Death in a Funhouse Mirror (45 page)

She shook her head. "You were such a loyal friend you wouldn't help us out. You were supposed to help me point the finger at Cliff, who would, of course, turn out to be perfectly innocent, leaving the police with a mysterious list of suspects and nothing they could prove. But you wouldn't play, even though I'd cast you perfectly. Who better than you to manage Florio and Meagher. Meagher because he'll follow any hot crotch that crossed his path, but you had to go and pick a fight with him, and Florio because he's a male menopause type who needs to prove he's still attractive and he's married to a cripple. But no. You're out there—the female equivalent of Honest Abe—trying to be so fair that every time you accuse Cliff, you accuse me as well. You wouldn't even die when you were supposed to. Oh well," she fumbled in her purse, "better late than never."

"You killed your mother?" I still couldn't quite grasp it, even now, even knowing that she'd tried to kill me. "Why?"

She stared at me in disbelief. "You can't mean you didn't figure it out? Come on, you're the detective. You tell me."

I struggled to organize my thoughts. I don't think very clearly when I'm panicked. What had I seen in her apartment that made her think I'd figured it out? "I never was a detective, Eve. You know it. I was just trying to make things right."

She nodded. "Thea the Fixer. Can you believe it? My parents wanted me to be like you."

I thought I had it. "The poem, right?" I said. "You killed her because you knew she'd slept with Padraig. And the catalogues where you bought the knife."

Her smile made my skin crawl. "You're getting warmer."

I thought about what Martha Coffey had told me. Of Eve sitting in her car. So she had been watching her mother. Following her. "Because she was sleeping with Waldemar?"

"Bingo. Score one for Thea." Her face crumpled up like a little girl about to cry. "Every time I got a boyfriend, she had to sleep with him. Not because she cared about any of them. Just to prove she could do it. To prove she was still more attractive."

I'd figured that out, too, I just hadn't realized it. That was what I'd been trying to tell Andre. Warn the Viking. Erik the Viking. Eve's Viking. Because he was bound to be next. "That was you I heard talking with Cliff last night, wasn't it."

She plucked a piece of lint off her sleeve and watched it float away. "Was it? I was afraid you might have heard that. Another one of the things that made this business necessary. You're slow, but you're smart."

"Did Cliff know?"

"About Helene? Before last night? No, but he had his suspicions, once he got over his fear that his beloved Rowan might have done it. He must have known I was going to kill you, though, when I told him about Helene and Padraig. He gave me the pills. Gave back, that is. The ones he took from my apartment. They were too strong for me, he said."

"Padraig?"

"Well, I couldn't let him treat me that way and get away with it. You have no idea how much I loved him. How much it hurt me when he slept with her. Such a tragic thing, that accident. He really did have talent."

"What good do you think killing me will do? The police already suspect you...."

"Suspicions are all they've got. Without you, they've got nothing," she said angrily. "No witnesses, no fingerprints, nothing! That's why I had Roddy bring you the coffee."

While she talked I was studying the room for something to use as a weapon. There was the IV pole, but I was too weak to swing it effectively. And the water pitcher, which presented the same problem. "Was it you who broke into my apartment and set the fire?"

She seemed genuinely surprised. "No. That wasn't me. Sorry to disappoint you. Guess you must have more than one enemy. I'm not surprised, the way you piss people off."

Maybe I could throw a Gideon's Bible at her and effect a miraculous transformation. She was digging around in her bag again, looking for whatever it was she needed to kill me. Even if I had to crawl, I wasn't going to wait around and make it easy for her. While her head was bent, I pulled the IV needle out of my arm and jerked on the tube so the whole apparatus fell on her. As it fell, I rolled out the other side of the bed and staggered to the door, fumbling with the lock, heard it click, and grabbed the doorknob.

"Stop or I'll shoot."

"Go ahead and shoot." I grabbed the handle and opened the door. A bullet smashed into the door frame beside my head, showering me with splinters. I crouched down and threw myself into the corridor.

I ran straight into Andre. "Get down," I said, "she's got a gun."

Dom and Steve, just behind him, went for their guns.

Andre swung me into his arms and carried me down the corridor. "Someday, Kozak, I am going to figure something out before you do."

