The Big Kill

by Elise Sax

  “Sure. I think he’s hunting the dragon right now.” Or the dragon was hunting him. It was a toss up.

  “He just got home,” Grandma said. “And he needs hydration. Bring him one of the pizzas and a bottle of Coke.”

  I took the food and ran downstairs, just as the door opened. “Spencer?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he answered, limping into the house. “I don’t know anymore.”

  His suit was destroyed. His pants were torn off at the knees, and his jacket only had one sleeve. His tie was turned around so that it was running down his back. His hair was standing up on end, and his face was smudged with black streaks and a green blob on his left cheek. His usually straight back was slumped.

  “What happened to your shoe?” I asked. He was only wearing one.

  “Who knows? It’s all a blur at this point. Maybe it’s in the same place as my dignity. Lord knows that’ll never be found again.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Our matches are looking for love, bubbeleh. But they’re also looking for belonging. They want to be normal and to fit into the community. They want titles like, husband, wife, homeowner, parent, PTA member. That sort of thing. They want those titles. Ache for those titles. You may see an electrical bill, but to them, they see belonging. You may see a recliner chair, but to them, they see comfort, maturity, and security. Matchmaking is an iceberg, but love and attraction are only the tip. There’s a lot more underneath that’s just as important, and it’s keeping the iceberg afloat.

  Lesson 106, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  I put the pizza down, but I handed him the Coke. “Drink this, Spencer. It’ll help.”

  He stared out into space. “Nothing’ll help. I’ll still be Police Chief Spencer Bolton, the man who let a dragon loose on a small town and got treed in front of the world’s tabloids. And there’s worse, Pinky. Please don’t ask me about it.”

  I bit my lip, trying not to ask him about it. I helped him upstairs and undressed him so that he could take a shower and wash away the poisonous dragon juice and the humiliation. As I undressed him, he undressed me, too. I figured that was because of shock or Spencer being Spencer. When he stepped into the shower, he pulled me in with him.

  “You’re horny even now?” I asked him.

  “It’s my therapy, Pinky. You wouldn’t want to deprive me of my therapy?”

  “What kind of therapy is putting your hand between my legs?”

  “It’s the no-talking therapy. It’s a really good therapy. I’ve almost forgotten about the dragon. If you turn around, I’ll show you how I forget about the rest of it.”

  I turned around. Surprisingly, Spencer’s therapy was the same as mine, although I was thinking about the pizza a little bit, too. After our shower, where, ironically, we got down and dirty, we both dressed in jeans and sweaters. Spencer brought Meryl’s cot and belongings upstairs and installed her in my grandmother’s bedroom.

  Spencer put his wallet in his pocket and grabbed his keys. “Come on, Pinky. We’re late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Our appointment with the sofa guy. Come on. We have to be there in ten minutes.”

  “What’s a sofa guy?”

  The sofa guy was a warehouse halfway to San Diego. It was run by a small group of hipsters, who all had man buns, tattoos on their knuckles and other places, and tool belts around their hips.

  “Pinky, this is Perry.” Spencer introduced me to the head hipster, who had brilliant blue eyes and a nose ring.

  “You’re going to love what we got going on here, man,” he said to Spencer. “Have you ever seen Ko Phi Phi Le at sunset when the sunlight shimmers off the sand, and the water glistens like a beautiful woman who’s just fallen in love with you? Well, that’s what we’re doing with your couch, man. And your couch too, babe.”

  “Thanks, dude,” I said.

  He walked us past a lot of other couches in different stages of being built. I didn’t know what Ko Phi Phi Le was, but it probably was a lot like what was happening in the warehouse. It was every man’s wet dream. Big, comfortable couches with massage settings and drink holders and whatever else was in a man’s heart.

  The hipster stopped us in the center of the warehouse. “I covered it to give you the drama it deserves.” Spencer was riveted, his pupils dilated. He was hanging on every word and gesture of the hipster, who ripped the cover off the couch, like a Vegas magician. “Ta da, motherfucker.”

