Grounds for Murder (19 page)

Frank gave a little whimper, then a bark, a low growl and another whimper. His legs bicycled.

‘Puppy dreams, huh?’ I gave him a little rub behind the ears. ‘Must be nice to dream about running through fields and chasing rabbits.’

Lately my dreams had been more of the ‘being chased by giant breasted baristas’ variety. That and the ‘drowning in a sea of debt’ dream. But then who doesn’t have that one?

‘Sleep, I fear, won’t come easily tonight,’ I told Frank, patting what felt like his head. With a sigh, I got up, checked my cellphone for messages, and slipped a movie in the DVD player.

In my dream, I’m in Uncommon Grounds. There’s a ‘Barista Wanted’ sign in the window and a customer sitting at the counter, sipping coffee. I’m on the other side of the counter, wiping it down with a rag.

Neither one of us seems to notice the body on the floor. It’s Marvin LaRoche, eyes fixed and staring at a mobile – the kind that hangs over a baby’s crib – on the ceiling above. Suspended from the center of the mobile is a miniature ‘Slut in a cup’, surrounded by five runner-up trophies.

The chimes on the door jangle, and a woman comes in. I look up. The woman has rainbow-colored hair. Amy.

‘I see you want a man,’ she says.

I shake my head ‘no’ and start to point to the ‘Barista Wanted’ sign in the window.

Except now it says ‘Man Wanted’.

The chimes again, and in comes Janalee. She’s wearing a black suit. In mourning. She has baby spit on one shoulder and is carrying Davy. In Davy’s mouth is a pacifier. It’s in the shape of a toy soldier.

‘Looking for a job?’ I ask Amy, as I toss Janalee the rag to wipe the spit off her shoulder.

‘No, a man.’ She shrugs. ‘I never like any I’ve ever had. Maybe the next one is the one I’ve always been looking for.’

Another bell, this time at the back door. Before I can get there, it rings again.

‘It’s The Milkman,’ the customer at the counter says, without turning around. ‘He always rings twice.’

Davy starts to cry. His pacifier drops out of his mouth, hits the floor and starts to roll.

Jerome is there now, and his camera follows the pacifier across the floor, past LaRoche’s vacant, pale eyes. It comes to a stop in front of a pair of European loafers.

The camera pans up. Lean thighs. Narrow waist. Sculpted biceps. Dark Italian eyes. Antonio.

Janalee sighs and sets Davy down. Still wailing, he crawls across the floor toward his pacifier. Antonio leans down and gives it to him. Davy smiles at him and begins to play soldiers on his father’s bloodied head.

‘Davy wants to play with his daddy,’ Amy says plaintively. She’s crying, too, and holding a cellphone.

‘He’s playing on his daddy,’ I point out.

Davy begins to giggle, and giggle, and giggle . . .

I was bolt upright in bed.

My radio alarm was on, and the remnants of Davy’s maniacal giggling had morphed into the happy talk of the local morning team. I wasn’t sure which was worse. In response to my movement, Frank jumped up on the bed. For once, I didn’t try to push him off.

Instead, I settled back on to the pillow and scratched his head, which he had accommodatingly plopped on to my stomach. It was obvious the dream had been sparked by my viewing of The Postman Always Rings Twice last night. Instead of the black and white of the original 1946 noir classic, though, the dream had been in vivid color. So vivid that it had almost hurt to watch it. The details, the colors – all overwhelming.

I had been able to see individual tears run down Davy’s face, practically count Antonio’s eyelashes. The three earrings in Amy’s left ear were all pink gold. One of them had a tiny turquoise stone. Janalee had been wearing blue eyeshadow and her mascara was smudged. La Roche’s already pale blue eyes were starting to cloud over, like a bad case of post-mortem cataracts.

Wait a second. I rewound the scene in my mind. Janalee’s tears. LaRoche’s staring eyes. Janalee had – both in the dream and in real life – blue eyes. LaRoche, the same. But Davy . . .

I thought about the times I’d seen the baby. Davy’s eyes were brown, I was certain of that. Could two blue-eyed parents have a brown-eyed baby?

‘No!’ I said, with all the conviction a single biology class could give you. But I also knew that Davy wasn’t adopted, because I’d seen Janalee pregnant. Could his birth have been the result of in vitro fertilization? A possibility, of course.

But Davy’s dark eyes were very much like the eyes of someone else I knew, and while the surrealistic quality of the dream might have magnified the resemblance, it certainly hadn’t manufactured it.

‘That’s why I keep feeling like Davy has adult eyes,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve seen them in an adult.’

