Obsession, Deceit and Really Dark Chocolate (30 page)

“Mmm-hmm.” I stuck my fingernail in one of the cigarette holes that graced the sofa’s armrest. “Do you think he smoked or do you think the couch had these holes when he bought it at…I’m guessing a garage sale.”

“He smoked.” Dena bent down and lifted up an empty carton of Marlboros she found on the floor. “But not that much because I don’t smell anything.”

I made a face and turned my attention back to the rest of the mess around me. I personally didn’t have a problem with slobs. Housework is both tedious and labor-intensive and I absolutely respect an individual’s right to turn on a television rather than a vacuum. But if you’re planning on throwing yourself out a fifteenth-story window you should clean up your place first. I mean, was this really the legacy he wanted to leave?

“I don’t know where to start,” I admitted.

“I’ll start with the desk.” Dena gestured over to a brown plastic slab that was supported by two three-drawer metal filing cabinets. On it was a computer, piles of mail and other random pieces of paper. “It looks reasonably safe.”

Damn, why hadn’t I called the desk first? Everything else was bound to be kind of icky. But someone had to go through this stuff, and if nothing else, I knew that if Peter had ever been in possession of the evidence I was looking for he certainly hadn’t thrown it out.

Like Dena, I was a little afraid of the kitchen. I lifted Chica off the couch and went into the bedroom. I was relieved to see that it was slightly neater than the living room. Here, too, there were clothes strewn around, but there were fewer Diet Coke cans. The bed was predictably unmade. I went over to the small walk-in closet and found its floor to be covered with several pairs of loafers, tennis shoes and dress shoes. In the back of the closet were a few empty suitcases that Peter undoubtedly used for his frequent trips. Fascinating stuff.

I shifted my weight back onto my heels and lifted my eyes to the clothing racks. Lots of chinos and cotton shirts, one suit that he had probably owned since he was sixteen and a couple of dry-cleaning bags filled with…costumes. I took a closer look. There was a lion costume, and one that kind of looked like a goat. They had to either have been left over from Halloweens past or his mascot days…but then again these costumes didn’t look bulky enough to work as a mascot get-up. The goat costume was downright sinewy.

I stepped out of the closet and looked at the bed again. There was something sticking out from under the pillow. I shifted Chica to one arm and lifted up the pillow to find a miniature version of Christopher Robin’s favorite bear.

“A grown man who sleeps with a stuffed animal,” I said, looking down at Chica. “I guess that’s…sweet?”

Chica looked at me doubtfully. Even she understood that males over the age of ten should not be sleeping with a teddy.

On a whim I pulled back the sheets. A little noise of surprise escaped me. The bear had company! There was a bouncy tiger, a donkey and even a mother kangaroo and her joey. I reached down and picked up the donkey. Something about his sad eyes reminded me of Chica. The doll was soft and cuddly except for one spot on his side that was kind of stiff and crusty. Peter must have spilled milk on him or something. I looked down at the animals again and realized that the tiger had a little dried milk on him, too. And so did the bear and the kangaroo and—

“Oh, my God!” I screamed, and threw the donkey across the room, totally startling Chica, who found the strength to wriggle out of my arms. “Ew! Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!”

Dena appeared in the doorway. “What is it? What did you find?”

“Oh, my God!” I said again. “What—who—does something like this?”

“Does something like what?”

“Ejaculate all over a bunch of innocent stuffed animals, that’s what! And I touched it!” I looked down at my hands and then ran to the attached bathroom. I turned on the faucet and ran my hands under the hot water. I looked around for soap, only to find that Peter used the liquid variety and kept it in a soap dispenser that resembled a dog. “Ewwww!” I screamed again. I desperately needed to use the soap, but I was terrified that Peter might have defiled that, too. I lunged for the toilet paper and yanked off about a yard, which I folded up into a thick little square and used to press down on the dog’s head in order to get access to the soap.

“Woof, woof, woof!” the plastic dog said as soap streamed from his mouth like clear liquid vomit. I scrubbed my hands raw until I felt certain that I had removed all traces of Peter’s germs. Eventually I came out, waving my hands in the air to dry them because there was no way in hell that I was going to use Peter’s towels.

