Killer Cocktail (12 page)

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Authors: Sheryl J. Anderson

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

BOOK: Killer Cocktail
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He walked into the bedroom to put my bags down—another positive sign—so I wasn’t sure what the sound was the first time. The second time, I realized it was a cell phone. Before it rang a third time, he was answering it and I was praying for a wrong number.
Instead, I heard, “Yes, Detective Cook.”
It was a brief conversation and I couldn’t follow it well because he was being more monosyllabic than usual. As he emerged from the bedroom, all I could say was, “You gave her your cell?”
“Professional courtesy.” He slid his cell back into one pocket and dug the car keys out of the other.
I hoped my next question didn’t sound as petulant as I felt. “You need your keys?”
“I have to go in for a little while.”
“Out of professional courtesy.”
Kyle walked toward me slowly, holding my gaze the whole time with a certainty I found exasperating at the moment. “Persons of interest live in my jurisdiction and I offered my assistance in securing information to aid a fellow officer’s investigation.”
“And those persons of interest are more interesting than persons currently on the scene?” I asked, trying to keep it light and probably not doing nearly as good a job as I thought I was.
“Apples and oranges, babe,” he said, stopping just short of pressing his body against mine.
“Who are you checking out for her?”
“You already know way more than you should.”
“Who.”
“I’ll call you later.” He kissed me gently, lingering a moment, then walked to the door. “Stay out of trouble,” he said in the doorway.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I responded. Then I stood there and stared at the door for several minutes after it closed, trying to sort out the anger I felt at Detective Cook intruding on a promising evening, the frustration of Kyle knowing something I didn’t, and the disappointment that yet again, just when we were finding our groove, we’d gotten jolted out of it.
And what’s the best remedy for being blue about a guy walking out on you? Call another guy. Not advice I’d ever give in my column, for fear of sounding trampy, but it works.
So I called Jake, Tricia having tracked down his number before I left. The machine picked up on the second ring, probably already filled with messages as people heard about the Web site. “This is Jake. Impress me.”
Interesting approach for a guy who was far more interested in doing the impressing than in being impressed. But if that was the way the game was played, “Jake, it’s Molly Forrester. We sat together at David and Lisbet’s party last night. What a tragedy. But I’m working to distract myself from mourning and I was really captivated by your ‘wordless cinema’ concept and wanted to talk to you about it. Did I mention I write for
Zeitgeist
magazine, among others?” I left my number and hoped he’d be too smitten with the idea of media coverage to check my credits and realize I never wrote about film, aside from the kind a bad cleanser leaves on your skin.
It was already after seven. Maybe Jake and Lara were out for the evening. I was in. Not because I was going to sit and wait and see if Kyle came back, but because I needed some quiet time to piece things together so I could ask Jake the right questions. And if Kyle came back, that was fine, too.
I ordered in, Pad Thai with chicken, and sat down at my computer to take another look at Jake’s Web site. On my familiar screen, the images were somehow more disturbing, like porn magazines on my grandmother’s coffee table. There was definitely someone else out in the hall after David put Lisbet down. As David stormed away, Lisbet turned to talk to the unseen person and the film cut. Who was it? If no one had confessed to talking to Lisbet after the big scene, did that mean the person who did, this shadow in the hallway, was the killer?
The combination of adrenaline and Thai iced tea had me up and pacing, not a place I like to be at ten o’clock at night. Jake was the next piece of the puzzle, but I was going stir crazy waiting for him to call back. And if I called Kyle, it would come off as clingy, desperate, or distrustful, none of them attractive options.
I called Cassady’s cell, to see how she and Tricia were doing. Cassady answered in a hushed voice. “Tricia’s already asleep.”
“And you’re whispering? How thin are the walls there?”
“She took your bed, didn’t want to be by herself. She’s a wreck, Molly.”
My heart ached and that slowed my mind down a little. “Anything new from Detective Cook?”
“Detective Myerson told the Vincents they could go back to Manhattan, but nowhere else.”
“That’s promising for David.”
“We’ll head back tomorrow as soon as Lisbet’s parents
finish making their arrangements. The Vincents want to help them through all that and Tricia wants to stay as long as her folks do.”
I told her about leaving word for Jake and prepared to say good-bye. But Cassady wasn’t done.
“Excuse me. How was the ride home?”
“Fine. Occasionally weird, but fine.”
“So is he there?”
“Nope. At work. Doing some stuff for Detective Cook.”
“Ouch.”
“Potential ouch.”
“Ouch nonetheless. Is he coming back?”
“Not my call.”
“Double ouch. I think I’ll call him and tell him to come back.”
“I think I’ll hang up now.”
