Killer Cocktail

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  “I’m pursuing an investigation,” she said, eyes on Jake.

  “Well, investigate this,” Jake suggested with a grab at his crotch, “’cause I’m outta here.”

  He took a step closer to the curb, arm up for a cab. There was one on the other side of the street and I was worried it was going to swing around and pick him up before I could convince him not to go, so I stepped up with him. Detective Cook closed in on his other side. We were standing three abreast on the corner as the SUV at the curb on West Broadway peeled away and came right at us. The headlights were so bright I couldn’t see the driver. Even so, I couldn’t believe the SUV wasn’t even trying to make the turn until it was almost too late, until people were screaming and Detective Cook was shoving us as hard as she could and I could feel the heat of the engine under the hood as the SUV clipped us, sending us to the pavement in a tangle of flailing limbs.

  Somehow, we rolled out of its path as it roared up onto the sidewalk, scraping against several planters, then back down onto Chambers. It roared off as I tried to stand up. People were rushing from everywhere to help us. “Get the license!” I yelled as someone grabbed me and told me not to try to stand. Arms eased me back down to the pavement where Jake was sitting, stunned, his nose bleeding. On the other side of him, eyes closed, her left leg bent at an unnatural angle, Detective Cook lay silent.

  18

  “You think they were after you? You conceited twit.”

  “How many death threats have you gotten in the past three days, big guy? Huh? Bet I got you beat by a mile.”

  “Shut up, both of you, or I’ll have you arrested for disturbing the peace.”

  “Look, just because we thought you were dead, don’t expect us to go all soft and respectful now,” I snapped at Detective Cook. Even before the paramedics had arrived, she’d come around, roaring in pain and anger, shouting directions, and still trying to grill Jake. Loath as I am to admit it, I had to sit back in admiration. Then again, I was probably in shock.

  Now we were gathered around Detective Cook’s bed in the ER at NYU Downtown Hospital, while Kyle ran interference with the responding officers from the First Precinct. Tricia and Cassady were doing their best to move the medical process along and get us all released. In the eye of this storm, Jake was still protesting that he had left Lisbet completely sexually satisfied and very much alive and, other than Veronica, he had no idea who could have killed her and why. Detective Cook continued to lay out the outstanding quality of Jake’s motive and opportunity. And I tried to figure out which one of us the SUV had been aiming at, which had turned into an absurd roundelay of bragging about how many people hated us and why each of us was a prime candidate for hit-and-run target of the year.

  When Kyle came in, Tricia and Cassady on his heels, we managed to settle down for a moment or two, but the combination of painkillers and adrenaline the three of us were wrestling with was pretty unwieldy. Especially Detective Cook, who had a fractured leg and a suspected concussion. Jake and I had lots of bruises and cuts, but we were going home. Kyle informed Detective Cook she had to stay in the hospital, at least for the night.

  “I have a case to run!” she protested.

  “We’ve got a partial plate and I’ll let you know as soon as we get a meaningful hit. I’ll call Myerson and see if he wants to come up. There’ll be a uniform outside your room tonight, as a precaution.”

  “You think she’s the target?” Jake complained. “Why don’t you people understand? She wanted to kill me!”

  “Why’re you so sure the driver was a woman?” Kyle asked.

  “Because a man would’ve gotten the job done right.”

  Tricia made a high, strangled sound of disgust and Cassady wagged a finger at Jake. “You say that with four women in striking distance? Not as smart as I’d hoped you were, Booney.”

  “Hard to imagine someone wants to kill him, isn’t it?” I asked.

  A large, unhappy nurse who walked like her feet had been sore since the Nixon Administration pulled back the curtain to join our party. She had an intimidating syringe in her free hand. “Ten seconds to clear out. Otherwise, you each get one of these and spend the night with the detective.”

  “Charming as that offer is,” I said, backing out immediately. I gave Detective Cook a little wave she didn’t bother returning. Jake, Tricia, and Cassady followed me, but Kyle lingered for a moment. I hoped it was official business and just kept walking.

