Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights (29 page)

“Really?” I tapped my finger against my lips. “She could have been covering,” I ventured. “You know, making a point of saying that she didn’t know people here so no one would suspect she was having an affair with a local.”

“I could see it if the conversation was with her husband or his family, but why make a point of lying to your masseuse?” Charlie reasoned.

“You’re right, that doesn’t make sense.” I sighed. Why was it that the more information I got, the more confused I became? “Okay, here’s another question for you. Is there any chance that Bob was checking into the hotel under a pseudonym?”

“Unlikely. We need a credit card to make a reservation. Celebs sometimes ask us to refer to them by a fake name, but our records in the computer have their real info.”

I sighed again and then looked down at Jack. “Charlie, I’ve got to go.”

“Okay, I’ll call you if I get more dirt.”

“Yeah, okay, gotta go.” I hung up the phone and bent down to Jack’s level. “You ate all the lipstick, didn’t you.”

Jack looked up at me with big innocent eyes and flashed me a giant smile, his baby teeth now covered with Crystal Rose.

I picked up the canister of lipstick and looked to see if there were any instructions concerning accidental ingestion.

“I’m so not cut out to be your guardian.”

CHAPTER 14

“Of course I don’t own you!” Samantha spat. “I don’t own the road either, but that doesn’t mean I want to share it.”

—
Words To Die By

A
natoly showed up at my house an hour later. By that time Jack was screaming again. I hadn’t bothered calling Poison Control since, judging from the raw waste that he had pushed into his diaper, it seemed reasonable to assume that there was nothing left in his stomach to pump. I had gone through Leah’s things, and if something didn’t have a warning label on it, I offered it up. Nonetheless, apart from a brief interlude he had with a super-absorbent tampon, Jack was not to be appeased.

Rather than help me, Anatoly seemed content to stand in the corner of the room and passively observe the execution of my nephew’s diabolical plot to drive me to the brink of insanity.

“So, tell me what Charlie said again?” he asked, leaning his weight against the wall.

“Anatoly, look at me. It’s everything I can do to get a sentence out without this child yanking out another lock of my hair, and you actually have the nerve to ask me to repeat myself?”

“I just want to make sure I have everything straight.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Unless, of course, you want to be taking care of this child on a full-time basis.”

I shot him a lethal glare, then turned my attention to the phone that had begun to ring again. It occurred to me that Jack’s screams might have spurred one of my neighbors to call Child Protective Services. I snatched up the receiver. “Is this CPS?”

“What?” Leah screeched. “Why would CPS be calling? What have you done to my child?”

“Nothing bad, which speaks to my unbelievable level of self-restraint.” I mouthed the name
Leah
for Anatoly’s benefit.

Anatoly pushed himself off the wall. “Ask her if she has any of Bob’s old credit card statements.”

“Leah, do you have any of Bob’s credit card statements?”

“No, Bob always shredded the bills after he paid them. Why is Jack screaming?”

“I don’t know, maybe because he’s Jack.” I shook my head at Anatoly to indicate that Leah didn’t have what he wanted.

“Have you tried feeding him?” Leah asked.

“Of course I have!” I didn’t bother mentioning that her lipstick had been one of the items on the menu.

“Has he been sticking his hand in his mouth? He was doing that a lot last night.”

Anatoly waved his hand in the air to get my attention. “Ask her if Bob’s job ever required him to meet with out-of-town business associates.”

I nodded at Anatoly and spoke into the receiver. “I haven’t noticed Jack putting his hand in his mouth, but he did try to bite my pinky off a few minutes ago. Leah, is there any chance that anyone Bob worked with would have stayed at the Gatsby?”

“If that was the case, don’t you think I would have mentioned it when Charlie was telling us about the Brazilians? My husband didn’t have to entertain clients, he was a comptroller. The only business people he ever interacted with socially were his superiors who actually worked for Chalet. You know, maybe he’s teething.”

“Who, Anatoly?”

“No, Sophie—Jack. The pediatrician said that if Jack was teething I could give him some children’s Advil. I have a bottle in your bathroom but I don’t like to give it to him unless I’m sure.”

“What are the side effects of the Advil?” I asked as I rescued a section of my hair from Jack’s clutches.

