Red hot lies, p.21
Red Hot Lies, page 21
“That would work. Even if she only lets you in for two minutes, as long as one door isn’t locked for a bit, I can put something on it to make sure it won’t lock properly on her way out, and that way we can get back in.”
“But there’s the alarm. She’ll turn it on when she leaves.”
“If I’ve got access to the panel, I can figure out the code. I’d need a few minutes in there before she leaves.”
When we hung up, I called Annette.
She picked up after the second ring and said a soft hello.
I told her my story of wanting to say goodbye to Forester in my own way. I told her that I’d been thinking of all the parties he’d had on his back lawn, and I wondered if I could get one more look at the lawn and say my own private farewell there.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate. I don’t have authorization to let anyone in here, and your fiancé apparently stole a lot of money from Forester.”
“Annette, I know nothing about that. Nothing.” I paused to try and let that settle in. “Who would you have to get authorization from?”
She sniffed, then cleared her throat. “Well, I don’t know. The estate can’t be administered because of your fiancé’s crime, so it’s unclear who owns this house right now, although I’m sure it will go to Shane.”
“Will you stay on to take care of the house?” I asked.
“At least initially,” she said stiffly, “but I have no idea what will happen.”
“I’m sure Shane will keep you on if you want.” I wasn’t exactly sure about that, but suddenly I felt terrible for her, and I wanted to make her feel better. She was a sixty-two-year-old woman who might lose her job, while in the meantime unable to rely on the money Forester had left her. It occurred to me that maybe what most upset her was the two million. Was it possible she’d done something to Forester, knowing she’d get money after he died?
“I’m sorry for everything you’re going through,” I said. It was vague, intentionally. I was trying to work up a way to ask her if, or how long, she’d known she had two million waiting for her, but there seemed no polite way to do so.
“Thank you.” Again, her delivery was stiff, but then suddenly she softened. “I’d be happy to let you into the house to say goodbye. When were you thinking?”
“Tomorrow afternoon? Maybe about five?”
I’d be done with my babysitting job then, and dusk would be settling in. I could pretend to look at the lawn, while Mayburn would have some darkness to do his work.
“I’ll see you then, Izzy,” she said, and hung up.
39
At eight o’clock on Saturday night, my buzzer rang. When I pushed the intercom, I heard, “Hey, baby, it’s the King.”
“Grady?”
“No, baby, it’s the King. My Caddy is all warmed up and waiting for you.”
Downstairs, Grady held open a cab door for me. He was dressed as a seventies Elvis-fat suit with chest hair, white jumpsuit, a black sweeping pompadour and huge gold sunglasses.
When he saw me, he swiveled his hips and sang, “A hunk, a hunk of burning love.” A couple walking arm-in-arm laughed at him from across the street. I looked around to see if there was a gray Honda, a blue SUV or any other suspicious car or person. But the city was full of suspicious people on Halloween.
Grady swung his hips around again and gave me a lascivious grin.
I laughed and it felt so good.
“C’mon, baby,” Grady said. “Get into the King’s car.”
I got into the backseat.
Grady kept singing “Burning Love” then switched to “Hound Dog,” then lifted the gold sunglasses. “What are you supposed to be?”
I pointed to the devil’s ears on my head and opened my coat to show a slinky blue cocktail dress.
“Devil with a blue dress,” Grady said.
“You got it.”
“It’s not that original.”
“Oh, and Elvis is original?”
“At least I’m going all out. I’ve got a fricking fat suit on. You’re just wearing a dress you know is hot and then you stuck those things on your head.”
“May I remind you, my fiancé took off this week?” I ignored the lump of nausea that fact sent to my belly. Why was I going out tonight? The same reason I’d been doing so many things lately-I didn’t know what else to do.
A pause from Grady. He reached into his fat suit, from somewhere in the direction of his armpit, and pulled out a flask. “You’d better take a nip of this.”
“What is it?”
“Cinnamon schnapps. It’s a seasonal drink.”
I took a sip, winced at the spicy burn trailing my insides. But it felt good to feel anything. On second thought, I drank some more.
Five minutes later, we pulled up to Q’s place. The house he shared with Max on Cleveland Avenue was all lit up-candles burned inside pumpkins, orange string lights were twisted around black railings and every light in the house was on.
Grady and I walked up the front steps, and I opened the door. But as I pushed, it hit someone on the inside.
“Hey, watch it!” It was Max’s mother, Simone, dressed in her Vegas-showgirl costume, complete with a purple feathered headpiece that towered a foot above her and plumed out in all directions. “Sorry,” she said, patting the feathers. “It gets in the way sometimes.”
“Hi, Simone, it’s Izzy.” No matter how many times I’d met Simone, she never remembered me. I had long stopped taking it personally. She never remembered anyone.
“Oh, Izzy! How nice to meet you!” Simone hugged me. I could feel her tiny waist and her ribs. The woman was in amazing shape. Well over sixty and still able to rock a showgirl outfit.
Simone grabbed a passing waiter, who was dressed in tight black pants, no shirt and a Venetian catlike mask. “Two, please,” she said, relieving him of a couple martinis, which she shoved at Grady and me before she disappeared into the crowd.
