Death in a Funhouse Mirror (16 page)

It was bad enough that Dom Florio kept showing up and making me think about Eve and Cliff and Helene. Now the whole mess had followed me home. This was supposed to be my castle. I was in charge here. "Go away, Eve," I said aloud. "Go away. I am not going to get involved in any more murders." My voice sounded strange out here in the quiet darkness. And my thoughts of Eve and of Helene, so abruptly and brutally dead, wouldn't go away.

I considered what she'd suggested—that Cliff had killed Helene—and why I didn't want to believe it. It wasn't very complicated. Viscerally, I didn't believe that Cliff killed Helene, but it was also true that I didn't want Cliff to be the killer. Because I knew him. Because I liked him. Because I wanted to believe that he was a good man, that he'd loved Helene, that good people didn't kill each other even if they were involved in midlife crises and alternative lifestyles. And because, like the woman who'd spoken at the funeral, I had admired and looked up to Helene and I couldn't bear the thought that someone so special could have been killed by someone I knew.

The part of me that likes to play devil's advocate said that was all very well but what about the facts? What about Cliff's lover? What about his apparent lack of grief? What if he had wanted a divorce and Helene refused to give it to him? It wasn't enough to support even a weak suspicion, let alone an assumption, my rational side responded. But the devil's advocate wouldn't stop. If Cliff wasn't guilty, it wouldn't hurt to do what Eve had asked. All I had to do was keep my eyes open and ask a few questions, that was all Eve wanted me to do. It wouldn't do any harm. I was going to be there anyway, wasn't I? Assuming we got a contract. It would be a good way to show Eve how wrong she was. "But I don't want to. I don't want to get involved," I told the darkness, feeling like a damn fool.

The devil's advocate just smirked and told me I already was involved or I wouldn't be thinking about it so much. It was this impulsive, do-gooder side of my nature, the side that thinks I have to do what I can to help people, to "fix" things, that Suzanne and Andre had been warning me about. They knew me too well. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.

Sometimes I wished I could be a little girl again so I could go and dump all my problems in the lap of some big, all-knowing grownup, to say, "Daddy, Andre and Valeria are being mean to me and Suzanne's happy and having a big party and I feel left out and my friend Eve is trying to get me to do things I don't want to do that I know I really shouldn't do. Fix it." Sometimes it was no fun being an adult. It wasn't comforting to realize that no one was all-knowing, and it was wearing as well as empowering to know that I was responsible for supplying my own answers. So here I was, Thea "the buck stops here" Kozak, adult, sitting by myself on a cool, damp night, feeling like my mind was overrun with industrious black ants, and I was the exterminator.

I breathed deeply, relishing the salty tang of the air. Oddly enough, once I'd acknowledged them, the ants were very willing to go back to their nest for the night. Overhead, the stars twinkled against the velvet sky like tiny jewels. I would have fallen asleep, but it was too cool to be comfortable.

I tottered inside, my legs stiff and sore from the intense workout Aaron had given us, and crawled into bed. If I was this stiff now, I didn't want to think about what I'd be like in the morning. I buried my head in the pillow and made one last wish. I wished for a sleep without dreams, and my wish was granted.

When the alarm went off I groaned out loud. What had possessed me to arrange breakfast with Dom so early? It must have been his fatal charm. Cursing the dazzling Aaron, I limped into the bathroom and turned on the shower. My body felt like I'd been beaten with a hose and tomorrow I was supposed to go back and do it again. Maybe it wouldn't be Aaron. To compensate for my pain, I decided to show off a little and wear the new suit Suzanne had picked out for me. It was a superfine wool crepe in sage green, with a short, tight skirt and a swingy trapeze jacket over a slightly greener silk blouse. Eve always used to say when I wore green that it showed off my cat eyes.

Just thinking Eve's name was like having a bucket of cold water dumped on my head. What was I going to do about Eve and her crazy obsession? With anyone else I might be able to wait a few days and then get her to listen to reason, but Eve had always been adamant once she made up her mind. Luckily, this morning the solution seemed clear. I didn't have to do anything with them. I could dump them in Dom's lap and get on with the pressing problems of my own life.

