Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss Page 17

  “Don’t moralize me, honey. You’re the one who brought him here to get high on air.”

  “You know, I can hear you,” Zach said. “I’m standing right here.”

  “Sorry,” I said, plopping myself on the stool next to Marcus. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “What do you mean to do?” Zach asked abruptly. “Why was it so important that we hang out?”

  I hesitated for half a second before blurting out, “Do you think Maria killed Enrico? Because the police think she did, and if they’re right, then I’m not so sure I want to go to any more séances with her.”

  Zach chewed on his bottom lip and stared down at his shoes. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “But if she did she deserves a frickin’ medal.”

  Marcus blanched. “My, my. You are a dark little closet case, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not a closet case! And I don’t give a shit if I’m being dark.” Zach sucked his upper lip in between his teeth giving himself the appearance of a humanistic warthog. “Enrico was evil. I wish I could have been there when he died. I wish I could have been the one to stick the blade in. I would have made sure he saw it coming, too, and then I’d do it again and again—”

  “Hi, guys! Can I take your order?” We all jumped as the floppy-haired waiter beamed down at us. “Oh, my goodness! I startled you all, didn’t I?” he asked. “I bet I interrupted a juicy gossip session, didn’t I?” He looked from Marcus to me to Zach then back to Marcus. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the bubbles in the walls of the kiosk shoot skyward only to pop from the pressure. No one said anything.

  The waiter shifted from foot to foot. “Maybe I should come back in a few minutes,” he offered.

  “Yeah, that would be good,” I said. The waiter nodded quickly and rushed off, desperate to escape an awkward moment.

  “Zach,” I said softly, “what exactly did Enrico do to you?” I found myself hoping that it was something truly horrible, because if it wasn’t then I was about to suck oxygen with a boy who might end up being the next generation’s Zodiac Killer.

  Zach looked off into space. “I should just go.”

  Marcus leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. There was no flirtation in the gesture, just a kind of platonic, almost paternal concern. “Zach,” he said, “what did he do?”

  Zach didn’t jerk away. Instead he stared down at Marcus’s hand, as if its presence was totally inexplicable, but not entirely unwelcome. “Nothing to me,” he finally said. “But my sister…” His voice trailed off and his shoulders hunched over so that his body formed the shape of a depressed letter C.

  “What about your sister?” Marcus pushed.

  “He raped her.” He was whispering now and both Marcus and I had to lean forward to catch the words. “He raped her when she was thirteen and he…he got her pregnant.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. That was infinitely worse than what I was expecting, but the story had a flaw.

  “Zach,” I said carefully, “you don’t have a sister.”

  “I do,” Zach corrected. “At least I did. I did before she killed herself trying to abort the baby at home.”

  I recoiled and slapped my hand over my mouth as I felt bile sting my throat. But Marcus’s hand remained on Zach’s shoulder and now all the laughter that had been in his brown eyes only minutes ago had morphed into sympathy. “How did she do it?” he asked.

  “Herbs and essential oils.”

  “I don’t think I understand.” Marcus’s eyebrows inched lower as he tried to make sense of this.

  “She tried to give herself a herbal abortion. She found the instructions online. She told me it was safe and not to tell anybody. I should have ratted her out. If I had…”

  “How old were you when this happened?” Marcus asked.

  “Eleven.”

  “Eleven-year-old boys don’t tell on their thirteen-year-old sisters, not when it comes to the serious stuff.”

  “How did this even happen?” I asked. “Was it at a séance or—”

  “We didn’t belong to the stupid Specter Society then. My dad lays floors for commercial properties, like marble floors and shit. Dad was friends with Oscar and Oscar was one of Enrico’s investors, so when Enrico wanted new floors for his newest restaurant Oscar recommended my dad.”

  “But how did Enrico ever get any time alone with your thirteen-year-old sister?” I asked.

  “My sister wanted to be a chef so my dad set it up so she could have private lessons.” Zach said the last two words with the acidity that conveyed his full meaning. “Oscar knew, too. He was one of Enrico’s business partners and he was always around. I know he knew. Sometimes Dad would take me and Deb to Enrico’s restaurant before it was open and Oscar would be there.”

