“I told you not to look!”
His head swiveled right back. “Okay, then tell me what I’m not looking at.”
I, of course, was completely unable to keep my eyes off precisely what I’d told Nick not to gape at. The man standing less than ten feet away from me was Jean-Luc Le Bec. I was certain I recognized him, despite the fact that I’d only met Robert Reese’s short, plump, baby-faced pastry chef once, despite the fact that he and I had spent less than ten minutes together, dishing about Robert and Cassandra’s less-than-perfect relationship— and despite the leather.
Not a lot of leather. In fact, Jean-Luc was completely naked except for what could best be described as a G-string. Even though the straps that encircled hips and a butt both the color and texture of large-curd cottage cheese were narrow, the leather pouch in front was huge. In fact, it was oversize to the point of being ridiculous. The garment’s various pieces were held together with enough buckles and studs to send an airport metal detector into overdrive.
His only other attire was also constructed of black leather. It was a mask that covered his entire head, made of crisscrossing straps that made him look like he was peering out a window. Or a dungeon.
Still, I could see enough of his face to be ninety-nine percent certain it was the mousse master himself.
“Earth to Jessie,” Nick said impatiently.
“Sorry. Remember the pastry chef who gave me all those goodies I brought home?”
“Of course. He has a soft spot in my heart for eternity.”
“You might not find his confections quite as appetizing after you see him in this getup. Especially since it looks like he stuffed a few éclairs in his thong.”
This time, there was no way I could keep Nick from looking. As soon as I heard him gasp, I knew he’d zeroed in on the gentleman in question.
“That’s him?” he cried.
“Afraid so.”
“You’re right,” he muttered. “I’m swearing off sweets as of this second.”
Frankly, I was much less interested in how Jean-Luc spent his free moments while his soufflés were rising than in the fact that he clearly traveled in the same circles that Cassandra had once frequented. In fact, I was so fixated on his outfit—as well as his pathetic attempt at doing a dance that seemed to be a cross between the monkey and the hora—that I didn’t bother to look very far beyond.
At least, not until Nick said, “Check out his dancing partner, the guy with the two-tone hair.”
The term two-tone hair should have been enough to tip me off. But it wasn’t until I studied the herd of sweating, undulating bodies and finally figured out which one Jean-Luc was do-si-do’ing with that I let out a cry. And it wasn’t the black-leather garter belt, or even the neat rows of needles piercing the flesh of both arms, that was responsible.
“That’s Preston DeVane!” I exclaimed.
“Who?” Nick asked distractedly.
“The owner of—I’ll explain later. But you and I have to get out of here.” I grabbed his arm, figuring the worst thing I could do was let Jean-Luc and Preston spot me. Something was going on—between them, obviously, but also between Jean-Luc and me.
“But we just got here!” Nick protested.
I opened my mouth to explain that while he thought all he was seeing was two men who could have used a session with the fashionista from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, I was seeing proof that Jean-Luc had lied to me about his relationship with his boss’s number-one competitor. His insistence that he and the owner of G were archenemies was clearly a ruse. The question was, why was he trying so hard to fool me?
But I quickly snapped my mouth shut, realizing that trying to explain the relevance of what I was seeing with my own eyes was much too complicated.
Besides, I had an idea.
“You know, Nick, you’re right,” I said. “How about if—wait, let’s find a quiet corner somewhere.” A quiet dark corner, I thought, where it’s much less likely the two foodies will realize I’m on to them.
“Okay,” he agreed.
As we moved away, I heard Jean-Luc shriek, “Who’s ya daddy?” with one of the strongest New York accents I’d heard since the last time I’d watched a Martin Scorsese movie.
He’s not even French! I thought. And he accused Preston of being a fraud!
“Nick,” I said breathlessly once we’d moved away from the dance floor, “I need a favor.”
“Sure, anything.” He glanced around the room and frowned. “Wait a minute. Maybe you’d better tell me what it is before I agree.”
