Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights (10 page)

“Hey, Sophie.”

I looked up to see Dena standing just outside of the kitchen.

“Is it okay for Jack to be getting into the cabinet beneath the sink?”

“Oh, my God!” I yelled.

Leah and I ran into the kitchen, pushing Dena aside just as Jack grabbed the Clorox scrub and dumped it onto Mr. Katz. Jack looked up at Leah with pride in his eyes. “Dirty cat.”

Leah scooped up Jack and I raced after Mr. Katz, who almost sent Mary Ann sprawling as he tried to pass her in the hall. I lunged for him and managed to throw him in the bathtub as he ran his claws down my arm. While I turned on the shower, Mr. Katz hissed and desperately tried to escape. I managed to rinse off the cleaning solution just as Mr. Katz punished me with a particularly painful scratch across the back of my wrist. He jumped out of the bathtub and darted out of the room. I looked up to see my three guests standing in the doorway.

“I know this might be an inopportune moment to bring this up,” Leah said slowly, “but is anyone else impressed that my son made the connection between Mary Ann’s statement that the cat was dirty and Clorox? It really is an amazing mental leap for an eighteen-month-old.”

I pressed my hands against my wounds. The only leap I wanted Jack to make was into a playpen for the rest of the night. “You’re right, Leah, the moment’s definitely inopportune.”

Leah handed Jack to Mary Ann, who took him with no little trepidation. “Let me see your arms.” Leah peered at them and then pulled some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol out of my medicine cabinet. She sat down next to me on the edge of the bathtub and held my arms under the running faucet before patting them dry and applying the alcohol. “Spare me the dramatics,” she said as I gasped in pain.

I narrowed my eyes. “This from the girl who was voted ‘most likely to overreact’ in high school?”

“I’ve changed.” She tossed the used cotton balls in the wastebasket. “Besides, you don’t know what pain is until you’ve—”

“If you finish that sentence with ‘given birth,’ I’m going to have to punch you,” Dena said flatly.

Leah glared at her. “It’s true. Not that you would know anything about childbirth or anything else that involved any kind of commitment.”

“I’m plenty committed. I’m committed to my friends, my career, and I’m very committed to my quest to help the women of San Francisco find their G-spot.”

Mary Ann sighed disapprovingly and took Jack out of the room before Dena could inadvertently corrupt him.

Leah stood up stiffly and put the first-aid supplies back in their place. “Do you ever miss an opportunity to advertise your scandalous behavior?”

“Come on, guys.” I squeezed my arms in hopes of alleviating the stinging. “Let’s not get into this now.”

“I don’t do anything that’s immoral.” Dena took a step closer to Leah, totally ignoring my last comment. “There is nothing shameful about sex between two consenting adults. Hell.” Dena smiled slyly. “There’s nothing shameful about sex between three consenting adults, either.”

“There you go again, bragging about being a slut.”

“It’s not like you were a virgin bride, Leah.”

“Yes, but unlike
some
people in this room,
I’ve
never slept with a man on a first date.”

“Really?” Dena leaned casually against the wall. “I seem to remember a certain incident at Sophie’s college graduation party. What was that guy’s name again? Or did you even get his name?”

“Oh,
please,
” Leah spat. “That wasn’t a
date!
”

Dena opened her mouth, but for once she seemed to be at a loss for words. I took the opportunity to drag Dena into my bedroom for a quick heart-to-heart.

“Listen, I know you and Leah see the world a little differently—”

“You’re kidding me, right? She basically said it’s acceptable to screw a stranger but it’s not okay to have a sexual encounter with a man who’s bought you dinner. No one sees the world the way Leah does.”

“Yes, well, Leah has all these rules of behavior that she wants to adhere to.” I sat down on the edge of my bed. “She’s going through a really hard time right now and it would mean a lot to me if you could try to get along with her while she’s here.”

Dena stared up at the ceiling. “You’re asking a lot.”

“It’s that or we’re not going to be able to see much of each other in the next few weeks, and I don’t want that.” I shot her a pleading look. “I know she’s nuts, but so are you. Can’t we just try to combine our collective neuroses and hope that we balance one another out?”

