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Authors: Sheryl J. Anderson

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Amateur Sleuth

Killer Cocktail (22 page)

BOOK: Killer Cocktail
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“Mr. Boone left two days ago,” he replied without hesitation. Another good sign.
“I didn’t realize.” I played along. “No wonder he’s been hard to get a hold of.”
“Ms. Del Guidice left last night.”
“Oh,” I said again, with genuine surprise this time. “Gone to meet him for a little lover’s getaway How nice for them.”
Steve shook his head. “It was less a getaway than a ‘get away from me,’ best I could tell,” he said, his voice dropping to a confidential volume. “She walked him out when he left and all but gave him the bum’s rush.”
“Wow. I saw them together Sunday morning and they seemed their usual happy selves,” I replied, leaving out a few small details like his pass at me, her stoned dancing in the living room, and then Lara giving me the bum’s rush while the other doorman was on duty
“You’re a new friend, right? ’Cause I haven’t seen you around here before this weekend.”
“We met in Southampton Friday,” I admitted. “But I thought they were charming.”
“They have their moments. You must’ve caught ’em in a good one.”
“When do you think they’ll be back?”
“He’ll come back eventually. We might’ve seen the last of her.” My expression must have been more alarmed than I’d
intended, because he hurried to clarify. “She just had that look of a woman who was done, you know? And I’ve seen it a lot. On his women especially.”
So he was referring to Jake’s romantic track record, not any homicidal leanings. “Do you have any idea where they are? I need to talk to her. About a project I’m doing.”
“I’d say he’s crashing with a friend and she’s somewhere expensive with his credit card. But that’s just a guess,” Steve shrugged.
“Thank you.”
Steve touched his brim again. “I’ll tell him you came by whenever I see him. May I get you a cab?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to walk a little.”
I was only about ten blocks from the office and I thought the walk might help my hangover as well as my thought process. Besides, I love walking in the city, throwing myself into the river of people moving up and down the island all day and most of the night, and letting the current carry me along. It’s not good for the shoes, but it’s good for the soul. The pace and the size of the city make it easy to feel disconnected, but when you walk down the sidewalk and just spend a few minutes watching the huge spectrum of people rushing along right beside you, worrying about being disconnected, too, sometimes that’s a connection in itself and you feel part of something larger and more important than your own panics and problems. Maybe you’re just a fish swimming along with a school, maybe you’re a star in a constellation, maybe you’re part of the human race. Whichever, you’re not alone.
I found myself humming “Takin’ It to the Streets” as I walked, watched faces, and thought. I’d come over to Jake and Lara’s on Sunday, he’d left Sunday night. Then I’d gone back yesterday and she’d gotten all freaked out about it “being
me.” I’d thought she’d meant the one threatening Jake, but could she have meant the woman she thought Jake was cheating with? The idea was preposterous to me, but—not to pat myself on the back—I could see how Lara might construe events that way. Maybe she knew he’d been up to something when he was courting Lisbet and then I popped up. I almost felt bad for her. But then I thought of her stalking me to the Algonquin and I felt less bad.
But I felt worse again when I got to the office and saw Genevieve swooping to intercept me before I’d reached my desk. I had an absurd impulse to run to the desk, slap it, and yell “Safe!” but I was certain no one would find that nearly as amusing as I would. Eileen might have goosed the subscription numbers since she’d come, but she’d killed office morale. Everyone worked with the fear of the pink slip foremost in their minds. Being fearful for my mortality and my basic hatred of the woman pushed that one down a few notches for me.
“Late!” Genevieve proclaimed, tapping her watch.
“I’m been working,” I answered with a patience she didn’t deserve. “On the story. Not much I can do sitting here in the office,” I explained. “But you can tell Eileen that I think I’m very close.”
“Really,” she said doubtfully.
“Really,” I said cheerfully. Then Genevieve handed me a message slip. On it, Genevieve had taken a message for Eileen.
