The Hinky Velvet Chair (21 page)

He wished Griffy would more careful. The old man seemed to
be on the edge of something. Clay could hear his tone, harsh and full of
authority as usual, and Griffy’s voice, cheerful yet defiant. That was bizarre —
what could she be thinking?

But that was why Virgil had brought Griffy home in the first
place. He didn’t know what Griffy thought and he didn’t care.

Then his father brought home the most beautiful showgirl in
the world, with the kindest heart. Teenaged Clay had adored her with a heart
starved for mother love.

He lifted his head and eavesdropped. He heard Griffy say, “So
you needn’t worry about the price, because I’m giving you crab cakes for your
birthday.”

“You’re feeding the whole block. How can you pay for it? You
don’t have any money.”

“I’ll sell my rhinestones. You never liked them because I
got them before I met you.”

“Rhinestones will buy crab cakes for forty people?” Virgil
said, but Clay heard a different question in his voice.

Amazed, Clay turned to look at them.

“They’re very collectible right now.” She swooped forward
and pecked Virgil on his bald dome. “So that’s settled. I’ll be in the kitchen
if you need me.”

And off she sailed, leaving Virgil and Clay gaping.

Virgil slumped in front of his Solitaire game. “What,” he
said in a bewildered voice, “the
fuck
has got into that woman?”

Clay flinched. Virgil didn’t swear often. When he did, bad
things happened to small boys. He opened his mouth, and Virgil cut him off with
a savage hand-chop.

“And what about this cop you’re sleeping with? So help me,
boy, if you’ve abused my hospitality so she can investigate me—”

“Can’t you tell? I thought you knew everything about
everybody.”

Virgil looked daggers.

Inside, Clay flinched, but he said reassuringly, “We’re not
investigating you. For some strange reason, everybody thinks you’re a nice
person.”

But Virgil veered away. “What’s that noise?”

Clay listened. He heard a distant, high-pitched ringing
noise, like a fan belt slipping on a car. “Sounds like it’s upstairs.”

“I told her to call the air conditioning company.” Virgil
seemed to be working himself up. “Rhinestones. Crab cakes. Block party! She’s
out of her frigging mind!”

Clay cringed.
I’m not a small boy anymore,
he reminded himself. He took a deep breath.
“She’s a good person. She’s giving you a birthday present you don’t deserve and
she’s paying for it with her own jewelry.”

“It’s cheap trash.” Virgil’s lower lip worked, and Clay
wondered if he was thinking about all the times he’d tried to stop Griffy
wearing the rhinestones. She was right, too, about his motive. The old man
didn’t like to be reminded that she had had other keepers. “Junk,” Virgil
muttered.

“It’ll buy forty people crab cakes for your birthday.”

“I don’t want a birthday party!”

Clay leaned forward until he was nose-to-nose with his sire.
“Well, you’re getting one. That’s a hell of a woman. She loves you, in spite of
your rotten behavior. And you may not have noticed, but she is right on the
edge. She’s figured you out. She knows she’s worth something. If you don’t
bother to figure
her
out, you’ll be eating crab cakes by yourself.”

Virgil gave him a puzzled look. “What’s got into you, boy?”

“Better hire another food taster. You could be notch number
six in Sovay’s belt. Because it doesn’t look like Griffy will stick around.”
Virgil stared at him, speechless, so Clay lobbed his last grenade. “My mother
left you, and now you’re going to lose Griffy. And it’ll be your own fault.”

Clay walked out, his skin sizzling with terror as his body
caught up with what his mouth had done.

o0o

Mrs. Noah Butt was as good as her word. She arranged for
nine of her fellow fugitives from cosmetology to show up in the coffeeshop at
Chestnut and Michigan.

Jewel had got the idea to quiz them all at once, hear them
talk, get a sense of Dr. Kauz’s popularity base, in case he ever unmasked as
the inventor of the Amazing Whatever Potion.

This turned out to be a bad idea.

“Shirley, you look wonderful!”

“How are you, Diane? That sweatshirt suits you! You’re
radiant!”

“So are you, darling. We all look wonderful now.”

