Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights (15 page)

A
t eight-thirty Leah woke me up to show me what was on
Mornings on Two
. Someone in the police department had leaked the news about Bob’s infidelity. I listened as the commentators rattled on about how Leah was now on top of the suspect list, but my eyes never went to the screen. Leah’s face stayed blank until the news report was over and then she looked at me and her lips lifted into a brave smile.

“Well, I guess the whole world now knows that my marriage was a joke.”

“Leah, I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing like a little public humiliation to start off the day.” She looked over at Jack, who was trying to get Mr. Katz to emerge from his hiding place under the coffee table. “Come on, sweetie,” she said, pulling him into her arms. “We need to get dressed so we can face the music.”

I waited for her to retreat into the guest room before going down to the lobby to collect the newspaper. There it was on the front page, a picture of Leah, her fist thrown in the air. The headline read: “Leah Katz: Victim of Racism or Perpetrator of Murder?” I rolled the paper up and stuck it under my arm. It was an awkwardly worded headline but the message was clear. My sister was in trouble.

I went upstairs and, after hiding the paper, called Anatoly and asked if he could come meet me in a few hours. He agreed without hesitation. He was way too nice over the phone, so I knew he had read or seen what I had. Now that Leah had Jack in the other room, Mr. Katz dared to come out for his breakfast. I kneeled down and scratched him behind the ears as he inhaled his food.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “Soon Jack and Leah will return to their house and everything will be back to normal.” I needed that to be true. Not just because I didn’t want to take care of Jack, but because Jack needed Leah and so did Mama. I needed her, too.

I got dressed and spent the next few hours at my computer working on my manuscript. I heard the buzzer for the door go off a half hour before I had been expecting Anatoly, but his early arrival didn’t bother me. Nothing on my screen was worthy of publication and I doubted I would be able to improve upon it until I spoke to him about our next move. I clicked off my monitor and met Leah in the foyer.

“It’s Marcus and Dena,” Leah said. “I already buzzed them in.”

I took a moment to absorb the unexpected information. “Marcus
and
Dena?” Marcus was my hairstylist, friend and shopping partner. He and Dena had always been friendly but I had never known them to hang out without me. I stepped out into the hallway just as they came to the top of the stairs. “Hey, guys. Did you just happen to show up at the same time or did you come together?”

“Together.” Marcus paused to give me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Dena says your sister’s having a fashion emergency, so I rushed over here as soon as I could.” His mocha skin was the perfect complement to his pearly white smile.

I looked over Marcus’s shoulder and threw Dena a questioning glance.

“She needs help establishing a new look, right?” Dena said. “That’s what she told Mary Ann.”

“Well, yeah,” I answered uncertainly. “She wanted help looking like a fashionable widow—”

“Nothing says ‘I’m in mourning’ like a good haircut,” Marcus interjected.

I shook my head. “You’re thinking of divorce. Everyone gets their hair cut when they get divorced.”

“Divorce, homicide—it all falls under the same umbrella,” he said, and swept past me into my apartment, Dena close behind.

“Hello, darling.” Marcus crossed over to Leah and held up a few locks of her hair. “My God, look at these split ends. No wonder you’re depressed!”

Leah smacked his hand down. “I’m depressed because my husband was killed.”

“No, darling, one does not get depressed over a violent murder. Such incidences call for dramatic displays of anguish. Depression is inspired by hair that hasn’t been properly cared for.”

Leah looked at me for some kind of explanation for Marcus’s brand of lunacy. I shrugged helplessly. There was really no explanation other than Marcus was just kind of nuts, but in a good way. Whenever I was feeling sorry for myself I could count on Marcus to trivialize my problems and distract me with eccentric behavior. Why he was focusing his energy on Leah was beyond me, although I suspect it was out of devotion to me. That’s the thing about Marcus—those who don’t know him think he’s flippant and shallow but the truth was that he was the most loyal friend a girl could have and could at times be amazingly self-sacrificing.

I sneaked a peak at Dena who was perched on the edge of my dining table. She was definitely loyal but she had to be seriously moved by a cause before she was willing to sacrifice anything, which made her new interest in helping Leah all the more puzzling.

