Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too (7 page)

A few months ago, I'd been asked to make some suggestions to the art museum board to attract a new demographic of charitable donors they wanted to call the Young Collectors. The museum constantly fought the image of being a fuddy-duddy organization that catered to octogenarians who stared at old masters while sucking on their oxygen tanks. To attract new money and new energy, I had suggested an “underground” party, to be held after midnight in the museum basement, and by invitation that would go out only at the last minute via cell phone text message and by BlackBerry—the latest in high-tech gadgetry among the young, moneyed crowd. The party committee had leaped upon my ideas. But the party was only days away, and many details were still up in the air. I'd been asked to light a fire under Delilah, and I thought I could do so in the guise of asking her questions for a pre-party mention in my newspaper column. Delilah saw through my ruse.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I'll get all the bases covered, honey, I promise. We'll talk tomorrow if you like, when you can concentrate better. Why don't you go home? Richard was just here. He could take you—”

I had been massaging my temples, but stopped. “Richard's here?”

“As big as life. Maybe he's chasing a big story.”

“At Cupcakes?”

I was getting accustomed to Richard D'eath's commitment to his calling as a crime-stopping reporter for the city's prestigious newspaper. Unlike my somewhat precarious employment at a Philadelphia rag, his job required long, irregular hours of tracking down stories that always landed on the front page. But Cupcakes wasn't his usual territory.

Delilah slipped back onto the stool beside mine. “How are things going, by the way? With you and Richard?”

“They're going. We've been seeing a lot of each other.”

But Delilah shook her head. “Lose the evasive maneuvers, honey. It's me you're talking to. That man is fine.”

I laughed unsteadily. “Yes, he's good-looking.”

“And you're cool as ice cream.”

“Not so cool,” I said. “Things have heated up a little.”

“A little? Or a lot? Have you—hold on, have you fallen off your pedestal, girlfriend?”

I put my elbows on the table and rubbed my face. “I've done some stupid things in the last few months, Delilah.”

She grinned. “You doin' the deed with Richard?”

I took a deep breath. “Just once.”

Delilah let out a raucous laugh. “Honey, once the barn door is open, that horse is gone! Congratulations. Richard's perfect for you! Smart, sophisticated, cultured. Just right.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

“So,” she said, “things must be officially over between you and your prince of darkness?”

“With Michael? Yes. Definitely yes. Completely over.”

“Good,” she declared. “Because he's here tonight.”

I nearly fell off my stool.

“With some wiseguy friends on the other side of the bar. See? They've ordered half the menu, and they're smoking cigars, drinking the most expensive booze in the place and pretty much acting like Bobby De Niro is going to show up any minute to do research for his next movie.”

“Oh,” I said in a squeak.

“He's got some tacky girl hanging on his arm, and not one of the kiddie Cupcakes, either, but a grown woman with some dangerous curves. I'm afraid she's going to give him a lap dance before the night is over.”

I followed Delilah's pointed gaze across the crowded restaurant, over the tops of many heads and through the hazy air to a large table set on the mezzanine that was prime seating to watch the Cupcakes show. Four men and their dates sat before a forest of bottles and plates of food. The women were animated, brightly dressed and vividly made-up, with plenty of long hair that curled around naked shoulders. By contrast, the men were still except for the wreaths of smoke that wafted upward from their cigars. Two of the men were wearing open-necked shirts with gold jewelry nestled in their chest hair.

I found myself staring across the restaurant and directly into the steady gaze of Michael Abruzzo.

He didn't move and neither did I. The woman beside him had somehow entangled her entire upper body around his arm, and she was giggling into his ear. He didn't seem to notice her or the hubbub of Cupcakes around us. As for me, the rest of the room evaporated in a heartbeat and took all the oxygen with it.

“Completely over?” Delilah said from far away. “I don't think so.”

I wobbled off my stool just as Emma arrived with our drinks.

“Hey,” she said. “Mick's here.”

“I heard.”

“One of the Cupcakes told me he gave her a three-hundred-dollar tip.”

“Well, well,” said Delilah. “I guess crime does pay.”

Emma put the drinks on the table, and I murmured that I'd be back shortly. Delilah started to apologize, but I waved it off.

“You okay?” Emma caught my elbow.

“I need a minute.” I slipped her grasp and headed for the ladies' room.

It was down two steps and along a hallway decorated with autographed head shots of some Cupcake Girls along with the usual jumble of fake antiques, a dusty Western saddle and a lariat pressed into service as decor. My footsteps were quick but unsteady on the tile floor, and I finally found myself at the termination of the hallway, where it widened for two lavatories and an old-fashioned European phone booth with wooden doors and frosted glass.

In four more steps I was thankfully alone in the ladies' room. There, I leaned against the stainless steel sink and tried to quell the new wave of queasiness that had nothing to do with morning sickness or finding dead bodies.

I had been an idiot, yes. For over two months I'd let Richard D'eath into my life in the foolish hope that he could make things better for me. He was supposed to be a plateful of healthy vegetables after months of rich and decadent chocolate mousse. But the vegetables brought only more complications, and now I felt sick.

It had felt like the right choice once. A good man instead of a bad boy.

But now it all felt wrong.

Someone flushed, startling me. In another moment, a teenage girl came out of the stall. The photographer who had been filming Clover.

“Hi,” she mumbled, avoiding my gaze.

“Hello.” I stepped back so she could have the sink. “Wild party, isn't it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She pumped soap into her hands and—just like my six-year-old niece—closed her eyes and began to scrub, humming “Happy Birthday” to be sure she washed for the correct amount of time.

She was of medium height with a square body concealed by a khaki vest over jeans and a frayed thermal T-shirt. Her face was very young, with freckles instead of makeup. Her lower lip had a sexy plumpness, but it was chapped. Her hands were stubby, her nails unpolished. Pinned on her camera bag was a Hello Kitty button and a press badge on which someone had scrawled
Jane
in large, loopy, childish letters.

