Marry, Kiss, Kill

by Anne Flett-Giordano

  Susan was clearly a woman who liked coming to the point. Smallish, late fifties, she’d let her short hair go gray but still managed to pull off bangs. Her tanned body was slim and tight as a violin string. She was dressed in moss-green silk. A loose blouse draped over flowing pants with matching Prada slippers. Soft clothes for a hard woman, Nola thought, as she rose to introduce herself.

  “Deputy Chief Nola MacIntire.”

  “Well, who else would you be?” Susan snapped as she sat down and poured herself a glass of tea. Nola was pretty confident that as long as Susan was holding the glass, the ice would never melt.

  “Sorry to spoil your vacation, but the city budget wouldn’t cover me driving all the way out to the desert to question you.”

  “I don’t see why you have to question me at all. The stupid jerk lost his money, so he killed himself. Isn’t it obvious? Case closed.”

  “Not quite. You see, we’re not totally convinced the scene wasn’t arranged by someone to look like suicide.”

  “I see. So I’m a suspect, am I?”

  Nola knew a woman like Susan was far more likely to outsource a murder than go the do-it-yourself route, but the standard questions had to be asked.

  “Not if you have an alibi for last night between midnight and two a.m.”

  “Well, that’s an idiotic question. I was in bed in my bungalow at the spa. I didn’t even know Gus was dead till your call this morning interrupted my qi-regeneration exercises.”

  Nola was glad she hadn’t had to send the Palm Springs Police to drag Susan back. They would have been hard-pressed to tell her apart from the rest of the thorny old cacti in the desert. Of course, maybe she hadn’t been quite so prickly before Gus dumped her for the second Mrs. Gillette the Third. That would be a tough row for any woman to hoe.

  Nola pulled a small notebook and pen from her purse. “Is there anyone who can corroborate that you were in your room at that time?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sleeping with my tantric breathing instructor, not that it’s any of your business. If you’d bothered to check, you’d know there are security cameras in the parking lot, and my car didn’t move all night. Frankly, I’d be the last person to kill Gus for the very simple reason that I wanted him alive.” She paused to let the weight of her words sink in.

  It dawned on Nola that Susan’s hazel eyes perfectly matched her moss-green slippers, which perfectly matched the cushions on the lounge chairs.

  “I assume you’ve met Gus’s new eight-by-ten-glossy whore of a wife?” Susan spit out the question like sour milk.

  Yep, Nola thought, green was definitely her color.

  “Actually, she’s the one who found his body.” Nola sipped her iced tea and waited for the next outburst. She didn’t have to wait long.

  “When Gus divorced me, he wasn’t satisfied just marrying her at the club in front of all our friends. He bought a new yacht for their honeymoon.”

  “Right, the I Got Mine. There was a picture of it on his desk.”

  “Of ‘her.’ Ships aren’t ‘its,’ they’re always referred to in the feminine. Anyway, Gus named her that just to spite me. He was furious about our settlement, so he was throwing his new life in my face.”

  “Harsh. But how does that prove you wanted him alive, as opposed to, say, on a spit with an apple in his mouth?”

  Susan smiled for the first time. “The banks are auctioning off Gus’s assets to pay his creditors. I was planning to buy that yacht even if I had to mortgage this house to do it. Then I was going to have a handyman drill a hole in her hull, throw the biggest party that yacht club’s ever seen, and raise a toast while she sank to the bottom of the harbor. The perfect symbolism can’t be lost, even on you, Detective.”

  Nola bristled at the implied slight. Immune to other people’s feelings, Susan continued to vent. “Of course, now that Gus’s dead, what’s the point? I can still buy the knife, but without his big fat back to plunge it into, where’s the fun? He died before I could humiliate him, and I really wanted to humiliate him. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the real victim here.”

  “I’m not sure the coroner would see it that way, and I don’t appreciate that bitchy remark about how even I could appreciate the symbolism, but you’re upset that your revenge plot’s a wash, so I’ll let it slide. But don’t sell me too short. Under all this honey blond, I’m a pretty smart Mint Milano. I know about your car, and I also know it would be simple enough to have a taxi pick you up on the road and have a second rental car waiting nearby. I’ve got people checking on that now. I’ve also got them checking your bank accounts to see if you’ve spent a little of your mad money on a hit man.” Nola paused, but there were no nervous tells. If Susan had killed Gus, she had a poker face that could stand up to any high-stakes game in Vegas.

