Chocolate Quake (22 page)

33

Leather Chic

 

W
hen the cab
dropped me off at Recycled Chic, I went inside with some trepidation. I’d never shopped in a secondhand store before. Was the clothing sized, or did one have to guess? What about dressing rooms? Their showroom space was long, narrow, and crammed with racks, both on the walls and running into one another and the customers on the floor. I asked a salesgirl for the leather section, and she shrugged. “Feel free to look, but we don’t carry anything kinky.”

Kinky?
Gingerly, I approached the left-side wall rack that began beyond the checkout counter. After spotting numerous sequined blouses and T-shirts with more down the line, I tried the other wall. In the center section I found three black leather jackets, none of them sized, so I tried on the largest and was able to zip it up. It barely reached below my waist, but it did fit, so I draped it over my arm and began to search the racks in the center section, while passing shoppers brushed me into tightly packed clothes. I don’t know how many times I said
excuse me,
more often than other customers said it to me. After a half hour, I was very tired and hadn’t come upon any leather pants.

About then I discovered a box of boots under the sequin section, and in it was a pair of beautiful, soft leather boots. If I couldn’t find pants, the boots were long enough to give me some protection. First, I clung to the rack rail and held the sole of a boot against the sole of my shoe. It looked about right. Have you ever tried on a long boot while standing up? I managed, but I fell down once. The lady at the cash register heard the clunk and came over to help me up. “If you’re injured, don’t figure on suing us,” she warned. “We got a sign up front.
Not responsible for injuries or thefts of personal property.
”

I groaned and leaned on her, still clutching the second boot.

“Why don’t you use the dressing room?” she suggested. “It’s got a chair.”

“Where is it?”

“All the way in the back. You’ll see the line.”

“Do you have any leather pants?”

“Second rack from the back. Center. That’s a great jacket. You better hang on to it. We don’t have that many tens.”

She returned to the register, and I went in search of the leather-pants selection. They had two in red with fringe; one in yellow, size two; and four in black, no sizes. Without much hope, I took the two biggest pairs to the fitting-room line—six young women loaded down with skimpy tops and skirts that might cover their underpants if they were short-waisted.

I waited at least a half hour to get to the head of the line, then another fifteen minutes, checking my watch frequently, because the girl ahead of me had half the store in her arms. When she exited, I went in and found two other women in there with me.

I turned my back politely. One of them said, “If you don’t start undressing now, you won’t finish in your fifteen-minute allotment.” I started undressing. First, the pants. The smaller pair I couldn’t get into. The larger I managed, but when I looked in the mirror, I considered them too tight.

“Perfect,” said a redheaded girl in her underwear. Then she pulled a sheer slip—perhaps it was a dress—over her head.

“Yeah,” agreed the second occupant of the room. “I wish I could get a pair of leather pants that fit me that well. In fact, those might. If you don’t want them, let me try them on.”

They fit me properly?
I turned again in front of the mirror.
Well
. . . I pulled the leather jacket on over my blouse, shoved the blouse tails up underneath the jacket, and looked at myself. I’d never in my life worn anything like this, but it was . . . different. Sort of . . . interesting. And it would protect me from scrapes if we had an accident.

I glanced at the boots. To get into those, I’d have to sit down. Could I sit down in these pants? Gingerly I bent to pick up the boots. So far, so good. I could bend. Then I went to the only chair, which was piled with clothes.

“Hey,” cried the redhead, and ran to rescue her selections.

I sat down. No embarrassing sounds of ripping, and the leather seemed to have some give to it. I struggled into one boot and then the other, stood up, and peered at myself. I must say that I looked like another woman and had to stifle the urge to laugh with pleasure. Did I have the nerve to actually wear these clothes in public? Would Sam make fun of me? Would Jason have a fit? Well, he didn’t have to see them. And didn’t I deserve to buy something outrageous once in a while?

