A Date You Can't Refuse (34 page)

I looked up. “Chai's mom just gave this to you? Her dead child's last words?”

“We told her we'd immortalize her dead child.”

Fredreeq leaned over the table. “Joey and I are a writing team. We do celebrity biographies. Classy stuff. Nothing cheesy.”

“What do you mean, you're a writing team?” I asked. “Since when?”

“Since the early seventies,” Fredreeq said. “We have quite a résumé. We write under the pen name Katie Kelly. The mom was pretty sure she's heard of us.”

“Oh, my God,” I muttered. “I can't believe you guys. I hope you plan to return this.”

“We have to,” Joey said. “We gave her a two-hundred-dollar deposit.”

“Treat it nicely,” Fredreeq said, then looked up.

Zbiggo and Felix were approaching with a plastic takeout container full of gumballs. “Zbiggo?” Fredreeq said. “I'm getting you chocolate chip pancakes with little pats of butter and mounds of luscious whipped cream, the kind of thing you won't find in the Kremlin.”

“Fredreeq,” I said. “Ixnay on that. We're eating in Santa Barbara in an hour.”

“He's a growing boy” Fredreeq said, making room as Zbiggo squeezed into the booth. “And look at these nice muscles. Zbiggo, you are just all man, aren't you? My husband, Francis, is a big fan of yours and I'm going to need an autographed photo of you to give him for Christmas. And ringside seats at your next fight. How many calories do you eat while you're in training?”

The waitress came and saved Zbiggo from having to actually speak. Felix did a creditable job of ordering a shrimp Caesar salad minus the shrimp, the croutons, and the dressing, just as we'd practiced in Beverly Hills, and Fredreeq ordered the promised pancakes, against my wishes. I now had poison on the brain. Not only did I feel distinctly unwell, I was
worried that Zbiggo might vomit in the Suburban. Didn't that happen with people who'd been knocked out and were possibly suffering concussions? Also, might he not be detoxing? The mere thought of semidigested chocolate chip pancakes was enough to make me ill too. Or was Chai's diary entry making me ill?

“Joey” I whispered. “Isn't it possible Chai really did just have a bad case of flu?”

Joey took a sip of water. “Nope. Poison.”

I sat back in the booth and closed my eyes. I had to stop focusing on this. I was feeling sicker by the moment.

“How's your appetite?” Joey asked. “You're looking a little peaked yourself.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her. “I'm fine. Perfect health. I'm never sick.” In general, this was true.

“You didn't order anything.”

“I told you, we're having lunch in Santa Barbara.” I turned to the boys. “Zbiggo? Felix? In America, it's a cultural imperative to wash your hands before eating. Why don't you two go to the men's room and do that right now? And find Stasik.” I waited till they were gone, then said, “What are you guys saying? That MediasRex is poisoning me? Because it's ridiculous. Who would do that? Why would they?”

Fredreeq reached over and touched a lock of my hair.

“What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed.

“Just checking.”

“My hair? Why? It's not falling out, is it?”

“It's hard to say.”

“No, it's not,” I said. “Because I'd notice. If I'd lost any hair at all, even a few strands, I'd be bald. I have bad hair. My hair's been through a lot, and on that score alone I can't afford to be poisoned.”

“Calm down,” Joey said. “Just because Chai was poisoned, if she was poisoned, doesn't mean that you're being poisoned.”

“But I'd go easy on the borscht,” Fredreeq said.

“Borscht? That's bush league,” Joey said. “There was a Bulgarian dissident in the seventies who was jabbed with a poison umbrella tip.”

“Guys,” I said. “You're giving me the creeps. Because this actually
does make sense and would explain why they'd stage a car crash for Chai. But wouldn't poison show up in an autopsy?”

“If there was an autopsy” Fredreeq said.

“I imagine there was,” Joey said, “but they don't routinely test car-crash victims for poison. It's expensive, running tests. Unless they had reason to suspect poison. But a model being underweight doesn't exactly sound an alarm.”

“Wouldn't her mom sound an alarm?” I asked.

“Strictly trailer park,” Fredreeq said.

“Not a Rhodes scholar,” Joey said, nodding. “And the diary doesn't say she was poisoned, we inferred it. Chai herself didn't suspect it.”

“Tell her about the Prius,” Fredreeq said.

“Yuri Milos gave the mom a Prius.”

“A
car?
Holy cow,” I said. “Most people send flowers.”

