He didn’t answer.
I pressed him. “Was it an accident?”
“Look, you,” he said shortly, “you be quiet. You’ll get your turn to talk.’’
They left Liz and Prentiss and me together in the solarium. Though it was freezing outside, the winter sun was toasty warm under the sparkling glass panels. I remembered the brief sexy moments I’d spent with Rafik in that place, just twenty-four hours ago. As I sat awaiting interrogation, I wondered where he was now.
Liz spoke sotto voce to Prentiss, “John fired some shots at me this morning.”
“That’s ridiculous,” whispered Prentiss.
“I thought he might have come to hurt you too.”
Prentiss gave his wife a hard, cold look. “Elizabeth,” he said, “John is my brother, my half brother, a fact you still refuse to accept. He would not hurt you or me.”
Liz looked at me in exasperation. “Vannos, please tell my husband what happened at our house this morning.”
I complied politely, saying, “I wasn’t there when it happened, but I can vouch for the broken windows and the bullet holes in the wall. They were real. So were the investigating cops.”
Liz insisted, “I’m sure it was John who fired those shots.” She faced her husband squarely. “Who else would want me dead, since he stands to inherit my share?”
Prentiss answered her sharply, as if instructing a stubborn child. “No one will inherit anything until I die. You are accusing someone without proper evidence.”
“John resents me.”
“You imagine that. You always have. I’ve known John all my life, and he is not trying to hurt either of us.”
“He’s a hateful leech.”
“He is my brother.”
“Half brother,” retorted Liz, as if to prove she’d learned the correct word. Then she turned away from her husband and sulked.
A police officer arrived and asked her to go with him. As she left the solarium, Prentiss said to her, “Elizabeth, remember, don’t answer anything until our attorney arrives.”
“I can think for myself, Prentiss,” she said, and she set her jaw forward and walked away with the officer.
Prentiss Kingsley shook his distinguished head in dismay, then he dropped his forehead into his upturned palms.
I asked quietly, “Who found Danny’s body?”
He kept his head down as he spoke. “I’d just come back from my morning run. He was on his bed….” Then Prentiss Kingsley, heir to a mega-million-dollar chocolate fortune, began to sob quietly. He raised his head and looked at me with wet red eyes. “Do you know what they did to him?” he moaned. His chin was quivering and his cheeks were streaked with tears. “Did you see?”
I felt bad for him. He’d obviously been trying to keep his composure for his wife and the police, but now, seated, alone with me, he’d lost control. It’s an effect I sometimes have on people.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you want to tell me?” My Slavic curiosity was hoping for excruciating detail.
He bit his lip, then spoke. “They took a gun …”
“Yes?”
“And they put it …” He paused and suppressed another wave of sobbing that was building in his body.
“Go on,” I encouraged him. “It’s best to say it.”
“They put it in him….” Then the sobbing won out, and he couldn’t continue. I moved near to him and put my arm around his shoulder—and quickly discovered that Prentiss Kingsley’s retiring personality, now stirred to agony over the death of a young friend, couldn’t hide his powerful body. It’s strange how some men give the impression of softness and refinement, while possessing strong, virile physiques beneath their clothes. At my touch, however, he jerked himself away. He heaved and cried and gasped for another few minutes, then stopped abruptly.
“Now my wife won’t even listen to me.”
I sat and stared with a blank expression, one step removed from the shrink who typically asks, “Why do you feel that way?” Eventually people will talk themselves out, into either resolution or impasse. Sure enough, Prentiss Kingsley continued on his own, without further prompting.
“My brother John—there’s such a strain between him and my wife. He was always so easygoing and friendly, but when I married, and then when my wife hired Daniel to help with the new store, well, John became aloof. Little by little it’s become open hostility, so much so that it’s easy for my wife to blame him for any trouble we have now.”
As he talked, I stared at him with intense dispassion, the kind of look that costs over a hundred bucks an hour in a therapist’s office. It seemed to work, and he went on.
“Perhaps it comes from Elizabeth working so hard to get where she is. I’ve tried to tell her it doesn’t matter anymore, that she doesn’t have to strive so much.”