  Zach’s hand was flat against the chrome surface of the bar, his veins pushing further and further into view as he increased the pressure of his palm. “Oscar would look at Enrico, and then he’d look at my sister and then the son of a bitch would laugh. That fucker laughed.”

  Marcus finally pulled back, crossing his arms across his chest. “You’re right. Enrico deserved to be slashed up with a scythe.”

  Zach did a quick double take. What had he expected Marcus to do? Try to smother him with platitudes that couldn’t possibly ease the pain? I could only imagine how long Zach had kept all of that information tucked inside. And now he was volunteering the story to us. God only knows why. Maybe because we were strangers and he could afford to alienate us. Or maybe, for some unfathomable reason, he trusted us. I looked toward the picture windows on the other side of the restaurant. It was night now and you could see the wind urging the planted trees into a violent dance.

  “I knew a long time ago that I was going to—” Zach began.

  “Don’t say it,” I said quickly. “If you want, I can get you set up with a lawyer. But don’t confess anything to me or anyone else. I believe that revenge can be therapeutic, but I’m not so sure about prison.”

  “Why would I go to prison?” he asked. “I didn’t do anything. Maria’s the one who cut him up.”

  The waiter returned at that moment holding his pad and pencil firmly in front of him. “Sorry, but you guys really have to order something if you’re going to stay. We have drinks and vegan pastries if you don’t want oxygen, but the bossman here says nobody stays without ordering.”

  “Sex on the Beach oxygen for all of us,” I said quietly, sincerely wishing that we could substitute the scented oxygen for the cocktail that was its namesake.

  “We sell it for $1.50 per minute, five minute minimum per person. Each person gets their own nasal cannula—that would be a nose hose to you and me.”

  Under the best of circumstances this guy would have annoyed me, but now as I followed Zach down this dark path of memory, the waiter’s like-me-like-me-like-me routine was almost enough to send me over the edge.

  “We’ll take five minutes for each of us,” Marcus said.

  “You sure you don’t want to buy more minutes?” the waiter asked. “They say once you inhale it’s hard to stop. I do it two or three times a day! I really think it’s accountable for my chipper disposition.”

  Marcus, Zach and I all studied him for half a second before we all started talking at once, each one of us changing our oxygen order to a fruit spritzer. As it turns out, hemp oil wasn’t on the menu.

  Marcus looked around at the crowd in the bar. A group of men a few kiosks over burst into cheers, many of them raising their glasses as they saluted some unknown success. The environment was beyond inappropriate considering the situation, and, despite my better instincts, I wondered if I should have given in earlier and taken Zach to a cannabis club. “How do you know Maria killed Enrico, Zach?” I asked. “Did she tell you?”

  “No, she’s not stupid.” Zach pulled gently on the lobe of his ear. “But it’s kinda obvious she did it. You heard him call someone a bitch so we know it was a woman and Maria showed up at the Specter Society meeting so there’
s that and—”

  “Wait.” I held up my hand to stop him. “Why does Maria showing up at the Specter Society meeting incriminate her?”

  “It’s kinda obvious she came because she knew Enrico wouldn’t,” Zach said with a shrug. “Why else would a woman purposely go out of her way to go to the same event her ex is hanging at?”

  “Ah, young Zach, women do things like that all the time,” Marcus lamented. “It’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful to be attracted to men. But it is possible that Maria wasn’t a stalker or a murderer. Has Maria’s appearance changed at all since she split with Enrico?”

  Zach considered this for a moment. “She did lose a lot of weight.”

  “So then the attendance at the séance doesn’t incriminate her,” Marcus said matter-of-factly. “Anyone who has dropped a few dress sizes knows how fabulous it can be to run into an ex who dumped them before they got cozy with Jenny Craig. Do you have anything else?”

  “Yeah, duh! Maria was the one who tried to set it up so Anatoly and Sophie discovered the body first. She totally knew there was a body in that condo. That story she gave you about wanting you to go over there to make sure Enrico was okay?” Zach rolled his eyes. “That was so lame and so obvious. Then again, you fell for it.”

