“And Cynthia’s death?”
“Now, that,” said Emily, “is a cul-de-sac that you don’t need to bother with.”
I finished with Emily and ate two sugar cookies. Sugar cookies are the Aristotelian ideal of cookies, as far as I am concerned, as they do not concern themselves with unneeded frippery like chocolate or oatmeal or walnuts. Just pure cookie idealness, which was a comfort I could use.
I hated the idea of Cynthia’s death being described as “a cul-de-sac.” If I died, I would want my passing to be more than a dead end. I would want it to be a full-on avenue, with traffic and interesting businesses, and signs that warned to go slowly because children were playing. There are limits to this metaphor, obviously, but I just hated the idea that I was supposed to give up on Cynthia. It felt wrong.
Even worse, it felt callous. But maybe that was the gig. Hookers may have hearts of gold, but detectives not so much. And industrial spies not at all.
“Hey, Colleen,” I said to a woman behind the counter.
“You again? You’re becoming one of our best customers.”
“I’m trying to bring up morale at work. With baked goods.”
“How much do you need to bring it up?”
“Well,” I said, “right now we have firings, a saboteur, and possibly a murderer.”
“I’ll put together the bag,” said Colleen.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I had scarcely made it home when I got a text from Tyler Banks, which I was not expecting, although I should have been.
“On second thought, maybe meet for coffee after all? I’m kinda stressed out after all that.”
Right. I’d forgotten about the coffee plan, given the interrogation. Now all I had to do was see if Masako was interested. Admittedly, this was doing things backward, but backward is better than nothing.
“Masako—” I said, opting for a phone call rather than a text, since this was going to be a hard sell. “What are you doing right now?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Dahlia, Nathan’s … whatever I am.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling that this was dangerous water. “What are you doing?”
“Linear algebra.”
“What?”
“Like with matrices.”
“Do you want to have coffee with me?”
“Why?”
“Does coffee need a reason?” I asked.
“I am suspicious,” said Masako.
Masako was not a detective—she was, as far as I could tell, a Goth who disguised herself in pastels and polka dots—but she certainly had the right frame of mind for the endeavor. She was right to be suspicious.
“There’s a fellow I thought I might introduce you to.”
“Who?” said Masako.
“He works with me.”
“What is he, a bounty hunter?” asked Masako.
“Ha, ha, no. He’s in middle management.”
“Sounds fun,” said Masako, who was a Grand Magus of Sarcasm, and was in fact capable of wielding it like an ancient tome of great power.
“I think you’ll like him,” I said. “And you don’t want to get hooked up with bounty hunters. Those guys are the worst.”
“Why are you working with a middle manager, anyway? Is this part of some kind of secret detective work?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.” Jesus, Masako was good. “Although, now that you mention it, don’t bring up my detective work to Tyler.”
“You don’t want him getting suspicious of you.”
“Um.”
“You’re keeping secrets from this middle manager.”
Masako, it dawned upon me, was entirely too clever and strong willed to be invited on a delicate operation such as this. She was not a sidekick; she was her own main character. Seriously, you should probably be looking for The Masterful Decision Making of Masako Ueda, in stores now.
“You know, on second thought, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.” Masako was going to be more trouble than she was worth.
“Maybe I do want to,” said Masako.
“I can find someone else,” I told her, which was almost certainly not true.
“No, I’m getting sick of this math, anyway. I’ll try your middle manager. I have a middle. Maybe he can manage it.”
And with that, Masako Ueda had taken over the evening.
I also called, not texted, my boyfriend/manfriend/fella-of-the-moment Nathan Willing. Nathan was a grad student in plant and microbial sciences—don’t say botany, it makes him testy—and as we have determined in previous adventures, not a murderer. I thought it would be nice to have Nathan around, because he’s fun, and enjoyable to look at. Also, I thought that there was an even chance that Masako and Tyler would go badly, and Nathan was good at creating the illusion of fun. There’s this thing in biology where apex predators in different food chains meet, and they will have absolutely no relationship to each other. That’s a little what I was worried about. I was going to have coffee with a crocodile and a vulture, and they were going to eye each other from across the table as though they belonged in different biomes. Because they sort of did.
I even told Nathan about this concern.
“I think you have the wrong animals,” Nathan said. “The crocodile is just going to eat that vulture.”
“The individual animals aren’t the point,” I told him.
“Which one is Masako, anyway?” he asked.
“She’s the crocodile, obviously.”
“What animal am I?” asked Nathan.
“I don’t know, Tigger? I really need you to bring the fun, Nathan, if things aren’t going well.”
“I can bring the fun train into station,” said Nathan. “But I’m picking up a prospective TA from the airport tonight, so I can’t stick around.”
“Cool,” I said. “Awesome. This is all for a case, by the way.”
“Yeah,” said Nathan. “I figured that out.”
The evening did not go as I planned it. Right from the start, Masako changed where we were meeting, switching from a coffeehouse to a bar, and things only got more off the rails from there.
Let’s start with the bar.