“He tends to get rather drowsy and sedentary.”

I covered the mouthpiece and turned to Anatoly. “Go to the bathroom and find the children’s Advil.” I gave him a shove down the hall.

“Don’t give it to him now,” Leah continued. “I’ll be home in a little bit, and if he’s still cranky, then I’ll check his gums.”

“Right.” Anatoly came back from the bathroom with the Advil and I immediately started pouring the purple fluid into the plastic measuring cup. “Whatever you say, Leah. When are you coming home, anyway?”

“Well, Jerome and I are at my house.”

I swallowed hard. “Please, please, please, tell me you’re not getting to know each other better.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m just walking him through the events of…that night.”

“Great idea,” I said absently, as I pried Jack’s mouth open and coaxed him to take the Advil.

“And after that, I’m going to show him some of the places Bob used to take me during our courtship. I’m going to walk him through our entire relationship so he can accurately relay the love Bob and I shared to his readers.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. “I thought you were just going to be gone for the morning.”

“Change of plans.”

“Leah, you can’t do this to me.”

“What? I’m sorry, but I think there’s something wrong with my phone—you’re cutting out.”

“Leah…”

“Nope, can’t hear you anymore. I’ll check in again in an hour or so. Ta!”

“Leah!”

At the sound of the dial tone I tore the phone from my ear and threw it across the room. “I can’t believe this! Leah doesn’t need to worry about going to prison—because I’m going to kill her!”

Anatoly nodded distractedly. “So what did she say about Bob’s clients and colleagues?”

“She has no reason to think that Bob would have been visiting anyone at the Gatsby, colleague or otherwise.” I used both hands to lift Jack so that he was eye to eye with me. His screams had been reduced to a peevish whine.

“Sophie, I have to go,” Anatoly said.

“What?” I put Jack down. “But you can’t leave me alone with this child! That would be…be…”

“The way the cookie crumbles,” Anatoly finished. “I know this is difficult to believe, but I have a life outside this case.”

“Excuse me, but twelve thousand dollars of my money says you don’t!”

“I have errands to do and a few bills to pay. I’ll call you later in the day and we’ll do some more brainstorming.” He leaned down and gave Jack a playful punch on the arm that started him screaming again. “See you later, Jack. Have fun torturing your aunt.”

I stood there with smoke coming out of my ears and watched as he walked out. Jack’s screams went up a notch in volume and I looked down at him sympathetically. “For once, I don’t blame you. I feel like screaming, too.”

I picked the remote off the top of the television set and started flipping through the channels. Leah didn’t like Jack to watch TV, but I was past caring about her parental preferences. Besides, watching television had to be healthier than digesting cosmetics.

Unfortunately, Jack wasn’t a big fan of
Mr. Rogers
or
America’s Funniest Animals,
and after a few other poorly received programming choices I was about ready to give up. And then I found it—the secret to domestic harmony right there on the Disney Channel. Five hyperactive Australians who called themselves The Wiggles were jumping around singing about fruit salad with a giant dog, and Jack was immediately transfixed. I sat down on the edge of a chair and waited for the spell to be broken—but Jack became more engrossed by the second.

Mr. Katz peeked into the room to investigate. “I don’t know why, but he loves this show!” I explained to my clearly skeptical cat. I looked back at the screen and watched the brightly dressed men strike up a conversation with their door. “I wonder if you have to be a kid to really get this.”

Mr. Katz didn’t seem to have an answer, so I let the question drop and grabbed a Corona from the refrigerator. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to sort through the shoe box of Bob’s life. Sitting down on the couch, with Jack in full view, I examined each dry cleaning receipt and parking stub in hopes of finding something useful. Perhaps he had parked somewhere unusual, like Brazil, for instance. But no such luck. I was about ready to give up when I found a torn-up scrap of paper. The words “Jan Le” and the numbers “517-8” were written on it. By the way the paper was torn it looked like “Le” was the first part of a last name. I rummaged through the box again to find the other torn pieces, but they weren’t there. Jan could be anyone—a mistress, a prospective employee, an exorcist, the possibilities were endless. There was no reason to think that this name had anything to do with the case.

