The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  Clay stretched. “Plan B then.”

  “What’s plan B? Do this on every bed in the house?” She hunted around the bed for her clothes. This would not be a good place to leave anything behind. “I don’t think so.”

  “We could get that tracking unit from Ed and see where the anklet is.”

  She dropped her bra on the floor in surprise. “Duh!”

  “Ah, officer. I can see why you were celibate for six months. Sex clouds your mind.”

  “Who told you I’d been celibate for six months?”

  “Your best friend, Nina.”

  “I’ll kill her. Where’s my goddam bra?”

  “Think I’ll keep these,” he said. “In memory of a special occasion.”

  Standing up with her bra in her hand, she saw Clay with a pair of Sovay’s underpants on his head. She burst out laughing.

  The door opened.

  Sovay stood in the doorway, both hands full of shopping bags, her mouth ajar.

  Naked Jewel and naked Clay stared back at her.

  “Oops,” Clay said.

  Sovay’s jaw flapped as if she couldn’t get words out. Then she backed up a step and slammed the door.

  Scrambling into her jeans, Jewel said through her teeth, “I thought you pennied us in.”

  “I thought it would relax you to think we were pennied in,” he said. “I’m sorry. You were so tense. It seemed like the decent thing to relieve your mind of at least some of your wor—”

  She socked him on the arm with one hand, pulled up her jeans with the other hand, and stuffed her feet into her pumps. “Did I bring a purse in here?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure, or are you saying that to make me feel better?” She snagged his arm as he was reaching for the bedroom door. “Wait a minute—” She yanked him close so she could hiss in his ear. “What did you steal while I had a pillow over my head?”

  He widened his eyes at her and pooched his lips out. “Not a thing.”

  “If you stole anything, that’s a green sheet in your file. I’m not kidding about this.”

  Rustling came from the other side of the door. Sovay, waiting.

  Jewel said, “This screws our cover, you realize.”

  Clay shrugged. “So we change it. Now that your green tones are through the roof, you can’t resist sexualis imaginarium, so we’re having a little fling. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s lame, but we’re stuck with it.” Jewel sent her eyes around the room. “I wish there was another exit.”

  “Why? She knows we’re in here.”

  “I can’t stand walking past that bitch. She’ll needle me about this for ever.”

  “Leave it to me. I’ve got a story cooked up already.”

  “Of course you do,” she muttered, and let him open the door.

  Jewel bolted past svelte, perfumed, lovely, seething Sovay, not fast enough that she didn’t hear Clay say, “Sorry about that. I’ve been trying to get into her pants since she got here. I found out she has a fetish for other people’s beds.” He winked and aimed a pistol-forefinger at Sovay. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  Over her shoulder, fumbling at her own bedroom door across the hall, Jewel hissed, “Green sheet!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Clay bowed his way out of Sovay’s room and breezed down the hall, feeling brilliant. Intense, our Jewel. For an unsettling moment he wondered if he was up to her. It’s not like I have a gene for long-term relationships.

  On the other hand, neither had Jewel. Full of optimism, he ambled into the kitchen, where he found Griffy looking at a catalog amid a whirlwind of caterers. “Oh, Clay,” she said, too familiarly for a hostess speaking to a relative stranger. “Have you seen Virgil? The crab cakes are six dollars! He loves them, but he’s so mad about this birthday party, and they’re so good I don’t think people will take just one, but, so the crab cakes will cost about five hundred dollars, so I don’t know whether—”

  “How about we have some coffee?” Clay said, drawing her away from Caterer Central. They sat in the breakfast nook around the corner. The cook brought coffee and a grateful smile for Clay.

  He didn’t bother reminding Griffy that he was supposed to be a total stranger. “I thought this was a block party.”

  “He’s seventy tomorrow,” she said with determination. “He gets a birthday party.”

  “Maybe he’s sensitive about getting old.” He had thought she understood that. Her education was deficient in everything except makeup and male ego management.

  She lifted her chin. “Seventy is a milestone.”

