Edited to Death (30 page)

“That’s it?” he inquired. “You’re sure?”

I nodded. “Oh, of course, there’s Jorge.”

“Why am I not surprised?” said Moon. “And who is Jorge, and what’s he doing?”

I explained. He smiled. “I see our information systems people were too slow for you,”
he said.

I felt myself blush. “Well, not too slow,” I said, “but I’m sure they’re busy tracking
down all those offshore stashes of funds some local Catholic church keeps embezzling.”

Moon raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you ever worry about what you say, Maggie? I could
be Catholic. You could be offending me, you know?”

“Hey, I’m married to a Catholic myself. I just read the papers. Aren’t all those local
priests turning into the Michael Milkens of the new millennium? Besides, I’m hoping
they’re socking some extra away to help put my little half-Catholic waifs through
expensive private colleges. And besides,” I finished with a flourish, “shouldn’t you
be Buddhist?”

“I believe that’s what’s called none of your business,” he said, closing his notebook.
“And now, since you informed me this morning that we’re friends, I’m going to talk
to you like a friend. Maggie, you’ve got to cut it out.”

I began to protest, “I didn’t really do anything—”

“Well, someone thinks you did. Asking questions and exploiting your magazine help
to do your legwork for you looks like a lot of something to somebody. Just cut it
out or something more permanent than mysterious name-calling graffiti is going to
happen.” He shook his head. “You know, that’s what bothers me about this prank.”

“Bothers
you
? It’s my car.”

He ignored me. “Remember, I worked for years in high schools. This is the kind of
thing teenagers do. It’s like tepee-ing a neighbor’s house. It’s meant to scare and
humiliate you, I guess, but it doesn’t seem very threatening. And it’s meant to puzzle
you. So it’s somebody who knows you well enough to assume you’ll figure it out.”

“You mean, like Glenn Close boiling the kid’s bunny?”

He smiled. “Your kids have a bunny?”

“No, thank heavens.”

“Well, you see what I mean, don’t you? This isn’t life threatening. It’s meant to
look scary, but it isn’t really.”

“So you think I’m being stalked by a teenager?”

He gave a short laugh. “Maybe. It’s more like you’re being warned off by someone who
actually cares about you—and just can’t bring himself or herself to really scare you
in a serious way.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Michael?” ventured Moon.

“Michael what?” I asked crossly.

“Michael wouldn’t do something like this?”

I snorted. “Just because he’s Italian doesn’t mean he knows anything about sixteenth
century painters,” I said. “And besides, he just wouldn’t.”

Moon shook his head. “I’m remembering our conversation at Skate Oakland. Husbands
and wives. Do we ever really know each other?”

“Uh huh,” I said noncommittally, distracted by the distressing series of phone calls
I had still in front of me—to Michael, to our cranky insurance agent who never seemed
happy to hear from me.

Moon asked me a few more questions, trying to pin down exactly who did and didn’t
know about my contraband sleuthing, then unfolded himself out of the defaced Volvo
and sent me on my way.

I couldn’t stand the thought of parking the newly enhanced Fiori-mobile in front of
our house, so I dropped it at one of those discount paint places my insurance agent
kinda, sorta pre-approved and called Anya to come fetch me.

The kids were in the back seat of her equally disreputable aged VW bug, singing “Take
Me Out to the Ball Game,” and favoring the back of the seat with those high-force
kid kicks that convince you terminal kidney disease is just around the corner.

I blew kisses at everybody, discouraged the kicks, and closed my eyes.

“Shhh, kids,” Anya cautioned, “your mom’s not feeling good.”

I sighed. “I’m okay, Anya, I feel fine. It’s just been a complicated day.” And then
I sat bolt upright in Anya’s grimy passenger seat.

“Anya’s an art student, you idiot!”

Anya looked miffed. “Who are you talking to, Maggie? I’m right here. Of course I’m
an art student.”

“Good. So you know who Guercino was, right?”

“Italian painter, Bolognese school, inspired by Titian.”

“Okay, what else do you know about him?”