From Veronica Innes. Re: The Article. Message: Why hasn’t anyone called me yet?
Across the message slip, Eileen had scrawled, probably in Genevieve’s blood,
Molly, Call her now!
I released the slip, letting it drift down on to my desk. The person I was least interested in talking to was the one most interested in talking to me. I was beginning to think I could divide the world into those who wanted to be in the
article and those who didn’t. “I’m not sure she’s even part of the story. Why should I call her?”
“Orders,” Genevieve replied.
“Okay,” I said, looking for the magic word to make Genevieve go away. That apparently wasn’t it. “What?” I asked, trying not to be shrill. I was beginning to wonder if part of Eileen’s shrillness came from having Genevieve in her face all day.
“Call,” Genevieve chirped.
“No.”
Genevieve put her hands on her hips. I decided in that split second that if she wagged her finger in my face, I was going to bite it off. But all she said was, “Molly,” in what was probably her version of low and menacing. It was only slightly less chirpy than usual.
I wanted to tell her she wasn’t the boss of me. I wanted to tell her that her prep-school sense of entitlement was the most irritating of many irritating traits. I wanted to feed her the message slip in individual strips, like high-carb pasta. But all of that required more energy than I wanted to devote to her at the moment, so I switched gears. I leaned across the desk and said, “Let me tell you a j-school secret.”
Her eyes went wide and she leaned in eagerly. “’Kay.”
“Never go into an interview unprepared. Because the question you forget to ask will turn out to be the most important question for your entire piece.”
She nodded slowly. “Right.”
“So I’m going to take some time to prepare my list of questions. Then I will call Ms. Innes. I’m sure we’ll all find the experience worth waiting for.”
“Absolutely.” Genevieve flounced back to her desk, leaving a cloud of Kenneth Cole’s Black over mine.
I sank into my chair. Dale Bennett, the rotund editorial
assistant who sat the next desk over, so fresh out of school he still had blue books to use as scrap paper, threw me a sidelong glance. “I don’t remember learning that in j-school. Where’d you go?”
“I didn’t. But I will go to hell for lying, if that makes you feel better.”
Dale quickly went back to his work and I attempted to go back to mine. I did some research on Lisbet’s family, just in case there really was an article in all this, but the more I worked, the more frustrated I got. I channeled that into making phone calls to the most expensive hotels in the city, looking for Lara Del Guidice, but I couldn’t find her. Finally, I switched over to reading letters for my next column and that made me feel much better. Isn’t that the whole attraction of advice columns, not so much “Hey I was wondering that myself!” as “Hey, I’m not as messed up as these people!”?
I was engrossed in sorting out a letter that was filled with so many exes on all sides that I thought I was going to have to draw a family tree like in
One Hundred Years of Solitude
when the phone rang. I grabbed it halfheartedly; statistically, it was someone I was going to hang up on anyway.
“Guess where you’re having dinner tonight,” Cassady demanded.
“The McDonald’s in Times Square.”
“Why there?”
“It’s the most depressing thing I could think of.”
“No depression. Only joy. Acappella in TriBeCa. You and Tricia. Eight—thirty.”
“Any particular reason?”
“So you can ever so casually run into me and my dinner date. He and I arrive at eight.”
“And who is this yummy man we have to come inspect so early in the game?”
“Jake Boone.”
“What?” It was so loud that not only did the meerkats rise up, several of them considered bolting from the bullpen. I actually felt compelled to cover the phone and yell, “Sorry, guys,” before returning to the conversation. Which I did by repeating “What?” at an only slightly lower volume. “How did this happen?”
“Remember those blank spots we were discussing this morning?”
“I remember having them, but obviously, I don’t remember what they are or they wouldn’t be blank spots.”
“Think about this. Think of me with the phone in my hand, proclaiming that I want to finance a film.”
