Love You to Death

by Grant Michaels

  I slapped my butt in time to the music and hooted, “Olé!” The cheeks turned red where I’d hit them. And Bruno, my personal pet, stirred to new life between my legs. I looked at my face in the mirror. The newly shorn red hair stood up like a brush, and the green eyes glittered happily. The dopey grin meant I was ready for the steamy heat. Then it all crashed under a wave of Slavic melancholy. Were these antics the reason I was alone? Was I so eccentric that others didn’t dare to spend private time with me? Didn’t anyone else like my flavor of fun?

  I got out of the shower at eight-thirty. The pizza was almost burnt, but I chewed on it anyway while I towel-dried my hair, something I forbid my clients to do. Besides, when it’s as short as mine was, almost nothing can hurt it. I finished drying off, put on clean clothes, and headed out to Chez-Chez for a night of fun and frolic.

  But it didn’t work.

  I was with friends I liked, and who liked me, yet I couldn’t relax. Even the stellar performance seemed too contrived, too sophisticated, too intent on entertaining, not like my ingenuous, homegrown striptease earlier. I downed drink after drink, but that didn’t help either. I was unpleasantly distracted by what had happened during the last several days. Sure, Laurett was free again, but what was going on in Abigail? Someone was after something, and they were willing to kill people to get it. Who was it? Rafik? John Lough? Mary Phinney? Liz Carlini? Prentiss Kingsley? As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shake off the effects of recent events. And yes, perhaps there was that element of wanting to show Branco up again, to prove to him that even a hairdresser is worthy to breathe the same air as the rest of humanity. Perhaps the liquor was kicking in if I could think like that.

  I stayed until the end of the show, then went directly home. Francesca was concerned that I was coming down with something and suggested more liquor, but I knew it was simply mental exhaustion, which doesn’t take much with me. Within minutes after arriving home and collapsing into bed, I was asleep.

  17

  IS THAT A GUN IN YOUR POCKET?

  NEXT MORNING, FRIDAY, AS I WAS LEAVING for the shop, I discovered outside my door yet another large, heart-shaped box of chocolate. These velvet-covered behemoths seemed to be turning up everywhere, as though Saint Valentine’s theme this year was feast-or-famine, only with chocolate. I figured that Rafik had sneaked into the building again, so I called out his name in the hallway. No answer. I picked up the box—Sugar Baby had already begun her sniffing, chin-rubbing inspection of it—and took it back inside. Attached to the top was a small envelope. I opened it and read the note inside. “I love you,” it said, in small, neat printing. No signature. A pleasant, if unoriginal sentiment. If you loved me, pal, you wouldn’t try to fatten me up so much. The box seemed extra heavy, which made me extra curious about its contents. Perhaps it was a slab of fine couverture for me to gorge on. That’s the highest quality chocolate, used only for coating … and decadent noshing. As I slipped the ribbon off the box, I promised myself I’d get a fresh start on the diet the first of March, or the first day of spring, or the first of April, or sometime.

  Inside the box was a gun.

  So much for my cocoa butter fix. I called Nikki and explained that I’d be a little late getting to the shop, since I wanted to take the newfound evidence to Branco. She sounded almost relieved that I was once again embroiled in the case. After all, it would give us something to argue about, which is probably the basis of our friendship.

  I took the loaded chocolate box to Lieutenant Branco. When I got in to see him, I told him breathlessly that I had something important for him. He glanced dubiously at the heart-shaped box, then spoke with a cool, condescending smile.

  “I already told you once, I can’t accept gifts. It’s against regulations.”

  “Lieutenant, it wasn’t a gift last time, and it isn’t one now.” If the notion persisted in his mind, was he secretly hoping for a gift from me? And if I gave it, would he take it, or refuse it? Was I projecting? Maybe it was simply Branco’s presumption that all people are doomed to worship him.

  He clenched his jaw and remained silent.

  I continued, “You might want to make an exception to your rules today. Lieutenant.”

  “Kraychik, your games get tiresome.”

  Arrogant bastard! I lifted the lid to the box, so that the carefully padded contents showed. Branco saw the gun, but maintained his composure.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “It was outside my apartment this morning, just exactly like this, in the box. I thought you might want to know about it.”

  Branco took the box and studied the gun inside without a word—and without touching it, of course.

  I said, “Maybe it’s the gun that killed Dan Doherty and fired the shots at Liz Carlini.”

  Silence. Using a pencil, he lifted the gun out and sniffed at the barrel. A tiny nod. “Strange coincidence,” he said. “Someone just called to report a missing gun.”

  “Who?”

  No answer.

  “Mary Phinney?” I asked. “John Lough?”

  Branco grunted. “Was there anything else with this?”

  I reluctantly showed him the love note too. He studied it carefully, for quite a few moments, then raised his eyebrows and said, “Looks like you have an admirer.”

  “All my suitors send guns and poison.”