With rebellious determination fueling my courage, I gathered up the slacks and matching jacket that I had worn in. Behind me I heard the redhead say, “Did you ever see a woman her age look that cool?” I wasn’t
that
old, I told myself and went up front to pay. “I’m wearing the jacket, pants, and boots out,” I told the woman at the register when, after another lengthy wait, it came my turn. “The blouse is mine, as are these.” I displayed my linen-like jacket and slacks (real linen wrinkles horribly).

“Nice color,” said the cashier. “How much do you want for those?” Nonplused that she was interested in buying my slacks suit, I decided to sell so I wouldn’t have to carry it home. “Fifty dollars,” I said.

“Twenty,” she countered.

“Forty-five.”

We settled on thirty-five, which came off my leather bill, and I walked out in time to hear Sam pull up in front of the center two blocks away. He was taking off his helmet when I caught up, and he said, doing a double take, “What happened to you?”

“My mother-in-law advised me to get leathers if I was going to be riding on a motorcycle,” I said primly.

“Yeah? Well, Carolyn, that’s the hottest pair of rider’s leathers I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you,” I replied, taking that as a compliment, but not necessarily sexist since Sam is gay. Then we put on our helmets and set out for the interview with Mrs. Croker. During a wait at a traffic light, I told Sam what Yasmin had said, that the murder was probably over money because no one could get Denise to come up with any since she took over. “Doesn’t that add credibility to what Mr. Timatovich overheard and took to be evidence that she was stealing?” I asked at the next light.

“Yeah, but we’d have to find out who knew besides the Russian and why they’d kill her instead of turning her in.”

“A person who helped in the theft,” I suggested.

In front of Crokers’ duplex, he said, “We’ll get into Denise’s apartment and see if we can find any evidence.”

“Won’t it be locked? Maybe even taped off by the police?”

“Tapes can be untaped and locks picked.”

“You’re going to break into her apartment? Sam, I can’t—”

“So you go home, and I’ll do it.”

“Well, on second thought—” I began, no doubt having been lured into criminality by my leather clothing.

“Right,” said Sam. “Now you follow the same routine with Mrs. Croker. Is he home? No? Good, it’s her you want to talk to. Tell her you’re a cop.” He laughed. “Tell her you’re a motorcycle patrolwoman, and you heard about her husband coming home Thursdays when he’s on duty for a romantic fuck, and you’d like to know how she got him to do that, because you’d like to get some action from your husband. I’ll be out here, keeping my eyes open for Croker.”

I do not consider
fuck
a romantic word, or even an acceptable one. Would a motorcycle policewoman actually say
fuck
? Well, I wouldn’t.

34

Carolyn Undercover

 

M
rs. Croker was
neither well groomed nor a good housekeeper. I doubt that she’d have let me in if she hadn’t liked my outfit. We sat in her living room with the television playing, amid a litter of magazines, dishes, and overflowing ashtrays, to which she added liberally in the time I was there.

“So you’re with the motorcycle cops? That don’t look like any cop clothes I ever saw.” Without offering me one, she fixed herself a bourbon and water. Perhaps she’d been offended when I refused a cigarette.

“These are my civvies,” I said, hoping that was the term for a police person’s off-duty clothes.

“Mighta known. If they had uniforms like that, I mighta joined myself. I always liked motorcycles. What kinda bike you ride?” she asked.

“A Harley,” I replied because I was unable to name any brand but Sam’s.

“You don’t look like you could keep one a them big bikes from fallin’ on you. An’ aren’t you a little old for the bike patrol?”

“My sergeant doesn’t think so,” I said, smiling coyly. “Say, the reason I stopped by, Nadine—you don’t mind if I call you Nadine?—there’s a rumor going around that your husband takes off every Thursday night just to come home and have . . . ah . . . sex with you.”

“You with IAD?” she asked suspiciously.

I’m sure I looked befuddled, but then I remembered a police show: Internal Affairs—they investigated other officers. “Not me,” I said. “I just wanna know how you managed it. Like, I wish I could get my husband to come home for a . . . a quickie now and then. We’re never working the same shift, my husband and I.”
Quickie
was a good touch, but I should have used
me,
not
I.
“A girl likes a little surprise in her love life. Know what I mean?” That was better. Or maybe not. She was glaring at me again.

