The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “I always do,” Sovay said.

  Griffy lifted her chin. “In that case, I win too, because he’s not worth having if he would take you over me.” I can go to college. I could get a job. Her heart was hot and sore.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Sovay said and laughed, or choked, as she bent over the ivy again.

  The birthday cake caterer arrived. Griffy swallowed once and went to supervise the setup.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Clay, honey, would you find Virgil and bring him outside?” Griffy said at Clay’s elbow, much to his relief. “His birthday cake is here.”

  “Will do.” He escaped from Beulah-and-friends in her wake. “Thanks for getting me out of there. Those women stink.”

  “I know. I think they don’t care. They’re nice anyway, aren’t they?” Griffy waved back to the nutcase ladies. “There’s something so likeable about them.”

  “They’ve been taking a potion,” Clay said grimly. “It works like the Venus Machine. Apparently it also makes them nuts.”

  “Oh, no.” Griffy sounded dismayed.

  “Promise me,” Clay said, taking her hands, “you won’t take that potion.”

  She hesitated. “Well, if I — but Virgil doesn’t like smelly people — anyway, I don’t care,” she said with resolution. “May the best woman win.”

  He put his arm around her. “You okay?”

  With a sniff, she said, “Clay, Sovay says she’s talked Virgil into going to live with her in the south of France!” She clutched his arm. “Do you think it’s true?”

  “No. She’s just being a b-brat. This is what Virgil gets for filling the house full of marks. Actually, it’s a good sign, because she wouldn’t show her claws like that if she didn’t feel desperate.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do. Go back to the party.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Serve your cake. I’ll rout him out of his rathole.”

  He found Virgil in the collection room, sitting at the computer, and attached himself to his father’s arm without ceremony. “Come on. They’re cutting your birthday cake in fifteen minutes.”

  “At least let me close the program,” Virgil protested.

  Clay hauled the old man to his feet, surprised at how frail and bony he felt. “Hurry up.” He stood behind Virgil, watching the screen while the old man tapped keys. “Ripping off someone’s credit card account?” The screen showed a fat balance.

  “CD account,” Virgil said. The screen went black. “There. Now I can go.” Clay moved to take his arm again. Virgil drew back. “You forget who’s got the whip hand, boy? I still have the video. Find the FBI mole or I’ll send it to your supervisor. That’ll be a green sheet in your file.”

  Clay counted to ten. Then he said, “Tell me something. Did it occur to you, while you were conning Griffy that you loved her last night, that you had a witness the whole time?”

  “That room is secure. I sweep it every day now. With FBI in the house? What do you take me for?”

  “A cuckold,” Clay pronounced. All the rage he’d hidden while Virgil’s taunted him these past few days burst out of him. “I take you for a cuckold. That means a guy whose wife is screwing somebody else under his nose. In your case, right there in the bed with you. Did you think she got all pink and happy only for you?”

  Virgil looked flushed. “What are you talking about?”

  “The fairy tale, Dad. Lord Darner, who disappeared out of a locked second-story room when you and Jewel were about to walk in on him and Sovay. He’s in that bed.”

  “Oh, horse pucky.” The old man’s went pale and then red.

  “He’s in that bed. I could prove it to you, if you’d let Jewel be alone in that room for twenty minutes.”

  Virgil looked shaken. “You puppy. You worm.”

  “Cuckold,” Clay said, projecting truthfulness the way he’d been taught.

  “I can have you arrested. I have the contracts from the Torstensen job, four years ago,” Virgil said, starting to tremble. White spots appeared in the corners of his mouth.

  Clay went hot. He leaned into Virgil’s face. My God, he’s so old. I could break him in half.

  “I always knew you would turn on me if you got emotional enough,” he said, and saw his father flinch. “I didn’t think it’d be Griffy who sent you over the edge. You love her. You always have, you dope. You thought she was a doormat, and now she’s got her ego more than two inches above the floor, and you’re so old, you can’t stomp on her like you used to. Maybe it’s time to start treating her like a person.” He turned the screw. “If it’s not too late.”

