Obsession, Deceit and Really Dark Chocolate (34 page)

I didn’t read any more. Instead I just picked up the phone and called the man who was going to help Anne.

Marcus picked up on the fourth ring. “I have a woman under the dryer,” he said, “but she only has another five minutes, so whatever it is, make it quick.”

“This is quick,” I assured him. “I know this is a lot to ask, but I need you to pencil Anne Brooke in for an appointment—a touch-up of some kind, perhaps a cut and highlight. If you’re booked all day maybe you could stay late this one night. She has a TV interview tomorrow morning.”

“Anne Brooke, as in the promiscuous-politician-with-a-possibly-murderous-ambition Anne Brooke?”

“Yeah, maybe—I’m not one hundred percent sure she’s murderous, but I’m positive about the promiscuous-politician part.”

“Why do you want me to work on a person you suspect of murder? Do you think she only gets homicidal on bad-hair days?”

“What I
think
is that people talk to their hairstylists. She’s not going to sit in your chair and confess to murder just because you’ve given her killer highlights, but she might drop some useful tidbit if you just subtly quiz her about certain things.”

“No, sorry, can’t help.”

“Why not?” My voice reached such a high pitch that it could have upset the hearing of a dog.

“Sophie, when someone hires me, they are allowing me to alter one of their most prized possessions,
their hair.
You don’t take that kind of risk with someone you can’t trust. If word got out that I broke a client’s confidence, I’d be about as popular as an admitted communist during the McCarthy era.”

“You’re serious about this? You’re not going to help me?”

“Honey,” he began, “you know I love you but—”

“Please, Marcus? There’s a chance that Anne is responsible for the deaths of two, possibly three, people. If that’s true, then there’s a good chance she’ll kill again.” I was aware that I was being hopelessly unfair to Marcus, but I was desperate and I needed to feel like I had an army of friends behind me to help figure this mess out.

There was a beat of silence. “
Three
people?” he finally asked. “I thought this was just about Eugene. How did we get up to three?”

“Well, there’s Peter Strauss. He was Anne Brooke’s campaign worker and he probably committed suicide, but I think he did it because of Anne and their forbidden affair. And then there’s Melanie,” and at the mention of her name my voice broke. “They found her body on Friday. Somebody dumped it by Ocean Beach. And right now the bulk of the evidence is pointing toward Anne Brooke. That kinky adulterous parasite probably put on one of her furry costumes and killed Melanie!”

I dropped to the couch and started crying, but I quickly forced my tears into submission. Grieving was a luxury for those who weren’t hell-bent on revenge.

When Marcus spoke again his voice was considerably gentler and less playful. “Sophie, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.” I reached over for the Kleenex box on the side table and blew my nose as quietly as possible.

“Are you alone right now? Do you want me to try to rearrange my appointments so I can be there with you?”

“I don’t need you to be here with me, I just need you to help me.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Really?” I squeaked.

“Yes, really,” he said on a sigh, “although I’ll undoubtedly regret it. My last appointment should be over by six-thirty. I’ll stay late if she wants to come in then.”

“Oh, Marcus, I love you!” And I meant that sincerely. I did have an army of friends behind me…actually they were more like the National Guard. Whenever I had a homeland emergency, they came rushing in and they never let me down.

“Okay,” I said, after wiping away the few tears that were still clinging to my cheeks, “this is how this is going to work. Her husband’s kind of working with me—not that he thinks he’s married to a killer or anything, just an adulterer. He’s a nutritionist, so I’ll just have him tell Anne that one of his patients has an in with you. Hopefully he’ll have her calling you within the next few hours.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Marcus hesitated for a moment before adding, “I may have misheard you, but did you say that Anne was a furry?”

“You know about furries?”

“Of course I know about furries. What, you think I live in a cave?”

I didn’t answer. This was kind of like the whole iPod thing. By the time I figured out what they were, everyone and their mother had one. Why was I always being left out of the loop on these important cultural phenomena?

“So I take it that
is
what you said? Anne’s a furry?”

“That’s what I said, yes.” I told him about everything I had found at Peter’s apartment. He listened, occasionally breaking into the same kind of contrived coughing fit Dena had when suppressing a laugh.