“I don’t know where you heard Marcus takes off Thursdays for me. So the question is: who
does
the bastard take off to see? Maybe I better catch up with that damn Arbus and find out what’s goin’ on.”

Oh dear, if she did that, Officer Croker would know someone was asking questions about him. “Well, isn’t that just like a bunch of guys,” I improvised. “I bet they told me that so I’d make a fool of myself with my own husband. That really . . . ah . . . sucks. I’m gonna get my partner good for this one.” Was I convincing her, or making her more suspicious? “Look, I’m sorry to bother you, Nadine, and I wouldn’t want to be the cause of acrimony between you and your husband—” Too much Carolyn-speak again. How did Sam do it? Switch from street language to normal language? “Just because my partner and his buddies are . . . practical joker . . . assholes.” I can’t believe I said that, but she looked more convinced. “Guess I’d better be going. Sorry if I—”

“Oh, forget it,” said the terribly blonde Nadine. She lit another cigarette, and I headed for the door.

“He doesn’t come home to
her
Thursday nights,” I reported to Sam, and we headed toward the apartment of the late Denise Faulk. I’d never have believed how easy it is to pick a lock if I hadn’t seen Sam do it. When I commented, he told me that a credit card was often good enough, but Denise had good locks. Then we went into a space that already seemed dusty and depressing. Sam put on gloves and gave me some.

His first disappointment, although he wasn’t surprised, was the missing tape in her answering machine. Then I took the drawers in her bedroom, and Sam took her desk. I didn’t know exactly what we were looking for, but Sam found it in a kitchen drawer under a counter that held a second telephone. “Bingo!” he said. Since I heard him from the bedroom and was tired of looking through her coat pockets and shoeboxes, I joined him at the kitchen table, where he sat holding a small notepad.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“Notes on various ways to siphon off money that isn’t yours. Bills paid to nonexistent companies, departments at the center that get money regularly and aren’t mentioned in their brochures. Consultant fees for nonexistent consultants.”

“So she was stealing?”

“And it looks to me like she was getting advice from someone named Jacob.”

“If we can find Jacob and he was a coconspirator, maybe we’ll know who killed her.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Sam agreed, “but it sure would be easier if we had a few less suspects. She’s got telephone numbers written on a list here,” he said, reaching back to the drawer and flipping another notebook to me. “You take this one, and I’ll check the desk again.”

Of course, I got the unimportant list. The only Jacob on it was annotated with the words
good lettuce.
She didn’t even include his last name. Still, I wrote his number in my notebook. I was going to have a difficult time transcribing these scribbles when I got home because they were of different sorts. Usually I put my food notes in the computer and write columns the very night that I’ve eaten the food. In San Francisco, I’d never had time.

“You find anything?” asked Sam, coming back into the kitchen.

“I think she has a green grocer named Jacob,” I replied dryly.

“I found a Jacob Rylander with an office downtown. Rylander, Stork, & Penfold. His card was in her desk and his number in her address book.”

“What does he do?”

“Card doesn’t say. Maybe he’s so famous nobody has to ask.”

“Or involved in secret criminal activities.”

“Worth finding out.” Sam called Rylander’s office, but the answering machine suggested that he call during office hours, 9:30 to 5:00. He then looked Mr. Rylander up in the residential pages, called, and got Mrs. Rylander, who said her husband was out of town. Since Sam hadn’t identified himself as anyone she’d ever heard of, she refused to say when Mr. Rylander would be returning.

“Now there’s a bitchy woman,” he muttered.

“Maybe he’s skipped town with all the center’s money, thinking if the theft is discovered, Denise will take the blame. It would be a perfect crime.”

“There are no perfect crimes,” Sam replied. “So let’s get you home. You’re going to Foreign Cinema, right?”

I glanced at my watch. Oh my. Not only was my husband waiting for me, but we’d be lucky to get to the restaurant in time to use our reservations.

35

No Place for Scientists