Dating is Murder (29 page)

39

“
N
o luck,” Maizie
said, locking the door behind her. “But I thought of one more place the pill might be. I’m sure I didn’t toss it, and it’s not like I mailed it to Annika’s mother.”

I snapped out of my paralysis and pushed the earlobe aside with my foot. The yellow cat, thinking it was a game, bunched himself up, swaying, ready to pounce. I stepped lightly on the earlobe, covering it with my sneaker.

“Check this out.” Maizie bent down to a braided area rug and moved it aside. “I designed it and, I have to admit, I’m pretty proud of it.”

She knelt on the white floor and counted tiles. She found the one she wanted, pushed on one end with her thumb, then lifted it out to reveal an aluminum-like surface underneath. A metal ring rested in the aluminum. She hooked her finger through it and pulled. A section of floor lifted up and became a trapdoor.

She stood and smiled, gesturing to the open door. “After you,” she said.

I thought of Seth, the Krav Maga instructor, and something he’d said in class: “Don’t get in their car.” I hadn’t understood it then, but now it was obvious, which was funny because this wasn’t a car but an underground room Maizie was inviting me into. I knew that going down there was a bad idea. Bad, bad, bad.

“Wollie?” She seemed not to notice that I hadn’t said a word since she’d walked in.

I stepped forward and looked down. A light had gone on automatically, revealing a spiral staircase of polished oak. Spiral staircases, Fredreeq said, were bad feng shui.

The yellow cat nuzzled my foot.

Maizie was waiting. Smiling.

“I’d rather not,” I said. “I get . . . claustrophobic.” It wasn’t a lie. I’d never been before, but now I had a profound need to be outside and far away.

“Wollie, it’s incredible. I have something so similar, with airplane cabins. Severe. I can’t fly, not for all the tea in China—it’s not flight itself, it’s the closed cabin. Believe me, you’ll like this.” Maizie put a hand on my arm, guiding me toward the trapdoor.

I kicked the earlob aside, talking loudly to mask the sound of its journey across the tile. “It’s not claustrophobia, technically, it’s—” I searched through what was available of my brain. “Spelunkophobia. Fear of caves. Basements, subways. Rec rooms.”

“Try it. If you hate it, we’ll come back up. Cat! Leave that alone, the primer isn’t dry.”

I turned to see the cat batting at the torso of a wooden reindeer leaning against a counter. The earlobe must’ve landed behind it.

I should run for it. Maizie stood between the door and me, but I could just barrel over her. We were probably in the same weight class, although I had two inches on her, even given her high heels. But she looked solid whereas I was a jellyfish. And there’d be no going back. There’s no alternative scenario, no polite reason for bashing into someone. Once you do it, from then on it’s all about who’s stronger, who’s meaner, who’s been to the gym more. And that wouldn’t be me.

But I couldn’t go down that staircase. Only an idiot would go down there.

Unless she had a gun.

She did have a gun.

It was in her apron pocket, not even hiding. Part of the outfit. Had it always been there, or had she gone to the house for it?

Okay, once a gun shows up, the rules change. Don’t they? Wasn’t it better for the gun to stay in her pocket than get pointed at me?

She was looking at me. Her hand went to her pocket.

“Maizie!” My voice was shrill. “I’ll do it. Before I lose my nerve. Feel the fear and do it anyway. I think that was the name of a book. Anyway, I love to see how other people do their houses. Did you design all this yourself? I think your husband mentioned that you did.”

“That’s right, you met Gene.” The cat knocked over the reindeer torso. Freaked out, he raced across the room. Maizie grabbed him. She walked toward me, the cat wiggling and mewing, wanting to get back to the earlobe. Rico’s earlobe. The earlobe of Rico Rodriguez.

The cat was no match for Maizie Quinn. Nor was I. She held him in one hand, the other hand in easy reach of her gun. The three of us were going down.

The staircase was a long one. The underground room had a high ceiling—or a low floor, depending on your perspective. And Maizie was right; it wasn’t cramped. You could have ballroom dancing down here or, more likely, a cooking class. Half the room was a test kitchen, with extra sinks and stovetops, all of it well lit and aggressively clean. Walls, floors, and counters were white, with copper hardware. And it smelled of perfume, something spicy. That scent again. Annika’s.

“What did I tell you?” Maizie said. “Does it feel like you’re underground?”

“No. It’s wonderful. Is this where you make your aromatherapy products?”

