Authors: Linda Lee Peterson
Edited to Death (34 page)
“Baseball?” asked Josh. “Oh, the seventh-inning stretch.”
Right, I thought to myself, Thou shalt not commit the seventh-inning stretch.
The entire Volvo smelled wonderful on the way back across the bridge, and once again,
nearly faint with relief at having Josh back, I remembered how seductive a mistress
San Francisco can be. I breathed in that heady combination of strong coffee and even
stronger salami and closed my eyes. A little nap, just a little nap, before I had
to endure Michael’s lecture—and my own self-recriminations—and then, just before I
drifted off, the young man who had looked vaguely familiar to me outside the church
snapped into focus.
“Sweetie,” I said to Josh, “what’s the art teacher’s name at school?”
The boys were dozing, too, stuffed with brunch and fresh air and the aftermath of
an adventure. “Mr. Connolly,” he mumbled.
“It wasn’t Mr. Connolly who took you to his place, was it?” I asked.
He opened his eyes. “Mom! What kind of a dummy do you think I am? I know Mr. Connolly.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “That was a silly question. It’s just that I saw someone
who looked just like him today.”
Sunday night was something other than restful. After I heard, in considerable detail,
what Michael thought about putting our son in danger, even inadvertently, we decided
to call Inspector Moon. His office paged him, and he sent an officer out to interview
Josh. Michael called it quits when it was clear Josh had reported as accurately as
he could and we weren’t going to turn up anything new. Moon called back late that
night.
“It’s more of the same, Maggie. I know it was awful for you guys, but he didn’t even
have Josh gone long enough to be serious. Think about who cares enough to scare you
just a little.”
“What about the seventh commandment warning?” I asked.
“That doesn’t tell us much new,” he said. “It’s just like the graffiti on the car.
It’s somebody who knows about your indiscretion and thinks you’re probably suffering
over it.”
“Well, doesn’t it rule out Michael?” I asked.
“Who knows?” said Moon.
“Get some rest. We can talk tomorrow.”
When we finally went to bed, I was too hot, then too cold, then too panicked to sleep.
Every time I started to drift off, I’d jerk awake, frozen in that moment when we didn’t
know where Josh had gone.
On Monday morning, Michael and I squabbled about whether or not to send him to school.
In the end, I called Mrs. Schwab, explained what happened, and persuaded her to let
Josh carry my cell phone again.
When I turned my computer on at my office, my e-mail was blinking a greeting. Email
over the weekend could only mean some whiny, procrastinating writer asking for an
extension.
“No better than I was,” I muttered under my breath as I typed in my password. I was
wrong. The e-mail was from Sara.
Hullo from the Sloan Ranger. Am busy detecting on your behalf. Here’s a weird thing.
Your dead guy must have had some lovely little pile of American capital. Douglas and
I had tea the other day and he told me that Quent had offered to loan him money when
his sweetie (Leslie) first become ill and had to resign his teaching post. Guess this
new job of yours must be pretty swank. Does that mean you and your best beloved and
the kidlets can pop over for a holiday visit? Let me know. We’d deck the halls and
all that
.
I replied immediately, thanking Sara for the info and disabusing her of the notion
that the Fiori family finances were lush enough to support a transatlantic visit.
Money, money, money. Money was somehow at the root of all this. If I could connect
the money with whatever that stuff was in the pot handle, I’d figure it out. I unlocked
my bottom drawer and took out the box of tampons I kept for emergencies. I slipped
my hand inside the box, and there, just as I’d left it, nestled among the crinkly
paper-wrapped tubes, was the vial I’d “liberated” from Quentin’s pan handle.
The door flew open and in walked Calvin. “Hey, Maggie,” he began, then broke off when
he caught sight of the box. “Put that stuff away, would you?”
I grinned at him, lifted the box and gave it a rattle. “What’s the matter, Calvin?
Don’t you celebrate all those important little lunar cycles with your harem?”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” he shuddered. He flung himself on the couch and groaned.