“Simone, this is Grady,” I said to her retreating back.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not staying at this party long.” He glanced around. “Man, I thought gay men were supposed to have tons of straight girlfriends.”
“Hey,” I said, taking a sip of the martini, which tasted of apple and cinnamon, “you’re not looking anyway, right? You said it was going great with Ellen.”
He eyed a guy dressed as Little Orphan Annie, wearing a sign that read, You’re Only a GAY Away. He shook his head and returned his eyes to me. “Things are great with Ellen. But I’m always looking.”
We made our way into the thick of the crowd. I began to wish I was a single, homosexual man. It seemed every hot, gay guy in the city was in Q’s living room, most of them shirtless and greased up. One guy was dressed as a Chippendales dancer, another as an Indian (replete with feathered loincloth), yet another as a trapeze artist. And the flirting that was going on-Jiminy Christmas. Everyone seemed to be batting their eyes at one another and squeezing biceps. I started to feel ignored in my sexy blue dress.
We found Q in the kitchen, talking with a black guy cross-dressing as Marilyn Monroe. Q wore white footie pajamas and sheep ears.
“Iz!” he yelled when he saw me. Q got loud when he drank. And he had clearly been drinking. “Izzy, baby, how are you?”
He lurched over to me and hugged me big. “How are you?” he hollered again.
“Fine. What’s with your costume?”
“Max is Little Bo Peep. I’m the sheep.” He turned me to face Marilyn Monroe. “Iz, have you met Timothy?”
Timothy/Marilyn licked his lips and swished the skirt of his white dress back and forth. “Lovely to meet you,” he purred. “So tell me something…” He pointed to my red hair then down toward my waist. “Does the carpet match the drapes?”
“Dude, shut up!” Grady said.
I laughed. “It’s okay.” I’d been hearing that question, in one form or another, since I was thirteen, usually from drunk assholes at a late-night bar. Coming from Timothy/Marilyn, it didn’t bother me.
I turned and pulled Grady forward. “This is Grady Fisher.”
“Yum.” Timothy/Marilyn looked him up and down.
“Yeah, hi.” Grady put his martini on the counter, grabbed a beer from a drinks tub and disappeared.
“So,” Timothy/Marilyn said, dragging his eyes up and down my body now. “You’re sexy.”
“Thank you,” I said. I was struck by how truly flattered I was. And then immediately struck by how truly low my self-esteem must have dipped for me to be eating up attention from a man dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
Q threw his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “So, Timothy, Izzy is my boss.”
“Shut up,” I said. “We work together.” Or we did. Before Shane took the Pickett work from me.
“Yes, but you make the big money.”
“Wait a minute, I direct a portion of my salary to you, so you make more than enough.”
“But I’m still just a lowly assistant,” Q said. “Hey, I’m okay with it. It’s like being in AA.” He pulled away and threw his arms out. “I am Quentin David Briscoe. And I…am an assistant.”
“Oh, have another drink.”
He grabbed a bottle of Corona off the counter. “You and I need to have a talk about that fiancé of yours.” Q tugged me though the living room, up the steps to the second floor and into his and Max’s bedroom. The space was cool and calm, done in charcoal gray and decorated with contemporary artwork, many painted by Q.
“Sit,” he said, half gesturing toward the bed, half shoving me in that direction.
“Watch the devil ears!” I tumbled back onto the bed.
“Spill it. I’ve called you four times since the funeral yesterday, and I got nothing. What’s been happening?”
“Everything.” I threw a hand over my eyes, Gone With the Wind style.
He didn’t laugh. I didn’t either.
I couldn’t tell him about working with Mayburn, so I told him about getting followed, probably by two people. I told him about the break-in, and how I’d met with Shane Pickett today. I stopped short of telling him everything about the meeting.
Q listened intently. “How was Shane doing?”
“Seems to be great. He’s moved into his dad’s office already.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, that was fast, huh?”
He shrugged. “I guess he’s just doing what he has to do.”
I knew I should tell him that Shane was giving my work back to Tanner, but I was hoping to come up with a plan, some way to meet with Shane and maybe the entire board and convince them that I should remain as one of the company’s attorneys. It had slipped from me too fast. Last week the work was too much. In some ways, I had wanted out. And now I was out. If I told Q, it would make it reality.
“I don’t know what to think about Shane,” I said. “I’ve always really liked him, but it was weird to see him in his dad’s office. Has he always wanted to take over Pickett? Is it possible that he did something to make that happen?”
“Forester had a heart attack.”
“There are ways to cause a heart attack,” I said, mimicking Mayburn’s words.
“The guy was almost seventy, Iz. He’d had a heart attack before. Don’t insult his family members by implying they might have done something to get him there.”
“I’m not trying to insult anyone. I’m just trying to make sure there was no foul play. Forester had been receiving death threats before he died.”
