The door flew open, and Gavin almost ran into Marissa in the hall. His notepad fell to the floor, and he bent down to pick it up.
"I thought you might need help getting back downstairs so I waited." Marissa smiled and had the courtesy to blush. If Gavin couldn't find the office by himself, maybe he wouldn't notice this was a poor attempt at a lie.
"Thanks."
Marissa couldn't tell what he was thinking. His blue eyes stared straight ahead, and the muscles in his jaw were clenched tight. He started marching in a way that would have made Adam proud. "Are you mad because I listened?"
Gavin looked at her as they walked. "Well, I'm not pleased, but that's not why I'm mad. I can't get over the people around here who just neglect to tell the police valuable information. I'm so tired of hearing that people didn't think it was important enough, or they forgot. Someone died here, and we're expected to figure out who killed the man. A little help would go a long way towards solving this case."
Marissa cocked her head slightly to look at him. "I don't understand why exactly his health is a big clue. Lots of people have diseases, but they aren't murdered."
"That's not the clue." Gavin let her step onto the escalator first and then slid his arm down the banister so that it was behind her. Marissa stepped down to the next stair, but not before she let her hand brush against his on the rail. "The real fact there was that he wasn’t doing well lately. Why kill someone who doesn’t take their meds? We have to look for someone who had a powerful motive that couldn't wait for Steve's death of natural causes. That's the clue."
"What if the murderer didn't know that Steve was dying?"
"That's something we need to find out, but it would be a lot simpler if people told us what they knew."
Marissa stepped off the escalator and started towards cosmetics. As she approached, she could see Tish's escort standing at the counter, talking to Nicole. Was her department was becoming a police dating service?
Nicole's face looked pale and Marissa wondered if the girl was frightened by the police or upset by the latest violent outburst although both were commonplace these days. The deputies greeted each other and left for the car.
"Nicole, could you call the janitors to come clean up the rest of this? After you're done, I'd like some help trying to salvage what's left of the display." Marissa pulled a trash can from behind the counter and started to gingerly pick up the broken bottles of perfume. As she did, the aroma of the combined scents rose and filled her nostrils, making her cough.
Nicole kneeled down silently and started picking up bottles that had survived the attack, setting them to one side. Unfortunately, the whole bottles were outnumbered by the shards. Puddles of oily liquid covered the floor.
"I think we could bottle up what's on the tile and sell some of it to the women who come in here." Marissa waved her hand towards Nicole to the let the scent surround her. "We could call it Overpowering."
Nicole kept at her task, not looking up or speaking.
Marissa waved a perfume-coated finger under the clerk's nose. "Nicole, usually you're talking a mile a minute. Are you in there? Has all this upset you? Do you need to go home?"
Looking up, Nicole's face was ashen. "Is it true, Miss Scott about Steve Douglas — that he had a STD?"
It was Marissa's turn to blanch. Gavin was going to kill her. No one would ever believe that she had kept her mouth shut. "Where did you hear something like that?"
"Well, I didn't mean to, but I overheard you and Deputy Tish discussing the murder, and I thought I heard him say that. I wasn't trying to listen, honestly. I thought he might be asking you for a date. I was just hoping, that's all."
"He asked that the information not be passed on because it hasn't been confirmed by the coroner yet, but Gavin did tell me that the medicine in Steve's pocket was Combivir which is a AIDS medication to fight HIV. Is this what upset you so much? You can't contract the virus from casual contact with Steve. You're at no risk from Steve unless you had sex or shared fluids. You were too busy ringing up sales to even see him."
Nicole nodded. "It just seems too horrible to be true. Why would he do something like that? How could he — I mean, knowing he was and all."
Marissa shook her head in amazement. "Could you say that again in plain English?"
"Oh, Miss Scott, it's just awful, and I don't know what to do." Big tears started rolling down Nicole's face and splashed into the fragrances on the floor.
Marissa sat awkwardly as the girl cried. She started to place a hand on her shoulder, but she was concerned that the alcohol in the perfumes would stain Nicole's sweater. She felt uncomfortable being Mother Confessor to someone she wanted to fire. "Why don't you tell me all about it, and maybe I can help?"