“He took over the supervision of the Bolognese school from Guido Reni.”

“Guido, Uh huh. What else?”

“I don’t know that much more,” Anya said. “He really had just one famous painting.”

“And that was?”

“The picture of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I think it’s called
Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery.”

“That’s it,” I said grimly. “So if somebody was called Guercino’s girl, what would
she be?”

“Oh,” Anya said, “a bad woman, an adulteress.”

I fell silent. The graffiti artist clearly knew about my wicked ways. Of course, as
time went by, I was becoming convinced that could include most of the population of
the greater Bay Area.

“I have something to cheer you up, Maggie,” said Anya. “Two somethings.”

“Good,” I said, “I can use some cheering up.”

“Michael’s bringing home ribs from Everett & Jones.” A cheer went up from the backseat.
Everett & Jones was a hole-in-the-wall paradise for lovers of authentic down-to-the-last-spoonful-of-spicy-coleslaw
barbecue. I felt a little like cheering myself.

“So,” Anya wagged a finger at the kids in the rear-view mirror, “no reindeer souffle!”

Fortunately, she was good-natured about her lack of cooking skills, and about the
incrementally preposterous dishes Michael was always promising the kids she would
make.

“Okay, I agree, great news number one,” I said. “What’s next?”

“Oh, someone must be—do you say, ‘sweet on you’?” asked Anya.

“We do say that,” I said, “under certain circumstances. Why?”

“Well, someone left a big bouquet on the front steps,” she said. “And it must be from
their garden, because there’s no florist note, just a little envelope with your name
on it.”

By the time we reached home, the pinching/scuffling activities in the backseat had
escalated. We turned the kids out in the driveway, Anya disappeared into the basement
to work on her senior project—which consisted of many large, metal, rusty objects
scavenged from trips to the “pick ’n pull” wrecking yard destined for eventual soldering
into one large, increasingly hideous, and, I feared, unmovable, sculpture.

Anya had put my bouquet on the dining table, arranged in a large crystal vase. And
before I even saw the note, I felt my heart sink. I leaned on the table and called,
“Anya? Can you come a minute?”

Anya came in, caught sight of my face, and said, “Maggie? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?
Sit down.”

“Do you see anything odd about this bouquet?” I asked.

Anya regarded it. “No, I mean, I don’t know much about flowers, but these are… unusual.
I don’t think I’ve seen many of them in a bouquet before.”

“And there’s a reason,” I said. “They’re all poisonous.”

“Poisonous?” Anya recoiled.

“Yes,” I said, gesturing at each different kind, ticking them off. “Oleanders, solanum,
foxglove, even the foliage—it’s poison oak. Did you touch these leaves?” I asked.

Anya’s eyes grew wide. “Maybe.”

“Well, go have a good, soapy shower just to be sure. I’m going to dump these things.
And where’s the note?”

“In with the mail on the hall table,” Anya sprang to her feet.

The envelope looked innocuous enough, although my name was in typeface, clearly cut
from something in print—
Small Town’s
masthead, I would have guessed. I had the envelope slit and open and the note halfway
out before I remembered to worry about letter bombs. Nothing exploded, except the
message.

“Sweets to the sweets,” it read, “and poison
fiori
to the Nosy Fiori Slut.”

“How charming,” I said. My graffiti-artist worked in mixed media. Fiori is Italian
for “flowers.”

I pulled on rubber gloves to protect against the poison oak, unfolded newspaper on
the dining room table, swept the offending bouquet into it, and marched to the trash
can. Then I considered my options. I could call Inspector Moon—who would deliver yet
another lecture; I could tell Michael, who would probably try to put me under house
arrest; or I could let it ride. I made the dumb, expedient decision and let it ride.
It must have been Moon’s past life as an authority figure in high school, but against
all reason, I resisted being a well behaved little citizen. I had reported dutifully:
with Orlando’s signature, with my kids’ theories, with my car, and where was it getting
us? Michael’s career was in a holding pattern. This was our life some nut was intruding
on, and it seemed as if the cops weren’t making progress on much of anything. When
Anya emerged from the bathroom, her hair still dripping from the shower, I suggested
to her that the bouquet could be our little secret.

