Edited to Death (23 page)

In the meantime, Hot Licks’s notorious hostess, she of the flame-colored hair and
lingerie modeling career, awaited. She would be disappointed when she heard I was
hopeless with a saxophone.

I pulled open the door and stepped inside, transported from dim fall sunshine into
that eerie nobody-home darkness nightclubs have in the middle of the afternoon.

“Hello?” I called. “Anybody here?”

“We’re not open! Go away,” I heard someone shout back. I peered into the darkness
and made out a t-shirted young man, putting bottles away in back of the bar.

I marched over and hoisted myself onto the bar. I grinned at the young man and admired
the line of turquoise studs marching up his right ear. I counted five.

“Hi.” I stuck out my hand. “I’m Maggie Fiori.”

He shook. “And I’m Casper. But we’re still not open, lady—uh, Maggie.”

I turned on what I remembered as a beguiling smile. “Oh, I know. I’m a friend of Quentin’s.
He used to play sax in your Sunday jam sessions?”

He shook his head. “I remember. Cool guy. Shame he got… done in.”

“I know. Anyway, someone called from here and wanted to know if I’d sit in for him.”
Casper regarded me suspiciously. I don’t think the suburban matron getup led him to
believe I was capable of delivering licks, hot or otherwise. I disabused him of that
notion quickly. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to play. I’m just talking to people who
knew Quentin. Since I’m temporarily filling in for him at
Small Town
, I’m gathering material for a memorial piece.”

He looked interested. “Oh, yeah? Well, you shouldn’t talk to me. I hardly knew the
guy. You ought to talk to our hostess, Stare.”

“Stare?”

“Yeah. I think it’s like Esther or something. But she’s kinda cool for one of those
Biblical names. So we call her Stare, ’cause, well—when you see her, you’ll understand.”

I got the drift. “You mean she’s great looking and men stare at her, huh?”

He laughed. “Men. Women. Children. Small animals.”

“So is she here?”

“Yeah, she’s in the office. Want me to get her?”

“Please.”

Casper disappeared through a swinging door behind the bar, leaving me to contemplate
myself dispiritedly in the mirror behind the bottles. Stare, huh? Wonder what you
have to look like to get called that? After Puck had mentioned her to me, I’d heard
more about her from other people—little nuggets here and there. Heard about the modeling
jobs for the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Featured heavily in the teddy, brassiere,
and bustier sections. Hmmph, I snorted inwardly, all that upper body emphasis must
mean she’s got less than gorgeous thighs. And was she conversant with the pluperfect
tense? And did she know all the verses to John Jacob Jingelheimer-Schmidt? Get a hold
of yourself, Maggie. This is envy so low, so degraded, so—and then, I stopped, because
Stare was walking through the door and any envy I could have imagined was inadequate
to the challenge.

Right off, the goddamn thighs were fine. I could see that because she had on a miniskirt—or
not. It was so short, it was sort of a Zen skirt; you just had to imagine it was there.
And there was that obnoxious cleavage. “Wonderbra,” I thought to myself. “I could
look like that.”

And then there was that red hair, lots of it, redder than mine, in one of those dated,
curly, cascading to the shoulders looks that men claim to love. It’s what they mean
when they sigh and say, “Why can’t you wear your hair like.…” Creamy skin, green eyes
(contact-enhanced, I felt sure), and twenty-minute lips.

The pieces were terrific, but it was the sum of the parts that knocked a person out.
Most of all, I realized, it was the way she moved all that gorgeousness across the
floor. Something like warm caramel dripping off a spoon liquid, languorous, and melting
everything in its path.

“Maggie? Gee, it’s really great to meet you. Quentin talked about you a lot.”

Yeah, I thought to myself bitterly, pillow talk, when he was contrasting your glamorous
self to his frumpy, hausfrau stationwagon-driving suburban squeeze.

