Obsession, Deceit and Really Dark Chocolate Read online

  “Yeah, it doesn’t exactly scream emergency situation.”

  “Hardly.” He paused before adding, “This is just more evidence that the person responsible for all this is Anne Brooke.”

  “I don’t know, Marcus. I’m not even sure this has anything to do with Eugene or politics.”

  “Of course it does. The note is a bit harsh, but the picture of the animated character softens it a bit. It’s a vague threat bundled inside a mixed message…sounds just like a Democrat.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Goodbye, Marcus.” I put the phone back in its cradle. Better to hang up on him than admit he was right.

  8

  Without the lies I am uncomplicated and uninteresting. My bullshit gives me depth.

  —C’est La Mort

  I spent the next morning doing more Internet research on all the players. I had started by gathering information on Fitzgerald, Brooke and the top members of their teams. They were nothing if not consistent in their behavior. It seemed that when Fitzgerald wasn’t speaking at some pro-life rally he was in church praying for a more homogeneous and intolerant world. Brooke, on the other hand, was all about the seven deadly sins. But really, who wasn’t? Spend one afternoon of lying around eating Oreos, fantasizing about Brad Pitt in a toga, and you were guilty of three. The problem was that Brooke always took things a step too far. She didn’t just drool over the eighteen-year-old kid her former hubby had hired to paint their fence, she actually slept with him.

  I ended up spending much more time reading about Anne than Fitzgerald. Not just because I thought she was likely to be Eugene’s murderer, but because she was much more fun to research. Which article would you rather read? “Fitzgerald Urges Teens To Practice Abstinence” or “Brooke Dirty Dances With Distressed Foreign Dignitary”?

  I was actually printing up the latter article when my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Sophie, it’s Melanie. Is this a good time?”

  “It’s a fine time,” I reassured her. “What’s up?”

  “I haven’t been able to reach Anatoly today and I was just wondering if either of you were able to get in touch with that boy’s family.”

  I straightened my back as I tried to make sense of her words. “That boy’s family?”

  “Yes, I know Anatoly thinks I shouldn’t worry about it, but the whole thing is very upsetting.”

  I felt my hands clench into fists. What boy? Anatoly hadn’t told me anything about this! “Anatoly’s right, Melanie,” I said slowly. “You shouldn’t worry about…um…oh shoot, what’s the boy’s name again?”

  “Peter Strauss,” Melanie supplied. “And I’m not exactly worried about him, not that his death wasn’t a tragedy, but at least he’s with God now.”

  Little bells started to go off in my head. Peter was the guy who jumped to his death just months after he had begun working for Brooke’s campaign.

  “But I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t up all last night thinking about that letter,” Melanie continued.

  “Right, the letter. Do you really think the letter was all that important?” I asked.

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. What I wanted to do was scream in frustration. If this were a movie Melanie would have answered my question by giving me all the information I needed to know about the letter and this Peter person. Instead she was answering me with vague, two-word sentences. Of course, I could have told her that Anatoly had neglected to tell me about this, but I was afraid that if I exposed the communication problems between Anatoly and myself, Melanie would decide that she didn’t want me on the case after all. So I took a breath and tried again. “What part of the letter was responsible for giving you insomnia?”

  “Every part of it!” Melanie’s voice was shaking, although it was unclear which emotion was causing the tremble. “Why would this boy be writing my husband in the first place? And what did he mean when he wrote that Eugene ‘had the power to not only destroy political careers but also his life and the lives and families of other well-meaning people’? Does this mean that Eugene had information on Anne Brooke that would have ruined her? Even if that was true, why would a twenty-two-year-old campaign worker be so distraught over that? Is this why he took his own life? Is it possible that my Eugene was culpable in the death of another person? Is that possible, Sophie?” The last sentence was more of a hysterical scream than a question.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure Eugene didn’t want Peter to die, but maybe he didn’t know that Peter was the kind of guy who would jump out a fifteenth-story window in order to avoid a little scandal.”

  “Perhaps,” Melanie said. Her voice had dropped a few notches in volume but it was a ways from being calm. “I do think Anatoly was on the right track when he suggested that he contact Peter’s surviving family. They may be able to shed some light on all this. Has Anatoly gotten through to any of them?”

  “Not yet. They haven’t been answering their phone and there hasn’t been a machine. I’m beginning to suspect that Anatoly transcribed the number incorrectly. Could you give it to me again?”

  “I never gave it to him in the first place. Anatoly said he could get it himself.”

  Hate him. “I’ll just ask him again, then. And I’ll try calling…um, I’m sorry, I just blanked out on Peter’s parents’ names.” I was getting less subtle by the second.

  “Anatoly did tell you about all this, didn’t he? Because from the nature of your questions you appear to be a tad out of the loop.”

  “I’m totally looped. Trust me. I’m just a little tired. Look, I really do have to get going, but I’ll get back to you with some answers really soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Soon, soon. It’s my top priority, so try to relax and leave the worrying to me. Take care, Melanie!” I hung up before she could ask me any more questions.

