by Kyra Davis
“Whatever. Anne was uncomfortable with the furry thing. You can interpret that any way you like. Just keep in mind that if your interpretation is different from mine it’s wrong.”
“You’re impossible,” I grumbled.
“Perhaps, but I make impossible cute.”
“True.” I mulled over the little information that Marcus had shared with me. “Do you really think I made a favorable impression on her?”
“That’s what she said, and she seemed to mean it.”
“I’m going to stop by,” I said impulsively. “I’ll pretend I happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by to say hello to you. Then maybe, just maybe, I can talk her into coming out for a drink with me. I might be able to get a little more out of her than you.”
“You doubt my skills as an interrogator?”
“You told me yourself that you’re not comfortable interrogating a client, and that’s bound to affect your performance.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. I should be done with Anne in about thirty minutes. Stop by then.”
“Beautiful! Marcus, thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome. You can start to pay me back by bringing me a little chocolate to munch on. I’m having a craving, probably because I’m dealing with PMS.”
“You’re dealing with PMS?” I asked incredulously.
“Possible Murderous Senator, darling. Just talking to her gives me cramps.”
I laughed and said a quick goodbye. Anatoly looked up from the silverback mask he had been studying. “Did Marcus get any information out of Anne?” he asked.
“Not much. He doesn’t think she’s a furry, but that’s just his opinion.”
“She’d better be a furry,” Anatoly said. “I don’t want to dress up like a gorilla for nothing.”
“But you are going to dress up as a gorilla, right?”
Anatoly sighed and tucked the mask under his arm as if it was his motorcycle helmet, his silent way of saying yes.
I breathed a sigh of relief and told him about my plan to see Anne.
“If you’re going to talk to Anne, I’m going with you,” Anatoly said firmly.
“You can’t, Anatoly. It’s one thing for her to coincidentally run into the reporter from Tikkun magazine, but it’s another thing for her to run into both of us. She’ll get suspicious.”
“Sophie, this woman could be a killer, and there’s a chance she already knows that you’re investigating Eugene’s death. You can’t be alone with her.”
“If we’re going to figure this out, we’re both going to have to take some risks, and you’re going to have to find a way to deal with that.”
Anatoly grumbled some Russian before relenting. “Fine, I won’t be at your side when you speak to her. But I am going to follow you at a distance. It’s one thing to take risks and it’s another to be needlessly reckless.”
“Fine, follow me. I can live with that.” I reached into the display rack behind me and pulled out what looked like a generic version of Hello Kitty. It had Hello Kitty’s big head and lack of a mouth, but it had longer whiskers, and the bow adorning its ear was purple instead of pink. “This is going to be my costume,” I said definitively.
Anatoly cocked his head to the side. “Why that one?”
“For one thing, it doesn’t have paws, so I’ll be able to use my hands, and second, it doesn’t have a mouth, so no one will be able to kiss me or ask me to, you know, put anything between my lips.”
Anatoly’s eyes widened slightly and he looked back down at the large lips of his gorilla mask. “Perhaps I should select a different disguise.”
“No, stick with the silverback. No one is going to mess with an alpha ape.”
23
As awful as this sounds most of us do not want to live among the mentally ill. That’s why we try to keep them all in Washington.
—C’est La Mort
I ditched Anatoly. He had followed me from the Mission in his beige, totally nondescript rented sedan. It was the kind of car you could sit in for an hour and still not find anything about it that was interesting enough to remark on. In other words, it was a perfect car to use to tail someone. Unfortunately Ooh La La was on Fillmore, which was not the perfect street if you were hoping to park a medium-size car, nondescript or otherwise. I found a spot several blocks away and Anatoly had signaled to me that I should wait there while he found a spot for himself. I waited for about two minutes before getting antsy. God only knew how long Marcus was going to be able to keep Anne in his chair. Besides, it wasn’t as if Anatoly didn’t know where I was going. He would park and find a place where he could watch Ooh La La from a discreet distance and everything would be fine.