  Spencer clutched at his chest and sucked air. “It’s everything,” he breathed.

  It was a couch.

  It was a really big leather couch.

  Spencer wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in close. “Our couch, Pinky. It’s our couch.”

  “It’s amazing. Really,” I said.

  This was marriage. Pretending to be excited about a couch.

  “We still have some touches to do on it, but it’ll be done and delivered the day you said,” the hipster told us. Spencer hugged him hard.

  “I love you, man,” Spencer said.

  “I love you, too, man. You want to talk about the media room chair?”

  “We have a media room?” I asked and scratched my arm. Uh oh. I was getting another dose of house hives.

  “We’re going to have every channel in the world,” Spencer gushed, smiling wide.

  My phone buzzed with a text message, and I checked it.

  “Roman Strand wants to see me,” I told Spencer. “He has something to tell me.”

  “Let’s go,” he said, surprising me.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me to stay out of it?”

  “Would it make a difference?”

  On the way to Roman’s mansion, Spencer let it slip why he wanted me to talk to Roman. “He’s got friends in high places, and he won’t talk to us.”

  He meant Roman wouldn’t talk to the police. “Isn’t he a suspect?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, his alibi is his wife, and her alibi is her husband. So, I’m stuck between a rock and a dragon.”

  “And bubble gum. Don’t forget the bubble gum,” I reminded him.

  “The bubble gum stuff has died down, either because the bandits ran out of bubble gum or because they’ve moved on.”

  I knew there was a “phase three” brewing, but I didn’t think that Spencer needed to know that I had hired one of the bubble gum bandits and that I had gotten that tidbit of information from him.

  “So you want me to interrogate Roman and get him to confess?” I asked, cracking my knuckles.

  “No, I want you to get him to open the door so that I can interrogate him with my charm and style.”

  “I have charm and style,” I said, but we both knew that wasn’t true. Spencer was a metrosexual hottie with impressive muscles and a gun. I was known for finding dead people and occasionally blowing up town landmarks.

  “You have charm and style for me, Pinky,” Spencer said like a man who didn’t want to jeopardize his sex life.

  “So you think Roman did it? Do you think he killed my father and Adam Mancuso? As far as I can see, we’re down to three suspects for my father’s murder.”

  “We don’t know if your father was murdered. We don’t know if Adam Mancuso had enemies or if a crazy fan decided to slice and dice him. Pretty much, we don’t know anything.”

  I thought Spencer was wrong. We knew a lot. We knew my father had a small group of friends, and he wound up dead. And we knew that we spoke about my father with those friends, and then one of them wound up dead, too.

  Thinking about that reminded me about another dead friend of my father’s. Rachel Knight, the depressed poet who killed herself. Something in me made me sure that her death was important to discovering the truth about my father and Adam. I didn’t think that Spencer would let me dive into the files on her death, but I now had a young person at my disposal, who knew how to use a computer. I wondered how much he could find out for me.

  Spencer parked in Roman’s d
riveway. The valet was gone, but the mansion was lit up with lights in every window, as if they were having another party. I rang the doorbell, and Joy answered immediately, making me suspect that she had been watching for our arrival.

  “Oh, my poor sweet Gladys,” she said, inviting me in and wrapping me in a big hug. “You’ve had such a hard life, and now this. Come in, my poor sweet girl.”

  I leaned into her, enjoying the attention and the hugging. We walked into the living room, and she sat me down next to her on the couch. There was a roaring fire in the gigantic stone fireplace, even though it was seventy-five degrees outside. Joy pointed to a platter on the coffee table with cheeses, meats, and fruit.

  “May I serve you?” she asked me. “A little cheese will put the bloom back in your cheeks.”

  I touched my cheeks. I didn’t know the bloom had left them. “I like cheese,” I said.