  It took me two more hours of searching the Net before I was able to track down the phone number of someone related to Peter. His obituary gave the names of his parents and a sister. His parents were unlisted, but I struck major pay dirt with his sister, Tiffany Strauss. As luck would have it she worked in the city as an esthetician at Mojo, a day spa on upper Haight that was all the rage among the seriously hip and moderately budget-conscious.

  I clutched the phone in my hand and sat cross-legged on my bed. Getting in touch with this woman would be a cinch, but what was I going to say? Hi, I think I may need to talk to you about your brother and I was hoping you could help me figure out why? For some reason I doubted that would work.

  No, the best course of action would be to book an appointment with her for one of the services she offered and pray that she liked to get chatty with her clients.

  I leaned over and peered at Mojo’s Web site. According to the site Tiffany was considered to be one of San Francisco’s best waxers. I was perhaps the last woman in the western world who didn’t wax. Yes, I tweezed, shaved and used Nair, but I drew the line when it came to ripping out hair follicles with a strip of hot wax.

  Fortunately Tiffany didn’t just wax, she also gave facials. I’d never had one of those, either. I didn’t have any wrinkles and rarely got more than one pimple a month, so the service seemed like an unnecessary extravagance. The Web site claimed that the facial Tiffany specialized in was a “fully relaxing experience” and that clients would leave the salon with “the famous Mojo glow.” I could deal with that.

  I dialed the salon and told the perky receptionist that I wanted a facial with Tiffany.

  “Sure thing,” the woman said. “It looks like her next available appointment is in a little over three weeks on—”

  “Did you just say three weeks?” I asked. “But I needed to see her sooner than that!”

  “I’m really sorry, but she’s majorly booked this month,” the receptionist said sympathetically. “She did have a cancellation for tomorrow at five but—”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Wait,” the woman said,
giggling at my desperation, “that appointment is only for twenty minutes. That’s enough for a waxing but not for a facial.”

  “A waxing?” I asked weakly. “Um, could you hold on a moment?” I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and took a deep breath before turning my gaze on Mr. Katz, who was peeking out at me from under the bed. “I can do this. After all, I’ll just be getting rid of a few hairs.”

  Mr. Katz blinked at me. He was very attached to his hair.

  “I can do this,” I said again. But which body hairs should I sacrifice in the pursuit of justice? Definitely not pubic hairs. I couldn’t have an intimate conversation with a woman while she was in the middle of giving me a Brazilian. However, I could allow her to dispense with my leg hairs.

  I brought the phone back up to my ear. “Is twenty minutes enough for a leg wax?”

  “It should be. But if you want to see someone else I could get you in for both a wax and a facial in two days.”

  “No, Tiffany was recommended to me. Just put me down for the waxing appointment with her tomorrow.”

  “Will do,” the girl chirped. I gave her my phone number before hanging up.

  I looked down as Mr. Katz crawled out from under the bed and brushed up against my leg. “So that’s done. Now, do you have any ideas on how I should go about getting a complete stranger to talk to me about what was undoubtedly one of the most painful events of her life?”

  Mr. Katz turned away from me and positioned himself in a full-body stretch with his head near the floor and his tail straight up in the air.

  “Got it. If all else fails, show her my ass. We’ll see how that works for me.”

  Five o’clock Tuesday evening came way too soon. I lay on the padded table within one of Mojo’s intimate rooms surrounded by cream-colored walls and Keith Haring prints and studied Tiffany’s back as she stirred scalding-hot goo in a stainless-steel pot. What had I been thinking when I had scheduled this appointment? I couldn’t question her about her brother now. I was too freaked out to talk. Plus, I felt nauseous. Of course, that might have something to do with the five Advil I had taken an hour earlier in anticipation of this moment.

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I couldn’t think about the pain I was about to endure. I needed to keep my eye on the ball, and in this case the ball was the tall blonde with the 1980s-style hairclip who was about to torture me.

  No, no, no, I wasn’t going to think about my impending torture! I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the pot with the hot wax and lowered my gaze to Tiffany’s green cowboy boots instead. Who the hell wore green cowboy boots? Tiffany was an attractive woman and her skin had the kind of radiance that women always hoped to get when they’re pregnant (and never do). She wasn’t excessively over-weight, but the skin-tight pants she was wearing made her look at least three sizes bigger than I was sure she was. Under her apron she wore a bright red sleeveless mock turtleneck sweater, which made her selection of the green cowboy boots all the more bewildering.

  “It’s Sophie, right?” she asked in her soprano-pitched voice. “Not Sophia?”

  “I think the last person to refer to me as Sophia was the clerk who wrote up my birth certificate. How ’bout you? Do you always go by Tiffany?”

  “Almost never. I prefer Tiff.” She turned away from her evil potion long enough to give my legs a visual once-over. “This is great,” she enthused. “First-timers usually make the mistake of shaving just days before they come in. It’s nearly impossible to wax stubble, but I see you haven’t shaved in quite a long time.”

  “I wanted to make sure you really had something to grab onto.” The truth was that I had stopped shaving my legs around the same time I had stopped having sex, which was just over two months ago when Anatoly and I split. Of course, I had bought a new razor so I’d be prepared for the next man who entered my life. I had even bought a package of condoms, but so far I hadn’t met anyone interesting enough to test them out on.