  Clay abandoned tact. “Are you trying to send him the message that he’s too old for a new girlfriend? Virgil doesn’t like people to notice his weaknesses. He’s ruthless. He cuts his losses like lightning.”

  She flashed her eyes, looking superb, he had to admit. “So maybe I need to get ruthless too.”

  He threw up his hands. “Fine. Whatever. Piss him off. I suppose it’s good for his blood pressure.”

  She gave a merry laugh, and Clay blinked. She was in a good mood, he realized. She wasn’t scared. She was enjoying the prospect of matching tempers with Virgil.

  “You’re not afraid of him, are you?”

  “No, and you know something, I realized this yesterday, but I never have been. I act like I’m scared so he doesn’t get all kerfluffly, you know what he’s like.” She fluttered her hands like a teenager.

  He smiled at her in bemusement. “I’ve been scared of him all my life.”

  “I know. I’ve been scared for you sometimes. But his temper never bothered me.” She stood up and grabbed the caterers’ catalog. “Where is the old buzzard? It’s time he made some decisions around here.”

  Brain spinning, Clay followed her in search of Virgil. At least he would be a witness if anything exploded.

  Virgil was in the card room with an ugly look on his face, playing Solitaire with plenty of wristy follow-through. Clay walked to the window and pretended to interest himself in the checking account deposit slips he’d snitched from Sovay’s room.

  He wished Griffy would more careful. The old man seemed to be on the edge of something. Clay could hear his tone, harsh and full of authority as usual, and Griffy’s voice, cheerful yet defiant. That was bizarre — what could she be thinking?

  But that was why Virgil had brought Griffy home in the first place. He didn’t know what Griffy thought and he didn’t care.

  Then his father brought home the most beautiful showgirl in the world, with the kindest heart. Teenaged Clay had adored her with a heart starved for mother love.

  He lifted his head and eavesdropped. He heard Griffy say, “So you needn’t worry about the price, because I’m giving you crab cakes for your birthday.”

  “You’re feeding the whole block. How can you pay for it? You don’t have any money.”

  “I’ll sell my rhinestones. You never liked them because I got them before I met you.”

  “Rhinestones will buy crab cakes for forty people?” Virgil said, but Clay heard a different question in his voice.

  Amazed, Clay turned to look at them.

  “They’re very collectible right now.” She swooped forward and pecked Virgil on his bald dome. “So that’s settled. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

  And off she sailed, leaving Virgil and Clay gaping.

  Virgil slumped in front of his Solitaire game. “What,” he said in a bewildered voice, “the fuck has got into that woman?”

  Clay flinched. Virgil didn’t swear often. When he did, bad things happened to small boys. He opened his mouth, and Virgil cut him off with a savage hand-chop.

  “And what about this cop you’re sleeping with? So help me, boy, if you’ve abused my hospitality so she can investigate me—”

  “Can’t you tell? I thought you knew everything about everybody.”

  Virgil looked daggers.

  Inside, Clay flinched, but he said reassuringly, “We’re not inves
tigating you. For some strange reason, everybody thinks you’re a nice person.”

  But Virgil veered away. “What’s that noise?”

  Clay listened. He heard a distant, high-pitched ringing noise, like a fan belt slipping on a car. “Sounds like it’s upstairs.”

  “I told her to call the air conditioning company.” Virgil seemed to be working himself up. “Rhinestones. Crab cakes. Block party! She’s out of her frigging mind!”

  Clay cringed. I’m not a small boy anymore, he reminded himself. He took a deep breath. “She’s a good person. She’s giving you a birthday present you don’t deserve and she’s paying for it with her own jewelry.”

  “It’s cheap trash.” Virgil’s lower lip worked, and Clay wondered if he was thinking about all the times he’d tried to stop Griffy wearing the rhinestones. She was right, too, about his motive. The old man didn’t like to be reminded that she had had other keepers. “Junk,” Virgil muttered.

  “It’ll buy forty people crab cakes for your birthday.”

  “I don’t want a birthday party!”

  Clay leaned forward until he was nose-to-nose with his sire. “Well, you’re getting one. That’s a hell of a woman. She loves you, in spite of your rotten behavior. And you may not have noticed, but she is right on the edge. She’s figured you out. She knows she’s worth something. If you don’t bother to figure her out, you’ll be eating crab cakes by yourself.”

