by Kyra Davis
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
I smiled and hung up again. Yes, he was definitely a prince.
Then again if I didn’t find a way to definitively clear Amelia soon she wouldn’t think Anatoly was so wonderful. She would think of him as the man who made all her worst nightmares come true.
I didn’t sleep easily that night. I kept thinking about Anatoly sitting in Jason’s car outside of Rick’s place…cold, tired and forcing himself to watch a man he believed to be, in this instance, innocent. All for me.
He had taken Jason’s car because it’s difficult to do surveillance while riding a Harley. Jason hadn’t asked why he had to give up his car for the entire night. It just gave him one more reason not to leave Dena’s side.
When I woke up the next morning I heard Dena and Jason making noises in the kitchen. Anatoly still wasn’t home. The only guy in my bed was my faithful cat.
I stumbled down the stairs in sweatpants and a spaghetti-strap tank top. Mr. Katz was close on my heels. “Coffee,” I said once I had found my guests loading up my dishwasher. “You don’t have to do that,” I said as it finally dawned on me what was happening. I’m not exactly quick-witted before my coffee.
“Hey, I can reach the dishwasher,” Dena said as Jason handed her another freshly rinsed plate from the sink. “This might be the only chore I can easily do.”
“’Kay.” I was way too tired to argue with her. I pulled some dry cat food out of the cupboard and filled Mr. Katz’s bowl to the rim. He gave me a puzzled kitty stare before quickly digging in.
“That’s his second breakfast,” Jason said as he held a handful of utensils under the running water. “Anatoly fed him before he left this morning.”
I hesitated, the bag of cat food dangling in my grip. “But he didn’t come home yet.”
Dena laughed. “He was home. I heard him come in at about three-thirty. When he headed out he told me he slept in the upstairs bedroom so he wouldn’t wake you.”
“But where did he go?”
“I think he said he had to go to San Jose. Is that right, Jason?”
Jason nodded. “You miss a lot when you sleep in. ’Course if I ever become a vampire, I’ll miss all the daytime shit. It’ll just be moonlight, hunting and David Letterman for me.”
I glanced at the clock above his head. It was already ten-thirty. Not surprising since I hadn’t really fallen asleep until about three. If I had stayed up just a half hour longer I could have talked to Anatoly.
“Did he say how his surveillance went?” I asked as I put the cat food back. No use in taking away my pet’s second breakfast. Mr. Katz was sweet but if you tried to take food away from him he got angry, and that was never a good scene. Mr. Katz was the Incredible Hulk of the kitty world.
“Uneventful,” Jason said as he handed more things for Dena to put in the dishwasher. “That was his word. Who was he watching anyway? Some puritanical-chastity-case hire him to watch her boyfriend?”
“No, he… It’s a long story. Um…I should call him though…after coffee.”
Dena nodded. “You know Kim’s plane lands at SFO tonight at ten-fifteen.”
“Oh?” I went to the refrigerator and pulled out some un-ground beans. “You want me to drive you to the airport to pick him up?”
“Actually, I was thinking I’d like to pick him up with you, Jason…and Amelia.”
Jason’s chipper expression slipped from his face. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Jason, don’t be an idiot.”
“She wasn’t there for you, Dena!”
“Yeah, well—” Dena took a deep breath and looked down at her hands “—have we ever really been there for her? She’s family Jason and it’s about time we start showing her some love or she’s going to bail on us. We don’t want that. I don’t want that.”
“You love her,” Jason said quietly, distress coloring his features.
“She’s family,” Dena repeated. It was as sentimental as she was ever going to get. She reached forward and repositioned a glass in the dishwasher. “Anyhow, I don’t want the responsibility of having two boyfriends. You guys are too high maintenance and Amelia balances things out. This whole polyamorous thing doesn’t work without her.”
The water was still running full force although Jason wasn’t rinsing anything anymore. Wordlessly I turned off the faucet and threw some beans in my coffee grinder.
Jason stared at the dishes that remained in the sink. “We don’t have to be polyamorous if you don’t want to.”
