Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress

by Kyra Davis

  “Oh, I like that!”

  “And the bridesmaids could wear something like this.” Leah put the Barneys bag down on the couch and pulled out a dress.

  Actually it wasn’t just a dress, it was a piece of art. A black, ruched, one-shoulder short dress with asymmetrically draped chiffon over charmeuse. “Oh, my God,” I said as I stepped closer to see the dress. “You are brilliant.”

  “It’s so feminine!” Mary Ann squealed.

  “It’s a Marc Bouwer Glamit!” Leah said reverently. “A little pricey, but I’m sure your bridesmaids will happily pay for it. They’ll wear it again, and it’s for a good cause.” She looked pointedly at me as she said that last part.

  “I’ll pay,” I said emphatically. “Even if I didn’t have to wear it in a wedding I’d still buy it. Seriously, Leah, you did good.”

  “It is beautiful, Leah.” Mary Ann fingered the fabric. “But I wouldn’t want to have the bridesmaids and the maid of honor wearing the same outfit so we’d have to find yet another black dress that would fit our theme. And Disney coordinators already do so much. I just don’t know if I need more people on the wedding team.”

  The door to the guest room swung open and Jason rolled a completely dressed and only slightly mused Dena out into the living room. If she had actually had sex it had been a little while ago. Jason was also dressed in his T-shirt and jeans but his belt seemed to be missing and his feet were bare. He looked exuberant and Dena looked…I felt my heart swell as I took note of the mischievous sparkle in her eyes. For the first time since the shooting Dena looked happy. Leah turned to her still holding the dress up high.

  “Hello again, Dena, you look wonderful.”

  Dena flashed her a pleasant smile. “Thank you. I had an orgasm a little over a half hour ago and it was wonderfully refreshing.”

  Jason looped his thumbs through his belt loops. “I helped,” he said proudly.

  Leah rolled her eyes and Mary Ann quickly looked away but not before I caught a glimpse of her relieved smile.

  I gave Dena a questioning look. Was everything really back to normal?

  “It felt different,” Dena said, reading the question in my eyes. “But what I think I forgot for a while was that sex isn’t just a physical act.”

  “No, I suppose it’s not,” I agreed, although I knew there were at least a couple of very good lovers from my past who I had little to no emotional attachment to…of course Dena had probably had about four hundred lovers like that.

  “For me it’s always had a heavy psychological element. I can get aroused just by handcuffing a sexy, erect man to my bed. That’s psychological.”

  “Dear God,” Leah mumbled and shook her head.

  “It’s all a state of mind and today I proved it. I proved that when I’m in the right frame of mind I can have an orgasm no matter what my legs can or can’t do. You have to admit that’s pretty damn cool.”

  “Cool? Dena,” I squealed bouncing up on my toes, “that’s awesome!”

  “Yeah, I thought maybe I’d lost…lost everything.” She stared down at her legs again. “I haven’t… Things are different but I haven’t lost. I won’t let that happen. I’ll always be me, and I’ll always be orgasmic.”

  “And she said there was no pain!” Jason said. He stood slightly pigeon-toed as he beamed down at Dena. “No pain at all…well, it hurt a little when she scratched her fingernails down my back but I like that. That kind of pain keeps it real. It’s part of the intensity of the human experience.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Leah pressed the base of her right palm against her forehead in a rather dramatic gesture of frustration. “Can we please talk about something less torrid? How was physical therapy this morning?”

  “She took three fucking steps!” Jason boomed.

  Now it was Leah’s turn to smile and look away. I was pretty sure I could hear her say “I knew it” under her breath.

  “What’s up with the dress?” Dena asked.

  Now Leah was really smiling. “I thought it might make a good bridesmaid dress.”

  Dena’s eyebrows shot up and she immediately gave the dress her full attention. “All right! This is progress! Now that dress isn’t exactly my style but at least it’s black. So if we could find another black garment…it doesn’t need to be a dress, I’m cool with a classy pantsuit…although Theory has this fantastic knee-length leather dress—”

  “This is impossible!” Mary Ann cried. Mr. Katz entered the room and pressed up against my legs and stared at Mary Ann’s reddening face. Apparently he found her sputtering to be a mild form of entertainment.