When Frank didn’t respond, I gently knock-knocked on the top of his head. He raised it.

‘Guess what?’ I asked, moving aside a lock of hair so I could see his still closed eyes.

Frank yawned and opened one of them.

‘Davy,’ I said triumphantly, ‘looks like The Milkman.’

Chapter Twenty

‘The more I thought about it, the more sense it made,’ I told Sarah in the exhibit hall later that morning.

She was busy trying to keep the exhibitors from breaking down their booths early. It being Sunday and the last day of the convention, the crowd was light. Those who weren’t in their hotel rooms packing to leave were either at the cupping or the frothing exhibition.

Nonetheless, the exhibit hall was billed as being open until noon, and it wasn’t going to close early under Sarah’s watch, come hell or homicide.

‘Antonio has brown eyes,’ I continued, as I trailed after her. ‘And Davy has brown eyes. Davy is also colicky. A milk allergy perhaps?’ I raised my eyebrows at Sarah.

‘You do remember I never had kids, right? That I inherited the two that live with me?’

Oh, yeah. ‘A milk allergy can contribute to colic and Antonio told me just this week that he can’t drink dairy.’

‘The Milkman doesn’t drink milk?’ Sarah asked.

‘Weird, huh?’ I said. ‘But maybe it makes it easier. You know, like candy-makers who don’t eat chocolate. They don’t have to worry about being tempted to eat the profits.’

‘I doubt that two-percent and skim have exactly the siren call of truffles and peanut butter cups,’ Sarah said dryly. She started after a booth-holder who was surreptitiously sliding a cardboard packing box out from under his table.

When he saw her, he raised his hands in surrender and kicked the box back under the table. Sarah backed off.

‘According to my biology class,’ I continued, uncowed, ‘lactose intolerance is quite common amongst people of middle European and Mediterranean descent.’

‘God knows I don’t want to badmouth your biology teacher from the ninth grade,’ Sarah said, checking her clipboard, ‘but I don’t think either the “blue or brown”, “burp or don’t burp” thing is scientific proof.’

‘Perhaps not,’ I said. ‘I did a little Internet research this morning and I did find some . . . caveats.’

She looked sideways at me. ‘Like what kind of caveats?’

‘They say it’s “rare” for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed child. Rare,’ I repeated disgustedly. ‘Whatever happened to downright impossible?’

Sarah patted me on the shoulder. ‘I think I speak for the rest of the free world when I say I’m sorry we all can’t be as black and white as you are.’

‘Apology accepted,’ I said, sadly shaking my head. ‘But where does this leave us?’

‘Leave us?’ she asked. ‘It leaves me patrolling these yahoos until noon. Then it leaves me making sure they use union workers to transport their stuff, or all hell is going to break loose.’ She took a hit of her puffer. ‘Who knew that coffee vendors were such loose cannons?’

‘Hey, speaking of loose cannons,’ I said, glancing around, ‘have you seen Levitt this morning?’

‘I did,’ Sarah said, ‘and he’s looking a little banged up. Apparently, black and blue is the new green.’

‘Poor Levitt. I should probably check on him to make sure he’s all right.’

Sarah snorted. ‘Don’t give me that. You’re just feeling guilty because you were glad he fell over.’

‘I was not glad.’ Relieved maybe, but not glad.

‘Right.’ Sarah didn’t look convinced, but since she was busy patrolling for vendors trying to make a break for it, she let me off the hook. ‘The last I saw of Levitt, Penny was trying to get him to sign a release so he wouldn’t sue the joint.’

‘What in the world got into him, do you suppose?’ I asked.

‘I’d say nearly a bottle of wine,’ Sarah said dryly.

Given my friend’s mood this morning, I didn’t bother to ask what had gotten into her to offer the obviously inebriated Levitt the stage and an open mic. Asking Sarah to explain herself was like asking the wind why it blew dirt in your eyes. It just did.

‘True,’ I said, instead. ‘I know he drank it down fast, but should a man his size get falling-down drunk on three glasses of wine?’

‘Maybe he’s not as used to it as you are.’

I ignored the besmirching of my character. ‘He did turn the wine down, the first time around,’ I said, more to myself than to her. ‘It was only when Pavlik started questioning him that he began to drink.’

‘While we’re on the subject of Pavlik, did you get any last night?’ Sarah showed her teeth.

‘No,’ I said shortly.

Pavlik’s game with the phantom camera in the corridor wasn’t sitting well with me. What did he think I was going to do? Break down and confess? I didn’t think so. He hadn’t seemed to take me seriously as a suspect. I did think, though, that he took me seriously as an informant.