She smiled and stroked the cat, who purred so loudly I could hear him across the room. “That’s right. Shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, and methylenedioxymethamphetamine. Ecstasy. With a little something extra. Fentanyl. X plus F: I call it Euphoria.”

Another interesting thing
about the human brain, at least my brain, is that while I expect it to work in an orderly fashion, one discovery leading to another, building to an inevitable conclusion, in fact it’s one big shopping bag I throw things into: tax receipts, toenail clippers, half a banana, nothing connecting to anything else until it all comes together in one big Aha! moment. That’s what Joey calls it, the Aha! moment, but in this case it was more of an Uh-oh! moment, followed by an I Can’t Believe How Stupid I’ve Been moment.

Everything I’d surmised about Savannah Brook actually applied to Maizie Quinn. Maizie, with whom I’d spent time on a practically-every-other-day basis, Maizie, dropping clues right and left, except I was too busy admiring her quilts and flowers and homemade lawn ornaments to notice. Maizie, who made her own sausage and bread, now standing between me and the staircase that was my only way out of here.

I found my voice. “Wow. For . . . how long?”

“Down here? Less than a year. Oh, you mean when did I get into the business? I cut my teeth on Ecstasy back in college. I was the sorority supplier.”

“But, Maizie—” I heard my voice squeak. “You act like it’s nothing, but you invented a
drug.
That’s historical. You’re the Madame Curie of Encino. How did it happen?”

Maizie laughed delightedly. “I just love you, Wollie. Thank you. It
is
a big deal, it’s huge, but you know, I was sitting around one night thinking about analgesics and hallucinogens, and voilà! Exactly like cooking. You know how that is?”

I said, “I don’t cook.”

“Well, but you paint. Cooking, painting, organic chemistry—same thing. The experimental spirit. If you’re willing to make mistakes, you can achieve anything.”

I nodded, thinking of my freehand mural. My West African goliath. My mistakes.
Just stay connected to her,
I thought. “But to go from an idea to an actual product—?”

She nodded too. “I derivatized some fentanyl, combined it with MDMA, and started test-marketing. People loved it. So then I had to talk Gene into a regular supply of fentanyl—he’s such a stick-in-the-mud, but once he saw the profit potential—” She guided me farther into the room, away from the staircase.

“That’s right, Gene’s a doctor, isn’t he?”

“Not the most inspired, but he’s found his niche now, running this pharmacy scam; he gets me all the fentanyl I need, in the form of pain patches. A man has to thrive professionally or he feels like a big fat loser. Remember that when you get m—. Oops. Sorry.”

“No, what about?” I said brightly.

“I was going to say ‘when you get married,’ but obviously you won’t. Now.”

Something inside me started to tighten up, in my throat, but I waved off the implication as if it were nothing: a party I wasn’t invited to, a bad haircut. I just waved it away, my hands doing air ballet. “Okay, but listen—Vladimir Tcheiko, it’s him, right? That you’re going into business with? Because I actually read about him in
International Celeb—”

“My God, Wollie, I’m giddy.” Maizie laughed. “Did I tell you it’s tonight?”

“Tell me everything!”

Maizie nearly squealed. “We’re meeting here. It’s like the president coming for dinner. No, better, it’s like the Rolling Stones. I mean, the arrangements—endless. They didn’t want Gene here, no one but me, they did background checks on the family, Lupe, the gardeners, people in the neighborhood, the goddamn film across the street—”

“Why do this at all, if they’re so paranoid?”

“Because Vladimir’s bringing me into his organization, and he won’t take on anyone he can’t see face to face; he goes with his gut. And since I
cannot
get on a plane and you can’t drive to Africa, the mountain, so to speak, is coming to me.”

“Jeez, Maizie, it must be a big deal, it’s like you invented Velcro or something.”

“Yeah. It’s my year to be prom queen. I could’ve had Forio, or the Asians. . . . That’s a big reason Tcheiko’s interested, because his competition is. And the timing’s good; he’s bored with hiding out, wants to show he’s still in the game and expanding.”

“But—what happened with Annika?”

Maizie rolled her eyes. “She brought Rico around. That’s what happened to Annika.”

“And he liked U4? He wanted in on it?”