  Mary Ann took a deep breath and continued. “I promised Monty that we’d have the wedding at Disneyland—”

  “Aha!” Leah snapped her fingers in the air. “It was Monty’s idea to have the wedding at Disney! I knew it!”

  “It doesn’t matter whose idea it was!” Mary Ann shot back. “I agreed! I want a fairy-tale wedding, and since Disney writes the fairy tales, it makes sense!”

  “Actually,” I said as I bent down and pulled my kitty up into my arms, “Disney doesn’t really write fairy tales, they adapt them—”

  “They don’t adapt them!” Jason protested. “They decimate them! They make them all fucking cheery and shit! Fairy tales are supposed to be brutal with people being dragged through the streets and wicked stepsisters cutting off their toes just to fit their foot into a shoe! And that’s the edited version! Did you know that in the original version of Rapunzel the prince knocks Rapunzel up during his little visits inside her tower? Rapunzel was a freak!”

  “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!” Mary Ann was now literally jumping up and down. Mr. Katz squirmed in my grasp as he continued to watch Mary Ann with amused kitty eyes. “I don’t care who Disney has adopted and I don’t care about your nasty unedited Rapunzel story!” She took a long ragged breath and continued. “Monty wants a Disney wedding and I’m on board with that! And I want pretty, feminine dresses for my bridesmaids and for my maid of honor! It’s nice that you found one pretty and appropriate black bridesmaid dress, Leah, but there is simply no way you are going to find another black dress that is equally appropriate that both Dena and I can agree on! And since I know she’s never going to like anything I choose, I might as well just have her wear peach so we can honor Monty’s stupid grandma!” As soon as the last words escaped Mary Ann’s lips she gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  We all stared at her in silence. Leah looked thoughtful, Jason perplexed and Dena seemed to be hovering between irritation and bemusement.

  As for me…well, I don’t know what I was feeling. The world didn’t make sense. If I ever doubted that point I didn’t anymore. The topic of this conversation was all wrong. Dena wasn’t bemoaning her fate or celebrating her recent successes and Mary Ann wasn’t contemplating the possible murderous tendencies of the man who had been following her all day. Instead we were arguing about leather dresses by Theory and Disneyland weddings and Rapunzel’s secret wild side and…and peach! Our lives were in danger and we were arguing about the value and significance of the color peach!

  I sat down heavily on the soft cushions of my armchair, ignoring the prick of my kitty’s claws. I was tired. Everything was upside down and I was getting dizzy.

  Leah slowly lowered the dress over the back of the sofa. “I can make this work.”

  “Oh, Leah,” Mary Ann began but something in Leah’s face stopped her.

  “If I can find a dress that both you and Dena agree on by the end of tomorrow will you hire me as your wedding consultant?”

  Mary Ann pulled anxiously at her curls that were now tumbling around her shoulders in an impossibly adorable way. “That’s impossible. You know it is.”

  “Nothing’s impossible. Not for me.” Leah ran her hands over her highly disciplined hair. “Will you hire me if I find the dress?”

  Mary Ann hesitated, her eyes darting uncertainly around the room.

  “YES!”
Dena yelled. “Say YES, Mary Ann.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll take you both shopping tomorrow afternoon. If I can’t find The Dress by the time the stores close, I will stop bothering you about your wedding. But if I do find the dress you have to hire me.”

  “Dena and I both have to like the dress,” Mary Ann said carefully. “Otherwise no deal.”

  Leah smiled. “Of course.”

  “Okay then, we’ll go shopping…tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Jesus,” Dena said, slapping her hand over her heart.

  “Actually my name is Leah. But feel free to worship me anyway.”

  “Leah,” Dena laughed, “I am so sorry for all those times I called you a Stepford wife.”

  “And I’m sorry for all the times I called you a slut,” Leah said crisply. “I’m thinking something along the lines of a Robert Rodriguez. Sexy, flirty fun.”

