Kaleidoscope (25 page)

“You look sensational.”

“And pregnant,” Margot said.

“You look sensationally pregnant,” I said.

“This will be a happy day for Wadena,” Margot said. “Now for the love of God, undo that zipper. I need to breathe.”

I spent the rest of the morning running errands and returned home in time to make a salad to go with the wonderfully crusty bread I had picked up at the Orange Boot Bakery. As I headed for the terrace with my lunch tray, I was still smiling at the prospect of Wadena’s happy day. However, as I walked through the living room, I knew that, in Miss Clavel’s immortal words, something was not “right.” One of the drawers of the sideboard was partially open and the Fafard horses and cows had been rearranged on the glass tabletop. I put down my tray, trying to keep my hands steady, and counted the animals. One of the horses was missing.

“Louise!” I was furious that she had once again managed to disrupt my life with her self-pity. When there was no answer, I checked the rest of the apartment, calling her again. But it was clear there was no one else there. Louise wouldn’t be interested in our sculptures – her obsession was
Leland. The image of the tattooed man in the red Trans-Am flashed through my brain. But how could Red Rage have managed to circumvent all the security codes?

The other mystery was that the intruder, or intruders, had done no damage and stolen only a small piece of sculpture.

I picked up one of the tiny horses. Each of the bronze animals cost $3,000, and we had owned twelve. A thief could have carried out the entire collection in a plastic grocery bag. Breaking into our home had been a huge risk for very little payoff. The intent clearly was to let us know that despite the fifteen-foot fence, the razor wire, and all the security swipes, we were vulnerable.

Out of nowhere, I remembered the Plains Indians custom of counting coup. If a warrior could walk into the enemy’s camp and steal his weapons or his horse, he gained prestige. A member of Red Rage had walked into our home and stolen our horse – a clever urban twist on an old custom. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have been impressed.

I put down the sculpture and called Debbie Haczkewicz, who sent over two constables. The male officer checked the security system, found nothing awry, then dusted the doorknobs and the surfaces of our furniture for fingerprints. The female officer took my statement, listened politely to my theory that in stealing our Fafard horse, Red Rage had replicated the act of counting coup, then got down on her hands and knees and found the missing bronze horse under the couch.

When I called Debbie to apologize for wasting her officers’ time, she was understanding, but she cautioned me against letting my imagination run wild. I accepted her rebuke, but I knew what I had seen. The drawer to the sideboard
had
been open and the Fafard horses
had
been rearranged. I wasn’t crazy, but it seemed someone was trying to push me in that direction. If that was the case, I had learned a lesson.
The next time I sensed that something was not “right,” I would make certain I had hard evidence on my side before I passed along my suspicions to someone else.

By the time Zack got home, I had decided not to tell him about the incident with the Fafard horse. The trial was never far from his mind, and it was worry enough. Zack seldom second-guessed himself, but this time he knew he wouldn’t be pulling any rabbits out of the hat. The physical evidence surrounding Arden’s death was daunting, but if the jury could accept the explanation of consensual rough sex, Cronus would have a chance at acquittal. The only person who could offer that evidence under oath was Cronus himself, and understandably, he was determined to testify.

As his client’s advocate and adviser, Zack was convinced that putting Cronus on the witness stand would be a mistake – he still couldn’t see any of the jurors warming towards his client. But Zack was a gambler and a risk-taker, and he was running out of options. By Wednesday night, he was tipping towards going for broke and letting Cronus take the stand.

That night after we turned out the lights, Zack said, “So what do you think, Ms. Shreve? Should I let Cronus testify?”

“From what you say, your prospects can’t get much worse,” I said.

“Yes they can.” Zack’s laugh was a bark. “Cronus is the most alienating human being I’ve ever met. To know him is to loathe him.”

“Well, Arden Raeburn didn’t loathe him,” I said. “And I don’t know him.”

Zack was pensive. “That can be remedied,” he said finally. “Cronus and I always meet after the afternoon session in court. Why don’t I ask him how he’d feel about having you join us tomorrow?”

The next day when I arrived at the courthouse, I was determined to keep an open mind about Zack’s client. It wasn’t easy. Despite the immaculately tailored suit, the Countess Mara tie, and the Italian leather shoes, Cronus was a snake. When I shook his hand, it was unnervingly cold and smooth. His head was shaven, and his eyes were hooded. His movements alternated between tense watchfulness and a quick striking motion that I found alarming. His contempt for women – or at least for me – was palpable.

He gave the witness room a scornful glance. “I know you’re not here for the ambience, Joanne. Zack tells me it would be good for us to know how you react to what I want to say on the stand.”

Zack nodded. “It’ll be useful to get a sense of how you come across to an objective third party.” Zack turned to me. “We decided the best approach today is just to let Cronus talk, and you or I can interrupt if anything leaps out at us.”

The performance began with Cronus delivering a primer on rough sex. Two minutes into his narrative, I knew he needed coaching before he approached the witness stand. Zack was playing an adversarial role, but even with a powerful and skilled opponent, Cronus was condescending. After Cronus described the pleasures of hard and rhythmic spanking, Zack said, “Some might consider that sadistic.” Cronus looked at him pityingly. “It is
mildly
sadistic, it’s also
mildly
painful, but of course people who are into vanilla sex never quite get the connection between pleasure and pain. Sexual pleasure and a spanking both release endorphins. Rough sex allows you to double your pleasure, double your fun.”

Give him his due, Cronus was an enthusiast, but when he moved from rhapsodizing about how women want a man who shows them who’s boss in the bedroom and began explaining how a woman’s
no
often means
yes
, Zack looked as if he was about to spontaneously combust.

