A Crazy Little Thing Called Death (22 page)

In the car, I borrowed Reed’s cell phone and tried calling Detective Bloom again. He didn’t answer, so I left a voice message—vague because Aldo made no secret of eavesdropping.

Reed delivered me to the newspaper office first. Aldo waited in the lobby at the security desk while I spent an hour working alongside my busy colleagues. I went through the fresh batch of party invitations that had arrived by mail and e-mail.

As usual, I received far more invitations than I could possibly accept. Choosing which parties would receive space in the newspaper was tricky—a combination of political importance, social significance, personal favors and sometimes simple cachet. One enterprising charitable organization tried to encourage my attendance at their annual dinner by sending me a bunch of silver balloons. I only wished they’d try to be more creative with their dinner party. I couldn’t allot precious newspaper inches to a dull event that didn’t lend anything special to my column.

I tied the balloons to my desk chair and wondered if I had the courage to take them to Michael in the hospital.

I wrote notes and e-mails, made a few phone calls. When my work space was cleaned up again, I phoned the other newspaper and asked to speak to Crewe Dearborne. I still couldn’t get my brain to accept Bloom’s information that Crewe had been in a fight with Kell Huckabee before Kell disappeared.

Crewe wasn’t at his desk, so I was put through to his voice mail. “Crewe,” I said when the recording beeped at me, “Michael and I had a wonderful time Sunday night. Thanks so much for hosting us. I hope to catch you soon so I can thank you properly. Bye-bye.”

Short and sweet. I’d tell him about Michael’s injury later. And I’d find a way to learn about his altercation with Kell when we could be face-to-face.

Next I dialed Lexie Paine’s office.

Her office assistant said she was still in a meeting. “With Mr. Dearborne. I believe they’re having lunch.”

“Crewe Dearborne?” I said, unable to keep the amazement out of my voice.

“Yes.” The assistant realized he may have said too much, so he hastily asked if I wanted to leave a message or a voice mail. I chose voice mail again.

“Lex,” I said when I heard the beep, “it was nice to see you on Sunday evening. We’ve had a little excitement since then.” I decided not to give her the details. Nor did I want to demand an instant report about her lunch with Crewe. Not over the phone, anyway. So I said, “I’ll tell you all about it soon, I hope. Maybe a drink this week? If you’re not—um—already busy. Call me when you get a chance.”

One more time, I tried Detective Bloom. No answer. I didn’t leave another message.

I sat at the desk and drummed my fingers. There had to be something I could do to get more information for Bloom. I dug the phone book out of a desk drawer and flipped through it for an address, finding exactly what I needed.

“Where we going?” Reed asked when Aldo and I climbed into the car a few minutes later.

“Bellissima,” I said, and gave him the spa’s address.

Aldo wasn’t happy about letting me go inside alone, but the steady parade of female patrons through the famous pink doorway unnerved him.

“I guess you’ll be safe in there,” he told me.

“Take my cell just in case,” Reed said. “Use it if you need us.”

Obediently, I accepted the loan of Reed’s cell and took note of Aldo’s phone numbers.

Inside the spa, I tried to book a manicure, of course, because the fastest way to learn anything in the city was with my hands in a warm bowl and a chatty nail technician to talk to. But all the manicurists were busy. While the receptionist flipped through her book of available services, I peeked at the sign-in book to see what customers were already enjoying their various treatments. Halfway down the page, I saw the scrawled signature I’d hoped to find.

Nuclear Winter was in the sauna.

“How about a sauna?” I said to the receptionist. “That’s just what I need today.”

In minutes, I was in the locker room and taking off my clothes. Another woman was there—a chunky, elderly woman with her hair wrapped up in a towel. I didn’t recognize her face. She turned away from me, perhaps shy about stripping off her bathing suit in my presence, so I murmured a noncommittal hello and slipped past her, wrapped in my own fluffy pink Bellissima towel. A quick shower later, and I was ready to step into the steamy fragrance of the sauna.

“No more than twenty minutes,” the gum-chewing attendant said. “I’ll set the timer because I’m going on my break. Bathing suits are optional, you know.”

I hadn’t planned on coming to the spa, so I didn’t have a bathing suit. Hugging my towel, I stepped inside the warmth of the sauna and peered through the steam. Another woman I didn’t know got up hastily from the bench, wrapping her towel around herself. She scooted past me with a murmur about her time being up, and I took her place.

