“Jeez, Maizie, it must be a big deal, it’s like you invented Velcro or something.”
“Yeah. It’s my year to be prom queen. I could’ve had Forio, or the Asians. . . . That’s a big reason Tcheiko’s interested, because his competition is. And the timing’s good; he’s bored with hiding out, wants to show he’s still in the game and expanding.”
“But—what happened with Annika?”
Maizie rolled her eyes. “She brought Rico around. That’s what happened to Annika.”
“And he liked U4? He wanted in on it?”
“Loved it. He and his friends were my first distributors. But eventually he told Annika. And she might’ve gotten used to the idea, but she caught him kissing me one day and that was it. She was such a child about that, I wasn’t comfortable around her anymore. But by then I couldn’t send her home—Tcheiko doesn’t like changes in domestic staff close to a meeting like this—so I had to threaten her mother’s life, all sorts of nonsense. What a big, unnecessary mess.” Maizie sat on the staircase. “Rico should’ve seen she had a streak of puritanism.”
So what happened to her? I wanted to ask again but couldn’t. If the answer was bad, I wouldn’t be able to keep this up. I cleared my throat. “Rico was not, I take it, puritanical?”
She gave me a sidelong glance. “Not in any way you can think of.” I don’t know what my face was doing, but she laughed. The cat squirmed. She set him down. “Shocked that I slept with him?”
“Not at all. You’re beautiful, Maizie.” If we could just go on like this, I thought. Like friends. Chatting. Gossiping. “You have the skin of a twenty-year-old.” And the earlobe of a twenty-one-year-old. Upstairs. Under the lawn ornaments. I was losing it.
“Elizabeth Arden day spa. And I got my eyes done last year.” She patted her hip under her denim apron. Where the gun was. “Being ten pounds overweight minimizes wrinkles. Not that I wouldn’t like to be skinny, but I am one damn good cook, and I’m not making foie gras for my three-year-old. Oh, my goodness, did I ever offer you some?”
“Foie gras? No.” What was foie gras? Liver?
She looked at her watch. “Well, too late now, but you saw it in progress, so I thought you’d like to taste the result.”
“I saw it?”
“Saturday night. The bird. Oh, there’s so much to talk about. Such a shame. I always felt an affinity for you, Wollie. You know Emma thinks we’re cousins? And you’re Grammy Quinn’s favorite, on that show of yours . . .” She stood, reached into her apron pocket—not the gun one, but the middle one—and pulled out a piece of Tupperware. It was the size of a hockey puck. “Lucky you. Fentanyl, far better than morphine. Nap time.”
“And then what?”
“Hey.” She winked. “Let’s not get into that, okay?”
“No, really,” I said, my voice shrill. “What will you do with my body? It’s not easy to lug around—my feet alone—. Believe me, this is something I know about.” Perhaps I was going into shock, talking about my body as though it were a suitcase.
“Honestly, you don’t want to know. People get so squeamish. A guy in my charcuterie class Sunday had to leave the room when I pulled out Goosie’s liver.”
“That was Goosie?” I gasped. “I thought it was a turkey.”
She laughed. “It was a pain in the ass, frankly. It took seconds to wring her neck, and forever to turn her into foie gras. But that’s life: moments of drama, hours of cleanup. No time for that tonight, I’ve got dinner cooking. And you’re right, I can’t carry you anywhere; I could barely drag Rico across the room.”
A murder confession. That was awfully easy. I swallowed. “This room?”
She shook her head. “Upstairs. I dropped him through the trapdoor.”
“Then what?” I whispered.
“If you must know, I had to get his limbs off. I tried a Skilsaw, but tissue splattered everywhere, so I went with a hacksaw, fit the torso and head in one Hefty bag, ground up arms and legs in the meat grinder, the small parts, and got the large bones out to the car in a second trip. Not bad.”
My mouth was very dry. “You’re losing me. Wh—why the meat grinder?”
“I had to limit trips to the car. Not so important on this end, but in Antelope Valley that kind of thing attracts attention.”
“Why Antelope Valley?” I asked, keeping my voice conversational.