"That's just it. I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone and that means I can't ask for your advice." Nicole sniffed loudly. "I don't know what to do."
"I'm here. I'll listen."
"I wish it was that easy. I can't though because I promised." The girl got up and ran to the entrance of the mall.
Marissa started to follow when someone grabbed her arm. The janitor, an older man with glasses and a Reds cap, pulled a mop from the rolling bucket and pushed it into the puddles that covered the floor. "Excuse me, but you don't expect me to fix these cabinets today, do you?"
"I need them as soon as you can get them replaced." Marissa tried to see Nicole, but the clerk was gone. Looking at the shattered glass that had been her beautiful new department, Marissa sighed and turned back to work.
Chapter 10
Anne Dillon sat on the sofa with her legs crossed at the ankles, sipping a cup of coffee and trying to avoid Joshua as he ran his Tonka truck around her feet. She barely looked like the head of Juniors in her jeans and oversized sweatshirt. "So what is this big news that you had to tell me?"
Marissa looked at her friend. Anne had been her primary support during the last year through the divorce and trying to get on with her life. They had lived in the same small community when Marissa and Dan had moved to Cincinnati, and the two women had hit it off from the start. The differences in their lives had only made their friendship stronger, instead of pulling them apart. Marissa relied on Anne's stability and common sense when she wanted to do something rash to Dan.
"Your hero, Steve Douglas, was HIV-positive. Gavin told me yesterday at work — well, actually I just overheard it."
Anne put the cup to her mouth and drank slowly. When she was finished, she put down the cup without blinking. "Which part of the story is the big news — the fact that Steve was HIV-positive or that a certain member of the police is spending time with you?"
Marissa groaned and flung a throw pillow at the woman. "How can you not be surprised? The press doesn't even know about it —yet." Josh joined in on the fun, landing on top of Anne with a thud.
Anne uncovered herself from pillow and child. "Well, I am surprised about it, but certainly not stunned. Every account I've ever read about Steve has put him with some rich socialite or budding starlet. He never seemed very particular about who he was with, if you know what I mean."
"But there were no hints in the papers. Nothing?"
"No. I'm sure that whoever knew would keep his secret. American women are not going to pay eight dollars to see her idol if she knows he has a sexually transmitted disease. It's hard to maintain that romantic illusion when you're hit with reality." Marissa remembered that Anne had a Master’s degree in Business Marketing. She bet her friend could give Raymond West a few pointers if she kept talking like this.
Marissa punched one of the throw pillows and shoved it under her arm. "So you do think he got it from — well, from a woman?"
Anne laughed. "Definitely. First, Steve had a drinking problem, not a drug problem. He was in that clinic last year for alcoholism. You remember me telling you that. It was just after he had to drop out of that remake of Days of Wine and Roses with Madonna. Talk about life imitating art."
Marissa nodded and the other woman continu
ed her lecture. Marissa had a certain admiration for her friend. How could anyone fill up her mind with this much trivia and still be able to function?
"At the time, Steve did this interview with Barbara Walters, and he was quite adamant that he had never used drugs. He took a certain pleasure in that."
Marissa rolled her eyes. "I guess there's even a pecking order among addictions. So no dirty needles. Why couldn't he have contracted it from another man?"
"Not possible," Anne said, shaking her head. "There was that gay-bashing incident several years ago. Steve was on a talk show and made a really rude remark about homosexuals on the air. Don't you remember?"
"No, I don't. Maybe he was a closet gay. A lot of them are the worst homophobes around."
Anne sighed and continued to shake her head. With her freckled face and innocent air, she reminded Marissa of Josh's pre-school teacher, talking about her rambunctious pupil. Marissa thought about grabbing Anne's head in both hands to make it stop. "If he was a closet gay, why would he be sleeping around? HIV isn't passed through thinking about sex. I think you're just trying to get my goat by bad-mouthing someone I thought was attractive. Didn't you ever have a crush on a movie star?"