In a queasy swirl of recollection, it came back. Somewhere between pitcher number three and pitcher number four, it had occurred to us that the one foolproof way to entice Jake was to give him what he wanted most in the world. Not sex or fame but money to produce his next movie, which would then bring him all the sex and fame he wanted. So Cassady had gotten on the phone and left Jake a message, proclaiming that, while she’d given him a hard time about his cinematic theories, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since meeting him and she wanted to discuss being one of his backers. She’d left her cell phone number, which Jake had called this morning and, after questioning her sincerity only once, he’d asked her to meet him for dinner.
“Cassady Lynch, you magnificent vixen. We’ll be there. With bells on.” Or whatever it is you wear to crash dinner with a murderer.
It’s. funny how you
use a phrase for most of your life without really thinking about how it came into the language or how its meaning might have been diluted by time. And then, something happens that changes the import of that phrase for you forever. Don’t expect to hear me talk about “deer in the headlights” again.
I had some trepidation about calling Tricia to arrange the dinner. What if by the time her hangover lifted, she decided she was more upset with me than with her mother after all? But I had to call her. She was invested in this, too, and I couldn’t exactly go into Acappella by myself without arousing suspicion.
“I’d be delighted,” she replied when I laid out the plan.
“And yet, you sound quite grim,” I pointed out.
“They planned their little party, their marvelous show of support for David. And didn’t include me in it one bit. You know, I’m not the one who’s been accused of murder here, but I’m the one being shunned. I swear to God, Molly, I wish Rebecca would go back to drinking and messing up.”
“Why?” I couldn’t quite see the connection.
“Because sober, she’s a little too perfect to bear. I’ll pick
you up at eight and I might have calmed down by then. But no guarantees.”
When I met her at the cab in front of my building, she was smoldering. She looked fantastic in her flutter-sleeved Matthew Williamson red jersey dress, a keyhole cut in front and back, but she was still upset, too. She’d contained it, but she hadn’t gotten over it.
“So when is this big event?” I asked as we got into the cab, aware I was stepping onto thin ice.
She slammed the cab door for emphasis and/or catharsis. “Tomorrow afternoon. A luncheon.”
“You’re kidding.”
“If I were kidding, it would mean I saw some humor in the situation, which I don’t.”
“But that’s no notice at all.”
“The funeral’s on Friday and it has to be before that. Mother and Rebecca are sure that our true friends will drop whatever they’re doing and rush over to show their love. It’s a test. Everything with my mother is a test.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was a conversation it was wise to have just now, when we should be psyching ourselves up to deceive and snare Jake. Then again, I didn’t want to ignore her pain. I aimed down the middle. “Are you going?”
“I haven’t decided yet. If you can put Jake behind bars tonight, I might go. If Jake pins it on Davey tonight, I might still go.” She smiled weakly and patted me on the knee. “No pressure.”
As we lurched down the West Side Highway, our cabbie driving like he was immersed in some marvelous video game that required he never come to a complete stop, I tried to anticipate how we were going to maneuver Jake into confessing. At the moment, it seemed simpler to walk across the Hudson River, which taunted me outside the cab window.
It might have been nice to have Lara in the equation, but I still hadn’t been able to find her. As my dad always says, “Do what you can where you are with what you have.”
Where we were now was on Hudson Street in TriBeCa. Acappella is a marvelous Northern Italian restaurant with fantastic food and exquisite service, big on charm and low on lights. We stepped into the muted glow of the interior and Tricia gave her name to the maître d’. He asked us with a lovely, rolling Italian accent to have a seat in the cluster of burgundy leather settees behind him while he checked on our table. A compact and beautifully supplied bar was just across from us, its stools occupied by snugly dressed young women being doted on by well-dressed young men. I studied the bottles behind the bar because I didn’t dare peer into the dining room for Cassady and Jake.
Tricia perched nervously beside me. “You think they’re here?”
“I hope so. Otherwise, I don’t have enough appetite to do this place justice.” Then again, maybe it wasn’t lack of hunger. Maybe it was nerves.
