Malicious Mischief

by Marianne Harden

  Leland had one leg inside the car when buxom Queenie crossed the parking lot to him. Huh? So Leland and Queenie knew each other. I didn’t like it, not one bit. I thought it looked bad, Leland having another connection to Booth. Unfair guilt by association? Probably. All the same, it gave me a bad feeling.

  My stomach squirmed as if filled with live snakes. I watched Queenie take Leland’s hand in hers, twist his wrist, and draw a finger down his palm like a fortuneteller. This was crazy. “What is she doing?”

  Solo looked up from the phone, blinked.

  “Over there,” I explained. “Leland is talking to Booth’s girlfriend, though I think Booth has some competition for her heart.”

  Solo stared out the window, squinting. “Where? Oh, there he is. I didn’t know Booth had a girlfriend— Wow, she’s his girlfriend. Sick!”

  “I know, right?” I smiled at his slack jaw. “She’s young enough to be his granddaughter.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant.” His cheeks were a vivid shade of scarlet.

  Seeing them, I realized his remark hadn’t been about their winter/spring pairing, but about Queenie’s amazing beauty.

  “It’s shocking,” he went on.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said. “So Queenie is a little pretty.”

  “A little pretty? Queenie is beau-ti-ful. Look, Leland is in the car now. They’re driving off. Is that Alistair behind the wheel?” he asked, and I nodded. “Where did Queenie go? I don’t see her. Get out of the way, everyone. Did you see where she went?”

  Men.

  “I got another shocker for ya,” I said. “Booth is married to Happy Hye.”

  He mouthed, “Omigod.”

  I continued to search for Queenie in the crowd when something else grabbed my eye. It was Booth, and he was leaving the White’s Jewelry table just outside Roaring Wings. Then he crossed the street, heading in our direction, appearing to fasten a wristwatch to his left arm. His smile was overblown. As he drew near, he spied us through the window and gestured for me to come outside.

  He was standing on the sidewalk when I pushed out the door. There were still loads of marathon watchers milling about, yet I had the strangest impression of being on my own in the lair of a monster.

  “Have you lost your damn mind? A Jewish deli?” Booth said. “Kosher foods? All those stupid rules. It’s bad enough we have to eat that way at FoY.”

  “Leland only has you making a couple kosher dishes,” I reminded him. “Plus, Shlomo’s serves a chocolate blintz.”

  “I’m allergic to chocolate.”

  “Omigod, Booth. Help. Help. Not chocolate.”

  His expression soured. “Is there a grown-up around I can talk to?”

  I dropped my gaze to the medical alert bracelet he wore alongside a half dozen other gold bracelets on his right wrist. “Is that why you wear that, because you’re allergic to chocolate?”

  “I’m not decrepit, see. I have a few allergies, so what? I’m gonna need my phone back. What’s with the long face? I just need the SIM card. Yo, Queenie,” he yelled as she walked to a nearby parked Ford Explorer. “Come back in an hour. I should be done, then.”

  She nodded, angled into the SUV, and turned the key. Though the windshield, we locked eyes, snarling at each other like pirates.

  “What’s Queenie and Leland’s deal?” I asked Booth as the SUV pulled away. “Friends?”

  His eyes thinned beneath his restless brows. “Here’s a nugget of wisdom. Don’t pry into things that don’t concern you.”

  “But it does concern me. Leland is my friend.”

  “Meaning?” He dug a finger under the wristwatch to get at his rash.

  “Seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? You set up Leland with Happy Hye for—for—”

  “Just say it, Rylie. He wanted to practice S&M. So what? I’m a generous man.”

  And he pecked me like a chicken. “Are you generous with Queenie, too?”

  His face went hard. “No.”

  “Never?”

  “I want my SIM card.”

  I glanced over to the deli. Solo was no longer in the booth. “Unless you mean later, we’ve hit a road bump. Solo has it.”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ve hit a bump. I want it now.”

  Just then, Gilad in the company of a stylishly dressed older woman left the deli. Gilad paused to hold the door open for a man in a wheelchair.

