by Клео Коул
I approached the only stall door that was closed and heard a choking gasp. “Breanne, are you crying?”
I didn’t relish playing girlfriend to the grand bitch of Trend. But the woman did sound like she was suffering; and if anyone knew what it was like to choke on tears over Matteo Allegro, it was yours truly.
“Come on now, Bree. It’ll be all right. Come out and we’ll talk about it—”
But the fashion maven didn’t want to talk. Instead, one of her thousand-dollar double-strapped Fen pumps flew through the small space between the bottom of the stall door and the floor, narrowly missing my ankle.
Great! First she dismisses my detective work, now she’s throwing shoes at me. Forget this! I was about to turn and leave when the stall door rattled and cracked open.
“What? Did you change your mind? You want me to come in now?”
I cautiously pushed the door wider—and froze.
Matt’s fiancée was choking all right, but not on prewedding tears. A man was standing behind her in the stall. I couldn’t see his face or much else to define him. He wore a black ski mask, a long black coat, and his thick black gloves were literally squeezing the life out of Breanne’s slender white throat.
“Help!” I cried at the top of my lungs. “Heeeeelp!”
I could see Breanne’s French-tipped fingernails were digging into her attacker’s black gloves, but it was no use, the strangling grip was firm.
“Helpppp!”
My voice echoed hollowly in the tiled space, and I feared the remote bathroom was too far away from the loud party for anyone to hear. Bree’s eyelids were fluttering; her long, lithe limbs were going limp; she was losing consciousness!
I feared leaving her to get help so I lunged into the stall myself, pulled on the man’s gloved fingers, tried to break his merciless grip. It began to work, until the attacker’s body turned enough to kick out and slam me backward.
“Dammit!”
I landed on the floor, my whole side throbbing. The sloppy fall had dispersed the contents of Breanne’s handbag. Makeup, credit cards, a red leather wallet with hundreds of dollars falling out—my gaze quickly scanned the scattered items. Finally, I spied something useful: a small can of Mace.
Yes!
I grabbed the pepper spray, aimed the nozzle, and pressed the trigger. The burning stream struck the man point-blank in his ski mask. The attacker howled, and his gloved hands released Bree’s neck. I grabbed Matt’s half-conscious fiancée around her waist, yanked her backward with all my strength, and we tumbled together onto the floor.
Coughing, the man stumbled out after us. Breanne was thinner than I was, but she was also much taller, and I was trapped for a minute under her large, limp form. I squirmed, trying to turn my head, get a decent look at her attacker. I glimpsed brown pants and shoes under the long black coat. He wasn’t a giant, but he wasn’t small, either. From the floor, I had trouble estimating his height; and with the ski mask on his head and the gloves on his hands, I couldn’t even be sure of his race!
I only had a second to make an ID, and I couldn’t do it. Howling and clawing at his saturated mask, the man bolted for the exit. I heard the door swing shut, then an eerie silence.
With a groan of pain, I rolled over to check on Breanne. She was already sitting up and clutching at her long white neck, now bruised with angry red marks. Her necklace snapped off, the silver and turquoise tumbling from her throat like a dead serpent.
I faced Breanne, my heart still racing. “Are you okay?”
Breanne was gasping for air. “No,” she rasped. “Dizzy. Sick. Need a minute.”
“I’ll be back,” I said.
One of my wedge platform sandals was half off my foot. I quickly fixed it, ran out the door, and madly scanned the corridor. But no one was there. The ladies’ room was in the very back of the restaurant, beyond the kitchen entrance and even remote from the men’s room, which was off the building’s front bar. I noticed the fire exit door was hanging open, and I guessed the man had escaped through the back alley.
I could have risked running after him into that alley, but it wouldn’t have been smart. I was small, unarmed, and I didn’t want to leave Breanne alone for long. Since I’d left my cell phone in my bag, which was still sitting in the dining room, I hurried toward it. On the way, a waitress nearly collided with me coming out of the busy kitchen. I grabbed her arm.