When I arrived at the salon Marcus was at the front desk mixing champagne with crème de cassis in a glass f lute. The contemporary hip-hop and alternative-rock hits that could usually be heard at Ooh La La were conspicuously absent; in their stead was something that sounded suspiciously like Abba.
“You’re the last one here?” I asked in a low voice, craning my neck so I could see the empty room behind him. Marcus’s station wasn’t visible from the entryway.
“Yes, which means that the task of getting Anne her second kir royale is mine.” He held the drink up for my inspection.
“Her second, huh?”
“Yes, and she needs it. Girlfriend is strung as high as a kite.” He looked down pointedly at my empty hands. “No chocolate?”
“Oh, dammit. I totally forgot.”
“But I have—”
“PMS, I know, I know. I promise to buy you a whole box of chocolates tomorrow, okay?”
Marcus released an exaggerated sigh. “Fine, but I must tell you, I’m feeling very unappreciated right now.” With that he turned and led me to his station. “Anne, darling,” he called to the back of the woman who was sitting in his chair. “Look who the cat dragged in.”
The chair swiveled around and I gasped in surprise. Anne looked gorgeous. Her hair, which had been in a French twist last I had seen her, was now cascading around her shoulders, which were exposed by her pale yellow silk camisole. She undoubtedly had come wearing a blazer, but Marcus always insisted that such things be hung up before he started working, and he had clearly been working on her. Her curls were loose and romantic and adorned with delicate golden highlights that made her look at least five years younger than she was. It was hard to envision this woman putting that head inside an animal mask.
“What a wonderful surprise!” Anne said. Her mouth was curved into a smile, but nothing else about her body language indicated happiness. As I stepped closer I could see that, while lovely, she wasn’t quite as put together as she had been during our interview. Her nail polish was chipped, it looked as if she had been biting her cuticles, and her navy skirt needed ironing. She also looked thinner than the last time I had seen her, and she was wiggling her right foot as if she had a nervous twitch.
“Sophie was in the area and noticed the lights were on,” Marcus explained. “She knows this is after hours for Ooh La La, so the little journalist stopped by to investigate.”
“I’m glad you did,” Anne said. “Marcus and I were just talking about you.”
“Oh?” I asked innocently.
“Yes,” Marcus said with a wicked grin. “We were playing the it’s-a-small-world game. Anne found me because her husband is the nutritionist of one of my other clients, and then when we found out that we both knew you we realized that we were linked in some wonderful cosmic way.” He held up a lock of her hair. “It’s like that John Cusak movie, Serendipity, except instead of finding the love of her life she found the perfect perm.”
“Your hair does look amazing,” I admitted. “I hope you’re going out tonight to show it off.”
“I’m just heading home after this,” Anne said. “But my husband will see how I look and that’s good enough for me. Besides, physical beauty is not what I’m about. It’s what’s inside that matters.”
Ri
ght, that’s why you just switched stylists in a pinch and coughed up hundreds of dollars for a perm and color. “When you look that good you should go out,” I insisted. “There’s lots of cute little bars around here. Why don’t we treat ourselves to a glass of merlot?”
The twitch in Anne’s foot became more pronounced. “I shouldn’t drink any more tonight. This is my second kir royale and I have a long drive home.”
Now, that didn’t sound like the Anne I had read about on the Internet.
“Then why don’t you two go to Bittersweet, the Chocolate Café?” Marcus suggested. “It’s just a few doors down and they serve the most amazing chocolate treats you have ever tasted. You might even want to pick up a box for a friend while you’re there.”
I couldn’t help but smile at Marcus’s lack of subtlety, but Anne just shook her head. “I really shouldn’t…” Just then her cell phone started ringing. Marcus politely retrieved her handbag so she could answer. She took one look at her screen and shoved it back in her purse. “No one I need to talk to right now,” she explained quickly. “You know, on second thought, I’d love a cup of hot chocolate.”
