“Oh yes, smart women do marry the well-to-do. Remember that, dear. Of course, my sweet Pauly also has his frisky moments. And, purr, last night was one of them.” Yet incredibly, she trailed a finger down Zach’s arm. “I wore my sex-executioner cat suit.”
“The one with the tail and whiskers?” I asked, not looking at her face as my eyes were on her fingers tickling Zach’s palm.
“That’s the one.” She laughed huskily; it was an alluring laugh, creamy and cloying with no naïveté in it. “One must never underestimate the power of a titillating whisker. And I do apologize for leaving the bonfire early.”
“I hope you got a chance to grab a s’more before you left,” I said.
She looked at me. “Ah, yes, two in fact. Chocolate sex.” Out came that laugh again. “My Pauly likes his chocolate melted.”
I stayed exactly where I was, between Zach and her. “Thanks for your generous donation. Leland plans to use the money to buy Wiis to help Solo exercise the seniors.”
She waved a blasé hand. “We won’t miss it.”
The Desmonts’ twenty-five-year-old daughter reached the top of the staircase from the top floor of their lakeside house down below. Sure, it was a redundant means to go up and down the hill since they also had a tram, but the city required a second way up in case of fire or a power outage. Mackenzie Desmont wore her reddish-brown hair straight and blunt cut to the shoulders. One side—the side with a long black streak at the temple—she’d tied back with a tiny black bow. Black eyeliner and near-black shadow called attention to her nearly violet eyes. The result was stunning, yet I thought she looked sad and lost.
“Hi, Mackenzie,” I said.
She sneered at Zach’s jacket around my waist. “Cute. I suppose you will be at tonight’s chaos, the party for Leland, I mean. It’s a chance for you to meet lots of potential employers, I suspect.” She slapped a strained smile on her dark lips. “It must take hours to make sense of that crazy quilt you call a résumé.”
I would have thought that comment was funny normally, but now I found it bitchy. She liked to make me look bad in front of Zach. It was no secret she wanted him for herself. Well, I was thrilled to see her expensive leather jacket had a gooey stain near the cuff.
“Mother dear,” Mackenzie said to Lilith. “Fat chance, I know, but how about having lunch with me today? It’s my last day at Starbucks—”
“Starbucks?” I said. “I thought you were doing filing at Leland’s lab.”
“I quit weeks ago. You try working with all those chemical smells. And don’t get me started on those nasty germs and diseases burning up in their incinerators.”
“So how come you’re leaving Starbucks?” I asked. She had an employment track record about as dismal as mine.
“The commute,” she said. “I thought I’d like working in Seattle, so much more urban than boring old Bellevue, but it turns out I hate it. And then there are the hordes of tourists at Pike Place Market. They’re so demanding.” She focused on Lilith. “So are you up for lunch?”
“I’ll have to pass, darling. I am rather tired today. I must get my beauty rest.”
Mackenzie barked a bitter laugh. “And why not, you put everything else before me, why not your beauty rest?”
“Nonsense. Have you forgotten all the sacrifices I’ve made for you? Inches to my waistline, several sleepless nights before your nanny arrived. And how can you forget all those vile months as your Girl Scout leader—”
Mackenzie brushed past her, drew near the squad car, and paused. Solo, a piece of licorice between his lips and just returning from his sailboat, shook his head when Zach asked if Leland was home.
“Are those Twizzlers?” Mackenzie asked him.
Solo smiled, held out several sticks, and opened the passenger door to the squad car. “Take ’em. Rylie’s got a big bag.”
“She would. Have you gotten a look at her fat ass?”
Zach whispered into my ear, “It’s been a hit with two men today.”
Despite my best effort not to, I giggled girlishly.
“Where are you guys headed?” Mackenzie asked Solo.
“To the police station.” He settled in the car, then told her about the accident.
“So what senior kicked the bucket? One of Leland’s?” she asked him.
“Someone killed Otto Weiner.”
“Really? I heard Leland threaten a guy named Otto last night.”
Zach stepped closer. “Leland threatened Otto?”
