by Kyra Davis
Detective Hoffman hesitated. “I shouldn’t tell you this but no. It wasn’t either of them. The tip actually came from another suspect.”
“Another… Oh, my God, Chrissie!”
Detective Hoffman smiled. “I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that Chrissie was understandably doing some investigating in hopes of finding the person who did this. As far as we can tell, Chrissie didn’t do anything wrong…or at least she hasn’t done anything illegal. We’ll leave it at that.”
Had I put the idea of finding other suspects in Chrissie’s head? Had I mentioned Amelia in her presence?
But it didn’t matter. For one thing, if I had been in her position, I would have taken a similar course of action. Secondly, and most importantly, Amelia was off the hook. And lastly, Anatoly had kept his word.
And I owed him an apology.
I got home at almost the exact same time Dena, Jason and Leah pulled up. Dena and Jason were quiet. Not unhappy or frightened…just thoughtful.
In contrast Leah was exuberant. “Monty and Mary Ann told me they don’t want to get married at Disneyland anymore!” she confided as she got out of her car, which she had parked behind mine in the driveway. “He says they want to have their wedding in the city where Mary Ann got her new lease on life, and they want the woman who gave her that to plan the wedding! That’s me! Me planning a wedding that will happen right here in San Francisco!”
“But they had their hearts set on Disneyland,” I said distractedly as we waited for Jason to help Dena into her chair.
“They’re going to Disney World for their honeymoon, and I was thinking we could contribute a little to that as our wedding gift. Have them do the room up with rose petals or something. You know Disney is so good at arranging special events I’m sure they’ll have some wonderful ideas.”
I gave Leah a funny look but decided not to call her attention to the irony of her comment. The important thing was that she was going to have license to plan an honest-to-God fairy-tale wedding and no one could say she hadn’t earned the honor.
“So,” Dena said now that she was settled in her wheelchair. “We’re safe.”
“It seems that way.”
She looked down at her legs. I understood what she was thinking. She may no longer have to worry about looking over her shoulder every two minutes but the road to recovery was still going to be rough…and worst of all none of us knew exactly how she would heal.
“You’re making progress, Dena,” I reminded her. “Really amazing progress.”
“You got that right,” Jason agreed as he pushed her up the ramp. And before I could even get to the front door, Anatoly was there waiting for me. He pulled me into a marathon-style kiss. I think I could have done an entire load of laundry in the time it took us to complete that one kiss. And yet I wouldn’t have minded if it had gone on longer.
I was vaguely aware of Jason and Dena going inside. Leah said goodbye and something about having to get back to Jack, but I couldn’t answer her. My mouth was otherwise occupied.
Anatoly’s hands moved up and down my back and through my hair, and mine clung to the back of his neck. There was nothing gentle about the way he was touching me. The pressure of his hands, his lips…it was all telling me how grateful he was to have me here, safe. It was the kind of kiss that made a girl feel needed.
When we finally broke away my apologies bubbled from my lips. “You waited outside all night watching an innocent man sleep all because I asked you to, and only hours after that I accused you of betraying your promises!”
Anatoly shook his head, unwilling to give weight of even acknowledgment to my concerns. “I haven’t been the most forthright person lately,” he said. “I understand why you doubted me.”
I smiled. His behavior had little to do with my own but it was nice to hear him admit to the faults he had so recently refused to recognize. This was clearly a day full of victories.
When I got inside, Jason was sitting by Dena holding her hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked. She was so quiet. Not like herself at all, although she didn’t seem depressed…just…different.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that I want to get settled into my room.”
“You want another orgasm?” Jason asked, although he didn’t seem too thrilled about it. From the looks of it he was wiped.
“No,” she said quietly. “I want you to lie down in bed with me and hold me.”
Jason stared at her, his mouth wide-open. “You…you’re going to let me…you mean we can cuddle?”
“Don’t use that word,” she snapped, a flash of the Dena we all knew striking out at her least favorite word. “You can hold me…but I swear if you use one c-word that doesn’t have four letters in it, I am kicking you out.”
His mouth gradually formed into an elated grin. “Fuckin’ A!” He jumped to his feet and then without further ado pushed her into the bedroom.
Anatoly reached out and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “Maybe we should make our way upstairs. I don’t think Dena’s the only woman in this house that should be held.”
“I’d like that.” I got up on my tiptoes so I could kiss his chin. “I just want to give Amelia a ring. I’m not sure she even knows what went down or that she’s off the hook.”
“Call from upstairs.” He let his finger trace the outline of my jaw and then slide down the length of my neck until it was at the edge of my shirt. “I’ll tell her. I was wrong about her. She deserves to hear me say it.”
“But she didn’t even know you suspected her. As far as she’s aware you played no part in this little drama.”
“Still, I’d like to say it.”