“I just want you to stay at this party a while longer, alone.”
“But—”
“I can’t let Jean-Luc see me!” I went on. “Now that I know he lied to me, I have to consider him a suspect. If he realizes I’m on to him, it might be dangerous. But he doesn’t know you. Could you just mingle a little and see if you can learn anything about him? He obviously feels comfortable with this crowd. Somebody here might be able to tell you something useful.”
“Jessie, if it was anyplace else—”
“We went to all this trouble, with the leather pants and all...and you really do look like you fit right in.”
As soon as I said those words, I regretted them. Fortunately, Nick is a good sport. Either that, or deep down he was as committed to doing whatever it took to get Suzanne off the hook as I was.
“Half an hour, okay? After that, I’m outta here.”
“Thanks, Nick! I owe you!”
The look he shot me told me he was perfectly aware of that—and that he wasn’t about to let me forget it.
No sooner had I moved away from him toward the door than a sweet young thing with a tattoo of a skull on her left bicep shot across the room like a heat-seeking missile. She would have looked like an extra in a horror movie if it weren’t for the fact that she was tall, slender, and ridiculously pretty, even with a small hypodermic needle stuck through one nostril. She also happened to be wearing nothing besides a peekaboo thong, cut out in a deep V-shape in front, the two sides held together by a silver chain, and a black bra with two revealing circles cut out.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” I heard her coo as she sidled up to Nick. “At least, I haven’t seen you before. I know I would have remembered.”
Maybe her outfit qualified her to be a pinup girl for the Hell’s Angels, but she sounded as sweet and flirty as a Southern belle. I bet that if she hadn’t had half a pound of eye makeup on, she’d have batted her lashes at him.
I gritted my teeth and headed out the door. “Nick had better find out something important,” I muttered to myself. “And I’m not talking about Needle-nose’s phone number either.”
I headed out to the car, slumping down in the front seat so no one would notice me. I also opened the window a couple of inches, hoping to overhear an incriminating piece of someone else’s conversation as they left the party. Something like, “The metal studs on Jean-Luc’s G-string were certainly shiny tonight, weren’t they? Considering that he just murdered Cassandra Thorndike and all.”
No such luck. In fact, there was very little activity out here. It was incredibly boring, sitting in a cold, dark car, checking my watch every two minutes. Even after that half hour we’d agreed upon passed, there was no sign of Nick. Thirty-five minutes passed. Then forty.
Don’t tell me he’s actually having fun in there, I thought. It did occur to me that he might be in some kind of trouble. But if he was, I had a feeling it wasn’t the kind I was in a position to help him with.
Finally, I couldn’t resist getting out of the car and creeping over to a window. It took me a minute or two to locate Nick. When everyone’s wearing pretty much the same color—black—it’s hard to pick out one particular person in the crowd.
When I did spot him, I almost wished I hadn’t. He was standing in a corner, although whether it was voluntary or he’d been cornered by the two women monopolizing him, I couldn’t tell. What I could tell was that they were
both pretty attractive, if you looked past their clothing. The one wearing the thong and the medical equipment kept giggling like a nervous teenager on her first date. The other one, whose entire body was smeared with something dark brown, had the thick blond hair and innocent face of a Miss America contestant.
Even though I felt a twinge of something that seemed very much like jealousy, I had to admit that Nick was doing exactly what I’d asked him to do: mingle. I just wished he didn’t look like he was enjoying it so much.
I went back to my car—and waited. Another ten or fifteen minutes passed. When a shadow finally crossed the front seat and the door on the passenger side opened, I let out a loud sigh of relief.
“Finally!” I cried as Nick slid in. “I was beginning to think you’d fallen into the punch bowl! Or maybe even the snake pit.”
“No snakes—at least, not until next week,” he replied pleasantly. “That’s when they’re having the Snake Festival.”
“Oh, really? I hope you paid your annual dues so you won’t have to miss it.”
