by Kyra Davis
“How old was I when she finally left us alone?” I asked.
“No more than six, mamaleh.”
My mind raced back to the photographs I had found of my family at Kane’s. Had Kane’s mother taken all those? But that picture of Leah was taken when she was at least seven. So was my mother wrong? Had Andrea stalked us right up to the point when she decided to take her life?
But these were questions that neither Leah nor my mother could answer. I stroked Mr. Katz, envying the simplicity of his life. All I had wanted was a nice home with central heating. How had everything gotten so weird?
“Do you remember any of this now?” Leah asked.
“I remember the lip gloss,” I said. “Strawberry Shortcake lip gloss in a tin. I remember that part perfectly.” I looked up at the picture of me and my father, and for reasons I wasn’t willing to acknowledge or explain, I mouthed the words, thank you.
18
When a spy is captured, he takes a suicide pill, believing it’s better to die than be tortured. By that reasoning shouldn’t those same pills be issued to anyone foolish enough to fall in love?
—The Lighter Side of Death
LEAH AND MY MOTHER DIDN’T STAY LONG AFTER THAT. MY SISTER wanted me to rethink my decision to buy the house. Vague sentiments from the past should not be the basis for financial decisions that could affect my future, she reasoned. It was very practical advice, except for one caveat. I was getting the house for an insanely low price. If I could cut through the drama being foisted upon me by Kane and Scott I would be able to count this sale as the best investment of my life. Unfortunately, the drama was getting almost Oedipal in both tone and scale. I suppose a reasonable person might wonder whether any real-estate investment was worth the hassle. The cost of a Victorian, three bedroom? Nine hundred eighty thousand dollars. The cost of my sanity? Priceless.
And yet I knew I wasn’t going to move. Outside it had become dark and the rain was heavier than ever, pounding against the pavement as if applauding my decision to stay. Of course, making a decision was one thing. Coming up with a plan to make that decision work was a whole other ball game. In order for me to do that, I was going to have to find a way to outsmart Kane, because I was now convinced that he had no intention of selling to me. He was undoubtedly out for revenge, using me as an instrument to avenge a mother so justly rejected by my father.
As I had walked my mother and Leah out to the car, I asked Mama exactly what ammunition Dad had used against Andrea.
My mother had smiled at me from under her plastic cap. “Your father was a clever one. He agreed to meet with Andrea. He got her to talk about all the crazy things she had been doing. What she didn’t know was your father was getting it all on tape! When he told her that, she knew she was kaput! I may still have that tape somewhere if you want it.”
And for about an hour I thought I had it all figured out. I would get the tape, splice it up and hand it over to Dena or Marcus. One of them would then hide in the house and play Andrea’s answers to my practiced questions. Kane, not knowing about the tape or my hidden friend would hear his mother’s “ghost” answering my questions and would then give me the house! And Dena was dating a DJ who liked to remix! Kim could splice the tape for me!
And then reality hit me like a punch to the gut. Kane was crazy, not stupid. He would hear that the voice of his mother was coming from another room and he would inevitably follow the sound. In short order he would discover my ruse and then he…well, God only knew what that freak would do.
I also couldn’t try the trick of getting Kane to admit something on tape the way my father had with Andrea. For one thing, Kane didn’t have a crush on me. He wasn’t going to admit to anything no matter how much I batted my eyes. For another, my father’s blackmail had worked because he was threatening to give the tape to Oscar and maybe a few men in white coats. But if I got Kane to admit to some illegality, the only people who would be interested in hearing his taped confession would be the police, and they were the only people who absolutely couldn’t listen to it. Taping someone without their knowledge, without a warrant, was illegal. Kane’s confession would be thrown out as inadmissible, and I would go to jail for getting it in the first place.
I was mulling all this over with a Cosmopolitan in hand when there was a knock on the door. At first I thought it was the wind, but when it gained in force and rhythm I knew someone was there. Mr. Katz and I looked at one another. With everything that was going on, another unexpected visitor was not a positive development. I took a large chug of my drink before getting up to go press my ear to the door. “Who is it?” I called.
“The man who saved your ass.”
I experienced the unexpected rush of relief. I hadn’t even realized that I had still been worried about Scott, but now that I knew he had gotten out of Kane’s place in one piece I felt like doing a little happy dance.
I threw open the door and took a step forward, ready to give him a big hug. And then I stopped short. What the hell was I doing? Scott was the bad guy I loved to hate. Sure, he had his moments, but hugging was definitely out. Silently, I stepped aside as he walked in.
He waited until he heard the door click closed before he turned back to me. “You can’t ever do that again.”
“I know it was rash, but—”
“Ever!” he thundered.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open like an idiot. I wasn’t used to Scott being this forceful or this serious. He looked over at the filled bookcase and then down at the half-filled box of novels that had yet to find a place. Without a word he walked over and started to take the books out of the bookcase and put them in the box.
I ran over to him and grabbed his arm. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“You’re not going to buy this place,” he said simply, shaking me off and grabbing another armful of books. “Start packing up your stuff.”