Time appeared to stand still as she stared up at him. “Well, not threaten exactly. He told a black guy that he couldn’t wait for Otto to get what he deserved.”
Zach’s gaze met mine, all serious now. “Black guy?”
“Booth Jackson,” I said. “You’ve met him. He’s FoY’s associate chef.”
Lilith grabbed my arm. “I knew there was something suspicious about Booth. All that glitz.” Her voice was hushed, but there was a tone of incredulous disbelief. “How can anyone working for Leland afford Armani?” She eyed my casual clothes as though to prove her point. “And Leland and he both acted strange last night. Writers notice these things.”
“Lilith, believe me. Leland isn’t involved in this.” I shifted to Zach just in time to see Mackenzie smooth a stray hair from his forehead.
“Nice one, Rylie, protecting your boss.” Mackenzie tossed away a half-eaten stick of licorice. “Of course, by nice I mean pathetic. What you won’t do to keep a job.”
“This isn’t about keeping my job.” It was a little. “It’s about supporting a friend.”
“Don’t you mean protecting a friend?” she said.
“Mackenzie, let’s get back on topic. What else did Leland say?” Zach asked.
“I’m no snoop or eavesdropper,” she told him pleasantly enough. “I overheard them as they built the bonfire. Then Leland took off.”
Zach looked at me. “Leland left the fundraiser?”
I nodded. “Particulate matter gives him asthma. He heads inside once the fire gets going.”
“What time was that?” he asked.
“About nine thirty.”
“How much staff did that leave?” Zach asked.
“Three. I made s’mores while Tita and Booth packed. Then Booth left shortly after. He took the Desmont’s tram. I remember because he said he had a cab waiting.”
Lilith tugged on my arm. “Who’s Tita?”
“She’s FoY’s head chef,” I told her without turning my head.
“Oh, that little shit. She had a fit when I asked for a virgin Bloody Mary.”
Now I did look at her. Lilith dearly loved her full-throttle cocktails. “Virgin?”
“Yes, I planned to write later. I wanted a clear head,” she said. “Last night I chatted with her assistant—Booth is it? He also adores Mt. Rainier and he also thinks Leland’s vitamins cause fatigue.”
I shifted to see Zach staring at his cell phone. He looked up and faintly smiled at Mackenzie, whose thumbs were on her cell. When he swung my way, his face fell. “I need to call this in.” He stepped away.
Mackenzie snorted, hands on hips. “Really, Rylie, who taught you how to make s’mores? You skimped on the marshmallows. I had to add more myself—myself.”
This explained the sticky stuff on her cuff. She had worn the same jacket to the bonfire last night. “Oh yeah?” I feigned some goggle-eye awe. “All by yourself?”
“I like lots of marshmallows. So does Zach. Don’t you, Zachy?”
This angered him; his eyes were unsmiling when they met hers.
“Yes, very stingy of you, Rylie,” Lilith piled on.
“See?” Mackenzie said.
We frowned at each other, a foul duo of rivals. Then at the sound of a passing truck uphill on the road, her chin shot up. “Shit. My bus will be here soon.”
“Don’t pout, darling,” Lilith said. “You can’t blame your father for making you use mass transportation. Two cars totaled in six months. Tsk, tsk. But I will keep workin
g on him. He’ll buy you an admirable one soon, maybe a nice BMW.”
“Damn it, Mother.” Mackenzie’s eyes, her voice were pissed. “How can you be so—?”
“So what, darling?”
“Mackenzie!”
All eyes turned to Paul Desmont at his second floor office window. His neck was craned outside, his face creased with a frown, and his eyes still unseen behind dark glasses.
“Lilith, shouldn’t you be writing?” His voice had regained is usual softness. “You have a deadline, remember?”
“Deadline, smeadline,” she said. “My publisher hearts me.”
“Two years to finish a book is absurd. You need to write faster,” Mackenzie said.
Paul smiled dolefully, giving his daughter a disappointed look. “Mackenzie, shouldn’t you be leaving for work? And, Lilith, turn off the lights when you’re done in the garage.”
Zach touched my arm. “I need to get something from my apartment. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said and started uphill.