“Loved it. He and his friends were my first distributors. But eventually he told Annika. And she might’ve gotten used to the idea, but she caught him kissing me one day and that was it. She was such a child about that, I wasn’t comfortable around her anymore. But by then I couldn’t send her home—Tcheiko doesn’t like changes in domestic staff close to a meeting like this—so I had to threaten her mother’s life, all sorts of nonsense. What a big, unnecessary mess.” Maizie sat on the staircase. “Rico should’ve seen she had a streak of puritanism.”

So what happened to her?
I wanted to ask again but couldn’t. If the answer was bad, I wouldn’t be able to keep this up. I cleared my throat. “Rico was not, I take it, puritanical?”

She gave me a sidelong glance. “Not in any way you can think of.” I don’t know what my face was doing, but she laughed. The cat squirmed. She set him down. “Shocked that I slept with him?”

“Not at all. You’re beautiful, Maizie.” If we could just go on like this, I thought. Like friends. Chatting. Gossiping. “You have the skin of a twenty-year-old.” And the earlobe of a twenty-one-year-old. Upstairs. Under the lawn ornaments. I was losing it.

“Elizabeth Arden day spa. And I got my eyes done last year.” She patted her hip under her denim apron. Where the gun was. “Being ten pounds overweight minimizes wrinkles. Not that I wouldn’t like to be skinny, but I am one damn good cook, and I’m not making foie gras for my three-year-old. Oh, my goodness, did I ever offer you some?”

“Foie gras? No.” What was foie gras? Liver?

She looked at her watch. “Well, too late now, but you saw it in progress, so I thought you’d like to taste the result.”

“I saw it?”

“Saturday night. The bird. Oh, there’s so much to talk about. Such a shame. I always felt an affinity for you, Wollie. You know Emma thinks we’re cousins? And you’re Grammy Quinn’s favorite, on that show of yours . . .” She stood, reached into her apron pocket—not the gun one, but the middle one—and pulled out a piece of Tupperware. It was the size of a hockey puck. “Lucky you. Fentanyl, far better than morphine. Nap time.”

“And then what?”

“Hey.” She winked. “Let’s not get into that, okay?”

“No, really,” I said, my voice shrill. “What will you do with my body? It’s not easy to lug around—my feet alone—. Believe me, this is something I know about.” Perhaps I was going into shock, talking about my body as though it were a suitcase.

“Honestly, you don’t want to know. People get so squeamish. A guy in my charcuterie class Sunday had to leave the room when I pulled out Goosie’s liver.”

“That was Goosie?” I gasped. “I thought it was a turkey.”

She laughed. “It was a pain in the ass, frankly. It took seconds to wring her neck, and forever to turn her into foie gras. But that’s life: moments of drama, hours of cleanup. No time for that tonight, I’ve got dinner cooking. And you’re right, I can’t carry you anywhere; I could barely drag Rico across the room.”

A murder confession. That was awfully easy. I swallowed. “This room?”

She shook her head. “Upstairs. I dropped him through the trapdoor.”

“Then what?” I whispered.

“If you must know, I had to get his limbs off. I tried a Skilsaw, but tissue splattered everywhere, so I went with a hacksaw, fit the torso and head in one Hefty bag, ground up arms and legs in the meat grinder, the small parts, and got the large bones out to the car in a second trip. Not bad.”

My mouth was very dry. “You’re losing me. Wh—why the meat grinder?”

“I had to limit trips to the car. Not so important on this end, but in Antelope Valley that kind of thing attracts attention.”

“Why Antelope Valley?” I asked, keeping my voice conversational.

“Good distance. Nice Dumpsters.”

“But wasn’t there a lot of . . . blood?”

“Oh, at first, just spewing out, and his body thrashing around, but not so bad once his heart stopped pumping. I used an aluminum tub for his parts, the kind we use at picnics to store ice and drinks, and a six-mil plastic sheet to contain things. . . . Thank God for custom ventilation. Gene made a big fuss over the expense last year, but you don’t do aromatherapy, let alone drug production with a ceiling fan.”

What to do? She had to be a little mad. Maybe a lot mad. These were not words I used lightly, considering my brother’s history with schizophrenia, but it helped me. I don’t know much about real evil, but mental illness is a world I’ve lived in. It could work to my advantage. Since she was armed, it was perhaps my only advantage.

“What a week for you,” I said. “You’re not just creative, Maizie, you’re brave.”

Maizie shrugged but looked pleased. “It’s no different from a surgeon or butcher. Once you get past the smell of blood and cutting through bones, it’s a series of tasks. Killing him was harder in one sense. It comes down to a moment. You can’t hesitate or you lose your nerve.”