"Just a knack for being in the right place at the right time, Trooper. Where the hell were you, anyway?"

He plopped me down in an empty wheelchair beside the nurses' station. "I'll be right back...."

I grabbed his hand and held on with all my remaining strength. "No way, Andre. Let the other kids play cowboys and Indians. You said you wouldn't leave. That you'd keep me safe. Don't leave."

My fingers were slipping off. I couldn't hold him if he wanted to go. There was blood seeping through the bandages on my wrists, and I could feel blood on my face. If he left me now, I'd never speak to him again. I stood up, using the counter of the nurses' station to support me, and got ready for my big scene. He was staring longingly down the corridor, where the action was.

"It's a simple matter of making choices, Andre. If you have to be a cop, and you can't resist going down there and joining the other guys, go ahead. And don't bother to come back. I'm a very understanding woman. Truly I am. But right now I need you more than they do."

I concluded by pitching forward onto my face in a graceful Victorian faint and he was thoughtful enough to catch me, a nurse told me later, before I hit the floor and broke my nose. A good thing, since I am especially averse to breaking my nose. Once was enough.

After that I slept for a long time, a bottomless, immeasurable sleep, dreamless and untroubled. Sometimes I would come up, like a fish from the deep, and float just below the surface, never opening my eyes, listening to the sounds around me before plunging back down into the depths again. From my hiding place I heard Dom and Rosie come and go, checking on me, checking on Andre. I always knew when Rosie was there. She had an aura of strength and tranquility. Once she sat beside me for a while and talked to me. She knew I was hiding out and she understood why.

Andre was always there. I could feel him. Sometimes lying beside me, sometimes sitting in a chair or talking on the phone. Once he sat and read to me for an hour, a wonderful funny story—I listened to it all—but even then I didn't wake up. My body needed the down time. I could almost feel it healing, making new blood, restoring itself.

I wanted to know what had happened with Eve and I wanted to know who the intruder in my apartment had been, but both things could wait. Had to wait. For once I wasn't impatient. I was rushing nowhere. Just lying in the bed, letting my body sink down into the mattress, hugging my covers, glad to be warm, grateful to be alive. Somehow my friends kept the nurses from bothering me. Sure, they gathered vital signs, but at least they didn't wake me up to discuss my condition.

I understood, as I never could have before, the meaning of "scared to death." I had been. Once I woke up and started functioning again, I'd jump right back into the rat race—I knew myself well enough to be sure of that—this was the only chance I'd get to recover, reflect and heal.

They finally coerced me into waking up by preying on my weakness—hunger. The whole gang of them stood around and pressed delicious things under my nose. It was the bacon and coffee that finally teased me out. I opened my eyes and caught them all standing there, grinning like they were posing for a dumb family picture. "I'd like mine with cream, two sugars," I said, my voice odd and creaky, like a long-abandoned tool.

"I told you it would work," Dom said. "Welcome to the world of the living. We've missed you."

"You catch all the bad guys?"

"We've been waiting for you. You're the one with all the answers, you know. Actually," he said, "you told us a lot while you were sleeping. I think we know just about everything now. We just need to confirm it with a real live, conscious human being."

I raised my arms and held them out in front of me, assuming a zombielike trance. "Thea Kozak knows nothing. It is the Spirit. The Spirit speaks through me." My arms were too wobbly. I dropped them.

"Look, Spirit," Dom said, "let's get down to brass tacks here. We're all a bit impatient out here in the real world."

"The spirit world is the real world, unbeliever. Only the spirits know for sure."

"I thought that was her hairdresser." Meagher said.

"Spirits don't have hairdressers. Are you ready for the answer?"

"Hold on, I'm lost," Rosie said, "what is the question?"

Andre answered. "The question is what are the names and occupations of the two bad guys who attacked Thea Kozak during the month of May?"

"It sounds stupid when you put it that way," I said. "You do have them locked up, I hope."

"You mean there was more than one?" Rosie asked.

"Two. Eve and Valeria," I answered. "Do you?"

"Do I what?" Dom said.

"You mean the bad guys were both women?" Rosie said.

"That's right," Dom told her. "And yes, we have them."

