Death by Cuddle Club

by Norah Wilson

  “Er, Dix, did you say right-hand drawer?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  Silence. Sucking silence.

  Oh shit! The right-hand drawer! I’d put my personal stash in there! I leapt to my feet.

  “I’m just having trouble getting the drawer open. It seems to be stuck,” Dylan called out. He was sitting in my chair, and gave the drawer one more good yank. “Ah, there, I got it—Jesus, Dix!”

  His alarm was precipitated by me diving/sliding across the desk. I slammed that drawer shut before he saw my... um... special reading material (dog-eared as it was). Except I didn’t just slide across the desk. I slid right off it and landed right on top of Dylan.

  The chair toppled over, depositing Dylan flat on his back on the carpet, and I landed on top of him. The oomph we both let out at the end of our graceless descent only added to the impact of that body-to-body press.

  Quickly, (well, after a minute or two), I started to lift myself off him, mumbling apologies as I did.

  “Hold it, Dix.” His voice was a little breathy, probably because I’d knocked the wind out of him. “Don’t move.”

  By this time, I was lying half on, half off him, and froze. “Why? Oh God! Are you hurt?”

  “Not quite.”

  He lifted his hands to my head, buried both hands in my hair, drew my face down and kissed me. And oh, Lord, I could get used to this! I skimmed my hands up his sides, delighting in the lean solidity of him. He groaned and tugged me fully on top of him. I could feel his arousal stirring, and it sent my libido shooting through the roof.

  “Straddle me,” he commanded.

  Happy to comply, I drew my legs up on either side of him and sat up, splaying my hands on his chest. Bearing my own weight like this I had much better control. Which I immediately exercised by wriggling against his hardness. He turned the tables on me by palming my breasts, stroking and squeezing. I quickly forgot everything but the feel of his hands on me. After a few moments of that, though, I was going crazy. I dragged my hair to one side, then bent and kissed him. He seemed to approve. But then he groaned and rolled me off him.

  Well, someone had to answer the phone.

  You know, I was really starting to fucking hate phones.

  The phone had gotten swept off the desk along with everything else, but had landed a little more gracefully than Dylan and I. Miraculously, the receiver was still in the cradle.

  I picked it up on the third ring. The call display told me it wasn’t Dickhead with news from the forensic lab, but it was someone else I was just as anxious to hear from. With a push of the button, that party was on speaker phone.

  “Hey, Foxx,” I said.

  Dylan gave an approving nod. Yeah, we’d both been waiting for this call.

  Ryan Foxx was a former co-worker of mine at Jones and Associates. While I’d left the old firm because that glass ceiling came just up to my skirt, Foxx had left for quite a different reason. He’d left for the love of a woman. And in this case, a woman who loved him back. Specifically, Montana Hall. Montana had been a client of the firm’s, looking for the son she’d been forced to give up twenty years before when she’d been in Canada. She’d been a runaway, given the authorities a false name, left the baby at the hospital and never looked back. For two decades, that is. Foxx had helped her find said son (the reunion had even been a happy one). But during the course of the investigation, Foxx and Montana had fallen in love. He’d moved to California, where the two ran a foster home for teens who’d been abused (there was a reason Montana had run away in the first place). That was a full-time proposition, to be sure, but it wasn’t unheard of for Foxx to do some freelance work on the side.

  I’d emailed him the very day we’d taken the case of Death by Cuddle Club and asked him to snoop around and see what he could find out about Gaetan Land in California.

  “Hey, Dixie,” he said. “How’s it hanging?”

  “Well, Foxx, if it were hanging any better I’d have to fold it.”

  Dylan gave me a curious look on that. Private joke. I waved him off.

  “Good to hear from you,” Foxx said.

  “Yeah, you too. How’s it going with Montana and the kids?”

  He filled me in. Life was good. Busy, but good. Foxx sounded content. No, more than content. He sounded happy.

  “Love will do that to you, Dix,” he said, startling me.

