by Kyra Davis
Anatoly’s eyes slanted. “Have you been drinking?”
“I wish, but no. Listen, this is what I was trying to tell you earlier. Dena and I found out that Peter is both a furry and a plushy. Do you know what that means?”
“Evidently, it means that my mastery of the English language isn’t a strong as I thought, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No, it’s not an English problem,” I assured him. “You’re unfamiliar with furries and plushies because you’re a moderately normal person.”
“Shall I take that as a compliment?”
“If you choose. Now, allow me to give you an overview of the dark underbelly of the furry world.”
I detailed everything I had discovered in Peter’s apartment and everything Dena had taught me about furries and plushies. When I began, Anatoly looked skeptical and a bit confused. By the end he looked mildly horrified and a little sick to his stomach.
“He had sex with toys,” Anatoly said slowly, clearly trying to make sense of the new information.
“And people dressed up as animals—that’s where Anne comes in. Or at least that where I think she comes in.”
“I suppose that would make sense,” Anatoly agreed. “If any of this could possibly qualify as making sense. Eugene could have found out about Anne’s perversion….”
“Dena likes to think of those who belong to these groups as eccentrics. She thinks ‘perversion’ is too judgmental of a word.”
“I’ll remember that,” Anatoly said sarcastically. “But if Eugene did find out and then Peter killed himself, he might have held off for a few weeks before revealing the information out of respect for the dead. Or perhaps he was just waiting for a more opportune time, like a few weeks before the election when Anne wouldn’t have much of a chance to refute the charges and the Democrats wouldn’t have time to run someone else.”
“Either way, it gave Anne time to plot Eugene’s death,” I said.
“And then she could have thought that Melanie had found out.”
“But why would she think that?” I asked. “I’m sure Melanie didn’t know about this. This kind of information is way too bizarre not to share. So if she didn’t know, why kill her?”
“Maybe Melanie just found out. She could have come across some papers Eugene left behind detailing Anne’s fetish. Or maybe Anne just thought she did. She could have taken Melanie’s body to San Francisco just to get it as far away from Contra Costa County as possible, confuse the police a little. On the other hand, she could have done it because we live in San Francisco. She may have wanted to issue us a warning.”
“You think she knows that we’ve been snooping for Melanie?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“True.” I glanced back at Sam and Anne’s house. “So now what?”
“Now we go back there and ask Sam a few questions. But, Sophie?” “Yeah?”
“The animal questions can wait for another time. If Anne is a fuzzy—”
“Furry.”
“All right, if she’s one of those, then I doubt Sam knows anything about it. If he does, we don’t want to tip him off that we know. We may be able to gain a strategic advantage by playing this one close to the vest until later in the game.”
“Got it.”
When we reentered the house we found Sam sniffing the contents of a small brown glass bottle. “Aromatherapy,” he explained. “Cedarwood, to be precise. It has a calming effect.”
“Sounds interesting,” Anatoly said, clearly disinterested. We sat back down on the sofa and Anatoly cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about stepping out just now. Sophie and I recently finished a case involving animal abuse, and being an animal lover, she’s been anxious for any kind of assurance that the majority of people are as fond of our four-legged friends as she is.”
Okay, now that was a lame excuse. I waited for Sam to demand that we tell him the truth about what was going on, but shockingly enough he bought it.
“I have always found stories of animal cruelty to be particularly disturbing,” he said, smiling at me sympathetically.
“Thanks for understanding,” I said. “But none of that has anything to do with why you hired us. Other than that phone call, do you have any other reason to be suspicious of Anne?”
Sam hesitated and then took another sniff of his cedarwood. “There have been a lot of late nights at the campaign headquarters.”
“I would think that would be normal,” Anatoly said.
“It would be, except…I went by the office one time when she said she would be working late. I thought I’d surprise her with some homemade vegetable juice.”
“Lucky her,” I muttered. Anatoly jabbed me with his elbow.