Nick cast me an odd look. “Am I wrong, or did you not specifically ask me to stay in there to see if I could find out anything?”
“You’re right. I did. It’s just that when I see you cavorting with tall, gorgeous women who are dressed as if they only had time to put on half their Halloween costume, I tend to get a little edgy.”
“I was hardly cavorting,” Nick insisted. “Besides, they both turned out to be pretty nice.”
I bet, I thought. And they probably didn’t think those pants make your butt look even close to big.
“That woman who came up to me as you were leaving—the tall, gorgeous one, as you described her? She works in an assisted-living facility. Anyway, Princess Hellfire—that’s her name—introduced me to Betty Boob, and the three of us just hit it off.”
My eyebrows jumped up so high they nearly popped off my head. “Those are their names?”
“Not their real names,” Nick replied impatiently. “It’s part of the persona they take on when they come to dungeon events.”
My boyfriend suddenly seemed very much at home in this world. I wasn’t sure I liked that, even if it was for such a good cause.
I was about to ask him if he’d remembered he was there on assignment, rather than simply to make new friends, when he volunteered, “I found out something I think you’ll be interested in hearing about.”
“Shoot.”
“According to Betty and the Princess, Cassandra was gloating the last time the group got together.”
“I’m impressed,” I commented dryly. “It sounds as if those two told you quite a bit about her.”
“Cassandra Thorndike inspired a lot of jealousy, at least among some of the females who knew her. It seems she wasn’t above bragging about her good fortune, whether it related to her skyrocketing career in the glamorous wine industry or modeling for kinky magazines or hanging out with some guy named Thor they told me was ‘a real hunk.’ ” Turning to face me, he announced, “Apparently Cassandra was pretty excited about some new venture she was about to undertake.”
“What kind of venture?” I felt a familiar pounding in my chest, my usual reaction to learning something that might get me a step or two closer to figuring out what a murder victim had been up to in the days or weeks before he or she was killed.
“They didn’t say,” Nick replied. “But it must have had something to do with her father, because according to Betty Boob, Cassandra made a sly comment about how she had her daddy wrapped around her little finger. At least, that’s how Betty remembers it.”
“Interesting.” And perfectly true, I thought, at least according to Joan Thorndike, who was certainly in a position to know. But if these leatherettes were to be believed, it sounded as if this exciting new endeavor of Cassandra’s had something to do with her father.
Which meant he was likely to know about the new twist Cassandra’s life was about to take.
Suddenly another thought struck me. “Good work, Nick . . . but I don’t suppose you asked them about Jean-Luc and Preston DeVane.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” he replied, looking quite pleased with himself. “The two of them are regulars at this Tuesday night dungeon event. They’ve been showing up together for months. They’re pretty tight too.”
“Very good work,” I told him.
In fact, I was still trying to digest all the interesting new information I’d learned about Cassandra and her entourage this evening when Nick said, “By the way, Jess, we’re not coming back again next week, are we?”
I just stared at him for a few moments before I collected myself enough to say, “No-o-o.”
“I didn’t think so.” He hesitated. “It’s just that I agreed to be on the refreshments committee. I signed up to bring a cake or cookies or something. Since we’re not coming, maybe I should go back and tell Princess Hellfire—”
“I think they’ll manage fine without us,” I assured him, turning the key in the ignition. “Besides, from what I saw, it looked like the chocolate-pudding committee had things pretty well under control.”
First thing the next morning, after Nick had left for school and I was finishing my coffee, I made a dozen phone calls and, as I hoped, managed to reschedule enough appointments to fit in an unscheduled visit to the North Fork late that afternoon.
I was scribbling in my date book, crossing out David and Marty Dauwalder and their cockapoo Wally in Port Townsend and writing them in for the next day as Cat lay contentedly in my lap, when a knock at the door startled me. For some reason, I immediately pictured my visitor as someone dressed in a black leather hood, brandishing a thick chain. So I was relieved when I peeked through the window and saw Betty standing outside.
