Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  “Probably not for another ten minutes,” Dannie assured him.

  “Bugsy, I need maps of about a thirty-mile radius from where each of Loverboy’s other bodies were found, and on them I want all of you to mark any places where people go for fun.”

  “Motels?” Bugsy suggested.

  “Family fun,” Imogen corrected. “You know, arcades, bowling alleys, miniature golf. Amusement parks.”

  “Movie theaters?”

  “No, too many.”

  Bugsy glanced at the television again. “Racetracks?”

  “Sure. And carnivals.”

  “Some carnivals are seasonal,” Tom pointed out. “It would be hard to get all of those.”

  “Check for around the dates of the murders. Or, even better, just circle fairgrounds.”

  Imogen was buzzing with nervous energy. She was on to something, but had no idea what. She should call Louisa Greenway’s parents and ask them if their daughter—or even one of their sons—had brought home a cheap stuffed animal before the girl disappeared, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wanted to stretch out the possibility that what she was thinking might be true for as long as she could.

  She took a red Tootsie Pop from the box on the table and parked herself in front of the collage. Her eyes roved over it, from object to object: bed, television, Intellivision console, Night Crawlers game, stereo, geode, Original Ouija board, Great Houdini Magic Set, Emergency! poster, desk, Audrie Lumber notepad, Ford County Library book (Moby Dick), Liquid Paper, valentine, Mead notebook. Next to it she’d taped up Loverboy’s most recent hangman’s gallows. Somewhere in that collage there were the twelve letters that spelled Rosalind’s location. Somewhere.

  Groans emanating simultaneously from the television set and from Tom at her elbow pulled her attention from the collage.

  “He’s fallen behind.” Tom pointed out Benton’s chrome-and-yellow car on the television. “He was up in the first lap but now he slowed down.”

  “He’s just trying to trick them,” Harold told Tom confidently. Harold’s admiration for Benton had been growing at an exponential rate. “You know, make him think he is slower than he is so they’ll eat his dust. He told me all about it. It’s strategy.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Dannie said, abandoning all pretense of working and moving over to the couch in front of the TV. Soon they were all sitting there, eyes glued to the screen.

  Imogen gnawed her Tootsie Pop down to the stick without realizing it.

  “This is it,” Harold murmured, and they all leaned closer. Three cars in a tight pack approached the final bend of the motor speedway in a dizzying blur.

  “He’s moving to the inside,” Dannie shouted.

  “He’s not going to make it—wait—” Tom said excitedly.

  All five of them sat spellbound watching as he edged into the inside of the turn. His nose edged between two cars. It was close. It was damn close. It was—

  He was in front.

  “He’s going to do it,” Tom yelled.

  “He’s pulling it off,” Harold cheered.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Dannie hollered, jumping up and down.

  Imogen’s heart was racing. She found herself on her feet, craning her neck at the TV as if it would improve her view, holding her breath—

  Then jumping up and down and cheering with her team as the finish flag dropped behind Benton’s bumper.

  It was absurd. She didn’t care how he did. Yet when he climbed out of his car, smiling and waving at the crowd, she found herself, alongside Tom, Harold, and Dannie, smiling and waving back. At the television.

  She was just happy for him, she told herself. For how he must be feeling. A job well done. Success.

  Her phone rang fifteen minutes later. “Imogen? It’s Julia.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Were you watching? I’m calling because we’ve taken over the Fontana lounge tonight to celebrate and I wanted to invite you and the rest of your hardworking staff. I know you are all busy and believe me, none of us feel like a party either, but the head of our stockholders just called and said that if we don’t capitalize on this win and show it’s business as usual despite our little personal problems—that’s what he called them, the asshole—we are going to be looking at a hostile takeover in the morning. The truth is, I am trying to get as many warm bodies there as I can. I know that’s not the most elegant invite, but at least it’s honest. Is there any chance any of you could come? It would really help us out. And the band is going to be good, so at least we can work out our frustrations salsa-ing like mad. Things should start around seven.”

