Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress Read online

  “I just need to talk to her. You have to help me set it up.”

  Leah folded her hands in her lap. “Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

  “Because…” I searched my mind for a way to finish that sentence. What could I promise her that would be appealing enough to make her abandon both common sense and caution? I could promise to babysit her son! No, I couldn’t do that. I was desperate, not masochistic. Besides, Leah hadn’t even wanted me to babysit my nephew since that time that I let him paint his face with her lipstick. I glanced out the window and spotted a woman with a ruby-red tote bag hurrying down the sidewalk. Ruby like Mary Ann’s ring. “Because,” I said with a smile, “if you do I’ll convince Mary Ann to hire you as her wedding planner.”

  Leah’s lips parted slightly and then her mouth gradually opened into an O as what I had said sank in. “Mary Ann is getting married?”

  “She is.”

  “But I thought her boyfriend was gay!”

  “Why would you think that?”

  Leah raised her eyebrows. “We’re talking about Monty, right? The man who invented the samba-dancing seal cub?”

  I hesitated. “Okay, I can see why you might have gotten a gay vibe, but he really is straight.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “And they’re really getting married?”

  “It’s going to be a huge event.”

  “Well, then of course I’ll plan the wedding!” Leah brought her hands to the table with a thump. “You won’t have to convince her of anything. It’s a given.”

  “Nothing’s a given. Trust me when I tell you that Mary Ann is going to want the full fairy tale wedding. She’s going to want everything to be perfect and she’s not going to want to leave it all in the hands of an amateur.”

  “A what! Sophie, did you not just hear me tell you about the bar mitzvahs? Leon Panetta was there for God’s sake and he said the whole thing was fabulous. Fabulous, Sophie! How many times do you think Leon Panetta has used that word?”

  “Look, I know you’re qualified but you’ve never been hired for a wedding before. It’s not on your resume and Mary Ann doesn’t know you that well, so…”

  “But she knows you. If you tell her I’ll do a good job she’ll believe you!”

  “Yes, she will,” I said with an overly sweet smile. “If I tell her.”

  Leah’s eyes widened with horror. “You’re evil.”

  “No, just mildly devious.”

  Leah tapped her nails against the faux-wood table. “You’ll tell her to hire me if I set up a meeting between you and Chrissie?”

  “I can’t tell her to hire you. It’s her wedding and ultimately her decision. But I’ll suggest it…strongly. And as you pointed out, with Mary Ann my opinion has weight.”

  Leah did some more tapping. “Fine,” she finally said. “I’ll call Chrissie. Perhaps I can even get her to see you within the next day or so. That way we can get this horrid business over with. I’m sure Mama will take Jack for the time it takes to deal with this mess.”

  I smiled to myself as Leah dialed. There were lots of things that bugged me about my sister, but I did love her efficiency.

  CHAPTER 6

  I like to hang out with secretive and dishonorable people. Their flaws are the perfect complement to my superiority complex.

  –Fatally Yours

  It took Leah a total of five minutes to call Chrissie and get her to agree to see me. She told her I wanted to join the fundraising board for the symphony and was hoping that after meeting me Chrissie would be willing to help Leah persuade the other board members to accept me. It seemed like a weak cover, but Chrissie accepted it immediately. We were to come to her apartment at four o’clock the next day to talk about my suitability.

  In other words it was too good to be true. I mentally analyzed all the new information as we walked back to the hospital. Why would Chrissie write that article two years after Dena’s supposed offense? It’s not as if Tim had walked out on Chrissie. He did marry her after the fling with Dena. Maybe Leah was wrong. Maybe MAAP really was formed to fight pornography in general. The article Chrissie had written had included disparaging mentions of several of San Francisco’s strip clubs as well as a few nationally published adult magazines.

  But Dena was the only individual she had actually named, and what she had said about her…

  “I’m not going to have time to visit with Dena this morning,” Leah grumbled, interrupting my thoughts. “I have to get Jack.”