  “If this keeps up,” Tricia pointed out, “we’ll have visited every ER in Manhattan in another two years. We could have T-shirts. ‘The Molly Forrester ER Tour.’”

  “To her credit,” Cassady countered, “I have many more doctors in my Rolodex than I used to, which I deeply appreciate.” To illustrate her point, she flashed us a newly won business card before sliding it into her purse.

  “Somebody’s trying to kill me!” Jake whined, loudly enough that a doctor detached himself from the admissions desk and started over to us. Cassady shook her head at the doctor and Tricia and I put our arms around Jake, ushering him quickly down the hallway and pinning him against a vending machine.

  “Jake, I want you to tell me who you think it was. Because I’m going to find her and help her get it right,” I threatened.

  “I don’t know. I’d been thinking it was you threatening me this whole time and Lara thought so, too. But unless you’re really twisted and set this whole thing up, it’s gotta be someone else.”

  “I’m plenty twisted, but it wasn’t me. Where’s Lara?” We needed to find her and see if her story overlapped properly with his.

  “Home, I guess.”

  “No, she’s not. Doorman Steve said she left.”

  “Left you in your hour of need. That’s cold,” Cassady observed.

  “He left first,” I pointed out.

  “Left her behind,” Tricia said.

  “No one was threatening her!” Jake would have happily squeezed himself up into the vending machine and spent the rest of the night between the stale Kit Kat bars and petrified Juicy Fruit if it meant getting away from us.

  Getting away. What if that’s what Lara was doing? “Did Lara know you slept with Lisbet before she was killed?”

  “I didn’t tell her, did you?” he snarled at me.

  “No, but what if someone else did? Who else knows?”

  Jake shook his head emphatically. “Just Veronica. And Lara won’t speak to her. Won’t speak to any of my exes.”

  “Poor girl travels in a pretty small circle,” Cassady said.

  Jake was too beaten-up to respond. “There was nobody else.”

  “Nobody but the person who saw you walk out of the pool house. The person who went in to see what you’d been doing and found Lisbet, figured it all out, and was mad enough to kill her for it.”

  Jake slumped as he envisioned Lara committing the murder. Tricia mumbled, “Dear God,” and turned away. For her that path led back to David again. But I was headed in a third direction. The woman who’d been calling and threatening Jake. Could she have been the one? And she was wor–ried that there was something in Jake’s footage that could incriminate her. That’s why she’d demanded that Jake shut the site down, not out of respect for Lisbet but to keep anyone from going over it too carefully.

  “You still have all your footage?” I asked Jake.

  “Of course. I archive everything,” he said in a tone that implied of all I’d accused him of since we’d met, that was the worst.

  “I want to see it. Everything.” I turned to Tricia and Cassady. “You guys can head home and I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  I half-expected lip from Cassady, but it was Tricia who dished up the attitude with an extra-large scoop. “You must have hit your head harder than they realized if you think we’re going to sit out this round. In fact, I think we should have the doctors keep you overnight and we’ll take it from here. Cassady?”

  Cassady slid the business card back out of her purse. “I have a new friend who�
�s very eager to do me a favor.”

  “All right,” I acquiesced, “just let me find Kyle and tell him we’re leaving. Stay right here.”

  I found Kyle coming out of the ER, looking for us. I started to explain what we were going to do and he held up a hand, cutting me off. “Go home and stay there.”

  “I can’t,” I protested, “I have to see this through.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s my job. Cook’s job. Other people’s jobs, not yours.”

  There was a lot I still didn’t know about Kyle, but I knew when not to argue with him. His brilliant blue eyes go hard and dark and God Himself would have trouble swaying him. Arguing with him was just going to upset us both more and waste valuable time, so I said, “Fine. Can Jake go, too?”

  “You’ve all given statements, you can all go.”

  “Great. Thanks.” I turned and went back to retrieve the others.

  “Molly,” he said behind me.

