Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights

by Kyra Davis

  Mr. Katz blinked, which was clearly his way of saying yes.

  “And I’ll sell more books than Dan Brown?”

  Mr. Katz got up and left the room.

  I looked down at the floor. This is why I don’t gamble. I’m incapable of quitting when I’m ahead.

  I spent the next two hours pounding out what I hoped would be blockbuster prose before Mary Ann showed up on my doorstep bearing gifts.

  “A light Java Chip Frappuccino with extra whipped cream and a box of Neiman’s exclusive chocolate-covered macaroons.”

  “Oh my God, it’s been forever since I’ve had a macaroon!” I took the box from her enthusiastically, then hesitated. “They’re low fat right? I’m trying to lose four pounds.”

  Mary Ann pulled nervously on a curl. “Well…”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, doesn’t anybody lie anymore?”

  “They’re diet macaroons.”

  I smiled and popped a cookie in my mouth.

  Mary Ann slipped off her Keds and kicked them under the coffee table. Her eyes zoomed in on the shoe box that was already there. “New shoes?”

  “Old junk. Those are the personal effects Bob had at his office.”

  “May I?” she asked, gesturing toward the box.

  I nodded and she handed me my Frappuccino before taking the box to the couch.

  First she pulled out the family photo encased in the hideous gold frame. Mary Ann pressed her lips together as if trying to resist the urge to gag. “Did…Bob pick this frame out himself?”

  I laughed. “Erika told me it was a gift but we don’t know from whom.”

  She examined the photo with what I took to be morbid curiosity. “Bob and Leah look so…so…”

  “Disgusted with life?” I supplied. “Yeah, they weren’t exactly a Norman Rockwell kind of family.”

  “Rockwell…is he the guy who built Rockwell Center in New York?”

  I suppressed a grin. “You’re thinking of Rockefeller. Bob wasn’t him, either, although you would never know it from the way he spent money.” I took another cookie before sitting on the love seat with my coffee. “You know what’s funny? As hard as this whole ordeal has been on Leah, in some ways I think it’s helped her grow as a person.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, as long as I have known her she’s always been a wannabe something. A wannabe cheerleader, a wannabe debutante, a wannabe domestic goddess—and Bob just encouraged that.”

  “Really? In what ways?”

  “Oh, in lots of little ways. She used to say ‘oy vey’ a lot, but Bob said it made her sound low-class, so she stopped. She bought this cute little plum-colored V-neck sweater, but Bob thought it made her look slutty, so she didn’t wear it. Basically he had an idea of how she should be and it had nothing to do with who she was.”

  Mary Ann put one hand on her heart. “That’s awful!”

  “It is awful. But it seems like in the past few days Leah’s forgotten to try to be someone else. It’s like she’s been forced to look at what’s most important to her and she’s discovered that it’s not a white-picket fence and a lace tablecloth.”

  “I didn’t know Leah even had a white-picket fence.”

  I stared at her from over my plastic cup and wondered how someone could manage to be that dense and still survive. “I’m speaking figuratively. What I’m trying to say is that in a strange way this horrific situation has forced Leah to come into her own.”

  There was the sound of a key being wiggled in the lock and a second later Leah slipped in with Jack sleeping in her arms. She mouthed the word hi and went down the hall into the guest room.

  Mary Ann smiled at me. “I like her highlights.”

  “She’s getting rid of those soon,” I grumbled.

  When she came back out into the living room and sat down next to Mary Ann, her eyes fell on the macaroons that I had put on the coffee table.

  “Have one,” Mary Ann urged. “I bought them for both of you.”

  “Are they sugar-free? I’m on a low-carb diet.”

  “Sugar-free? No…” Mary Ann saw the pleading look on Leah’s face and immediately understood her mistake. “Yes, they’re sugar-free. No sugar at all.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.” Leah smiled and dove in. “So I’ve made a decision.”

  “What kind of decision?” I asked.

  “I’ve decided to have sex with Jerome.”

  Mary Ann turned bright red and I nearly choked on my low-fat/sugar-free cookie. Maybe Leah wasn’t so stable after all. “Wasn’t it you who told me you should never sleep with a man on the first date?” I asked.

  Leah nodded. “I still believe that, which is why I won’t be dating him. This will strictly be a wham-bam kind of deal.”

  “A wham-bam deal?” My voice came out in a strangled squeak. “Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

  “Really, Sophie, what’s the risk?” Leah asked. “It’s not like anyone will see us holding hands in public. Besides, do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had good sex?”

  “I don’t know…a month, two…”

  “Seven years ago. You remember Steven, don’t you? He was the man I dated before Bob.”

  “Seven years?” Mary Ann’s eyes widened. “What about Bob?”

  “I said good sex.” Leah must have heard herself because she suddenly blushed and looked down at the floor. “Bob did try but…” As her voice trailed off she held up her hand and made a small space between her thumb and index finger.

  “You mean he had a small penis?” Mary Ann blurted out, then sank down into the couch, clearly embarrassed by her own contribution to the conversation. “Well, I guess that’s not the most important quality in a husband.”

  “Yeah,” I said dryly. “There’s honesty, loyalty, moral values—all things Bob just had in spades.”