  Branco called the lab to have someone pick the parcel up, then turned back to me. “Now that you’ve relinquished the weapon, why don’t you tell me where to find him?”

  “Who?”

  “Your lover.”

  “I don’t have a lover.”

  “You know whom I mean.”

  Who, went my tic for proper case. “There’s no way to prove Rafik left the gun.”

  “Who else has been at your apartment recently?”

  “Tobias Cole was there, but that’s back when I was still a pederast.”

  “I want facts, not sarcasm.”

  “If you want my cooperation, Lieutenant, you get all of me.”

  Branco grunted again. I figured he’d repressed most of his urges to slug people into those rage-laden grunts. He’d not yet mastered the art of verbal jousts.

  “For your information, Kraychik …” He paused as though savoring a secret. “There’s been another victim.”

  “Who?”

  Branco eyed me. “Can’t you guess?”

  “Sure, let’s play twenty questions. Let’s see, is it a man or a woman?”

  “Cute, real cute, considering who the victim is.”

  “If you don’t like cute, Lieutenant, why don’t you talk with the same directness you expect from everyone else?”

  “All right, then. Prentiss Kingsley was found by the Gloucester police early this morning.”

  That stopped me. “Where?”

  “In his car at a roadside rest stop, a place known to be frequented by …”

  Long pause.

  I prompted him, “Big burly truckers?”

  Branco nodded. “It’s the kind of place you guys like to go to.”

  “Don’t assume we all check our dipsticks the same way.”

  Branco sat back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. He grinned sadistically. “Gun was fired right into his mouth.” He waited for my reaction, but I sat mute. “Think the killer was trying to tell us something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Seems to me there’s a similar kind of sexual theme operating in both killings.”

  “You mean because a gun was inserted into a body opening?”

  “Sounds like sex to me,” he said with a cruel glint in his eye.

  “Is that how cops do it?”

  He bolted himself straight up and stuck out his jaw—all man, no nonsense. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. I thought there was more to sex than putting something in.”

  He let out a cynical little snort. “Maybe,” he said, avoiding my eyes.

  “Could the death have been su
icide?”

  “Funny you should ask. There was a note.”

  “Which explains your scrutiny of the card that came with this gun.”

  “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Lieutenant, you obviously didn’t have to decipher the message, so it must have been the handwriting.”

  “What do you think, Kraychik? Suicide?”

  “Prentiss Kingsley did seem despondent about Danny’s death.”

  “Enough to kill himself?”

  “Maybe he really loved Danny.”

  Branco shook his head. “Can’t imagine it.”

  “What? Feeling that strongly about someone?”

  “No. What it’s like to blow your brains out. Whole back of his skull—”

  “Why do you relish all the gore, Lieutenant?”

  Branco sat forward again and stared coldly at me. “I don’t relish it. It’s my job. I got used to it. Life isn’t all those pretty girls’ heads you spend your days playing with.”

  “They’re not all girls, Lieutenant, and they’re certainly not all pretty. And for your information, that’s my work. There’s a place for it, and I’m good at it. At least no one gets bullied at Snips.” Well, almost no one, I thought, recalling the occasional S/M blow-drying session with certain clients.

  “Kraychik, I know you’re protecting Rafik Panossian. I’m prepared to detain you on that alone, but right now you’re more useful out on the street, where you’ll undoubtedly lead us to him. After all, you just handed over what is probably the murder weapon.”

  “You said you can’t make a positive identification on a gun.”

  Just then, a woman from the lab arrived to take the gun and the parcel down for analysis.

  When she left, Branco said with a twisted little grin, “I can’t, but the lab will. And just for your information, we have an APB out for your lover, so if you know where he is, you have a responsibility to tell us.”

  “He is not my lover! We had sex, that’s all. You act as though we’re married already.”

  “Isn’t it all the same thing?”

  “Sounds like your definitions of sex, love, and marriage are a little confused, Lieutenant.” Look who was talking.

  Branco banged his fists on his desk. “Fool! You think you’re smart playing around with a killer, don’t you?” He shook his head disdainfully. “Your kind gets feeling a little too cocky once you’re out of the closet. Maybe it’s time to come out of the clouds, Kraychik.”

  “I’ll remember that, Lieutenant.”

  “You’re playing with a killer.”

  The phone on his desk rang. Branco grabbed it and listened intently. Then his face lit up into one big gloating smile. He hung up and announced his victory.

  “We got him, no thanks to you. You can go now.”

  “Where is he? Can I see him?”

  Branco dismissed me with a brusque wave of his hand.

  “Go. Now.”

  “I was just leaving anyway, Lieutenant, to flutter back to the shop and play in the blond hair of some pretty girlie sex object.”

  Grunt went the cop.