  “I know,” I said, stopping but not turning around. “The job’s hard enough without my getting in the way.”

  He caught my arm and spun me around. “The job’s hard enough without the next place I pick you up being the morgue. I’m trying to protect you, don’t you get that?”

  I was grateful, but I was angry, too. I was trying to protect myself and people I loved and even some people I didn’t particularly care for who needed protecting, just because it was the right thing to do. But I wasn’t a member of the Protector’s Club, so I was supposed to sit quietly in the dungeon and wait to be saved. The hell with that. I had a more complete picture of what had been happening than anyone else did and I was going to finish what I’d started because I’d promised one of my two best friends I would.

  What I told Kyle was, “Yes.” What I did was walk away slowly and then cram Tricia, Cassady, Jake, and myself into a cab and go straight to Jake’s. I figured we had a little time before Kyle called to check up on me and I needed to use it wisely. I wanted to see Jake’s extra footage, discover what secrets it held, and pinpoint our hit-and-runner accordingly.

  The flaw with that plan was that, when we got to Jake’s apartment, the footage was gone. It had been wiped off his computer, and his camera, with the original memory cards, was gone. Jake called Lara names I had never heard before as he ransacked the place, looking for where she might have hidden any of it. But it was just gone.

  Remembering what Doorman Steve had said about Lara being out on the town on Jake’s dime, I asked, “You have a credit card with just a first initial, something Lara could use?”

  Jake stopped his ransacking and grabbed his wallet out of his pants pocket. “Damn her!” He showed us an empty slot in the wallet. “The production company.”

  Cassady arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re incorporated?”

  “I’m a professional.”

  “Professional what?”

  “Focus, please.” I handed Jake the phone. “Call your credit card company. Ask them the last charge on your card so you can figure out where you might have left it.”

  While Jake pounded through the automated menu in search of the information, I huddled with Tricia and Cassady. “If you ripped off your boyfriend, would you keep the stuff on you or ditch it somewhere?”

  “Keep it,” Tricia voted. “Putting it somewhere just increases the odds that you won’t be able to get back to it when you need it.”

  “Not that I base this at all on personal experience,” Cassady added, “but the whole point in taking something is leverage. You want it on hand when they come looking for you.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Jake screamed, throwing the phone across the room.

  “Good news, Jake?” I asked.

  “You know the last two places my credit card was used? The Peninsula Hotel.”

  I’d missed that one. Tricia shook her head. “That’ll set you back six hundred a night. Unless she’s in a suite.”

  “Where else, Jake?”

  It took him a minute to be able to say it. “Hertz. Hertz Rent–a–Frigging–Car.”

  How about that. She moves out, then decides she’s still mad, and rents a car. Maybe a nice big SUV, even. And goes for a moonlight drive in TriBeCa.

  “You think she might have decided to leave town?” Tricia asked sweetly.

  “She rented a car to run me down. She hates me! She wants to kill me!”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Cassady said.

  If Lara’d been following him, she could’ve been following me, been the woman at the Algonquin, just not for the reasons I’d thought. She could’ve seen him leave Lisbet, and killed her in a jealous rage. Then when I came around, she had to figure out if I was into Jake or on to her. It made sense. As much as murder could. “There are several lovely bars at the Peninsula. Anyone for cocktails?”

  Cassady wound up in charge of keeping Jake in the apartment and off the phone while Tricia and I went to the hotel. Jake looked on the brink of a meltdown, but in case he got feisty Cassady was bigger than Tricia and had a couple of self-defense classes under her belt to help her control him. Tricia brought the sympathy card to play with Lara if we had trouble getting her to confess.

  “We’re not calling Kyle?” Tricia asked in the cab. “I’m clarifying, not critiquing.”

  “No. He has other things on his mind.”

  Tricia, someone with plenty on her mind herself, nodded. After a moment, she said, “I know you’re doing this for Davey, Molly, and I appreciate it, but I don’t want you to lose Kyle over it.”