The sauna was barely twelve feet across with two benches on either side of a hissing pit where the attendant had placed a bowl of herbs over the steaming coals. As I sat down, someone splashed more water on the coals, and a fresh cloud of steam boiled up into the air. I inhaled the delicious scents and thought perhaps I’d made a good decision coming here. A little relaxation might help clear my thoughts.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said a voice, “but I like it very hot.”

“Noreen?” I tried to sound surprised. “Is that you?”

Nuclear Winter lay supine on the bench opposite mine, her towel loosely draped across her body. Both of her long, golden legs were exposed to the heat, and the towel had slipped from one of her breasts. She sat up on one elbow to peer myopically at me.

“It’s Nora Blackbird.” In an effort to sound friendly, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Is that a nipple ring?”

“Yes. Do you like it?” She cupped her enormous breast to better show me the gold hoop.

“Very nice,” I said, cursing myself for choosing that particular vein of conversation as an opener. Obviously, I still hadn’t regained all my wits.

She sat up and let the towel fall completely into her lap to reveal both of her full, naked breasts, both ornamented with delicate gold hoops weighted with a small jewel at their centers. “They’re pretty, aren’t they? I wonder if I should show you my other piercing.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I’m squeamish. Did you have a pleasant evening with Potty the other night?”

“Not too bad. I just wish he’d quit playing those damn Sousa marches before I have to salute the flag, if you know what I mean.”

“Uhm.”

“I saw you with that polo-player guy Monday night. He’s good-looking. His date was pretty pissed, though. She heard you left with him.”

“That’s not exactly what happened. We didn’t go home together.”

Nuclear nodded and took a slow swipe of sweat from her torso. “He’s not your type, huh?”

“No.”

As the steam wafted between us, she used her towel to swab the perspiration from her thighs. “Frankly, I’d rather put up with a soft old guy than a young one, you know? Less bother.”

“Potty seems…pretty energetic.”

She shrugged. “He’s okay. If I get a chance, I break those damn pills of his in half. You know, to ease up on the dosage.”

“I see.”

She got up, moving as smoothly as a python, and sat on the bench beside me. She tossed her towel onto the floor, and leaned into the hot steam to inhale a deep breath of it.

“About Potty,” I said. “Do you think he knows anything about his sister Penny’s disappearance? More than he’s saying in public, that is?”

“I’m just glad the sister is out of the picture.” Nuclear smiled at me. “I hear she was a bitch.”

“You didn’t know her?”

“No, but Potty’s told me everything. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear about movie stars? Even old ones. But he hated her guts. Something to do with a vote at a board meeting.”

“Potty must have disagreed with Penny about a lot of things.”

Nuclear stopped breathing the steam and gave me a frank look. “I’m not as dumb as I look, Nora. I’ve got an MBA that cost more than these implants, so I can see what you’re trying to do. I don’t know anything about Potty’s sister, and that suits me just fine. It’s Potty I’ve got in my sights, and I’m not doing anything to jeopardize the progress I’ve made so far. Get it?”

“I—yes, I get it.”

Nuclear turned her body toward me and lifted one limber leg over the bench so that she was straddling it. I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help catching a glimpse of more jewelry in the smooth, hairless curve between her legs. In a huskier voice, she said, “You know, you get the best benefits of the steam if you drop the towel.”

“Nuc—Noreen—”

“Let me help.”

I gripped the edge of my towel as firmly as I could manage. “Maybe I’ve miscommunicated here.”

“You have beautiful skin. Very soft.”

“About Potty. I’m sorry if I implied that you—hey, just a second.”

She had one hand on my arm, and before I knew it, she was sliding her other hand between my bare knees.

I clamped my thighs together and suddenly figured out that Potty Devine’s money was the only thing Nuclear found attractive about the man. Hastily, I tried to talk my way out of the embarrassing moment. “Noreen, I’ve made a mistake. I have nothing against—you know, who you are, but it’s just not who I am.”

She had used the knee maneuver to distract me. Because in the next second she had her other hand under my breast and was squeezing me gently. “You feel great,” she murmured.

I grabbed my towel closer. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong cues.” I heard my voice going unnaturally high. “But really, Noreen, you’ve got to stop—please.”

I stood up, and she dropped both hands into her lap. She pouted. “I thought you were different.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not different. I’m perfectly ordinary. Completely, utterly ordinary.”

“We could try, you know. Just experiment a little. You’ll like it, I promise. I have a double-jointed tongue.”