  “No, my boyfriend fell for it,” I protested. “And that’s only because Maria paid him $300 to fall for it!”

  “So Anatoly’s naiveté can be bought?” Marcus asked. “How very disturbing.”

  The waiter came back with three spritzers. It seems he wasn’t completely unable to take a hint because he ran off as soon as he placed the drinks on the chrome surface.

  “I think we inadvertently insulted our server,” I offered as I watched the waiter talk to other patrons, his back studiously turned to us.

  “No,” Marcus said. “There was nothing inadvertent about it.”

  Zach picked up his drink, which looked suspiciously like a Shirley Temple, and sipped it through his purple straw. “I don’t like it. It’s too sweet.”

  “Shocker,” I said, removing the bright red cherry in the middle of my drink and placing it delicately on a napkin. “Who else knows about what Enrico did, Zach? Do your parents know?”

  “No, they’re idiots. They think I’m mad at Enrico because he screwed up some major gig for my dad. Dad wanted Enrico to recommend him to the Kimpton Group. Kimpton’s always opening new restaurants and putting new floors into the ones they already got. That account would have made my dad’s career. He even told me that as soon as he got it I would be going to private school. Like that’s something I would have wanted! Enrico’s a fuck-faced bastard, but he’s sharp. He knew my dad’s business couldn’t have handled an account as big as the Kimpton Group, so he told them not to sign with him. That’s my parents’ problem with Enrico. A lost business deal! They have no fucking idea what went on under their own damn noses!”

  “But your sister was pregnant when she died,” I pointed out. “How did they explain that?”

  Zach took a much longer sip of the drink he proclaimed to dislike. “My parents think that my sister was knocked up by Ian, this dumb kid that Deb used to hang with. Dad even went to the school and said that they should expel Ian. Like a public school was going to kick some kid out just for taking sex ed into his own hands.”

  Marcus wiggled his foot under the table. It wasn’t one of his normal ticks, he was trying to tell me something, but unless the message was, “check out my shoes, they’re Prada,” I wasn’t getting it.

  Zach’s drink was almost gone and he was now eyeing the door. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I get that.”

  “I’m gonna head out.”

  “Sure, let me just get the check—”

  “Nah, I’ll take the bus.”

  “Don’t be silly. I took you here, I’ll take you home.”

  But then something in Zach’s look stopped me. Perhaps he felt he had said too much, but what was clear to me was that he absolutely did not want me to take him anywhere and I got the distinct impression that I had pushed him as far as he was willing to go.

  “Zach,” Marcus said, his voice determinedly light and casual, “when I was your age I was confused. That’s what they call it when you’re gay and a teenager. Anyhoo, I used to wish that I could have a Gay Big Brother type to hang out with. Someone who I didn’t have to pretend with and who could tell me how to properly tweeze my eyebrows. If you ever feel the same—”

  “I’m not gay!”

  “Of course not,” Marcus soothed. “But perhaps you need a queer eye to help you get things in order.” He took one of his business cards out of his wallet. “Call anytime you like. I’ll be your Professor Higgins.”

  Zach wrinkled his brow. “Who the hell is Professor Higgins?”

  Marcus blinked in surprise. “You honestly don’t know?

  Maybe you are straight after all. But that doesn’t make you any less in need of a haircut and a makeover.” He pressed his card into Zach’s hand. “Seriously, call. You won’t regret it.”

  “Whatever.” But I noticed how carefully Zach handled the card as he put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  As he walked out of the restaurant I let my hands fly up to my temples. “I could never give him up,” I said aloud. “Even if he did do it.”

  “God, no. That would be like turning in a POW child for killing the soldiers who offed his parents.”

  “Okay, that’s a bit extreme…actually, no, I take it back. It’s a good metaphor,” I said, quickly correcting myself. “Maybe I could just tell Kane about the rape. No one knows about that, so I could have gotten the info from the grave.”

