Slay it with Flowers (20 page)

Who turned out to be Reilly.

He grabbed me by the shoulders to keep me from reeling backward, then took a good look at me. “I should have known I’d find you here.”

I shrugged sheepishly. “I live here.”

“Abby!” Nikki wailed from the kitchen. “I’m in hand-cuffs! Tell them I’m not a murderer.”

“She’s not a murderer,” I told Reilly. “She’s my roommate Nikki Hiduke. I was hiding in the tub, so she thought I was an intruder, and that’s why she’s wielding a knife.”

I spotted our superintendent making his way toward the bathroom to inspect the damage. “Everything is fine, Mr. Bodenhammer. We’ll take care of the shower curtain.”

“Why do I rent to young people?” he muttered, throwing his hands up in disgust as he stalked away.

Reilly called out to his partner to release Nikki, then he folded his arms and peered down his nose at me, just like my father used to do. “
Why
were you hiding in the tub?”

“Would you like to sit down? It’s actually kind of an amusing story.”

He made a circling motion with one hand. “Just get on with it.”

Nikki came out of the kitchen rubbing her wrists and looking morally wounded. She was followed by a face I recognized: Motorcycle Cop, aka Officer Gordon. He had been the cop to respond to my distress call a few weeks earlier when my Vette was smashed by a hit-and-run driver, and again when my brake lines were cut. What fond memories we shared.

“Not you again,” he said with a grimace.

The same thought was running through my head, but I had the tact to keep it to myself. I gave them my story, then Nikki told her side, and the thought of it started us laughing again. But one stern look from Reilly put an end to that.

“Are you sure you didn’t leave the door open when you ran out?” Motorcycle Cop asked.

“If I had been sure, believe me, you wouldn’t be standing here now.”

“Next time,” Reilly said with an exasperated sigh, “call us first. We’ll check it out for you.” He radioed in to let the dispatcher know everything was fine, then he turned to aim his index finger at me. I sat down on the sofa, figuring a lecture was forthcoming.

“You!” he said, then apparently didn’t know where to go from there, and finally just gave up, shook his head, and left.

Nikki locked the door behind them, poured two glasses of Merlot, and joined me in the living room. Simon peered around the corner to make sure the coast was clear, then came galloping across the room toward us, his tail curved like a question mark, delighted that we were awake during his play-time. Nikki dug a plastic straw out from between the cushions and played fetch with him, while I gave her a rundown on the country club dinner, my discoveries about Onora at the hotel, and the odd sighting of the Chinese woman.

Nikki thought I should leave further investigation on the spa’s activities to Bill Bretton, but she agreed that I should pay a visit to Maria Mendoza to ask about Punch’s activities while he was a guest at the hotel. “Only if you take me with you,” she added.

“Why do you want to come with me?”

Nikki’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Remember how we used to pretend we were Nancy Drew?”

“That was me, Nikki. I used to pretend to be Nancy Drew. You used to pretend to be her sidekick.”

“I still want to go along. I can help with the questioning. I’m good with people. Please?”

How could I say no to Nancy Drew’s sidekick?

We finished our wine, rehung the shower curtain, then took ourselves off to our respective rooms to get some sleep. I put on my pj’s, stretched out on my bed, and was staring at the patterns on the ceiling, chuckling to myself at the thought of Nikki attacking a shower curtain with a butcher knife when I suddenly realized the patterns had changed. Instead of the straight-lined shadows from the miniblinds, there were crosshatches, tent shapes, squiggles, and other oddities.

I knelt on my pillow at the headboard, stretched my arm across the space between bed and window, and lifted the blind. Painted on the outside of the glass were big black letters. Big black Chinese letters.

They did know where I lived.

“N
ikki!” I yelled, letting the blind drop into place. I jumped off the bed and ran for the door. We met in the hallway between our rooms, and I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to my window. “Look!”

I pulled up the blind and she gasped. I shut it immediately, afraid that whoever had painted the symbols was watching.

“Call the police,” she said, turning pale.

“Nikki—”

She was bouncing up and down on tiptoe, shaking her hands, showing signs of the panic that I was trying very hard to suppress.
“Call the police, damn it!”

I wrapped my fingers around her arms to steady her. The last thing I needed was for her to lose it, because I would surely follow. “Think, Nikki! The writing is on the outside. No one was in our apartment. We’re not in danger. Besides, what will I tell the police? That someone scribbled on my window? Do you know how irritated Reilly will be if I have him come out here for graffiti?”

“Don’t you get it?” she cried. “Someone is threatening you! You can’t shrug it off as graffiti.”

“How do we know it’s a threat? Can you read it? Maybe it’s a good-luck wish.”

“You don’t seriously believe that, do you?”

I sat down on the bed in a slump. “No.”

“It was that old man,” Nikki said, pacing in front of the bed. “The one messing around with your car and peering in your shop window.” She glanced around, spotted my cell phone on the bed, and snatched it up.

“What are you doing? You’d better not be calling the police. Do
not
call the police, Nikki!”

She was staring intently at the screen, working the buttons with her thumbs, no doubt going through my phone book.

“Nikki, are you listening to me?”

She hit a speed dial number and put the phone to her ear, then gestured for me to wait. “Hello, Marco? This is Nikki. We have a major problem.”

