Marry, Kiss, Kill

by Anne Flett-Giordano

  “What occurs to me is that you’re certifiable,” he said. “But do what you want. I won’t say another word.”

  “I wish.”

  “No. Seriously. I’m done trying to keep you from dying alone. I’m just going to bury you in a thong and high heels and hope some nice necrophiliac undertaker gives you a goodbye bang for the road.”

  Nola winced. “Bury me in a thong and you will feel my icy cold ghost breath on the back of your neck every time you try to swing a golf club. It’s bad enough having to wear them while I’m alive. My idea of heaven is a fluffy cloud rave, where drop-dead gorgeous men go wild every time I flash a little comfortable granny panty.”

  “And on that disturbing image. . . ”

  “Fine,” she said. “Subject changed. Now that we have a pretty good idea who passed the info to Waxman, and we’ve tacitly agreed not to follow up on it, how do you want to divide the rest of the day’s workload?”

  Tony turned up the radio. Still soccer. He turned it down. “Well, you could do some interviews, and I could take a nap.”

  Nola made a counteroffer. “Or, you could check out Kyle’s alibi buddies in Isla Vista, while I pay a surprise visit to Ken at the Reader. Now that he’s been caught with his Pulitzer-hopeful pants down, maybe he’ll be more amenable to giving up his source.”

  “Or,” came Tony’s counter counteroffer, “while you stake out Ken, I could drop in on the widow Gillette and find out if Gus had any prior run-ins with ROTC70. . . if the juice came out of her blouse . . . if she’s ready to start dating again . . . then, I could check on Kyle’s buddies in Vista.”

  “Haven first, huh?”

  “Hos before bros, right?”

  “Ri-gh-t,” Nola stretched out the word for full sarcastic effect. “In fact, maybe I should drive. That way when we get to her place, you can just combat tuck and roll out of the car to save time.”

  They cruised into the Lompoc tunnel; Tony’s voice echoed in the dim concrete cylinder. “At least one of us isn’t afraid to follow up on the sexier angles of the case.”

  “Because one of us hasn’t read enough Raymond Chandler to know better,” Nola echoed back. “Women like Haven eat guys like you for breakfast, then stick their fingers down their throats, so they won’t gain weight.”

  “I’d still do her,” he said cheerfully, as they emerged from the dark.

  “So would I,” Nola said with a smile. “Preferably, in the back of the head with a hatchet.”

  “Wow!”

  “Too harsh?”

  “Like dry-swallowing an elephant tranquilizer.”

  “Okay, forget the hatchet,” she said, then added under her breath, “maybe just a small ball-peen hammer?”

  They were back in sight of the ocean, by the cutoff for the Circle Bar-B Ranch, where Nola went horseback riding on her days off. She wished she was riding now. The smell of saddle soap and leather and the rush of galloping up the mountain might help clear the cobwebs out of her head. She was convinced that Haven had murdered Gus, but she had no idea how to prove it. “All kidding aside, Tony. I really believe she shot her husband, and it’s killing me that she might get away with it.”

  “Look Nols,” Tony said, placating, “I tried to see it your way, but the autopsy proved the gun was pressed right up against Gillette’s temple. You think she just said, ‘Honey, hold this gun to your head while I pull the trigger,’ and he couldn’t resist?”

  “Why not? You probably couldn’t,” she said with a sideways smile. “Look, I admit, I don’t know how she did it. Maybe he was asleep. Or maybe she wormholes through space and suddenly pops up behind people, like Burnell does. Seriously, how could a guy built like a concrete bunker catch us by surprise like that? It defies the laws of physics, right?”

  “That was pretty stealthy,” Tony laughed. “Check the backseat, maybe he’s behind us now.”

  The sports bots on the radio finally stopped yammering about soccer and began yammering about baseball. It was nearly spring, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of long balls hit out of the park. The longest committed relationship in Tony’s life was with the Dodgers, which meant that for the remainder of the ride home, Nola was free to chase thoughts around in her head undisturbed. Gus and Max, Max and ROTC70, missing weapons and development deals . . . there was lots of connective tissue, but no substantial body of evidence. As they cruised down the Gaviota pass, motives and theories crashed and bounced off each other like bumper cars. Sadly, nothing stuck.