“Call 911,” I said. “Be quiet about it. Don’t cause a panic, but a woman was just attacked in your ladies’ room. When the police and paramedics arrive, tell your manager, okay?”
I went back to the restroom and found Breanne still on the floor. There was a lingering smell of burning pepper from the Mace, and I hit the switch on the room’s powerful fans. The air cleared quickly.
“You’re bleeding.” I pointed to the hollow of Breanne’s shoulder.
She looked down. “My necklace... while he was choking me. The metal dug into my skin...”
Her voice was still raspy, and I worried about damage to her vocal chords. I pulled a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and dampened them in the sink. Then I sat back down on the bathroom floor and gently pressed her bleeding wound. She winced.
“Just hold that on there, okay?”
With an exhale, she nodded. Then she regarded me. “Are you okay, Clare?”
“Oh, sure... the scumbag kicked me pretty good.” I rubbed my aching hip where the jerk had slammed me. “But I’ll survive. I’ve got pretty good padding down there, as you already know.”
I gave her a little smile, glanced down at myself, and frowned. I’d worn a new dress of pearl-pink silk to the party (a name designer at outlet prices, thank you very much). But part of the wrap dress had unwrapped during the struggle. I stood up to secure my dress back around my body and tighten the matching belt.
“So what the hell happened?” Breanne’s voice was a lot less raspy now.
“What do you mean?”
In record time, the woman’s expression went from human and caring to cold and accusatory. “I thought you told Matt that I was out of danger.”
Wow, I thought. The bitch is back.
I folded my arms. “I thought you didn’t believe you were in danger.”
“Apparently, I was wrong.”
“Well, apparently, so was I.”
I crossed to the stall where we’d struggled and studied the floor, hoping to see something the attacker may have dropped, but all I could make out were some of the contents of Breanne’s purse. I stooped down and began to clean up the mess.
“Did this guy say anything to you?” I asked. “Demand anything? Threaten you?”
Still on the floor, Breanne shook her head. “I came into the bathroom, and he attacked from behind. I guess he was hiding in one of the stalls. When he saw me, he sprang out, dragged me in, and slammed the door shut. I tried to fight him off, but then his hands were around my neck, and I couldn’t breathe.”
I nodded, processing the tale, trying to make sense of it. I was still picking up scattered items. I found her PDA behind the toilet and returned it to her.
“I wonder how it got way back there?” I said.
“I was trying to call Matt.” Breanne studied the floor. “It was in my hand when that man grabbed me.”
I continued picking up her things. When I got to the Mace can, I held it up. “Coffee notwithstanding, chili pepper is getting to be my new favorite ingredient.” I smiled, hoping to lighten her mood a fraction.
It didn’t.
“I guess this is all pretty funny to you, too, huh, Clare?”
“Funny? Are you mental?”
“Before I came in here, I saw you getting your jollies over my distress. When Matt pitched a fit and stormed out, I saw the smile cross your face.”
“Oh, for the love of... I’ll tell you why I smiled, Breanne, and it had nothing to do with relishing your pain. I was admiring what you did. I was happy to see you finally act like a wife!”
The stunn
ed look on the woman’s face was nearly priceless. Of all the responses I could have given her, she’d never gambled on that one. But then she never wanted to think of me as anything more than the ex-wife, the enemy.
“You’re not kidding, are you?” she said.
“Roman told me that your marriage was just one of convenience, that you really didn’t care about Matt’s playboy lifestyle; and it made me sad to think you weren’t going to demand what any real wife should: faithfulness. When I saw what you did with those announcements, I realized you did care.”
Breanne glanced away, massaged her forehead. She’d obviously cast me as the villain in this little play, someone who was only set on sabotaging her. My words now and my actions three minutes earlier flew directly in the face of those assumptions.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay...”
I wasn’t sure what okay meant, but her tone sounded a lot less accusatory and a whole lot friendlier. I took that as a good first step.
“Breanne, can I give you some advice—ex-wife to hopefully not future ex-wife?”