  Gilad’s female companion waited a few feet away from us. She was dressed in navy tapered pants and a red double-breasted short blazer. A designer striped scarf (bragging label visible) swathed her halo of black hair. She held a miniature poodle, its dyed pink hair shaped in a pompom. It looked like a cotton candy cloudburst.

  “A woman in Denver got fined for dying a dog’s hair,” Booth said to her. “Get a thousand bucks ready should PETA see that mutt.”

  She scowled at him, then at his rash. “I hope that’s a flesh eating fungus.”

  “It’s a social disease,” he said with a heated snort. “Want to see if it’s catchy?”

  She glanced over to Gilad, who was fast approaching. “The only thing I’m interested in catching is a Nazi hunter.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Booth said. “Even the best razors dull.”

  Gilad rushed forward. “I am not dull!”

  Or modest. Or discreet. Or faithful to Elsa.

  “Listen, I’d love to hear another round of your amazing Nazi stories.” Booth continued to scratch the rash on his wrist. “But I have business with Rylie.”

  Gilad cut his eyes to the rash and paled. There came an awkward moment where he appeared to assess its infectiousness, the sight creeping him out.

  When Booth barked his name, Gilad looked up, his eyes narrow. “You should see a doctor about that urticaria—that rash,” he said. “Leland’s party is tonight, so I assume you’ll be working it.”

  “You assume right. Why?” Booth asked.

  “Nothing important, but when you see Leland, will you give him my apologies for not attending? Sunny and I have plans for the evening.”

  “All night,” Sunny said with a creepy wink.

  “Easy there, tiger,” Booth told him. “You don’t want to pop a gasket, see. Penis arteries get brittle with age.”

  “Bleh!” Gilad said. “You cannot be serious. Sunny is new to Bellevue, she doesn’t know about me. Tell her, Rylie, you tell her how big the hill is from your lake house to FoY. How I trudge those three miles at least twice a day, up and down, back and forth. You tell her, Rylie, tell her what fine shape I’m in. Go on.”

  “He is fit,” I managed.

  “There is just no denying that, sugar,” Sunny said. “You’re a Nazi hunter, after all. Oh, look. There is my rabbi. Hello, Rabbi Cohen. Got a minute?” she called and trotted away.

  “Gilad,” I said. “What about Elsa? Don’t do this, please.”

  There was no mistaking his disgust: cavernous frown, eyes pointed. “Elsa has herpes,” he said. “She’s dead to me.”

  Was I speechless? Oh yeah.

  Booth chuckled as he stepped aside briefly for a passerby with a Golden Retriever. “In case you haven’t noticed, Rylie.” He pointed to his round visage. “This is my I told you so face. Score one for the rumor mill.”

  Totally. Yet had not that same mill said two seniors had herpes, which led me to wonder if Gilad had it, too. Or had Elsa got it from another man? If so, which one?

  Sunny’s voice rose to chastise teasingly the rabbi for his modesty. “Oh, you must know how very clever you are, you really must.”

  “You’re very kind,” the rabbi told her as the Golden Retriever doubled back to sniff at his pant leg. “Few people know that my father was a comedian.”

  “Was he famous? Would I know him? Had he been on Johnny Carson?” Sunny asked. Her poodle eyed the retriever as its owner tugged on its leash.

  Somehow, the poodle wiggled free, released some yaps, and dashed for the retriever.

  Sunny shrieked. “Duchess, no!”


  But Duchess kept running, a tiny pink blur in hot pursuit of a rapidly disappearing retriever. People scattered to make way. Sunny grabbed Gilad’s hand, pleading with him to save her precious Duchess.

  Gilad wrenched free, wiped his hand on his pants. “I don’t know. I heard the former French president was mauled by a clinically depressed poodle.”

  “Well, then,” Sunny said. “Sex tonight is off the table.”

  Gilad held his ground, his face a riot of revolving emotion. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. He looked so conflicted.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Booth thrust his angry rash under Gilad’s nose. “Catchy, catchy.”

  Going. Going. Gone was Gilad as he took off after Duchess, with Sunny at his heels, leaving us alone.

  “I want my SIM card,” Booth said to me.

