Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress Page 10

  Mary Ann slowly reclined back in her seat and Marcus, his eyes glued to mine, reached forward and downed Mary Ann’s untouched Absolut Disaster.

  “I know,” Leah scoffed. “Sophie just hauled off and hit her! Chrissie landed on the coffee table. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t suffer a concussion!”

  A passing car with an offensively loud boom box drove by and I could feel the impact of the harsh beat in my temples. Mary Ann raised her hand halfway in the air as if she needed to be called on to speak. “Is it wrong,” she asked timidly, “that I kind of want her to have a concussion? I even kind of wish Sophie had broken Chrissie’s arm, too. Is that bad?”

  “No,” Marcus said, “I would even throw in a couple of broken legs. Girlfriend has earned herself a world of hurt.”

  “We don’t even know if she did it!” Leah protested.

  “Who else would do it? Dena is not a girl who makes a lot of enemies.” Marcus’s cell phone rang but he didn’t even pick it up to see who was calling. His hand was trembling slightly as he toyed with the empty shot glass. “Dena has spent her life helping people find pleasure,” he said. “I realize not everyone needs one of her specially designed bongo-cock-rings to get their groove on but those who don’t like to party like a porn star can easily avoid embarrassment by shopping elsewhere.”

  “But all the men who she has cast aside—”

  “The men in her life,” Marcus said, definitively cutting Leah off, “are always sent home happy even though they all are eventually sent home. Even the people she lashes out at know they deserve it and most are almost grateful for the discipline. Half of them end up begging her to spank them. But cranky Chrissie is all up Dena’s butt. And why? Because she can’t keep her dog of a husband on a leash. Ironic that her hubby should be a dog since she’s the little bitch who needs to be sent to the pound!”

  “So what do we do?” Mary Ann asked. “How do we make sure she goes to prison for this?”

  “Nothing,” Leah said firmly. “You heard Sophie, the police have already called her into questioning. They’re going to be watching her and if they have even a shred of evidence they’ll search her home. We don’t need to pull a Sophie.”

  “Pull a Sophie?” I asked.

  “Oh, oh, I know what she means!” Mary Ann’s hand was up in the air again. “Pulling a Sophie is when you do something really silly like break into the home of a potential serial killer and confront him without a weapon!”

  “Yep.” Marcus smiled, the hate he spewed only few minutes ago now buried under his mischievous and insatiable humor. “That’s pulling a Sophie.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Whoever said you can’t base a relationship on sex alone hasn’t been dating the right guys.

  –Fatally Yours

  We had more drinks after that, all of us except for Leah who used the time to drown the one shot she’d had with a pitcher’s worth of water. With enormous effort I managed to indulge Mary Ann’s need not to talk about what had happened to Dena. We talked about everything else in a desperate attempt to remind ourselves that the trivial things of our world were as real as ever. Not everything had been tainted by violence. We tried to talk about the wedding but that made Leah violent. When Mary Ann mentioned that she wanted to have a pre-wedding bridal party tea with Alice and the Mad Hatter, Leah got up and tripped on Marcus’s area rug, causing her to “accidentally” hurl her empty shot glass across the room. It was at that point that we decided that a change in subject was in order.

  Still, not talking about things is not the same as not thinking about them and by the time Leah and I arrived back at my place I was exhausted by the effort of trying to suppress the pain. We sat in her car and took a moment to absorb the quiet of the street. There weren’t any cops waiting in my driveway which wasn’t exactly a huge surprise.

  “Just because the police aren’t here now doesn’t mean they’re not coming later,” Leah pointed out.

  “Mmm, well, I won’t hold my breath,” I said while stifling a yawn.

  Leah gripped the steering wheel and stared out into the night sky. “If the police do contact you about what happened at Chrissie’s will you tell me? I want to make sure we keep our stories straight.”

  “We have a story?”

  Leah shrugged. “She tried to hit you, you ducked and then hit her before she had the chance to try to attack you again.”

  “You said claims of self-defense wouldn’t be credible.”

  “Yes, but I’ve been thinking about it and if the police really do suspect her of murder then they’ll probably be willing to believe she’s capable of anything.”

  “And you think I should allow them to think the worst of her?”

  Leah turned to me. The light from the streetlamp above only touched half of her face, leaving the other side in darkness. “I care about Dena, too, you know,” she said softly. “And I love you. If telling a little white lie to the police will help avenge her and spare you…well, I suppose I can live with that.”

  I smiled and reached out to put my hand over hers. “I love you, too, Leah.”

  Leah shifted uncomfortably in her seat and turned back to the street. “You know, in Victorian London footmen never served as ring bearers.”

  “What?”

  “I’m just saying,” she said with an irritated shrug. “I mean they were servants for God’s sake! Victorians didn’t ask their servants to be part of their wedding parties!”

  “I’m going to go in now.”

  “You do know that Disneyland has their own wedding coordinators. They take care of everything! Even if Mary Ann did hire me for this there’d be nothing for me to do!”

  “Goodnight, Leah.” I got out of the car before she could say anything else.