"Robert Redford in The Sting, but he's into saving the environment. I don't need to bad-mouth Steve Douglas. He was an obnoxious, prejudiced, hard-drinking, rude man who made bad movies. What is so attractive about that?" Marissa paused. "Actually, he sounds an awful lot like Dan."
"Marissa, you really need to get over that guy. He's going to marry someone else in a few months." Anne took another sip of coffee. "Obviously, he's over you. There's a nice guy waiting in the wings for you. You ought to give him a chance."
"Thanks, Dear Abby. I'm already aware of the fact that the jerk is getting married in a matter of weeks and besides, I am over him." Marissa pushed the hair away from her face and looked at Joshua who had climbed up beside her. Bursts of filial affection weren't normal for him and Marissa paused to put a hand to his forehead.
"Dan came into the store a few days ago." Marissa stroked Josh's hair and he stood up on the chair. "It was the weirdest thing. I didn't feel anything for him. I just looked at him like he was a stranger. It was an odd sensation, but it's definitely finished between us." Marissa turned around to check on Josh who was getting ready to jump off the reclining chair. "He's out of my heart, but not out of my life. I'm just not ready to date again. I can't stomach the thought of going back out into the singles scene at my age. Bars and bad pick-up lines and guys who think that they are the world's gift to women, no thanks. I'll just stay single."
Anne started laughing and had to set her coffee cup down so not to spill it. "You make it all sound so terrible. Dating wasn't all bad. You could date this policeman and skip some of that."
"Could we please change the subject? Joshua's in the room, and I don't want him to hear all about my love life. I’m not going to be one of those mothers who share everything with her kids. You came over to see the copies of the things in Steve's pockets. Let me go get them."
Marissa wove through the furniture and went into the hallway that led to the two bedrooms in the back of the apartment. When she returned, she was carrying a small attache case with her. She sat back down on the floor and pulled out a stack of file folders. "I put them in here so no one would find them. I've developed a real paranoia about things disappearing."
"It's no wonder —with your track record this week."
Marissa pulled out the copy of the partial letter and handed it to her friend. Anne sat quietly, reading it through several times.
"It's thought provoking, but hardly solid evidence. I mean, it could be from anyone. An old school friend, somebody he used to date." Anne sipped from her cup as she read.
"The murderer. Come on, how many people who used to know Steve Douglas would bother to write him a letter like this. From the sound of him, any acquaintance would be more likely to run away."
Anne looked at the paper again. "You could be right. There's a certain desperate ring to the note. Almost an urgency, a plea. Listen, '. . . something that can't wait any longer. I think you'll want to hear what I have to say.'." Her voice took on a melodramatic whisper.
"Anne, this is a note. You're acting like it's a great work of literature." Marissa could barely suppress her laughter as she spoke.
Anne sat up straight. "If you want my help, you could at least be civil about it. I don't want to spend my night out being made fun of."
Marissa looked at the carpet, trying to remember the last time she had gone out. Probably four months ago at the Giorgio seminar and the quick drink after it. Maybe Anne was right. "Sorry. I just forget sometimes that I don't need to be in attack mode twenty-four hours a day. After seeing Dan, it's hard to let down and relax."
Anne leaned back against the couch gently as if it might attack too. "That's okay. Most of the time I'm used to it, but once in a while —" She shrugged to make her point. "Besides, it just proves what I said before. You need to get over that man, and get on with your life."
"What more do I need to do to show you? Marry someone else?" Marissa shoved the next piece of paper at her. "This is the other note I found in Steve's pocket. It's just a bunch of numbers."
Anne looked at the scrap of paper briefly and handed it back. "This isn't Steve's handwriting."
Marissa's eyes grew big with thoughts of what she could say, but she bit her tongue. "How can you know that?" she asked, pushing the words from her mouth around the one-liners. Maybe they could get Anne on Jeopardy and hope the category of dead movie actors came up.
