Zipper Fall (40 page)

“That explains why she didn’t use e-mail,” I said to Chico, who ended up reading the letter with great interest. Celia’s other letters were similar: they came from afar, she had missed Risby’s company terribly, and the poetry he kept sending her truly warmed her heart.

“Truly, my lovely Risby, someday you shall forget who you are and the century you live in, and you’ll start speaking in iambic pentameter to your obtuse coworkers….”

and

“I sure hope Toussey dropped all that ridiculous talk of suing me. Nothing I have said up ’til this date has failed to be substantiated by the corporate record. I don’t know how these things go in Collections, which is your domain, but Toussey not only keeps a double set of books, he even makes no secret of it.”

Now that was interesting. “Tim… come look at this!”

Tim scuttled over, looking harassed. “I’m busy… what is it?”

“Chico and I found these old letters from Celia, and this one refers to Toussey again.”

Tim glanced at the letter, and then he put it on the desk and photographed every page. “I’ve been taking photos of the files, mostly. There is too much to absorb this fast. What else have you got?”

I fished inside the almost empty drawer. One more envelope—a letter addressed to Celia, yet unsealed. And, in the back of the corner, my fingers felt a curious shape. I teased it out from the dark recesses of Risby’s night table and wiped dust off the box covered in red velvet.

“Open it,” Reyna whispered over my head.

The tension was unbearable.

Slowly, I eased the spring-loaded lid ajar. A white gold and platinum ring sat in the middle of black satin; a large solitaire diamond sparkled in a simple, elegant setting. “Wow. He spared no expense,” I said, barely breathing. The stone itself could have been bartered for a modest suburban house. Nothing I’d ever stolen came even close to its quality.

“How do you know it’s not glass?” Reyna asked.

“I know diamonds. The size is good, the clarity is great, it has virtually no color, no gray overtones… it’s beautiful. And look at the even, brilliant cut.” I closed the box and placed it in the back corner of the drawer.

“What’s in the envelope?” I looked up at Tim, who studied the single sheet of paper with a light blush in his face.

“It’s a… a marriage proposal. The verse is surprisingly good. It’s… it’s rather passionate.” He passed it around, and we all read the private, expertly crafted words Risby had intended for Jack’s deceased sister.

The silence was deafening.

Tim photographed it only for the record. “It still doesn’t let him off the hook,” he said. “He still could have done it.”

“His motive is greatly diminished, if he intended to marry her,” I said. “You don’t just buy a ring like that without having big plans.”

“Is it possible he could have killed her, even though he had loved her?” Reyna speculated. She returned back to the shelf where she had been examining various objects.

“That’s exactly what he admitted to doing when I was here last,” I reminded her. “Anyway… have you found anything, Reyna?”

The tall woman stood up and stretched, ignoring the fact that her careless action caused her adorable cheerleader outfit to show a great deal of her sculpted midsection. “He’s into all kinds of stuff besides climbing. There’s books on wilderness survival, music, brewing….”

“Brewing? Like beer?” I perked right up. Beer brewing had been a great experiment of mine some years back. Homebrew had been well worth the effort back before microbrewery beer became both affordable and ubiquitous.

“No… he’s using mash, and a copper coil, and he has these thermometers up here….” Reyna pointed to a large plastic tub full of equipment worthy of a medieval alchemist.

I’d seen stuff like that before. “It’s a still!” I exclaimed.

“A what?” Chico asked.

“A still. A piece of equipment used to distill whiskey. Or moonshine, hooch… you know, the illegal side of brewing?”

“Oh that. How revolting. I’d never drink that—moonshine can make you go blind if you’re not careful. You can even die.”

“Yeah. If you don’t separate your methanol from your ethanol, you’re screwed.”

Tim looked at me with curiosity. “You seem to know a lot about it.”

“Yeah….” I gave him a sheepish grin. “Someone I know has a still on the roof of his apartment building. Moonshine isn’t just for rednecks anymore.”