We said our good-byes and I paced a little more. A thought nibbled at the edge of my consciousness, but I couldn’t identify it yet. The fact that it skittered away every time I tried to focus didn’t help either. It was so silent in the room, I found myself thinking of the jangle of Aunt Cynthia’s bangles. That’s what I needed. Music. And a nightcap.
Rummaging through the CD cabinet and through the liquor cabinet are both very soothing, since both hold the promise of delicious relaxation if the proper choices are made. I decided to tackle the decision as a matched set. Years ago, Drambuie had an advertisement featuring Ella Fitzgerald, so I always think of them complementing each other. Perhaps a Rusty Nail and the
Cole Porter Songbook
? Or maybe I needed to go even more mellow: Ron Sexsmith and a Brandy Alexander? Rufus Wainwright and a White Russian? Maybe I should just go for broke: Johnny Cash and shots of Jack Black. I have more than a few friends who
dabble in psychopharmacology like they’re trading baseball cards: I’ll give you four Ambien for two Ritalin and a Percocet. But I prefer to modify my chemical imbalances the old-fashioned way. Hey, an old-fashioned. With a little Dave Brubeck.
So I threw on my pajamas, slid in the CD, and mixed the drink. I was near the end of the CD and close to the bottom of the glass when the phone rang. Since I was finally relaxing, I decided to let the machine get it. It was almost midnight and Kyle wouldn’t bother calling at this point just to tell me he wasn’t coming back. And I was fine with that. Really. Duty called, he answered, and I dealt.
But when the voice on the answering machine started with a shrill, “Hey, Molly! Got your message!” I dove for the phone.
“joke?”
“Are you screening? Am I interrupting something fun?”
“What could be more fun than talking to you, Jake?” When in doubt, go for the ego.
“Baby, not talking’s what I believe in.”
“I can imagine.”
“Why imagine when you can see it on-screen?”
So maybe the film vaults were a little fuller than I’d suspected. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to sit through anything awkward to get him to show me the party footage. “Still without words?” I asked.
“Actions speak louder, you know.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got this silly hang-up with words and I was hoping we could trade a few.”
“Anything else you want to trade?”
I could feel his leer through the phone. “Let’s take our time. As a filmmaker, you should appreciate the slow build to a climax.”
“You seen my tribute to Lisbet?”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What’s on-screen is only half of it. I’m still building the piece.”
Yes. I suddenly liked Jake a whole lot more than I’d ever thought possible. “How soon can I grab you?”
“Well, luckily for me, I’m being grabbed by someone else right now, so that’s not an option.”
I didn’t figure it was polite to ask who might be doing the grabbing, though I suspected it might not be Lara since I didn’t hear any chattering in the background. “Any chance we could talk tomorrow?”
“First thing.”
“Seven?”
“You some kind of mutant?”
“I’m just so anxious to dig into this story.” That was true; if he wanted to interpret that as some fan frenzy, that was his option.
“Seven isn’t morning, it’s the middle of the night.”
“Direct me, Jake.”
“Ten. You’ll have to bring bagels and coffee.”
I’d dress up like a bagel if it would help. “Ten it is.”
“I should be upright by then. Might even be sober.”
Just as long as he was able to point me to the film. I mean, if a man’s going to be stupid and vain, it’s a shame not to use it to your advantage.
“
I thought I knew
you.”
It was not exactly the greeting I was expecting, but I was surprised that I even heard it, given that Lara had opened the apartment door wearing only jade green silk tap pants and a matching balcony bra. And Jimmy Choo Marilyn’s, those amazing stiletto-heeled satin sandals with the mammoth green bows that tie around the ankle. The joint in her hand was the finishing touch on a very persuasive portrait of weekend decadence. The overall picture was stunning enough to make me give up carbs for the next three days. Or, at least, the next thirty minutes.
Before she’d opened the door, I’d been feeling pretty sleek in my Diesel black low-rise jeans, pink Juicy Couture hoody, and marvelously strappy Kate Spade santiago sandals. Of course, I’d selected the ensemble as much to make myself feel better about the fact that Kyle had never come back last night as to impress Jake and Lara. Still, confronted by Lara and her splendor with the grass, I suddenly felt Amish.
Taking great care to look her in the eyes, and only in the eyes, I apologized. “Didn’t Jake tell you I was coming?”
Lara blinked so slowly I wasn’t sure her eyes were going to open again. “Jake tells me a lot of things,” she purred dismissively.
“The doorman, he said your name and I thought of someone else.”
Someone for whom it would have been appropriate to answer the door in lingerie? “Jake invited me.” I raised the cardboard tray of coffee and bagels up into her line of sight. “I come bearing gifts.”
Lara backed up, beckoning me to enter the apartment. It was aggressively hip, with lots of painfully austere black furniture posed on white carpet, and red accent pieces placed with great care to look as casual as possible. The living area was focused around an entertainment center designed to make mortal men weep, its centerpiece being a fifty-two-inch plasma TV. At the moment, it was tuned to a cartoon.