Less than five minutes later we were sitting right by the banister in the loft area of the Chocolate Café. I was sipping the ChocoLatte and Anne had ordered the Bittersweet, which had to be the most spectacular and decadent chocolate drink ever made. But Anne hadn’t touched it, nor had she tasted the dark chocolate macaroons or the dark chocolate truffles that I had purchased. Of course, the small box of truffles was supposed to be for Marcus, but I had already eaten one. I figured I was doing him a favor by consuming at least a few of the excess calories. But Anne didn’t seem interested in chocolate. The only thing she seemed to be interested in was the front door of the café.
“Anne, is everything all right?” I asked. “You seem anxious.”
“Hmm?” She kept her focus on the exit.
“I asked if you were—” This time it was my cell phone that interrupted us. It was, of course, Anatoly. I held up a finger to indicate to Anne that I would only be a minute.
“Hi,” I said after pressing Talk.
“I told you to wait for me.”
I laughed jovially for Anne’s sake. “I know. I was in a bit of a hurry.”
“Here’s how this is going to work,” Anatoly continued, clearly livid. “You are going to tell me where you are right now. Then I am going to get you and we will walk back to the car that I’m driving and then I am going to drive us home and you are going to leave the rest of this investigation to me.”
“Yeah, um…that’s not exactly how it works.” I covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Anne. “My sister asked me to set up her new DVD player, but I didn’t have time. Now I have to walk her through it.”
For the first time since her phone had rung, Anne made eye contact. “You don’t need to leave, do you?” she asked anxiously.
I blinked in surprise. She wanted me here?
“Damn it, Sophie!” Anatoly yelled, and I pressed the phone tightly against my ear so Anne wouldn’t hear his voice. “You don’t know what you’re doing and you can’t follow simple instructions. I’m putting an end to this right now. Where are you?”
“I think you’re a little confused,” I said into the phone while smiling at Anne. “The system you bought can’t be controlled that way.” I smiled at Anne and mouthed I’m not leaving.
“Sophie, tell me where you are right now,” Anatoly growled.
“Listen,” I said as sweetly as possible, “you’re dealing with a valuable piece of equipment. If you handle it roughly it won’t work, and if you try to force it, you might not be able to insert your disk into it ever again. Make sense?”
“No, Sophie, you listen to me…”
“Sorry, can’t do it, but I promise to help you out tomorrow. See you then!” I hung up and put the phone in my handbag, ignoring it as it rang again. “Sisters,” I said with an exaggerated eye roll. Anne smiled weakly and toyed with her macaroon. “So what do you think of Marcus?” I asked.
“He’s very talented.” Her hand went up to her hair. “And very intelligent. I wish I had more time to talk with him.”
“About?” I prodded.
“His life. As a gay black man I’m sure he had a lot of hurdles put in his path. My opponent may like to turn a blind eye to the prejudices that are still prevalent in our society, but I see them clearly and I understand them. Marcus clearly hasn’t let other people’s prejudices stand in the way of his success. I think he has a lot to teach people.”
“Yeah, it’s hard for a gay man to become a successful hair-stylist in San Francisco.” The comment slipped out of my mouth before I had a chance to check it, but Anne just laughed.
“Well, maybe not in San Francisco. But you’d be surprised, Sophie. There are plenty of people right here in Northern California who seem to think that being gay is like having a contagious disease, and they would never let someone who identified himself as a homosexual get near them, not even to do their hair. Flynn Fitzgerald certainly wouldn’t. But then again his problem isn’t homophobia, it’s pandering. He happily assumes the role of a hate-monger in order to woo the Christian right.”
“Yeah,” I said after swallowing another one of Marcus’s chocolates. “Some people will do just about anything in order to win.”