He could be so honorable sometimes. He so rarely shrank from his responsibilities. And even when I pushed him away he remained by my side. Fighting with me, pressing my buttons, comforting me and always, always loving me.
I let him take my hand and lead me up the stairs. Unlike Dena, I planned to do a lot more than lie down while he held me in some kind of unsatisfying, platonic embrace. He was my prince and unlike Rapunzel, I knew how to use birth control.
EPILOGUE
“One does not serve carrot cake at a wedding,” Leah snapped. Dena, Mary Ann, Marcus and I were all gathered around the little table in the tasting room of an elegant bakery called I Dream of Cake. There were a dozen or more small slices of cake before us. Mary Ann was digging into the orange one that Leah found so offensive.
“Carrot cake is what you serve when you host a PTA meeting,” Leah continued. “Or as a rich finish to an Easter brunch. You don’t serve it after salmon!”
“She has a point.” Marcus waved a forkful of white cake with caramel swirl filling in the air. “Carrot cake is for people who like to pretend they’re being healthy even while they’re sucking up four-hundred-plus calories of sugar. If you’re going to cheat on Jenny Craig, the least you can do is be decadent about it. This, on the other hand—” he paused long enough to put the fork in his mouth and have his expression morph into one of pure ecstasy “—this is divine.”
“But nothing’s better than the banana cream cake with the walnut filling,” Dena protested. With a languidness that was impossibly seductive she licked the remaining frosting off the fork in her hand. Mary Ann had been engaged for exactly one year now and we still had another four months before the wedding. You would have thought that all that time would have made the planning less hectic, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
I sat back in my chair and contemplated how much had happened in the past twelve months. A year ago Monty had used a ruby to profess his love to Mary Ann, and a day later Dena had been shot. So much had changed, and so much hadn’t. We were still in the middle of wedding chaos, but I wasn’t worried about Dena anymore. Not even a little bit. Months ago she had walked into the courthouse to testify against Fawn. She had needed her walker then, but, still, she had walked. Now the walker was gone and all that remained was her cane. It was made of a beautiful b
riarwood and at the top in sterling silver was the image of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders for Dena to lean on. I liked it. Dena constantly had the world in the palm of her hand.
She had changed, but not in any way that could have been predicted. She was still fierce and her sexual appetite hadn’t abated in the slightest. She had broken up with Kim but still steadfastly refused to have a monogamous relationship with Jason. So they both dated other people and occasionally they engaged in a ménage à trois…the ménage à trois always being with Dena, Jason and another guy though, not another girl. Try as she might, she was never able to discover her inner lesbian and eventually had to admit to herself that she was, as Marcus called it, a flaming heterosexual. I wasn’t at all sure if Jason had any bisexual tendencies either, but in his eagerness not to be conformist, he would never admit to being completely straight, and besides he didn’t mind sharing Dena with others…not much anyway. As long as he remained her number one boyfriend (the way Holly had been number one with Hef for all those years), he was happy.
No, the thing that was different about her had nothing to do with her sexual prowess. What had changed was her level of empathy. She listened more. She volunteered her time to work with disabled girls. She even talked about finding a way to forgive her mother…although she was understandably having trouble with that.
Currently she was in the middle of writing a book about how to rediscover your orgasm after a spinal injury. I had a feeling her book sales would eclipse mine in the first month after publication.
“You know what I haven’t tried?” Dena said as she reached over her plate for another. “I haven’t tried the coconut cream cake with the Thai coconut flakes.”
“If you’re going to get something that exotic make sure that there is at least one layer of cake that will suit the less adventurous,” Leah said knowingly. “If you have a layer of the classic vanilla cake with the organic raspberry filling you can be assured that everyone will walk away happy.”
“Honey, nobody is going to be walking away period,” Marcus said, his mouth now full of chocolate fudge cake. “They’re all going to be gathering around your little animal-print wedding cake fighting for a second piece.”
“Do you love the cake design we chose?” Mary Ann asked eagerly. Her hair was pushed back by a muted-pink headband and a cloth flower with a sparkling crystal center flopped around in her brown curls. “You don’t think it’s too much?”
“No,” we all said in unison and then we all giggled and reached for our next tasting. It was clear by now that everything Monty and Mary Ann wanted for their wedding was “too much.” And yet somehow Leah always found a way to make their over-the-top preferences whimsical and attractive to the rest of the world. Each layer of the cake would subtly hint at a different animal print without overtly copying it. It fit with the theme of the wedding, which would be at the San Francisco Zoo. Leah had arranged for there to be animal handlers there with birds and bunnies and guests would even have an opportunity to feed the giraffes. The idea was that if Mary Ann wasn’t going to be Cinderella at Disneyland then she should be Snow White in San Francisco. Monty was all for it. He wanted to add his own touch by bringing truckloads full of animatronic ferrets to entertain guests on the dance floor. Leah was still trying to dissuade him from that.