“Fine,” she said with an air of exasperation. “If I can put up with Mary Ann I guess I can put up with your sister for a while—”

“Thanks a lot—”

We turned to see Mary Ann standing in the doorway smiling at us.

“I love you, too, Dena,” she said.

I giggled and pushed myself off the bed. Unlike Leah, Mary Ann knew better than to take Dena’s rumblings seriously.

“Leah was just telling me that Jack usually goes to sleep around eight,” Mary Ann said. “She also told me that she hasn’t had a chance to get any of her stuff from home, so I was thinking that I could come back after Leah puts Jack to bed and stay with him while you and Leah go to her place and pack some things.”

“She needs help with that?” Dena asked.

I shrugged. “She probably doesn’t want to go back to her house by herself. Hey, I have an idea, why don’t you come with us, Dena?”

“Because I don’t want to?”

“Come on, it will be the perfect olive branch to extend to Leah. And if the two of you do start arguing while we’re there, then at least she’ll be distracted from all the memories.”

“I don’t know.”

“Or maybe you could babysit with Mary Ann. I mean, Jack might wake up….”

“I’ll go with you to Leah’s.”

“Great.” I patted her shoulder. “I’ll go tell her.”

Mary Ann stopped me in the doorway. “You don’t really think he’ll wake up, do you?”

“No, of course not.” I stepped past Mary Ann and swallowed my guilt over that last lie.

CHAPTER 5

“One should never go back to the scene of a perfect crime,” Jonathan said. “But it’s a good idea to go back if the crime was mediocre.”

—Words To Die By

A
lthough Mary Ann and Dena did arrive at my place at eight, Jack refused to go to bed before ten, so my friends and I watched Donald Trump fire people on national television while Leah dealt with her son. The delay was not exactly unexpected. As far as I knew Jack had only fallen asleep at eight once in his life. However, Leah continued to insist that the one incident had been “normal” and all the other nights of Jack’s life had been “exceptions to the rule.”

Eventually Dena, Leah and I arrived at Leah’s door. The house was pitch-black and I tried the light switch in the foyer only to find that the light bulb needed to be replaced.

“Perfect,” Dena muttered as she felt her way down the short hallway to the dining room.

Leah pushed past her and turned on a lamp before going into the kitchen. “Let’s start by packing up some food.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I have food at home.”

“You don’t have the
right
food,” Leah explained. “I’m doing South Beach.”

Dena gave her a quick once-over. “How much have you lost?”

“I’ve gained a pound, but I think I have a thyroid condition. So going forward, I’ll have to be a little more diligent about following the rules of the diet.”

“
More
diligent about following the rules?” Dena leaned against the counter. “Let me make sure I’m interpreting this correctly. You cheated on your diet, gained a pound, and you blame this on a self-diagnosed thyroid condition.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” I said as I opened up the cupboard.

Dena rolled her eyes. “So you two
do
have something in common. You both have the same messed-up dieting strategies.”

“Shh!” Leah motioned for us to be quiet. “Did either of you hear that?”

I shook my head. “Hear what?”

“I thought I heard something…like something upstairs fell over.”

We were all quiet for a moment until Dena broke the silence. “I don’t hear anything. Maybe it was just the sound of your two brain cells knocking into each other.”

Leah shot her the look of death. “I refuse to stand here and be insulted by the whore of Babylon.”

“Will you two cut it out and start packing stuff up? Mary Ann was nice enough to offer to babysit, so the least we can do is try to get back before Jack wakes up.”

The floorboards above us creaked. Leah froze, a box of low-carb cereal bars in her hand. “You heard that, right?” she whispered.

Dena nodded.

“It could be nothing,” I said softly. “Houses creak.”

Dena was staring intently at the ceiling. “You’re right,” she said. “It could be nothing. It also could be something—or someone.” She pushed herself away from the counter and walked into the dining room.

I could hear the crackle of tinfoil packaging as Leah inadvertently crushed the bars within the box she held. She put her free hand on her stomach and took a deep breath. “Something’s off. I can feel it.”

Dena poked her head back into the kitchen; her face betrayed her alarm. “Come here!” she demanded.