  I left Station E and headed back to Snips. With Rafik caught now, I felt a sudden urge to help him. My own confusion of sex and love was fast becoming the confusion of sex and crime. By the time I arrived at the shop my anger had grown to the point that I tromped in and greeted Nicole by yelling, “Goddam Branco and his stupid macho brain!”

  Nicole replied quietly, “Seems to be contagious.”

  “Damn it, Nikki, he drives me crazy. It’s as though his brain is cement. He gets these ideas, and once they’re set in there, nothing else can get by them into what’s left of the soft, grey part of his brain. He doesn’t think.”

  Nicole cooed softly, “There, there, darling. Those manly brutes are all the same. I’ve always told you to pursue the more sensitive types, but you never listen.”

  “Like Charles, you mean?”

  “Now, Stanley, don’t turn on me just because you’re upset.”

  “I’m not turning on you. I’m turning on Charles. His brain can’t be calcified—it’s made of stainless steel.”

  Without further comment, Nicole placed her reading glasses back onto the bridge of her artfully remodeled nose, done back in the time of talented surgeons, in the days before you selected your new nose on a computer screen. “You have a client waiting,” she said coolly.

  I leaned toward her and whispered, “Prentiss Kingsley was killed this morning.”

  Nicole shrieked. Then just as she had done the day before, she pulled me toward the back room for some privacy. Once inside, she asked what had happened, and I recounted my earlier visit with Branco. I didn’t believe Prentiss Kingsley’s death was suicide, and I was disturbed by Branco’s blase attitude about the horrors of death.

  Nikki remarked, “It’s an occupational hazard, darling—just like you with your clients’ sense of style.”

  ‘‘The difference is, doll, I do know what looks good on them better than they do.”

  She asked, “Are you going to rescue Rafik now?”

  “What else can I do? Branco wants to fry him. I just want to continue our import-export arrangement.”

  “Sounds like you’re in love.”

  I looked directly at her. “No, doll. I am not.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s nice to see that you still believe me.”

  “I want to believe you, Stanley. That’s why it’s easy to.”

  That made me wonder if I was using the same logic with Rafik. I wanted him to be innocent, which made it easy for me to believe it was so, despite all my suspicions to the contrary.

  Nicole seemed to read my confused thoughts. “You know what I think, Stani? I think you should get back to work and concentrate on that. Don’t force things. Let matters resolve themselves.” Then she added, “And you’ll be safer too.”

  “I thought you wanted me back on the case.”

  “I changed my mind. Don’t resist. Go with the flow.”

  I smiled at Nicole, then hugged her. “You know, doll, if you keep talking like that, you might want to sell the shop and go to California to start a self-actualization clinic.”

  “Chaz has mentioned it, actually.”

  “Oh, no!” I wailed. “Get me to the sinks, quick.”

  For the rest of the afternoon I was busy, interrupted only by a surprise visit from Liz Carlini, who’d just driven in from Abigail. She tore into the shop, breathless, and insisted on speaking to me. Fortunately, I was in the middle of a cut, not tricky chemical work. I took her to a private corner of the shop, near the changing rooms. I noticed that she looked peaked, with dark circles around her eyes. She related the horrible news of her husband’s death, and how she was afraid she was next in line to be killed. She looked and sounded desperate and scared—borderline hysteria.

  “Liz, I think you should talk to Lieutenant Branco.”

  “Vannos, I’ve already spent hours with the Abigail police. I’m exhausted.”

  “But listen to me. Branco can help you, get you some protection. Go see him in person. Tell him everything. Got that? Everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean all the trouble with Prentiss’s will, with Danny and John Lough and Mary Phinney.”

  “But that’s none of his business.”

  “It is now, Liz. You’re in danger. I’ve tried to tell Branco what I know, but he doesn’t believe me. Maybe if he hears it from you, he’ll listen.”

  She looked at me dubiously. “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me,” I said solemnly. “And insist on a bodyguard too. He can arrange it.” I gave her his number.

  Then Liz inhaled a quick, shallow breath and lifted her shoulders tensely. She held the position for a few impatient seconds, then she let the air out in an explosive puff. I guess that was her version of deep, relaxed breathing. No inefficient mantra for Liz. She wanted her relaxation fast.

  “I feel better already,
just talking to you,” she said, but I could tell it was just words. She was still sending out gigavolts of nervous energy.

  “Don’t tell Branco I sent you. Make it sound like it’s your idea, that you remembered him from being out in Chestnut Hill the other day.”

  She smiled, as though recalling something pleasant, which was probably the feeling of Branco’s eyes admiring her legs. “Why not mention you, Vannos? Wouldn’t that help?”

  I paused. “I think not.”

  She hesitated, then said, “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. And if you want, you can call me too, either here or at home.” I gave her my home phone number. “Maybe I should reserve some time for you at Alaine’s studio. Sounds like you could use some pampering.”

  “I could use a week of it.”

  “I’ll book you for the whole weekend. That way you can get some serious rest, and you won’t be alone either.”