by Kyra Davis
“That’s sick,” Tiff whispered.
“I know.” I looked down at my half-eaten peanut butter pudding cake and wondered how many of them I’d have to eat to make the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach go away.
Tiff pushed her chair back. “I have to go.”
“She’s dead, Tiff.”
“Who?” Tiff asked coldly. “One of your imaginary family members?”
“Melanie. They found her body yesterday. I don’t know exactly how it happened but I do know it was murder.” I looked up and met her eyes. “I’ve been really awful to you. You’d be crazy if you had any urge to help me, but that’s what I need you to do. I need you to help me get justice for my friend.”
Tiff didn’t scoot her chair back in but she didn’t get up, either. “What did my brother’s letter say?”
I reached into my handbag and took out the photocopy of the letter Anatoly had given me.
Tiff snatched it from me and read it over. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said, the edge in her voice beginning to dull.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I was hoping that it would.”
“‘Political careers are going to be ruined and so is my life?’” Tiff read the quote while running one finger across the line that contained it. “This is way too melodramatic for my brother.”
“Is it his handwriting?”
Tiff squinted her eyes. “It’s a photocopy so it’s a little hard to tell but…yeah, that’s his writing. But it still doesn’t make sense. What had he gotten himself into?”
“You said before that you didn’t think he would have an affair with Anne Brooke or anyone else he worked with, but is it possible that you were wrong? Brooke has an impressive track record when it comes to adultery, and her new husband thinks she’s up to her old tricks. Could your brother have been her latest conquest?”
“I almost wish that were true,” Tiff said, her eyes still scanning the letter. “That would make him a little more normal. But like I said, my brother never dated.” Tiff put the letter in her lap and let her chin drop to her chest. “He was in trouble. He was in trouble and he didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it.”
“Tiff, you can’t shoulder the blame for your brother’s inability to cope.”
“Then who can I blame?” she snapped. “Can I blame this Eugene guy? Because from this letter he certainly seems culpable.”
“Maybe he was,” I admitted.
Tiff swallowed hard, and she put the end of a bright pink acrylic nail in her mouth. “I need to look through his apartment.”
“Excuse me?”
Tiff looked up, and although her expression didn’t exactly convey forgiveness, she didn’t seem livid, either. “When Peter died my parents asked if I would be the one who went through his apartment. It wasn’t just because I was the one who lived the closest to Danville. They said it would just be too painful for them. But it’s painful for me, too. I’ve picked Peter up at his place before but I’ve never actually gone inside, and for some reason the thought of going in there now that he’s dead…” Tiff shook her head in defeat. “I ended up calling his landlord and he agreed to let me pay him a fraction of my brother’s rent until his lease came up in a few months. He thinks I’ve been slowly clearing the place out, but I haven’t even stepped inside the door. I just couldn’t deal with it.”
“Are you saying that no one has been inside your brother’s place since he died two months ago?”
Tiff smiled weakly. “I hope he had baking soda in the refrigerator.”
“Tiff, we have to go there.”
“We?” she asked incredulously. “Are you suggesting that I take you along?”
I toyed with the remainder of my dessert, somewhat appalled by the audacity of my own request. “I’m not suggesting,” I said carefully. “I’m asking. It would seem that whatever Eugene knew about your brother was upsetting enough to make him suicidal. But Eugene died a month after your brother did, and you still don’t know what Peter was hiding, so obviously Eugene didn’t rat him out. Maybe someone else was involved in that secret. Maybe that person was not only responsible for both Eugene’s and Melanie’s deaths but was also responsible for getting your brother involved in something that pushed him to suicide. If you let me come with you while you look through Peter’s apartment, then together we might be able to find the clues we need to get justice for all three victims.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. I could tell by the way her lips were pressed together that this was not the time to push. She glanced at her Swatch. “I’d like you to take me home now.”
I nodded and slipped my credit card into the bill our waiter had left for us. If Tiff’s judgment was as bad as her fashion sense then there was a chance that she might come to trust me again.
Tiff lived in the Richmond district in a cozy little cottage with a front lawn surrounded by a white picket fence. At least that’s how a real estate agent would describe it. I would say that it was a run-down converted earthquake shelter whose only boasting right was a front lawn that doubled as a parking spot for her VW Bug. By the looks of it the picket fence hadn’t been white for at least a decade.
One of the nice things about that area of Richmond is that parking isn’t just a pipe dream. I pulled my car up right in front and turned off the music that had previously been masking the silent treatment Tiff was giving me. “Thank you for letting me take you out to dinner,” I said lamely. “If you decide to allow me to come with you to Peter’s place, just give me a ring, okay?”
“Okay.” Tiff didn’t look at me when she responded but she didn’t get out of the car, either.
“Tiff? You okay?”
Silence.
“Tiff?”
“I’m…I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of what?” Tiff scoffed. “You just told me that two people have been murdered and that their deaths are all somehow connected to what happened to my brother. My brother! That’s scary!”
