The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  She pulled the Tercel over to the curb. “I want to, I really do,” she said from the heart. “But what if you, like, zap into some bed somewhere? As much as it drives me crazy having you glued to my side twenty-four-seven, I can’t risk that.”

  “Don’t dissemble. You want my mojo,” he said in his precise English voice, and she choked on a laugh, partly because of the accent and partly because he looked so conflicted.

  She put her hand over his. “Even if I knew it would be the last time ever, Randy, I couldn’t leave you stuck. You said that the other morning, too. Like, why don’t I leave you stuck somewhere if I’m sick of you. I won’t do that.”

  He looked long into her eyes, and all she could think of was him looking into her eyes.

  “I mean it,” she said. A picture of a cell phone popped into her head and she added, “No, I don’t think a cell phone is a good idea.” His eyes widened and he jerked his face away. “Like I said, you always pull a zapper when we’re having an argument. If we have a fight over the phone, I can’t afford to search every bed in Chicago. Look at me.”

  He stared out his side window instead.

  She muttered, “Now you know how I feel when you’re in my head, when we’re in demonspace, when I’m dreaming.”

  “I see.” He pulled his hand out of hers.

  She felt sorry for him, and a little hurt. “People get real used to their privacy. You’ve had, what, two hundred years of it? That’s a long time to be alone in your head.”

  She thought of the tracer anklet. He would never be in a better frame of mind to agree to it.

  “Um, I have an idea. Instead of the cell phone. Or even plus the cell phone. You’re right, you ought to have one.”

  He looked back with caution and hope in his eyes.

  “There’s this device, I mentioned it before. It’s um, a magic anklet. It can tell me where you are. So say you’re out somewhere buying groceries or at work,” there was a golden idea, Randy working and bringing in some money, “and you get in trouble? The anklet tells me. I can find out where you parted company with it. I assume it wouldn’t stay stuck to your ankle in demonspace. It should fall off like your clothes do.”

  He looked intrigued. “I see.”

  “And then I would have a strong idea where, geographically, you’ve wound up stuck.”

  “That could work,” he said. He put his hand over hers and curled his long fingers into her palm. Their eyes met again. She forgot to wonder what he was thinking. His long upper lip twitched, as if he had stiffened it against trembling. “Thank you. That would be — that would be wonderful.”

  Parolees all over the country cursed that anklet, and here he was thanking her for it.

  Damn, I’m good.

  Then she realized how much he must hate being her siamese twin. He was her slave. And he didn’t like it.

  She squeezed his hand remorsefully. “You’re a good guy, Randy.”

  “I will remind you that you said so.” He smiled. “On the occasion of our next disagreement.”

  He looked so grateful that something twisted in her chest, and she pulled her hand free. “Time to kick some Buzz butt.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jewel turned down Michigan Avenue, remembering how Buzz favored the Magnificent Mile, and had the luck to see his bicycle propped against a planter by Water Tower Place.

  “Groovy,” she groaned, imagining Buzz in a mall, where he could do maximum damage. Plus, she didn’t relish the notion of seeing a jillion male mall-goers’s fantasies about her.

  She parked in a short-term zone next to the old water tower on Chestnut, grabbed sunglasses out of her glove box, and slapped her Official Business tag on the windshield. A harness bull strolled over. She flipped open her badge.

  “Hot pursuit, officer. Oh, hi, Petey.” She donned her sunglasses. One date, four years ago. If he remembered, she didn’t want to know.

  “Hey, Jewel. Heard you were out of circulation. This the guy?” Officer Petey looked Randy over with approval.

  “One of them,” Randy said.

  “No time for chitchat, Petey, gotta uphold the law, bye!” She attached herself to Randy’s wrist. “Shut up about my personal business,” she said out of the side of her mouth.

  On the up escalator in Water Tower Place, he said, “I believe I am your personal business. Have I not the right to free speech in the United States of America?”

  Brother, did he catch on fast. “You’re not a citizen.”

  In that moment she saw Buzz on the balcony, with no store entrances or escalator exits for twenty yards in either direction.

  “There he is! See him? He’s with that woman.”

  “I see him.” Randy was all business.