“But she wasn’t there. I waited in the car across the street for a full forty minutes and she never showed up. I finally rang her cell and without telling her where I was I asked where she was and…”
“She said she was in the office, didn’t she?” I asked.
“Exactly.” Sam chewed on the inside of his cheek. “That’s exactly what she said,” he whispered again.
Anatoly jotted something down in his notebook and stroked the beginnings of his stubble. “Mr. Griffin…”
“Sam,” he corrected.
“All right, Sam, could you e-mail me your wife’s schedule? Everything from work-related outings to errands and nail appointments for the next week or two would be helpful.”
“I can certainly e-mail you the appointments I know about but…” His chin began to quiver and he whispered, “What if the schedule I have for her isn’t accurate? What if she’s lying to me about where she’s going and what she’s doing?”
Anatoly f lipped his notebook closed and put it in his jacket pocket. “That is exactly what I plan on finding out. From what you’ve told us it’s clear that your wife has a secret. Now we just have to figure out how dark that secret is.”
21
I went to the doctor to see if he could give me something for my anxiety. He told me to simplify my life and then call him in the morning.
—C’est La Mort
After we left Sam, I filled Anatoly in on the exchange I had with the homeless tinfoil-hat lady and we both agreed that we needed to at least try to find her. We rode the Harley up and down Highway 1 (which is parallel to Ocean Beach), pulling into each parking lot, looking for the sparkle of aluminum headgear, but no such luck. We turned onto every one of the avenues that were within five miles of the beach and even went into the Sutro Heights park, but there was no sign of her. We searched for three hours before we finally gave it a rest.
When we got back to my apartment I was more than a little exhausted. There is such a thing as too much information, and right then I found myself longing for the time when S and M seemed avant-garde. Mr. Katz greeted us with an impatient meow, which I responded to by filling his food bowl before collapsing on the couch. “We really do need to keep following Anne,” I said. “Eventually she’s got to lead us to something.”
Anatoly grunted his agreement and threw his leather jacket over a dining chair. “Your answering machine is blinking,” he noted before pressing the play button. I shot him a warning look. Being my boyfriend did not give him license to play my messages without asking.
“You have…one new message. First new message.”
“Hey, Soph, it’s me.” Dena’s voice filled my room. “Thought I’d let you know that I got Tiff back safe and sound. Also she told me about all of Peter’s trips, and I happen to know that there have been furry conventions in each of those cities. Speaking of which, I thought that you might want to check out the furry scene, maybe even catch a homicidal cheetah—” she paused before adding “—cheetahs are actually very popular costumes among furries. Anyway, there’s a furry bash at the Chelsea Hotel this Tuesday. I think it’s an annual bash or something, so it’s getting a lot of buzz among the furs. If Anne Brooke is a furry someone there will probably know about it. Anyhoo, I know somebody w
ho knows somebody and it looks like I can score you a couple of invites. If you want them, give me a call.”
I glanced up at Anatoly. “We should go.”
“Why?” Anatoly crossed his foot over his knee. “If Anne is truly behind all this, she’s not going to risk everything by showing up at a large party dressed up as some kind of mutant feline.”
“Probably not, but how many people can really be part of this movement? My guess is that they all kind of know one another, so maybe someone will talk to us about Anne.”
“If they’re wearing masks they might not even know one another’s real identity.”
“Maybe not, but I think it would be hard to completely hide your identity from someone you’re having sex with.”
“Rape victims have a hard time identifying their attackers all the time.”
“But that’s because rape victims aren’t expecting to be attacked. These people know what to expect from one another. They’re having consensual sex. They have the presence of mind to memorize the kind of details that might help us.”
“I still don’t think attending this party is necessary.”
I studied the protruding position of Anatoly’s jaw. “What’s going on with you? You know this party could produce leads. Why are you being so obstinate?”
“Just because Dena gets us an invitation doesn’t mean that they’ll just let us in,” he grumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“There will be certain expectations…” His voice trailed off.