  “Get out. Get out of my house.”

  Clay closed his hand over Virgil’s wrist. His heart hammered so loud, he thought it would come out his ears. “You’re coming downstairs with me now and eating some birthday cake.”

  o0o

  Jewel meanwhile was fending off one of Virgil’s neighbors. She couldn’t find Griffy, so she surrendered to hunger and followed the smell of grilled bratwurst up the alley.

  Once again her fatal spell got her in trouble.

  The grillmeister weighed three hundred pounds including gut, and he was shirtless, and he had a long-tined barbeque fork in his hand. Beer was apparently making him deaf.

  “I’m Jack Allen,” he kept saying, gripping her wrist with one hand and trying to slip his fork-holding hand around her. “I developed that condo building over there.”

  “No,” she said, keeping an eye on the barbeque fork. “Let go of me.” Crap, she hadn’t had to use physical force since college. This Venus Machine effect sucked.

  “Where have you been all my life? You’re so beautiful,” he crooned. “So very, very—”

  For Pete’s sake, she was wearing a feathered mask that covered everything but her eyes and mouth. “Let go of me or I will hurt you.”

  Let’s see, could she reach his nuts without crossing within range of the fork? Maybe she should shove his bare belly against the barbeque grill. A close spin, a kick to the back of the knee, and push. Sooner or later, he would let go of her.

  The drunk gasped. “Beautiful!” His grip slackened, his eyes fluttered, and he sank to his knees.

  “Hi,” Clay said, his face cold, his hand on the drunk’s shoulder. “Time for some birthday cake.”

  “Jack!” a woman shrieked. She rushed down her back steps and threw a tattooed arm around her fallen barbeque master.

  “Thank God,” Jewel said. “I was thinking I’d have to leave scars. What did you do to him?”

  “Vulcan neck pinch.”

  “You’ll have to teach me that one.” Something was the matter with her partner. “What up? Buddha not smiling.”

  “Virgil,” Clay said, drawing her away from the Allen barbeque. “He’s losing his rag over the FBI mole thing. Are we positive it’s Mellish? It might be smart to toss him a bone.”

  “We don’t mess with federal agents gratuitously,” she reminded him. Poor Clay seemed really bent. She offered, “How about I go find Mellish and give him the cop handshake, see if he responds. If he does, I’ll let you know.”

  A smile cracked Clay’s face. “Great. Thanks.” He pushed a feather away from her eyes. “You okay in there?”

  “Sweaty. What’s that old man been doing to you?” Jewel looped her arm through his elbow and led him toward the sound of “Happy Birthday.”

  “Just a little family blackmail.”

  “I’ll kneecap him for you. Jack Allen got my blood up.”

  “I’m not helpless,” Clay said.

  Boy, we are brittle tonight. “I never said you were.”

  As they walked down the alley toward Virgil’s house, Jewel decided to keep Clay out of the loop a while longer.

  Time for a talk with our host. At least she didn’t have to conceal her identity from Virgil.

  No need to tell Clay all that.

  The first person she saw, when they came up to the crowd in the alley outside the Thompson garden gate,
was Buzz, shoveling birthday cake into his face. “What are you doing here?”

  “Eagin birfgay gake. Hi, Officer Jewel. I didn’t recognize you in the mask.”

  “Did you bring any more of that stuff?”

  She yanked open his backpack where it dangled from his shoulder and rummaged. There were a lot of things in the backpack, some of them squishier than she wanted to know about, but no little bottles.

  “Okay, you’re clean. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re here after all. Come with me.”

  She led Buzz behind Virgil’s garage, which gaped open so passers-by could try out the Venus Machine. “In about an hour there’s going to be a press conference here. I want you up front and center. If I point to you, you speak up and tell the press where you got those little bottles.”

  He squinted at her. “But you said I’d get busted.”

  “Not unless there are more little bottles. You don’t have any, do you?”

  “Hey, if I had any, I’d-a sold ’em by now.”