I remained silent. Why spoil a potential gush of information? When people have just experienced a major trauma, they often tell the most intimate things to a convenient stranger. How else do you think those funeral directors find out about the bank accounts and the trust funds and the investment portfolios?
Prentiss rambled on, as if talking to himself. “Where is my attorney? There’s so much to be done now.”
I sensed his free flow of facts slowing down, so I tried a direct question. “What about an heir?”
Prentiss’s eyes flickered angrily. “Really, I think that is none of your business.”
I’d gone too far, stepped over the boundary of propriety. Perish the notion that Prentiss Kingsley and his vibrant young wife didn’t “do the job” together.
We sat together in silence until Liz returned to the solarium, this time with an officer of the local police, who was apologizing for the inconvenience all the nasty questions were causing her and her esteemed husband. Never mind the inconvenience to Dan Doherty, wherever he was now.
The same officer asked me to follow him to answer a few questions. I told him I had to use the bathroom first, which was a deceit to let me look around. He said okay, then led the way. As we passed by the bedroom where Danny’s body was, I paused at the open doorway and gazed inside, taking it all in quickly before the cop realized I wasn’t directly behind him. The most obvious thing was the blood. Red was everywhere, in splatters and gobs and puddles. It was hard to imagine that a body held so much blood inside. Dan Doherty was lying naked, face down on the bed. It took my mind a few seconds to realize what the fleshy gunk on the sheets meant: The gun had been shoved into him from behind and fired. My stomach heaved, and my ploy to use the bathroom became an urgent reality. I ran past the cop and got my head over the hopper just in time.
The questioning that followed was routine and simple, at least for the moment. The local cops just wanted to know whether I’d known Danny, and why I was there. I explained that both Dan Doherty and Liz Carlini had been customers of mine, and that Liz had invited me out with her today. I purposely didn’t tell them about her suspicions concerning John Lough. That was only her side of things anyway. The police seemed friendly and cooperative enough, which further confirmed my theory that if you live in a wealthy community, even the police are nice.
On my way back to the solarium, I paused once again at the bedroom door. Danny’s body was now covered, which gave me a chance to notice something I hadn’t seen earlier. On the night-stand near the bed was a heart-shaped box of Le Jardin truffles, spattered with Danny’s blood. The box was open, but from what I could see, none of the candy had been eaten. Again I wondered where Rafik was.
Minutes later the police told me I could go, so I went to say good-bye to Liz and Prentiss, who were finally in conference with their attorney. Liz seemed brighter now. Perhaps the all-knowing presence of their attorney had renewed her confidence. She even insisted on paying for a cab for my return trip to Boston. I protested the extravagance, but she convinced me, explaining that she’d asked me to accompany her out there in the first place. Then I reasoned, she could afford it.
Even with the cab rid
e back to town, I got there too late to pick up Tobias at the shop. I called Nicole at home and apologized for not returning sooner, yet another of my broken promises. She seemed to accept it all in good spirits. I wondered, Was Charles there, tallying the chits on my personal Judgment Day Account? And with Nicole being so pleasant, why did I still feel the floor dissolving from under me?
“Nikki,” I said hesitantly, not sure how to begin what I had to tell her next. “This whole shuffle-and-deal with Tobias will be over soon anyway.”
“It will?” she asked with little interest.
“Yes. Laurett Cole will be released soon, I promise.”
“Stanley, what are you talking about?”
“There’s been another killing. Dan Doherty was murdered in Abigail today. There’s no way Branco can hold Laurett for that one.”
“So that’s what delayed you!”
“Yes, Nikki. It was real life today.”
I recounted everything to her, from my visit to Liz Carlini’s house in Chestnut Hill to my leaving Abigail by taxi. If I slyly censored some gruesome detail, she would instinctively sense the gap and pounce on me immediately and command me, “Tell me everything.” Never skip details when dealing with a gossip-monger, even if you have to contrive them.
At the end of it all Nicole said, “Darling, forgive me for doubting you. I had no idea what had happened. Would you like some time off tomorrow, well-deserved if not earned?”