Leah turned back to Marcus. “I’ll have you know I get my hair done at the most expensive salon in San Francisco. It’s located right on Maiden Lane…”

“Well, that explains it.” Marcus was now circling her, examining her tresses from all angles. “If you’re Paris Hilton you get your hair done on Maiden Lane. If you’ve got Macy Gray curls going on, you take your nappy head to a brotha from da ’hood.”

“First of all,” Leah said sharply, “my hair is straight.”

“Your hair is relaxed. I’m talking roots, honey.”

“Secondly, what do you mean da ’hood?’ Your salon’s on Fillmore. Just two months ago I bought a twelve-hundred-dollar dining table from the shop next door to you.”

“I said I was
from
da ’hood, not that I was there now. The first nine years of my life my family was constantly relocating from one all-white southern town to another. Anywhere we moved instantly became da ’hood. We would just kick back and watch the real estate values plummet.”

Dena laughed. “Mary Ann’s coming over in a few minutes. She and I are going to watch Jack while Marcus does his thing.”

I tried to make eye contact with Dena but she wouldn’t look up. I was dying to know Dena’s motivations for helping Leah but I’m also a firm believer in the “gift horse” cliché. “So are you going to be doing her hair here?” I asked.

“I had originally considered that, but no,” Marcus said as he continued to toy with Leah’s hair. “She needs more than a living room fix so I’ll take her back to Ooh La La. I prefer to work in the salon anyway. It’s a more appropriate setting. After all, you wouldn’t ask a cardiologist to perform open-heart surgery in a psychiatric ward.”

“Are you comparing my apartment to a psychiatric ward?”

“There are certain similarities,” Marcus said and motioned toward Mr. Katz who had slipped under the coffee table and was watching my guests with a mixture of alarm and suspicion. “I’ve always pegged your cat as a paranoid schizophrenic.”

“Hey, my cat is as well adjusted as I am!” I quickly held up my hand to stop Marcus’s predictable retort. “Don’t comment on that.” I turned my focus on Leah. “Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea,” I said. “You could use a little pampering about now.”

Leah opened her mouth to protest but then closed it and gave a defeated shrug. “Why not? It’s not like anyone could make my life any worse than it already is.”

The buzzer went off again. “Mary Ann?” I asked into the speaker.

“Anatoly.”

“I’ll be right down.”

“No, I’d rather come up and talk to Leah.”

I glanced over at Leah, who was now passively allowing Marcus to maul her hair. “She’s kind of busy right now. Can it wait?”

“No.”

I sighed and buzzed him in. I could pretty much guarantee that Anatoly was not going to help Leah achieve the peace of mind Marcus and Dena seemed determined to give her.

He appeared in the door and nodded briefly to both Dena and Marcus.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I gestured toward Anatoly. “Dena, this is Anatoly. Anatoly, Dena. And of course you’ve met Marcus.” Both Dena and Anatoly mumbled a greeting while looking at the floor. This may have been their first face-to-face meeting, but Anatoly had taken the liberty of spying on Dena when she was with me and Dena had (at my request) broken into his apartment. After all that, an introduction seemed uncomfortably formal.

“Leah,” Anatoly said, “I want to talk to you about Cheryl.”

Leah brightened. “Did she lose her job?”

“Not that I know of. Sophie thinks she could have been involved in Bob’s death.”

Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t I think of that? She’s just the type of person who would murder her own brother.”

Marcus did a quick double take. “That’s a type? Honey, who have you been hanging with?”

“There’s a problem with the theory,” Anatoly said. “Cheryl has no motive.”

“Of course she has a motive.” Leah bent down to prevent Jack from swallowing a dust bunny. “They didn’t get along. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. Bob flat-out hated her.”

Anatoly pulled out his notebook. “Any particular reason for that?”

“Yes, she’s a hateful person,” Leah said.

Anatoly smiled All right, I’ll give you that. But how did
she
feel about
Bob?
”

“She could never spare him the time of day. Cheryl has two goals in life—to meet multitudes of celebrities, and to name-drop as much as possible. I think it’s just a matter of time before she moves to L.A.—unless of course she’s arrested first.” Leah straightened up and looked at me. “Cheryl could be arrested instead of me!” She broke into a huge grin and clapped her hands together like a child. “Oh my God, that would be wonderful!”