“We’re going to have to dress up as furries,” I said slowly.
Anatoly shook his head definitively. “We’ll simply get a room at the Chelsea Hotel on Tuesday and we’ll observe.”
“Observe what? A bunch of masked strangers wandering in and out of a hotel conference room? Come on, if we want to catch Anne, we have to get into one of these get-togethers and schmooze. Someone’s got to know her!”
“I’m not dressing up like an animal.”
“Stop being such a wuss. We’ll go to one of those costume-rental places and find you a macho furry costume—it’ll be fine.”
“There is no such thing as a macho furry costume.”
“Sure there is, like…like that big strappin’ bear who teaches fire safety! Every little girl loves him!”
“I have no interest in little girls.”
“Okay, good point. How ’bout King Kong? Come on, any ape who could win the hearts of Fay Wray, Jessica Lange and Naomi Watts has got to be an ape worth emulating.”
“Sophie, I’m not going to do it.”
A sudden burst of fury restored my energy and I was instantly on my feet and in Anatoly’s face. “Anne Brooke may have killed a woman that I truly cared about. And if that’s true, then she also killed Melanie’s husband, ensuring that Melanie’s last days on earth were miserable. I’m going to take this bitch down. And if I have to dress up like a fucking pony to do it, so be it. Now, are you going to help me or not?”
Anatoly hesitated. “You think we’ll be able to find a King Kong costume?”
“I think it’s highly possible, yes.”
Anatoly grumbled some Russian curse, which I knew was his way of giving in. I smiled and relaxed back onto the couch. I had dropped my purse on the end table and took this moment to check my cell. “Hey, Johnny called me. You know, the guy who—”
“Loves you,” Anatoly finished. “Yes, I remember.”
I pressed the phone against my ear and listened to the message. “He feels awful about rescinding my invitation to his party,” I said, summarizing Johnny’s ramblings for Anatoly while I listened to them. “And he—” I swallowed hard before relaying the rest of what I was hearing “—he feels awful about Melanie. Fitzgerald told him about what happened on Friday and he’s still in shock about the whole thing.” I pressed Nine, deleting the message before it was even finished playing. I couldn’t stand to hear him blather about Melanie as if he knew her. He may have taken her to church, even introduced her to his mom—but he didn’t know her. He didn’t feel the loss that I did.
Anatoly leaned back in his chair and gave me a quizzical look. “How did Fitzgerald know about what happened on Friday? The papers didn’t come out with it until Saturday.”
“She was discovered Friday morning,” I said quietly. “Maybe the Contra Costa sheriff’s department sent someone out to talk to the people who knew Melanie Friday afternoon…or evening.” The memory of the police’s visit to my apartment on Friday night came pounding into my head like a migraine.
“Maybe,” Anatoly mused. “Tell me something, Sophie, what is your opinion of Johnny?”
“If you’re still feeling jealous, you don’t need to—”
“This isn’t about jealousy.” Anatoly left his chair and joined me on the sofa, placing my legs on his lap. “We don’t know that Anne killed Eugene or Melanie. We just know that she might have had a motive. Even if she was sleeping with Peter that doesn’t mean he was her only lover. What if she was sleeping with someone else who was willing to kill for her? Someone working for Fitzgerald?”
“Johnny?” I scoffed.
“It’s possible,” Anatoly pressed. “As a low-level personal assistant his background wouldn’t have been scrutinized as carefully as those of the other people working closely with Fitzgerald.”
“I have a hard time visualizing him and Anne as being a couple, and if he does have a soft spot for Anne he’s pretty adept at covering it up. I brought her up when Mary Ann and I went to dinner with him and Rick, and Johnny was not kind. Even Rick was willing to cut Anne more slack than Johnny. Besides, Johnny called me during my last conversation with Darth Vader. For a few minutes I had them both on different lines at the same time.”
“He could have been calling from a cell and a landline,” Anatoly suggested. “It certainly can’t hurt to check him out.”