"But you guys said Valeria couldn't have done it," I reminded him. "Though I never quite believed that. She was such an accomplished liar I wouldn't have believed anyone who said she was at home. What made you change your minds?"

"Her roommate had an attack of conscience when she heard the full story of what had happened," Dom explained. "Does this mean you finally remembered what it was you noticed that night? Harris will be tickled pink."

"I have had some time to think," I said, amused by the image of Officer Harris turned bright pink.

"Think?" Andre looked at me dubiously. "I thought you were sleeping. I've never seen anyone sleep like that."

"Sleeping is one of the things I do best."

"And sleep-related things..." He arched his eyebrows in that sexy, sardonic way I find so irresistible.

"Cut it out, you two. We're trying to get the facts here," Dom said, "and I don't mean the facts of life."

"Excuse me," Rosie said, "but what was it you remembered?"

"Perfume. She used to wear too much of it. Some awful thing she blended herself. She was very proud of it. Musk and gardenia. It smelled like a cheap bathroom cleaner. She called it 'Success.' It always made me sneeze. The person who hit me, who set the fire, wore that same scent."

"So that's what you meant by the sweet smell of success," Dom said. "Hell of a lot easier than trying to track down a perp identified only by the fact that he wore Old Spice."

"There's a business for you, Thea," Andre suggested. "Signature scents for the classy criminal."

"I already have a business, thank you very much." Which reminded me of the ambiguities surrounding my current contract. "What about Cliff? How much was he involved in all of this?"

Dom answered that, sounding bitter. "He says not at all. She says the same, and we've got nothing to tie him in. Only I don't believe him."

From what Eve had told me, I could fill in the missing lines from the conversation I'd overheard. Now it went something like this:

Eve: I got Thea involved to confuse things by casting suspicion on you.

Cliff: I don't understand why you did that.

Eve: She was supposed to get everyone thinking that it was you, but there isn't a thing anyone can use to connect you, and with things so stirred up, and Thea helping me, the poor, distraught daughter, no one would suspect me.

Cliff: So it was you. I don't know what you could have been thinking, involving Thea. She's not the kind to just adopt the party line. She's going to hear too much, and think about things. You know she searched your apartment.

Eve: So I'll just kill her, too. No big deal.

Cliff: You can't make a habit of it, Eve. Killing people just because you don't like the way they're behaving.

Eve: I do what's necessary. To protect myself. To protect you.

"Earth to Thea, come in please. What were you thinking?" Dom asked.

"He knew. That she planned to kill me at least, if not the details. Eve told him. Maybe not about the others until she told him, though I'm sure he suspected. That's why he was there to search the apartment just like I was. I guess I'm hopelessly naive. I was trying to protect him... for him... for both of them... so they could come out of this with a chance for a healed relationship. I thought she was off-the-wall, wrongheaded, but I never suspected... how could I be so loyal to him while he could listen calmly to her announcement that she was going to kill me and then let her go and do it? Without a word. Without any effort to warn me, or save me. Like I was as disposable as a used tissue. It makes me feel like such a fool. I had so much loyalty to them and they had none to me."

"Maybe he didn't know what she'd done," Dom suggested.

"But he saw me. He had to know I was drugged."

"He was used to seeing drugged people. Maybe it didn't register," Meagher said.

"Don't make excuses for him," I began, feeling a sort of resigned despair as another hero crumbled, "he may not have played an active part, but he at least failed to help me when he could have. It might not be a legal crime but it's a moral crime..."

Rosie shook her head. "But Eve was all he had left."

"Don't you dare take his side," I said.

"Believe me, I'm not. I'm horrified at what they did to you. I'm just trying to understand."

"I still feel like a fool," I said again, "a trusting fool." I collapsed back against the pillows. "What about Eve's boyfriend?"

"He's okay," Andre said. "Guess she hadn't gotten around to him yet."

"But she killed Padraig. She told me so. When I was trying to figure out Helene, everyone I talked to gave me such a different picture that it was like looking in a funhouse mirror. It must have been even stranger for Eve, seeing everything distorted through the prism of her own anger and self-involvement. To her, we were all the bad guys and she was just trying to make things right."