  But even as Ryan Foxx elaborated about his life with Montana, there’d been that little edge in his voice. That little nudge-nudge that let me know he was more than anxious to spill the beans about what he’d discovered about California’s Gaetan Land.

  “So what’s the suspicious death count in Gaetan Land?” I asked, ready for the juicy details.

  “Zero.”

  Huh? “Come again.”

  “Like I said, zero. I checked Dix. Dug deep. In the last year, there’ve been three deaths among the membership of all the Gaetan Lands here in California. Two were the result of accidents—one boating, one vehicular. The other was from complications from pneumonia. Nothing suspicious around any of them.”

  Dylan looked at me, obviously just as surprised.

  “No heart attacks? No sudden cardiac arrests?” I said, just to confirm. “You’re sure?”

  “None fatal. In fact, it seems the cuddling might have a positive effect on the heart. But that’s not so surprising. Human touch and all...”

  I laughed out loud, until I realized he was serious.

  “Most of the club members are thirty-somethings,” Foxx said. “That probably accounts for the low rate of heart episodes, too.”

  “Are there no older members?” I asked.

  “Oh, there are some in that over-forty bracket—” (I cursed the fucking speaker phone.) “—but not many. So the clientele isn’t exactly in the prime group for heart attacks. And really, don’t you find that strange, Dix? That so many younger folks would be attracted to Gaetan Land?”

  Of course I did. At that age, I was out clubbing. You know, hitting the bars. Dancing till the wee hours of the morning. Times hadn’t changed that much.

  “One more thing,” Foxx said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I also checked on those Cuddle-Uppies they have for sale down here. Yeah, pricey as hell. But Gaetan’s making another small fortune in sales of those ugly things alone.”

  I thanked Foxx. Told him to say hi to Montana for me, and hung up the phone.

  “It’s a Canadian thing, eh?” Dylan shook his head. “The suspicious cuddle club deaths are only at this one club in Ontario?”

  “Yeah, Canadian. Like beaver tails and hockey.” I said.

  “Maybe that does have something to do with it.”

  “Beaver tails and hockey?”

  “Er, no Dix. The Canadian thing. Maybe some of us northern folk just can’t hack the closeness. Face it, we have the reputation of being a bit on the reserved side. Maybe even a little stand-offish.”

  “You mean prickly?”

  “Hey, I wasn’t talking about you.”

  Well, he was. We both snorted a laugh because we knew it.

  “Maybe Gaetan Gough just doesn’t like Canadians. What’s that all aboot, eh?”

  “My money’s still riding on the Cuddle-Uppies,” I said. “Pheromones that somehow trigger a fatal arrhythmia in some people. Like an allergy of some kind. And there had to be pheromones in that Cuddle-Uppie the way I...”

  “What?”

  “The way I was acting... you know... the other night.”

  No sooner were the words out than my mind shot back to Saturday night. I think I got a little glassy-eyed just thinking about it, because when I looked up, Dylan was wearing a knowing smile. But all he said was, “We’ll know soon enough, I guess.”

  Actually we’d know sooner than that. Because the phone was ringing again, and it was Dickhead.

  “Excellent,” I said, smiling widely. This case was about to crack wide open. I picked up the receiver. “What’s the news?”
<
br />   My smile soon faded away.

  Crap! Crap! Crappppp!

  The Cuddle-Uppies were clean.

  Chapter 12

  I HAD BEEN wrong. Super wrong.

  And I really, really hate that!

  The only thing the lab found in measurable quantities in that Cuddle-Uppie blanket (besides the head holes, of course) were traces of detergent and fabric softener.

  I just did not get it! I was so sure that Gaetan Land had to be using synthetic pheromones in those cuddle blankets to get the clients aroused, coming back, and absolutely addicted to his clubs. And that that hormone was somehow linked to the deaths.

  Damn.

  I was so sure I’d be waltzing into that cuddle club and having one of my theme-song-humming, Gotcha! moments where I get to point the finger at the guilty party, after which everyone oohs and aahs about Dix Dodd, best PI ever. Hands high-fiving all around. Confetti flying. Wine pouring. There might even be a small parade...