  “So you understand why I want to sleep with Jerome.”

  “Of course I understand why you want to, but that doesn’t mean you should do it.”

  “And what should I do? If I behave like a nun do you think the DA will drop the charges? No, he won’t. My life is on the brink of ruin and it’s all because I married some adulterous jerk-off with a small penis!”

  And with that she turned around and threw the frame against the wall. The glass shattered and the backing dislodged, thus displaying a floppy disk that had been hidden behind the photo. Mary Ann, Leah and I all exchanged quick looks before dropping to our knees to study it. I carefully pulled away the shards of glass and picked up the disk.

  “Do you know what this is?” I asked Leah.

  “It’s what that burglar was looking for,” she whispered.

  My mind went back to the day Erika called me to Bob’s office. She had been so adamant that I come get everything immediately. And then there was the way that she had presented the framed photo. She hadn’t put it in the box with the other things. Instead she had made a point of personally handing it to me and telling me that Leah should reframe the picture.

  “Erika put this here,” I said quietly. “She wanted you to find this.”

  Leah gasped. “You think?” She reached out and touched the disk. “If that’s true, it would be as if she was speaking to us from beyond the grave.”

  Mary Ann stood up. “I just got a chill.” She looked over her shoulder as if expecting to see a ghost.

  “We have to see what’s on this.” I rushed to my laptop, which I had left in my bedroom, Leah and Mary Ann on my heels. When I attached the external floppy drive and stuck the disk inside, only one file popped up. It was titled “Orders.” I clicked on it, and in a matter of seconds the purchasing history of several of Chalet’s customers appeared on the screen.

  I shook my head. “I don’t get it. Why would Erika want us to have this?”

  “Maybe she didn’t.” Leah’s voice was heavy with resignation. “Maybe she didn’t put it in the frame after all.”

  “If she didn’t hide it, someone
else did. But why someone would want to save the purchasing history of a select number of Chalet customers on a floppy is beyond me.” I scrolled down the page. “These people weren’t even good customers.” I pointed to the screen. “Look, this woman bought twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff in June and then here in July she returned it all.”

  Leah bent over so her face was closer to the monitor. “So she did. Look, this woman did the same thing—except she only spent seven thousand.”

  “I know what this is!” Mary Ann clapped her hands together. “It’s a classic buy-and-return scam. We see it at Neiman’s all the time. People buy a dress, wear it once and then try to return it.”

  I shook my head and pointed to one of the orders. “A dining room table is not a dress.”

  “Maybe they were having a dinner party,” Mary Ann offered.

  Leah squinted at the screen. “Will you look at where this woman lives? Who buys an eighty-five-hundred dollar table and then has it delivered to the slums?”

  “That is weird,” Mary Ann said, noting the Hunter’s Point address. “Maybe it was a gift?”

  “For who?” I asked. “Her drug dealer? Are they accepting tables and armoires in the place of cash these days?”

  Leah tapped the arrow button, scrolling down to expose more orders and returns. “Okay, so these people like to return things. How is this relevant to my life?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea, but it must mean something.”

  “That’s great, Sophie,” Leah said sarcastically.

  “Hey, we just found this. Give me a few minutes to figure out—oh my God, Leah, look!” I pointed to the name of one of the customers.

  Leah gasped. “Maria E. Souza! That’s the Portuguese woman from Hotel Gatsby!”

  “Wait a minute.” I quickly scrolled back up. “Jan Levine.” I got up and ran to the living room and then came back with the torn piece of paper. “Jan Le—this must be her!”

  Leah looked at the paper. “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it in the shoe box!” I jumped up and down excitedly. “Check her phone number—see if it starts with the numbers 5178.”

  “It says here that her number starts with 4153.” Mary Ann tapped the screen. “It’s not her address, either.”

  Leah studied the screen and then gasped. “Oh. My. God. It’s her credit card number.”

  “Holy shit.” I slapped my hand over my mouth.

  Leah scrolled back down to Maria. “There’s something wrong here. The delivery address for Maria is in San Francisco.”

  “There’s another buy-and-return scam that I know about.”

  Leah and I turned to Mary Ann.

  “Remember when I used to work at Dawson’s? Well, sometimes if a department was really close to making their monthly sales goal the managers would ask the salespeople to buy merchandise and return it when the month was over.”

  I looked at the screen again. “All these purchases were made in March, June, October and December, and all the returns were made the following month.”

  Leah brought her hand to her cheek. “Every three months.”

  I chewed on my thumbnail. “What happens every three months?”

  “The seasons change?” Mary Ann offered.

  “Business quarters,” Leah said quietly. “Business quarters change every three months.”

  My mind flashed back to the conversation we had with Charlie. “That note that Charlie saw Cheryl handing Bob—she was using her position at the Gatsby to help Bob commit identity theft.”

  “Why would she do that?” Mary Ann asked.

  Leah looked at me and I saw my own comprehension mirrored in her eyes. “They did it to keep stock prices up. Artificially inflating stock prices coupled with identity theft…that’s enough to land someone in prison for quite a while.”

  I lunged for the phone and dialed Anatoly’s cell number.