It had taken Mary Ann a while to fully recover from the trauma of being held at gunpoint. The healing hadn’t really started until that day when Fawn had been sentenced to twenty years in prison. Rick had recovered from the physical attack quickly, but emotionally and psychologically he was a mess. Mary Ann initially forgave him for his stalkerlike behavior in the week that followed the shooting but quickly took her forgiveness back when she found him out by her garbage can sniffing a pair of badly worn high-heeled boots that she had thrown out earlier in the day. Now she had a restraining order in place and a rather interesting story to tell.
Anatoly hadn’t gone to Fawn’s trial. He initially said he was going to, but then he got embroiled in one of his cases and wasn’t able to make it. I teased him by suggesting that the real reason he wasn’t going was because he thought Fawn was too ugly to look at. Why else had he suddenly become so busy after he first saw her picture in the paper? He of course rejected the suggestion, rather gruffly I might add. But I hadn’t really been worried about his absence. As far as I was concerned, the only people who truly needed to see Fawn sentenced were Mary Ann and Dena. And they had seen it—and it had been wonderful.
The funny thing is that since her imprisonment Fawn had tried to call me twice. I got the messages on my voice mail saying I had an incoming call from a prisoner at the state penitentiary and asking if I would accept the charges. On both occasions I had heard Fawn’s voice in the background muttering curses. I hadn’t told anyone about that. Why would I? Everyone had moved on. I could deal with Fawn myself, and as for my friends…well, let them eat cake.
The young chef came over with a few more things to sample. Her smile was almost as sunny as her yellow apron and her almond-shaped Asian eyes were filled with warmth and friendship. “Try the pumpkin spice,” she coaxed and nobody argued with her.
My phone rang. I excused myself quickly and went to the other corner of the room where I could take the call without disturbing the others’ conversation.
“Hello?”
“You have a call from a prisoner at the…”
I sucked in a sharp breath as I listened to the message and then, out of morbid curiosity, accepted the charges.
I leaned my shoulder against the blue-gray wall of the bakery. “Why are you calling me, Fawn?” I asked in a hushed voice. The chef was serving everyone coffee and now the scent of the well-brewed beans tantalized my nose.
“Hello, Sophie. Did you miss me?”
“Yeah, I really don’t have time for this. Did you call for a reason or not?”
“Very well. I called because I figured that after everything you’ve done for me—or should I say to me—the least I can do is repay the favor by shedding some light on the true nature of your relationship.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I wanted you to know that I used to know Anatoly. He knew me when I went by the name of Fedora.”
For a second I couldn’t say anything and then I burst out laughing. The four people on the other side of the room turned to look at me and I held up my hand for patience and stepped out onto the street.
“What’s so funny?” Fawn asked, irritated.
“Well, if you’re going to tell me that you slept with Anatoly years ago, you have wasted your week’s worth of phone time. I don’t care what or who Anatoly did before he was with me. He’s faithful now and he’s STD free, so we’re good. But hey, thanks for calling and have fun in prison.”
“I didn’t sleep with Anatoly,” she said. “I was just friends with his wife.”
I sighed and stared up at the black sign of the neighboring shop that read Live Worms Gallery. “Fawn,” I said, “you’ve got the wrong Anatoly.”
“Really? He’s not a tall, dark-haired man with fair skin? He didn’t serve in both the Russian and the Israeli military?”
My eyes were still on the sign. Live worms, live worms…like a can of worms? I wanted to focus on the sign. The sign was real but what Fawn was saying…that couldn’t be real, right? She had seen a picture of him, or maybe she had seen us together on the street. Maybe she had slept with him. But if so, why didn’t she try to taunt me with that? Why make up a wife?
The sign didn’t seem so amusing anymore. I turned my back to it and stared at the beautiful cakes in the window. Fawn may have had a one-night stand with Anatoly a million years ago, but it couldn’t mess up what I had today. Today life was every bit as lovely and sweet as these cakes.
“And this Anatoly of yours,” Fawn went on, “he didn’t marry into the Russian mafiosi in New York? Well, then perhaps you’re right. I must have the wrong Anatoly Darinsky.”
My cell phone slippe
d from my hand and crashed against the hard surface of the sidewalk.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost I need to thank my spectacular editor, Adam Wilson. He might be the only man on earth who can make the editing processes not only helpful but also fun (I’m using a rather loose definition of “fun,” but still). I also want to thank Dr. Monica Gorassini, who helped me understand spinal cord injuries and recoveries. I hope she’ll forgive me for the enormous amount of poetic license I took with the medical facts. And of course I need to thank my son, Isaac, for providing me with so many truly helpful suggestions. Isaac, I promise to pay you your share of the royalties in Disney Dollars.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4629-4
VOWS, VENDETTAS AND A LITTLE BLACK DRESS
Copyright © 2010 by Kyra Davis.
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