We followed her into the living room. Every pillow on the couch had been removed and was on the floor.

We heard a noise again. This time it sounded like soft footsteps, headed in the direction of the stairwell.

We all exchanged looks, and for the first time in our lives we were all on the same page. We ran toward the front door, knocking over a lamp in the process. I thought I could hear the footsteps descending the stairs but I didn’t dare turn around and find out if I was right. Instead, we tumbled out into the cold night air and ran to my car. I jumped into the driver’s seat and Leah got in next to me; Dena got in back. No one came out after us but I wasn’t going to wait around and give the person more time. I put the car in gear, slammed my foot on the gas and screeched out of my parking spot.

“What should we do?” Leah asked. “Should we call the cops?”

I checked the rearview mirror and confirmed that we weren’t being followed. “I don’t think calling the cops is a good idea.”

“Are you serious?” Dena yelled. “We could have been killed back there!”

“We don’t know that,” I said. “It could have been just some kid looking for a TV to snag.”

“Under the sofa cushions?” Dena asked.

“Maybe he was looking for the remote control.” I checked the rearview again. In a matter of minutes I had put several blocks between us and the house. “Whoever was upstairs didn’t follow us.” I slowed the car down to a more moderate speed. “Maybe he was more afraid of us than we were of him.”

“Let’s call the police and let them figure out how scared the intruder is,” Leah suggested.

“But the intruder isn’t going to sit around and wait for the police to show up.” I pulled the car over to the side of the road. “He’s probably long gone by now, and if we call the police it’s going to look like we’re trying to deflect their attention away from you, Leah, and that will make you look more guilty than ever.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Leah asked. “That we just sit here and allow some stranger to go through my things?”

“Like I said, the intruder probably left by now.”

“No, no, no.” Dena shook her head furiously. “I know what you’re thinking and you can just forget it. I am not playing Nancy Drew with you again.”

“I wouldn’t dream of playing Nancy. I’ll play my own literary heroine, thank you very much,” I retorted. “Besides, there are three of us, and it’s not like we don’t know how to handle ourselves.”

“But we’re unarmed! Unless…” Leah pivoted in her seat so she could see Dena. “Do you have any S&M toys with you today?”

“Not so much as a nipple clamp.”

I squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter and tried not to think about what nipple clamps would feel like. “Why don’t we go back and stake the place out. If we see any signs that there’s someone there, we’ll call the cops. If not, we’ll go in and investigate.”

I pulled a U-turn and headed back in the direction from which we had come. Leah was staring at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “I used to wonder why you’ve had so many life-and-death experiences,” she said, “but I think I’m beginning to figure it out.”

Dena groaned. “If one of us gets killed tonight, I’m going to be so fucking pissed off.”

We ended up sitting outside Leah’s house for an hour before reentering. Leah stepped in first and went straight for the front closet. She reached up to the top shelf, pulled down three old boxes and handed one to each of us.

Dena took hers gingerly. “What are these?”

“Unwanted wedding gifts that Bob and I never got around to giving away.” She pointed to the box in Dena’s hand. “That one’s a poor-quality crystal bud vase, and Sophie and I have equally poorly made condiment containers.”

Dena stared at her box for a beat before looking back up at Leah. “Why?”

“For self-defense, of course. If there’s still someone in the house you can hit him over the head with it without worrying that you might be breaking something that’s valuable to me.”

“Thank God for that,” Dena said dryly.

I exhaled loudly. “Come on, Leah, if someone was still here, we would have seen—”

“Excuse me, but it was my husband who was killed. I think that entitles me to insist on a few extra precautions.”

Dena removed the contents of her box with an air of disgust. “Well, if the intruder offers us flowers and homemade jam, we’ll be prepared.”

“Just humor me, all right?” Leah pulled out her condiment container and held it above her head threateningly. “Now, let’s investigate.”

Dena blinked and turned to me. “Is she kidding me with this?”

I shrugged and opened my box. “It’ll make her feel better.”

Dena watched as Leah and I moved forward, armed with our crystal. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She raised her bud vase and followed us through the house.

We walked into the living room first. All the pillows had been replaced. I sucked in a sharp breath and Leah quickly turned on the overhead light.