“Wait, who says I’m not buying this place? Kane?”
“No, me. I’m not brokering this deal for you. It’s off. I reserved a suite for you at the St. Francis hotel. You can stay there, figure out what you want to do. My treat. It’s the least I can do.”
“The least you can do is stop manhandling my things and help me buy this house! It’s mine, Scott!”
“Wrong! It’s Kane’s, and that guy is dangerous. If I had known that before I would never have gone through with any of this!”
“Any of what?”
“The sale, of course.” But before he said that there was a moment of hesitation. There was more to this.
“Scott, what aren’t you admitting to?”
“Look, this plan to have you buy Kane’s house? It’s over! The writing isn’t just on the wall, it’s written in blood! There is no more negotiating. No more escrow. No more anything! Start acting like you have half a brain and start packing!”
And just like that I slapped him. The sound of my palm smashing against his cheek almost had a musical quality to it.
Like the first lone beat of a song that was destined to rock.
“You slapped me!” he whined. “You never slap me.”
“That was then. This is now. So why don’t you stop insulting me and tell me what it is you’re not saying.”
Scott ran one hand over his cheek, the other still holding one of my books. “I just want to protect you. That’s all.”
“That’s not your job anymore.”
We stood there in a face-off for what seemed like an eternity. Then Scott finally looked down at the book he was holding. “The Great Gatsby. I always wished I was more like him.”
“Who? Gatsby? You know he doesn’t get the girl, don’t you? He ends up alone in his big old mansion without any real friends.”
“Yeah, but in the end you love him despite all his shit. Everybody loves Gatsby.” He looked up at me. “Kane doesn’t care if you killed Enrico or not. He never did. He just wants you to prove to him that you can contact ghosts.”
“
I realize that lying to me is par for the course with you, but why did you lie about this?”
“I knew that if I had told you that Kane wasn’t going to sign over the house unless you proved your abilities as a medium you would have pushed me to tell you why Kane was so certain you were a medium to begin with,” he babbled. “Sure, you knew he had his suspicions based on his own whacked beliefs, but that he was certain of it…that would have required an explanation. But by telling you that he didn’t want to sell to a murder suspect and the only way I could imagine overriding that concern was if you convinced him you could talk to ghosts, well, I thought you would take that as an opportunity to win Kane over by faking him out.”
Scott was being borderline incoherent now. A sure sign that he was hiding something.
“I didn’t think you would go out and try to solve Enrico’s murder,” he went on. “But then again we’ve been out of touch for a while and you seem to be the kind of person who, with every year of age, becomes a little more comfortable with risk. By the time you’re ninety you’ll be jumping out of airplanes and eating blowfish.”
I stepped back and gave him a critical once-over. “You buried the lead.”
“Excuse me?”
“Why should I be suspicious, Scott? Why is Kane certain that I’m a medium?”
“Who knows? Maybe he thinks it was predicted in one of the rare texts of Nostradamus. Or maybe…” His voice trailed off.
“Maybe what, Scott?”
“Maybe he’s certain you’re a medium because I told him you were.”
“Goddammit, Scott!” I yelled, sorely tempted to slap him again. “Why would you do something that stupid?”
“After his dad died, Kane wasn’t going to sell you the house, Sophie! I knew you wanted it and I knew Kane wasn’t going to go for it, not for the price you wanted to pay for it.”
“I would have found a way to pay more!”
“And so would have a lot of other people. Look around you, Sophie. The housing market in this country is a mess, but not in San Francisco. Houses like this in this city are like diamonds in South Africa. People will kill for them.”
“So what are you saying? That out of the goodness of your heart you decided to lie to Kane and later to me so I could get the house on the cheap?”
“Pretty much.”
“And now you not only expect me to believe that you lied for my own good, but that you actually have a heart. Talk about suspension of disbelief.”
“Like I said, I owe you and I…I don’t hate you.”
“Wow, Scott. I’m touched.”
“Well, you hate me, right? I screwed up, and you decided to hate me, end of story. I’m not like that. Love and hate have never been the flip side of the same coin for me.”
“What makes you think they are for me? Just because I once told you I loved you doesn’t mean I meant it.”
“Ouch! That’s cold!” But he was grinning, a sure sign that he wasn’t buying my line.
“Better cold than stupid. Stupid would be telling a man that the woman he’s about to sell a house to is a medium when she’s not.”
“Right, well, it doesn’t matter anyway. Kane wants to put it in the escrow agreement that you have to come up with some suitable evidence that you have been able to contact the ghost of a former resident, preferably his mother. Now, I don’t think he can legally do that, but what he can do is just back out of escrow, and, I gotta tell you, I think that’s for the best.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Scott slammed The Great Gatsby back on the bookshelf. “You were there, right? You heard him when he talked about that painting. We all need to dissociate from this guy and pray that he leaves us alone.”
“I will…as soon as I get the deed. Tell me, what are the chances that Kane is the one who killed Enrico?”
“You think so?” he asked. “I don’t know why he would, but I guess anything’s possible. We could talk to the police about it.”