“Puffy ankles, moodiness, uncontrollable impulses to eat chocolate and kill old boyfriends.
Forget that noise. In fact,” he began unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves,
“want to hear my new idea for the harem?”
“I can’t wait,” I said grimly.
“Older women,” he beamed. “Past the change. No birth control worries, no cyclical
murderous impulses. Often quite wealthy. Just think, Maggie, in a few years you’d
even make it onto my short list.”
“Calvin,” I said, “I’m going to give you a very big benefit of the doubt and assume
you’re joking.” I held up one finger. “Number one, I’m at least ten years away from
‘the change,’ as you so charmingly call it. Number two, when I go for younger men,
they’re going to be much, much, much younger. You’re not even on the radar screen.
I’m talking the seventeen-year-old box-boys at the Safeway. And number three,” I said,
flourishing a third finger at him, “I have no idea what you’re rolling up your sleeves
for, since I’m unconvinced you’ve done anything more physical than snap a shutter
in your entire life, and what’s more—”
“That’s number four,” he interjected.
“Number four,” I said, getting to my feet, “I only tolerate your presence to do my
dirty detective work, so unless you’re here to take instructions, you’d better skedaddle.”
Calvin let a slow, sleepy smile spread across his face. “Skedaddle? Well, aren’t we
the wholesome country girl?”
“No, we’re not,” I said briskly. “And you’d better be darn glad of it, because if
I were I wouldn’t hang out with the likes of you.”
Calvin put his feet on Quentin’s freeform marble-top coffee table and regarded me
with interest. “I’m here, I’m ready to do your scut work.” He indicated his rolled-up
sleeves with a grand gesture. “And as you can see, I’m ready for action.”
“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said, fishing in the tampon box and pulling out the vial.
I handed it over to him. And proceeded to bring him up to date. About Puck and about
our panic in North Beach.
The grin faded from his face. “Wow. You guys must have been scared to death.” I nodded,
my eyes welling with tears.
“Plus Michael’s ready to kill me,” I said.
“So I guess that’s finally the end of Maggie Fiori, girl detective,” he said.
I dabbed at my eyes. “Probably.”
He held up the vial. “So what about this weird thing? You say Puck found this with
you?” he asked.
I nodded. “Is that a good idea?” he asked. “I mean, Puck could be a suspect. All those
clubs he goes to are just dens of drugs and iniquity.”
“Well, Puck’s not exactly pure as the driven snow,” I said, “but he’s off my list.”
“Your list?”
I pulled a reporter’s notebook, slim, spiral-bound, from the same drawer that was
home to the feminine hygiene emergency stash. “Well, here’s what I did. I went through
everyone here at the magazine and some other people close to Quentin, and I’ve figured
out who was around—and who wasn’t—during the time of Quentin’s murder.”
“Girl detective back at work?” he asked.
“It’s my swan song,” I said.
Calvin crooked a finger. “Hand it over. Let me see what you’ve got.”
I handed it across. He paged through.
“Pretty good work, Maggie,” he said. “So if I understand what you’ve been digging
into, everyone at the magazine except Glen and Andrea is accounted for.”
“Right.”
“So have you asked them where they were?”
I shook my head. “The cops questioned everyone. I assume they must be satisfied with
what they said. And I don’t exactly know how to bring it up casually in conversation
without seeming like I’m nosing around.”
“Oh, and that would be a big surprise to everyone, wouldn’t it?” observed Calvin,
turning back to the notebook.
“Well, forget them for a minute. Outside
Small Town
, Orlando’s got this watertight alibi from all those people at his cock-a-doodle-doo
restaurant, and the delectable Mrs. Quent was seen having her talons sharpened and
painted at Nails by Neta on Union Street.”
He looked up “How’d you turn up that little piece of info?”
I smiled sweetly. “We have our methods.”
“And those would be…?”
“Well, Gertie gets her nails done at the same place, and even though Quentin and Claire
are divorced, she still makes Mrs. Quent’s important appointments. You know, dentist,
hairdresser—”
“Plastic surgeon, blood bank, Poison Control center for withdrawals,” interrupted
Calvin.