  “The subscriber you are trying to reach…”

  I hung up, sat back down at the computer and quickly saved the information on the disk onto my hard drive. “Mary Ann, Anatoly should be at the Gatsby. I want you to find him and give him this disk.”

  “Okay,” Mary Ann said uncertainly. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Cheryl’s.” I ejected the disk and gave it to Mary Ann, who took it with some hesitation.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

  This seemed like a particularly ironic question coming from Mary Ann. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. Now go!” I pushed her toward the door. She slipped the disk in her purse and took off to carry out her mission.

  “So,” Leah said. “You’re going to break into Cheryl’s place?”

  “You got it. There’s got to be more evidence of Cheryl’s involvement in all this, and I bet you anything it’s somewhere in her home. All I need is a few minutes to look around.”

  “Jack and I are coming with you.”

  “Leah, you can’t bring a baby to a break-in.”

  “I’m not going to go in with you. I’ll just sit in the car and make sure no one walks in while you’re there—like a…a lookout person.”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “If you go to jail, I’ll have to leave Jack with Mama. Think about what it would have been like to have been raised by Mama without Dad around to keep her balanced. I refuse to sentence my son to a childhood filled with guilt and gefilte fish!”

  I smiled despite myself. “Okay, you can come, but only because I know we won’t be caught.” I squeezed her hand. “It’s the Katz sisters against the world.”

  Leah gave me a curt nod. “The world won’t know what hit it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “You wanna know if she’s a devil worshiper?” Al laughed bitterly. “That broad’s so evil the devil worships her!”

  —Words To Die By

  “Just when I thought it wasn’t possible to hate Cheryl any more than I already did, she goes off and kills my husband.” Leah glared out the front windshield and ran her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe she would do this. What would her hero Arnold Schwarzenegger say?”

  “We don’t know that she killed Bob.” I paused at a stop sign before hitting the gas again. “It could have been James Sawyer. I know he’s at the center of all this.”

  “Don’t even get me started on James Sawyer. It was just a few months ago that I had his family over for dinner. I made a soufflé, for God’s sake! And this is the thanks I get?”

  I gave her a sidelong glance. “If it’s any consolation, I’m sure everything was set in motion long before the whole soufflé event.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to go to Chalet? It seems like that’s where the evidence would be, and the police have already searched Cheryl’s place.”

  “We’ll never get into Chalet on a Saturday, and even if we did we wouldn’t get into James’s office. Besides, the police didn’t know what to look for when they searched Cheryl’s. We do.”

  “I can’t believe she was actually providing Bob and Taylor with the information to steal people’s identity. Surely one or two of these people had a credit report done.”

  “Think about it. They were probably opening new accounts under these people’s names and every purchase that was made was credited back within thirty days of the purchase. And I assume Bob, Taylor, or whoever, had the presence of mind to close the accounts right after crediting them. If someone did notice it on a credit report they might have seen it as a computer glitch and decided it wasn’t worth the effort to pursue the problem with the credit bureaus.”

  “If I thought there was even the slightest possibility that someone was charging things on accounts with my name on it I would put out the effort to find out who it was and stop them.”

  “Okay, let’s say a few people did report it. How would they know who got their credit info? Every time we hand our credit card over to a salesperson we risk being r
ipped off.”

  “How comforting.” Leah turned and looked at Jack in the back seat.

  “He’s being really good,” I noted.

  “I know. I wonder if he’s feeling all right.”

  I pulled onto the sidewalk in front of the garage in Cheryl’s building. “I’m going to give you one last chance to back out of this whole lookout-person deal. Keep in mind that aiding and abetting a break-in is a felony.”

  “What are they going to do, throw me in jail with a bunch of other criminals?” she said scornfully. “Been there, done that.”

  “Fine, but I don’t think you should wait in the car. Why don’t you pretend to wait at that bus stop across the street. That way if something goes wrong, you and Jack will be able to just stroll away.”

  “Fine with me.”

  We all got out of the car and Leah pulled the stroller out of the trunk and strapped Jack in.

  I looked up at the building. “Cheryl’s apartment is on the first floor. I think if I climb on top of the car I should be able to pull myself up to the fire escape and climb in the window.”

  “Really,” Leah said flatly. “Am I mistaken or are you the same person who dropped out of gymnastics after three classes.”

  “I was six!”

  “Yes, but I don’t remember you signing back up at seven.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “As a matter of fact I do. I’ll climb in the window and open the door for you.”

  Before I could say anything she was on top of the car. She reached her arm straight up in the air, but there was still about a foot between her hand and the bottom of the fire escape.

  “Leah, you really shouldn’t be doing this.”

  She bent her knees and jumped. For a split second I didn’t think she was going to be able to make it, and I wondered how I was going to explain my dented roof to the insurance company. But Leah did grab hold of the bars. Now she was dangling in the air, holding on for dear life.

  A young couple who was walking by, stopped to stare. I smiled nervously. “We locked ourselves out,” I explained.

  They looked at each other, shrugged and kept walking. That’s what I love about city dwellers. More often than not they’d rather walk away from a potential crime in progress than waste their cellular minutes calling the police.