  “On a separate note,” Nola continued, “were you aware your ex-husband had cancer?”

  The hazel eyes went wide as quarters. “Seriously?”

  “Terminally.”

  The quarters shrunk to narrow dimes. “Now I really wished he’d lived. I would have had two ways to watch him suffer.”

  “Wow. Did you write your own wedding vows? Because ‘till death or I get to really watch him suffer’ might have raised a few red flags.”

  “Someday you may realize how funny that isn’t. Don’t judge me, Ms. MacIntire. At least until you’ve wasted forty years of your life with a man who dumps you for a cunt with cheekbones. Then see if you aren’t bitter.”

  Nola cringed at Susan’s casual deployment of the C word. Apparently those qi exercises hadn’t quite kicked in yet. She knew the smart thing was to just let it go, but if she always did the smart thing, there wouldn’t be a tiger-striped monokini hanging in her closet.

  “Well, in forty years I’ll be nearly eighty, so I guess I would be a tough sell on eHarmony, but if you don’t mind my saying, stockpiling anger and dropping C bombs doesn’t seem to be helping you on your quest for inner peace. Didn’t your fountain Buddha say something about how, when you grasp a hot coal to throw at your enemy, you only end up burning yourself?”

  Susan took another sip of tea. “I trust you can see yourself out, Detective.”

  Asking Susan to stop being bitter was like asking passion fruit iced tea to stop being sweet. Nola had enough seemingly lost causes to deal with at the moment, so she left Angry Susan with her happy Buddha and returned to the T-bird.

  Pulling out of Susan’s polished-slate driveway, she thought about all the ways she’d seen love go wrong. A guy who doped his girlfriend’s Smart Water . . . a wife who added a pinch of live blow dryer to her husband’s hot tub . . . a gay man who suffocated his partner with a cloth he’d been embroidering for an AIDS quilt. Forget carbon monoxide — that person calling you sweetheart was the real silent killer. Still, despite its clear and present danger, love was the heroin of the heart, and everyone was always jonesing for a fix. It had only happened to Nola once, and there was no telling if it ever would again. Thankfully, there was a handy substitute right nearby. Back on Coast Village Road, Nola pointed the little T-bird toward her favorite cupcake joint. Frosting: the methadone of desire.

  Thirteen

  When Nola got home, she found a blue Post-it thank-you note from Nancy, accompanied by a mix CD. The first song on Nancy’s playlist was by Swedish House Mafia.

  “Don’t you worry, don’t you worry child . . .”

  Great advice, but how could she help but worry? The day had been an epic fail. No new leads had opened up. The newspapers and television stations were reporting whatever they could and getting most of it wrong, and when she’d stopped at Crushcakes on her way home, they’d already run out of red velvet. She only ate the frosting off the top . . . but still. There was nothing to do but go out on the balcony and talk it over with a glass of chardonnay. Unlike most people, who had an annoying proclivity for amping things up, wine had a quiet way of putting things into perspective.

  It was another warm night. The ocean fog was gracio
usly waiting offshore for midnight to roll in. Out on her tiny balcony, she listened to the music and the waves and let the wine slip a ball gag over the mouth of her constantly yapping inner critic. She wondered if Tony had made any progress on Charley’s case since their last text. Anything big and he would have called, but still. . .

  She reached into the pocket of her old gray cardigan. It was drab and shapeless and amazingly comfortable. She only put it on when she was home alone, and even then it was always with the silent prayer that she wouldn’t choke on an almond or something and literally be caught dead in it. She pulled out her cell and hit speed dial.

  Tony answered on the third ring. “Hey.”

  “Hey back. Glad you answered, I was afraid I might be interrupting a date.”

  “You are.”

  “Is she hotter than me?”

  “They all are.”

  “You might not think so if you could see the sexy little number I’m wearing now.”

  “You may look great, but she’ll have sex with me.”