“No, not yet. Now, if I understand our agreement correctly, as soon as he signs something saying I have been respectful of the house he no longer has the right to take it away from me, even if he does pay me $20,000, right?”
“Well, we did change the word respectful to good caretaker, although the term is just as ambiguous and he can’t just sign something. It’s a specific document that we had drawn up, but for the most part, yes, that’s basically how it works. Before that, he can also kick you out whenever he wants if he signs another specific document saying your caretaking abilities aren’t so hot. I’m paraphrasing, of course.”
“Right, so this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to convince Kane that I have been talking to his evil mommy. As we work on that, we are going to figure out if it was Kane who killed Enrico and if he had anything to do with what happened to Oscar.”
“Why would we do something like that?”
“Because deed or no, I’m going to have to get rid of Kane. He has it in for me big-time. In fact, I think he may have it in for my whole family, and as you pointed out, he’s a whack-job. But if I can prove that he’s been killing people then he’ll go to prison and I won’t have to worry about it for another ten to twenty, if ever. So the two objectives are get the house and then get Kane, in that order.”
Scott walked over to the fireplace and peered into the ashes. “There are so many problems with this plan I don’t even know where to begin.”
“It’ll work.”
“No, I do know where to begin. How are you going to prove to Kane that you can commune with ghosts? You think you can bullshit him? Or have you recently been in touch with the dead?”
I walked to his side and picked up the tin of lip gloss that I had left on the mantel. “It’s easy to convince people of something they want to believe.”
“And you expect me to help you with this?”
“I do.”
“And why would I do that?”
Smiling, I put down the lip gloss and placed a hand on each of his shoulders. “You’ll do it because you don’t hate me, Scott. And because if you don’t help me I can, and will, kick your ass.”
“Don’t tease me with your sexy tough talk, Sophie. I’m a man of very little willpower.” In one swift move he pulled me close. I groaned and was all set to pull myself away and scold him. But I didn’t do that because I was distracted by the door. It was opening.
I still should have pushed him away, but the shock of seeing Anatoly glaring at me froze me in place.
He turned around and walked right back out. The sound of the door slamming was louder than any clap of thunder. It was that sound that spurred me into action.
“I have to go after him,” I said, quickly freeing myself.
“Why? Because he caught us hugging? Give me a break!” He grabbed me by the waist, holding me back as I attempted to leave. “Sophie, it’s pouring out there. You can’t go out without a jacket.”
“Let me go!” I yelled, reinforcing my request with a very effective backward jab of my elbow. As Scott yelped in pain I rushed from the house, into the rain. But it was too late. Anatoly was gone.
“He’ll come back,” I heard Scott call from my doorway.
“What if he doesn’t?” I asked, just loud enough to be heard.
“Well, you always have me.”
I was soaked now, but all the water in the world wouldn’t have been enough to wash away the sense of horror that last statement left me with. Slowly I turned around and reentered the house, stalking past Scott, ignoring the puddles of water I was leaving in my wake.
“I don’t know if you remember this,” Scott said, taking a step up behind me, “but I never walked out on you. Not when I was in a bad mood, not during a fight, never. If Anatoly is going to tuck his tail and run the minute there’s a conflict, maybe he’s not the right guy for you.”
“Anatoly left because it was the only way he could resist beating you to a pulp,” I said flatly. I turned to him, pulling a drenched lock of hair from
my face. “And you didn’t walk out because you never allowed yourself to be pulled into a conflict that would warrant it. You changed the subject, tried to calm me down with a drink, tried to smooth it over with sex, anything but talk about what was really going on.”
“Are you trying to say you didn’t like my drinks, or…well…” He grinned and moved forward, but I put my hand up to block him.
“Go home, Scott. I’ll call you when I figure out what I want you to say to Kane.”
He reached for the hand that I had held up to impede him and kissed my palm. “All right, I’ll go. I’ve already waited ten years, so what’s another few days.”
I didn’t even bother to respond. Instead I walked him to the door, holding it wide open so there was no mistaking my message. “I do want to thank you,” I said, “for not giving me up to Kane.”
“I would never do that,” Scott said seriously.
“Mmm, well, as a token of my gratitude I’m going to share a juicy tidbit.”
“And that would be?” Scott asked, his grin back and his eyes exploring all the places where my clothes still clung to me.
“A tidbit of information,” I clarified. “Venus broke into my house. Remember that brooch we found in Oscar’s dead hand? She planted it or its duplicate in my bedroom and then she returned to deliver a few thinly veiled threats before taking it back. I just thought you should know that if Kane isn’t a murderer your girlfriend probably is. Good night.”
Scott’s face was the picture of shock and confusion as I shoved him out of my house and closed the door in his face. It had been one of the most trying days of my life and that was saying something. I desperately wanted Anatoly’s arms around me all night long. But something Scott had said had hit its mark. Anatoly shouldn’t have walked out. Maybe I had been right about his leaving to avoid the temptation to start a fight, but I wanted Anatoly to fight for me. I didn’t want him to leave me.