“Wait,” Mackenzie said, catching up. “I’ll walk with you.”
Zach gave me a long look. “Okay, sure.”
Together, they climbed the driveway and veered toward the woods between houses.
“Don’t cut through Leland’s property,” Lilith yelled after them.
Mackenzie raised an open palm. “Talk to the hand.”
Lilith shrugged it off and jumped on their nearby tram to descend the hill.
Zach reappeared from the woods a moment later. “Rylie, over here.”
With Solo at my heels, I broke into the small clearing.
“Take a look at this,” Zach said, pointing to a black satin cap discarded on the ground. “Isn’t that a Jewish kippah?”
I nodded.
“Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t,” he said, “but Otto was missing his.”
“It’s Otto’s,” Solo said matter-of-factly. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“It is,” I agreed, though my mind reeled with the fact that this discovery suggested Otto had been killed only twenty feet from my bedroom window, which just might implicate me even more. So armed with this newest discovery all lingering doubt about investigating his murder vanished with a poof.
“See the clip?” I pointed to the silver fastener dangling from the edge of the kippah. “Even though Otto was bald, he always wore that same hairclip. I heard him once say it had sentimental value. I never saw him wear another.”
“Never,” Solo confirmed.
“See the star on the tip?” I went on. “Normally it’s blue, or at least that’s what I’ve seen on others, but on Otto’s the enamel is worn off. Just like this one, nothing left but silver.”
“So Otto tried to go to the fundraiser, but never made it,” Zach said, looking uphill.
My gaze followed his, trailing up the support columns to Leland’s home office and the street level garage above it. The towering height made me dizzy. “I wonder why the kippah is here and not on his head.”
“Maybe the killer knocked it off when they smothered him,” Solo suggested.
“Don’t touch,” Zach warned Mackenzie as she started to reach down. “It’s evidence.”
The kippah was a yard away from a crushed rhododendron and in the middle of a dirt trail that twisted the two hundred feet from the street above to Leland’s lakeside house below. Clear to see were drag marks across the trail, through some stinging nettles, around a stack of firewood, and into the woods to my driveway, where I had parked the van last night.
“What are you looking at?” Solo asked.
I considered. “Maybe Otto was killed up there,” I said, eyeing the balcony outside Leland’s street-side home office.
“You think someone threw him over the rail,” Solo said, staring uphill, too.
“Possibly,” I said. “Otto was a small man, way too small to tumble over a large rhododendron like this one and crush it. No, he had to drop on it from above.”
“Oh, get real, Rylie,” Mackenzie said. “How do you know that rhoddy wasn’t already like that? It’s not like you walk this way a lot to Zach’s place, not like” —her eyes met his— “others.”
They were involved. The thought struck me that they had been for some time, even though Zach often insisted since the shooting he didn’t want long-term relationships. I dropped my gaze, in a moment of hopelessness. Mackenzie was so dynamic, so self-assured, and not for the first time, I resented that everything I wanted—parents, stability, Zach—she possessed.
“This is now a crime scene,” Zach said.
Mackenzie curled into him, her eyes on me. “Hold me, Zach. I’m frightened.”
He wrapped her in his arms, shifting his gaze in my direction, a sliver of sorry in his eyes.
I looked down again, thinking, wondering, how I could ever compete with her.
~Life is short. Don’t be a dick~
I felt better after I had showered and changed and eaten a cheese stick. There was a quiet peace about our little home, as though family long gone watched over me. Still, another five minutes of my own pity party must have passed before I was able to grab a pencil and scribble a note to Granddad. No vivid exposé on this morning’s accident would do, nor would a barefaced fib. I may not be completely up-front with Granddad on all the goings-on in my life, but I don’t like to flagrantly lie, either. Plus, with Leland as my neighbor, there was zero chance of this disaster staying hush-hush for long.
I decided to carry on Joe Friday-like, “Just the facts, ma’am.” I stared at what I had written before I erased the part about finding Otto Weiner dead in the back of the van. Naturally, Granddad would never leave town with me involved in a murder, and in order to investigate this case, he had to be gone—had to be! I ended with “See you tomorrow. Love, Rylie.”
