by Kelly Rey
Speaking of that, it was awfully strange—and convenient—that no guests had been around when Oxnard had met his maker. Also strange that I hadn't even heard a splash. Of course, I'd been busy not hoovering filet mignon to pay much attention.
I looked up through the solarium's glass roof. It was past eleven. The sky was cloudless, and the moon was full, lending a startling brightness to everything except my mood.
Maizy was back, pretty unconcerned for someone who was trespassing on a murder scene. "I just thought of something," she said. "Do you think he died during nicky-nack?" She waggled her arms and fingers around, indicating, I presumed, conjugal bliss.
"With who?" I asked. "The bride disappeared along with everyone else."
"Maybe he was a do-it-yourselfer," she said.
My nose wrinkled all on its own. "In the pool?"
"He seemed like a free spirit," she said. "You don't know. I mean, if you ignore that he was a couple hundred years old and probably tired easily, it's possible."
Had Sybil deliberately boinked Oxnard into a heart attack and then run off? I couldn't see it. I didn't want to see it. If Oxnard hadn't been drinking, my theory of a drunken tumble was dead in the water, pardon the expression.
"We'll call the police in a minute," she said. "Follow me."
I followed her into the pitch-black foyer. "Why are the lights off?"
"It's better that way," she said.
It was never better that way. I picked up the pace to catch up to her. "Shouldn't we make a statement or something?"
"About what?" she asked. "Do you know something I don't know?"
Unlikely under any circumstance.
There was something spooky about the house, with the cool darkness and the knowledge that Oxnard wasn't coming back somehow lending an air of abandonment. Hard to achieve that, with priceless antiques and paintings and hideous designer furnishings scattered about. Sans a particular vase, of course. It was too quiet, without so much as the white noise of the HVAC system.
Within a half dozen steps Maizy had blended into the shadows. She was no more than a disembodied face in the darkness when she turned. "You plan on standing there till morning or what?"
Definitely or what. I followed her down dark hallways, past closed doors, and up a tiny elevator—an elevator! —to the third floor, where we finally arrived at Oxnard's office. I knew we'd arrived when she stopped walking and I ran smack into her back. Well, it wasn't like I could see her or anything.
"You take the desk," she told me. "I'll check the master bedroom. Maybe there's a safe in there. Remember, no lights." And she disappeared into some dark crevice in the corner of the room. I heard a door open, and she was gone.
I groped my way across the floor, smacking my shin on something to the left and whacking my knee on something to the right, stopping when I hit the desk. With my hip. The desk, as it turned out, was the approximate size of the Eisenhower. It was made of some dark wood, burnished to a mirror gloss. It held a slew of papers and a single photo in a silver frame. I held the frame up to my nose for closer inspection. The Stepford Thorpes smiled gummy smiles back at me. I put them down, facing the other way, and picked up the papers, angling them toward the mostly lightless window to try to read them. Lying on top was Lizette's bill with a balance due of—I squinted harder—the national deficit. No wonder she'd wanted her money. She probably had her eye on a chateau in the Alps. I folded the page into quarters and stuffed it in my bag, deciding I'd try to smooth things over with Lizette. When I questioned her about an alibi.
I kept sifting through the papers, my curiosity piqued. Letterhead with the No Flows logo, a pint-sized David wearing an adult diaper. Classy. Purchase orders and invoices reflecting that there was big money in the circle of life. A few contracts, evidenced by all the wherefores and hereunders, between Oxnard as CEO of No Flows Incorporated and Allison Madeline Cartwright, Jalen Jefferson, and Caroline Kirby. Oxnard hadn't signed any of them. The others had. Allison had dotted her "I" with a little smiley face. Oddly, while the contracts were of recent date, everything else seemed to be a year old.
The top drawer was full of the usual: rubber bands, pencils, pens, paper clips, a stack of risqué Polaroids featuring a very talented dark-haired stud lounging casually on throw pillows in a black Speedo. He had such a come-hither expression that I couldn't resist carrying him over to the window for a better look to see if I recognized him from, say, Sunday services. His name, stamped on the back along with his significant measurements (funny, he seemed taller than 5'9") and professional credits ("man waiting for bus"), was Rod Rockstone. Allegedly.