I fell back onto the bed with a loud groan and pulled the pillow over my head to muffle her voice. Marco was going to hit the roof when he found out I’d been nosing around at the Emperor’s Spa. The only good thing about Nikki making the call was that it wasn’t me asking for his help.

“Abby,” she said, tugging at one corner of the pillow, “Marco is on his way.”

“Do me a favor,” I mumbled through the feathers. “Press down real hard and don’t let up until I stop struggling.”

“You’re an idiot. I’m going to put on a robe and make a pot of tea.”

“In the middle of the night?” I tossed the pillow aside, glanced up at the scary patterns still filtering the through the blind, and hit the floor running. Maybe Marco’s coming over wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

We stood in my bedroom, Marco on the right side of the window, Nikki beside him, and me way back in the doorway, a sheet wrapped around my shivering body, studying the characters on the glass. I wasn’t actually cold, so I assumed my shivers were a delayed reaction to the fright of seeing the writing on the window. In fact, I should have been warm, because Marco had shown up wearing very snug navy sweatpants and a sleeveless T-shirt cut off above his belly button, showing some pretty impressive abs.

He’d been working out, he told us. Right. At one thirty in the morning? Working out with
whom
was what I wanted to know.

He hadn’t asked me any questions yet, but I could tell by the little downturn of his mouth that they were piling up inside. I watched as he studied the writing, then glanced around my room, spotted a pen and a pad of yellow sticky notes on my nightstand, and began copying the figures.

“Is it a warning?” Nikki asked, making me shiver harder.

“Probably. I’ll take it over to the college and have it translated. I’m guessing Abby has been meddling again, and someone doesn’t like it.” He tossed the pen onto the stand, tucked the yellow square into his pocket, and turned to eye me. “When did you notice the writing?”

“About an hour after the police left. I know it wasn’t there earlier.”

“What I want to know,” Nikki said, “is how the person got up to her window. It’s a flat wall. There’s nothing to climb or stand on outside the window.”

“Have you ever read Edgar Allen Poe’s
The Purloined Letter
?” Marco asked. “What’s the best way to hide something? In plain sight. The ladder has probably been there awhile, so you’ve stopped noticing it. When was the last time the windows were washed?”

Nikki and I looked at each other and shrugged.

“Ask your superintendent.”

“I think the old Chinese man did it,” Nikki-the-squealer said. “He was peering into her car and shop window earlier today.”

Marco turned to look at me. “What old Chinese man?”

“Who’s ready for tea?” I asked and headed for the kitchen.

I filled three mugs with Nikki’s brewed tea. Nikki opened a package of sweetener, I got out the squeeze bottle of honey, and Marco took his straight. We sat in the living room, Nikki and me on the sofa, and Marco in an old, wooden rocking chair I’d unearthed from my parents’ basement. Simon appeared from one of his hiding places and jumped onto Marco’s lap. He would never have done that to Pryce.
I
wouldn’t have done that to Pryce.

“Tell me about this old Chinese man,” Marco said, stroking the cat’s head as he fixed me with that intense gaze that turned me into a blabbering fool. Being nervous about it anyway, I blabbed, telling him about the various times I’d seen the man around Bloomers and after my stint with the camera.

When I finished, Marco continued to gaze at me, only this time it was in disbelief. “You stood across from Emperor’s Spa on a busy street in broad daylight with a camera in your hands, taking photos of men going for a massage?”

“I’ll grant that it probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

He nearly choked on his tea. “The
smartest
thing? That has to rank as one of the
dumbest
things I’ve ever heard.”

“Someone has to do something to stop what’s going on there. It’s criminal.”

“Why does it have to be you?” Marco asked.

“My feelings exactly,” Nikki-the-traitor tossed in.

“Because the police aren’t doing their job,” I replied, ignoring Nikki. “Carrie, the beauty salon owner, complained to the police and the mayor over a month ago. Has anything been done since then? No.”

“Maybe they checked it out and didn’t find anything,” Marco said. “Don’t forget my experience there.”

“Yeah, yeah. The hairy European woman. Look, Carrie asked me what she should do, I suggested the photos, then she asked me to take them. That’s all there was to it.”

“Where are the photos?” Marco asked.

“I put them in the top drawer of my desk at the shop. Bill Bretton from the
News
is coming to look at them on Monday.”

“You’re going to give him the photos, and then you’re out of it, right?” Marco asked.

I nodded enthusiastically. “Right.” Nikki snickered, and I shot her a dark look.

“Did you tell Bill not to reveal you as the photographer?” Marco asked.

I took my time putting the cup to my mouth, trying to frame an evasive reply. “I still have to do that.”

“Damn right you have to do that.” Marco put Simon down and walked to the door. I abandoned the sheet and followed him, with Nikki bringing up the rear.

“Listen to me, sunshine,” he said, tilting my chin up so he could look me in the eye, “forget about this little grudge you have against the Emperor’s Spa. You have enough to do helping your cousin solve her murder without adding another murder to the pot.”

“There’s been another murder?” I asked stupidly.

“There could be. Yours. If those photos make the newspaper, there will be some extremely angry men who’d love to get their hands on the photographer. Let’s just hope none of them got a good look at you.” Marco opened the door, then bent to examine the lock. “I see you still haven’t put on that dead bolt.”