  Dena’s smile widened. “Leah, I swear to God, if you were a guy I’d do you right now on top of your Barneys bag.”

  “Now that’s hot,” Jason breathed.

  “Yes, well, that’s…” Leah shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Anyway, Mary Ann, I would like to have this agreement in writing. Do you mind if we draw something up?”

  “But all this is on the condition of you finding the perfect dress, right?”

  “Of course, we’ll include that as a clause.” Leah glanced in my direction. “We’ll be in the dining room,” she said as she grabbed Mary Ann’s hand and led her out of the living room.

  Dena gestured for Jason to roll her closer to the dress on the couch. Jason did as asked and then leaned over her wheelchair so that his lips were only inches from her hair. “You’d look hot in a garbage bag,” he said.

  “Yes, well, I’d rather wear a garbage bag than a shiny peach dress.” Dena sighed. She turned over the price tag dangling from the garment and winced.

  “You know, Mary Ann isn’t going to agree to let you wear a leather dress to her Disneyland wedding,” I said as Mr. Katz finally broke free of me and found his own spot on the window seat.

  “I know,” Dena said with a smile. “It’s called bargaining. I’ll ask for what I know I can’t have and then as a compromise she’ll give me the more reasonable dress that I actually want.”

  “Ah.” I plucked a few cat hairs off my sweater. “What exactly does a woman of your temperament consider reasonable?”

  She didn’t even have to take a second to consider the question. “Reasonable is getting exactly what I want.” She dropped the price tag and licked her painted lips. “Today I wanted to walk and I wanted an orgasm and that’s what I got. Tomorrow I want a little black dress. I think that’s very reasonable, don’t you?”

  And the odd thing was that I did. At that moment in time it seemed like the most reasonable thing anyone had said all day.

  CHAPTER 23

  The line between Nutritionist and Sadomasochist was irreparably blurred the minute nutritionists started pushing people to embrace wheatgrass as a beverage.

  –Fatally Yours

  Leah didn’t stay long after that and Mary Ann left the minute Monty called to tell her he was home. Dena and Jason were both exhausted from the orgasms they had given each other earlier in the afternoon and decided to retire for an early evening nap. I was exhausted, too, but I couldn’t rest. Instead I went online and did a background check on Rick Wilkes. When I couldn’t find anything suspicious I got in my car and I drove by his house. It had been at least a year and a half since I had been there. I remember standing between Leah and Dena as we and every other person Mary Ann had ever so much as had a conversation with sang “Happy Birthday” to Mary Ann. We were all crammed inside Rick’s tiny little Hayes Valley home all at Rick’s personal invitation. I had been impressed with him then. Impressed with the efforts he would go to for the woman he loved.

  Now I wondered if love had been his motivation. Perhaps it had been guilt. It didn’t matter anymore. What he had with Mary Ann was over. Now the question was what he had against her. Rick’s car was parked in front of his garage. All the living quarters were above that garage and I could see the lights flickering behind the blinds. Rick had been successful once. Republican politicians had been willing to pay him good money for his consulting services. But then he had an epiphany and became a Libertarian and his fortunes had dwindled from there. What was a man who had nothing to lose capable of?

  The short answer was anything.

  I parked across the street, watched and waited. Would he try to hunt Mary Ann down again? What would I do if he did?

  My phone rang right at the moment when the night was dark enough to show all its stars.

  “Where are you?” Anatoly asked the moment I said hello.

  “I’m outside Rick’s,” I said simply. “He followed Mary Ann today, Anatoly. I know he’s guilty.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Sophie,” he finally said, “come home.”

  “I have to watch him,” I protested. “Somebody has to watch him.”

  “I don’t think he’s guilty, Sophie. Amelia—”

  I hung up and dropped the phone on the passenger seat. Why was he so hung up on Amelia? Why was he ignoring all the evidence?

  Anatoly called again and this time I let my phone ring four times before I picked up.