Dena was looking casually around the room. “I wonder how much he was paying for this place. It’s run-down but it’s spacious.”

“That’s what you’re fixating on?” I asked. “He’s been sexually assaulting all the innocent animals of Hundred Acre Wood and you’re worried about his rent?”

Dena sighed and pointed toward the bear. “I’m not exactly shocked by what happened to this particular honey lover.”

“You’re not? Why? Do you think he was asking for it by running around in that red little half top of his? Isn’t it kind of wrong to blame the victim?”

“Sophie, it’s not that big a deal. Peter was a plushy, that’s all.”

“A whaty?”

“A plushy. He was sexually attracted to stuffed animals.”

I held out my freshly scrubbed hand to stop her. “Okay, you are seriously freaking me out. Are you telling me that there are other people who…who use a teddy bear catalog as their porn?”

“That is exactly what I’m telling you,” Dena said, clearly bemused by my naiveté. “You know those Weenie Babies that I sell in my store? The little beanbag-stuffed animals with the big…”

“I remember them.”

“Well, they’re not just gag gifts. I keep them in stock for the plushies. Not very many of them shop in my store, but enough that I make sure to carry a few things that will appeal to them.”

I shook my head in horrified amazement. “I can’t believe this.”

“People have weird fetishes, Sophie. If you think about it, real shoe fetishes aren’t that much better than this.” She gestured toward the abused animals. “I’m not talking about women who just can’t stop themselves from blowing their paychecks on a pair of Manolo Blahniks, I’m talking about the guys who are turned on by a pair of Nine Wests—not the women in them.”

“Okay, I am seriously grossed out right now.” I pulled on the ends of my hair and looked around the room. “This whole thing is
so
weird.”

“What’s weird is that he was a furry, too,” Dena said.

“Excuse me?”

“Check it out.” Dena stepped over to the doorway and gestured for me to follow her into the living room.

I looked down at the floor where the poor, depressed, violated donkey was lying limply at my feet. “I’m not sure I want to be ‘shown’ anything else in this apartment.”

“Don’t be a wimp,” Dena called out as she walked into the other room. “I swear, sometimes you’re as bad as Mary Ann.”

That was enough to get me out into the living room. I followed her over to the laptop, which was currently on Peter’s Yahoo home page. “Take a look at Peter’s bookmarks,” Dena said. She clicked the favorites icon and down came a long list of sites. Many of them had to do with Anne Brooke and some of them had to do with newspaper articles with titles like “Supreme Court Weighs in on Privacy Case.” But then there were a lot of other site names that were kind of weird. “Click that one,” I said, hesitantly tapping a bookmark titled “Furry Fandom.”

“You got it.” She clicked it and then one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen popped up on the screen. It was a person dressed up as a big fluffy sheep doing it doggy-style with a guy dressed up like the Big Bad Wolf.

I stared at the screen in silence for what had to be a full minute, if not longer. Finally I found my voice. “This is really sick.”

“I still don’t see what you’re freaking out about,” Dena said calmly. “I’m actually grateful that some people have these particular fetishes.”

“Hello?” I snapped my head in her direction. “I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded person and I’m even willing to say that people have the right to have sex with toys or to dress up as farm animals as long as everybody, minus the toy, is consenting and it’s done in the privacy of their own home. But how can you be
grateful
that this kind of—of—
depravity
exists?”

“First of all, depravity is one of those words that are used by the Christian right. Don’t use it again,” Dena said. “Second, the people who are into this
are
on the weird side. Every once in a while one will come into my shop looking for a leash for their pseudo-animal love slave and there’s something about them that just lets you know that they’re a little off.”

“I would think that the very fact that they
had
a pseudo-animal love slave would be enough to qualify them as being off.”

“No, it’s not that,” Dena said dismissively, as if such a possession was as common as having a four-slotted toaster. “It’s just that a lot of these people come into my store and they’ll whisper what it is they want, like they’re afraid someone in the next aisle will hear them. They’re so intense about the whole thing, it’s like they’re hiding a habit from their friends and family while they jones for a fix. It’s not healthy. But they’re only attracted to other people who enjoy dressing up like animals, which keeps them out of
my
dating pool. That’s a good thing. And the plushies are some of the most messed-up, insecure people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m personally grateful that they engage in sexual activities that don’t allow them to procreate.”