“Good distance. Nice Dumpsters.”
“But wasn’t there a lot of . . . blood?”
“Oh, at first, just spewing out, and his body thrashing around, but not so bad once his heart stopped pumping. I used an aluminum tub for his parts, the kind we use at picnics to store ice and drinks, and a six-mil plastic sheet to contain things. . . . Thank God for custom ventilation. Gene made a big fuss over the expense last year, but you don’t do aromatherapy, let alone drug production with a ceiling fan.”
What to do? She had to be a little mad. Maybe a lot mad. These were not words I used lightly, considering my brother’s history with schizophrenia, but it helped me. I don’t know much about real evil, but mental illness is a world I’ve lived in. It could work to my advantage. Since she was armed, it was perhaps my only advantage.
“What a week for you,” I said. “You’re not just creative, Maizie, you’re brave.”
Maizie shrugged but looked pleased. “It’s no different from a surgeon or butcher. Once you get past the smell of blood and cutting through bones, it’s a series of tasks. Killing him was harder in one sense. It comes down to a moment. You can’t hesitate or you lose your nerve.”
“Was it because he wanted to be a partner?”
“Oh, please. Fifty percent of my gross? For what, his people skills? Not in this lifetime. The problem was, he threatened to turn me in. Think about that. I’m arrested, Gene’s arrested. Forget losing the house, the cars, Emma growing up in Palm Springs with Grammy Quinn. Prison would be the least of it, because by then I’d met Yosip and Frito—”
“Frito?”
“Tcheiko’s lieutenants. I could identify them. I know some organizational details the Feds would be interested in. And Tcheiko would lose face among his peers, because of my error in judgment, and he’s very unforgiving about that sort of thing, that was made very clear to me. I don’t think federal custody is really the place for me, do you?”
“Then it was . . . self-defense. Killing Rico.”
She smiled. “I’m not sure a jury would see it that way, since he was naked at the time. In front of the fire. Unarmed, except for prosciutto and olives, and a loaf of sourdough.”
“What’d you kill him with?”
“The Wüstof.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bread knife. Using what’s at hand, that’s a core homemaker philosophy. I went down on him, he fell asleep, I slit his throat. I always have my knives sharpened for the holidays, a little cutlery store in Beverly Hills. Ear to ear is what you always hear, so that’s what I focused on, one good incision. And from there it was just a step at a time. You can do anything in the world if you break it into small, manageable parts. Oh, please.” She was looking at me now, eyes narrowed. “Don’t waste your sympathy on him. Do you know he came over on Saturday to ask if I’d killed Annika? You told him she was looking for a gun, so he thought I’d killed her. Thought he could squeeze me for a bigger percentage. Do you need a Kleenex?”
My nose was running, the way it does when I try not to cry. I thought of Lauren Rodriguez, the look in her eyes that would never go away now. She’d never get over losing her son. I couldn’t stop my nose. I felt as though my face were leaking. “His mom,” I whispered.
Maizie stood. “She shouldn’t have raised such a selfish kid. I’m sorry for her, I truly am, but everyone’s got a mother—you can’t let that stop you. I have a child.” She glanced at her watch. She was like Bing, ready to yell “Cut!” the minute the conversation palled.
“Capricorn,” I said breathlessly. “Emma’s the Capricorn. The logo on your pills.”
Maizie smiled. “Yes. Emma.” There was a counter between us, a white counter, sparkling clean, no trace of the blood that must have spattered here from Rico Rodriguez going through a saw. “Because you know what real euphoria is? An epidural, after fourteen hours of labor. And then the prize. My Emma. Giving birth to my baby was the best day of my life.”
“Maizie,” I said. “She’s so wonderful.”
“Thank you. You’d have been a good mom, too, Wollie. I’m sorry, I had no idea you’d keep at this the way you did. And you figured out a lot. Surprisingly. Not to be offensive, but you just don’t look that smart. I think it’s your hair.”