  When Tony pulled into the parking lot outside her condo, she reclaimed her driver’s seat and dialed the radio away from the Sweat Sock Diaries back to Icona Pop.

  “On some level, you do know that music sucks, right?” he said, closing her car door for her.

  “I don’t care, I love it!” She sang to the tune of the song, knowing the double meaning would be lost, since his pop-music references had come to a gear-grinding halt somewhere back in the 1990s.

  As Tony climbed into his Audi to go interview Haven, Nola called to him from the convertible: “Keep your ears open, I hear they rattle before they strike.”

  He threw her a thumbs-up, but Nola suspected that if Haven was in a cop-seducing mood, it was going to give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Officer down.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Haven’s orgasm, like everything else in her single-purpose-driven life, was right on the money. She rolled back onto the bed and sighed. It was a mixed exhalation of pleasure and relief. Sex with Gus had been an act: seven award-winning performances a week. Even Broadway stars got Monday off. Sometimes she’d switch his Viagra with her Valtrex just to give her shock absorbers a rest. “Sorry, baby, must have been a little blue dud.”

  The current man in her bed had come as a complete surprise, so to speak. Still not age-appropriate, but extremely sexy, he hadn’t slobbered all over her, twisted her nipples like bottle caps, or shouted “bottoms up” to signal his preference for back-door action. Even now, his breath on her neck was sending ripples of pleasure down her legs, making her wonder if she might not want this to be more than a little one-time strange.

  “Mind if I use the shower? My wife gets suspicious when I come home smelling of sleek, tawny twenty-two-year-old.”

  Lawrence Wilson always mentioned his wife as soon as possible after sex. It was his not-so-subtle way of keeping his temporary playmates from getting any romantic ideas.

  Fine, play it your way, Haven thought. She could get sex from any man, but money to support a trophy-wife lifestyle without the balding old fart that usually came with it was a rare and beautiful thing. “Just leave the check on the Chippendale when you go,” she replied without a hint of irritation.

  “A hundred grand, as promised,” Larry said, twirling her hair around in his fingers.

  Haven pulled away and sat up against her pillow. “Made out to the dummy corporation?”

  “As you wished, Milady.”

  “You also offered Gus a three-percent partnership.”

  “A silent partnership,” he said, pointedly.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I can be very discreet.”

  “One of the many. . .” he said, kissing her breasts, “exciting reasons . . .” he continued, kissing her stomach, “. . .I’d like to do this again sometime.”

  “Well, you’re definitely moving in the right direction,” she said, sliding back down on the bed.

  As his lips traveled lower, the intercom rang. Larry looked up and laughed. “I’ve been told I’m good, but I never made a girl chime before.”

  “There’s someone at the gate,” she said, annoyed at the interruption.

  The ex–Dr. McDorable rolled over and hopped off the bed. “Lucky for us you have a very long driveway, and I take very short showers.”

  Tony had to wait a suspiciously long time before Haven’s voice came back over the intercom, and even longer before the scrolled ironwork gates that separated her heavily mortgaged estate from the real world swung open. If h
e’d been checking out other cars on the street, he might have noticed a boy and girl, slouched low in a sporty Boxster, watching him disappear up the driveway. Just another amusing kink in their plan.

  Twenty-Nine

  Two bloody drains and a compression wrap.

  Ken wasn’t in his cubical at the Reader, but the newspaper’s owner and chief editor, Jillian Crawford, agreed to spare Nola five minutes of her time. Normally people spend at least a week in isolation after a neck lift, but the day’s journalistic tailspin had flushed Jillian from her post-op recovery room ahead of schedule. Nola, who sometimes thought about having a little nip-tuck herself, was definitely having second thoughts. The price of surgical youth apparently included a week or two looking like you’d been dating Chris Brown and forgot to duck.

  As she waited for Jillian to finish up a call with her lawyers, Nola started playing fashion-show narrator, in her head.