  “Damn.”

  Was I ready to abandon the notion that anything was amiss at the cuddle club? Did I believe that all was right in the Land of Gaetan?

  Not a chance.

  Even if logic was kicking my butt, telling me to turn the other cheek, so to speak, my intuition was telling me otherwise. Niggle, niggle, nudge, nudge—still. Even if I wasn’t on Dickhead’s dime anymore. Oh, and by the way, I wasn’t.

  It had been nice while it lasted, but being the softie that I am, the rest of my time would be on the house. But he still had to pick up expenses.

  And then there was the favor factor. He’d owe me one. Big time, especially considering he told the force I’d called him in. (Hey, I’m soft, not stupid. Being owed a favor by one of Marport City’s boys in blue had to come in handy someday.) Then there was the whole he-saw-me-topless thing...

  And how was Detective Richard Head feeling about all this?

  More pissed off by the minute. The question of why he kept going back after that lark of a night with his cousin from Florida was one he wasn’t about to let go of. It was so out of character for him. And it was driving him nuts.

  How did I know? Well, my shitload of intuition helped. But too, he told Dylan and me over coffee at Perky Joe’s as the three of us sipped our mean coffee, bit into day-old donuts, and plotted what we would do next.

  But before the dead bodies started stacking up, one thing we all three agreed on—we needed some face time with the recently bereaved. I was all ready to divvy the work up among the three of us when Dickhead reminded me this was a police investigation now. He would talk to the families of the late Faynelle St. James, Telly Smith and Albert Valentine and I was to keep my nose out of it. I nodded agreeably and suggested he start with the first one to have kicked it, Faynelle St. James, so their memories didn’t get even more stale and unreliable.

  Predictably, he scowled and told me he knew how to do police work, thank you; he didn’t need my advice.

  As we watched him stalk out of the coffee shop, Dylan said, “I take it you’re going to take them in reverse order?”

  I smiled. He knew me so well.

  “Would you care for more tea?” Cathy Valentine asked me. The petite, attractive woman was already lifting the delicate pot, ready to pour another small cup of the blend. She was, I’d judge, about mid-fifties.

  I put up my hand, staving off that second pouring. “Thanks, but no, Mrs. Valentine.”

  She looked at me reproachfully.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Cathy.”

  Mrs. Cathy Valentine had told me to call her by her first name within the first moments we’d met on her doorstep. That was about half an hour ago when I’d come knocking on her door. We were now sitting in her small, well-kept sun room at the back of the house. Which was fine by me on this bright fall day. One of the consequences of my PI work: I just do not get enough sun.

  “Now, tell me again how I can help you,” Cathy said, with an easy smile. We’d spent the last half hour talking about the renovations she was having done on the rest of the house (the contractors were just setting up as I’d walked in through the foyer), the trip she planned to Dallas to visit her younger brother and his new wife right after the funeral, and her upcoming vacation to New York City to take in a few Broadway shows. (She kept humming Mama Mia!—yes, she was a theater buff.) Was that a new sapphire ring on her finger?

  It most definitely was.

  Had the Valentine’s been well off? Was that how the widow was affording all this? Nope. But there apparently had been a couple very hefty insurance policies on Albert’s life and Cathy had every intention of enjoying the same.

  “So you said you were from the university?” Cathy said, prompting me out of my daze. (Must have been the sun.)

  “Um, yeah.” I sat up in the chair, and adjusted my skirt over my knees. I’d gone home to change from my grubbies and into something more appropriate. “I was hoping I could ask you a few questions for my thesis research.”

  “Master’s or doctoral?”

  “Master’s. In sociology,” I supplied before she could ask my discipline.

  She still didn’t look completely convinced, but she said, “I see. And what are you researching, exactly?”

  Of course, I could tell her I was researching the phenomenon of cuddle clubs, but if she didn’t know about her husband’s activities with Gaetan Land, how awkward would that be?

  No, better to steer toward safer ground. People were always more willing to talk about their favorite topic—themselves. “I’m doing my thesis on the bereavement process in recently widowed women. How they cope.”