“I see your point.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
I thought about that for a moment. “You know how some people bring out the worst in others? Well apparently I make them homicidal. In the past few years I’ve found two dead bodies and been threatened by two different killers on different occasions for totally different reasons. I’m fairly sure that’s not normal.”
“I’m fairly sure you’re right.”
“But it does give some credence to the whole what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger cliché. At this very moment nobody is trying to kill me and I actually find that comforting. So no, I’m not scared. I’m just a little sad and seriously angry.”
“You are so weird.”
I smiled wryly. “You should meet my friends.”
“That’s okay. Walk me to my door?”
“You got it.” I took this last request as a good sign. There were two gates, one big enough for her VW to pass through should it ever become mobile again, and one just big enough for people to pass through single file. We went through the latter and climbed the two slightly uneven steps that led to her front door.
“Just stay until I get the lights on.”
I nodded and waited as she very, very carefully opened the front door, and even then she only opened it a quarter of the way. She slipped inside and I started to follow her in when she yelled, “No, Chica!”
I jumped back outside. “What! What did I do?”
“Not you.” A light went on and I stepped inside again. Tiff was standing in the middle of the living room with a little Taco Bell dog in her arms. “This is Chica,” she explained. “She gets a little excited whenever I walk through that door and I didn’t want her getting her dirty paws all over this skirt.”
As if anything could make that skirt more hideous. “Looks like you stopped her in time.”
Tiff looked down at Chica, who was squirming in her arms. “I’ll do it.”
I ran my fingers through my hair as I took in Tiff�
��s white pleather couch. Above it she had hung an electric landscape picture that when turned on simulated the movement of the ocean.
“Did you hear me, Sophie?” Tiff asked.
“Huh? Oh, were you talking to me? I thought you were talking to your dog. I have conversations with my cat all the time so I figured—”
“I said I’d do it. I’ll take you with me when I go to Peter’s place.”
“Seriously? Tiff, I swear you won’t re—”
“Don’t jinx this,” Tiff said, effectively cutting me off. “I have tomorrow off so why don’t we go then and just get it over with. You’ll have to drive because obviously my car won’t be working by then.”
“Tomorrow, perfect. Morning, afternoon? Whatever you want.”
“I like to work out on Sunday mornings, so why don’t we say afternoon. Maybe one o’clock?”
“One it is. Thank you, Tiff, I think…” I was going to say “You have made the right decision,” but that was probably one of those comments that would “jinx us,” so I opted for the only safe comment I could come up with. “You have a nice couch. It has a nice…retro feel to it.”
“Retro?” Tiff raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “I always thought of it as being pretty modern. Can you believe it’s not real leather?”
I smiled at this and bid her goodbye. I had just gotten on her good side, and if I allowed myself to comment further on her taste I’d be back on her shit list in no time.
17
All these years I thought I was being the perfect Catholic, but as it turns out there’s more to the rhythm method than just having sex on a dance floor.
—C’est La Mort
ON THE WAY HOME LEAH CALLED ME ON MYCELL PHONE.
“I just found out what happened on the news,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
She sighed heavily into the receiver. “Who’d you give grief to this time?”
“No one, which is not to say that I’m willing to deal with it right now,” I said as I rushed through a yellow light. “I have to focus on finding Melanie’s killer.”
“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to let the police take it from here?”
“Approximately seventy percent of violent crimes go unsolved in this city,” I retorted. “With that kind of track record, why would I leave something this important to the police?”
“Because it’s what you’re supposed to do! Because some of us would prefer it if you didn’t die young. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
“I have to do this, Leah,” I said quietly, “for Melanie.”
Leah sighed again, but this time it was a sigh of resignation. “At the risk of sounding repetitive, you’re like a psychological case study.”
“Right back at you,” I said with a smile. “And you’re not supposed to criticize me until I hang up, which is now.” I ended the call and after a long search for parking made my way back up to my apartment.
“Hello?” I hung my jacket up on my coatrack and searched for signs of life. The only response I got was from Mr. Katz, who stepped into the foyer long enough for me to see that he was going into the kitchen, where he undoubtedly expected to be fed. Anatoly wasn’t there. “Can you believe that guy?” I snapped as I went to fill my pet’s bowl with kibble. “He blackmails me into letting him stay here so he can protect me and then when I come home at nine o’clock at night he’s nowhere to be found.”
As if in response, my front door opened and Anatoly strode in. “Have a good dinner?”
“Where have you been?”
Anatoly smirked and got himself a glass of water. “You’re upset that I wasn’t here when you got home? You haven’t forgotten that you don’t want me around, have you?”
“No I haven’t forgotten,” I snipped. “But you said you were going to do some research. Obviously I want to know what that was about.”
“You didn’t seem to care this afternoon.”
“You know what, that’s fine. Be an asshole. It is, after all, what you do best. I’ll just take my laptop into my bedroom and do some writing. I think I’m going to have my character beat her ex-boyfriend to death with the front fairing of his own stupid bike.”