  She made me a plate with a selection of food and handed it to me. I popped a grape into my mouth. It was delicious. Rich people even had better grapes.

  “Help yourself,” she told Spencer, who sat in a big comfy chair. He took a slice of cheese. “Roman was so upset about Adam, but like me, he was more upset for you. How tragic that you reached out to Jonathan’s friends and then this happened. You poor, sweet girl.”

  She touched my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I put my head on her shoulder and put a slice of salami in my mouth. I liked being babied.

  “It was awful,” I said.

  “I bet. I can’t even think of it. We have the security company doing double drive-bys until the craven killer is caught.” There was a pregnant pause, when I figured she was giving Spencer the evil eye for not catching the craven killer.

  “I hope the police find the killer, too,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you’re in our life, again,” Joy gushed, holding me close. “I can’t tell you how much it means to us. Your father’s passing put a big hole in our lives, especially for Roman.”

  “What’s all this maudlin talk?” Roman asked, walking into the room. Spencer stood and shook his hand. I ate another grape.

  “Not maudlin. I’m just relieved that Gladys is safe and in our lives,” Joy told her husband.

  “Oh, well, that’s true.” Roman grabbed a slice of salami and plopped down in a chair. “We were shaken up by what happened to Adam.”

  He said it like it happened years ago, but it was only the night before. Instead of showing real concern, it seemed to me like Roman was dismissing it like some far away event that had little or no impact on him.

  “Last night, we left before Adam,” Spencer said. “What did he talk to you about when we were gone?”

  “Nothing,” Roman said. “Nothing relevant. Adam wasn’t a big talker. He drank his cognac and left.”

  “Any comment, any words that you can remember might give us the clues we need to find his killer,” Spencer continued.

  “I told you, he didn’t say much,” Roman grumbled and slapped his knee.

  “I’m not sure I appreciate your tone, Spencer,” Joy said, coming to her husband’s defense.

  “There’s a man who was murdered, and I’m just trying to honor him by finding out why and by whom,” Spencer said. I was impressed he used “whom” instead of “who.”

  “I have nothing further to say about Adam,” Roman announced. “Gladys, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Would you come with me?”

  He stood and gestured to me. I stood, and so did Spencer.

  “Just Gladys,” Roman told Spencer. I grinned at my fiancé. So much for his charm.

  “I’ll be right back. Wait here, okay?” I gave Spencer a kiss on the cheek and whispered, “Neener, neener.”

  Spencer didn’t look happy to let me go alone with Roman. I didn’t know if he was frightened for my safety, or if he was just upset that he couldn’t get a word out of Roman, but I was actually invited to talk with him.

  I left Spencer with Joy, and I followed Roman through the house. We walked through hallway after hallway until he opened a side door and turned on a light. “Come on in,” he said.

  I walked through the doorway to find a large garage. There were three cars parked in it, and a large area, filled with organized tools and various odds and ends.

  Roman turned toward me. “I loved your father,” he said, softly. “He was my mentor, my brother. And you know, he was a genius. If he had lived, there would have been no stopping him. World’s greatest living poet. That sort of thing.”

  My throat grew thick, and it was hard to swallow. I was proud of my father, but hearing about how wonderful he was just made missing him more painful.

  “Now with this Adam thing, I feel that I’m coming under suspicion.”

  “No,” I lied. “I’m sure that Spencer was just trying to find out more about Adam. He doesn’t suspect you of any wrongdoing.”

  “Jonathan was so happy for me that night of my book release party. I signed a book for him, and he told me that he was more excited about my book than he was about his own. Can you imagine? No writer says that. It’s like a mother saying she loves your child more than she loves her own. But he meant it. He wasn’t a bullshitter. I’m telling you all of this so you understand how close we were. After he died, I wanted no part of the rest of his group, and sadly enough, that included your mother and you by extension. But I’m glad you’re back in my life, and to prove it to you, I want to show you something.”