“Whatever, guys. This is irrelevant. Booze doesn’t let us know what happened to Celia.” Tim was the voice of reason once again, and we bent over our tasks, restoring Haus’s humble abode back to its original state. When we were done, Tim photographed the copies of Risby’s brewing records. “Just to be thorough,” as he put it.

Then we filed out of the apartment, and I locked all three locks. Tim’s camera was back in the mesh sack full of white-and-purple pompoms. Our mission may have been accomplished—but unfortunately, it managed to raise even more questions than it had answered.

We were silent on our ride down, lost in our thoughts and our doubts. The ancient, rickety elevator shook and groaned—until it jostled hard and stopped.

“What the heck?” Reyna gasped as the sudden movement tossed her right into Tim.

“We better not be stuck in here in these stupid getups,” I groaned. “Who has a cell phone?” I didn’t. Girl clothes, especially cheerleading uniforms, were not known for their profusion of pockets. This was one of those times when I had chosen
not
to stuff my iPhone in my sock-stuffed bra.

“Let’s use the service telephone,” Reyna suggested and removed the panel, which was supposed to hide the simple phone. Except the phone wasn’t there; it had been ripped out.

“Here you go,” Tim said, fishing in the large net bag full of pompoms. He produced a simple flip-phone. “So, who do we call?”

I peered at the control panel. There was a toll-free number to call in case of an emergency. “Here, this one!” I pointed to the number.

Tim dialed and listened for a while, and then he flipped his phone shut. “The robot voice says the number has been disconnected.”

“We can’t call Jack,” I said, my voice kind of small as the words broke into the thick elevator air. The guys looked at me, all serious, and nodded. We all remembered the scene after Jack and Risby tangled at North Face, and Jack still had the remnants of bruising under his eyes.

“Okay. Carlos’s out of town, Craggs would throw a fit, Rosalie only has a learner’s permit…. How about Auguste?”

Chico’s question stunned Reyna. She flopped against the cold wall of the elevator, her russet eyes wide and incredulous. “A-Au-Auguste? Oh, you have no idea…. When he showed me how to pick locks, he never figured I actually meant to—no. No way.”

Tim sighed, rolled his eyes, and dialed a number. “I’d like to report an emergency,” he said, cool as a cucumber. He stated his name and location, and all of a sudden, it occurred to me that the pompous jerk called the bloody police on us.

“Act natural. Just, act natural, everyone.” My voice was a bit tight, which made it somewhat higher pitched than usual.

“Wyatt, you sound like such a girl,” Chico snorted, covering his well-proportioned mouth with his even better-proportioned hand.

“Just act natural, asshole!” My face felt red and hot, my cheap black wig made the back of my neck itch, and I was checking out the elevator for hiding places for my lock picks.

“Reyna… you don’t want the police to find those lock picks on you,” I said, stashing my own set into the dark recess of the removed elevator control panel.

“They will find it in there, Wyatt,” Reyna said. “I can’t lose Auguste’s tools.”

“If you stick it all the way in the corner, yeah, there… maybe they won’t. And wipe your fingerprints off.”

Reyna followed my example, wiped the picks on the pleats of her skirt, and stashed the small metal set where I told her. Her expression was sullen. “They better be there tomorrow.”

“Or not. Relax…. For now, just act natural. We’re four chicks and we’re cheerleaders and we got stuck in an elevator, and all we need to do is go to the subway and go home. No big deal.”

I
T
HAD
been hours and my bladder was full before the elevator began to jostle and creak again, moving us to the lobby with exaggerated care. The door slid open and we stepped out into a small entrance area full of people. The police were there, firefighters were there, and maintenance workers in their navy blue jumpsuit uniforms and yellow leather tool belts swaggered, all tough and masculine, having just fixed a problem.

Flashes of light blinded me as we stepped forth.

“And here they are, the residents who had have been trapped in an elevator for five hours in this Oakland building….”