“I did some research on Sam. He’s been married before.”
“Yeah, I found that out, too. That hardly makes him unusual.”
“No, but he’s not divorced, he’s a widower. His wife was killed in a drive-by shooting.”
My mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God! We have to talk to this guy!”
“My thoughts exactly. I called Darrell and he’s going to set it up.”
“But Sam’s seen us before. He thinks we work for Tikkun. He’s not going to be open and honest with a couple of journalists.”
“I faxed Darrell a script that he used to explain all that. He’s already told Sam that the Tikkun reporters he met are actually detectives whom he occasionally calls when he needs help on a difficult investigation. Darrell is also going to tell him that due to a sudden turn in his health, he can no longer pursue this case and that he’s handing the whole thing over to us. I had him tell Sam that we are considerably more experienced and skilled than he is, which of course is half true.”
“What’s Darrell supposed to be ill with?” I asked, ignoring the obvious jab.
“Mono.”
“That’s a stretch. Who would get close enough to Darrell to give him mono?”
“A prostitute?” Anatoly suggested. “I assume he uses them, either that or he’s a virgin.”
“Okay, so when is this meeting?”
“Tomorrow at four. Anne will be at some fund-raiser for MAC.”
I leaned against the white-tiled counter and gave Anatoly a quizzical look. “I only know of two MACs—one makes lipstick, the other makes computers—and neither of them are struggling financially.”
“In this case MAC stands for Mothers Against Censorship.”
“Are you kidding? I thought mothers were supposed to be for censorship.”
“Not the ones who support Anne. These mothers apparently want their children to be exposed to depravity on a daily basis.”
“Huh,” I said thoughtfully. “I wonder if Dena would be interested in hosting one of their events. It could be good publicity for the shop…wait a minute, did you say tomorrow at four? I can’t make that! Tiff and I are driving to Danville to go through Peter’s apartment.”
“She hasn’t cleared that out yet?”
“No, she’s never even been inside. No one has since he killed himself.”
“Really?” Anatoly’s tone clearly conveyed his appreciation of this news. “That is a lucky break.”
“Yeah, but by the time I pick her up, drive to Danville, search his place and then drive back to San Francisco to drop her off…there’s just no way I’ll be able to be in Lafayette by four, so you’ll have to reschedule with Sam.”
“Can’t do it,” Anatoly said definitively. “Darrell’s already called and gotten the whole thing set up and I talked to Sam not a half hour later. He wasn’t exactly thrilled with having his case handed over to someone new and I can’t afford to further upset him by rescheduling our first appointment. If he decides to go with yet another detective agency, we lose our advantage. Ask Tiff if she can go to Peter’s place on Monday.”
“I can’t ask her to do that! It’s taken her months to work up the nerve to go over there. If I try to hold her off she might back out completely. Besides, I’m skating on thin ice with her as it is.”
“What are you talking about? She obviously likes you. She agreed to go out to dinner and she even allowed you to drive her home—” Anatoly stopped short and winced.
“You followed me?” I asked, my voice trembling with rage. I pushed myself away from the counter and yanked open my junk drawer by the sink.
“What are you doing?” Anatoly asked.
“I’m getting
a permanent marker and then I’m going to a gay biker bar!”
Anatoly came up behind me and held me still by placing a firm hand on each of my arms. “For the record, I did keep my promise. I didn’t go anywhere near the restaurant. I simply followed you to the parking garage on O’Farrell, which is where I waited until you returned with Tiff in tow.”
“How did I not notice you?” I snapped. I considered pulling away, but there was something rather pleasant about being restrained like this. God, I was as sick as Dena.
“I rented a car again,” Anatoly answered.
“What are you, a Hertz Gold Club member or something?” I said, finally finding the will to free myself. I pulled myself up on the counter and sat there, glaring at him. “Why don’t you just buy yourself a car?”
“I don’t know, Sophie,” Anatoly said dryly. “Why don’t you just buy yourself a plane?”
“People who eat salmon and caviar for breakfast don’t get to complain about financial problems.”
“It’s how I choose to spend my money,” Anatoly said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“You can’t keep following me around town, Anatoly.”
“Sophie, I don’t think you understood what I was trying to tell you before. There is a killer out there and he may think that you’re on to him. I know you want your space but you’re not going to get it in a coffin.”
I blanched. “That was harsh.”
“So is murder.”
For a full minute Anatoly and I stared at each other in silence. Mr. Katz seemed to sense the tension and abandoned the meager remains of his late-night snack in order to get out of the line of fire.
“I can’t reschedule with Tiff,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Fine, then you go with Tiff and I’ll talk to Sam on my own.”
“But I really want to meet with Sam!”
Anatoly shrugged. “We can’t always have what we want.” His gaze slipped from my face and took inventory of my more erogenous zones. “At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
“You had what you wanted. But that’s what happens when you don’t appreciate what you have, you lose it.” And with that I jumped down and left the room.