“Do you know Dora?” Lara asked me, pointing to the animated girl with huge eyes who was bouncing across the screen, accompanied by a purple monkey in red rain boots and a blue bull with hoop earrings and bandana.
“No,” I said carefully. It had the bright colors and rounded line of kids’ animation, but I was fully prepared for Lara to explain the socio-political satire at work in the piece. There had to be some symbolic significance to the bull in the earrings, didn’t there?
“She’s very wise. She always can find her way.” Lara held her hand up to Dora’s image. Was she offering the characters a toke?
“Then she’s wiser than I am. Is Jake here?” I didn’t want to inspire one of Lara’s cultural theses, but I didn’t want her to drift off and forget why I was there, either.
“He’s in the shower, he’ll be out in a moment, she has so much to teach us,” Lara continued as though each thought flowed naturally into the next. She took a hit off the joint herself as the girl and the monkey both clutched their heads in distress. Apparently, a small star had fallen out of the sky
and gotten lost. Lara nodded in sympathy. “All of us, we’re lost stars.”
“Swear to God, I’m gonna call DirecTV and cancel Nick right now,” Jake growled as he emerged from the bedroom, buttoning his shirt slowly so I could have a glimpse of chest as he approached me. I would’ve restricted her smoking, not her viewing, but that was between them and I was happy to stay out of it.
Lara draped herself across the black leather couch in a languid pose. “I bought the DVD,” she sniffed. “It’s a powerful metaphor for the inability of the culture to embrace what is different without crushing that very individuality into nonexistence.”
Jake rolled his eyes at her and opened his arms to me as he came across the room. Seeking to block his hug in the most gracious way possible, I held up my breakfast offerings. Properly derailed, he took the tray. “Thanks.”
“There’s a vanilla cap, a chai latte, a macchiato, and a house blend. Your choice.”
“I love options,” he said, plucking the macchiato from the tray. “I’m glad you called.”
Let the sales pitch resume. “I was so impressed by your tribute to Lisbet and that got me thinking about your wordless cinema theory again.”
“You heard any more about the investigation?” Jake glanced up from going through the bag of bagels. “Did they arrest David yet?”
“Why would they?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“Lover’s spat gone wrong, isn’t that what it looks like?”
“You think David’s capable of that?”
“We’re all capable of anything. One of the guiding principles of my life.”
“You tell the police that?”
“Course not. They’d take it the wrong way.” Jake shook his head, bemused, as I tried to imagine the right way to take it. “One way or the other, sucks to be him.”
Especially with such loving and supportive friends. I waited while Jake decided on the onion bagel and chomped a chunk out of it. He pointed back to the bedroom. “C’mon in here. Let me show you where I make my magic.” He waggled his eyebrows to make sure I got the joke and led the way. I put the coffee and bagels on the table in front of Lara, but she didn’t move as we walked by, still intent on decoding Dora and the monkey.
The bedroom was as deliberately austere as the living room. There was an unmade king-size bed in the center of the room, a massive sound system on one wall, and a dazzling rack of computer equipment on the other. Jake began reeling off the specs of all the equipment, that tech speaking-in-tongues men do. I nodded and tried not to look at the bed or wonder how well visited it was.
Jake placed me in the chair in front of the computer and thumped his fingers on some keys. The tribute sprang to life on the screen. “The core idea of wordless cinema is the primacy of the image, so it seemed so appropriate to honor Lisbet with images showing her full of life because she isn’t. Anymore.”
Perhaps Jake was such a fan of wordless cinema because he was so impressively clunky with words. An art form that encouraged him not to talk was making more and more sense. “You’ve known David since college, right? How long’d you known Lisbet?”
Jake tapped the bagel against the end of his nose and did some quick math in his head. “They started dating like four months ago, I guess.”
“You didn’t know her before?”
“I knew her work, but not her.” He leered, leaning in much too close to me. “Interesting exception. ’Cause most of David’s girls were referrals from me.” He winked and I swallowed hard, trying not to grimace. “That’s what friends are for.”
The downside to investigating a mystery is that you wind up with a whole lot of information that you would’ve been happier not to know. The idea of most of David Vincent’s girlfriends being scraps from Jake Boone’s table was going to haunt me.
The footage had played to the final scene. I tapped the computer screen to refocus Jake’s attention. “Why’d you end here? Were you trying to make a statement about the abrupt end of her life?” I vamped, trying to sound like a semiauthentic film critic.
“No, I was making a statement about Lara dropping the camera.”
I chewed the inside of my lip in frustration. “So you didn’t shoot anything after that?”