“This morning, I swore I’d never drink again. But right now, a shot might stop my heart palpitations.”
“
Bellas?
” The maître d’ reappeared and gave us a little bow, indicating we should follow him.
The seating area, dominated by an immense painting of an intense Italian nobleman, was even dimmer than the bar and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. I was still blinking when, to my great relief, I heard Cassady exclaim, “What are you doing here?”
She stood up at her table, radiant even in the dimness in a David Meister psychedelic silk halter, her hair caught loosely at the crown of her head. She looked fully prepared to seduce Jake into a confession, should that prove necessary.
The maitre d’ stopped politely. “Am I surprised the most beautiful women in my restaurant know each other?” He folded his hands in front of him and waited while Tricia and I put on a show of hugging Cassady in greeting.
Only after I’d hugged her did I look down at her dinner companion. The pained look on his face helped me react with surprise. “Jake. Hi,” I said flatly. I’d figured he wouldn’t be happy to see me, but he looked disgusted. “I’m sorry,” I backpedaled, like I thought I’d stumbled on to some lover’s tryst. “I had no idea …”
“Hello, Jake,” Tricia said with extreme politeness.
The maître d’ pointed out the empty chairs at their table. “What a lucky man,
signore,
you could dine with all these pretty ladies.”
Jake cocked his head at me. “Your boyfriend know you’re here? ’Cause he told me to stay away from you.”
“I tried to tell you last night, Jake, it wasn’t me.”
The maître d’ cleared his throat. “Or, you could have your table right over here,
bellas
.”
Jake stood up and dropped his napkin on the table. “No, really,” he said a little too firmly. “I insist. Join us.”
Wary glances were exchanged all around, including with the maitre d’, before Tricia and I moved to sit down. Acappella is one of those places that seems to have slightly more than one impeccably trained waiter per table, so there’s always some gentle soul appearing out of nowhere, tending to your need, and disappearing back into the darkness. The moment we reached for the chairs, two waiters materialized to seat us properly, hand us our napkins, and assure that we were properly situated.
“We’re not intruding?” I asked, needing some sort of explosive to break the ice that was spreading from Jake’s side of the table.
“Jake and I are discussing his next film. I’m going to invest,” Cassady said sunnily.
“A short or a feature, Jake?” Tricia inquired.
“A feature,” he replied, but not as sullenly as he might have.
“Self-financed? That’s ambitious. My hat’s off to you,” I said.
“I’d rather have your checkbook,” he replied, warming to the topic. He’d recognized the ambush for what it was, but he’d expected us to launch in on him immediately. Now he was starting to relax a little, thinking he’d been wrong. Silly boy.
“Would this be part of your wordless cinema?” I asked. “We didn’t get that far in our talk about the article.”
“You were telling us about that at David’s party,” Tricia added.
“Yes. Sorry about your loss, by the way,” Jake said with unexpected grace.
“Thanks. It’s so insane. She didn’t have an enemy in the world, we just don’t understand …” Tricia grabbed her napkin and dabbed at her eyes. Either she could cry on cue as well as Veronica or those were real tears for her almost-sister-in-law, or for her brother, or for the whole mess.
Jake sat quietly a moment, struggling with something. I managed to keep my mouth closed and let him work it out without any reinforcing stiletto through the toe from Cassady. “I don’t mean to throw mud, but she did have enemies,” he said quietly. “If they still haven’t figured out who did this, it’s important you know that.”
I stared at Jake, not because of what he was saying, but the way he was saying it. I’d seen nothing but braggart and blowhard from him. This was a gentleness that was shocking. Maybe it was something he turned on when he wanted to charm people; even with that in mind, it worked.
He stared back at me. “I told you about Veronica. They weren’t cool with each other at all.”
“But it wasn’t bad enough for Veronica to kill her, was it?” I asked, scoffing at a theory I’d held dearly for a while.