“I suppose—” I cleared my throat. “If I didn’t want to take this—fen—”
“Fentanyl,” she said, and her hand once more reached into her denim apron pocket. She drew out the gun. It was small. Black. “It’s a twenty-two. It’s all I could find; Gene’s always walking off with the keys to the gun cabinet. It’ll do the job, I just can’t guarantee how fast, and you could be conscious the whole way out. And consider the mess. I don’t have time to clean and even if Lupe were here, I couldn’t ask her, she’s Catholic. And it’s loud. The room’s insulated, assuming the trapdoor worked. It should close automatically—” Maizie walked over to the spiral staircase, heels clicking across the white tile floor. I looked around frantically, but there was no place to run, hide, no door, nothing. A weapon, then, something, anything. I tried a kitchen cabinet. Locked. Each cabinet had little locks.
How had she pulled this off, how could no one know about this, the police, the FBI—
They did know. She hadn’t pulled it off. For the second time in an hour I felt like the stupidest person alive. Simon had tried in every way he could to prevent this. There was no crime going on at Biological Clock except bad TV; he’d “recruited” me to distract me. He’d done everything but glue my feet to Santa Monica Boulevard to keep me away from here.
But here I was.
Where was he?
The house must be under surveillance, bugged, the phones tapped—that’s how it worked, right? Agents must be in a van on the street, listening to everything we’d been saying, getting it all on tape, maybe waiting for the right moment to come rushing in—
Now would be a good time! I wanted to yell.
Maizie climbed back down the spiral staircase with a smile. “Okay, all insulated. Wollie, don’t be difficult. It’s like Emma’s pink medicine. She always thinks it will taste bad, but it doesn’t. This could be so easy.”
Simon wasn’t coming. Not that my opinion of men is low, but in my experience, the cavalry doesn’t show up just because you need them. If Simon was listening, he wouldn’t be listening, he’d be in here already, he’d be in here at the first mention of guns and whatever Maizie kept yapping about in that Tupperware. He wouldn’t use me for bait or for evidence gathering. He wouldn’t use me, period.
Simon! I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream, period.
He wasn’t here because he wasn’t listening, because this was a soundproof room, with no telephone, and a secret entrance that no one, not even a state-of-the-art good guy knew about. And they didn’t know I was here because my car was parked blocks away and I’d used the back-gate entrance that UPS knew about, but the FBI maybe didn’t, since my hostess had neglected to fax the FBI a map and, most of all, they didn’t know I was here because they all thought I was heading to Biological Clock.
“Shouldn’t we do this in your car, Maizie? Or mine? If you’re going to use my car to dump my body, wouldn’t it be easier if I’m already in it?”
“No,” she said, growing exasperated, “because then when I dump you, I’d have to drag you in one piece and it would attract attention. We went over that. Also, you’d be easy to ID, they could determine time of death—no. Trust me, it creates more problems than it solves.”
“I see.” I seemed to be both shivering and sweating now, and then I sneezed; it was as though my body were running through its repertoire of involuntary activities, sensing the end. My memory was running through its own repertoire, saying I love you to P.B., Joey, Fredreeq, Uncle Theo. Mom. Simon. Doc.
I loved you too, Doc said back. I just loved my kid more.
“One last thing,” I said. “Where’s Annika?”
“Wollie, it’s so ironic. She killed herself. She left me a suicide note the day she left. I just couldn’t show anyone; it was too incriminating.”
That’s not true, I thought, wrapping my arms around myself to fend off hysteria. Annika e-mailed me. Just days ago. I had to believe it came from her, because otherwise, what was all this for? If she’d been dead all along . . .
I held myself tighter and felt something in my jean jacket, in the pocket. Hard.
I slipped my hand in my pocket. Cold. One of the things I’d bought at Williams-Sonoma. The meat mallet. I could feel the tiny string on it, attached to the small rectangular price tag.
Words began to run through my head like voice-mail messages.
Crotch, neck, soft parts of the face. Seth, from Krav Maga.
I couldn’t do that. I don’t even do sit-ups.
You do what you have to do to stay alive. Ruta, my childhood babysitter.
Annika would never kill herself. Not over a guy. She was smarter than that.
If you’re not dead, you’re not done. Seth.