She hoisted her perfect little butt onto the barstool adjoining mine and reached awkwardly
over to give me a hug. “I feel as if we know each other.” I didn’t. But it seemed
rude to say so.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “Did Casper tell you I was doing a piece on Quentin?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off all that perfection. Those billiard-table felt green eyes
welled with tears. She nodded. “He told me. I’d love to help. What can I do?”

I felt the knot of envy dissolve. I’d like to think it was some grand feminist principle
that made me feel petty to envy someone so beautiful. But probably not.

Maybe it was being past thirty and knowing that even in my prime, I’d been the farm
team to Stare’s major league. Or maybe it was just that she was so perfect, so pleasurable
to contemplate. I felt a little like an art student, struck happily dumb before a
canvas of some pre-Raphaelite beauty. Stare was well-named.

So I simply launched into what I have to consider as a very fine piece of amateur
detection. How she met Quentin? At the club. What their relationship was? More tears,
but, well, just magical, Quent was so brainy and stuff. Who else Quent hung out with
at the club? You know, just everyone. Any enemies? No, everyone liked him. Kinda quiet
for this crowd, but very funny, good musician, very generous.

“Generous?” I asked, thinking about Quentin’s real-life assets, separate from Claire.

Stare dabbed her eyes with a Hot Licks napkin. “Uh huh. You know, treating people
to… well, treats.”

“Standing drinks?” I asked.

“Oh, well, no. I mean, if you play here, the bartenders really take care of you.”

“Okay, then, what do you mean? Making loans to people?” I couldn’t quite conjure up
an image of Quentin as a loan shark, but then, you never know.

“No, no,” said Stare, and shifted uneasily on the barstool. “I just meant.…”

Tiny bells went off in the back of my head. “Dope? He treated the guys to drugs.”

A look of both relief and discomfort flitted over those art-directed features.

“Oh, you know. Nothing hard. But he’d bring hash in now or then, or good grass, and
he was generous with it.”

I guiltily remembered our small, suburban stash of Belize Breeze, also courtesy of
Quentin, and began to wonder.

“He didn’t sell, did he?”

Stare looked horrified. “Sell? Oh, no. He wasn’t a dealer. He just seemed, every now
and then, to have access to quite a bit of very high-quality stuff. And we’d all share
the goodies.”

I could see the headlines now. “Preppy Magazine Editor Doles Dope Largesse, in Places
High and Low.” Michael and I would probably be busted along with the musicians at
Hot Licks. Oh well, at least there’d be more than Muzak in jail.

“So, Stare,” I pressed on. “Any idea where this stuff came from? A friend of Quentin’s?
Somebody he worked with?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? We didn’t ask. Quentin’s—was—a kinda private guy. I mean,
he had that bitchy Pacific Heights wife of his, and then.…” she gestured toward herself.

“You?” I filled in politely.

“Yeah,” she said. “Me. And hey I wasn’t kidding myself. A whole lot of others. Boys
and girls. That Quentin, he got around. You know.…”

I knew. How nice to be part of a large extended family. “So as long as we’re discussing
Quentin’s love life,” I continued, “any past sweeties who were really pissed at him?”

Stare blew her nose, furrowed her brow, and appeared to give the matter some thought.
“I don’t think so. You know, with Quentin, no one ever took things very seriously.
And he was so polite. I mean, he didn’t really dump anybody. He just moved on. And
it was okay; you just felt like you were part of a club or something.”

“An alumni association,” I commented, wondering if we should plan a reunion.

“Yes, that’s it,” she said brightly. “It was never love. It was fun with Quent. You
felt as if you were his project for a while, and then the next project came up. But
he didn’t forget you or anything.”

I nodded and made a mental note to call Inspector Moon.

“So, is what I said going to be part of the article?” asked Stare. “Seems kinda weird.”

For a moment I was bewildered, and then I remembered my ruse for speaking with Stare.
What a lousy detective. Got to keep those stories straight. “It’s all background,”
I said. “But everything you said has been helpful.” I had a sudden, queasy thought.

“Stare, did you tell the cops any of the stuff about drugs you told me?”