  “Solo has it,” I said again.

  “Is he here?”

  “He was.” I pointed to the empty booth inside the deli. “But he’s gone now. I don’t know where. We’re both working the party tonight. I’ll see that he gives it to you then.”

  “No can do,” he said. “I need it now. It’s got my contacts.”

  I needed to distract him, so I blurted out, “You got that rash from the stinging nettles on Leland’s hillside, didn’t you?”

  His eyes widened. “This curiosity with my rash wouldn’t have anything to do with a detective needing to talk to me?”

  “Sounds like they know you introduced Leland to the seniors who ran me off the road.”

  It was difficult to see guilt behind his cool facade, but I managed.

  “Detective Lipschitz brought them up when he called earlier. I hear they’re dead. No matter, see, as I didn’t know them. I got their names off a bulletin board and gave it to Leland. So like it or lump it, I gotta now go see some Detective Talon and straighten this out.”

  “Then tell me this—” I began.

  “This is where you witness my pissed off face. I know all about your silly PI fantasy. But listen, and listen good, I don’t talk to amateurs, even when I got nothing to hide, see.”

  His eyes were challenging, and I knew he expected me to back down. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “How about Otto’s watch?” I said.

  His look of irritation turned to joy. “Meaning this?” He raised his wrist to show off with some fanfare the apparent object of my interest. Only problem, I hadn’t known his watch had been Otto’s. Nothing about it appeared special. Not with its plain, wide burgundy leather band, white face, blue hands, and two crisscrossed flags below the twelfth hour.

  “That’s Otto’s watch?”

  “Yessiree, Bob. This is my first time putting it on. Not bad, huh?”

  Hard to believe it was so expensive. “May I see it?” I asked. “Off your wrist.”

  “Why?”

  Good question, for which I had no answer. “I just want to.”

  “Then you’ll need to pry it off my cold, dead body,” he said.

  “You like it that much?”

  “Hell, I’m filthy rich because of it.”

  “Twenty thousand hardly makes you filthy rich.” But I’d take it.

  “What would you say to fifty grand?”

  I mouthed my best holy mackerel pie hole.

  “Yep, just like Otto this watch is ancient, yet unlike Otto, it’s a collector’s item.” He held it up for me. “See, it’s a pocket watch. The weird band holds it in place.”

  It was indeed a pocket watch, and an unremarkable one at that.

  “I think it’s the shit.” Translation: cool. “Otto told me not to wear it, said it didn’t go with my swag, like he was a fashionista.”

  “Why would Otto wager such a pricey watch?” I asked. “Did he know its value?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. But he brought it on himself, see. He’d been losing hand-over-fist all night, was down to his last dollar. The dumbass could have said all in, but instead he bet the watch.”

  “All in?” I asked.

  “Never mind, what’s important here is that he lost the watch to me fair and square.”

  “Leland says it’s worth twenty grand, you say fifty. Who’s right?”

  He gave me a steely smile. “You’re looking at one lucky son of a bitch, see. My jeweler friend offered me twenty. That’s where Leland got that number. But that bloodless bastard over there.” He pointed to White’s Jewelry table. “He just offered me fifty.”

  I thought that was a good description of the man, bloodless. “Wow, why the difference?”

  “Can’t say,” he said.

  A hunch about the bet surfaced. “Otto meant the watch to be just collateral, didn’t he?”

  “It’s called a marker,” he said, giving nothing away.

  “I suspect you were to give it back once he paid up. It seems to me a deal like that would need to be in writing, especially since we both know Otto trusted no one.”

  “Are you going somewhere with this shark tale?”

  I refrained from remarking on the aptness of the word shark. “A note like that could prove you didn’t steal the watch. Pretty important note, maybe important enough to cut off Otto’s air until he is unconscious so you could search him. Maybe he fought back and died.”

  “See, if that was true—and I’m not saying it is. I would want a note like that destroyed? With it, see, I’d have no legal claim to the watch, speaking hypothetically of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, thankful for the safety of a busy street. “Booth, it was premeditative, wasn’t it? You meant to kill him, destroy the marker.”