“So this is your version of Darwinian theory?” I asked. “It’s not survival of the fittest but survival of the most emotionally well adjusted?”

“Pretty much,” Dena confirmed. “Ever wonder why so many antidepressants lower a person’s sex drive? Maybe it’s God’s way of making sure that we don’t populate the earth with a bunch of mopey children.”

“Huh.” It was the only response I could come up with. I was studying the other titles listed on the favorites bar. There was a site labeled The Horny Unicorn, another called Frisky Puppy Dogs, and yet another titled The Hare Up The Ass. “I can’t believe he didn’t delete all this before he offed himself,” I mused.

“Yeah, that part is a little weird. And then, like I said before, I’m a little surprised that he was both a furry and a plushy. Usually people are one or the other. Furries look
down
on plushies.”

“Are you telling me that man on the computer screen thinks his sheep costume makes him superior to others?”

“Kind of. There are different kinds of furries. There are the ones who like to dress up as cartoon characters, but the serious ones wouldn’t dream of demeaning themselves by wearing a Danny Duck costume. They want their costumes to look like real animals, or at least like real werewolves and shit. It’s like the Trekkies. The New Generation fans do
not
have the respect of the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock fan club.”

“The respect?” I waved my hand toward the screen. “What that wolf is doing to that sheep is
not
respectful.”

“Yeah, but that wolf wouldn’t even give the sheep the time of day if he was a Cuddly Bear.”

“I can’t believe…wait, what did you say?”

“I was explaining that serious furry wolves only want serious furry sheep….”

“No, no, about the Cuddly Bear…Oh, my God, Dena.”

“What is it?”

“I just figured it out. There was a woman by Ocean Beach. A homeless woman, and I just assumed she was crazy, but she wasn’t!”

“Sophie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“A homeless woman by Ocean Beach saw a pink bear with a rainbow on his belly dump Melanie’s body in the brush! Melanie was killed by a pink bear!”

Dena studied me for a moment and then took a deep breath. “Okay, you may be on to something, but you might want to consider rephrasing your conclusion before you go to the police with it.”

But I wasn’t listening to Dena anymore. I was pacing back and forth, zigzagging around the random piles of clothing. “One of those freaky furries killed my friend! Melanie didn’t even approve of lingerie fetishes, and now I find out that she had to suffer the indignity of being killed by a kinky pink bear! I’m going to figure out which one of those freaks did this and then he’s going to pay! And…oh, my God!”

Dena jumped. “What now?”

“The threats I’ve been getting! Why didn’t I put this together before? I’ve been threatened by a furry! That woman stood there and told me that she saw a bear kill Melanie, and just days earlier Darth Vader told me he liked to dress up like a koala bear. How could I not have figured this out! Now I’m going to have to track down a homeless woman whose name I didn’t even bother to ask for!”

“Sophie, what the fuck are you talking about? What threats? And what the fuck is this about Darth Vader playing dress-up? Was that in the prequel?”

I quickly told her about the phone calls and the note.

“How the hell do you get yourself mixed up in this kind of shit?” Dena muttered. “All right, I’m not going to lecture you about that now,” she continued. “What I’m still confused about is this Cuddly Bear thing. A serious furry doesn’t dress up like a pink bear. He would consider that to be humiliating.”

“Which makes this worse!” I snapped. “Melanie wasn’t even killed by one of the cool furries! She was killed by one of the geeks of the furry world!”

Dena broke into a coughing fit. I knew she was trying to suppress a laugh, and if the circumstances had been even a little different I might have found the whole thing funny, too, but this was Melanie’s killer we were talking about. There simply wasn’t room in my heart for anything but anger.

“Do you think Tiff knows anything about her brother’s eccentricities?” Dena asked, sitting back down in the chair by the desk.

“I doubt it.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

I stopped pacing for a moment. “How do you tell a woman that her dead brother was getting busy with a stuffed donkey?”