She shook her head. “No, they just asked us about enemies he might have had at the
bar. I think they thought it was a different kind of place, that people get in fights
here. You know.”

Back at my office, Gertie was happy to get the signed invoices and relieved to hear
that Glen was on the mend and would probably be in the next day. I dealt with the
usual collection of pink message slips and then wandered down the hall to Puck’s office.

He was in full writing mode. Gone was the laid-back, leather-jacketed, cooler-than-cool
look. Jacket discarded on the floor, he was hunched over the word processor, three
half-empty coffee mugs scattered over his desk, index cards taped to his walls. He
looked undistractable, so I began to creep away. Without looking up, he barked at
me. “Stop. Don’t sneak out. Don’t leave. Save me, save me!”

I wavered in the doorway. “You look like you’re in the middle of it.”

“I am, I am, and that bitch Fiori has me on deadline.”

“Ooh, I love it when you call me names,” I cooed to him.

Puck swiveled his chair around, away from the screen, and pointed at his disreputable
armchair. “Sit, sit. I need a break. The bitch will have to wait.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “Speaking schizophrenically, I’m sure she will.”

He brightened. “You will?”

“Yeah, for about twenty four hours. So we’ll make this a quick break.”

Puck sighed. “Okay, what’s up?”

“I want to know about drugs,” I said. “I think Quentin had access to stuff, and I’d
like to know where and when and why.”

Puck looked annoyed. “Oh, you would, would you? Who issued you a badge, little lady?”

“Come on, Puck. I think you know something.”

Puck carefully examined the toes of his black, reptile-skin boots. He held his foot
up for me to check out. “Think these heels seem like I’m trying too hard to look tall?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said briskly. “I think they point out once again how insecure all
you boys under six feet are, and I don’t think you’re fooling anyone, and I know you’re…”
I looked him up and down, “no more than five feet ten, and if you can’t fool a middle-aged,
out-of-circulation old bat like me, you’re sure not gonna fool those little girls
with uncorrected twenty-twenty vision at the clubs.”

Puck looked genuinely wounded. “Holy shit, you don’t have to be so brutal.”

“Hey, I’ve just spent a delightful hour with the curvaceous and, as I believe you
boys say, ‘eminently fuckable’ Stare from Hot Licks, so I’m not in the mood to coddle
anybody’s ego. Mine’s pretty much headed out of town for the winter.”

Puck’s expression brightened. “God, Stare. Mmmm. Isn’t she a piece of work? Plus,
she studied at the Sorbonne or something. In all my fantasies, she’s talking dirty
to me in French.”

“In the pluperfect tense,” I muttered.

Puck wasn’t listening. He continued, “Man, I couldn’t believe old Quent actually reeled
her in. She needed somebody much, much younger.”

“Yeah, well, I think she goes for tall ones,” I said. “Save your energy.”

Puck launched himself out of the office chair and began straightening up the piles
of paper. “Okay, Maggie, make it quick. Now that you’ve dropped by to ruin my ego
and my day, I do have to get back to my story.”

“Well,” I began, “before we were distracted by this delightful interlude dismantling
each other’s self-esteem, I believe I asked you about drugs.”

He continued straightening, and muttered over his shoulder. “And I believe I asked
you what business it was of yours?”

“Come on, I’m not just being nosy. Look at me.” He turned around. I held up my right
hand in Brownie pledge position. “I’m going to call Inspector Moon right away, I promise,
but I think Quentin was into something peculiar, and maybe if we—if the cops—figure
it out, they can wrap up this murder investigation. And we’ll all be a lot happier.”

Puck regarded me and then sank back into his desk chair, a wad of files leaking papers
on his lap. “You mean
you’ll
be a lot happier.”

“Oh, you really want to have some murderer wandering around San Francisco? Maybe whoever
it is will systematically knock off the entire staff of
Small Town
.”

Puck snorted. “Bullshit, Maggie. This is turning into your little obsession. What’s
the matter? The cops coming after you—or old Mikey, the wronged husband?”

I winced.