“Betty!” I cried as I flung open the front door, understanding why Max and Lou hadn’t done anything more threatening than wag their tails and whine a little. I felt both relieved and guilty, the latter because I’d been so busy thinking about Cassandra over the past few days that I’d forgotten all about Betty’s romantic R&R with Winston. “How was your getaway?”
She thrust a white box at me. “Shoofly pie,” she explained. “A Pennsylvania Dutch specialty. I swear, you can’t drive ten feet through Amish Country without running into one of these.”
“Great!” I said, taking it from her and setting it down on the coffee table. “Lately, Nick and I have been developing quite a sweet tooth—hey, get away from that, Lou! That’s people food!”
As Betty settled into the upholstered chair, giving Max the enthusiastic welcome he always insisted upon, something about her smile struck me as forced.
“Was your trip as wonderful as you’d hoped?” I asked, plopping down on the couch.
Her smile faded. “First, there was so much traffic between here and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, you’d have thought they were offering free land in Oklahoma again. Second, our ‘rustic yet charming’ bed-and-breakfast was such a bare-bones operation I thought I’d become Amish myself. Third, if I look at one more quilt, I might begin to shriek hysterically.”
She let out a deep sigh. “To tell you the truth, Jessica, home sweet home has never felt quite this good.”
“What about Winston? Did you two...you know, rekindle the old spark?”
“Turns out he snores just as loudly in Pennsylvania as he does in New York. And that he brings a lot of his other quirks with him on the road too. And those include his brewer’s yeast and his soy powder.”
Shaking her head slowly, she added, “I know I’m not perfect either. In fact, he did mention—in a very nice way, of course—that I have a few annoying idiosyncrasies of my own. I guess the bottom line is that Winston and I just have to get used to each other—and to living with another person too. It’s never an easy thing, of course, and when you’ve been living on your own the way each of us has—and for as long as each of us has—it’s even harder. But one good thing did come out of our trip.”
“What’s that?” I asked h
opefully. Frankly, I was surprised by how hard I was rooting for them.
“Winston and I had a long heart-to-heart conversation on the Belt Parkway, coming home. And since they closed two of the three lanes, I can assure you that we had plenty of time to talk. He and I agreed that we have really strong feelings for each other, and that no matter how difficult it is, we’re going to keep trying. I guess he’s as much of a romantic as I am, but he believes as strongly as I do that what we have is special—and worth fighting for.”
“Wow,” I breathed. I felt like I was watching the ending of a really romantic movie, the kind that makes my eyes sting.
“How about you and Nick?” she asked, the look in her eyes going from dreamy to bright. “I hope you two made the best of your romantic getaway, even though you didn’t get very far away.”
I couldn’t help glancing around the cottage, suddenly worried that maybe I hadn’t put everything back in order—at least enough so that it looked like my normal level of chaos, instead of the scene of a ransacking. The last thing I wanted was for Betty to worry. Even though the unsettling incident had occurred on her property, I was utterly convinced it had nothing to do with her.
“It was lovely,” I assured her. And as I said the words, I realized that it really had been lovely. Nick and I were lucky enough to have that same special connection that she and Winston had—and, like them, we were lucky enough to recognize how valuable it was. “Thanks for letting us use your place, Betty. It was a great chance to step out of our regular day-to-day life and really appreciate each other.”
“Good!” she cried. “In that case, I say we put on the teakettle and break into the shoofly pie.” In response to my look of astonishment, she added, “I said they were everywhere in Amish Country, but I didn’t say I wasn’t crazy about them!”
The good mood our impromptu tea party created didn’t last long. As I turned off Route 35 and into the Thorndikes’ driveway later that day, a feeling of dread came over me. While I’d been excited by Nick’s discovery that Cassandra was about to embark on some sort of new venture, I found the prospect of talking to the victim’s father about it pretty unsavory.
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