I shrugged and I let myself slide into a more horizontal position, my legs elevated slightly by Anatoly’s. I didn’t particularly like Johnny and I wouldn’t be heartbroken if he turned out to be a bad guy, but it didn’t seem to fit with what I knew about him. Johnny was too naive and he was way too hyper to be a murderer. The extra adrenaline he would get from killing would probably send him into cardiac arrest.
I stared at our dark reflections in the blank screen of my television. “What if this doesn’t come together?” I whispered. “So far we have Eugene, killed in a drive-by shooting, a letter proving that he knew something that Peter Strauss didn’t want him to know…”
“That he was a furry,” Anatoly interjected, “or at least I think it’s fair for us to assume that was it.”
“Yeah, we can assume that, but obviously Eugene wouldn’t care if some random low-level campaign worker had a thing for cuddly cartoon characters. So it was probably Anne, right? Who else has a reputation that Eugene would want to destroy? But does that mean that Anne is responsible for the threats I’ve been getting? And why have the threats been so incredibly stupid? Furry or not, these people should be a little more adept at being intimidating.” I could hear my volume increase with each question, punctuating my aggravation. “Does Sam’s first wife’s death have any relevance at all or is it totally unrelated? And why did Flynn Fitzgerald show up at Neiman’s at the same time I was having lunch with Maggie, Rick and Mary Ann? I mean, when is this thing going to start to make sense?”
“It’s confusing,” Anatoly agreed. “But we’ll figure it out.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve never failed to solve a case before.”
“But most of your cases deal with adultery, not crime.”
“An adultery case is still a case,” Anatoly said. “And if you remember, I used to do detective work for an insurance company. At that time almost all my cases involved some kind of criminal activity. I’ve even solved a few kidnapping cases.”
“Really? You never told me that.” But then again, Anatoly hadn’t told me a lot of things. I had gone out with him for
almost a year and there was still so much that I didn’t know about him, but I was actually okay with that. Dating him was like studying the language of the Ancient Egyptians. He would always be a bit of a mystery to me, but I loved “learning” him.
Tonight, though, I wasn’t up for an Anatoly lesson. There were too many other questions floating around in my head. It felt like he and I were chasing down a million little leads, each one taking us nowhere. Anatoly must have picked up on my mood because he stopped talking, and for a good ten minutes neither one of us said a word as we rested on the couch, which was good because my thoughts were so damn loud. Silence was the only thing keeping my head from exploding.
But the silence couldn’t last forever. Tomorrow morning I’d have to throw myself into the chaos once again in the hope that I would eventually be able to make sense out of fragments of nonsensical information.
“Whatever you’re thinking, let it go,” Anatoly finally whispered as he gently started to massage my feet. “At least for tonight.”
“How do I do that?” I whispered back.
“Lose yourself in us.” His hands moved from my foot to my calf and then continued their journey upward. “Just for tonight. Tomorrow you can let the world in, but tonight the world must do without you.”
I sighed as he pulled my jeans down over my hips.
I’ve always been a sucker for sexy men who are skilled in the art of distraction.
22
When our elected officials make us look bad, we usually give them another chance; but not our hairstylists. We hold them to a higher standard.
—C’est La Mort
Anatoly and I had sex three times that night. If we kept IT up like that we would have to start buying our condoms at Costco. But despite the pleasures Anatoly bestowed upon me I was secretly relieved when he suggested that we split up for the day. He had gotten up early to dig further into Sam’s, Anne’s and Johnny’s backgrounds, and when he failed to come up with anything interesting, he drove off to Contra Costa County to put a tail on one of them. At the time he left he had yet to make up his mind which one he would be tailing, but he assured me that his decision would be made by the time he crossed the Bay Bridge. My task was to find the tinfoil-hat lady. I truly hoped that I would find her, but regardless of whether or not I did, I would enjoy the breathing room. Some people craved companionship when they were anxious. I craved space.