  Virgil gave him a puzzled look. “What’s got into you, boy?”

  “Better hire another food taster. You could be notch number six in Sovay’s belt. Because it doesn’t look like Griffy will stick around.” Virgil stared at him, speechless, so Clay lobbed his last grenade. “My mother left you, and now you’re going to lose Griffy. And it’ll be your own fault.”

  Clay walked out, his skin sizzling with terror as his body caught up with what his mouth had done.

  o0o

  Mrs. Noah Butt was as good as her word. She arranged for nine of her fellow fugitives from cosmetology to show up in the coffeeshop at Chestnut and Michigan.

  Jewel had got the idea to quiz them all at once, hear them talk, get a sense of Dr. Kauz’s popularity base, in case he ever unmasked as the inventor of the Amazing Whatever Potion.

  This turned out to be a bad idea.

  “Shirley, you look wonderful!”

  “How are you, Diane? That sweatshirt suits you! You’re radiant!”

  “So are you, darling. We all look wonderful now.”

  “Isn’t it fun?” said Mrs. Butt, the only person in the coffeeshop Jewel recognized. “Have you ever seen a room so full of happy women?”

  “Not since Janine Dorchester’s detective showed those pictures of her husband in divorce court.”

  This remark caused mass giggling. Jewel lifted her gaze to heaven. The smell wasn’t nasty. Just not what she would have expected from a coffeeshop full of Gold Coast matrons. Sort of sweat-socky. A little bit funky. She cleared her throat.

  “Hi, I’m Jewel Heiss.” She gave her job title and handed out cards. “The reason I asked you to come today—”

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s the girl from the city.”

  “Is she a new convert?”

  “Oh, she must be. Look how lovely she is.”

  “Yasmin, ask her how long ago she took the potion.”

  “Ahem!” Jewel raised her hand. “May I have your attention? I just have a few questions I wanted to ask you.”

  “I thought you were going to find a legal source of the potion!” Mrs. Butt said, ruffling.

  “Haven’t found one yet, but I am on the track of the person who invented it. The first step is finding out what it does, and whether it’s harmful. You wouldn’t want to give a harmful substance to a friend, would you?”

  “We all got ours from Eileen Butt,” someone said. “Didn’t we?”

  The ladies looked at each other. After loud consultation, it was agreed that they had all been supplied with potions by Mrs. Butt, who had got her supply from Buzz.

  “But he’s just the retailer,” Mrs. Butt said. “You said he wouldn’t go to jail.”

  “Not unless the potion proves harmful. Can you describe your, uh, symptoms for me? Oh, and I’m passing around a sign-up sheet, so we can all, uh, stay in touch.”

  “What a good idea!” someone said. “Make two copies. One for Officer Heiss and one for us.”

  Another woman leaped to her feet. Her dark red hair flew every which way, but at least she smelled more like soap and less like a jock strap. “My name is Yasmin Sabra, that’s Yasmin without an E, and I got my potion from Eileen two weeks ago. We were having lunch in that adorable little place up on Dearborn, or is it Oak Street—”

  “Oak Street,” Mrs. Butt said. “Hamburgers and Absinthe.”

  “Oh, I’ve been there,” said another woman.

  “Just the part about your symptoms, ma’am?” Jewel said.

  “Of course. Well. I put it in my purse and went for a massage and that night Helmy came home with lipstick on his cuff again, and I was miserable, and I remembered the potion and after he went out, we had this huge fight but that’s not important, anyway, I took it.”

  “And?” Jewel prompted. “How did you feel? What did it taste like?”

  “Well, I didn’t feel anything. It was minty.”

  “Yes, so was mine,” Yasmin said.

  “I thought wintergreen.”

  “With cloves, maybe?”

  “Can we let Yasmin finish, please?” Jewel said desperately.