  I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to show me. More than one man had told me that he wanted me in his life and wanted to show me something to prove it, and in all of those cases, I had to run out of the room. I braced myself for Roman to turn out to be a dirty, old man, intent on making a pass at me in his garage, while his wife was in the house.

  But instead of lunging for me, he walked to the corner of his garage. Something was covered with a tarp. He grasped the edge of the tarp, and I was reminded of the hipster sofa guy, saying, “Ta da, motherfucker.” Roman didn’t say that. He yanked the tarp away, revealing a mass of twisted metal.

  “I saved it all these years,” Roman told me. “Your father’s motorcycle.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Don’t pre-judge. Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t Google. Google… What a weird name. Where does that come from? Google. Shmoogle. Phlemoogle. Weird. Why isn’t it called something nice like, Jerry? Jerry is a nice name, don’t you think so, dolly? Dictionaries have Webster, so, the internet should have Jerry. Anyway, don’t give your matches too much information. Otherwise, they’ll Google the hell out of their potential match, and it’ll all go to hell. Keep them in the dark until the right moment.

  Lesson 126, Matchmaking advice from your

  Grandma Zelda

  “What?” I asked.

  “Your father’s motorcycle. I couldn’t let them dump it, so I saved the bike. I’ve kept it with me all this time.”

  I walked forward, slowly. It barely looked like a motorcycle, anymore. The tires were gone. The seat was gone, too. At least, I thought it was. It was a mass of twisted metal and obvious proof that my father couldn’t have survived his accident.

  I reached out and touched the metal. It was cool to the touch. My grandmother had hated the motorcycle, begged my father not to ride it. But it was just a bunch of metal. My father was the part that made it dangerous.

  “You see, I loved him. I couldn’t let him go, so I kept a piece of him,” Roman said.

  “Were you there at the accident? Did you see him?”

  “Me? No. Not me. I heard that they were going to dump the bike after, so I picked it up.”

  It was a souvenir of my father, but I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to be near it. Everyone grieves in their own way, but there was something about Roman keeping my father’s motorcycle that bothered me. I just couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

  “What did Adam talk to you about after I left last night?” I asked him.

  “He told me that I’m a pretentious jerk, who w
as a one-hit-wonder but couldn’t manage a second book.”

  “He didn’t talk about my father?” I asked.

  “Adam didn’t care about your father. Adam lived in his own world and didn’t have room for other people. Why else would he live with a Komodo dragon and poisonous spiders?”

  He had a point. “That’s beside the point,” I said. “He sought my father’s opinions on Fart Boy.”

  “He did?” Roman asked, honestly surprised.

  “My father never helped you?”

  “Of course, he did. I just didn’t know that he helped Adam.” Roman put his arm around my shoulders. “If you need anything from me, and I mean anything, just call. I want to be there for you. I owe it to Jonathan.”

  Spencer drove us away from Roman and Joy’s mansion, after Roman showed me his garage. “I thought you were going to follow me into the garage and protect me,” I told Spencer. “Normally, you’re protective. Does this mean you don’t love me anymore?”

  “Well, I weighed the amount of danger you could be in against the fact that Roman’s knees cracked when he walked.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I figured you could outrun him, if it came to that. Also, Joy was an obvious admirer of the Spencer physique, so I thought I could squeeze her for information.”

  “How did the squeezing go?”

  “She was one of those oranges that looks like it’s full of juice, but is as dry as a bone when you peel it. How did it go with Roman?”

  “He had the remains of my father’s motorcycle hidden away in his garage.” I shivered.

  “Whoa. I didn’t see that one comin’.”

  “He said it was proof of how much he loved my father.”

  “I’ll get my guys to pick it up in the morning,” Spencer said. “Doubtful there’s any forensics on it after all these years, but you never know.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. I thought you said my father’s accident was just an accident.”

  Spencer ran his hand over his hair. “You don’t believe it was an accident, and maybe you’re contagious. Like the flu.”