Next, I called Leland’s house from the landline Granddad refused to give up. It was an added expense to our budget and hard to remember the last time I’d used it, but with my cell phone AWOL at Suicide Trestle, I was happy to have it. The phone, meanwhile, was still ringing in my ear. Five rings later, I stood blinking in the sunlight glancing off the lake and into the windows.
There came a squeak of the front door, and Solo with a heaving chest and gasping breath appeared. “There are way too many steps to climb up from the dock.”
“Granddad says that if he ever wins the Lotto he’s gonna buy a tram like Leland’s.”
“It’s a lemon, that tram,” he said. “It’s always breaking. And it squeaks. Stick with the Desmonts’ brand. It’s ironclad. Who are you calling?”
“Leland. But there is still no answer, so I’m calling Tita now.”
The instant I uttered her name, Tita answered, “What!”
Typical Tita. Gruff. “It’s me, Rylie.”
“I noticed,” she said. “But more importantly, how come you’re not at work?”
Tita Iglesias, head chef at FoY and a former gang member, was the sole breadwinner in her family, supporting two kids, overbearing parents, and a moocher ex-husband. Sort of like a Latina Britney Spears.
“I had an accident in FoY’s van,” I said. “It’s totaled.”
“Not a surprise. You’ve been with us, what, four months? It’s fate.”
“I’m okay, though. Thanks for asking. The bad news is, Otto Weiner is dead.”
Long silence.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You not only totaled the van, but you killed Otto?”
“Yes to the first question and no to the second. Someone suffocated him. They stashed his body in the van,” I said.
“That’s it then, it’s over.”
“What’s over?”
Another pause. “You know? Otto, his bad temper.”
As soon as she spoke, I knew she was hiding something, but over the phone was not the time to question her. “Hey, listen, Karl Lipschitz is making Solo and me go to the station to give our statements—”
“I have an idea. How about you never
call me again?” she said. “I frown on having guilt by association linked to my name.”
I groaned. “Ah, come on, I really need you to drive Gilad and Elsa to their Sunday services. No other seniors signed up for rides, so they would be your only two. Pretty please.”
“Gracias a Dios,” she said. “You still gonna make your shift at the marathon? We need every able body we can get to man FoY’s tent. It’s gonna be crazy busy.”
“Sure thing. We’ll walk over after we’re done at the station. By the way, since you’ll be in the area dropping off Gilad at temple, would you mind swinging by Suicide Trestle and picking up my jacket? I hung it on the rail at the north end. My cell phone is in the pocket.”
She said a four-letter-word—also known as excrement used to fertilize crops—and agreed to retrieve my things, then hung up.
Solo and I jumped into the squad car and Zach took off. At the top of the driveway, my across-the-street neighbor was about to drop a letter into my mailbox. When elderly Mrs. Bebitch looked up, she demanded we stop by flailing her garden trowel. Zach pulled up alongside, Solo rolled down the passenger window, and she leaned inside.
Zach and Solo greeted her. I, on the other hand, tried to be inconspicuous in the backseat. The woman freaked me out. She was never without that stupid trowel, which she wheeled freely at any hapless stupido who dared park on her private lane.
“So, Rylie,” Mrs. Bebitch said. “The tax assessor wants his money. What is that look for, Zach O’Neil? I don’t check the addressee on envelopes. How could I have known I was opening Rylie’s grandfather’s mail? Oh, that reminds me, I saw your mother last night, Zach. I don’t mind telling you, it was hard to see her looking so miserable after you shot and killed that poor man last winter.”
Zach grimaced, but she appeared oblivious to it.
“Well,” she said. “Your shoulder must be better as your mother looks years younger, or maybe it’s having Father O’Brian from St. Patrick’s to cook for when he visits us. I will tell you this. I tasted her beef stew last night, before five o’clock Mass. Bland. Very bland.”
“Father O’Brian watches his salt. He has high blood pressure,” Zach said.
“I guess you heard he’s retiring,” she said.
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