I pulled back the hair that always straggles into my face and secured it with some small gold barrettes. I found some gold and jade earrings and green shoes. I checked the whole business in the mirror. Not bad. I'd struck a neat balance between someone's wet dream and Sister Mary Catherine. I grabbed my briefcase, hurried out to the car, and joined the morning rat race.

I was only a few minutes late, but Dom was already there, drinking coffee and staring happily at a steaming mound of pancakes. He smiled when he saw me, gave me a brisk head-to-toe inspection and shook his head. "Good thing Steve's not here," he said. "The poor guy'd be drooling."

"They don't give you guys a course at the academy in drool management?"

"Sure they do," he said, "but you know how it is. Some guys just do better at it than others. I shouldn't make fun of Steve, though. He's a good, solid guy. And smart. It's just that sometimes he lets the little one-eyed guy do his thinking for him."

"The little one-eyed guy?" I said, puzzled. Then I realized what he was talking about. I could feel a hot blush rise up my face. "Well, we're off to a good start, aren't we?" I slid into the booth and picked up the menu, waiting for the blush to fade.

"I already ordered for you," he said, "assuming that you may not eat again all day." The waitress appeared and set a staggering amount of food before me. Dom poured my coffee and waited for my reaction to his selection.

Two poached eggs on toast. Bacon, sausage and home fries. A side of pancakes. A large glass of orange juice. Enough for the Russian army or one hungry woman. "Well, what are we waiting for?" I said, picking up my fork. "The day is getting old."

"Interesting funeral yesterday, wasn't it?" he said.

I stopped trying to dissect my sausage and met his half-hidden blue-eyed stare. "I guess we need to get a few things straight, Dom. I never find funerals interesting. I hate them. And I don't like to play cop games. If you want to ask a question, ask it, but don't try oblique approaches, don't try to trick me, don't try to screw around with my psychology because of things you know, or think you know, about me, okay?"

"Whew," he said, shaking his fingers like he'd been burned. "You change moods almost as fast as your friend Eve."

"I don't think so," I said, slicing into the first egg and watched the yellow yolk roll out and ooze across the toast. It's a treat to get a poached egg that isn't hard-boiled. Dom was dealing with his pancakes in a much more methodical way. He was just eating them. "And don't judge Eve by the last few days. She has every reason to be upset. She's not normally so difficult."

"Was Helene Streeter a faithful wife?" he asked.

"How the hell should I know..." I began, then backed off. "I'm sorry, Dom. I guess I am a little edgy this morning. As far as I know, yes. At least, Eve never said anything to me to suggest otherwise. But it isn't something she would necessarily tell me. I told you, we haven't seen much of each other lately." Feeling slightly guilty, I shared what Eve had confided in me. "She did say her parents weren't sleeping together."

"By which she meant they were occupying separate bedrooms or weren't having sex?"

"I don't know about their sleeping arrangements. I assumed she meant they weren't having sex." As I said this, the waitress leaned across me to check the coffee pot. Waitresses and waiters have special built-in intimacy receptors that compel them to interrupt the most private parts of conversations. You can spend a whole evening undisturbed having a personal conversation with your lover, but the moment you finally get up the courage to blurt out "you need to take more time to get me aroused," the waiter will refill your water glass and drown out the word "aroused." He will hear it, but your lover will not. It never fails.

"Interesting," Dom said. "Cliff Paris told me theirs was a happy marriage in all respects, and Eve said nothing to contradict that."

"You know why, don't you?"

He smiled, an amused smile that reminded me of Andre, the first time I met him. It was the experienced cop's "who does this civilian think she is?" smile. "Tell me," he said.

"Eve doesn't trust you. She thinks Cliff has you wrapped around his finger, so you won't believe anything she says. And Cliff has spent a lifetime protecting his privacy from people who are trying to get at him. He'd probably have a hard time talking to you even if he truly wanted to. I think shrinks reach a point where they only feel safe talking to people in their own profession."

"Thank you, Dr. Kozak."

"Shut up, Dom. I like you. Don't spoil it by being an asshole, please."