Breanne gritted her teeth, but she nodded.
I crouched down, back to her level. “Stop trying so hard to cut Matt off from his past.”
“But you just said you admired what I did with the old flames.”
“The old flames are one thing; his family and his life’s work are another.”
Breanne frowned, shook her head.
“Listen, Madame is hostile to you for a pretty basic reason. She’s picked up on your animosity vibe, your jealousy. She’s heard you say things that imply Matt would be better off not working for the Blend. Madame is afraid you’re going to pull her son away from the family business that she’s kept going for half a century, a business that started with Matt’s great-grandfather. She’s afraid you’re going to cut the strings that attach her son to her life.”
Breanne met my eyes. “You’re afraid, too, aren’t you, Clare?”
“Maybe I am. We all have threads in our lives, continuous strands that reach back years, decades, entire lifetimes. The threads are what help define who we are. Matt has always meant a lot to his mother, to his daughter, and to me. My advice to you is pretty simple: instead of trying to cut Matt off from what’s defined him over a lifetime, try harder to entwine yourself with it. Like those gorgeous wedding rings Nunzio created for you. Three different types of gold—white, yellow, rose—all weaved together into one band. Past, present, and future, right? Isn’t that why he chose the design?”
Breanne looked away again, began to chew the gloss off her bee-stung lips. “Okay, Clare. I’ve heard everything you said, and I’ll think about it—”
“They’re in here!”
The shout came from just outside the bathroom door. The waitress was back with her manager and a half-dozen others. The door flew open, and I heard sirens in the street.
“Sounds like the cavalry’s here,” I said. Then I took Breanne’s arm and helped her to her feet.
Twenty-Seven
“A mugging! Come on, you can’t be serious!”
“Do I look like I’m kidding, Ms. Cosi?”
I stood in the middle of Machu Picchu’s dining room, facing off with the senior detective assigned to the case. Rocky Friar was in his early thirties and built like a granite statue. Trying to talk with Friar, I soon discovered, was like trying to reason with a granite statue, too.
“I was there, remember? I saw it. That man was trying to kill Breanne Summour, not rob her. It was attempted murder.”
“What would lead you to this conclusion?” Friar asked, his skepticism thinly veiled and infuriating.
“The man was choking her,” I said. “His hands were wrapped around her throat—”
“The perpetrator was trying to steal Ms. Summour’s valuable necklace.”
“If this was just a simple robbery, then why did the man ignore a wallet, credit cards, and hundreds of dollars in cash spilled all over the floor?”
“Generally speaking, Ms. Cosi, your average criminal type isn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.”
“A five-year-old knows how to pick up money.”
“I’m not going to waste time trying to fathom the stupidity of the criminal mind.”
“Oh, is that so? Silly me. And I thought that’s what cops did for a living!”
Oops. Friar’s expression just went from strained patience to openly annoyed in under a second. Okay, so maybe that last quip was a little over the top...
“I’m sorry, Detective. I’m still a little upset about what happened. But I need you to hear what I’m saying: this isn’t the first time there’s been an attack...”
I told the man about the SUV jumping the sidewalk on the Upper East Side, and the murder of Breanne’s look-alike stripper, Hazel Boggs, in the West Village. Finally, I told him about Breanne’s ex-husband, Stuart Allerton Winslow. I explained that he was under arrest now for illegal distribution of medication and conspiracy to rob his wife.
Before I even finished, Friar raised his hand. “I might be missing something, seeing as I’m not delving into the criminal mind like I ought to be. But with Winslow sitting in an interrogation room on Tenth Street, I don’t see how he can possibly be implicated for today’s mugging in a Soho bathroom.”
“But he could have hired someone to attack her—”
“And I really don’t see any connection between a dead stripper and the attempted robbery of a socialite in a restaurant—beyond the fact that both victims have blond hair and nice legs.”
“What about the attempt to run Breanne down on the street?”
“Gas guzzlers run amok all the time in this burg. You’ll have to do better than that.”