Q narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yeah. He was getting threatening letters, telling him to step down from the company.” I told him what they’d said. I told him about the homeless guy outside Pickett Enterprises. “I want to make sure that his heart attack was natural and not caused by something else. Or anybody else. I have to look at everyone. I know Shane is a nice guy.” A nice guy who just gave me the ax. “But I’m just trying to keep my eyes and ears open. I thought Sam was the nicest guy, too, right? I mean, I still think that. But sometimes it gets hard to ignore what I’m seeing.”
Q was silent for a minute. “How can I help?”
“I might ask you to stay at my apartment with me, although I did get new locks put in.”
“That wouldn’t be a problem. Anything to get away from Simone. Max is tense as hell with her around.”
“How are things with you guys?”
He looked away. He seemed to be staring at a painting of his that was deep-yellow and tinged with orange. I knew he had painted it when he first met Max, and he said that being in love made him feel at the center of the sun.
He looked back at me. “Not good.”
“What’s going on? Is it just Simone?”
“That doesn’t help, but the main problem is Max thinks I’m cheating on him.”
“Did you finally cave and fool around with someone else?” Q had a wandering eye, but I never thought he’d give in to the impulse.
He waved a hand. “I can’t talk about this with two hundred people downstairs. Plus, you’ve got enough going on. Tell me what else I can do other than crash on your couch once or twice.”
“How hard would it be to get our hands on Forester’s autopsy?”
Q thought for a second. He gave me a long look. “I think you’re being paranoid, but I can get you the report from the estate department if you really want it. I’ll just say we’re closing up something for Forester and we need it for our records. I’ll copy it and have it Monday morning.”
“What about Forester’s records from his cardiologist?”
“Hmm. Well, I’d guess those would be part of the autopsy records. If not, I could subpoena them under the court number of the estate.”
A knock came from the door and Fat Elvis stuck his head in. “There’s my hunk of burning love.”
Q stood and put his hands on his hips. “I’m glad you’re coming around to the good side, Grady.”
Grady guffawed. “Not you, man. I wanted to see if Izzy was okay.”
“She’s a conspiracy theorist.” Q adjusted the foot of his pajamas. “Get her drunk and onto a different topic.” He left the bedroom.
Downstairs, through the open doorway, I could hear the thumping strains of the song “It’s Raining Men.”
“What’s the conspiracy?” Grady shifted the heft of his fake belly to the other side and sat on the bed next to me.
“I can’t take you seriously in that outfit.”
“Wait a second.” He pushed the gold shades up on his pompadour and peeled off the top of the jumpsuit and the fake belly. “Better?”
“Much.”
He put his beer on the floor. “Iz, remember I told you that you could rely on me? That I could handle more than sports and law-firm talk?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I want to tell you something else I can handle.”
I held my breath. There was something weighty moving into the room-some kind of energy that felt serious.
“I could handle me and you,” Grady said.
“Me and you? But we’re friends.”
“Exactly. We’re great friends, and it’s not like I’ve thought about this for years or anything, but since last week, since everything has happened, it’s killed me, absolutely killed me, to see you sad. And I started to wish I could be more than just your friend.”
“So you want…” I couldn’t even finish my sentence. I’d never thought Grady was interested in me.
“I don’t really want anything. You’ve got too much on your plate right now. The only thing I want is for you to know I’m thinking about you, and I’m into you, and if you are ever ready for that, you let me know. And if you just want to be friends, that’s great, too, and I’ll do anything I can to help you get through this. Anything. Ask me anything.”
I remembered that tomorrow morning I had to pick up Kaitlyn, Maggie’s niece. “Well, um, could I borrow your car tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. I’m going to the gym in the morning. I’ll leave it outside your place and put the keys under the doormat.” He stood. “I’m getting out of here before I say anything else. Are we okay?”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, sure.”
He zipped up his jumpsuit and put his wig back on. The huge gold sunglasses came next.
I started laughing.
“That’s not exactly the response I wanted from a girl I hope to date.”
I put on a serious face. “Sorry.”
He swiveled his hips. “Don’t feel sorry for the King, baby.”
Grady left, leaving me to sit alone in a room, wearing devil ears, listening to the thump of too much bass and pondering how life never failed to surprise.
40
Day Six
S leep had come easy the night before, thanks to the vast quantities of apple-cinnamon martinis that Simone kept handing me and I kept chugging, liking how reality receded with every sip.
I woke up on Sunday morning to the persistent sound of a thudding bass drum. I tried to tune it out, but the thumping only got louder, to the point where I could feel the reverberation through my body.
I sat up and yelped with pain. The drum was, I realized, in my head.
Lying back down, I concentrated on quieting it. Impossible.
I investigated and saw that there was a tiny hangover band in my brain that was playing really, really, really loud. On closer inspection of the band members, I saw that Simone was playing the bass drum with one hand, holding a martini in the other and grinning. Grady was also there, banging away on some kind of bongo. Q and Max played matching snare drums.
I groaned and rolled over, which only made the pain worse and the noise louder.
“Go away,” I muttered.
No such luck.
I got out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen. Reaching into the cupboard for a box of green tea, I stubbed my toe-hard-on the corner.
“Fudge!” I yelled, hopping around, trying out one of my swearword replacements. Definitely wasn’t working. “Fuck!” For some reason, I stubbed my toe on that corner at least twice a week.