For the sake of thoroughness, I flipped through the rest of the stack, stopping when I saw a familiar face. Dusty Rose, wearing a string bikini. Yowza. Compared to her, I was built like a garden stake. So this was the No Flows roster of diaper models that Bitsy had railed against. They were practically identical except gender and hair color. And I had to say, having given the matter intense consideration, Rod Rockstone had a leg up on his competition.
You never knew when something could come in handy, so I slipped his photo into my pocket and returned to the desk. Oxnard had been surprisingly organized. His files were alphabetized, his collection of DVDs numbered, and his telephone directory filled with nice large clear printing that enabled me to read Bitsy Dolman's address and number even in the dark.
Bitsy Dolman? It took a second to register. Maybe Bitsy had served on some charity board or other with Oxnard. She might be a pretty good fundraiser, and what else did she have to do with her days once she got her drinking out of the way?
Although I had her business card, it seemed like a good idea to jot down her home address, too. I found a piece of notepaper and scribbled down her information. It gave me another way to contact her, and I couldn't very well take the entire telephone directory. It was much too large to fit in my skinflint purse.
When I thought I'd found everything there was to find, I decided to find Maizy. I picked my way across the floor, into the hallway, past some hideous framed Rorschach tests, but I couldn't locate the nexus of my breadcrumb trail, the elevator. I could have sworn we'd left it just beyond the portrait of the Stepfords in their younger years, their 70s. I tried not to look at it as I scurried past in case their eyes followed me.
Finally, after groping my way down another hallway, I found the master suite. Maizy wasn't there. She wasn't in the en suite, either. Weak moonlight pushed through the glass block window behind a ginormous soaker tub, faintly illuminating a lifestyle I'd never have.
"Find anything?" Maizy asked from behind me.
I whipped my head around so fast I nearly broke a bone. "Will you stop sneaking up on me like that?"
"I'm not sneaking," she said. "I'm being prudently silent. So what'd you find?"
"I found Bitsy Dolman's home address and phone number."
"The drunk lady, right? Is that all?"
I patted the pocket where the photo of Mr. Right was safely tucked away. "That's it," I said.
"Maybe she was doing nicky-nack with Oxnard," Maizy said. "On the side. I hear money is an aphrodisiac."
I thought of Sybil whining about Oxnard's affair. Maybe that should have been affairs, plural.
We got on the elevator, which had somehow moved to a different hallway, and rode to the first floor. Everything was quiet. The lights were still off. Oxnard was still dead.
Ninety minutes later, after we'd given our statements to the police, we settled into the Escort. Maizy had parked by the side door, having stuffed the car with a box of No Flows along with brooms, mops and a vacuum cleaner in an effort to disguise us as the cleaning crew. Not sure where she'd been going with the No Flows, but I was pretty sure the cleaning supplies were a not-so-subtle suggestion that I planned to ignore completely.
"He was awfully old for nicky-nack, wasn't he?" Maizy asked once we were on the road. "I thought those parts just shriveled up after a while. Unless he had the little blue pill. Then he could proba
bly nicky-nack all night."
"You mean the little purple pill," I said.
"I don't think so," she said. "I think it's the one with the possible side effect of you could die."
That didn't narrow the field much.
"Anyway," she said, "I didn't find anything in here, either. Some massage oil and a box of glow-in-the-dark condoms."
Eww.
"Why would you want it to glow in the dark?" I asked.
"Maybe he liked to pretend it was a light saber," she said.
Eww again.
"So," Maizy said, "Guess we need to talk to the new widow."
"Guess so," I said glumly. "But I'm not waiting for her here."
"Agreed," she said. "This place has lost its panache. We'll do it tomorrow."
Not if I could help it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I couldn't help it.
Maizy tapped me on the shoulder at eight a.m., simultaneously waking me from a sound sleep and performing an unscheduled stress test. "Time to get started."