  “You’re sure Mama will take him tomorrow?” I asked. As much as I wanted Leah to introduce me to Chrissie, I really didn’t want to bring my nephew to the home of a potential psychotic. I was pretty sure that was something most of the parenting books would frown on.

  “Actually she already offered to watch him but I’ve been leaving him with the nanny a lot while I work and I was worried we were having too much apart time.” She glanced at her watch. “It’ll be fine. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at three-thirty at your house. Be ready.”

  “I’m always ready.”

  Leah gave me her give-me-a-break look. “Tell Dena I’ll try to be back tomorrow, and, for God’s sake, go to the gift shop and buy her a magazine or something. The woman can’t be expected to spend the entire day watching game shows and soap operas.”

  I smiled to myself as Leah turned on her heel and headed toward the parking lot. The thing about my sister was that she was totally self-absorbed and totally considerate at the same time. I realize that isn’t possible, but it was an impossibility that Leah seemed to manage well.

  I went back in the hospital. I had a lot to do but today I would spend at the hospital. I just wanted to be by Dena’s side and remind myself that she was alive.

  The day crept by at a snail’s pace. Marcus stopped by for a while but seemed somewhat unnerved by the hospital setting. Mary Ann and Jason were a constant presence and Monty brought Dena’s parents to see her. Her parents didn’t say much. Her father stood a few paces behind her mother as she asked Dena a few clipped questions about how she was doing. It would have been nice if she had shown a little warmth, but Dena’s mother didn’t do warmth, and her father didn’t do anything but stand in her mother’s shadow. In an odd way her parents modeled the master and servant relationship that Dena occasionally played with in the bedroom. That was a rather disturbing thought and I quickly decided not to dwell on it.

  When they left Mary Ann walked out with them, promising to be back in less than half an hour. That just left Jason and me sitting in Dena’s room as she stared moodily at the ceiling. Jason’s eyes were on the brown swinging door that Isa, Dena’s mother, had just gone through.

  “What the fuck’s up her ass?” he asked.

  “She’s pissed,” Dena said with a shrug.

  “Why?” I asked incredulously. “She mad at you for getting shot?”

  “Not really.” Dena picked up the remote control to the television and turned it over in her hands. “For my mother being pissed isn’t so much a mood as it is a permanent state of being.”

  “Oh, got it.” Jason let out a long sigh of relief. “I thought maybe she didn’t like me or something.”

  “You’re not the one she doesn’t like,” Dena said shortly.

  I smiled and settled myself into the chair by Dena’s bedside. I knew Isa didn’t like me. For one thing she thought I was going to hell because I was a Jew. It’s always hard to have a positive relationship with someone who thinks you’re going to hell. I also suspected that she was clinging to not just a few racist sentiments…not that she ever came out and said so. It was just the way she always seemed surprised that I spoke grammatically correct English and didn’t have any friends in prison that tipped me off.

  Dena gave me a sharp look. “I wasn’t talking about you either,” she said. “The only person in this room that she has any real antipathy for is me.”

  I swallowed. How did I respond to that? Of course the best answe
r was probably not to respond at all. “Does she still go to church three times a week?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but in her last letter she told me she switched congregations again. It’s hard for her to find a religious community that’s intolerant enough for her.” Dena turned on the television and started flipping through the channels so quickly it was impossible to tell what was on what station.

  “All religions are institutions of intolerance,” Jason sneered as he walked over to the window. “They’ll never embrace the beauty of the alternative lifestyle. They’re always spouting shit about heaven and hell. They fail to grasp that it’s about the now, man. It’s about the fucking now.”

  “The fucking now,” Dena repeated, finally settling on CNN. “Maybe that’s my mom’s problem, she doesn’t like fucking anything. She doesn’t even like fucking in the literal sense.”

  “Dena,” I said with a laugh, “we don’t have to get that graphic about your mom.”