  “She made a purchase that amounted to 292 dollars at Reed’s Sport Shop in San Jose a week and a half before Dena was shot,” he said, continuing his sentence as if I had never hung up on him.

  “She was going camping in Nicaragua,” I snapped. The headlights of a passing car provided me with a moment of light and I grimaced at my tired-looking reflection in the rearview mirror. “It makes sense that she would need some sporting goods.”

  “Sophie, San Francisco is full of sporting goods stores. Amelia went out of town to the one sporting goods store that’s known for its wide variety of firearms.”

  I glanced up at Rick’s place. A shadow passed behind the blinds. “She must not have known…she probably happened to be in San Jose, saw the sign and decided to get a tent or something.”

  “Sophie, she couldn’t have not known. The place has an indoor shooting range attached to it.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “In the past week Rick has shown up at the hospital, at Mary Ann’s boyfriend’s house and now at a restaurant where she was eating with me. He knew Dena had been shot before the press released her name. Don’t you think that’s suspicious? More suspicious than anything Amelia has done?”

  “I do but three of Rick’s neighbors swear that they saw Rick enter his place less than an hour before the shooting. It’s possible they’re covering for him, it’s even possible that they didn’t see him leave again, but he would have had to have been fast, and there’s no evidence that Rick has a close enough relationship to his neighbors to inspire that kind of loyalty. I don’t doubt that Rick’s stalking Mary Ann and we can try to nab him for that. But that doesn’t make him guilty of shooting Dena.”

  I rested my head against the leather seat. So he had checked Rick out. He hadn’t ignored my concerns at all. That probably should have made me feel better. Oddly enough it didn’t.

  “Do you know for a fact that Amelia bought a gun?” I asked.

  “No. I found the charge on a yellow credit-card receipt in her recycling bin. If we do prove her innocent you should talk to her about the dangers of identity theft.”

  “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

  I could almost hear his smile. “I plan on going to Reed’s tomorrow with a picture of Amelia. Hopefully they’ll remember her. I won’t go to the police before I do that but, Sophie, it’s not looking good.”

  “But you’ll at least wait to talk to the employees at Reed’s?” I asked. I was simply buying time again. Tomorrow I would track Amelia down and ask her about the charge. Anatoly was right about one thing: just because Rick was home an hour before Dena was shot doesn’t mean that he stayed there. I th
ought of Rick’s skewed tie and rumpled appearance this afternoon. He was losing it and he was obsessed and I’d be willing to bet a fair sum that he was guilty of shooting my best friend.

  “Come home,” Anatoly said again. “If you’re right about Rick, it’s not safe for you to be there. Even if you’re not right, it’s not wise to sit by yourself in a car on a dark street.”

  “Ha! After all the dangerous situations I’ve been in you think I’m going to be scared off by a little stakeout?”

  He gently swore in Russian. “All right,” he said finally. “If I agree to stake out his place tonight…all night, will you come home?”

  “Seriously?” I peered out at the street as yet another car passed. “But don’t you need your sleep?”

  “What I need is to know that you’re safe. Without that, there isn’t going to be any sleep.”

  I loved him. No ifs, ands or buts about it, the man was my prince…the good kind of prince, not the kind who knocked up distressed long-haired women locked inside of towers.

  “You don’t have to stay the whole night,” I said apologetically. “Just until you feel sure he’s asleep…of course if he turns the light off that doesn’t mean he’s gone straight to bed. You might want to wait, like a half hour after his house goes dark and—”

  “I’m a private detective. I know how to do this.”

  “Right. You remember where it is? You haven’t been here since Rick threw Mary Ann a birthday party.”

  “I remember.”

  “Okay, well, do you mind if I sit here until you arrive? That way there isn’t a gap in our surveillance? Or I could sit with you! We could make this like a stakeout date!”

  “No, you should be here with Dena and Jason. But you can stay until I get there.”

  I sat up a little straighter in my seat. “Oh, you’ll allow me that, will you?”

  “I just offered to give up a full night sleep for you, Sophie. Don’t push me.”

  He had a point. I let my posture slump again. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”