Anne winced, which was…interesting. “Flynn Fitzgerald is not a good man.” Her voice was so soft I had to lean toward her in order to hear. “He’s a hypocrite and he’s dishonest. If he wins, he will not represent the best interests of his constituents. That’s why I have to win.” She put both hands f lat down on the table and stared at her mangled cuticles. “If I am elected, I’ll be able to do some good, not just for the people of Contra Costa County but for America as a whole. Flynn Fitzgerald won’t. If I can stop another opportunistic, unscrupulous conservative from getting to Congress I have to do it. You see that, don’t you?” She lifted her eyes to mine, and it suddenly occurred to me that she wasn’t really trying to convince me of anything. She was trying to convince herself.
“It’s been a hard campaign for you,” I noted as I took a sip of my drink. “I read about that guy who committed suicide by throwing himself out the window of your campaign headquarters. What was his name again? Something with a P…”
Anne’s face instantly hardened. “His name was Peter,” she said tersely, “and yes, that was horrible.”
“Do you have any idea why he did it?”
“He did it because of people like Flynn Fitzgerald.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Peter was gay, Sophie. He thought he was hiding it from me, but I knew the minute I laid eyes on him. Sometimes you can just tell. To be honest, it’s one of the reasons I recruited him. He was clearly a little lost and depressed, and I thought that if I offered him the opportunity to work in an environment where he’d be surrounded by kindhearted progressives like myself, he’d learn to be proud of who he was.”
“Wait a minute.” I leaned forward in order to make sure I wasn’t mishearing anything. “You recruited Peter?”
Anne hesitated, then brought the cuticles of her index finger to her mouth. “I did recruit him,” she eventually confirmed. “I was taking a trip and had bags to check. Peter was working behind the ticket counter. He was very helpful and sweet and he recognized me from the newspaper. I was looking for someone to help organize my phone campaigns and I invited him to come in for an interview.”
“Wow. So you really reached out to him. You said he was depressed, but did you have any inkling that he was suicidal?”
“No.” Anne looked down at the liquid chocolate in front of her. There was an awkward silence before she mumbled, “I found him.”
“You found him?” I repeated.
“It was late and I needed something from the office…my speech, that was it. I had left a speech I needed to memorize at my desk. I went to the building and there he was. Did you notice that my campaign headquarters is
on the top floor of a fifteen-floor building? And the area around the building is nothing but concrete. I’ve never seen anything so awful. I prayed that I wouldn’t have to see anything like that again.”
“Hopefully you won’t,” I offered.
Anne didn’t say anything. She just continued to stare at her drink. My handbag was on my lap and I felt it vibrate slightly. Anatoly, no doubt. I pulled out the phone just to make sure.
Not Anatoly. In fact, the only part of the number I recognized was the local area code.
“Sorry about this,” I said quickly. “I think it’s my sister again.” I pressed the talk button. “Hello?”
“It’s a shame what happened to your friend. Enough to make your fur stand on end.”
It was Darth Vader. He was calling me, taunting me with jokes about Melanie’s murder. And Anne was sitting here at my table, staring at her drink, not talking on the phone.
“Who is this?” I whispered. Anne looked up at me curiously.
“It’s your furry friend. This is your last warning, Katz. Stay out of my life and stay out of my campaign.”
The phone went dead.
“What was that about?” Anne asked.
I stared at my phone. My hand was shaking.
“Sophie?”
“Huh?” I looked up at Anne, who was regarding me curiously.
“Who was on the phone?” she pressed.
I swallowed. It was time to gamble with a version of the truth. “It was a prank call,” I said. “I’ve been getting a lot of them lately. They’re all from this Darth Vader soundalike who apparently has a thing for animals.”
Anne’s eyes bulged and she was immediately on her feet. “I need to go.” She grabbed her purse and sprinted down the stairs toward the door.
“Anne?” I called after her. I jumped up to follow, but my purse had still been on my lap and I hadn’t bothered to close it after pulling out my phone. Everything from my wallet to my ultralight panty liners crashed to the floor. “Shit!” I dropped to my knees and started stuffing the items back in my bag. I ran out of the café, clutching my purse in one hand and Marcus’s box of truffles in the other, but Anne was nowhere in sight.