  “No, I’m serious. I think the reason she is so into her religion is that it gives her a good reason to be against casual sex or any sex that isn’t for the explicit purpose of procreation. But the truth is my mom doesn’t like sex because it’s hard to be completely in control of yourself during the throes of ecstasy, and Mom doesn’t like to ever be out of control.”

  “Are you serious?” Jason turned away from the window, so that his figure was framed by the blue-gray backdrop of the San Franciscan sky. “She doesn’t dig ecstasy?”

  “Nope.” She looked up at the face of Wolf Blitzer, wrinkled her nose in distaste and changed the station to Headline News. “All my life she’s been telling me that I must always be in complete control of myself. She can’t understand why I ditched that lesson in favor of the ‘wild life.’”

  “But you didn’t—” I started but then quickly stopped myself. The truth was that no one maintained control during sex as well as Dena did. Sex was always on her terms. She chose the positions, she decided if there would be role-playing or if her partner was going to be tied to the bed or not. She may not have realized it, but Dena had totally internalized her mother’s life lessons. But I sensed that pointing that out to her now wasn’t going to go over all that well.

  But Dena wasn’t paying attention to me anyway. She was staring down at her legs. “A wild life,” she repeated. “I wonder how wild it’ll be now.”

  Jason laughed. “Trust me, baby, it’ll be wild. You don’t have it in you to be tame.”

  But Dena didn’t even break a smile. She was still staring at her legs and the look in her eyes… God, I had never before seen her look so sad. It made me want to hold her and then throw things and then wave my fists in the air and rail at God for the unfairness of it all.

  Dena looked up at me, and behind the sadness I saw the flash of anger. “The guy who did this…he has to be found. I don’t think I’ll be able to live if the person who did this to me gets away with it.”

  “The shooter won’t get away with it,” I said softly. “On that you have my word.”

  She looked at me for a long moment before nodding. And then she turned her eyes back up to the news.

  By the time I pulled my car into my own driveway the sky was darkening and the air was damp and cool. I liked the feel of it. It gave me a sense of place.

  I found Anatoly in the kitchen unloading a bag of groceries as Mr. Katz sat on the floor watching him with hungry eyes. Anatoly stopped when he spotted me, a baguette in his hand. “How is she?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. I had given up on trying to answer that question. “I thought you might stop by the hospital,” I said.

  “I considered it, but I knew she would be inundated with visitors. I’ll go when she doesn’t feel like she’s playing hostess from a hospital bed.”

  “Ah, good call.”

  He was quiet for a moment before placing the baguette on the island in the middle of the kitchen with a definitive thump. “I’ll make you a sandwich.” His tone implied that an I’m-not-hungry response would not be accepted. I hopped up on the marble countertop as he pulled out ingredients that he had just put away: Brie, garlic cloves and a bowl from the refrigerator filled with what looked like slices of tomato marinating in oil and spices.

  “Wait,” I said as I watched him place the tomatoes next to me. “When did you do this?”

  “I had a little spare time in the middle of the day so I gave myself a project.” He came over and gave me a slow lingering kiss before going back to the middle of the kitchen where he had placed all the other ingredients. “It’ll take a half hour to bake the garlic,” he said casually as he threw some cloves in a pan.

  This is why I’m okay with overcast skies. I had a boyfriend who marinated tomatoes when he was bored. Life doesn’t get sunnier than that.

  “They’re reporting the story on the news,” Anatoly said, interrupting my silent reverie. “It’s sensational enough to get a lot of play.”

  And now the dark clouds were coming indoors. I sighed and adjusted my position. “What’s the angle? Woman shot by unknown assailant in the Lake Street district while celebrating her cousin’s engagement?”

  “Yep,” Anatoly said. “They finally released Dena’s name a couple of hours ago. I take it that means Mary Ann was successful in contacting Dena’s parents?”

  “Yeah, they’re here.” Mr. Katz was circling Anatoly’s legs. He knew food was being prepared. Still, it seemed unnatural that a cat would have a craving for Brie. “I can’t imagine that Dena wants to be San Francisco’s celebrity victim,” I mused.