It only got worse when Cronus moved from lecture mode to personal history. When Zack asked Cronus to describe a typical evening he and Arden spent together, he said, “There’s nothing to describe. We had sex.”

“Surely you must have had dinner or gone to a movie or just taken a walk,” Zack said.

Cronus was smug. “Arden might have done that with other men, but she knew what she wanted from me, and I knew what I wanted from her.”

“And what was that?”

“Pleasure and pain.”

“How did you meet Arden?”

“In the line of duty.”

“Her duty or yours? Arden was a police officer and you are …”

“In real estate.”

“You’re a slum landlord.”

“Sticks and stones.” He smirked. “I provide a necessary service, and my ability to provide that service was being threatened, so I went to the police.”

“Threatened in what way?” Zack asked.

“An agitator in North Central was distributing lists of telephone numbers to my tenants – community lawyers, tenants’ associations, places where they could complain about my buildings. It’s always wise to know the enemy, so I hired somebody to do some digging. Riel Delorme was bad news.”

I was barely able to cover my gasp at hearing Riel’s name from Cronus’s mouth, but Zack, an experienced poker player, didn’t miss a beat.

“Because he was making problems for you,” Zack said.

“No, because he was disturbing the status quo – and the status quo worked for everybody. I didn’t need a troublemaker giving my tenants ideas. This Delorme guy was messing with them. Turns out his apartment was filled with
all kinds of crap about overthrowing the oppressors – meaning guys like me – and books about people like Che Guevera, whose biggest accomplishment was to get his picture on a bunch of posters and T-shirts. There were even tapes of Delorme telling his people that the oppressed had to match the oppressors weapon for weapon. My tenants didn’t need to fight for their rights. They knew their rights. They knew that in the houses I owned, they had the right to shoot up, to entertain johns, to beat each other senseless, and to drink till they passed out. They had the right to be left alone.”

Zack was seldom at a loss for words, but the spectacle of Cronus waving the flag for tenant freedom rendered him speechless – at least temporarily. “So you took the results of your ‘investigation’ to the police. And that’s when you met Arden?” he said finally.

Cronus pounced. “You got it wrong,” he said. “Arden wasn’t the cop I gave the package to.”

Zack was suddenly alert. “You told me you met Arden at the cop shop when you went in to make a complaint –”

Cronus glared at Zack. “You’re paid to ask the right questions,” he said. “Yes, I met Arden because I was making a complaint, but when I met her I was complaining about the fact that the police hadn’t done sweet tweet about the information that I’d brought them three weeks earlier. I’d have thought those tapes would have got some pretty fast action.”

“Shit,” Zack said. “You’re right. I made an assumption I shouldn’t have made. No excuses, but this file arrived on my desk late. So you and Arden got together when she was following through on your initial complaint about Delorme.”

“Right.”

“And who was the first cop you dealt with?”

“A guy at the front desk who was obviously at the bottom of the pecking order.”

“But we could find out his name from the complaint you filed against Delorme.”

Cronus’s expression was almost pitying. “No, we couldn’t because the report disappeared, along with the evidence. Hence my second complaint.”

Zack tensed. “The file just disappeared?” This time he let his guard down enough to look over at me, brow furrowed.

“You seem surprised,” Cronus said. “When people like me deal with the cops, there are all kinds of screw-ups.”

“But you followed through.”

“Of course I followed through, and so did Arden.”

“And nothing was ever found.”

Cronus shrugged. “Big surprise, eh? Anyway, it didn’t matter because Delorme ceased to be a problem. He crawled back in his hole and left my tenants alone.”

“Any idea why Delorme backed off?” Zack asked.

“Arden had a theory. Delorme’s sister was a cop. Arden figured the sister lifted the report and the file and held them over Delorme’s head as an incentive to straighten up and fly right.”

“And Arden didn’t report her suspicions to her superior?”

“No, and not because it didn’t piss her off. Arden believed in the rules. But cops don’t rat on other cops. Anyway, the situation remedied itself, like I said, and everybody was happy. Delorme had cleaned up his act, so his sister was happy; and he’d stopped being a major pain the ass for me, so I was happy. And the sister left the police force, so Arden was happy.”

Cronus turned to me. “And that’s the end of the story.”

“It sounds as if your relationship with Arden went beyond just sex,” I said. “You talked about the Delorme case.”

“The Delorme case was a matter of mutual interest,” Cronus said. “But talking wasn’t our thing. Sex was our thing, and it was great.” He leaned towards me. “And it was
always
consensual. We never did anything we hadn’t agreed on. Neither of us made demands. We never fought. There was no reason for me to kill her.”

His eyes shifted from Zack to me. “Do you have enough?”

I nodded.

“So do you think I should testify?”

“That’s between you and Zack,” I said.

“There are six women on the jury. How do think they’ll react to me.”

“I don’t know.” I forced myself to focus on the reason I was there. “I believed you when you said you had no reason to kill Arden. But you were patronizing when you explained the appeal of rough sex. You’re not testifying to win converts. You’re there to explain forensic evidence that otherwise is inexplicable. If I were in your position …”

Cronus raised an eyebrow. “And if you were into biting and handcuffs …”

Zack’s voice was a growl. “Back off,” he said.

I met my husband’s eyes. “It’s all right,” I said. “Cronus, I understand that you have to make jurors understand what happens between a man and woman during rough sex. But keep it factual. The release of endomorphins is solid information. Focus on the fact that you and Arden both had high-stress professions and rough sex was a way of relieving stress. And don’t challenge other people about their choices. You may be facing twelve jurors who are into vanilla sex.”

“Sounds as if you think I should take the stand.”

My eyes travelled around the cheerless witness room. “I think you and Zack should talk about it.”