“Thanks, Nikki, but I’m fine, I think. Numb, anyway. It hasn’t sunk in yet.”
“Call me if you have to.”
“Sure, doll.”
She hung up, and I knew we were friends again.
Alone, finally, and psychologically exhausted, I took a double shot of bourbon, scrubbed myself almost raw under a hot shower, then went to bed. I was asleep in seconds.
13
HOUSE CALL
THE CLOCK DIAL SAYS 2:40 A.M. when the noise awakens me—the sound of a heavy leather jacket falling onto the floor. Sugar Baby is sitting high up on her haunches, purring loudly from her place on the down pillow next to my head. She seems excited but not frightened. I realize that the fallen jacket isn’t mine, that someone is in my bedroom. I freeze, trying to discern the uninvited form that lurks in the darkest corner of the room. The air is still, and for a moment I hope it is all imaginary. But I hear him take a breath, and I am terrified. I am helpless, lying naked in my bed. The telephone is nearby, but what good is it? How can I call the police when whoever is in my room can see me in the dim light coming in from the street window?
His voice breaks the silence.
“Do not have fear.”
I recognize the French accent at once. It’s Rafik.
“What do you want?” I ask, as I reach for the lamp on the night table.
“No light.”
“Why not?”
“Non!”
“Are you afraid I’ll see the blood on your clothes?”
“I did not do it.” He moves closer to the bed. “I did not kill Dunny. I do not have to. He will give me anything I ask for.”
“Except sex.”
Rafik replies almost sadly, “Except love.”
I sense him removing his clothes with all the familiar sounds of a lover undressing in the dark: the putt-putt of shirt buttons released, the rustle of cotton sliding off shoulders and down arms, the creaking of heavy leather boots pried off, then dropped—clunk—to the floor, the loose jangle of a brass belt buckle, the secret whisper of a fly zipper lowered, the soft crunch of blue jeans pulled down and off muscled limbs, the snap of elastic. Has he purposely left his white socks on, knowing that’s a peculiar weakness of mine?
He kneels down and pulls something from his jacket pocket. Then he approaches the bed, rests one knee on the edge. He places the thing from his jacket on the nightstand. In the darkness I can make out the form of a gun. The air between us pulses with my fear and his desire—and probably my desire, too.
He says, “I want to be with you.”
“I can’t. Not after what you did.”
“What did I do? I just want to love him, but he says no. Don’t say no, Stani.”
He has the advantage on me. If he is a killer, I don’t want to press the wrong buttons and get myself destroyed. He lifts the duvet and slides into the bed beside me. Sugar Baby remains in her spot on the pillow. That’s a comfort at least. My pet remains constant, even though I might become the victim of a sexual murder.
“Relax, mon cher,” he murmurs. “I will not hurt you.”
He touches my shoulder. His hand is warm and strong, not the way I imagine a killer’s hand to be. I’m certain he’ll be an expert lover too, marred only by the tendency to kill his partners afterwards. Then a strange thing happens within me, occurs simultaneously as I realize that this naked man in my bed could end my life. It’s an irony: I have no lover, and now a killer wants me. And instead of finding a means of escape and self-preservation, I feel myself surrender to him. With total awareness and calm I think, If my faltering, meaningless, stupid, petty life is to come to an ignoble end at the hands of a sexy killer, so be it. Rafik could have whatever he wanted.
He raises himself up on one elbow and faces me. He leans toward me and puts his lips lightly on mine. I feel their chiseled shape against my own mouth. Only a mouth, and what wondrous textures! But I lie rigid, wondering what he’ll do next. I feel his lips tighten into a smile.
“I surprise you, eh?”
I take a deep breath, then let it slide out in a long, noisy gasp.
“Good,” he says. “Now I have you.”
I pray that I survive whatever is to follow.