  Today’s It Girl is Jillian Crawford. Seated at her distressed antique desk in a cream Alaia cling dress. Jillian’s recent cosmetic surgery has made her a fashion-forward icon for women everywhere. Notice how the carpaccio-colored bruising on her swollen jaw is dramatically offset by the bold stitching on the sutures behind her ears. In counterpoint, the artful draping of her Hermès scarf is simplicity itself. The patterned silk delicately camouflaging the compression neck wrap that’s currently keeping her head from falling off. Rounding off this breezy ensemble are a diamond Cartier pin bracelet and two bloody mucus drains. Elegantly dangling from behind each ear, mucus drains are truly the surgical fashion statement of the. . .

  Jillian abruptly hung up the phone, bringing Nola’s ersatz runway show to a screeching halt. “Sorry to make you wait, Detective MacIntire. Just gauging the legal fallout I’m in for if the Air Force decides to sue the paper for libel. So, what is it you’d like to ask me?”

  The bloody drains behind Jillian’s ears bobbled as she spoke. Nola answered in the compassionate voice she normally reserved for assault victims. “Well, first, Ms. Crawford, based on your conversation with your lawyers, I’m getting the sense that Ken Levine’s cover story this morning came as a complete surprise to you?”

  Jillian’s neck wrap made her swollen chin jut forward like she was daring someone to hit her again. “Surprise is putting it mildly,” she said derisively.

  Nola tried not to stare as she listened to Jillian’s story. While she was away on surgery leave, Jillian had promoted her daughter to temporary managing editor of the Reader with the express understanding that nothing in the predetermined layout be changed. Unfortunately, without so much as a text to run it by her, the girl had switched cover stories at the last minute, replacing the scheduled piece on the film festival with Ken’s erroneous account of the missing bio-weapons. “Now, of course, I look like a complete fool,” Jillian said angrily, mucus drains bobbing.

  Nola imagined the scene behind the scenes. Ken romancing the girl into giving him the cover story. Promising it would make the paper famous . . . make her mother proud . . . make the bathtub bubble with champagne sex. . .

  “Next week’s cover is going to be a giant fried egg,” Jillian huffed. “Because that’s what’s all over my face at the moment.”

  Every time Jillian moved her neck, she winced in pain, and Nola automatically winced with her. “I understand you’re in damage-control mode, Ms. Crawford, but should you really be out of bed right now?”

  “I know I look repulsive, Detective, but I had the unfortunate fate of inheriting my mother’s turkey wattle, and it wasn’t a cross I was prepared to bear at forty-five. But perhaps you’re one of those enlightened women who frown on cosmetic surgery.”

  “Actually, I totally get it. Gravity’s a bitch,” Nola said, remembering the nasal-labial landslide going on in her own traitorous face. “So, did Ken tell you who passed him the false information?”

  Jillian started unwrapping an ice pack. “No. Of course I asked, but surprisingly, he went noble. Said he promised his source anonymity and he was a man of his word. Which, to be honest, isn’t really like Ken. He always struck me as the ‘give up his grandmother to get ahead’ type. I rather doubt his interest in my daughter is entirely based on her charm.”

  “Are you thinking of firing him?”

  “I fully intended to, but when I went out to the guest house to read my daughter the riot act this morning, she rightly pointed out that I couldn’t really fire him without firing her, too. Ultimately, it was her call to print the damn story. She’s lucky I like having her where I can keep an eye on her, or they’d both be out on their asses. But I assure you, in the future, Ken won’t be covering anything bigger than cat-up-a-tree stories.” Jillian pressed the ice pack under her bruised chin. “If you want to speak to him yourself, I suggest you try Long Boards in about an hour.”

  “Is that his usual haunt?” Nola asked.

  “No. Just an educated guess. I sent him to do a story on the new tidepool exhibit on Stearn’s Wharf. After the spanking his ego took today, I’m guessing he’s going to want to drink, heavily. Long Boards is just across the pier from the aquarium.”

  “Thanks,” Nola said, grateful for the tip. “Nice bit of deductive reasoning. Um, do you happen to have your doctor’s number handy?”

  “Dr. Benioff. His office is on Quinto. You’ll love him. He’s a genius with eyes.”

  Jillian’s assumption caught Nola off guard. “Actually, I just thought you might want to give him a call. Your left drain is leaking.”