The Black Fox looked as if it had been dreamed up by the people at White Wolf games, which is to say that is was the sort of Goth bar that should have stopped existing in the nineties. It was made of brick and mortar and mortality and black eyeliner. The music was loud and industrial, the waitress was pierced and sexy, and I half expected to find people playing Jihad at a table in the back.
I liked it.
Lately the Goths have added neon “industrial waste” green to their color palette, and it was on full display here. A guy near us had a green-and-black-pinstripe jacket, which was swank in a Tim Burton sort of way. A gal over at a table nearby was wearing neon-green leggings with black stripes. And over by the door a lady who was arguably too old for the club had a neon-green feather in her hair.
Someday, people will look back and be nostalgic for the days in which the Goths just wore one color.
Masako and I got there first, and she wisely had us sit outside at black metal tables, which took the edge off a lot of the Gothiness. I had taken the opportunity to change out of my toile scarf, and was wearing a peach-and-white-colored kraken-print blouse that Alden had gotten me for Christmas, in part because our mother reiterated that I should never wear peach. I feel I should wear whatever goddamned pleases me, but peach was not in style here. I also had on brown slacks, which was similarly inappropriate to the venue.
Masako, despite wearing a red-and-white-polka-dot number that frankly seemed a little Minnie Mouse, did not seem out of place at all, but she was one of those people who had the quality of always being appropriately dressed. I think this is somehow related to Masako’s quality of Not Giving Fucks, which is something I envy.
Or maybe the truth is that nobody at the bar really cares.
Masako ordered a round of M
idnight Kisses, which was a drink so fruity that it had to be given an intimidating name, or Goths would never order it. This is what I have learned from going out with Masako: If you order something called “Satan’s Souls,” you will get a drink made from sherry, peach Sparkletini, and Skittles.
“Tastes like damnation,” she told me.
“I never knew that damnation tastes so much like champagne and grapefruit.”
“Probably because you’re so virtuous,” said Masako, who again, I will point out, is a Grand Magus of Sarcasm. Young teenagers who are just starting out on their voyages of snark make shrines to her in their bedrooms. I let this remark go by.
“So did you really think that I would like this guy?” asked Masako. “Or am I here as a pawn in your machinations?”
“You’re not a pawn in my machinations,” I told Masako, which was true. She was more of a knight or a bishop.
“You say that,” said Masako measuredly, “but you also haven’t answered my question as to whether I would like him.”
This is why I expect Masako to be anchoring her own series of detective novels at some point in the future. Not much gets by her, and that was on top of a mouthful of grapefruit and champagne.
“You could like him,” I said. “There’s nothing objectively wrong with him. It’s not like he has a hunchback or that disease that ages you prematurely like in The Magic Kingdom,” I said.
“So no aging disease. Well, that’s high praise.”
“He’s cute,” I said, and honestly, Tyler was, in a sideways sort of way. But I was clearly in a phase where I needed to find less boys attractive and focus on the boys at hand. I did not need to be adding new men to my repertoire as though they were new colors at a Goth club.
“Cute how?” asked Masako. “Describe this alleged cuteness—” And I was thankfully spared answering this question, as Tyler Banks entered the club. He was joined by Quintrell King, whom I was not expecting.
Neither of them had changed clothes, but Tyler’s asymmetrical hair certainly anchored him into the bar. Plus, he had that bright green wisp! He was born for the place. Quintrell was out of place, but that might have been true anywhere, because he looked shell-shocked.
“Dahlia,” Tyler said. “I’m glad you switched from a coffee shop to a bar. I think we could use a drink.”
I shoved over the Midnight Kiss to him, which Masako had thoughtfully ordered in advance. I didn’t have a drink for Quintrell, who looked like he needed it the most.
“What’s in this?” asked Tyler.
“Perdition,” said Masako. “Also grapefruit juice.”
Tyler downed his drink, which was intended for sipping. “Wow,” he said. “That’s a helluva mimosa.”
“I’m Masako,” said Masako, not bothering to wait for me to introduce her, which was probably wise. “Do you always drink alcohol that quickly?”
“No,” said Tyler. “Just after dead bodies and police interviews. Actually, we should order a second one. And something for Quint.”
Quintrell, despite looking rather out of it, was shrewd enough to observe the creasing on Masako’s forehead and ask: “You look surprised. Did Cynthia not tell you about the dead body she found?”
“No,” said Masako, who did not throw her drink back but certainly accelerated her consumption of it. “I suppose she forgot to mention it in all the excitement. Is that it, Cynthia?”
“Cynthia’s just my nickname,” I said. “It’s a little in-joke. They know my name is Dahlia.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Quintrell. Were it not for the murder, I would have been forced to assume that Quintrell was fucking with me, because he had been told my name hundreds of times in Chapter Two. Go back and read it again. Hundreds of times.
“How did you get the nickname Cynthia?” asked Masako.
“It’s the name of the dead body she found,” said Quintrell. This was not an appropriate thing to say, even outside a bar having a Goth night. Maybe if we’d been inside.
“I see,” said Masako.
“That’s not really it,” I said, but then a waiter came by, and more drinks were ordered.