  I started to tell her I didn’t want to lose her friendship either, but we seemed to be okay at the moment and I wasn’t going to pick at wounds that might be healing. I didn’t want to lose Kyle, but I also didn’t want to be in a relationship where my sense of right and wrong didn’t matter because I wasn’t professionally charged with upholding it. “Thank you,” I said.

  The Peninsula Hotel is on Fifth Avenue, a gorgeous Beaux Arts building, gilded and burnished to gleaming beauty. You walk through the revolving door and an overwhelming double staircase under a massive chandelier makes you want to stop and wait for the Busby Berkeley chorus girls to descend.

  Tricia picked up the house phone and asked for Lara’s room. When Lara answered, Tricia asked, in flawless French, if her grand-mère was ready for dinner yet or if she needed more time. Lara told her she had the wrong room and hung up. Now that we knew she was up there, we sat down on a loveseat near the elevator banks and I called Lara’s cell on my cell. There’s more than one way to flush the partridge.

  “Hello?” she answered with some irritation, probably because she didn’t recognize the incoming number.

  “Lara, it’s Molly Forrester. Don’t hang up.”

  “Give me a good reason.”

  “Jake’s in trouble.”

  “Good.” She hung up.

  Damn, she was straight. Still, I dialed back, praying she would be intrigued enough about Jake’s condition that she would answer again. She did. “What?”

  “He’s in the hospital, Lara.”

  “He deserves it.”

  “Deserves what?”

  The Pause was brief, but telling. “Whatever happened.”

  “Where are you, Lara? Can you come see him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s asking for you. And his camera bag.”

  This Pause was unexpected. Was she considering it? “Too bad.” Guess not.

  “You really need to come, Lara. The police are here, Jake’s so upset …”

  “So am I. He’s a lying bastard and a cheat and …” She trailed off and I thought she was searching for the word, but then I heard a sob and realized she was crying. For Jake or for what he’d driven her to?

  “NYU Downtown ER,” I said gently.

  “Okay” she said and hung up.

  “Are lies in the pursuit of truth still lies?” Tricia asked as I hung up and we moved over to stand outside the elevators.

  “I’m not sure. Are ugly shoes worn
by a beautiful woman still ugly?”

  “Do you not like these?” she worried, looking down at her Narciso Rodriguez black leather ankle-strap sandals.

  “I was staying theoretical.”

  “I rarely do.”

  “Part of your charm.”

  I almost didn’t see Lara get off the elevator because two couples stepped off in front of her, then stopped mere inches in front of the elevator to have an animated debate about whether to have drinks at the hotel before going to dinner or to go straight to the restaurant. Lara had a Hermès scarf over her hair and Chanel sunglasses on, very Jackie O, but I spotted her when she put the camera bag down to adjust her Burberry denim jacket.

  I skittered across the highly polished floor and grabbed the camera bag before she could pick it back up. “Let me help you with that, Lara,” I offered.

  “Put that down! It’s not yours!” she protested.

  “It’s not yours either, but if you’d like to make a scene, I’m game.” I wasn’t sure where Tricia had gone, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Lara. “Then you can explain to the police why you have Jake’s camera bag. And his credit card. And what you were doing earlier this evening.”

  She yanked her sunglasses off and I was startled to see how puffy her eyes were. She’d been crying mightily to look that bad under that much foundation. “Go away,” she demanded.

  I put the camera bag on my own shoulder. “Is everything you shot at the party in here, Lara? The less you hide now, the better it will be for you in the long run.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I find that when people say that to me, they know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  She shoved her sunglasses back on her face, stiff-armed me out of the way, and bolted for the front door. I went after her, but Tricia had already circled around and positioned herself so that all she had to do was step into Lara’s path and Lara went sprawling, actually sliding some distance across the highly polished floor. Several bellboys came running, but Tricia and I helped Lara to her feet and assured the staff that everything was quite all right. Each of us grasping an arm, we walked Lara to the door.