“A white Prius,” Fredreeq. “Very environmentally conscious. He told the mom it would've been Chai's Christmas bonus. The mom thinks he walks on water.”

“But did Chai write anything about secret DVDs? Or Alik Milos?”

“No,” Joey said, “but she alludes to ‘our little secret,’ so that's probably—” She stopped, and I looked over to see Zbiggo and Felix coming back to the table.

“Where's Stasik?” I asked. “Wasn't he in the bathroom?”

Zbiggo looked at me blankly. But Felix's eyes opened wide. “No! He is not here, then?” He looked around, then hurried back toward the rest-rooms.

I got out of the booth and walked around the restaurant distractedly, with Joey right behind me. “Stasik's the putative country and western singer?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, checking the ladies' room. No Stasik. “What do you mean, ‘putative’?”

“Fredreeq and I listened to his CD. He can't sing for shit. I've heard vacuum cleaners with better vocal quality.”

“But where is he? I'm checking the kitchen.”

“I'll see if there's a back room.”

I had a distinct feeling of déjà vu, thinking of Felix being lost the day
before. First Tiffany's, now IHOP. I stuck my head into the kitchen. No Felix. A moment later Joey met up with me back at the hostess station. “He's not in the employees' locker room,” she said.

“He is not with the syrup cans,” Felix said, which I took to mean stockroom.

We headed outside.

Joey and I searched the parking lot while Felix went farther afield, to the CVS pharmacy, but we all knew it was hopeless. It wasn't as if Stasik had wandered off or been kidnapped. He was gone with the wind, and of his own volition. How was I supposed to write this up in my report to Yuri? These men didn't need a social coach, they needed ankle bracelets.

And who was Stasik anyway? Not a singer, obviously. An aggressive, knife-wielding … an image of Crispin, stabbed in the face, rose up before me. Was that Stasik's real talent?

I was momentarily distracted by Joey, who was standing between a pickup truck and a motorcycle, looking disoriented. “Joey?” I asked. “What is it?”

My voice seemed to break the spell. She visibly shook herself and then looked over at me. “My car's gone.”

“C
all my cell phone,” Joey said. “I left it on the front seat of my car.”

I did. Her voice mail answered.

“Stasik,” I said after the beep. “Just in case you're there and figured out how to pick up Joey's messages, let me impress upon you the need to come back. All is forgiven. I won't call the cops, I won't even write this into my report to Yuri, that you're driving a hot car. We'll just forget it. But you have to come back right now because I don't know how they do things in Belarus or Ukraine—sorry, I can't remember where you're from—but here in America, you get deported for stealing a car. It's a big deal. In California, you're better off kidnapping a person. Depending on the car. Joey's is a Mercedes, so that's serious. Call me.”
Unless you're a murderer
, I added mentally.
In that case, don't call
.

Joey grabbed my phone. “I want my goddamn car back, and if you harm it in any way, I will shoot you, you motherf—”

I pried the phone from her and repeated my cell number and then added, “If this isn't Stasik, if this is some other carjacker, I'd ditch the car and run for your life. My friend's got a gun and she's always looking for an excuse to use it.” I hung up.

“Except that my gun's in the car,” Joey said.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, maybe he won't find it.”

“He won't, unless he looks in the most obvious place. The glove box.” We both thought about that, standing in the empty parking place formerly occupied by Joey's aging Mercedes. Felix joined us.

“Felix,” I said, assailed by a horrible thought. “Why would Stasik steal Joey's car?”

“He what?!” Felix let forth a string of phrases peppered with the ubiquitous
tvoyu mat
. This was very un-Felix-like.

“Listen,” I said. “I need to know what you know about this.” What I'd do with the information, I wasn't yet sure, but I wanted to confirm my guess that Stasik was a spy, on a secret spy mission.

But Felix took a deep breath and said, “How strange a thing for Stasik to do this. I have no idea why. Okay, let us go to Santa Barbara and not give him more of our brain thoughts.” He moved resolutely back toward the IHOP entrance.

Joey threw me a sideways glance with raised eyebrows, clearly communicating, “What's up with this guy?” and we followed him into the restaurant.

Back at the table, Fredreeq expressed outrage, but no surprise. “Of course he has to resort to stealing cars. He's completely talent-free. If that man is a singing star in some other country, it's a country I do not want to visit.”

The only person undisturbed by the turn of events was Zbiggo, now plowing through a mountain of pancakes, oblivious to the dots of melted chocolate accumulating on his face and T-shirt. I would have to buy him some new clothes to get around Santa Barbara in.