“Let me see.” He pressed his body against mine and slid down to sit in the chair with me. I started to get up and he pressed down on my knee with his free hand. “Don’t get up.” Figuring he’d be more helpful if I played along, I stayed in the chair with him, edging over just enough so he could half-perch next to me. He was wearing Chanel Pour Homme, which struck me as far too classic for him. Probably a Christmas present from his mother.
He took the mouse and started clicking on icons, pulling up snippets of film. He opened and closed them efficiently, not giving me much chance to register what I was seeing before he moved on to the next one. He seemed to know what he was looking for.
“Here,” he said after a moment. “This is after Lara picked the camera back up, but Lisbet’s too deep in the frame for it to be an effective shot. Besides, Lady Diva marches into the shot and destroys the composition. Lara should have panned with Lisbet, but she got caught up in the emotion of the moment. She’s a little high strung, but she has a lot of raw talent.”
As I paused to be impressed that Jake had actually paid someone a compliment, a woman walked into the shot on the screen, just as he had said she would. I had to lean in a moment to make sure I was identifying her properly. “Veronica Innes?”
Jake stretched, yawned, and snaked his hand around the back of the chair and my shoulders like an eighth grader on his first date ever. “Wherever there’s drama, Veronica can’t be far away.”
“I don’t remember seeing her follow them out.”
“I think she was already in the hallway, snitching a smoke or something. I tried to get her to leave it alone, let them work it out, but Veronica leaps to center stage every freaking chance she gets, so there was no stopping her.” He tapped the screen as the footage showed Veronica following Lisbet down the hall and out of sight. David was nowhere to be seen.
I leaned against Jake, hoping it would encourage him to share more information. “Veronica and Lisbet were friends?”
“How broad’s your definition?”
“They weren’t close?”
“Had a lot in common. Didn’t make them friends.”
“Veronica was Lisbet’s understudy. What else?”
“David.”
In a totally involuntary rush of adrenaline, I grabbed Jake’s thigh. He loved it and grabbed my thigh in return. “Veronica was with David?”
“Right after she was with me. And right before he was with Lisbet.”
“Did he dump her for Lisbet?”
“Depends on your point of view. Veronica was convinced she and David were soul mates, never to be parted, all that crap, so she probably thinks so. As I recall, David burned out on the high maintenance.” Jake leaned in, all but licking his lips, and I dove out of his line of fire, scooting close to the monitor again.
“Can you play the tribute for me again? Your work is so incredible.”
Fortunately, the praise was sufficiently distracting and Jake turned his attention from me to the screen. As the footage played again, I pretended to study it appreciatively, nodding periodically as Jake went into another one of his declamations, and tried to absorb this new information.
Much as it prides itself on being the Big Apple, New York City can be very small. At least the circles in which you travel can be, especially when you all have the same profession or same alma mater or same bank handling your trust funds. A lot of busy people like to date what’s within reach and why move on until the supply’s been depleted? I know some social butterflies who’ve taken multiple flights around a circle before moving on to fresher flowers. So incestuous cliques are not particularly remarkable and years of round-the-clock
Friends
reruns made them palatable for the rest of the country. But I still like to take the time to be amazed by the convoluted branches of some people’s dating trees.
The new pressing question seemed to be, how did Veronica feel about understudying Lisbet in more places than the theater? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so God help the soul who crosses an actress. Veronica had looked pretty intent as she’d followed Lisbet out. Had she wanted
to help a colleague in emotional distress or had she been closing in for the kill? Had Veronica been with her when Lisbet had thrown the ring away? Some might see that as an opportunity to get back with David, but had Veronica taken it as an insult to the man she still loved? Had Veronica and Lisbet wound up outside and come to blows?
“Can I see that last piece with Veronica again?”
“You questioning my editing choices?”
“No, no. Studying them.”
Right answer. Jake nodded in appreciation and clicked. I watched anxiously as Veronica stepped into frame, then followed Lisbet down the hallway until I could see her full length, holding the glistening champagne bottle in her hand.
I sat back in the chair as much as Jake’s shoulder would let me. “How does Veronica feel about being edited out of this?”
“We don’t talk more than absolutely necessary.”
“You seemed very close at dinner Friday night.”
“That’s for show. Most of what she does is for show. When she can control it. One of the big issues in our relationship. I like to call the shots, so does she. How ’bout you?”
“I’m more into give and take.”
Jake pressed against me. “That’s got possibilities.”
“So does this article.” I popped to my feet, half-hoping my sudden movement would tip the chair over. “I wanted to come by today and find out a little bit more background so I can do a righteous job of pitching this to my editor.”
“Let me pitch it.”
I started easing my way to the door. “I have no doubt that you’d be hugely persuasive, but that’s not how it works. Not at my magazine at least. But I’m sure if I get the go-ahead on the article, she’ll want to meet you. And I’ll certainly be in touch if I have more questions.”
“I have a lot more I could show you,” Jake said, rising to follow me.

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