“Can I look at it?” I said, my voice squeaky and high, like little Emma. “The fentanyl?”
Maizie took a seat and pushed the small Tupperware container toward me.
My left hand worked the lid, my right hand staying in my pocket. I couldn’t believe she didn’t notice, but she didn’t. I was shaking so badly that when I pushed the Tupperware back across the counter, it wouldn’t go in a straight path. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t get it open.”
Of course she tried to open it for me. She was a mom. The Tupperware lid was tough, though. She needed both hands to pry it off. She held on to the gun but, still, she used both hands, and so then she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at the Tupperware.
This was it. Now or never. A last voice played in my head. A moment. You can’t hesitate or you lose your nerve. The voice was Maizie’s.
Some force reached into my pocket and pulled out the silver meat mallet with my hand attached to it. I don’t know what you’d call it, some phenomenon of physics or biology stretching across a white Formica counter to bring the full weight of an arm onto someone’s neck, head, shoulder, ear, cheekbone, not once, not even twice, but enough times to make her fall from the stool she sat on, onto the white tile floor. When that happened, I stopped.
The blows stopped, but the cries didn’t, the raw sounds a throat can make, somewhere between a scream and a sob that I finally recognized as coming from my own body, not hers.
40
I ran up the spiral staircase. At the top, waiting for me, was the yellow cat, wanting out.
I wanted out too.
There was no handle, though, or door knob, so I pressed and pushed and banged the side of my fist against the trapdoor. It wouldn’t open. There was a keypad but I couldn’t begin to guess a code, so I punched numbers. The cat meowed at me. I thought about panicking and then remembered I had a cell phone. In my pocket. My other pocket.
I got reception. I called Simon. I didn’t think twice. When his voice mail answered, I said, “It’s Wollie, I’m in her house, the studio behind the house, underground, in an underground—and I can’t get out and I’ve maybe—killed her. And she said Annika’s dead but she can’t be dead because she e-mailed me.” My voice cracked and I hung up and clutched the banister of the spiral staircase, where I sat, my body knotted like a pretzel. The cat purred and rubbed itself against my shoulder.
I dialed 911. They asked me questions. I answered them. I hung up.
I sneezed. Then I waited.
Life is short. That’s one of those things that occurs to you when you glimpse death, yours or anybody’s. You think, “I’ll remember this
, this will remind me not to waste time,” but you forget. You carry on like you have several hundred years to live and like it matters if some guy now living in Taiwan who once loved you still does, or if you pass a math test or win a reality TV show or finish the frogs or get your car washed before the end of the year.
When all that really matters is that you’re not dead. The rest of it, like what that means in the long run or what I was feeling right at the moment, I couldn’t sort out. I didn’t know if Maizie Quinn was or wasn’t dead, and I knew that this distinction would make a big difference in the lives of many people, me among them, but for the moment I didn’t care. I had her gun on the top step, away from the cat, and I had the meat mallet. There were no sounds below me, the sounds of a human being rallying. If I were a different sort of person, a brave one, for instance, I might have gone down to see if I could do something about her, like revive her or tie her up, but I was the person I was, so I stayed where I was, crouched and tense and concentrating on steady shallow breaths, thinking about being alive. Sneezing.
I don’t know how long it was just the yellow cat and me, but after a time there were voices, so muffled I might have been hallucinating. I screamed and pounded and then the door opened upward and people moved past me down the spiral staircase. Someone—he told me he was FBI, they were all FBI—helped me up, took from me the meat mallet, with blood drying on its silver surface, and, after I directed his attention to it, the gun. He led me to a chair near the fireplace and gestured to a woman, who came and stayed close to me. At some point someone from below called up, “She’s alive,” and for a moment I thought they were talking about me. And then I slid out of the chair onto the floor, I’m not sure why, except that I wanted something more solid underneath me. I stayed there across the room from the reindeer pieces with their primer drying until paramedic types brought Maizie up from below on a stretcher. I didn’t see her face, only her healthy-looking blond hair, matted with the darkness of drying blood. I began to shake all over again. That’s when Simon walked in.
Dating is Murder Page 31