My eyes shot open while my pulse rocketed into the red zone. I could practically taste my heart. "What are you doing here, Maizy?"
"We agreed we'd talk to Sybil today." She scratched Ashley's ears. Ashley pushed her head into Maizy's hand and purred.
"It's not today yet." I pushed myself upright. "How did you get in here, anyway? I know I locked my door."
She snorted. "Single cylinder deadbolt. You want to call that locked, fine by me. Come on. Get ready. She has a nine o'clock appointment at Zara's."
An uber-chic spa that charged $200 for a massage. I could barely afford to drive past it.
I stuck my legs into jeans. "How do you know that?"
"I'm not just a pretty face," Maizy said. "I can also dial a phone."
I had to have clean socks somewhere. I got up to dig in the hamper. "You called Sybil Thorpe?"
"It's been done," she said. "There." She pointed to a pile of laundry in the corner.
I found socks and a hoodie sweatshirt with a zipper. "Think this is okay for Zara's?"
"Absolutely not," Maizy said.
Her outfit was jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt. "You're wearing the exact same thing," I said.
"But I'm wearing it with style," she said.
Whatever.
I did my best with very little equipment, and we headed downstairs to my car. Curt was already on his way back to his brother's house. The neighborhood was still half asleep. So was I, so I flipped Maizy the keys.
"Good news," she said. "Sybil agreed to let us do what we do. Well, actually she said 'It's late, I need to get some sleep.' But the gist was there."
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We're detectives," Maizy told me.
News to me.
"Ipso facto," she said, "we investigate. You can't be shy in this business."
"This isn't a business," I said. "This is…" I trailed off. What was this? Not a hobby, because hobbies were supposed to be enjoyable.
"Sure it is," Maizy said. "It's just a not-for-profit at the moment. That's all gonna change, because we rock."
I was pretty sure I didn't rock. On my best day, I was the driver of the getaway car while Maizy was the evil genius behind the operation.
I watched the world slip past the passenger window for a few minutes. It slipped by pretty fast. Maizy tended to regard speed limit signs as suggested minimums.
"Do you think it's possible that she killed Oxnard?" I asked after a while.
She shrugged. "What have our investigations taught us?"
"That I should have gone to college?"
Maizy sighed. "They've taught us that we don't rule out anyone."
Oh. That, too.
"Except," I said, "it makes no sense to hire us if she did it." Unless she had no fear of actually being found out. Which meant she had no belief in our abilities. That made two of us.
"It could be a psychological ploy," Maizy said. "She might think if she hired us, we'd never suspect her. Of course, hire implies pay. We're doing this for good will."
Then we were wasting our time. Sybil didn't have any.
"Anyway," she said, "I'm not too worried about it. If she gets caught in our net, we'll reel her in."
"What net?" I asked. "We have a net?"
She shrugged. "I heard that on the Cliché Channel. What time is it?"
"Eight forty," I said. "You can slow down. It's just on the next block."
Maizy swerved to a stop at the curb two doors down from Zara's. Ours was the only car on the street for the moment, but I could see people moving around inside, bringing the spa to life for the day.
I shrunk myself down inside my sweatshirt and crossed my arms. "We're going to talk to her before she goes in, right?"
Maizy glanced at me. "Why? Do these places intimidate you?"
My mouth twisted. "Of course not."
"Me, too," she said. We were quiet for a few minutes, watching the spa begin to breathe. "The blonde is really pretty," Maizy said softly.
I looked over at her, surprised. "You're really pretty, too, Maize."
She shrugged. Her eyes stayed on the spa. Mine stayed on her, but she didn't give anything away. Maybe I'd read too much into the comment.
"Here she comes," Maizy said a few seconds later. "Let's make sure we ask her about Bitsy Dolman."
We got out of the car and met Sybil on the sidewalk. She'd traded the red sequins for tailored white slacks, with a pale pink blazer, a chunky silver necklace and diamond stud earrings that flashed in the morning sun.