I stared at the man. Broad and angular, the detective’s jaw jutted like a concrete window ledge; his neck resembled a Greek column. His hair was the color of toasted walnuts, his eyes were the color of warm rum, but his mind had all the flexibility of a stale baguette.
“Why don’t you talk to the detectives at the Sixth Precinct involved with the cases I mentioned. You can call Mike Quinn or the investigating officers in the Hazel Boggs murder case, Lori Soles and Sue Ellen Bass.”
At the mention of Sue Ellen’s name, Rocky Friar’s eyes bugged. And then it hit me. When Friar first arrived, his name sounded familiar, but I was still rattled by the attack and hadn’t made the connection. Now I remembered.
Rocky Friar worked out of the Ninth Precinct and lived in Mike Quinn’s Alphabet City apartment building (Divorced Badges ‘R’ Us). He was also Sue Ellen’s old boyfriend, the one who’d declared her banned from the building.
“Frankly, Ms. Cosi, I don’t buy your theory on the case. Sounds like a tangled mess to me. I think you’re overwrought from the attack.” He jerked his thumb at the bar. “Do yourself a favor: have a good stiff drink and find a seat.”
“But Lori Soles and Sue Ellen Bass might have a new lead on the—”
“Forget it. I’m not talking to Sue Ellen Bass about this case, or any other.”
Friar turned his broad back to me and gestured to a young Hispanic detective. Like Friar, the younger man was dressed in a sport coat and dark slacks. He wore his gun on his hip and his gold shield on his belt. The man nodded to Friar, ended his conversation with a waiter, and hurried to Friar’s side. I willed myself invisible and stepped closer to the pair.
“What d’ya got, Victor?”
“Nobody from the kitchen staff saw anything out of the ordinary. The party guests are still being interviewed, but no one’s come forward with an eyewitness account other than the woman you were interviewing. And I got the victim’s statement before the ambulance took off—”
“Did the perp make any sexual advances? Fondle the victim?”
Victor shook his head. “She claims he didn’t even demand money or valuables, just started choking her—”
“You mean he grabbed her necklace,” Friar said.
Victor glanced at his notes. “The victim call
ed it choking.”
Friar noticed me lurking, just then.
“I’ve taken your statement, Ms. Cosi, so I’m done with you. Move along.”
Gritting my teeth, I walked away, fumbled in my bag for my cell phone, and hit the second number on my speed-dial list. Mike Quinn’s voice mail picked up.
Damn.
Okay, next. I fished out the card Detective Soles had given me. She said to call if I uncovered any new developments in Hazel Boggs’s murder. In my opinion, this was a new development, so I pulled out my cell phone and punched in the number, half expecting to get her voice mail, too. But I got an answer on the second ring.
“Detective Lori Soles.”
I identified myself, and the woman’s tone instantly turned friendly. “Clare Cosi, my favorite PI.”
“Anything new in the Hazel Boggs case? It’s important I know, or I wouldn’t be bothering you.”
“The bullet was recovered at the autopsy,” Lori said. “We’re expecting a ballistics report this afternoon, tomorrow morning at the latest. Anything new on your end?”
“I’m at Machu Picchu in Soho, and Breanne Summour was attacked here about thirty minutes ago. The senior detective on the scene thinks it’s a mugging.”
“Who is it?”
“Rocky Friar.”
“Oh, brother.”
“But Friar is wrong,” I quickly added. “I was there, an eyewitness to the attack, and I say it was a hit. I’m more convinced than ever that the death of Breanne’s look-alike and this murder attempt on the real thing are connected.”
“I don’t know what you’ve got,” Lori said. “But it certainly sounds interesting. I’ll run it by my partner. If she’s good to go, we’ll be there in fifteen.”
I closed the phone and returned to Madame and the luncheon.
Breanne was gone by now. The ambulance was taking her to Beth Israel’s ER. The paramedics didn’t think her vocal chords were damaged, but they suspected a hairline fracture of her collarbone. For that she needed X-rays.