I headed for the door.

Nuclear caught the tail of my towel and stopped me. “Slow down,” she said in a different tone. “Let’s talk. You wanted to know about Potty, right?”

I hesitated, torn between running shrieking for the locker room and learning something useful about Penny Devine’s murder. I pulled my posture stiffly erect and said, “I think it’s best if we keep our hands to ourselves, Noreen.”

She smiled again. “Okay, deal. Why do you want to know so much about them, anyway? Penny’s dead, so that means the cash goes farther, right? So you’re in the clear.”

“I don’t think the cash, as you call it, has anything to do with me.”

That information seemed to satisfy her. “What do you want to know?”

“About Kell Huckabee’s disappearance.”

“The caretaker? Potty says he left last fall, but I don’t remember that.”

“What do you remember?”

“The Huckabee guy hasn’t been around since I started seeing Potty last summer. But now Potty’s claiming he fired the guy in November. It didn’t happen that way, because I would have noticed.”

“What else did you notice? What’s going on between Potty and Vivian?”

She shrugged. “They stay away from each other. He doesn’t like her in the house because she’s such a slob. Give her five minutes in a room, and she’ll start a collection of newspapers to use for her smelly cats. So he forbids her to step into his house.”

“Where does she live? Good grief, not in that awful little mobile home behind Potty’s mansion?”

“Yep.”

“Alone?”

“I’ve never seen anybody else go in that hellhole.”

“What about Julie?”

“The kid? She lives over the garage. She doesn’t talk much. She’s a little spooky, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re okay,” Nuclear said, after staring intently into my face. “I didn’t expect that. I figured you came around hoping to get some of Potty’s dough.”

“That’s not my concern,” I said. “I just want to know what happened to Penny.”

“So I have a shot at the whole enchilada?” Nuclear asked.

“As much as anyone, I guess.”

“I can keep Potty happy,” she said. “As long as I get the kind of sex I like someplace else.”

At which point she opened my towel and planted a hot, wet, sloppy kiss on what’s gently known as my bikini line.

I fled.

F
ully dressed and partially recovered, I staggered out into the street, pulling Reed’s cell phone from my handbag. I tried Lexie first.

Her assistant said she was back in her office. “But she’s leaving for home in a minute. She asks if you’d meet her there.”

“At home?” Startled, I checked my watch and found it was only midafternoon. Lexie never left her office until the end of business on the West Coast. “Is she sick?”

“No,” the assistant said carefully. “Shall I tell her you’ll meet her?”

“Yes, by all means.”

When I disconnected the call, Aldo appeared at the back of the town car and gallantly opened the door for me. “You’re all pink,” he said.

I directed Reed to Lexie’s place, and he took a circuitous city route to avoid the worst of the traffic. His strategy didn’t work. Reed muttered, but drove sedately through the jam. We got off the expressway and crossed the river, which was dirty and swollen with spring rain, then wound our way down to Boathouse Row, where Lexie lived.

At a curve in the river, several boating clubs still maintained the Victorian-style boathouses where they kept racing shells, kayaks and canoes. At night, the picturesque houses were illuminated with strings of white lights that glowed on the surface of the river. On warm weekends, the clubs were thronged with members who enjoyed water sports on the river.

“Nice,” Aldo said. “Classy.”

Reed pulled into Lexie’s narrow driveway. Although the other buildings on Boathouse Row had been long since grandfathered in for boating clubs, Lexie had managed to acquire one of the more fanciful houses for her own. I often wondered how she finagled that astonishing real estate transaction, but I didn’t dare ask. I assumed strings had been pulled somewhere along the line. Her family, city leaders and philanthropists for generations, had not been above asking for a favor now and then.

Lexie was climbing out of her BMW when we arrived. She carried a bulging briefcase and wore her darkest glasses. Her face, I noted, was paper white.

And she didn’t greet me with her usual exuberance. “Sweetie,” she said when I got out of the car, “I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you.”

“Lex, what in the world is wrong?”

“Come inside,” she said, “and I’ll open a few bottles of scotch. I plan on getting good and drunk.”

I gave her a hug. “Honey, whatever the problem is, I’m on your side.”

Lexie’s house might have been adorably quaint on the outside, but the interior was sleek and modern—the better to display choice pieces from the art collection she had amassed on her own and inherited from her mother, a formidable collector of international stature. My friend liked to rotate her favorite paintings and sculptures, and today her living room gallery was dominated by a Gauguin. The hot, tropical colors slathered on the sarongs of island women seemed to echo Lexie’s mood.