"Here." She thrust a piece of paper at me. "The guest list."
"I'll take that," Maizy said, and did, shoving it in her pocket.
"Let's make this fast," she said. "I don't want to be late."
I blinked. "You don't seem too upset over your husband's death."
"I'm a complete wreck over it." She inspected her nails. "You can't imagine my horror when I got home and found out."
Actually, I could imagine it, since Maizy and I had been the ones to find him in the first place, when we shouldn't have even still been there except for the fact that I hated to see all that filet mignon go to waste. Which explained why I currently had a freezer full of filet mignon purloined from a perfectly clean floor. And a purse that smelled like a stockyard.
She cocked her head at Maizy. "What's with the blue hair? Are you undercover?"
"If I was undercover," Maizy said, "I'd be a blonde."
"Got home from where?" I asked.
She seemed surprised. "We had a fight, remember? You were there. You know what happened. Everybody knows what happened."
"So where'd you go?" Maizy asked.
Sybil hesitated. "I had to get away for a while, so I went shopping."
Interesting choice of words: had to. As in I had to get out of the house so my hired goon could kill my new husband?
"Buy anything?" Maizy asked her.
She shook her head. "After an hour or so I calmed down and decided that wasn't the way I wanted to start my marriage. So I went home."
How convenient. No receipts.
"Where did you go?" I asked, thinking Maizy could hack into store security cameras for confirmation. I tried to remember what time everyone had disappeared after the food fight. Too late for a shopping excursion, unless Sybil shopped at a 24-hour Walmart. And I couldn't see that happening.
She shrugged. "Maxwell's. He opened the studio just for me."
I'd heard of Maxwell's. It was one of those private, appointment-only places that existed strictly for those lucky people who had too much money and not enough time to spend it.
"Did Oxnard swim?" Maizy asked abruptly.
Sybil blinked. "I have no idea."
Maizy was dug in. "How could you not know that?"
"I first went out with him in November," Sybil said, speaking very precisely, as if we were coming out of a deep anesthesia. "I married him in April. It wasn't swimming season."
"Why the rush?" Maizy a
sked. "Are you pregnant?"
Sybil glared at me. "Who is this person?"
I ignored that. "Tell us about Bitsy Dolman," I said.
"Bitsy Dolman." She tapped her finger to her chin. "Bitsy Dolman."
"Looks like Helen Mirren?" I prompted. "Sees the world through the bottom of a glass?"
She snapped her fingers, remembering. "I asked Oxie who she was and what she was doing on the guest list, and he said they went way back."
"They couldn't have been a couple," I said. "I mean, she must be twenty-five years younger than him."
"And how old do you think I am?" she snapped.
Oops.
"She's not his type," I said quickly. "I didn't know your husband very well, but he seemed to like his women…sober. I got the impression Bitsy used to live a much different life."
She shrugged. "He didn't speak much about her."
Something suddenly occurred to me. "But you must have known her. Bitsy claims she recommended Lizette Larue to you for your wedding."
She shook her head. "That's preposterous. Oxie recommended her."
"She was pretty clear that she'd spoken to you," I said.
"The way she drinks," Sybil said, "I doubt Bitsy is clear about anything."
Good point.
"What about his brother and sister?" Maizy asked. "Would they have reason to want Oxnard dead?"
To my surprise, Sybil burst into laughter, "Abigail is 92 and osteoporotic. She couldn't drown anything heavier than a cricket."
"But she could push a cricket into the pool," I argued. "Especially if that cricket had included her in his will."
Sybil gave a slow nod, conceding the point. "I don't know them that well, but Oxie always said he was just a bank account to Alston and Abby. She never worked a day in her life. And Alston…Alston had a rich brother." She glanced at her watch. "I'm going to be late for my appointment. Is there anything else?"
"Herman Kantz," I said. "How long have you known him?"
"Why would you ask that?"
"He told you to call him if you need him." I paused. "Why would you need him?"
Sybil shrugged. "Herman has a white knight complex. He was just being gallant if he said that."