More flashes. Black, fuzzy microphones appeared before my face.

“Tell us about your ordeal, Miss… Miss… what is your name?”

“Gaudens,” I answered, stunned stupid.

“What happened, Miss Gaudens?”

I gave the TV person a vapid smile. “The elevator got stuck.”

“Yes, and you and your fellow teammates were stuck in there… for how long?”

“For too long.”

“Of course.” The ditzy blonde smiled at me.

“Your companions aren’t all women, are they?”

“Uh… does it show much?”

W
E
CONGREGATED
in Chico’s apartment, where we changed into our ordinary clothing. Once again, we felt normal.

“I can’t believe you talked to that woman from Channel 11,” Tim said once again. “Which part of ‘no comment’ don’t you understand?”

I shrugged, buttoning my jeans, searching for my cushy socks.

“At least you could have told her we were a singing telegram or something,” Reyna quipped, brushing her hair out and then braiding it into a long plait.

Only Chico was unperturbed. “Nobody asked me if I was a guy,” he said, sounding very pleased with himself. Nobody cared.

I
STOOD
at the stove, sautéing chicken the way I saw Jacques Pepin do it in a TV special, with just salt and pepper and rosemary, making the skin nice and crisp on the bottom, when I heard a funny sound from the front door. I smiled, pressing the sliced chicken thighs into the hot pan while the potato gratin baked in the oven. It was so cute of Jack to use lock picks instead of his keys. It seemed I had started a trend.

The door clicked open behind me. I didn’t turn around, having just rinsed the green beans and now ready to toss them onto the hot olive oil in the pan. “Hello, Loverboy,” I sang out while tossing the beans. I put the pan back onto the burner and topped the softening beans with grated lemon peel, capers, and a minced anchovy.

Light steps approached me from behind.

“Pull a bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator, will you?” I asked as I tossed the green beans some more and flipped the four chicken thighs. It was always good to have leftovers, after all….

“Of course, darling.” The amused baritone behind me made me spin around so fast, I almost spilled my beans.

The man wasn’t Jack.

I looked up to meet the eyes of the impossibly tall man, his black hair slicked back and a wide, toothy grin meeting my shocked expression with incredible arrogance. “R-Risby?”

“
D
ON
’
T
just stand there, Wyatt, your food will burn.” Risby took two long steps and stooped to peer inside my fridge, soon extracting a pale green bottle of wine. He fished in his pants pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife with a corkscrew.

“You’ll break the cork using that,” I commented while rescuing dinner.

“Why do you say that?”

“Jack and I always break the cork with those cheesy little corkscrews that come in survival knives.”

I heard a pop and turned around only to see Risby remove a whole, unblemished cork from the neck of the bottle. “I am more patient than the two of you combined.”

“Hmm.” I shrugged and bent over to pull the potato gratin out of the oven. The surface was still napalm-hot and bubbly; the edges had begun to brown. I slid the piping hot dish onto the trivet on the table and, not bothering to ask, I reached for an extra plate and utensils to add on the table.

Risby just raised his eyebrow; then he sauntered over to the living room, propped his feet on the glass coffee table, and clicked the television on.

Thoughts were roiling under the surface of my calm.

Did Risby know? How much did he know we knew? How mad would he be if he knew? Did he really not do it? Who was Toussey, really?

My cell phone rang just as Jack’s lock picks began to rattle in my lock. I went over to watch my mercurial lover’s progress from the other side as I stuck the phone to my ear. “Hey, Reyna!”

Reyna’s voice was strident and filled with urgency. She talked for a long time while I nodded into empty air and made all those “Yes, I see” and “Uh-huh” listening noises. Reyna kept talking while I kissed Jack’s cheek hello, while I filled three glasses with wine, and while I served Jacques Pepin’s chicken au jus with green beans onto three plates—a dish that was, to date, a pinnacle of my masculine culinary accomplishment.