“Isn’t it fun?” said Mrs. Butt, the only person in the
coffeeshop Jewel recognized. “Have you ever seen a room so full of happy women?”

“Not since Janine Dorchester’s detective showed those
pictures of her husband in divorce court.”

This remark caused mass giggling. Jewel lifted her gaze to
heaven. The smell wasn’t nasty. Just not what she would have expected from a
coffeeshop full of Gold Coast matrons. Sort of sweat-socky. A little bit funky.
She cleared her throat.

“Hi, I’m Jewel Heiss.” She gave her job title and handed out
cards. “The reason I asked you to come today—”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s the girl from the city.”

“Is she a new convert?”

“Oh, she must be. Look how lovely she is.”

“Yasmin, ask her how long ago she took the potion.”

“Ahem!” Jewel raised her hand. “May I have your attention? I
just have a few questions I wanted to ask you.”

“I thought you were going to find a legal source of the
potion!” Mrs. Butt said, ruffling.

“Haven’t found one yet, but I am on the track of the person
who invented it. The first step is finding out what it does, and whether it’s
harmful. You wouldn’t want to give a harmful substance to a friend, would you?”

“We all got ours from Eileen Butt,” someone said. “Didn’t
we?”

The ladies looked at each other. After loud consultation, it
was agreed that they had all been supplied with potions by Mrs. Butt, who had
got her supply from Buzz.

“But he’s just the retailer,” Mrs. Butt said. “You said he
wouldn’t go to jail.”

“Not unless the potion proves harmful. Can you describe
your, uh, symptoms for me? Oh, and I’m passing around a sign-up sheet, so we
can all, uh, stay in touch.”

“What a good idea!” someone said. “Make two copies. One for
Officer Heiss and one for us.”

Another woman leaped to her feet. Her dark red hair flew
every which way, but at least she smelled more like soap and less like a jock
strap. “My name is Yasmin Sabra, that’s Yasmin without an E, and I got my
potion from Eileen two weeks ago. We were having lunch in that adorable little
place up on Dearborn, or is it Oak Street—”

“Oak Street,” Mrs. Butt said. “Hamburgers and Absinthe.”

“Oh, I’ve been there,” said another woman.

“Just the part about your symptoms, ma’am?” Jewel said.

“Of course. Well. I put it in my purse and went for a
massage and that night Helmy came home with lipstick on his cuff
again,
and I was miserable, and I
remembered the potion and after he went out, we had this huge fight but that’s
not important, anyway, I took it.”

“And?” Jewel prompted. “How did you feel? What did it taste
like?”

“Well, I didn’t feel anything. It was minty.”

“Yes, so was mine,” Yasmin said.

“I thought wintergreen.”

“With cloves, maybe?”

“Can we let Yasmin finish, please?” Jewel said desperately.

“Well, I began to feel better right away. It’s not as if I
don’t mind Helmy sleeping with that little tramp, because I do.” Her whiny tone
vanished. “But, well, I realized that it isn’t about me, really, is it? I’m a
good person. I’m lovable and beautiful.” She stood straighter, and her eyes
shone. “I don’t have to work at making myself satisfactory to anyone. I’m
satisfied. I love myself and I love my life.” Her voice rang out, strong and
confident. Jewel found herself smiling at Yasmin Sabra. “I even love my
husband. Someday he’ll understand, if I can get another dose of that potion for
him. Then he might realize that he doesn’t need to screw twentysomethings to be
lovable.” There was no censure in her voice, just hope and sad, sweet pity for
a lovable guy.

The other ladies murmured, and one or two clapped.

“I have half a dose at home, if you want it,” offered a
woman wearing parts of two different track suits.

Yasmin clapped her hands. “You’re the best! My marriage is
saved!”

“Uh, maybe we should find out if it’s harmful,” Jewel put
in, but she was pooh-poohed by all present.

Yasmin proclaimed, “If I ever meet the man who invented that
potion, I’ll give him a hundred thousand dollars to advance his research!” She
sat down to applause.

“Me next!”

“Oh, me!”

Jewel covered her eyes with one hand.