  Imogen was delivering the news to her team when her phone rang again. Bugsy got it. He handed it to her.

  “Are you having a party out there?” the caller demanded. “It sounds crazy.”

  Imogen snapped back to work. “Reggie, please be calling to tell me you found something.”

  “Will you give me the best years of your life?”

  “Those are long gone. What is it?”

  “I found a listing for a vic, around the same time as your Greenway murder, one who matches what you described. Sex, no violence, strangling, found in bathtub. This one doesn’t have a hickey. But someone doused her sheets in Poison.”

  Imogen kissed the phone. This was a break. Marielle was not an aberration and she didn’t die just because of a mistake Imogen had made. “Can you send me the file? And a list of the evidence found on the body?”

  “Yeah, but it will take a few days. We’re short-staffed.”

  “How many days?”

  “Three or four. If I rush it.” He paused. “Of course, if you wanted to fly to Boston and have dinner with me tomorrow, you could see the file as soon as you got here.”

  Imogen looked at her watch. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Even if there were a flight leaving in an hour, she wouldn’t get to Boston until two A.M. local time. “What time do you get in?”

  “Nine, but I’ll push it to seven for you.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “I’ll make a dinner reservation.”

  Imogen hung up and turned to Bugsy. “Get me on the first plane to Boston and make an appointment for me to see Louisa Greenway’s parents the day after tomorrow.”

  Bugsy disappeared with the phone. When he came back he said, “First direct flight out is at midnight. It gets you in at sixty-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “There’s nothing sooner?”

  “You could change airplanes three times and arrive at eight A.M. if you’d rather,” Bugsy told her. “Besides, this way you get to come to the party.”

  “I am not going to a party,” she said, appalled.

  “You know you owe me a mamba, boss,” Bugsy told her. “From the agency Christmas fete last year. A mamba and a rumba. And you could use the stress release.”

  That was low. Bugsy was one of the few people who knew Imogen’s secret: She loved to dance. It allowed her a kind of single-minded concentration that cleared her head unlike almost anything else. It was the only time she did not mind being close to another body. It was the only thing she would unabashedly admit that she was good at. And Bugsy, who had made it to the quarterfinals of the men’s Latin dance championships two years earlier, was even better.

  There was really nothing for her to do until she had seen the evidence she hoped she would find in Boston, at least nothing that would occupy the entire time before her flight left. She gave in, put her hair behind her ears, and said, “You’d better wear comfortable shoes, because just for that, you are going to spend a full hour on your feet.”

  Bugsy stood back to examine her. “You’ve got a lead, don’t you?”

  “If I’m lucky.”

  “Maybe we should skip the dancing, go play the tables.”

  “It’s not that good a lead.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The party was great, at least until Julia came over to steal Bugsy from her. “You two dancing are a
mazing to watch,” she said, then leaned over and whispered to Imogen, “Go ask Benton to dance. Please? He’s been watching you all night.”

  Imogen tried to sound sincere as she said, “I really wish I could, but I’ve got some work to do before my flight leaves,” and ducked out, heading for her room.

  She sat down on the couch and began watching the security tape from the day of her arrival that Bugsy had found, people parading up and down her hallway. She saw Marielle Wycliffe come out of her room in the morning, but she didn’t come back and no one went in.

  “Look at my posture,” she said to Rex. “And can you believe no one told me I had a big white mark on my jacket all day?”

  Rex blew a bubble that she decided meant he agreed with her.

  Apart from her slouching and the fact that she’d been practically walking around with a KICK ME sign on her back, there was nothing else on the tape to notice. She put it back in its envelope, picked up her overnight bag, and was about to leave the suite when she thought of something.

  She got the tape out and ran it through again. And again. The time stamp was right. But there was something missing, she was certain of it. Because Benton had come to her room that day, the first day of the investigation, to apologize. He had talked to Lex. But he wasn’t on the tape.

  Someone had edited it.

  She called down to Bellagio security and cringed when her friend Burt from Eureka, CA, answered the phone. Of course, Sunday night late duty. It had to be the worst shift besides dealing with recalcitrant FBI agents.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Burt, but can you tell me who checked out the tape for Thursday before my assistant?”