“So your job is to try to get her to talk about Peter, Eugene and/or Fitzgerald,” I continued. “Oh, and there’s a furry party tomorrow night at the Chelsea Hotel. Try to fit that into conversation as well. See how she reacts.”

“How do I casually bring the subject of a furry party into conversation?”

“Marcus, you’re a genius, remember? I’m sure you can find a way to do this.”

“I’d need an IQ of 600 in order to figure this one out,” he complained.

“Just tell me you’ll try, Marcus.”

“Fine, I’ll see what I can do.”

A Cheshire cat grin spread across my face. “I really do love you, Marcus.”

“You’d better,” he said.

After I hung up I e-mailed Sam and he immediately replied, agreeing to feed Anne my lie. Apparently Anne really was worried about her roots because less than twenty minutes after that Marcus called to tell me she had telephoned to secure the appointment. It probably didn’t hurt that Marcus was a well-known hairstylist and most people had to wait weeks if not months to see him. I was about to call Anatoly when it occurred to me that there was one more thing I wanted to check out. I f lipped through the Yellow Pages until I found what I wanted, smiled to myself and then got Anatoly on the line. I quickly told him about Anne’s impending appointment with Marcus. “Marcus is going to see if he can get any more information out of her,” I explained. “You know, when her guard is down, no politicians or so-called journalists in sight.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Anatoly mused. “Tell Marcus to try to get her talking about Peter.”

“Already told him that. But since we know where she’s going to be tonight, you don’t need to follow her.”

“Got it. I’ll follow Johnny instead,” Anatoly said.

“Follow Johnny tomorrow. Tonight I want you to meet me in the Mission.” I rattled off a Mission-district address.

“Is that a residence?” Anatoly asked.

“A retailer.”

“What kind of retailer?”

“You’ll see…just be there by seven sharp.”

“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

“Because you’re a pessimist. I’ll see you tonight.”

I hung up and my smile morphed into a full-blown devilish grin. I was actually looking forward to seeing Anatoly’s reaction to what I had planned.

He showed up early, undoubtedly hoping to scope the place out before I got there. But of course I had anticipated his move and was there even earlier. The only thing that could have made me late would have been if I had found my tinfoil-hat woman. But despite combing the streets for the better part of the afternoon and questioning at least twenty different homeless people, I had turned up nothing, or rather no one.

I spotted Anatoly walking toward me; at six feet he towered over most of the other pedestrians and his fair complexion was on the lighter side of the wide spectrum of skin tones that were commonplace in the neighborhood. The moment he saw me his eyes went up to the sign hanging above the store behind me. Even from half a block away I could see him wince.

“We have to do it eventually,” I said, once he reached my side.

“There’s got to be another way.”

“There isn’t. Come on.” I linked my arm through his and led him through the door of Costume Closet. “Let’s go find you a King Kong outfit.”

Anatoly glanced around at the carelessly placed racks of costumes crammed into the funky little store. “Where do they keep the rentals?” he asked, directing his question to me rather than the disinterested clerk sitting behind the register reading comic books.

“I’ve decided that we’re going to buy. My treat.”

“Why do you want to
own
an animal costume?”

“Because,” I said, pulling him toward an overstuffed rolling rack, “now that I know what people do in these costumes, I want one that’s never been worn before.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right, we need new ones.”

We milled around the store for another five minutes before I finally found something promising. “Here,” I said, lifting up a particularly heavy costume. “This can be your King Kong getup.”

“That’s not King Kong,” Anatoly said. “It’s just a regular ape.”

“What’s the difference?”

“King Kong was more impressive than that,” he explained. “He was grandiose.”

“He was sixty feet tall, Anatoly. I guess I
could
try to score you some steroids and a pair of stilts, but that seems a bit extreme for a furry party.”

“I’m not wearing that.” His jaw was protruding enough to let me know he meant it.

“Okay, we’ll find you something else.” I wandered over to the rack against the wall. “Here’s one that’ll work,” I said, holding up another monkey suit. “This one has bigger pecks and a six-pack.”

“That’s a silverback.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at the back.”

I turned the suit around and sure enough it had a gray streak down the middle of its back. “So he’s a silverback,” I agreed. “That’s not so bad. The silverback within a gorilla colony is always the alpha male.”