“I hate this tankini,” Jewel groused to Clay. She tugged at
the bottom. It didn’t budge. Her frontispiece felt like a battering ram: high,
tight, hard, and huge. She felt like she could play football in this swimsuit.
She could plow snow. “I don’t want to go out in public like this.”

Clay crinkled his eyes at her. “You’re adorable.”

The house party had gathered in the vestibule. Virgil was
taking his guests to the beach for a picnic supper, and to view the kite show
and the fireworks to follow. She didn’t want to go. Randy was presumably still
somewhere back in the house. Her cavorting with Clay hadn’t flushed him, and
that filled her with worry.

Everyone wondered where Lord Darner was. Jewel made an
excuse about a ghost hunter in Skokie who’d called in a hot tip.

“I told him it was impolite to leave in the middle of his
visit, but he’s such an enthusiast.”

She wanted to get her hands around Lord Darner’s throat and
squeeze, but first she had to get over these recurring panic attacks from
wondering where the heck his bed could be.

“Well, we can’t wait for him!” Virgil said gaily.

Sovay looked fabulous, swanking in her teeny weeny red
bikini and transparent beach robe.

Yet Griffy, though older and softer, got even more wolf
whistles for her trim blue one-piece. She smiled and waved, looking thrilled
with her celebrity and comfortable with it.

Virgil and Kauz walked behind the women, presumably enjoying
the view.

They entered the pedestrian tunnel under Lake Shore. Jewel
felt like a Viking in her tankini. She drew whistles, hoots, and animal noises.
They follow you like dogs,
Randy had
said. Too proud to cringe, she held her head high and avoided men’s eyes,
praying that nobody she knew—

“Jules! Baby!” came a shout behind her. “Where ya been?!”

She grabbed Clay’s arm and squeezed it.

“Hey! Hey, Jules!” A volleyball team clogged the end of the
pedestrian tunnel. Their leader, a sunburned hunk Jewel remembered from some
years ago, frolicked up to her. “It’s me, Fred, from the Katz Beer Tournament?
Whoa, baby, you look hot!”

“Fred, this is Clay, my
partner.”

Fred’s face fell. “You’re kidding. You’re out of
circulation? Oh, man!”

Clay was a picture of huffy possessiveness. “Yeah, she is.”

“Oh, man! Bummer! Man, nobody’ll believe this.” Fred turned
to his teammates, who clustered around as if hoping Jewel’s touch could cure
them of scrofula. He bellowed, “She’s out of circulation!” His voice echoed
down the tunnel.

A chorus of groans greeted this announcement.

Griffy beckoned to Mellish, trailing the party with Mike the
chauffeur and a load of picnic gear. Mellish put his load down and went back to
the house.

“Jules, I still have a lock of your pube hair.”

“Hey, Jules, is your number the same?”

“Yeah, if you ever dump this guy, like, call me!”

Sovay’s lip curled. Jewel burned with humiliation. Clay put
his arm around her and said, “Guys, can we clear the tunnel?”

“Okay, bye!” The team romped away in Fred’s wake.

One minute later, Mellish appeared at her elbow. “Miss?” He
held out a beach coverup and a pair of giant sunglasses. “Miss Griffy thought
you might want these.”

“Oh, thank God!” Avoiding his eye, Jewel wrapped herself up
like Jackie O. She felt sweaty, but the parade behind her dispersed.

They made it to the beach. Among thousands, she felt less
conspicuous.

The summer sun hung low in the sky. The beach crowd was in a
festive mood, watching the water kites. Dogs peed, children wailed and threw
sand at one another, and humanity sweated in their flip-flops and shorts and
tank tops. Pink thunderheads lay far out on the horizon over the lake, making a
nice backdrop for the kites. A stiff north breeze cooled the sand and filled
the sails of boats on the choppy gray-blue water.

“We need to talk,” Clay said, drawing her away from the
party. “I’ll buy you a Mexican ice cream bar.”

“We do. And I never say no to ice cream.” She followed him
up the battered concrete walk to where the pushcart stood. “But what about our
cover?” she said around a rice-pudding-flavored paleta.

“Between you passing out in my room and Sovay catching us in
her room, I don’t think anybody’s surprised,” Clay said around a mango-flavored
paleta.