  Jillian put her hand behind her left ear and felt the thin trail of sticky, pink liquid oozing from the plastic drain. “Oh, for God’s sakes! What else can go catastrophically wrong today?”

  Jillian didn’t hear Nola’s goodbye. She was already calling the surgical center.

  Out in the hallway, Nola pretended to read a plaque awarded to the paper by the Rotary Club so she could secretly check out her eyes in its mirrored surface. Why had Jillian just assumed she wanted them done? Had the hooding and the crow’s feet finally hit critical mass? An even better question was: Why was she letting one little comment bug her so much? The looks she’d gotten at Vandenberg that morning had boosted her ego-rocket sky-high. Toss in breathtaking Major Burnell’s offhand invitation to join him on the firing range and her compliment quota was filled for the year. Why couldn’t she focus on all the good reviews instead of obsessing over the one bad one? It was one of those deep, philosophical questions that great minds had been pondering for ages. Right up there with: “What is the true meaning of existence?” and “Why doesn’t he call?”

  As she stared at her Rotarian reflection, she imagined her Pilates instructor Suzanne’s calming voice saying: “Eyes are for seeing. You see perfectly, ergo your eyes are perfect just the way they are. Namaste.”

  Nola realized that what imaginary Suzanne was saying was true. Blind people only wished they could see their crow’s feet in a Rotary plaque. Feeling grateful for her moment of spiritual clarity, she headed out to her car. Maybe getting older did make you wiser. Too bad it also made you older. Oh well, someday she’d be senile, and then she could relax. She grinned at the thought. It was nice to know that her hoody, wrinkled eyes could still look on the bright side.

  Thirty

  Tony’s unexpected arrival was adding an extra bit of excitement to Haven and Larry’s tryst. She’d had to playfully remove his hand from under her eleven-hundred-dollar peasant blouse to get up and answer the door. Having an affair with her mother’s favorite television idol was proving to be just the little pick-me-up she’d been needing. How wonderful it was to have Dr. McDorable’s autograph, especially on a big, fat check.

  On her way to let Tony in, she’d resolved to use the first of her new windfall to re-hire the maids. Opening your own door was for ugly women and feminists, although when you got right down to it, weren’t they really the same thing?

  She led Tony to the great room and introduced him to Larry. She could have answered his questions at the door, but she liked
the tension she created when there were two men in the room. She made the introductions with just enough soft flirtation in her voice to get Larry’s antlers up. A little payback for the clumsy way he’d thrown his wife in her face while she was still bathing in the afterglow.

  Tony had sensed the sexual vibe the moment he entered the room. The more nonchalant they tried to appear, the more obvious it was that they’d just been banging each other’s brains out. Larry claimed he’d come over to thank Haven for reading Gus’s speech and to make sure she was okay, but the faint whiff of girly shampoo in his wet hair said otherwise.

  That Larry had been the next man on Haven’s to-do list had actually come as a relief to Tony. Teasing Nola about sleeping with the spun-from-suntanned-sugar girl was fun, but if Haven had actually set her sights on him, he wasn’t a hundred-percent sure he could withstand the assault.

  “So, Detective, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Her voice had the warming effect of smoky scotch sipped by a fireplace.

  Tony shook off the peat and came straight to the point. He explained about ROTC70 and asked if Gus had received any threats from them in the past. Haven claimed she’d never heard of them. Gus always got crank mail from conservation nuts before a big vote, but a stupid name like “Ro-whatever,” she’d remember.

  Larry hadn’t heard of them either, but he had assistants who filtered his correspondence. Bomb threats, bogus paternity suits, stalker-grams, and voodoo dolls went straight to the private security company that he paid to protect him from his fans.

  Haven openly flirted as she answered Tony’s questions. Her body language was just short of Hamburg hooker on the Reeperbahn as she stretched and curled beside him on the big Fendi sofa. When Wilson put a proprietary hand on her shoulder, she deftly slipped out from under it and offered Tony a drink.

  Larry’s testosterone pawed the ground. “I appreciate that you’re just trying to do your job, Detective, but Mrs. Gillette is going through a very difficult time right now. Couldn’t you have just asked her these questions on the phone?”