“Don’t,” Dena snapped. “Don’t even think about getting traditional on me. I’m just getting back in the game and you want to clip my wings?”
“No!” Jason shook his head fiercely. “I don’t want to conform to the societal norms, I swear! But Amelia…”
“She’s coming tonight, Jason, and that’s final.”
I ground my beans and then after putting them and a pot full of water in my coffeemaker I slipped out of the kitchen and went up to my room to get my cell.
But the number I plugged into it wasn’t Anatoly’s, it was Amelia’s.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded strained and weepy.
“Amelia, it’s Sophie, is this a good time?”
“No,” she whispered.
I sat down on my bed. I had been wrong, Amelia didn’t sound weepy after all. She sounded scared. “What’s going on?” I asked cautiously.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Dena’s there?” she finally asked.
“Yes.”
“And Jason, too?”
“Yeah, they’re doing the dishes.”
“The dishes,” she repeated as if she had never heard the term before.
“Okay, seriously, Amelia. What’s going on?”
“Nothing…well, no, that’s not true…I…I need a friend, Sophie, and I feel like the world has abandoned me! My horoscope said that yesterday and today would be filled with positive opportunities but all I can see are threats! I don’t understand how that’s possible! How can my horoscope be that off? Do you think they read the stars wrong?”
“Amelia, do you want to come over here?”
“No! No, I don’t want to see Jason…but I do need a friend. Can we meet somewhere else? I won’t take up a lot of your time.”
“It’s totally okay,” I said quickly. I rested my hand on the side of the bed that Anatoly usually sleeps on. It was neat and undisturbed. “Just let me make myself some coffee and get dressed. Are you at home right now?”
“No! I had to get out of there. I’m at Crissy Fields right now, just watching the kite flyers and the tai-chi guys. Normally it calms me but…” Her voice trailed off and I heard her suck in a shaky breath.
“Okay, seriously, what is going on?”
“No, you haven’t had your coffee yet. You’ve told me about how hard it is for you to cope with drama before your coffee. Maybe we could meet by the pond by the Palace of Fine Arts? I could feed the ducks…I do love bonding with San Francisco’s wildlife. Maybe that will help me calm down…maybe…do you think that feeding hungry ducks could be defined as an opportunity? Could that be what the astrologer meant?”
I exhaled loudly. “Just go to the Palace of Fine Arts. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
Exactly an hour and fifteen minutes later I found Amelia at the Palace of Fine Arts, standing at the edge of the pond wearing another one of her tie-dyed dresses. Her curls were wiping around in the wind. She had a loaf of flourless sprouted-grain bread with flaxseeds that she was breaking up and throwing to a bunch of ducks that seemed to be exhibiting a healthy disdain for the meal.
But she wasn’t herself exactly. Even as she threw bread crumbs to the mallards she seemed stiff. Her shoulders were rigid and her eyes were wide and frightened.
“Amelia, what’s going on?”
“Jason told the police I shot Dena.”
“What!”
&n
bsp; “It had to be him!” she moaned. “He’s so mad at me, Sophie! But…how could he lie about me? Oh, my God, do you know how bad this is?”
“I have an idea.”
“The police just showed up at my doorstep and asked to come in but of course I couldn’t let them. I insisted we talk outside. I have, like, five pot plants in my place! And what if they found the mushrooms? What if they asked to taste one of my brownies? But now because I wouldn’t let them in they’re even more suspicious! Oh, God, I’m in so much trouble!” She threw a particularly large chunk of bread and the ducks skirted out of the way.
“What did the police want to know?”
“Everything! They wanted to know where I was when Dena was shot. About my relationship with Dena and Jason and Kim. They wanted to know why I didn’t go to Nicaragua with Kim and…just everything!”
A small child was laughing delightedly in the background but the sound didn’t do a lot to lighten Amelia’s expression. “Jason hates me. I knew he didn’t love me but…Sophie, he hates me!”
“Okay, you don’t know that Jason turned the police on you. It could have been someone else.” Like the Russian SOB I was currently living with. “Listen, aside from the drugs is there anything else you need to hide?”