“Samir!” she bellowed. When no answer came, she muttered, “Where the hell is that man? I didn’t hire him to spend his time playing tiddly-winks!”

Lexie’s houseman—as efficient as an English butler and less chatty than a samurai warrior—usually appeared like smoke when Lexie got home from work. But today, the house was silent.

I said, “I didn’t see his car in the driveway. He must be running errands.”

She kicked her stilettos off onto the white carpet and threw her briefcase down onto the white slipcovered sofa. A glare of afternoon sunlight streamed into the room from the tall windows that overlooked the river. We could hear the rush of the water without opening the French doors. The sound seemed to fuel Lexie’s temper.

She headed straight for the kitchen. I caught up with her just as she was pulling an expensive bottle of scotch from her liquor cabinet. Her expression was stormy.

I took the bottle from her and put it back. “Lex, booze isn’t the answer. Let me make some tea, and we’ll talk. It’s Crewe, right?”

“Goddamn right, it’s Crewe. Who the hell does he think he is?”

“Your friend?”

“Bullshit!” She paced the kitchen.

“For crying out loud, tell me what happened! I heard you went to lunch with him. What could he have done to—”

“He kissed me, that’s what he’s done! And I don’t appreciate being manhandled by a—a horny goat with delusions of fairy-tale love!”

“Crewe manhandled you?”

Lexie stalked out of the kitchen, too infuriated to explain. I followed her doggedly back across the living room, down the hallway to her bedroom. There, her sterile white sanctuary was graced by a tall John Singer Sargent painting of Lexie’s great-great-grandmother and her teenage sister. Both women wore white dresses, which looked charming next to the billowing white curtains at the nearby windows.

I sat on the bed while she slammed open the door to the walk-in closet. I thought about Crewe’s assault charge and wondered if there was a side to the charming restaurant critic I hadn’t seen yet.

When Lexie snapped on the closet light and disappeared inside, I called, “What happened, exactly, Lex? Was he really rough with you?”

I heard her slapping hangers on the rod. At last, she said, “He wasn’t rough.”

“What, then?”

She came to the closet doorway and stripped off her suit jacket. “He wasn’t rough. He surprised me, that’s all. And I hate that.”

“Where did this happen?”

“In Louie’s.”

“In a restaurant? He kissed you in a restaurant?”

“Where else?” she snapped. “He never goes anywhere except restaurants! At least this time he wasn’t dressed in one of his ridiculous disguises!”

“Lex—”

“I told him I have no intention of starting a relationship. Not with him, not with any man. My life is busy. Very busy. I run a large financial concern, and I have no time for personal issues.”

She ripped her silk sweater over her head and threw it on the floor. Then she bent to snatch it up again and went back into the closet. She shouted, “I’m not an available woman! I told him that!”

“And he argued?”

“No, of course he didn’t argue! He just—He said—oh, hell!”

I waited, and in a moment, she came out of the closet wearing a pair of yoga pants and her bra. She carried a black sweater.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her to sit on the bed. “Just tell me,” I said calmly. “Tell me what happened, and I’ll help. Take a deep breath.”

She sat down obediently. And she breathed. Then she said, “He asked if he could kiss my hand.”

“He—? Lex,” I said, “that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“After I clearly stated I wanted no part of a relationship? For him to act like that?”

“It wasn’t exactly the act of a—what did you say? A horny goat.”

“Well, where does he get off doing the Sir Walter Raleigh routine? I don’t want a man in my life!”

“I know, honey. I’m sorry.”

“You put him up to this!”

“Lex, I felt sorry for him. I feel sorry for you! I’m sorry he feels so much, and you feel so—differently. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. But you can hardly be angry at him for asking permission to kiss your hand. Really, doesn’t it show how considerate he is?”

“He knows, doesn’t he?”

“Knows what?”

“That I was raped.”

“I never told him.”

“But he knows. I can see he knows.”

“Lexie, it doesn’t take Sam Spade to figure out that something caused this—this extreme unwillingness to have anything but professional, business contact with the opposite sex.”

She fell back onto the bed and put her arm over her eyes. “Oh, damn,” she said unevenly. “Damn, damn.”

“Do you want me to talk to him? To tell him you really aren’t interested?”

She lay unmoving on the bed for a full minute in silence. Then, “No.”