  “Don’t look straight at him. When we get up there, you break left and I’ll go right. Don’t move fast. Make sure he’s bottled up in that cul-de-sac. He’ll run away from me, so I’ll keep facing forward. Even if he sees me, maybe he’ll think I don’t see him. And Randy—” She lifted her sunglasses so she could looked him in the eye. “Try not to hurt anyone or break anything. You are not covered by department liability insurance. We don’t want to arrest him, just talk to him. Dig?”

  “I apprehend your meaning,” he said. On the wide-screen TV in her mind, she saw a muddy field with a dozen beagles baying, running after a rusty streak.

  “Yeah, right, whatever. No bloodshed.”

  They split at the top of the escalator, Randy walking fast, looking taut and alive and happy. Damn. She needed to get him a job. One where his ignorance of American laws and customs wouldn’t get him fired on day one. She turned to the right and saw that Buzz was still engaged with his customer, a rather mussed-looking older shopper who talked with her hands. Buzz glanced over the shopper’s shoulder, saw Jewel, and bolted in the other direction, straight into Randy’s arms.

  Of course that couldn’t be enough. Buzz struggled and socked Randy, who was a head and a half taller, and Randy grabbed his shoulders and shook him like a terrier shaking a rat until the backpack slid down his arms and little bottles rained out of it. Buzz slipped on a bottle and fell to the floor, bringing Randy down on top of him. While they grappled there, Buzz’s customer dropped all her shopping bags, ran up, and started kicking Randy in the head with her two-hundred-dollar sneaker.

  Jewel flipped open her badge and shoved it in the face of Buzz’s protector. “Consumer Services, ma’am, please step away.”

  His customer jumped back as if she’d been bitten. “Are you a police officer? Young man!” She bent and whapped at Randy. “Stop him,” she said to Jewel. “He’s hurting my friend!”

  “You’ll be sorry you kicked my partner,” Jewel said. Randy was now sitting on Buzz’s head, a thing she’d only read about in books. Seemed to work, though. The backpack and its contents were scattered all over. “Randy, that’s enough.”

  “I’ll be sorry?” The shopper bristled. “Why? Are you trying to arrest me? My husband is an attorney!”

  “No, my partner’s English and he’ll make you apologize.”

  Jewel bent and picked up all the little bottles and put them back in the backpack. Even the ones Randy had fallen on were too small and hard to smash, thank goodness.

  Randy got up off Buzz, keeping his hand on the scruff of the kid’s neck. His eyes sparkled.

  Maybe he can play football.

  Huffily, Buzz brushed himself off. One of his zits had popped open when Randy had rubbed his face against the floor, but otherwise he seemed damage-free. “That’s mine,” he said, looking at the backpack.

  “And you’ll get it back when I can find a bag for the contents,” Jewel said. “Buzz, you know darned well your peddlar’s license doesn’t cover consumables. You need a Health Department certificate for that.”

  “My husband can help him get one,” said the loyal shopper.

  Jewel said, “I could help him get one myself, if I trusted him not to stock up on white lightning and snake oil. Please, ma’am. We
’re just going to talk to him. Alone.”

  But the shopper wouldn’t take a hint. “You were hurting him,” she said fiercely to Randy.

  “Your concern does you great credit, Madam,” Randy said with a bow. He flicked mall scuzz off his sleeve and looked down at the shopper with a bored-lord look.

  The shopper blinked and simpered. “Did I hurt your head?”

  Randy smiled. “It was only moderately painful. Think nothing of it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” the shopper said.

  “Bingo,” Jewel said. “I don’t know how he does it. Now, if you don’t mind?”

  “I’m not leaving,” the shopper snapped. “This boy changed my life. I’ll pay his legal fees!”

  “He’s not under arrest,” Jewel said tiredly. “Buzz. This stuff you’re selling is raising Cain all over town, I have no idea how. Giorgio lo Gigolo has filed a complaint against you. He says you’re hurting his business. Plus, and I guess I have to keep telling you this until you get the message, this stuff is a food or a drug or something. Consumable.” She pointed down her throat. “If you can put it in your mouth?” She pointed at him. “You can’t sell it. That can get you arrested and maybe jailed if anyone comes forward to complain about ill effects.” She put her hand on his arm. “Work with me, will ya, buddy?”