I laughed. “Right.”
“So how about Orlando’s partners? How about the people at Skunkworks? There’s lots
of other people. There’s even Stuart.” He hesitated. “There’s even Michael.” He held
up his hand. “Don’t get pissed at me for saying it. You already said that Moon’s theory
was that it was someone ‘friendly’ warning you off.”
I sighed and flipped the notebook shut. “It’s not Michael.” My watch alarmed pinged.
“Hang on a minute, Calvin,” I said. I dialed Josh’s school, got the hourly reassurance
from Mrs. Schwab, and called Michael.
Calvin watched me. “So Maggie, Moon knows everything you know?”
“Mostly,” I said.
“What’s mostly?”
“I didn’t talk to him about the vial.”
“Why not? That seems like a big find.”
“Oh, I will, but I have another place I’d like to check this vial out myself.”
He tossed it back to me. “Hey, much as I’d like a big scoop and lots of credit for
breaking the case, you really do need to talk to the cops about this stuff. You know,
I was a big fan of this detective shit, but I think we may be getting in way too deep.
Somebody’s gonna get hurt. And I’d sure hate for it to be somebody I really care about,
like myself, for example. Or even your kid. Just in case Moon’s suspect stops being
so harmless and friendly.”
“Calvin, you’re a pal,” I said.
He continued, “Wait a minute. Incoming bad thought! Suppose the murderer really is
Andrea? I’m getting kinda tight with that WASPy princess.”
I chuckled. “Remember that movie,
So I Married An Axe Murderer
?”
“That’s not so funny. Besides, Andrea’s only a suspect on your little list because
she wasn’t accounted for during the murder.”
“And,” I added, “she was one of Quentin’s paramours.”
“Yeah, well, she’s gotta take a number to be part of that crowd, from what I understand,”
said Calvin, giving me an arch look.
“Oh, please,” I said, “I believe I’ve taken enough grief for that. The next time I
stray, well, there won’t be a next time.”
“Not married to old Mikey there won’t be,” observed Calvin. “Italian guy like that,
he’s probably got sixteen uncles in the Mob.”
“I believe the Italian Anti-Defamation League breaks your legs if you make jokes in
that vein,” I said. “However, as I was saying, not that I’d ever make this mistake
again, but I assure you if I did, I’d pick somebody who isn’t quite so visible or
so catholic in his tastes.”
“Right,” said Calvin, “we already know you have your eye on teenage box-boys. That’s
going to be a juicy little scandal right there.”
I flipped through the pages of my notebook. “There’s something else,” I said.
“Cough it up,” said Calvin.
“Well, there’s this art teacher at Josh’s school, Joe Connolly.”
“Uh huh, and?”
“And, I think he’s the guy who called that day we were having lunch at Cock of the
Walk and made up the story about Josh being sick.”
“I’m not following.”
“Well,” I said impatiently, “look, someone wanted to get to me before I got to the
file that Moon was holding for me. And that someone knew the quickest, most foolproof
thing to do was to distract me with one of the kids.”
“And why do you think it was Connolly?”
“It’s all too much of a coincidence. He knows Glen and that Skunkworks gang, he knows
Josh, and he knew how to find me. And he probably knew what I had on that day, because
he could have seen me when I dropped Josh off at school.” I put my hand on the receiver.
Calvin glanced at his watch, unfolded his elegant legs and got to his feet. “Look,
Maggie, I hope you’re twitching over that receiver because you’re going to call Inspector
Moon.”
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
Calvin reached across the desk and patted me on the head. “Good girl.”
And with that, he disappeared out the door. I picked up the phone and dialed The Webster
School again. The student who answered the phone reassured me that she’d just seen
Josh and, in answer to my request, said she’d have Joe Connolly give me a call. I
thanked her and was about to hang up when she said, “But Mrs. Fiori, it might be a
while before he calls you back.”
