coffee basket and installed it into the espresso machine while she explained.

  “There’s a woman who is the operations manager at the Gladys Gardner factory. Her name is Phinney, Mary Phinney.”

  “I met her yesterday.”

  “Oh?”

  “I took my nephew on a tour of the factory.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “Actually, we had a little trouble, and it was with Mary Phinney.”

  “They really should get someone else to give the tours.”

  “I’d have to agree with you there. But wh
y do you think she’s involved with the killing?”

  Liz ran the espresso machine. I watched the syrupy coffee flow into two small cups she’d placed under the dual spigot. I also noticed that she’d neglected to preheat the cups. After the machine stopped humming, she spoke again.

  “When Danny and I asked Laurett to manage the new Le Jardin shop, Mary Phinney objected noisily. In the entire history of Gladys Gardner chocolates, there’s never been a black person in the stores serving the customers. So for us at Le Jardin, choosing Laurett was a breakthrough.”

  Such is the political correctness of business savvy.

  “But how does that relate to the killing?”

  “I think Mary Phinney planted that poisoned chocolate to incriminate Laurett, since she was the one who was setting up the truffles that night.”

  “But then the killing would be random,” I said.

  “I don’t think Mary intended to kill anyone—she just wanted to make them sick. But as long as Laurett Cole was suspected and accused and didn’t get that job, Mary Phinney would be satisfied.”

  “Liz, did you tell this to the police?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just an idea. I have no proof.”

  “Tell them anyway. Let them decide what to do.” I figured, if nothing else, maybe her far-fetched story would incite Branco to interrogate Mary Phinney. “Make sure you talk to Lieutenant Branco though. He’s in charge.”

  “Should I mention your name?”

  “Better not.”

  She set out to steam some milk, but at one point she miscalculated the steam pressure and splashed scalding milk all over the counter top. “Damn!” she said, and then banged the small pitcher against the counter, spilling even more hot milk.

  Being a salon neatnik, I automatically went to the sink for a sponge to wipe up the spill. As I mopped up the milk, I asked, “Did you get burned?”

  “You don’t have to be so helpful. We’re not at your salon now.”

  Her sudden bluntness stopped me. When she saw the effect her words had, she quickly changed her tone.