That night I dreamed about the Garden of Eden. I wasn’t sure if I was Eve or just
a visitor. And it was a beautiful garden, no black spot on the roses, no leaf curl
on the fruit trees—that’s how I knew it wasn’t my garden. But everywhere I looked,
when I leaned in to smell a lilac bush, reached to pick a peach, there was a
hissssss
—and a serpent appeared. And not just one wicked, tempting snake in the garden. Soon
the air was filled with the sound that Emily Dickinson says makes us go “zero at the
bone,” and I awoke, drenched in sweat. I lay there panting for a moment, then swung
my feet over the bed. I had a momentary panic about what narrow, slithering surprise
I might find when I nudged my feet into my bedroom slippers, but nothing happened.”

Downstairs, I hung on the refrigerator door and stared inside. Beer sounded good,
cold and wet, but I had sudden visions of turning into a three a.m. drinker and settled
for orange juice.

I pulled the “nosy Fiori slut” note from my robe. Of course, I’d handled it and probably
obliterated all fingerprints. But geez, what kind of idiot harasser didn’t know to
wear gloves, I consoled myself. I was sure there was nothing to see. I heard Inspector
Moon in my head: “But then, of course, we won’t know, will we?”

“No, we won’t,” I said aloud, surprising Raider from his slumber under the kitchen
table. He came over to the sink expectantly. Humans up? At this hour? Could a walk
happen? A treat? He regarded me with more than moderate interest.

“Sorry, big fella,” I said.

And then, as long as I was up, I decided to get some work done. So Raider and I settled
ourselves, me at the table, he back underneath, and with my feet resting on the warm
comfort of his fur, I worked my way through several piles of proofs. At four thirty,
with just a little light showing in the kitchen window, I put my head down on the
table and drifted into a mercifully dreamless, snake-less sleep.

25

Shipshape

Gertie was enormously impressed with my overnight productivity when I dragged into
the office the next morning. That was the good news. Plus, as a midwesterner with
farm roots, she approved of getting up at dawn. “Wait ’til menopause starts,” she
advised me, “you’ll have permanent insomnia and hot flashes so you’ll be up anyway
in the middle of the night.”

“Can’t wait,” I said.

I felt haggard, hollow-eyed and, after seeing the bill for the repainting of the Volvo
and remembering the king-sized deductible we had, newly impoverished.

I grouched through morning meetings and snapped at Puck about a late piece. I had
just begun rooting in Quentin’s cabinet for some aspirin when I looked up to see poor,
blameless Jorge standing there, grinning triumphantly.

He settled into a chair, folded his arms, and said, “Okay, Mrs. Fiori, I am ready
for my writing assignment.”

“Look, Jorge,” I began, “this isn’t exactly a good day… wait, wait, does this mean?”
I felt my headache begin to loosen.

His grin widened. “It does. I am one superhot, incredibly brilliant, persistent cyber-dick.”

I laughed and reached for the folder. “Uh huh—and I’m sure your mom would be thrilled
to hear you describe her precious baby boy in just those terms. Come on, give me what
you’ve got.”

Jorge leaped to his feet and came around to my side of the desk. “It’s easiest if
I show you on the screen. Get up, Maggie, let me sit there.”

“Is this any way to address your boss?” I said, giving him the chair and watching
as he punched in, in double time, a series of numbers.

“Okay, we’re connecting to the Internet, finding our site. Here we go, shipping schedules.”

A maze of names, numbers, dates, and symbols came up on the screen.

“You understand this stuff?” I asked Jorge.

“Yeah, it’s pretty easy to figure out the abbreviations, and the stuff I didn’t know,
I called my cousin who works at the container yard over at Oakland. He knows what
all this stuff means.” Quickly he explained some key acronyms and shorthand—“reefers”
weren’t marijuana joints, they were refrigerated containers, LTL was “less than loaded.”