  Buzz didn’t take his eyes off the backpack. “I want my stuff.”

  Jewel rolled her eyes. “Randy, can you scare up a bag?”

  “Here,” the shopper said. She selected a small, elegant, long-handled paper bag from her pile of shopping bags and dumped its contents into another, larger, elegant paper bag.

  They transferred all the little bottles into the new bag and Jewel gave the backpack back to Buzz. He wrapped both arms around it, looking calmer. Jewel sat him on a bench, Randy on one side and herself on the other. The shopper hovered. Her lipstick was on crooked, Jewel noticed. And her sneakers were missing their laces.

  To Buzz, Jewel said, “We need to find out who’s bought this stuff and what it did to them. So we go to every place around town where you’ve sold it and talk to people. And you have to help because, if you don’t, I gotta let the cops have you.”

  Buzz looked scared. He whined, “Please, officer. I’ll be good.”

  The shopper butted in again. “I can tell you right now that I bought some and it was wonderful. It changed my life. I haven’t been to Elizabeth Arden in a month. I feel fabulous and I don’t care how I look,” she said proudly.

  Jewel remembered Leo at Spa On The Mile complaining about his renegade hair client. Even Jewel could tell it had been ages since this woman had seen the inside of a salon.

  “So what did this — this potion do to you?”

  “I told you. It made me feel gorgeous.” The shopper shrugged. “It doesn’t taste bad. I only had one dose. God knows, if it ever wears off, I’ll want more,” she added with determination. “So you better find out where this young man is getting his supply. Otherwise a lot of very unhappy women will be looking for him.”

  “I bought a djinn in a bottle from him,” Randy said. “It was drunk.”

  “Genie,” Jewel said and bit her tongue. Policy, remember?

  The shopper blinked. “Was there a genie in the bottle?”

  “There was,” Randy said. “It smashed a hansom into a bridge abutment and then set the hansom on fire.”

  “Heavens!” The shopper clucked as Randy described with relish how the fire had held up a five-way intersection at Lake Shore and Navy Pier.

  Jewel thought hard. Dr. Kauz was hawking this stuff through Buzz. The potion made the victim feel great about herself. Kind of like the Venus Machine, she realized, which made you irresistable to men whether you wanted to be or not. Holy crap. She’d turned Kauz loose in a house with that machine. He already had this potion that women wanted. What could he do if he had both?

  That must be why he was so hot to come to Virgil’s. To get the Venus Machine. Plus Virgil has money and he’s a woo-woo fan. Maybe Kauz hoped to get campaign funding out of Virgil.

  It didn’t add up yet, but she could feel it out there, some wackadoodle plan in Kauz’s noggin that would combine magic and defrauding aging women and running for mayor into something that would make the Fifth Floor unhappy.

  She just didn’t know what.

  Yeah, but I’ve got him cold on manufacturing and distributing an unlicensed drug.

  That could stop him. She gnawed her lip.

  She would have to put the case together carefully.

  And she would have to find at least one unsatisfied customer of Dr. Kauz’s potion. She turned to Kauz’s beta distributor.

  “Buzz, I can keep you out of jail if you cooperate. Will you help me? I don’t have time to chase all over town when I need you, and Randy doesn’t like getting kicked in the head.”

  Buzz nodded convulsively.

  She framed her next question with care. “Ma’am, would you be willing to testify on his behalf?”

  “Of course. I’m Mrs. Noah Butt. My husband is Noah Butt, Esquire, of Butt, Baron, Fessley and Queeg.”

  “If I could talk to one or two other people who would concur with your testimony—” Jewel paused.

  “Of course!” Mrs. Butt beamed. “I’ve given samples to all my friends. I meet Buzz here every week, just so I can share his potion with other women. It changes our lives! We no longer waste our time and money on our appearance. A few of us have even gone to stay at ashrams.”

  Jewel fought an eyeroll. “You haven’t given up shopping.”

  “There was a shoe sale at Lord & Taylor.”

  Oh, well, shoes.