  She crossed her fingers. “If you won’t do this, I’ll have to bring in the cops, because there’s no other way to stop Kauz. If you play ball,” she said, regretting what she was about to offer and also realizing how fiendishly addictive blackmail could be, “I’ll take off the anklet.”

  He hesitated.

  She said, “C’mon. There will always be other crap to sell. I’ll bust you for that, too. But the anklet’s on. I don’t need to take it off.”

  He scratched a zit with his plastic spoon. “Well, I dunno. The Doc’s been pretty good to me.”

  I’ve been good to you, dammit, and what’s my reward? “Buzz, think what the cops can do to you.” She leaned over him and looked into his eyes. A picture flashed through her mind of Buzz, miserable, sitting at a Thanksgiving dinner table with a couple of very proper-looking parent types. What? “The batteries are good for five years.”

  He looked pale. “Dag, Officer Jewel, you’re tough.”

  She slapped him on the shoulder. “Good boy. See you back here in twenty. In the meantime, you can eat until you burst.”

  His eyes lit up.

  Jewel skirted the crowd and went into the Thompson garden in search of Mellish.

  The whole house party was in the garden, along with a dozen neighbors, hanging around a bar and a punch bowl and a two-tier ice cream cake the size of a ’78 Caddy transmission. Griffy talked and laughed, her green feathers quivering. Sovay stood silent in gold and black. Virgil looked like a devil in a crimson and scarlet mask, pushing tiny spoonsful of ice cream cake past the feathers into his pie-hole. Jewel spotted Mellish hovering in the background. She crooked a finger at him.

  He backed toward the kitchen door, away from her. Why Mellish, I didn’t know you were afraid to talk to me. She smiled and sprinted forward. She got to his side before he had his hand on the doorknob.

  “Hello.” No point in subtlety, if he was going to duck her. She flashed her badge, quick enough that he could see metal flash but not so slow that he could see what it said. “May we talk?”

  He was taller than she was, and bigger, too. She looked straight into his eyes and got a mental image of a closed door. What the—? This stupid Venus Machine effect wasn’t working for beans tonight.

  “Inside or outside?” he said, not sounding butlery.

  She was still puzzling over that picture of the closed door. “Outside. But within sight of witnesses.”

  A caterer tried to open the kitchen door from the inside and bumped her on the shin.

  Mellish seemed unflapped. She made him go down the steps ahead of her and, as she glanced down at his big, shiny, thick-soled, federal-looking shoes, she remembered seeing them before. From under a bed. Closed door. Closet door!

  “Closet door.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s in Virgil’s closet, Mellish?”

  “Yes, Mellish, what’s in my closet?” Virgil said behind the butler, and she saw Mellish’s eyes flare with alarm.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Mellish turned toward his employer, however, his poise seemed restored. “Your other smoking jacket, sir. There is ice cream on this one,” he said with utter detachment, as if his employer was welcome to smear himself all over with ice cream if he wanted to.

  Virgil glanced at his sleeve. “So there is. Why don’t you fetch me that other jacket. Ms. Hess and I will be in the card room.” He smiled like a snake at Jewel. “If you don’t mind.”

  Jewel raised her eyebrows, a wasted gesture behind the feathers. “I’d like a word with you, too.”

  They went inside and Jewel took off her mask, which was smothering her where she stood. In the card room, Virgil unmasked and poured himself a glass of brandy. “Drink, officer?”

  “No, thank you.” She knew what she would have to do. For a moment she wished she still had her mask on, so that her red face wouldn’t show. But her best weapons here were her honesty and her open emotions. Virgil could beat her at the sneaky stuff.

  “I see my son has already told you about the videotape.”

  She attacked. “Has he told you about the incubus in your bed?”

  Virgil went still. Then he flicked a couple of the fingers holding the brandy snifter. “Ah, the fairy tale.”

  “Have you listened to that tape, Mr. Thompson? Not just watched, but listened?” He didn’t speak. “Obviously you haven’t, or you would have thought your blackmail through better.” To her surprise, he looked embarrassed. “Didn’t you wonder why we chose to have sex in that room?”

  “My son has a penchant for foolish thrills.”