  Anatoly nodded. He pulled a bottle of sparkling water out of the fridge and poured me a glass. “I talked to the other tenants in Mary Ann’s building today.”

  “Oh?”

  “They all insist that they didn’t buzz anyone into the building last night.”

  “Okay.” I sipped my drink and let the bubbles play on my tongue. “So whoever did this had a key to the building or had access to one.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe the tenants are lying to me out of embarrassment,” he said as he dribbled extra-virgin olive oil over a small pan of garlic. “There’s no security camera to prove anything. Also, a lot of the people who live in that building are older and many of them are beginning to lose their hearing. They wouldn’t necessarily have heard someone running up or down the stairs.”

  “So you spent the day questioning tenants and you learned exactly nothing.”

  “I learned that they all like Mary Ann.” He put the pan in the oven and slammed the door. “I think she’s the youngest person living there. More than one of the other residents said she brightens the place up. I seriously doubt that this was an inside job.”

  “Okay, not nothing then. You learned that grandma didn’t shoot Dena with a silencer. Well, I suppose that’s progress.”

  “We have to start somewhere, Sophie, and it’s usually a good idea to start with the immediate area around the scene of the crime.”

  “I know but…God, I just want someone to pay. I mean, not just someone. The right someone. I was talking to Leah today and she said—”

  Anatoly’s phone started ringing. It was by the tomatoes and I picked it up to see the number.

  “It’s a 212 area code. Who’s calling you from New York?”

  Swiftly Anatoly crossed the kitchen and took the phone from me. He glanced at the number once and then dismissed the call.

  “Who was that?”

  “Just an old client.”

  “An old client?” Mr. Katz was staring at the oven. It would be horrible if he ended up being the first kitty to die jumping into an oven in an attempt to attack an oiled clove of garlic.

  “Yes, old. I’m not taking on any more of her cases.”

  “Her?” He had my attention now. “Her who? It’s not that Mandy bimbo is it?”

  “It wasn’t Mandy, not that it would be a problem if it was.”

  “She was coming between us.”

  “She was a client, Sophie.”

&nbs
p; “She was Playboy’s Miss August, Anatoly,” I snapped. “And did she have to call you at two in the morning? Was that part of your client-detective contract? Did you have to hold your meetings on her boat where she could model bikini tops that could double as friggin’ sails! Size-four-triple-D bimbo. Those things were nothing more than a couple of man-made buoys.”

  “That case ended six months ago. I never touched her.”

  “But you wanted to touch her. I bet you even looked at her Playboy pictures.”

  “I was curious. I’m a guy, Sophie.”

  “If by ‘guy’ you mean total jerk, I’m in complete agreement.”

  “I am making you a tomato and Brie sandwich. Jerks don’t do that.”

  “Okay, fine. A lot of the time you’re great. But there are also times when you’re a little bit of an asshole.”

  “A little bit?”

  I held up my hand revealing a little bit of space between my thumb and finger to show how much a little bit is…then I widened the space by about half an inch.

  He smiled. “Let’s not argue about things that don’t matter. She really didn’t interest me. Not only did she look like a plastic doll but she had the intellect of one, too.” He came over to me, making space for himself between my thighs. “I prefer women who are less…manufactured.”

  I laughed despite myself and trailed the tips of my fingers along his bicep. “You’re really going to help me find Dena’s shooter?”

  “I will.” He tucked my hair behind my ears and kissed me on the nose before returning to his cooking work. “I have a connection at the police department who might get me a little more information than what’s being released to the press. Tomorrow morning I have to do some work for the lawyer who hired me to investigate that workman’s comp claim, but I should be free by the late afternoon. I’ve arranged to meet with my police contact for an early dinner tomorrow after his shift. In the meantime don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said vaguely.

  “Yes, you do. If you find something out, tell me. If you think you’ve identified a suspect, don’t go running over to confront them. Leave that stuff to me and the police.”