“We agreed that I would be King Kong.”

I stared at Anatoly for a few seconds before answering. I had never seen this side of him before. He was this totally macho, irritatingly practical guy who had served in two different armies. Now he was whining like a six-year-old because I couldn’t get him the “right” King Kong costume.

“On second thought,” I said carefully, “I don’t think this is a silverback at all. It
is
King Kong. It’s just that he’s getting up there in years. I mean, the poor guy was climbing the Empire State Building and fighting off airplanes ten years before World War II. He’s entitled to a few gray hairs. It makes him more distinguished.”

“Don’t patronize me, Sophie.”

“Don’t patronize you?” I asked, quickly dispensing with the delicacy. “Do you hear yourself? You’re upset because this gorilla lacks grandeur! It’s a fucking gorilla suit!”

Anatoly pinched the bridge of his nose. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea.”

“Maybe not, but it’s our
only
idea. I think it’s fairly obvious that these furries factor into the murders, and if we’re going to bust these guys we need to infiltrate them. You were in the damned Israeli army, Anatoly, you should understand this.”

“They didn’t ask us to dress up like apes in the Israeli army.”

“Fine, don’t dress up as an ape, dress up like a wolf, dress up like Kermit the Frog—that way you can lay Miss Piggy. Is that macho enough for you?”

“That depends, are you going to dress up as Miss Piggy?”

Before I could respond, my cell rang. “Marcus!” I said, once I had pulled my phone out of my purse. “Tell me everything.”

“That’s easy, she confided nothing.”

“Nothing?” My disappointment was overwhelming. “But she must have at least engaged in small talk, right? Didn’t she say
anything
that I might be able to use?”

“Well, it does seem that we have a mutual acquaintance. Anne was interviewed by a novelist-cum-freelance journalist named Sophie not too long ago.”

“Please tell me you didn’t give me away.”

“Not at all—you actually made quite a favorable impression on her. But other than that tidbit, she didn’t reveal a lot. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get her to talk about Peter or Eugene. She did say that Fitzgerald is a hypocritical hate-monger, but that’s it. Apparently she’s had a very hard day and only wanted to talk about pleasant things. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.”

“No white copper kettles or warm woolen mittens?” I asked. Anatoly gave me a strange look.

“She strikes me as the type who prefers stainless steel and cashmere. Anyhow, there’s still a chance I’ll be able to coax a little more info out of her before she leaves.”

“Wait a minute, she’s still
there?
Marcus, you shouldn’t be calling me now! What if she gets suspicious?”

“Relax, she’s under the dryer at the moment. Listen, I may not have been able to get her to say a lot, but there is one question that I have been able to put to rest.”

“What’s that?”

“Anne’s about as furry as a naked mole rat.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“She’s not the type to dress up as an animal for sexual purposes.”

“Forgive me, Marcus,” I said as I watched Anatoly sift through another rolling rack of animal costumes, “but I’m not sure that either of us has had enough experience with furries to be able to identify their distinguishing characteristics.”

“Maybe not, but I know tons of people who
aren’t
furries and it’s clear to me that Anne is one of them.”

“Why? Because she shaved her legs this morning?”

“Because she’s not a minority.”

“Oh, give me a break! Being a furry is so not a black thing.”

“You’re right, it’s not. But to become a furry is to willingly become part of a minority group. Furries know that if people find out about their sexual preferences they’ll be discriminated against, perhaps even ostracized. A black, lesbian Muslim would have a better chance of gaining societal acceptance.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Just that Anne doesn’t see herself as a minority. Yeah, she’s a woman, but my guess is she’s spent the better part of her life surrounded by reverse-sexists.”

“I still don’t see—”

“Sophie, she spent the first half hour of our appointment explaining how much she empathizes with the plight of my people. She just
loves
the blacks and the gays. If I was Native American she probably would’ve offered to take me out for buffalo burgers. You know the drill. She’s one of those liberals who desperately wants to identify with an oppressed group, but she doesn’t so she overcompensates by telling anyone who will listen that she’s passionate about the issues that are important to the people she’s oppressing. You know how people who don’t have a lot of sex love to talk about it? Same principle applies here.”