“Like what?” she said, looking at me blankly.
“Like…Amelia, you didn’t buy a gun recently did you?”
“A gun! God, no! I don’t believe in guns. They’re objects of destruction. Just holding one can seriously mess with your chi!”
“Okay…have you…um…shopped anywhere recently where they sell guns?”
Amelia made a short noise of disgust. “Yes. A few weeks ago I was in San Jose visiting a friend and there’s this place called…I can’t remember…could be Red’s? Or Rod’s?”
“Reed’s?” I asked. Please let her have a good explanation for this. Please, please, please!
“That’s it! Reed’s!” She broke off another piece of bread and threw it into the pond. “There’s this really cool watch that Kim’s been wanting. It’s made by Suunto and it has a barometer, an altimeter, a compass, a weather indicator and all sorts of other neat stuff. I wanted to get it for him as an early birthday present…you know, before our trek.”
“A watch? That’s what you bought at Reed’s?”
“Well, someone who occasionally…buys herbs from me told me they had it there and they did but when I went in…Sophie, they actually had a shooting range! I swear if I hadn’t so badly wanted to give Kim that watch I never would have given them my money.” Her face darkened. “I never did get around to giving it to him. Maybe everything that’s happening to me is punishment for supporting a gun retailer. The earth mother is punishing me, and I deserve it! I just so wish that Jason wasn’t the one to deal out this punishment! And I know it’s him. You know, he called me yesterday.”
“He did?” I had thought he was too busy cheering Dena on and giving her orgasms to bother with Amelia, but tact kept me from saying that.
“Yes…I guess he talked to Kim, and I guess Kim told him I said I was going to kill Dena! I swear I never said that.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I could kill his relationship with Dena! Dena is much more into Jason than Kim. She likes Kim all right but if I’m not in the picture she’ll exchange him for someone else eventually. The only reason he’s lasted as long as he has is because I like him and Jason likes me…or at least he used to.”
“Ah, then what Kim’s saying…that’s quite a misquote, isn’t it?”
“I know! But believe me I would never say I was going to kill a living thing! Not even a bug! I mean, who am I to kill an ant? Why do I have more of a right to live than a cockroach?”
“Well…I don’t know. I think you might have a few more rights than a cockroach.”
“But I shouldn’t! In the eyes of nature we’re all equal. Every living being should have equal rights regardless of whether we like them or not—and I do like Dena! I love her!”
Amelia ripped at the bread as her eyes clouded with tears. The ducks had all gone to devour the bits of Wonder Bread that was being dealt out by a six-year-old twenty feet over but Amelia didn’t seem to notice their abandonment. That was probably a good thing. Considering her feelings about cockroaches I could imagine how emotional she might get over the rejection of a duck.
“Amelia, just tell the police the truth and get rid of the pot plants and all the rest of it. If you really need to get high, get some weed from a medical marijuana clinic.”
“But I’ve been growing those plants forever! They’re like family!”
“Yeah…um, actually, they’re really not. They’re plants. And get rid of the mushrooms and stuff, too. I’m guessing you can keep the brownies.”
“Sometimes to supplement my income—”
“You sell pot to friends,” I finished for her. “I know about that, but whatever economic hit you’re going to have to take won’t compare to the economic and legal hit you will take if you don’t clean house.”
Amelia took in a shaky breath and nodded her head. “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“That’s not going to work. You’re going to have to go home and do it right now.”
“Okay,” she whispered. She handed me the loaf of bread. “Dena knows I would never hurt her. She has a wise soul. She can see inside of people, you know?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I watched as a seagull landed near a fallen crumb of the flourless bread. He gobbled it up, made a distressed squawk and then staggered away. I wondered if he would ever eat unidentified leftovers again.
“But Jason…I didn’t think he was capable of this. He glorifies anarchy and then he reported me to the cops out of spite! How could someone with such a good heart be this cruel? To me!”