  Me, too, she thought. “Your son and I did the only thing I knew that would bring Randy out of hiding. We didn’t know you had already switched out the bed.”

  “I thought you displayed laudable enthusiasm. Very, ah, invigorating to watch.”

  Here it came, the blush to end all blushes, and humiliation, and then anger, a healing anger that freed her from fear. Jewel let the blush and the humiliation do their worst. She took a deep, freeing breath. Rage cleared her mind.

  “This morning, I saw the face of the woman you’ve been calling your sister.” She leaned forward, though she wanted to hide herself from those lizard eyes. She spoke crudely to push past humiliation. “Randy’s been fucking me for weeks. I see that face in the mirror every morning. It’s the face of a woman who’s been sleeping in a bed possessed by Randolph Llew Carstairs Athelbury Darner.”

  Her voice went hoarse. “That man — that creature, he’s more than a man after two hundred years — he is the best fuck in the universe. He can read a woman’s mind and give her exactly what she wants. He can do her asleep or awake. He can do her—”

  “I don’t believe in magic,” Virgil said sharply. She saw him smooth out his face.

  “I didn’t believe at first, either. But Randy can do her—”

  Virgil interrupted again. “You’re deluded. The bed is mine and it stays in that room. The tape is mine, too. Maybe your employer would like a copy. Maybe the mayor.”

  Jewel raised her voice. “You can wriggle all you want, but I know what you don’t want to hear. Randy can do a woman while she’s having sex with somebody else. And, unless that woman is me, the other man will never even know.”

  “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with,” he said in a silky voice. “I can send that tape to the media.”

  “I don’t think you know my reputation. I’m a slut.” His head snapped back at the word. “I’ve screwed every ninth disease-free, single, adult male in the city of Chicago. Two of them have already put me on the Internet. We won’t go into what happened to them.” She’d hated those Internet pictures. It creeped her to the max to mention them to this evil old man.

  Virgil sneered.

  She showed her teeth. “But that’s not my threat. My best threat is to do nothing. Because I saw Griffy’s face this morning.”

  Virgil went still. His face was expressionless.

  “If you give me that tape
, I’ll go up to your room, alone, and get Randy out of your bed.”

  “That’s it? That’s your threat?”

  “No, this is the threat. If you keep the tape, I leave Randy in the bed. And Griffy sues your ass for palimony and takes the bed. Or maybe not. Maybe you can make it up to her somehow, despite the way you’ve treated her, and maybe she’ll stay with you. But if I’m telling the truth, she will never give up that bed.”

  He opened his mouth and she raised her voice again, rolling over him.

  “And you will never know if Randy is in there or not, because Randy doesn’t do guys. That’s not his curse. He has to satisfy any woman in his bed. It’s annoying sometimes, he can’t control himself — he’s a bigger slut than I am — but I guess if you’ve practiced two hundred years, it’s hard to break the habit.

  “You and your videotape,” she said with scorn. “Shall I tell you what it feels like to a woman, to think you’re alone in bed and then find out, inch by magical inch, what happens when he starts to make his presence known? How it feels to be having sex with a guy and then realize, hey, there’s too many hands touching me, there’s too many tongues licking me, too many—”

  “Stop!” Virgil was panting, his face dark with rage. “I don’t believe you.”

  “So don’t.” She shrugged. “All you have to do is tell Griffy you’re getting rid of that bed. See how she reacts.”

  Jewel turned on her heel and walked out, swinging her mask at her side.

  Holy Jumping Jack Flash in a basket with fries and slaw. That was terrifying. She decided to stop needling Clay for knuckling under to his dad.

  Now to warn Griffy to do her part.

  Out in the alley, the block party was picking up speed. Other home-owners had opened their garages and back yards. Smells of grilled steak filled the air. The Self-Love ladies stood out in their huge feathered masks, but other lady merrymakers made up for it in itty bitty cocktail dresses, big sparkly rocks, and shoes inappropriate for a cobbled alley. Everyone was drinking.

  After the fight with Virgil, Jewel regretted turning down his brandy. Though he might poison me.