“Tell me what I can do,” I said. “I want to help.”

She sat up finally. There were no signs of tears on her face. She was in control again. “I don’t know what anyone can do.”

“Is it time for more therapy?”

She shuddered. “God, no. I’ve been therapied so much I know all the lines by heart. No, it’s up to me. I just don’t know….”

I hugged her around the shoulders. “Take it slowly.”

“How can I? One lunch date, one kiss on my hand, and suddenly I can’t finish my day at the office? This is no way to do business, Nora.”

“I bet you have a few people at the office who can take up the slack.”

She sighed. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what? I’m not running an investment firm, looking after millions entrusted to me by my clients.”

She grimaced. “I know. But weaving the threads of your life. You’re always coping with twenty different things at once. That’s all beyond me.”

“A few things are beyond me, too,” I said, thinking of my trip to the sauna with Nuclear Winter. “But most of the time you don’t have a choice. At least, I don’t seem to.”

She looked into my face finally. “I heard Raphael Braga is in town.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t mention that when I stopped by your house.”

“I was going to. Then—well, Michael came home.”

Lexie absorbed that information and noted my expression, too. “And you’ve seen Raphael, haven’t you? Spoken with him?”

“I—yes.”

“Sweetie, is that wise? I remember the contract you signed. You have a legal obligation to stay miles away from him.”

“He wasn’t supposed to come back to Philadelphia, either, so he’s in violation of the agreement, too.”

My friend studied me askance. “What did you say?”

“Nothing important. At least, not before he drugged me.” I told her all about drinking the spiked champagne.

“Oh, my God!”

“I’m okay. I was rescued before he could—before anything happened.”

“Thank heavens. That’s my worst fear. Did you—well, did you ask him about Carolina?”

“He says they’re separated.”

“And the child? It’s a girl, right?”

“She’s with Raphael’s parents in Brazil. Her name is Mariel.”

Lexie frowned. “Nora, when you helped Carolina when she couldn’t get pregnant—I know it was a time in your life when these things weren’t so important to you.”

At last I could discuss it. Here was Lexie, who’d been through it with me back in college. She knew the whole story, and had helped me figure out what to do then. Perhaps she could help me now, too.

“It seemed so easy,” I said. “I went to the hospital, and a doctor took some of my eggs, and it was as simple as having a routine exam, almost. And the legal contract—the promise that I’d never try to meet the child or have any communication with her—it didn’t seem so earth-shattering.”

“You were twenty years old! And doing something nice for a friend who needed help.”

I nodded. “His parents were so insistent they have children right away. And when Carolina discovered she couldn’t, Raphael demanded a divorce. She was so crazy in love with him. It all seemed so romantic at the time.”

“Seems downright medieval now, doesn’t it?”

“But to a college girl—one like me, who always thought true love conquered all…I don’t know. I wanted to help.”

“And now,” Lexie said, “you’ve had two miscarriages. And you want children of your own.”

“I do.”

“And Michael.” Lexie smiled. “I suppose he wants a whole platoon of little Corleones, doesn’t he?”

I found myself trembling then.

It was Lexie’s turn to hug me. “Oh, sweetie.”

“Thing is, Lex, I’m afraid to tell Michael. I haven’t told him about helping Raphael and Carolina have a baby.”

“Darling, why?”

“Because of something he said. Libby—oh, you don’t have to hear the whole story, but in one of her nutty moments, Libby said she’d be happy to be a surrogate mother if we decided to have children that way—”

“Oh, dear!”

“And Michael said—he said he didn’t want any Frankenstein babies.”

Lexie winced. “Ouch.”

“I know. It was awful.”

“Nora, if he didn’t know, if he was simply responding to Libby—”

“He said something similar months ago. Underneath everything else, Michael is a devout Catholic. He still goes to Mass, to that church with the ultraconservative priest. He’s had it beaten into his head there’s no other way to have children except how God intended.”

“Well, God wouldn’t have let man invent the wheel if He didn’t think we’d come up with a few other ideas on our own.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Are you going to tell Michael? About Raphael and Carolina’s kid?”

“My kid,” I corrected. “He’s going to think of her as my kid.”

“Well, yes, but…not really. What you did for your friends has no bearing on your life with Michael, does it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how he’ll react if I tell him, so maybe I should keep it a secret. He doesn’t really need to know. And yet,” I said slowly, “I may not have any other children, Lex. That little girl in Brazil might be the only child I’ll ever have in the world.”