My best guess was that he wanted to squeeze as much information as he could from me. And he sure knew how to do it. I had volunteered far more than I would have, if I hadn’t thought he had me on tape. Despite my attraction to him, Pavlik still made me a little nervous.

Sarah and I had lapped the floor three times now. She stopped at the door. ‘Touched a nerve, did I?’

‘No, you did not,’ I grumbled. ‘And it’s crass of you to ask anyway.’

‘I just know the benefits of having a professional check under your hood,’ she said. The dirty grin on her face told me that she, at least, had ‘gotten some’ last night.

‘And you have the nerve to call the trophy “Slut in a cup”,’ I said, and Sarah’s grin got even bigger. ‘The engineer, I presume?’

‘Mike,’ she supplied. ‘Who, by the way, apologized for turning on Levitt’s mic at just the right – or wrong – time.’

I shook my head. ‘Who knew that someone who looks like a preacher could have a mouth like that?’

‘He came up with body parts, and things to do with them, that even I have never thought of.’

That was hard to believe. ‘Well, at least we had a mature audience,’ I said.

Sarah shrugged. ‘Too bad about the Taylor wedding down the hall, though.’

‘The wedding?’ I asked. ‘You mean the wedding that was getting our audio feed until your Mike fixed it?’

‘Yeah, the fix didn’t quite take. Mike’s sorry about that, too.’ Sarah didn’t look like she was sorry for much of anything. ‘You might want to stay away from Penny for the rest of Java Ho. She’s not in a very jolly mood.’

‘It wasn’t my fault their sound system got its wires crossed,’ I pointed out.

‘True, but they seem to frown on public obscenity,’ Sarah said. ‘As does the father of the bride. And the flower girl.’

This could be a very long day. ‘None of this is my fault,’ I whined. I went to look at my watch, and then realized I must have left it on my dresser. Instead, I pulled out my cellphone to check the time.

‘Nine fifteen. I’m going to look for Levitt and Amy.’ I was hoping I could find out more about the relationship between the two of them. And the relationship between Antonio and Janalee. And God knew who else in this place.

‘I saw Amy about half an hour ago, with Janalee,’ Sarah said. As I started to turn away, she added, ‘Oh, and that camera kid was looking for you, too.’

Jerome. I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him last night, but I knew he had been shooting tape and probably had some prime footage from last night. Footage more suited to X-roll, than B-roll. I’d have to track him down to see what he and Kate planned to do with it.

I thanked Sarah and headed for the Grand Foyer. As I rounded the corner, I saw Penny. An older man was on her heels, apparently haranguing her. Definite father of the bride material. I ducked behind a pillar.

‘Of all the pillars in all the world,’ Levitt intoned.

I turned. ‘You look awful.’

And he did. Even though Levitt had toppled over backwards, he’d tried to break his fall by twisting sideways. It had probably kept him from bashing the back of his skull into the floor, but he’d hit his nose on Amy’s chair on the way down.

‘Is it broken?’ I asked, feeling terrible.

He felt his bandaged nose gingerly. Both eyes were black. ‘It is, and it serves me right, I fear. I’m so sorry for ruining your banquet, Maggy. If that weren’t bad enough, I also squandered the opportunity you afforded me to spread the word about EarthBean and further our cause.’

He shook his head dejectedly. ‘The only saving grace is that I didn’t get on that podium. I have no idea what I might have said.’

I sighed. There was something about Levitt that made me want to head to the confessional. And I wasn’t even Catholic. ‘I hate to admit it, but when you fell over before you could get up there . . .’ I trailed off.

‘You were relieved,’ Levitt supplied quietly. ‘Don’t be ashamed, Maggy. The fall hurt physically, it’s true, but the nose will heal, and the headache will dissipate. I’m not sure I would ever have recovered from making a fool of myself publicly.’ He grimaced. ‘Even more publicly.’

I touched his hand. ‘Levitt, forgive me, but what happened last night seemed completely out of character for you.’

‘It is – for the me you know.’ He looked like he was going to cry. ‘But it’s not out of character, I’m sorry to say, for the person I used to be. That’s why I’m so terribly ashamed.’

‘You’re an alcoholic,’ I hazarded. ‘That’s why you didn’t order wine in the first place.’

He nodded. ‘I cannot handle alcohol. I never could, but back then I kept trying.’ He gave me a little self-conscious smile. ‘When the sheriff starting questioning me, I just caved in. There was nothing even Amy could do about it.’