She held up the sheet so that Marissa could see the numbers. "Steve always dated his photos. Everything from this decade has a two in it and the one in this note is nothing like those. Steve's was more like a capital cursive Q. This is just a curve and a base."
"Anne, how do you do this? You're incredible."
"Do what?"
"Come up with trivia like this. It's going to take the police days to figure this out, and you catch it in a matter of seconds." Marissa slipped the sheet back into her briefcase and started to close it.
"Well, I've seen all his movies and read all the interviews with him. It's not like I don't know the man." Anne's eyebrows raised. "Well, have you called this number? What is it?"
"What are you talking about?" Marissa's face remained expressionless, but her eyes were sparkling. Someone had come to the same conclusion about the paper that she had.
"The phone number. On that piece of paper." Anne reached down to the briefcase with her free hand and pulled out the paper again.
"You think that's a phone number, too? I wanted to ask Gavin, but I wasn't sure how to bring up the subject."
"Of course it's a phone number. What else are seven digits on a piece of paper supposed to mean? Probably the murderer setting up a rendezvous."
Marissa's smile grew despite Anne's raised eyebrows. "I'm sorry, but I can't help it. You made some very valid points before, but I think you're pushing it too far. First, there isn't a dash between the numbers. When was the last time you wrote your phone number without a dash?"
"Maybe it was an idiosyncrasy of whoever gave this to Steve." Anne winced as Joshua ran a truck over her foot, Tonka dueling Nine West. "The murderer?"
"That you don't know about? I didn't think Steve had any secrets from you. It's some sort of code or something."
Anne stood up and took the paper with her. "I'm going to show you that I'm not crazy. I'm going to call this number and solve this crime. It's the least I can do for Steve."
Marissa followed her friend into the kitchen and stood near the phone. "Maybe it's the number for a local neo-Nazi group or a drive-through."
Anne waved her hand as she punched in the digits. She stood listening for a minute and hung up, smiling. "I told you that it was a phone number."
Marissa watched her from the corner of her eye as she poured some juice for her son. She grabbed the cap to the drink quickly, remembering how t
he letter got blurred to begin with. "So stop acting so smug and tell me, what was it?"
"It was a daycare center. Naturally, they were closed, but they left a message about their hours and rates."
Marissa pushed the cap down on the cup and went into the living room again. "So a nanny killed Steve Douglas? Or maybe he's seducing the child care help."
"Marissa!" Anne stamped her foot and mother and child turned to look at her. Joshua started crying, and Marissa bent down to pick him up.
"I'm sorry, Anne, but I don't see the connection." The woman stroked her son's hair and kissed him gently on the cheek.
"We've been discussing Steve Douglas and how he contracted HIV from too much sex. So what else is another result of too much sex? No, I'm not going to give you time to answer that. Babies are. So it's not a big jump to see that maybe Steve had an illegitimate child in Cincinnati. He lived here for a long time and came back to visit." Anne held out her hand to the boy and Joshua slapped it away.
"I thought Steve never came back to Cincinnati. He hated it here. His kid would have to be eight or nine by now. That's a little old for daycare."
"He's come back for other publicity events. Maybe it happened then."
Marissa stroked the boy's reddish-brown hair. "Wham, bam, here's a baby, ma'am."
"Something like that. Well, I think I need to go. Joshua looks ready for bed, and I'm not far behind him." Anne kissed the boy on his head and walked for the door, barely missing a lamp. "Just think about it. If a jerk like Dan could father this precious little guy, Steve could have had one too."
Chapter 11
At the end of a grueling Monday, Marissa made her way to the mall entrance as the last sales rep left the department. Usually, she liked the interaction with the different cosmetic sellers, showing her the latest in scents, make-up, and little gifts while spreading the gossip about the different stores in town. Today most of the appointments were courtesy calls since the store had just opened. However, she had waited for any one of the reps to spontaneously combust or start talking a foreign language. She'd always heard that bad things come in threes, but she wondered why she was getting a bulk discount. The events of the past week had taken their toll on her, and she just wanted to get away from work for awhile.
Love Stinks Page 7