  “One flaw,” he said with a radiant smile. “My bad hip won’t let me climb that hill, let alone climb from your driveway to Leland’s garage. And Leland’s tram is busted.”

  He slipped up! “I never mentioned that Otto fell from Leland’s garage balcony.”

  “Too bad it’s all over the local news.”

  “Oh,” I said, deflated.

  “Better luck next time, greenhorn.”

  I absorbed the smug look on his face as he left, and I absorbed his remark: greenhorn. I couldn’t move. I went on standing there for some time, my hands crossed in front of me, my eyes on my feet. I turned, my doubt about solving this case rising. I walked into Detective Talon.

  I stumbled back, apologizing as he reached out, steadying me with a gentle hand.

  “Thank you,” I said awkwardly, shocked by the comfort I found in his touch.

  There came a lengthening silence as he stared down at me. His handsome face folded in, brooding, deep into a frown.

  I looked at him in bewilderment. “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s the way Lipschitz talks of you. It isn’t right and proper,” he said. “You do know he was once in love with you. And dammit, he quite possibly still is.”

  Such concern, he must have written the Bintliff note. “There was never anything between us—why dammit?”

  “A detective on a power trip, a vulnerable suspect, and an axe to grind—never ye mind, I suspect it’s better if I say no more,” he said, his voice steady but worried.

  His assertion intrigued me on many levels. Though loosely exercised, it was a breach of the age-old police code of silence. Even when guilty of wrongdoing, cops don’t talk bad about other cops.

  “I never encouraged Lipschitz,” I said. “He was too busy calling me bastard baby to realize that at the time. You should know something else. I had nothing to do with Otto’s death.”

  “No mind, I already knew you weren’t involved,” he said. “Though it makes no sense to me, you trying to persuade your grandfather by solving Otto’s murder.”

  I raised my brows, figuring he had learned this from Leland. “I need his blessing.”

  “Answer me this: does the grape ask the yeast what type of wine it should be?”

  Puzzled by this man, by how he talked in riddles, I stepped back, clumsily turning on an ankle. He didn’t steady me this time, didn’t touch me. I
t shamed me how much I had wanted him to. “I find you so confusing,” I said self-conscious, a bit shy.

  “I cannae fault you for that. I’m up to my neck in confusion. There is no rhyme or reason in why I’m willing to break a dozen department rules to discuss this case with you.”

  “Don’t risk your career for me,” I said too hastily, too coolly, as one does when skeptical, for police officers carried another burden, the binding pressure of their code of conduct.

  He picked up on my doubt and gave me a half-amused smile. “My career will survive, though my ego may not be as blessed.”

  I forced myself to say, “Ego complicates things.”

  “Aye, while laughing last and loudest. Petulant thing, ego.”

  He continued to look at me with his dramatic eyes. I saw the soulfulness in them and thought back to his anger over Lipschitz’s contempt for me. I wondered why it bothered him, why he felt the need to write the anonymous Bintliff note. Surely, he had more to worry about than me. He was a man of contrasts; I could see that now. The dangerous detective with a discerning stare, concerned stranger abhorring the ways of a hateful partner. I smiled, oddly becoming more at ease with him. But there was something baffling, even staggering about the suddenness of this change. I was entering dangerous grounds, I knew I was, but still I said, “Maybe yours just got out of bed on the wrong side.”

  “Innuendo?”

  “No,” I said, but it had been, and I turned cold all over at my boldness. I was acting harebrained. It had to stop. “Talon, why are you doing this? I’m more often the friend than lover.”

  He raised his brows faintly as though to question why. “Perchance it’s the men,” he said.

  I had the impression he left off the words that you choose.

  “Rylie, I’d like to know you.”

  Not get to know me, but the more intimate know me, which meant he was purposefully being lovey-dovey for grins, or for a reaction, or worse, to poke fun at me. But I did not want jokes from him, or kidding. Not now, not when it strangely hurt more than amused. I had a ridiculous desire to cry, but instead I took back the power with a faux smile, a tilted smirk. “How can I be of service to you, my good sir?” I asked with an equally mocking salute at his inappropriate jesting.