  “I guess some girls just don’t have any standards.”

  “Amen to that. So, how’d it go with Angry Susan?”

  “Uck. The woman’s a kidney stone with a voice box. She was super pissed that I ruined her spa vacay, and even madder that Gus’s gruesome death put the kibosh on her evil-ex-wife plans for revenge. Which, in a crazy side note, were pretty effin’ elaborate. She had it planned right down to the color of the cocktail napkins.”

  “You writing her off as a suspect?”

  “Yeah, Juan called on my way home. No cabs reported picking up anyone fitting her description at the resort, no second rental car was listed in her name, and no hit-man money was missing from her Chase account, which is pretty much what I expected. If Haven ran to Gus’s room as soon as she heard the shot like she claimed, she would have noticed a hired killer sliding down a drainpipe. And speaking of Haven, no new clues pointing her way either. My whole day pretty much added up to less than zero.”

  “So why are you calling me at this cop-blocking hour?”

  “Relax. If Hotter Than Me thinks you’re talking to another woman, it’ll just make her want you more. I called to see if you got any new leads on Charley.”

  “Only more testimonials about what a decent guy he was. I’m starting to wonder if he may have stepped in front of a couple bullets meant for somebody else. Gangbangers up from Oxnard maybe?”

  “Maybe, but we’ll have to come up with something more concrete if we don’t want Sam to let the little tweakster fry for it.”

  “You know, there is one other possibility.”

  “Don’t even say it. It’s too scary. Go back to your date.”

  “They’re pretty fun, dates. You ought to try one.”

  “Can’t tonight. George Saunders has a new story in The New Yorker, and I’m sure by now a million friends have Instagrammed their lunches, so you see, there’s just no time. See you mañana, amigo.”

  After she hung up, Nola pondered that other possibility. The one so scary she hadn’t even wanted Tony to say it out loud. If some psycho had started getting his jollies by killing innocent homeless people like Charley, he could be out there on the prowl again tonight. Click, click, click. Nola pulled the ugly gray sweater a little tighter around her shoulders. How was it possible for such a warm night to suddenly feel so cold?

  Fourteen

  Sixty miles up the 101 Freeway from Santa Barbara, Vandenberg Air Force Base sits aside a stretch of coastline deemed “primo” by surfers, despite the fact that it’s also a primo hunting ground for great white sharks. While the big fish silently prowl the shoreline, high over the Pacific another kind of sleek, deadly hunter seeks its prey. Operated by Air Force Space Command’s 30th Space Wing, Vandenberg is a major missile-testing site. When the Patriot interceptors hit their dummy targets, a swirling kaleidoscope of gaseous colors explodes over the ocean, creating a dazzling aurora borealis in the sky. But as powerful as these mechanized kill vehicles are, it still takes soldiers to fight a war: men and women who sometimes return home with scars not readily visible to the naked eye. And that’s where Max came in.

  Maxwell Waxman, MD, PhD, dean of the psychology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was a leading expert on post-traumatic stress disorder. Short on shrinks and long on heroic personnel who’d been wounded in two wars most Americans no longer cared to think about, the Air Force had readily agreed when Max volunteered to provide group therapy in the evenings at the base’s mental health clinic. The room his group had been assigned was standard military drab, but the stories that were told around the table were vivid.

  Tonight, a young staff sergeant was recounting the grim details of an IED attack in Kabul. The rest of the group nodded knowingly, but Max was having a hard time concentrating. He wasn’t just sitting among them as a therapist this time, but as a fellow soldier, albeit in a very different army, fighting a very different war.

  A diehard environmentalist, Max had discovered a fellow traveler among his group, one who had access to classified information that Max had agreed to pass on and make public. But now he was having second thoughts. What if he got caught? What if the information was traced back to him? But it was too late to back out. The soldier had slipped the flash drive so deftly into Max’s pocket that he hadn’t even realized it was there until he reached for the cigarette he kept, not to smoke but just to roll around in his fingers. It was a little operant-conditioning trick he used to relieve stress. Although he’d quit smoking forty years ago, the feel of a Marlboro in his hand still had a Xanax-like effect on his aging nerves.