  Cathy’s eyebrows arched delicately. Yep, interest was piqued. “So you scour the papers, looking through the obits to find people to interview? Looking for grieving widows.”

  Geez, she made it sound so bad. “Yes.”

  “Well, good for you, Dix,” she declared. “No sense waiting for life to come to you. I did that for too long. Way too long. But let me tell you... if you’re looking for a grieving widow, you’ve come to the wrong house.”

  I saw the tightening in her face; detected that clench of anger in her jaw before she could hide it behind that tea cup.

  “Yes,” Cathy continued, after she’d sipped her tea and composed herself. “I spent a good many years waiting for life to give back to me.”

  “But no more?” I asked.

  “No more, indeed.”

  I said nothing. Just waited, sitting forward now in my chair to encourage the widow to go on. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Albert and I were married for nearly thirty years. I had my first child within a year of our marriage and had retired to being a housewife as soon as I found out that I was expecting. Terrible idea. That’s fine for some women—don’t get me wrong. Especially from my generation. I know some really happy and contented women who did just that. But really, it wasn’t for me. And I had three babies within four and a half years. Can you imagine!”

  I could only shake my head. Yikes. My own mother was a happy-as-a-clam stay-at-home mom, but that was just with Peaches and me, and we were more manageably spaced. Also, she and Dad had adored each other. I didn’t get the feeling it was quite that cozy and adoring in Casa Valentine.

  “Albert didn’t want me working outside the house, even as the kids grew older. In fact, he didn’t want me doing much of anything outside the house. But damned if he’d ever take me anywhere. I’m embarrassed to say that I put up with that treatment for a good many years. But Albert had a temper. And... I learned not to ask.” She looked up and caught the expression on my face. “Why did I marry him? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t going to ask that.” And you know, I really wasn’t. The man a woman marries isn’t always the man she ends up with. I knew enough about spousal abuse to know it very often came out after the marriage, during or after the pregnancy and when a woman felt the most trapped. It’s not always pretty in my line of work.

  “Well,” she sigh
ed. “The one thing I did insist upon, since Albert wanted me home rather than working out, was that he have enough life insurance so that if anything ever happened to him, I’d be all right. Plus, I’d put away a fair amount of cookie-jar money over the years,” she said with pride.

  “That’s excellent,” I commended. “Bloody excellent.”

  She looked at me strangely. “Do you watch British—”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Nothing British at all.”

  She smiled. “Well, Dix, I may not be what you’re looking for in research, I’m thinking. If you’re looking for the candle-in-the-window grieving widow, you won’t find her here. You’ll find a bitter one.”

  “Cathy,” I said. “That’s not what I’m looking for at all. I’m looking for honesty.” And yes, I was looking for information too. But I also wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “Bet you’re wondering why I didn’t leave him?”

  Part of me was, but part of me knew—knew—it wasn’t that simple. It’s never that cut and dried. Kids to raise. No job. Changes in the workforce. “I bet you would have eventually, but... I know it’s not that easy.”

  “You’re kind,” she said.

  “Cathy, it sounds like you’ve got a right to be bitter. Your husband was controlling. He had a temper. But it also sounds like you made the best of the situation that you could.”

  “And I didn’t even mention the affair.”

  “You were having an affair? Good for you!” Oh yikes. It was all I could do not to leap up to high five her.

  “No, Albert was.”

  What... wait... Albert was having an affair? A chill rippled over me. Where there was an affair, there was often trouble. Jealousy. Heartache. And sometimes, murder.

  “Did you know who Albert was seeing?”

  “Not exactly. I didn’t have the name. Nor did I really ever see her. But Albert was careless. Oh, more than careless—he didn’t care at all. He practically flaunted the fact that he was sleeping with someone. I knew. I damn well knew. Honestly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass that he was cheating on me, but it did anger me that he flaunted it.” There was no mistaking the wrath in her voice. The snap of it. Her eyes narrowed. The tea cup shook in her hands. “But I do know one thing, Dix. Albert met her at the cuddle club.”