  She heard the sound of Burt putting down his pencil—she wondered how far he’d gotten on his word-search book—and typing on his computer terminal. One-fingered, it sounded like. He came back on.

  “That tape was checked out to Peter Bembo on Friday,” he said. “Returned Saturday A.M.”

  “Peter Bembo?” Imogen stared at the receiver. “Don’t you ask for any identification before handing out the security tapes?”

  “Of course.” Burt sounded stiff. “Whoever’s on the desk checks it out. And there’s a note here says that Peter Bembo was from Metro.”

  “Can you give me the home phone number of the man who was on the desk when the tape was checked out?”

  “Sure could,” Burt said, “but wouldn’t do you any good. Grouse is down in Cabo fishing. Won a vacation on a charter boat or something like that. He won’t be back until next Monday.”

  “Thanks, Burt.”

  Imogen hung up and spent a minute sorting through the tastes in her mouth, trying to make her hands stop shaking. Peter Bembo, Imogen knew, was not from Metro. He was not even from the current millennium. Peter—Pietro—Bembo was historically said to have been Lucretia Borgia’s lover in the sixteenth century. Pietro Bembo was Lucretia Borgia’s loverboy. And Lucretia Borgia was the name she had registered under in the hotel.

  That was a good one. Loverboy was flaunting himself at her, showing her how close he could get, how funny he was. Making a big joke.

  But maybe he’d made a mistake too. She picked up her phone and dialed.

  CHAPTER 35

  It had been Hungry-Man family-style dinner night for Loverboy and Rosalind. He’d taken the tape off her mouth and she had wolfed down the Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes and peas so fast he’d begun running around the room making slurping sounds and calling her Hoover, like the vacuum cleaner.

  The food had almost come back up again when he held the mirror up for her to see herself. She had never been good around blood, and the blood caked around the holes he had driven through her ears was an unfortunate match in color for the meat she’d just eaten.

  “I knew you’d look better with pierced ears,” he told her, twisting one of the small gold studs he’d put in, until she winced.

  “I think it might be infected,” she said.

  He looked serious. “You could be right, Hoover. I’m sorry, I mean Dr. Hoover. We’d better do something about that when I get home.”

  He left, turning off the lights. Only the tiny red blip of the smoke detector pierced the room. When he came back four hours later he was sweaty and exultant. He was also carrying in his hand an enormous bottle of industrial-strength household cleaner. “Look what I got!” he said, holding it up proudly. “Look what good care I’m taking of you. This has ammonia in it,” he explained. “It should fix you right up.”

  “I don’t think that is the right thing for my ears,” Rosalind told him. “You aren’t supposed to put that on open sores.”

  “Why not?”

  She looked at him, aghast. He knew this. She even remembered the time, years ago, that they had emptied out a cupboard of cleaning supplies together in the apartment she shared with Julia so Jason— Don’t think about that, she cautioned herself. He was not the same man. She spoke as if she were speaking to a child. “Because it is highly toxic. It is not good for me. Or for you to touch.” And it would hurt like all hell, she added to herself.

  His face changed, aged, grew stony. “You’re lying. That’s not why you don’t want me to do it. It’s because you’re afraid it’s going to be ouchy.”

  Rosalind did not deny it.

  “Haven’t you learned about lying to me yet?” he asked her. “You lied to me when you smiled, and now you lied to me about this.”

  “I wasn’t lying.”

  He pasted on an expression of mock pensiveness, his finger at his chin. “Hmm, let’s see, I wonder if I believe that?” He leaned in right next to her face and yelled, “NOT!”

  He stayed there, letting her smell his breath, see up close the lines, skin, eyes, nose, lips she’d looked at so often, so happily, over so many years. Had this monster been hiding under there all that time?

  His cell phone rang, breaking the silence with the opening chords of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He looked at the display and a huge smile cracked across his face.