He seemed genuinely shocked by my bad language. Because I'm pretty, and abundantly female in design, men tend to expect me to be delicate, feminine and a sweet thing. Treating me like a fragile blossom when they can't wait to get their hands on my petals. It is wickedly iconoclastic of me to shatter those illusions, but I love to.

He concentrated briefly on his pancakes before he spoke again. "Okay," he said, "truce. I guess you aren't the only one who's edgy this morning. I just want to find the person who did this. We both know there's no such thing as a good murder, but this one is just so nasty. Not just a stab wound or two, like you might expect from a random attack, but deep, deliberate slashes, designed to kill."

"Just don't show me any pictures, okay?" I interrupted.

"No," he said, "I don't think you'd like to see the pictures. But why did you think I might?"

"Andre did, when he wanted my cooperation and he thought he wasn't getting it."

"It never occurred to me. But you know cops. We just do what works." He pushed his glasses back into place. "Within the bounds of the Constitution, state law, and our own personalities, that is. What Eve said about her parents is interesting because the autopsy showed that Helene Streeter had had sex with someone on the day she died." As soon as he'd said it I could tell he regretted it. It was one of those facts cops like to keep to themselves.

"So maybe they'd reconciled." I was very uncomfortable talking about Helene Streeter's sex life. "I thought you wanted to ask me about Eve and her father?"

"I do. But other things occur to me, so I ask."

I tried to drop my problem in his lap. "Eve thinks her father killed her mother. Has she told you that?"

"Obliquely. She keeps hinting at it and baiting him. Like she did at dinner."

"And you know about Rowan Ansel?"

"Paris hasn't exactly been subtle, has he? Holding hands with the guy, for God's sake, right after the funeral. I understand these guys in the touchy-feely business are maybe a bit more demonstrative than other folks might be, but they've gotta have limits, too. I guess it would make more sense if Paris was the one who got killed. Then I'd assume it was his wife in a minute and understand why she did it, too. People have a hard time when their mates are unfaithful. It leads to a lot of violence. But it's harder than hell to take when your spouse leaves you for a member of the same sex. It's just too weird. People really freak out."

"I'm not detecting a bit of homophobia here, am I?"

Dom massaged his forehead wearily. "Oh, hell no, Thea. I don't care if people wanna sleep with anteaters, as long as they're peaceful and don't do it in the streets. I just think people would be a lot better off if they'd just sleep with each other, get close, get some of that tension out of their systems, instead of bargaining with sex like it was poker chips."

I thought I was beginning to understand another source of the sexual overlay on today's conversation. "Do you take your own advice? You didn't go home and whirl Rosie around, did you?"

He stared down at his plate, refusing to look at me. "She was tired. That physical therapy really wears her out. And makes her glum. She thinks she'll never get anywhere. Never get any better. So I left her alone."

"Thought you just said people ought to make more love? Get close, get the tensions out?"

"Yeah?"

"So after you leave here, you should go right home, scratch that itch, get sex off your brain so you approach your work with a clear mind and let Rosie know that accidents, disability and physical therapy notwithstanding, she is still a sexy desirable woman. And if you say 'yes, Dr. Kozak' again I will pour syrup on your head." His eyes came up from his plate and he was grinning. I wondered how I'd ever typed him as plain and dull. "What?" I said.

"That Andre Lemieux is a lucky man." He put on a leer and twirled an imaginary mustache. "As some actor is alleged to have said about Sonia Braga, 'you are much woman.' Tell me about Eve's relationship with her father."

"She's mad at him. She thinks he betrayed her mother by having a relationship with Rowan." Now that we'd gotten our cards out on the table, we got along fine. I told him everything I could remember about Eve and her father, the current stuff she'd told me, and things from back when we'd lived together. It seemed odd that he thought I was a useful source, but Eve had always been sort of a loner, a one-friend-at-a-time kind of person, so maybe there weren't many people around he could ask about her. Waldemar Becker didn't look like the talkative type, and anyway, he was a newcomer.

"Cliff wants to talk to me about doing some work for him and Eve thinks it's the perfect opportunity for me to do a little spying for her." I guess I'd expected him to tell me I wasn't even to consider such a thing, because his answer disappointed me.

"Oh, really?" he said. "She wants you to be her spy? Do you think he did it?"