“Amelia, I really don’t think Jason talked to the police. Just for right now I want you to give him the benefit of the doubt and I want you to go home and get rid of the drugs. Seriously, time is of the essence.”
Amelia nodded again and then after giving me a quick hug ran off toward the bus stop.
I pulled my phone out of my bag and dialed Anatoly.
“Hi, Sophie, how’s everything?”
“Asshole!” I yelled. The child who had been laughing earlier stopped abruptly, looked over at me, and burst into tears as his flustered mother rushed to comfort him.
Anatoly paused. “Is that how you say hello now or will this conversation be unique?”
“You told your police contact that you suspected Amelia!”
“Ah, that’s what you’re upset about. No, that wasn’t me.”
“Bullshit! You’ve been wanting to sic the cops on Amelia for days! You just couldn’t wait, could you?” I threw the bread against the ground where it landed with a satisfying thud.
“Sophie, Dena is in a polyamorous relationship. It is not uncommon for people in polyamorous relationships to get jealous. The police may have come to suspect Amelia all on their own.”
“But that’s not what happened, is it?” I started walking along the pond. The mingling scents of grass, salt water and mold permeated the air.
“My contact on the force suggested that they had a tip. He didn’t tell me where it came from.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“When I said I was going to start to be more open, I meant I would be open about my life, not about police investigations that you might want to interfere with.”
“Asshole!” I hung up. A little voice in my head tried to remind me of the night of sleep he had given up just to help me but that voice was drowned out by my frustration. He lost a night of sleep? Big deal. Amelia could lose her entire future!
I dialed my home number. Mary Ann picked up. “I didn’t know you were there,” I said before she could even finish asking who was calling. “Are Dena and Jason there, too?”
“No, Leah picked them up and took them to Neiman Marcus to look at a dress. I was just leaving you a note before
going off to meet them. Is something wrong?”
“My boyfriend, that’s what’s wrong! He thinks Amelia is the one who shot Dena.”
“What? But she seems so nice!”
“She is nice! A little whacked-out but totally harmless. But now Anatoly has told the police about his suspicions…or someone has told the police…probably Anatoly. Anyway, the point is that now the police are treating Amelia like a suspect and if they do any serious digging they’re probably going to get her on a drug offense.”
“Oh, no, I forgot she did that stuff.”
“Yeah, well, she does. And maybe she shouldn’t, but for her to get caught now when everything else in her life is so fucked up…it’s just not right!”
“No, it’s not. Not if she’s innocent.”
“I’m so mad right now I could scream.”
“I’m going to Rick’s.”
“What!”
“Mommy, look at the angry lady!” another child cried as I walked by. His mother pulled him a little closer.
“Sophie, this is going too far. What if Rick really is the shooter? I’ve been thinking about it all night and he has been following me and…well, what if Chrissie’s right about how we should deal with this? It was bad enough when I thought I was in real danger, but now innocent people are getting in trouble. Not just people like Chrissie, but people who are actually nice! If I can stop that then I kinda have to, don’t I?”
“No, you don’t.”
“I think I do.” And with that she hung up.
I stared at the phone and then at the soaring domed building on the other side of the pond. “This is bad,” I whispered to myself. “This is so very bad.”
I turned on my heel and started running for my car. I had to get to Rick’s before Mary Ann did. It could be a matter of life and death.
CHAPTER 24
There are few things in this world that frighten me as much as a pastel color palette.
–Fatally Yours
The problem with getting to Rick’s house before Mary Ann was that it wasn’t really possible. Rick lived in Hayes Valley, which was considerably closer to my place than the Palace of Fine Arts. Of course, if Mary Ann had actually followed Chrissie’s plan and called Rick to set up a meeting and then arranged a meeting with the police right after there wouldn’t be a problem. But Mary Ann wouldn’t remember details like that. Strategy wasn’t her strong suit, even if all that was being asked of her was to remember somebody else’s strategy. Worse still, she wasn’t manipulative. Rick would know something was up. He wouldn’t allow her to take him over to the police station (not that they’d be expecting them or anything). If he was really capable of murder this would be the time for it.