  He stood up and tucked in his shirt before answering. “Hello. I had a feeling you’d be calling,” he boomed. As he spoke, he moistened a cotton ball with the industrial cleaner. He balanced the phone between his cheek and his shoulder and, looking in Rosalind’s direction, mouthed the word liar.

  Then he reached for her ear. He didn’t even put his hand over her mouth as she screamed in agony.

  CHAPTER 36

  9 days left!

  Corrina Orville had left her office at Boston Custom Liquor and Wine at 5:30 P.M. on June 28, like she did every day. It was a Thursday and like every Thursday, she stopped for a drink at L’Enoteca, a small, upscale wine bar with plate-glass windows that fronted onto Tremont Street. Thursday was poetry night there, and while she wasn’t willing to read any of her work, she enjoyed listening to others’. One day, she promised, she’d get up the guts to take the stool and spout off. She was known to the other regular poets as Bacchus, the god of wine, because she was the wholesaler who provided L’Enoteca with its wares.

  L’Enoteca was not only one of her clients, but also near her apartment. In fact, it was equidistant between her apartment—where she was found murdered in her bathtub—and the apartment in which Loverboy had held Louisa Greenway. That much Imogen had been able to learn during her first half hour with the Corrina Orville file in the overheated interrogation room Reggie had lined up for her use. She still had no idea where Corrina Orville had encountered her killer, how he’d talked his way into her room, or why the woman hadn’t struggled.

  She was pretty sure it was Loverboy. The killing was exactly the same, Poison perfume on the sheets and none in the apartment, sex accompanied by strangling, victim dumped in the bathtub at the end. Was it a ritual? Did he do it to clean his traces off the victim? Or could it be a subtle, playful way of advertising that all the murders led back to him?

  You’re going to take a bath on this one, Page.

  No one at L’Enoteca had seen Corrina talk to a strang
er, and they were sure that she hadn’t left with a man. One of the poets, Max Y. Bolash, suggested that Corrina was a lesbian and would never have gone home with a man, but interviews with two others revealed Max’s unrequited crush on Corrina. Max, unfortunately, had an alibi for Corrina’s murder. And he had been unequivocally in Boston the past two weeks, ruling him out as a suspect in Rosalind’s disappearance or Marielle Wycliffe’s death in Las Vegas. In fact, the idea of ever setting foot in Las Vegas gave him “head-to-foot skeevy boils,” he told Imogen on the phone.

  None of her friends remembered her wearing Poison ever, either.

  The only other interesting item she found on the case summary was a penciled note that said simply Susan K. The department secretary, Vickie, had confirmed that it was the scrawl of Clive Ross, the detective who had worked the original case, but had no idea what it meant. Clive Ross had retired three months earlier and was now living in Florida. Vickie gave Imogen the number, but when she dialed it she got an answering machine advising her in a jolly voice that “Clive and Paula have set sail for seven seas to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary” and would not be back for another four days. A picture of Clive based on his voice—slightly overweight, wearing a goofy Hawaiian shirt and shorts, laughing a lot—formed in her mind, and Imogen was jealous. Of the cruise. Of Paula.

  She left a message.

  Finally, she flipped to the evidence lists. Nothing on Corrina’s shoes provided any clue about where she had been. All the fibers on her skirt and sweater set were indigenous to her house. The only thing in the list that caught Imogen’s eye was a book of matches from the Four Seasons hotel. One of Corrina’s coworkers admitted to detectives that she and Corrina had occasionally closed the office early and slipped down the street to the hotel for a drink when no one was around, so the matches could have been taken then. Interviews with the bartenders had turned up no evidence that Corrina had been in the night she was killed, but Imogen decided to try again.

  She was acting half on impulse and half on logic. If Loverboy had not been the man who met Marielle at the craps table and got invited up to her room, there would have been no reason for the security tape to be edited. This meeting took place four days before Marielle was killed. What if he had acted the same way in Boston? What if he hadn’t killed Corrina until their second meeting? The detectives had really only asked the bartenders at the Four Seasons if they had seen Corrina the day of her death. Imogen was ready to bet she had met her killer there before that.