  I pushed open the front door and found Anatoly on the sofa. I wanted to crawl into his lap and fall asleep like a cat…specifically like Mr. Katz who had already claimed Anatoly’s lap as his personal real estate. Both my men (human and feline) were currently facing my TV as the cast of Lost tried to get off and then on and then off a cursed island.

  Anatoly looked up at me and smiled. “Did you just come from Leah’s?”

  “We were at Marcus’s. Mary Ann was there, too.”

  He patted the seat next to him, the one Mr. Katz wasn’t occupying. I collapsed next to him and put my head on his shoulder.

  “I went to see Dena today,” he said.

  “You did?” I snuggled a little closer to him. “Thank you. That means a lot to me. Did you see her before or after the fiasco with her parents?”

  “She didn’t mention her parents so I don’t know. I went because I wanted to see how she was doing. I also wanted to talk to her about her relationship with Amelia.”

  I lifted my head. “Why’d you want to talk to her about that?”

  “Sophie, according to what you told me, Amelia has a pretty good motive for murder. And thanks to her close relationship to Dena she could have gotten access to one of her spare keys to Mary Ann’s.”

  I blinked. It was true that Dena had two sets of keys to Mary Ann’s apartment but…there was just no way. “Trust me,” I said as I returned my head to his shoulder, “Amelia did not shoot Dena. If you knew her you’d know that she doesn’t have the heart or the…the focus to pull something like that off. She’s a pacifist. A kind, pot-smoking pacifist.”

  “Maybe, but you shouldn’t dismiss the possibility without doing at least a little research, and neither should the police.”

  “The police?” My head was up again. “You’re not going to bring these suspicions to the police, are you?”

  “Sophie, the more information they have the more efficient their investigation is going to be.”

  “No! Anatoly, you can’t!” Now Mr. Katz’s head was up and he looked seriously annoyed. He was not tolerant of loud interruptions of his naptime.

  “According to you she has nothing to worry about,” Anatoly noted as he stroked Mr. Katz back into relaxation. “She’s inno
cent, right?”

  “Of shooting people? Yes, of that she’s innocent. Of eating the occasional funny mushroom and growing plants you can smoke? Totally guilty! If the police start snooping around she’s screwed! You’re just going to have to take my word for it when I tell you she didn’t shoot Dena. Okay? Now can we move on?”

  “Dena thinks Amelia’s been feeling neglected—”

  “Did you tell Dena that you thought Amelia was the one who shot her?”

  “No, I was just fishing at that point. But when I was leaving I ran into Jason and he told me that Amelia had no alibi. When Jason asked her where she was that night she told him she was home alone. That’s why he was so upset about her not calling. She got the messages and nothing was stopping her from coming to the hospital. But she didn’t come until you discovered that she wasn’t in Nicaragua.”

  “Yeah, okay, but it’s not like I had to hunt her down. She was at work, Anatoly. So if she was trying to hide out she was doing a piss-poor job of it.”

  “She didn’t need to hide out, Sophie. The only people who were trying to track her down thought she was in Nicaragua. The only people who might have checked her work were the police and they weren’t going to because until now no one realized she had a motive.”

  “She doesn’t have a motive!”

  “She may not have acted on it but she does have a motive, Sophie.”

  Anatoly always used my name more when he was losing patience with me, which coincidentally usually happened around the same time I lost patience with him. The only one who seemed at peace was Mr. Katz, who was willing to ignore the controversy as long as Anatoly continued to pet him. My cat was such a flippin’ whore. Then again, I usually had a hard time focusing on conversations when Anatoly put his hands on me so maybe I shouldn’t judge.

  I tapped my toe against my oak floors and silently counted to ten. “Just give it a little more time. Like a week. If more evidence turns up against Amelia by then or if the police haven’t found a more convincing suspect you can tell them about your Amelia suspicions. But give it a little time first.”

  Anatoly took a moment to think about that. He stared into the screen. We had now left the island and were apparently in McDonald’s where they were promoting a new movie themed toy you could get with your Happy Meal. “I can give it a week,” he said.

  I immediately relaxed and put my head back on his shoulder. I knew that the police already had a more convincing suspect so there was no problem.

  Anatoly absently reached out and stroked my inner thigh. “I’ve talked to my police contact.”

  “Mmm?” I let my eyes close. God, I was tired.

  “Right now the cops are focusing most of their attention on Chrissie Powell.”

  And just like that I was awake. “You…you know about Chrissie?”

  “My contact shared the tip with me. She wrote an article—”

  “I read the article.”

  “Ah.” Anatoly smiled. “That’s why you said we needed to see if the police could find a more convincing suspect before we talked to them about Amelia. You thought that was already a given.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “She’s a suspect. Whether or not she’s more convincing remains to be seen. The police don’t think that she had a key to Mary Ann’s building but she could have been buzzed in.”

  “But the articles—”

  “The articles and the protests she’s organized certainly make her look guilty,” he said, cutting me off. “And according to her she was home alone the night Dena was shot which means she doesn’t have an alibi. But her husband’s a suspect, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and there’s more. As of a few hours ago the police have found themselves in the unfortunate position of treating Chrissie as both a suspect and a victim.”