  “You’re going to use Zach’s dead sister’s rape as a tool to keep you in that house?”

  “Not that house, my house,” I snapped, but my defiance wasn’t quite strong enough to withstand my tugs of conscience. “No,” I continued reluctantly. “But I really need something, Marcus. I can’t lose, not this time.”

  “Well, yeah, it would be a ginormous inconvenience and financially…”

  “It’s more than that,” I said.

  Marcus tipped his head to the side, causing his little locks to point down toward the chrome bar. “You’ve got a real emotional attachment going on, don’t you, darling?”

  “To my home? Yes, yes I do.”

  “Lots of people lose their homes, Sophie. These days it’s positively de rigueur.”

  “I’m not losing my home,” I said stubbornly. “I won’t throw Zach under a bus, but I will find something to give to Kane.” I toyed with the straw in my drink. “Why were you wiggling your foot earlier?”

  “You didn’t catch on to the meaning behind the foot wag? I was trying to point out that Zach’s faith in his parents’ ignorance may be unwarranted. Maybe they figured it all out and they’re the ones who are guilty.”

  “You were trying to say all that with a foot wag?”

  “I have very expressive feet.”

  “Okay, fine. Maybe it was Zach’s parents, but…” I let my voice trail off.

  Marcus bobbed his head up and down in an understanding nod. “Throwing Zach’s parents under a bus isn’t really a good way to spare Zach from anything. All right, then, who do you want to be guilty? I mean, if you could choose?”

  I chewed on this for a minute. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Venus go down.”

  “You mean on something other than your ex?” Marcus laughed.

  “I honestly don’t care about that. She can do whatever she wants to him, but she’s been on my case from the minute that she laid eyes on me, and if you met her…” I shook my head. “She’s weird, Marcus, like creepy weird. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did kill Enrico.”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with a little wishful thinking.” Marcus swiveled back and forth on his candy-colored bar stool. “Why don’t you see if you can back it up with any evidence? Anybody else on your hit list?”

  �
��Well, Kane obviously tops that list off. He’s the one messing with me.”

  “Does he have a motive? And if he does, would it help you? You may be able to get him locked up, but he’ll still have the right to sell his house to somebody else.”

  “I’ll find the evidence and I’ll use it against him. I’ll blackmail him until escrow goes through and then I’ll turn him in.”

  Marcus leaned back, his dark eyebrows tilting down toward the bridge of his nose. “Who are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Blackmail, Sophie? You’re going to blackmail a murderer instead of immediately turning him in to the police?”

  “Escrow will go through in just five days!”

  “Right, and what harm could a man with a lethal weapon do in five days, right?”

  “Marcus, this house, it’s like, it’s like it’s a member of my family. I need it. I need it the way I need…the way I need Mr. Katz.”

  “Hello?” Marcus stammered. “You’re talking about your fur baby!”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So now you know I’m serious.”

  Marcus sighed and did some more swiveling. “So Venus and Kane are the preferred suspects. Well, I guess we can look into that.”

  “We?” I asked hopefully.

  “Don’t look a gift-stallion in the mouth. I said I’d help, and I will.”

  “Marcus, I love you.”

  He smiled and dropped his arm around my shoulders. “Of course you do. What’s not to love?”

  “I want to get into Kane’s house. I’ve got to find a way to get him to invite me over and then, when he’s not looking, I’ll be able to look around and hopefully find something useful and/or incriminating.”

  “Won’t he notice that you’re searching the place while he’s entertaining you?”

  “That’s where you come in. If you come with me then I can keep him distracted while you snoop and vice versa.”

  “And what’s going to be your excuse for bringing me? I don’t know the man.”

  “I’ll come up with something. I’ll say you’re my guru or—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There are worse things than having a guru…I’m not sure what they are, but I’m sure there are a few,” I said. “But Kane’s into weird stuff so I’ll need a weird reason to explain your presence away. Guru might work, or my…my…my psychic! That’s it! I’ll say you’re a psychic and you’re helping me channel the spirits in my house! Kane will love that! We could go over there tomorrow morning!”