  “Ma’am, do you, or did you, used to patronize any other businesses besides Elizabeth Arden? Places that sell, oh, makeup and stuff?” Jewel was weak on that sector of retail that catered to women’s insecurities. “You must be saving a lot of money since you stopped buying that stuff.”

  “Goodness, yes. My Arden bill alone was two thousand a month. I got my makeup there, except for lip color, which I got from Neiman’s or Lord & Taylor, and I saw Giorgio lo Gigolo once a month for a pedicure. And I tried that new place in the Hancock Tower, Institute something, and then I met Buzz and all that was over. Come to think of it, that’s where I met Buzz. He was on the plaza outside, selling samples.”

  Jewel hesitated while she had a sudden evil thought. “You’ve been a great help, ma’am. If I find the source of the potion and it turns out you can get it legally — if it’s safe — would you like me to phone you?” She’d die first, but if she didn’t make the offer, Mrs. Noah Butt would smell a rat. I’m turning into a con artist! Clay would be so proud.

  “How thoughtful! That would be darling of you.” Mrs. Butt glowed. “Take my card.”

  Jewel realized that Kauz must not be ready to reveal himself as the inventor of this stuff. Maybe he planned to stay in the background. The potion might be full of cocaine or something. I only had one dose, Mrs. Noah Butt had said. So it was non-addictive. God knows, if it ever wears off, I’ll want more. Okay, non-addictive so far.

  Hm. There was an idea. Let a herd of raging lipstick-o-holics come banging on his spa door demanding more doses of an illegal drug, and watch his campaign come tumbling down. She’d have to figure out how to orchestrate that. Which gave her an idea.

  “Mrs. Butt, I’d still like to be sure that no one has been harmed by this potion. Here’s my card. If you remember the names of anyone you’ve given it to, would you call me? We may ask you to make a statement.”

  Mrs. Butt flushed. “Lord Pontarsais has only to ask.” She languished in Randy’s direction, tucked two cards into her purse, and headed for the elevator in her expensive, laceless sneakers.

  Two cards?

  Jewel sighed. “Thank God she’s gone. Let’s take a walk down Michigan, the three of us, and visit Buzz’s pitches.” On the down escalator she hissed to Randy, “Did you give her one of those bogus lord cards?”

  Randy raised his eyebrows. “I could
introduce myself as your fellow investigator instead.”

  “No!”

  With his hand on the back of Buzz’s collar, Randy spoke quietly. “I must be someone, Jewel.”

  He was right. He couldn’t get by much longer before he got challenged for real I.D. And it was her responsibility to provide it, if she ever hoped to get him out of pajamas and into a job.

  In the end, she would probably wind up asking Clay to get him fake papers. Which would put her in Clay’s crooked debt again.

  Wasn’t there a curse about this? You saved somebody’s life, and then you were stuck with them for the rest of yours?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jewel stopped in at Arden, then at Neiman’s, then Giorgio lo Gigolo. She didn’t meet any more of Buzz’s potion customers but she found plenty of unhappy beauty industry professionals. Randy kept Buzz out of sight at each stop.

  “I’m Jewel Heiss of the Department of Consumer Services, and I’m doing a survey on consumer buying patterns on the Mile,” she said over and over. “How’s business these days?”

  “Business sucks,” said the manager at Elizabeth Arden, a lacquer-finish brunette of forty. “We get plenty of tourists, but our regulars have fallen way off.”

  “Have any of these regulars disappeared for a while and then come back?” Don’t lead the witness, Jewel. “I mean, have you talked to them about why they left?”

  The manager stared out the window onto Michigan Avenue. “We’re not a dentist. We send reminder cards but we don’t pester our clients by phone.” Her eyes turned to Jewel. “How come Consumer Services cares about my business?”

  “You aren’t the only sufferer,” Jewel said, trying to look official and inscrutable. “We’re seeking a pattern to explain the trouble you’re experiencing.”

  The manager nodded. “Good luck.”

  The perfumes and makeup counter at Neiman’s had the same story. “It’s like they all dialed 1-800-GIVE-A-SHIT and then got tired of waiting on hold,” said a glossy girl with long legs.