  By the time the group broke up, Max’s shirt was sticking to his back, and the Marlboro in his pocket was a twisted clump of soggy tobacco. As he walked in the dark to his car, he realized he was trembling. If someone had ferreted out the plot, MPs would be waiting at the gate to detain him. Was he really prepared to go to jail for exposing military secrets, even if the public had a right to know? He climbed in his Prius, but he was afraid to start it. He could hear his blood pulsing in his ears. For nearly five decades, Max had been studying bravery and the effects of extreme pressure on the human mind. Now he was about to find out if he himself had “the right stuff.” Inhaling deeply, he pressed the ignition. The die cast, he steered the Prius in the direction of the Rubicon.

  The beefy guard at the gate gave a cursory glance at Max’s ID pass and waved him through. By the time he remembered to exhale, he was already heading south on the 101.

  An hour later, he was curling through the Cold Springs section of Montecito on his way up to Mountain Drive. Signs of the infamous Tea Fire that had scorched the earth a few years back were illuminated in his headlights. College kids partying at the deserted Tea House had been too stoned, drunk, or lazy to properly put out their campfire, and a mighty sundowner had whipped it into an inferno that incinerated more than two thousand acres and destroyed two hundred homes. The county sheriff’s department charged the kids with misdemeanors and kept their names out of the press. Meanwhile, farther up the coast, two Mexican day laborers who accidentally sparked a fire clearing brush were named and vilified and ordered to make financial restitution in an amount they couldn’t hope to earn between them in a lifetime.

  Max pondered the inequity as he coasted to a designated stop on the deserted road. He’d been told he’d find directions that would lead him to the spot where he was to deposit the flash drive. A fluorescent-yellow arrow on the charred remains of a fallen oak tree pointed to a ravine. Could that possibly be the “directions” his shadowy co-conspirators had meant? He’d never met them in person; they were just a name on the net: ROTC70, in honor of the 1970 student radicals who’d set fire to the Isla Vista branch of the Bank of America to protest the Vietnam War, but clearly they weren’t the brightest tree huggers in the forest. Fluorescent-yellow paint was an absurd choice in the clandestine world of eco-espionage. Not only did it mar the natural landscape, but anyone passing within a h
undred yards would be hard-pressed not to wonder where the Day-Glo arrow led.

  Max switched off his headlights, dug a flashlight from his glove box, and climbed out of the Prius. He’d told them he’d make the drop at dawn, but on the ride down from Vandenberg he’d realized he was too nervous to hang on to the flash drive overnight. Standing on the side of the road, he was gripped by the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t alone. Was it possible they were already out there in the dark somewhere, watching to see if he’d come early, wondering if his reaching out to them was just bait for a trap being set by the police?

  Easing the car door shut, he cautiously started off in the direction of the ravine. Somewhere down in the dry brush he heard a crack. He froze and listened. The sound had come and gone and now there was nothing. A bird, maybe, or a rabbit. Another crack. Instinct told him to duck behind a narrow outcropping of rock. Not all instincts are good. The startled deer’s hoof hit him squarely in the center of his occipital bone. By the time his brain had absorbed the shock, Maxwell Waxman, MD, PhD, was dead.

  In the dim light before sunrise, the ragtag band of eco-warriors who’d dubbed themselves ROTC70 were gathered around Max’s lifeless body. Ian, a skinny kid with the kind of scraggly facial hair only a nineteen-year-old stoner or an estrogen-starved dowager could produce was digging through Max’s pockets while his comrades looked on. Ian had never seen, let alone touched, a dead body, but when Malcolm told him to search the old dude for the flash dive, he cowboyed up as best he could to avoid looking like a pussy in front of his crew.

  Monica watched Ian struggling to hide his revulsion as he rifled the dead shrink’s pockets. Something she, as the girl, would never be asked to do. She’d sensed the misogynist vibe when she’d first asked to join the group, but with a butt so hot she coulda borrowed it from a black girl, and the fine-boned face of a Clinique model, she knew she was as good as in. She also knew Ian was wasting his time going through the dead man’s pockets. Didn’t these guys ever watch cop shows?