When she finished washing her hands, she snatched a towel from the dispenser, still trying to ignore me.

I must have looked pretty scary to a kid, I realized—a grown woman on the verge of tears. I made an effort to control myself, but she jammed her used towel into the trash and bolted out of the bathroom, clearly glad to get away from me.

“Nice,” I said aloud. “Now you're scaring children.”

Alone again, I blotted my eye makeup and powdered my nose. I steeled myself to act normal. I had been doing it for weeks, and I could certainly do it for another few minutes. Long enough to get away from Cupcakes without speaking to Michael.

I took a deep breath and went out into the hallway.

Where Michael waited.

Tall and watchful, he leaned one shoulder against the opposite wall by the phone booth. He'd cut his hair to something respectable, and he wore a suit, but with the tie undone and his shirt collar loosened—maybe by a woman.

He looked at my stomach. “Is that mine?”

My brain blew a fuse. Then I reached to touch the makeshift belt I had fashioned for the vintage Carolina Herrera suit I'd put on that morning. I'd used a man's silk necktie to belt the jacket, which didn't quite fit me anymore. “Is the tie yours?”

He nodded. “It looks good. You look good.”

“You look . . .”

“Scary?” he suggested. “Because you're trembling.”

I shouldered my handbag. Above us, music wailed, and we could hear a thunder of cowgirl boots stomping on the bar. I wasn't ready for this. I hadn't decided what to say or even how I felt. So, idiotically, I said, “This isn't your kind of nightspot.”

“Or yours.”

“Are you having a good time?”

He shrugged. “It's just a place to do business.”

“Who are your friends?”

“Not friends. Associates.”

Or coconspirators, I thought.

Michael studied me a little longer, and I feared he was seeing everything I'd tried to repair with makeup. His own beaten-up face—damaged during his misspent youth—concealed many secrets, too.

He said, “Somebody's dead, right?”

“Y-yes.” It shook me to know I was so transparent to him. “Emma and I were—it's a long story. The man who owns half this place—he was murdered earlier today.”

“Murdered? Who did it?”

“I don't know. I'm a little afraid for my friend, though. Delilah might have been the last person to see him alive.”

“Delilah? The black woman?”

I shot him a look. “Her race has nothing to do with anything.”

An unamused smile crossed Michael's mouth. “You think the cops are going to be that politically correct?”

“Don't be—look, she's just the last person to talk with the dead man, that's all.”

“So you're worried about her.”

“I'm not worried—” I stopped, unwilling to concede his point. I forced myself to say calmly, “Delilah's not in any trouble. She's going to have to spend a lot of time answering questions, though, and she's a very busy person. It will be inconvenient for her.”

“Whatever you say,” he said. “Have you talked with the cops?”

“Emma and I were questioned for a couple of hours.”

“That's enough to upset anyone.”

“You would know,” I said tartly. “Have you been arrested yet this week?”

He shrugged again. “There are a few more days left.”

“When you wear a suit, it's usually because you're talking to lawyers.”

“Not tonight.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, a gesture I knew he used to disarm people.

Not handsome, Michael nevertheless had a certain manner that Libby once said “makes the drums in a woman's jungle pound pretty hard.” When I first met him, I felt struck by libidinal lightning. We got emotionally naked together very quickly, too. The result had been the most satisfying and troubling relationship of my whole life.

He said, “Besides hanging out with the cops, what have you been up to lately?”

“Things have been quiet.”

“Still dating Clark Kent?”

“He's not—” I considered counting to ten, but said, “Richard and I have spent some time together, yes.”

“I saw him here earlier. He wanted to interview me, in fact.”

“To learn your opinion on global warming?”

Michael smiled at last, a smile that reached the very bluest depths of his eyes and changed everything. “I've missed you, Nora.”

We heard someone laugh at the far end of the hallway, then start toward us with ponderous footfalls. A stranger coming to break us up before we'd said anything that mattered. Without thinking—because heaven knows I didn't expend a single synapse to consider my action—I stepped across the six feet of hallway that separated us and put both hands on Michael's chest.

He said my name again as I pushed him backward into the antique phone booth. He bumped his head, and I closed the door, locking us both inside a space barely big enough for one. Tilting my face up to his in the dark, I said, “I've missed you, too.”

Okay, maybe it was the exploding hormones. Day and night, I'd been fighting some crazy impulses, and now here was the man who knew exactly how to light my fire, only it was already blazing and what I really needed was an entire engine company to cool me off before a whole city block went up in flames.

But I kissed him anyway. He kissed me, too, hands in my hair, something like a growl in his throat. I pushed my tongue in his mouth and my hands into places they shouldn't go. Every nerve came alive like tinder to a spark. It was the joy of being with someone who didn't need to talk, just knew me and what I needed.

In another instant he had me off my feet with my back jammed against the door. He nudged my knees apart and touched me so surely that I couldn't think, couldn't breathe. I couldn't stop the painfully delicious combustion of heat and desire inside myself. A torrent of pent-up energy and emotion swelled, and when it burst, it was with stars and noise and the sheer joy at being alive.

I gasped and held on to his shoulders, trying to catch my breath again, but it came out in a stupid sob.

“I know,” he whispered against my hair, holding me close, but more gently. He smelled of rich food and smuggled cigars and his own familiar, heady scent. His mouth had tasted of expensive scotch. I could feel his heartbeat, but my pulse was twice as fast.

“It's happening again.”

He slid one hand up my back, soothing away the tension that had seized me since we'd come upon Zell Orcutt's body that afternoon. He said, “I don't know why you attract so many dead men, but you do.”