“So was Bob somehow standing between her and her…goals?” Anatoly asked.

“Not really. He just didn’t do anything to help her achieve them.” She broke away from Marcus and started pacing the apartment with a new energy. “He didn’t know any celebrities, and he didn’t care to hear about them, so as a result they never spoke.”

“They never got together for coffee or anything…Thanksgiving?” Anatoly asked.

“Not unless you count the coffee I served them after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. But those are obligatory. I swear, if people weren’t expected to be nice to unpleasant relatives on the holidays everyone would enjoy the season a lot more.”

“I’m with you, sweetie,” Marcus said. “I hate the Christmas spirit. And I’m thoroughly opposed to all that love your neighbor stuff, too. My neighbor is like a flatulent Attila the Hun. You’d
have
to be Jesus to love him.”

“Did he ever stop by the Gatsby just to say hi?”

Leah rolled her eyes. “I thought detectives were supposed to be good listeners. Bob never went out of his way to see Cheryl, period. He had better things to do with his time.”

“Yeah,” Dena piped in, “like fuck his mistress.”

Leah glared at Dena, but Dena continued without apology. “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead,” she said, “but let’s face it, the guy was an asshole and you can do better.”

Leah cocked her head. “Why is it that you can never say anything nice without simultaneously being unbelievably disrespectful?”

Dena exhaled loudly. “Here’s a bit of advice—when offered an olive branch it’s best not to knock the tree from which it was plucked.”

“That’s your ‘olive branch’?” Leah put her hands on her hips. “You tell me that I can do better than my unfaithful dead husband and then you have the nerve to chastise me for not embracing your remarks as some kind of peace offering?”

The phone rang and I quickly answered it. “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Jerome Bader from
Flavah Magazine
. I was hoping to talk to Leah.”

“Jerome,” I repeated. “You’re the reporter who asked Leah about—”

“It’s Jerome?” Leah leaped forward and grabbed the phone out of my hand before I had a chance to finish my sentence. “This is Leah.”

Marcus sidled up next to me while Leah directed a series of
uh-huhs
and
okays
into the telephone. “Who’s Jerome?”

“He’s a journalist from
Flavah—
you know, that fanatically left-wing local magazine that’s always slamming da man.”

“Oh yeah, I like that mag. I don’t mind a little fanaticism when it’s cushioned by at least one picture of a shirtless hottie. But why is Leah champing at the bit to talk to him…wait…nooo!” Marcus’s eyes took on the shape of saucers. “Is Leah gettin’ jiggy with it?”

“No one here is going to get jiggy,” I said, ignoring Dena’s laughter. “Leah is in mourning.”

“Okay,” Leah said for what must have been the hundredth time, “I’ll meet you here at eleven on Sunday.” She hung up the phone, and I couldn’t help notice the little smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“He just wanted an interview, right?” I asked hopefully.

“Of course. Yes. That’s what he wanted—an interview.”

“You see?” I said to Marcus. “It was just a business call. Leah is nowhere near ready to start dating again—isn’t that right, Leah?”

“Absolutely not,” Leah confirmed. “I’m not ready at all. Now let’s get down to the matter at hand—my hair.” She looked at Marcus. “If I let you style my hair, you have to promise not to give me one of those cuts that looks great when you walk out of the salon but horrible the next day. I need to look cute for at least…well at least until the end of the weekend.”

“Honey—” Marcus perched himself next to Dena “—when I’m done with you, all the homies will be wanting private interviews.”

“Nothing too outrageous, guys,” I warned. “She has a public image she needs to maintain these days.”

Dena looked at Marcus, who in turn looked at me with big innocent eyes. “Of course, Sophie,” he said. “I would never mess with a woman’s public image.”

“Will you and Mary Ann be watching Jack at the salon or here?”

“As soon as Mary Ann arrives we’ll head to the salon,” Dena said. “I want to see this transformation.”

I took a little comfort in that. Mary Ann had a tendency to err on the side of caution and I knew I could count on her to speak up if Marcus tried to do anything too drastic with my sister’s hair.

Anatoly glanced at his watch. “We should head out.”

I nodded, although I had no idea where we were heading out to. I glanced at Leah. “Please don’t let your kid kill my cat while you wait for Mary Ann to get here.”