At this point, I was really starting to wonder about where Nathan and his proverbial Fun Train were. Not that we needed him, but he was late, and I didn’t want to be many drinks in when he arrived.
“Sorry about not ordering you something in advance, Quintrell,” I said. “We didn’t know that you were coming.”
This sounded a little more like a complaint than I had intended, and Tyler responded:
“Quintrell was saying that he didn’t feel like going home, and I thought, after what happened, I should bring him along.”
That’s what Tyler said, but I had an idea that Quintrell was his own Fun Train. I could respect that.
“I wanted to stay and work,” said Quintrell, who didn’t sound like fun regardless.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Maybe we should start you with a shot. What’s good?” asked Tyler.
“You should try a Sugar Sugar,” said Masako. As this had a fruity name to start with, I could only assume it was made with Everclear and battery acid.
“A round of Sugar Sugars,” said Tyler.
And this was how I began the road to perdition.
CHAPTER NINE
It’s not possible to nurse a drink when the beverage in question is a shot. You can’t sip a shot like you can a vampire-themed mimosa. If you are not doing shots with the group, you are transparently not drinking,
And I like drinking. I just didn’t want to do it at this particular moment. For one, it’s not a great thing to do following a concussion, and for another, I had planned to sneak away after to a Presbyterian church knitters’ group and ask probing questions to old women. This was a difficult thought to articulate, though, because any thought is difficult to articulate after you’ve had a Sugar Sugar. Also, as these people were possibly suspects in whatever tomfoolery was surrounding Cynthia’s death, it seemed unwise to bring up my sleuthing plans, however vague.
And naturally, the moment I started doing something unwise, Nathan Willing, botanist boyfriend, showed up.
Nathan entered the scene as coolly as a man wearing a messenger bag possibly can. Imagine him coming down to the table in slow motion, pastel-blue corduroy, mustard-colored messenger bag swaying back and forth, and grinning and nodding at me as he sat down. Nathan was cool. His clothes, probably not, but he was.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “The fun train got stuck in traffic. Although, from the looks of it”—Nathan looked at the collection of burgeoning drunkards around him—“it seems like you’ve got plenty of fun as it is.”
Nathan was looking at Tyler and Masako in particular, who couldn’t be sitting any closer to each other without having sex.
“The crocodile and vulture are certainly acknowledging each other’s existence.”
“You know, I don’t think I would do very well as a biologist.”
“Tell me about your case,” he said.
“Shh!” I told him, but the rest of the table didn’t take much notice. They hadn’t even paused their drinking and conversation. I guess he only entered in slow motion for me.
“Should you be drinking?” he asked. “It wasn’t that long ago that you had a concussion.”
This, to be fair to Nathan, was a very fair question, and I tried not to resent him for it.
“Certainly not,” I said, taking a shot.
“I see,” said Nathan.
I tried to introduce Nathan to the group, but the conversation drifted away from me, as Tyler, paying no attention to Nathan, seemed to jump in to some sort of extended Beauty and the Beast metaphor that I did not understand. Nathan took matters into his own hands.
“Greetings, everyone! It is I, Nathan Willing!”
“Have a drink,” said Masako. “They’re very alcoholic and extremely ridiculous.”
This is practically Nathan’s favorite combination of things, and he winced h
is answer. “I can’t. I’m playing host to a potential grad student tonight. I have to protect the good name of Washington University.”
“Its name wasn’t that great to begin with,” I said. “Tennessee Williams hated the place.”
“Tennessee Williams was a lying whore,” said Nathan, as amiably as you can imagine the line, “and, as I understand it, he had very little to do with plant and microbial sciences. Tell me about your case. You know, it really doesn’t look like you’re working at all.”
I should have been irritated at him for bringing up detective stuff again, but it was crystal clear that the rest of the table was not listening to us. Tyler had picked up a candle from the table and was doing some sort of trick with it.
“Yes,” I told him. “I’m working. I’m not always holding magnifying glasses up to windowsills and shouting out ‘Zut alors!’ Sometimes I converse with loose-lipped drunkards.”
Although, Tyler apparently heard this bit and said: “Aye, aye!”
“What detective is going around saying ‘Zut alors’?” asked Nathan, and this was his default state, which were happy tangents.
“Hercule Poirot, maybe?” I said, and then added in a strained voice, “Stop mentioning detective work.”
“He’s never said that,” said Nathan. “You’re thinking of the chef in The Little Mermaid.”
“No,” said Tyler. “Not The Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast.”
“René Auberjonois isn’t in Beauty and the Beast,” said Nathan.
Tyler, however, did not debate this point, just continued on with his metaphor that I did not understand.
“In the movie they all just start out as weird objects, but in the play, it happens gradually. Like, each scene you’re more like a teapot. That’s what it’s like while I’m there,” said Tyler.
“The what now?” said Nathan.
“When you’re where?” I asked.
“Tyler is explaining that working at DE is transforming him into a teapot,” explained Masako.
“Zut alors!” said Nathan.
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss Page 7