  “A victim?” I looked down at the knuckles of my right hand. “Victim of what?”

  “Her husband hit her this afternoon.”

  “What?”

  Anatoly nodded. “She has a bruise on her face and apparently when he hit her she fell on the coffee table so there are injuries from that. She came to the police an hour or so after it happened and she was apparently distressed. When she actually saw her husband being arrested she tried to recant her story, saying he didn’t mean to hit her, it was some sort of ridiculous and implausible accident but the police expect that kind of one-eighty from victims of domestic violence. The charges against Tim Powell still stand. It’s a mess.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “No, you really don’t.” I stood up and started pacing the room. “Um, what would you say if I told you that I visited Chrissie today?”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah, and we were talking…and then maybe arguing a little and one thing led to another and…well, you know how it goes.”

  “Why don’t you spell it out for me.”

  There was a silence that bounced off the vaulted beams of my ceiling and ricocheted off the hardwood floors.

  “Anatoly?” I ventured.

  “You hit her.”

  “Not hard!” I sat on the edge of the couch ready to plead my case. “It was more like I…pushed her.”

  “You pushed her?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” I averted my eyes. “I pushed her…with my fist.”

  “Damn it, Sophie!” Anatoly pounded his fist into the armrest of the couch and Mr. Katz jumped off his lap in a state of alarm.

  “Anatoly, you should have heard the things she was saying about Dena!”

  “It’s a free country, she can say whatever the hell she wants! Do you have any idea how much more complicated you’ve made things?” Mr. Katz lifted his head and gave him a funny look before making a little kitty snort and curling around my feet. It was nice to have at least one guy on my side.

  “One punch is not complicated,” I said slowly as if my communication problems with Anatoly were the result of some kind of language barrier. “Chrissie blaming her bruises on her adulterous husband who cheated on her with Dena, that’s the complicated part and that’s not my fault. Oh, oh, oh!” I snapped my fingers in the air and immediately hopped back up on my feet, upsetting my one mammalian supporter. “Don’t you see what she’s done? She’s proven that she’ll sink to any depth for revenge! As soon as the police find out that she’s falsely accusing Tim they’ll have her number! She’s just strengthened their case against her!”

  “She’s falsely accusing the man in her life of a crime. That makes her a killer?”

  “Under the circumstances? Maybe.”

  “Then you must be a killer, too.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath and looked away. He didn’t have to tell me what he was talking about. I knew. I had set him up for an assault charge before. “That was a long time ago,” I said carefully. “We weren’t even officially dating back then.”

  “Ah, so it’s all right to set a man up for a crime if you’re only casually involved with him?” He stood up and Mr. Katz crossed over to him. Great, now it was two against one.

  “You’re not being fair,” I snapped. “I thought you were a murderer!”

  “You think everyone is a murderer.”

  “Well, a lot of them are! If anyone has earned the right to be paranoid it’s me!”

  “And if you were suffering from paranoid delusions I’d understand. But you’re not paranoid, you’re just delusional. You never suspect a crime has taken place unless it has but you consistently accuse the wrong person of committing it. You accused me of killing someone in the park!”

  Barbie. She was the one who had died in the park less than half a decade ago. In my darkest moments I could still see the stab wounds, the insects that had begun to crawl inside her through the multiple new entries that the killer had made for them. Her hair had looked like mine that day and it had been my stalker, not hers, who had murdered her. And then as the years passed there had been more bodies and more blood. It always came when I leas
t expected it. Months, sometimes years, would go by without my seeing a gun or a dead body and then all of a sudden the violence would pop up like a hideous cold sore and everybody who touched me ran the risk of getting infected.

  And now it had infected Dena. Dena had been shot when I was only a room away. A little voice was whispering in the back of my mind. What if this isn’t about Dena? What if it’s about someone else? it hissed. What if this is somehow about you?

  “Sophie,” Anatoly said sharply, “are you listening to me?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Some of the people you meet may be homicidal but most of them aren’t. Don’t punch people until you’re sure which are which.”

  “I am sure! You read the article, didn’t you? And if you had only heard her—”

  “Words aren’t bullets.”

  “Okay, fine. What do you suggest I do? I can’t very well unpunch her.”

  Anatoly opened his mouth to respond but before he could his cell phone went off. He pulled it out of his pocket and glared at the screen. “It’s a client,” he said coolly.

  “Which client? Oh, wait, you can’t tell me right? That’s one of the many parts of your life that I’m not allowed into?”

  Anatoly shot me a menacing look. “Try not to do anything stupid while I take this.”

  “Gee, Anatoly, I don’t know. I’ll give it a shot.” But by that time Anatoly already had the phone pressed against his ear and was heading up the stairs.

  I glanced over at Mr. Katz, who was kneading my favorite throw pillow. For a moment I found myself transfixed by the way the little threads caught on his claws and formed frayed loops on the surface. “Try not to do anything stupid,” I muttered. What stupid thing did Anatoly think I was going to do in the ten minutes in which he took a phone call?