I had just called Via Vai to push our reservation back an hour when my cell rang. It was Stasik. “Something's come up, love,” he said, shocking me with his sudden use of endearments. “Had to borrow your friend's Mercedes, sorry, but I'll take good care of it and have it back at the pancake place late afternoon. Go on without me. Perhaps you could swing by the IHOP on your way back to pick me up? Or not. I could hitchhike to Calabasas.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, unnerved by his conciliatory tone. “First, what in the—”

“And no hurry. I'll need a few hours here. Must run.”

“But—” And then I was talking to dead air.

“Okay, we may as well go,” I said. “Since we have no idea where he is. Joey, do you and Fredreeq want to come to Santa Barbara with us, or—”

“Yes,” Fredreeq said. “If the alternative is Amtrak or a day at IHOP, God in heaven, yes.”

“There's Greyhound,” Joey said.

“I don't do buses. We'll go to Santa Barbara. Anyway, I miss P.B.”

The waitress came by to pick up the cash I'd plunked down. “He didn't eat his Caesar,” she said accusingly, looking at Felix. “Something else I can get you folks?”

“A ride home,” Joey said.

“That's right,” Fredreeq said. “How about some parking-lot security? What's that saying you have, ‘Come Hungry, Leave in Someone Else's Car’?”

“We're good, thanks,” I said to the downtrodden waitress. “In fact, we'll be back later.”

“Lucky me,” she said.

Santa Barbara is the pride of Southern California, with more class and culture and money per capita than Los Angeles. There was, naturally, an urban underbelly, but it wasn't apparent coming off the freeway at Las Positas, passing the verdant green of a golf course. It became more obvious as I got closer to my brother's residence. Haven Lane was in a middle-class neighborhood, indistinguishable from its neighbors. It needed an exterior paint job and was a little grubby around the edges, but had a thriving flower garden and a white picket fence, fighting to avoid the appearance of institutional living.

Felix, Zbiggo, Fredreeq, and Joey accompanied me into the house despite my efforts to dissuade them. Zbiggo, now fully recovered, was displaying an edgy quality that made him a less-than-ideal car companion. Even for Fredreeq, the thrill was gone. The five of us crammed into the parlor that functioned as a reception area, and I gave Mrs. Winterbottom
everyone's name, which she painstakingly wrote down in a log. This took a while.

“Zbiggo,” Fredreeq said, “keep your hands to yourself, or I will have to shoot you.”

Mrs. Winterbottom looked up. Zbiggo stepped back.

“We have a no-firearms policy,” Mrs. Winterbottom said, “that we take seriously.”

“It was a figure of speech,” Fredreeq said.

“We also ban knives, scissors, sharp objects, rocks, shaving cream, chalk, permanent marker, free weights, fireworks, explosives, aerosol cans, baseball bats, and adult beverages.”

“You run a tight ship,” Joey said.

“Does anyone wish to check any contraband with me?” Mrs. Winter-bottom asked, eyeing Felix's backpack.

“We won't be staying long enough to do that,” I said. “As I told you on the phone, we're just here to take P.B. out to lunch.”

“Well, you're too late for that. His uncle came and checked him out.”

“You couldn't have told us that before signing us all in?” Fredreeq asked. “Did you think we came here to visit
you
?”

“If you mean my Uncle Theo,” I said hastily, seeing Mrs. Winterbottom's chest puff up in affront, “that can't be right. Uncle Theo doesn't drive.”

“He was driven by a young man named—” Mrs. Winterbottom checked her log. “Apollo Sp—Spanikopita?”

Zbiggo moved in, as if he might help her by reading upside down.

“Stephanopoulos,” I said, growing alarmed. “Okay, this isn't good. Where did they go, do you know?”

“Yes, I do, but before we get to that, we have to discuss a few things, Miss Shelley. Such as your brother's lack of cooperation with yard work and flouting of curfew, which he's missed by as much as twenty minutes on many an evening. Also—”

“Are your breasts real?” Zbiggo asked.

Mrs. Winterbottom gasped. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your breasts.” He elongated the word, rolling the
r
in an exaggerated manner.

“This is Santa Barbara, Zbiggo,” Joey said. “Not Hollywood. People here keep their body parts intact.”

“Except for Michael Jackson,” Fredreeq said.

Mrs. Winterbottom now had two bright red spots on her cheeks, as if indignation caused fever.