  Tiff came up and examined my face. “I can see it’s been a while since you’ve done your brows, too.”

  “Well, I guess it depends on what qualifies as doing brows. I tweeze them.”

  “Yourself?” Tiff asked. From her expression you would have thought that I had just told her that I did my own Pap smears. “I can neaten them up if you like. You have such great brows. If you let me shape them a bit, it will really bring out your eyes.”

  “I’m kind of on a budget,” I fibbed.

  “I won’t charge you for it. Consider it a free gift with purchase for first-time clients.”

  She turned back to the wax as if the issue had been decided. She was going to put wax on my face. My face! That was so not okay with me!

  “We’ll start with the legs, all right?” she asked.

  I rolled my eyes skyward and swallowed the rising bile. I had been threatened by murderers on more than one occasion, so why was I so terrified of a friendly esthetician? But I knew the answer. My last college roommate had gotten her upper lip waxed shortly after she had begun using Retin-A for acne, and the combination of the two beauty treatments had cost her a few layers of skin and given me a phobia to last a lifetime.

  Tiff freed what looked like an oversize Popsicle stick from its plastic wrapper and dipped it in the wax. Okay, I just need to remember why I’m here: to solve a case. I can do this. “I’m so glad the receptionist was able to fit me in so quickly. I really needed to treat myself to a day of pampering.”

  “Have things been stressful lately?” Tiff asked innocently as she layered the warm wax onto my leg.

  “That’s an understatement. My older…holy fuck that hurt!”

  Tiff smiled benignly. “The first time’s always the worst. Just relax, breathe and try to think about something else. What was it you were just about to tell me?” she asked as she spread more globs of wax onto my skin.

  “What? Oh, right, I was about to say that I just recently lost my older sister.” Leah was my only sister and she was two years younger. The only time I had ever lost her was at one of Nordstrom’s half-yearly sales.

  “You mean she passed away?” Tiff asked, briefly looking up from her task. “I’m so sorry! When did it happen?”

  “A few months ago, but I don’t think it has really sunk in yet. We weren’t that close, but you know…Susie was still my sister.” Susie? Was that really the best name I could come up with? The pain must have been hampering my creativity.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Tiff said sadly as she carefully applied more wax with the Popsicle stick of pain. “I lost a brother not too long ago.”

  “You’re kidding! What hap—oh my God! Where the hell did you learn to do this? Abu Ghraib?”

  Tiff laughed politely and began to apply more wax.

  I swallowed hard and tried to keep my mind on my objective. “I was just about to ask you what happened to your brother.”

  Tiffany hesitated. “He was sort of in an accident.”

  “That’s terrible! Susie’s death wasn’t exactly an accident, although I think she was trying to make it look like one.”

  A little gasp escaped Tiff’s lips. “You mean she committed suicide?”

  I nodded, and then gritted my teeth as the next strip of hair came off. At the moment suicide didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “How’d she do it?” Tiff asked softly.

  “Drove her car off a cliff. It was awful, no one in the family saw it coming.”

  “Yeah, I get that…no one saw it coming with my brother, either.”

  “But his was a real accident, right?” I prodded.

  “Not exactly.” Tiffany’s shoulders slumped and her attention dropped from my legs to the ground. “Not at all. Peter threw himself out a fifteenth-story window. He wanted to die.”

  I felt a pang of guilt that rivaled the physical pain that was currently being inflicted on me. Tiffany was clearly still very upset about the loss of her brother, and why wouldn’t she be? He had died less than two months ago.
And here I was prying information out of her with false claims of empathy. I was a truly dreadful person.

  On the other hand, Tiff’s brother wasn’t the only person who was dead. And unlike Peter, Eugene hadn’t wanted to cut his life short. If Tiff had information that could lead to the arrest of the responsible party, then I owed it to Melanie to get it.

  “Losing a sibling to violence, even when it’s self-inflicted, is just so incredibly tragic,” I said carefully. “The weird thing is that in Susie’s case no one even knew she was depressed. What about Peter, did he show any signs at all?”

  Tiff sighed and removed the last bit of skin…er…hair from my right leg and then moved to my left. “I’ve gone over the conversations we had during the months before his death a thousand times,” she said. “There was nothing abnormal about them…well, at least they weren’t abnormal for him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Peter was different.” She emphasized the last word and then laughed self-consciously. “I’m making it sound like he was some kind of weirdo, but that’s not what I mean. He was just kind of a loner. He didn’t have many friends and the ones he had were kind of…well, geeky would be a good word for them. He was smart, but he didn’t have a lot of direction and he never liked school, although he did like to take part in the school sporting events.”

  “He was an athlete?”

  Tiff shook her head and applied more wax. “A mascot. He was the school cougar in high school and the bear when he went to Berkeley. He took it really seriously, too. He used to go to other schools’ games just so he could see what stunts the other mascots were pulling. I figured he must have had some kind of secret urge to do theater, but he would never agree to audition for anything or even take a drama class. I suppose it’s less humiliating to act like a goof when you have a big hairy mask over your head.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than dressing up like a giant jacked-up circus animal.