Under the down comforter, Rafik rolls up onto his knees and crouches over me, straddles my body. His warm thighs press fast around my waist. The hair on his legs scratches my smooth skin. He bends closer and flicks at my nipples with his tongue, then grazes them lightly with his day’s growth of stubble, causing kilowatts of pleasure to jolt through my body. He lowers his haunches down gently onto my crotch, then nestles around, squeezing and pulling on me with the furry warmth of his loins. Strong hands, hot hands knead my shoulders and upper arms. He drags his heavy pouch back and forth across my belly. A nip, and then another at my nipples. A moist member insinuates itself between my thighs, thighs pressed together, sealed with the pressure of his own strong legs around them. A hand finds a hand, a lip finds a lip, a sigh a sigh.
He sits up again and presses his hips harder onto my crotch. He presses, squeezes, twists, and milks my flesh with his butt. Even as he prepares to impale himself, he holds me captive in his strong limbs.
“I have no protection,” I say. There’s a killer in my bed, and I’m worried about safe sex.
“Voilà!” he replies, and takes a small foil packet from the nightstand, near the gun.
Hot, hopeful hands find their way down my chest and past my belly. He coils himself up and bends over to kiss me down where I am drooling clear syrup. He nuzzles in the bush, then kisses the shaft around its tip. He works his way toward the base, nibbling along the full length and following the course of his lips directly with the latex membrane that will protect us.
Now he sits up and begins the fast ride home. He grasps my shoulders for leverage and pushes himself down onto me. He winces sharply at the first penetration, just the tip. He holds me tightly in a spasm of pain. I blow cool air on his face. We breathe together. I murmur, “It’s just another sensation.” He lowers his torso and presses himself against me. His clipped chest hair scratches my skin, scraping me as he squirms and burrows himself further onto me, over me, ever compressing us into one. I feel his warmth surround my cock, and from skin to muscle to bone to soul, all resistance is freed and gone, all pores and portals open. We cantor, we gallop, we race too fast, we leap through a dark dream, explode into fire and stars, shatter into sparkling dust, fall and die.
14
AIN’T NOBODY’S BUSINESS
IT WAS SUGAR BABY’S COOL WET NOSE
nudging my chin that awoke me the next morning. That and her noisy purr. Rafik was gone. Even his scent had vanished. Had he really been there? Or had I imagined it all, like a movie in my mind, albeit a movie with Sensurround? The only evidence of our nocturnal adventure was a sadly wrinkled rubber on the carpet, and my humming haunches.
I got up and put coffee on. The telephone rang just as I was feeding and watering Sugar Baby. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve inadvertently created a conditioned response in my cat, that phone conversations mean food for her, since I so often do the two things together.
I answered the phone and Nikki asked, “Are you all right?”
“Sure, doll. Why?”
“Your voice sounds strange today, almost hoarse.”
“I was, uh, doing a little primal scream therapy last night.”
“Alone?”
“There was a facilitator….”
“We’ll discuss that later,” she said. “Can you open the shop today? We’re all going to be a little late here.”
“Who’s we?”
“Can you do it, Stanley?”
“Does this mean I’m manager again?”
“I suppose so.”
I paused. “Then I’ll open.”
“Thank you,” she said, and hung up.
I didn’t have a chance to tell her that I’d planned to see Lieutenant Branco first thing that morning, before going to the shop. I wanted to find out what he knew about the killing of Dan Doherty yesterday. Now that would have to wait until later, after I opened Snips.
My stomach grumbled for food as it usually does first thing in the morning, especially after a rigorous “night before.” I fixed myself a quick breakfast of organic fat-free whole wheat muffins slathered with extra butter, and fresh-ground coffee without sugar, but with a dollop of heavy cream. The breakfast was half-healthful, at least. Then I showered and dressed and headed for the shop.
It was biting cold outside and the sky was gray. Another snowstorm seemed inevitable. Cold, warm, cloudy, sunny, wet, dry—all in a day’s work for typical New England weather. As it turned out, I was booked solid that morning, so I wouldn’t have a chance to slip out to see Branco as I’d planned. Nicole and Tobias arrived shortly after noontime. She seemed a mite grumpy, though I was extra bright and cheery. While Tobias was using the bathroom, I asked Nicole if Charles had spent the night. I wanted to know if her lovemate had stayed until morning, unlike my succubus, who’d vanished as mysteriously as he’d arrived.
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