I got up and ripped out a blank piece of binder paper from a notebook I had resting by the phone. By the time the credits were rolling on
The Wiggles Show,
I had listed all the facts I had collected on the case so far. Despite my deep-seated desire to see Cheryl get her just desserts, my most likely suspects were still Taylor or Bianca. This Maria person was a possibility, but that piece of the puzzle didn’t fit as nicely as the others. And I couldn’t figure out how the floppy disk fit in at all. Mr. Katz was now sitting at my feet, eyeing Jack warily.

“Bianca doesn’t have the temperament of a killer,” I said aloud. Jack ignored me, but Mr. Katz was all ears. “Maybe I just haven’t been pushing the right buttons. Maybe if I piss her off, the bad Bianca will rear her ugly head.”

Jack grinned at me. “Piss off!” he said proudly, then turned back to the show.

“Shh! You shouldn’t say that,” I chastised while ducking my head down to hide my barely contained laughter.

Jack giggled but kept his eyes trained to the television set. I put my virtually untouched beer down on the table with a solid
thump
and punched Bianca’s number into the phone.

She answered on the fourth ring.

“Hey, Bianca, it’s Sophie. Do you have a minute?”

“More questions?” Her voice sounded weary.

“Just a few. I talked to Taylor Blake yesterday and she admitted to having an affair with Bob.”

“So I’ve been told.”

I sat up a little straighter. “You knew? For how long? Who told you?”

“I’ve known for approximately fifteen minutes and it was Anatoly who told me.”

“Anatoly called?”

“He stopped by—you just missed him. I’ll tell you what I told him. I’ve only met Taylor once and I’ve never even heard of anyone named Maria Pizo—”

“Souza.”

“Whatever. All I know is that Bob would never cheat on me. He wasn’t capable of that kind of betrayal.”

“Are you serious? He cheated on the mother of his son!”

“But he didn’t love Leah. He did love me.”

I scoffed. What she didn’t know about men could fill a concert hall. “Is your sister there to hear you spout this drivel?”

“No, she left with Anatoly.”

I froze. “Say that again.”

“She left with Anatoly.” Bianca’s voice started to shake. “I know she—all of you think I’m being naive, but you didn’t see Bob and me together. We—”

“Why the hell did she leave with Anatoly?” I asked.

“What? Oh, she had some errands to run for work. Make some copies, send some documents by FedEx, that kind of thing, and Anatoly offered to give her a ride.”

How fucking thoughtful of him. “How could someone named Porsha not have a car?”

“The name Porsha is much older than the actual car. You see…”

I pressed the base of my palm against my forehead as Bianca droned on about the history of names and the German automobile industry. It hadn’t been my intention to imply that someone named Porsha had to drive a Porsche. In fact, I would assume that good taste would necessitate the opposite. What I meant was that by naming a child Porsha, parents were essentially putting a sign over their daughter’s head saying, “My blood’s bluer than a Polo University sport jacket and I have more money than God.” And such a person shouldn’t be riding around on the back of a Harley.

“Plus, she doesn’t know how long she’ll be in the city.” Bianca had come back to the matter at hand. “And she prefers taking cabs to dealing with a car rental agency.”

“Okay, I get it. So do you think these will be quick errands?”

“She told Anatoly they would be.”

I sighed in relief.

“But after she’s done, the two of them are going out to lunch.”

“What?” Now I was on my feet. “Where? Where are they having lunch?”

“I think they said The Ramp. Is there a problem?”

“Yes, but I’m going to fix it.” I hung up the phone and called Marcus.

“What’s happening, hot stuff?” Marcus cooed into the receiver, apparently having gotten my name off his caller ID.

“I need to take you to lunch at The Ramp.”

“You
need
to take me?”

“Anatoly’s having lunch there with another woman.”

“Are you having one of your jealous fits? Do you want me to set her up with an appointment at Vladimir’s Salon? She’s guaranteed to come out with hair worse than The Donald’s.”

“I don’t have time for that. I need to spy on them.”

“Ooh, I love spying! But wait, I still don’t understand why you need me.”

“Because I have Jack. I need you to keep him quiet so that he doesn’t blow my cover.”