He shrugged. “People do stupid things.”
“Like sleep with the guest of honor at her own engagement party?” I asked.
Jake groaned and turned to try to explain to Tricia, but then he could see she already knew. His look hardened as it slid back to me. “Who told you?”
“Veronica.”
He twisted his napkin angrily. “She’s just trying to make me look bad. Who else have you told?”
“Doesn’t matter. What does is, why wasn’t that enough? Why didn’t that fulfill your ultimatum?”
Jake looked at Cassady, hurt. “You set me up.”
“That doesn’t mean I won’t invest in your film,” she assured him. “Unless you’re going to jail.”
“Why would I go to jail?” he asked, his voice getting a little too loud for such an intimate restaurant.
“Why did she have to leave, Jake?” I persisted.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The card in the flowers. ‘Leave and live.’”
“I’m the one who’s leaving.” Jake stood and threw his napkin on the table.
Two waiters and the maître d’ teleported into position around the table, the maître d’ in emergency mode. “
Signori, signore,
some wine, perhaps? A drink from the bar? Tony, where’s their antipasti?”
Jake pushed past them and headed for the front door. I jumped up and followed him, trusting my far more diplomatic friends to be able to smooth things over with the restaurant staff. Jake blew through the doors and out onto
the sidewalk, oblivious to other patrons and pedestrians. He started to walk out into traffic to make sure a cab stopped for him, but I grabbed him by the back of the jacket and yanked him onto the sidewalk.
“Jake, listen to me for just a minute.”
“Why, you gonna read me my rights?”
“I’m trying to make sense of what’s going on here. You’re getting threatened, so am I. I want to know why.”
“I bet you’re getting threatened for asking people nosy questions.”
“And you’re getting threatened for being classless enough to post footage of a dead girl on your Web site.”
Something, perhaps some whiff of his own culpability, caught him. His breathing slowed and his jaw relaxed slightly. “I made mistakes. But I don’t deserve any of this.”
“What mistakes?”
“The flowers. I shouldn’t have forced her to make a decision right then. She was crazy—the party, the play opening—I shouldn’t have pushed her to choose.”
“Between you and David.”
Jake’s jaw actually dropped. “Is that what you think this was? Some warring lovers’ trope?” He laughed bitterly.
“Forgive my confusion, but you did sleep with her after she broke up with David.”
“Because she invited me to. C’mon. I’d have to be embalmed to pass up a shot at that. You saw her, right? Well, you shoulda seen her naked.”
A wave of vertigo ran through me. Was I really that far off or was he playing me? “The decision didn’t have anything to do with David?”
“Only in terms of her talking to him about it. And she kept dragging her feet about it, which is why I pushed her.”
“Then what did she have to decide, Jake?”
“To leave the play to be in my movie. And live more fully as an artist.”
I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t, thankfully. “Your movie?”
“I wanted Lisbet to star in my movie. And I had a shot at this great DP coming off another friend’s film so I had to move fast. She had to drop out of the play to make the schedule work.”
“So when she called Abby and said she was leaving the play, it was because of your movie.”
“Until that stupid cow Veronica seduced David and Lisbet realized she couldn’t leave him alone for two minutes, much less go shoot with me in the Berkshires for two weeks, so she caved on me and told Abby never mind.”
“This is all about your stupid movie?”
Jake leaned into me. I think the only reason he didn’t hit me was my gender and even then, he was struggling. “It’s not stupid.”
“It can’t be worth killing over.”
“I didn’t kill her!”
“Of course you did. You banged her in the pool house, made your little sex film, and figured you were golden. But then she said no, she was just having a little fun and she didn’t care about you or your stupid feature. So you picked up the champagne bottle and bashed her brains in.”
“The technical term is ‘blunt force trauma,’” the voice behind me said. I didn’t have to turn around to identify it and I didn’t want to turn around because I didn’t trust myself.
“Who the hell are you?” Jake demanded over my shoulder.
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