  “Well, I began to feel better right away. It’s not as if I don’t mind Helmy sleeping with that little tramp, because I do.” Her whiny tone vanished. “But, well, I realized that it isn’t about me, really, is it? I’m a good person. I’m lovable and beautiful.” She stood straighter, and her eyes shone. “I don’t have to work at making myself satisfactory to anyone. I’m satisfied. I love myself and I love my life.” Her voice rang out, strong and confident. Jewel found herself smiling at Yasmin Sabra. “I even love my husband. Someday he’ll understand, if I can get another dose of that potion for him. Then he might realize that he doesn’t need to screw twentysomethings to be lovable.” There was no censure in her voice, just hope and sad, sweet pity for a lovable guy.

  The other ladies murmured, and one or two clapped.

  “I have half a dose at home, if you want it,” offered a woman wearing parts of two different track suits.

  Yasmin clapped her hands. “You’re the best! My marriage is saved!”

  “Uh, maybe we should find out if it’s harmful,” Jewel put in, but she was pooh-poohed by all present.

  Yasmin proclaimed, “If I ever meet the man who invented that potion, I’ll give him a hundred thousand dollars to advance his research!” She sat down to applause.

  “Me next!”

  “Oh, me!”

  Jewel covered her eyes with one hand.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I hate this tankini,” Jewel groused to Clay. She tugged at the bottom. It didn’t budge. Her frontispiece felt like a battering ram: high, tight, hard, and huge. She felt like she could play football in this swimsuit. She could plow snow. “I don’t want to go out in public like this.”

  Clay crinkled his eyes at her. “You’re adorable.”

  The house party had gathered in the vestibule. Virgil was taking his guests to the beach for a picnic supper, and to view the kite show and the fireworks to follow. She didn’t want to go. Randy was presumably still somewhere back in the house. Her cavorting with Clay hadn’t flushed him, and that filled her with worry.

  Everyone wondered where Lord Darner was. Jewel made an excuse about a ghost hunter in Skokie who’d called in a hot tip.

  “I told him it was impolite to leave in the middle of his visit, but he’s such an enthusiast.”

  She wanted to get her hands around Lord Darner’s throat and squeeze, but first she had to get over these recurring panic attacks from wondering where th
e heck his bed could be.

  “Well, we can’t wait for him!” Virgil said gaily.

  Sovay looked fabulous, swanking in her teeny weeny red bikini and transparent beach robe.

  Yet Griffy, though older and softer, got even more wolf whistles for her trim blue one-piece. She smiled and waved, looking thrilled with her celebrity and comfortable with it.

  Virgil and Kauz walked behind the women, presumably enjoying the view.

  They entered the pedestrian tunnel under Lake Shore. Jewel felt like a Viking in her tankini. She drew whistles, hoots, and animal noises. They follow you like dogs, Randy had said. Too proud to cringe, she held her head high and avoided men’s eyes, praying that nobody she knew—

  “Jules! Baby!” came a shout behind her. “Where ya been?!”

  She grabbed Clay’s arm and squeezed it.

  “Hey! Hey, Jules!” A volleyball team clogged the end of the pedestrian tunnel. Their leader, a sunburned hunk Jewel remembered from some years ago, frolicked up to her. “It’s me, Fred, from the Katz Beer Tournament? Whoa, baby, you look hot!”

  “Fred, this is Clay, my partner.”

  Fred’s face fell. “You’re kidding. You’re out of circulation? Oh, man!”

  Clay was a picture of huffy possessiveness. “Yeah, she is.”

  “Oh, man! Bummer! Man, nobody’ll believe this.” Fred turned to his teammates, who clustered around as if hoping Jewel’s touch could cure them of scrofula. He bellowed, “She’s out of circulation!” His voice echoed down the tunnel.

  A chorus of groans greeted this announcement.

  Griffy beckoned to Mellish, trailing the party with Mike the chauffeur and a load of picnic gear. Mellish put his load down and went back to the house.

  “Jules, I still have a lock of your pube hair.”

  “Hey, Jules, is your number the same?”

  “Yeah, if you ever dump this guy, like, call me!”

  Sovay’s lip curled. Jewel burned with humiliation. Clay put his arm around her and said, “Guys, can we clear the tunnel?”