Crazy for You (8 page)

With only a half hour of my shift left, I served a complicated order of drinks and cheesecakes to a table of women—yes, women were now coming into the shop; take
that
, Doyennes of Decency—and turned around to serve the customer who’d just taken the table near the newspaper rack.

“Hey,” the man said, looking up at me. “Mazie, right?”

“Hel-hi-lo,” I stammered. It was the movie star from Rhonda’s party.

“You certainly get around, don’t you?” he said, smiling.

“Uh-huh.” Here it came, the red tide from hell, the uberflush. I tried picturing icebergs, glaciers, snowmen—anything to ice down my treacherous capillaries.

“Nice to see you again,” he said.

Seeing a little too
much
of me, I thought, tugging down my shorts.

I took his order, half-listening. Jared Kennison looked even better than I remembered. He was wearing a light-gray suit and a navy tie that brought out the blue in his eyes. Juju prepared his double espresso because I was still learning how to work the
machines.

“I’ll give you fifty bucks to let me wait on that guy,” Juju whispered, fanning imaginary heat waves from her chest.

I smirked. “No deal.”

I brought Jared’s order to him, dipping a bit lower than was strictly necessary as I set his coffee on the table.

“Would you care to join me?” he asked, standing and pulling out a chair.

My, what lovely manners! I looked around. All my customers were temporarily taken care of, so I sat down.

“Why haven’t I noticed you here before?” Jared asked.

“This is my first day. Are you a regular here?”

“Yup. Pretty girls, great coffee, and it’s only a five-minute drive away. My office is on East Mason—the Kennison Clinic—maybe you’re familiar with it?”

“A clinic? You’re a doctor?”

He smiled. “Why? Don’t I fit the stereotype?”

“Not really.” I would have guessed model for Jockey brand underwear.

“I do cosmetic surgery,” Jared said. “Also reconstructive surgery for accident victims, burns, melanomas—that kind of thing.”

“That must be very intercour
—interesting
—work.”

One black eyebrow rose. “Oh, it is,” he said, grinning.

I was grateful to be rescued from more Freudian slippage by the arrival of a crew of noisy fraternity boys. For the next half hour, all of us were frantically busy, then the college guys blew out and things got quiet.

“Your shift was over ten minutes ago,” Juju told me. “Go home, girl, get some rest, be back here at seven tomorrow morning.”

I dumped my tips into my purse and changed back into my regular clothes. Sliding my beat-up old sneakers onto my whimpering feet felt like salving a wound. When I got home I was going to climb into my bathtub and soak until I turned into a big, pink raisin.

But that’s not how my evening was destined to end. I walked out of the café’s steamy warmth into a light snow, got into my car, and turned the ignition. Pig made a
static-electricity noise, the dashboard panel went into a flash-bang light show, and then everything died.

The alternator, I thought, clunking my head against the steering wheel. Eddie Arguello, a friend who knows cars the way I know chocolate, had told me I needed to replace Pig’s alternator. I had no idea what an alternator was, but I was pretty sure garages didn’t deliver them at ten o’clock at night.

I’d take a taxi home tonight and call a garage tomorrow, I decided. The prospect of sitting here in my cold, lifeless car, trying to excavate my cellphone from the garbage heap in my purse, was too overwhelming. I trudged back to the café, explained my problem to Juju, and asked to use the store phone to call a cab.

“Sure,” Juju said. “But if you wait around an hour I’ll give you a ride home.”

“I can give you a lift,” said Jared Kennison, looking up from his newspaper.

I hesitated, trying to decide. True, the guy was hot, but then, Ted Bundy’s victims probably thought the same thing about him.

He seemed to read my mind. “I promise I’m not a serial killer. I only kill my patients.”

“Are you crazy?” Juju said, practically shoving me toward him.
“Go!”

Kennison held the door for me and we walked out together. The snow had changed to sneet—stinging particles the texture of sno-cones that made driving an adventure in brakesmanship. He was parked right out front, the kind of person for whom life obligingly opens up parking slots. I’d figured him for a doctorish Cadillac or Lexus, but his ride was a Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV in shiny black. He held the door for me and I got in. I hadn’t been in a vehicle this high above the road since I’d ridden in my dad’s old farm truck.

“Like my wheels?” he asked.

“She’s a beaut.” Immediately I felt guilty for admiring a two-ton, testosterone-injected monster that emitted six swimming pools’ worth of hydrocarbons every time it was driven to the supermarket.

As if sensing my thoughts, Kennison said, “I know. Not the greenest ride on the planet, but it’s good in rough terrain. I drive out to Wyoming for deer and elk every fall.”

“I don’t get the connection. Do you use the SUV to run over the deer?”

He laughed, not sounding at all offended. “It’s a guy thing, Mazie. I take it you’re not into hunting?”

“No. I hate the idea of shooting things. I can’t stand guns. If I had to fire a gun to save my life, I’d probably just die.”

“You should take up hunting, Mazie. Nothing like it. Being outdoors in all kinds of weather, bringing down an elusive animal using your brains and skill—”

“So this is all done with your bare hands?”

He chuckled. “You’re busting my chops, Mazie. Okay, I get you. The Bambi syndrome. The big bad hunter versus the poor little deer. But hunting—I guess you could call it a necessary evil. Hunters thin out the herd, eliminate the weaker animals, and let the strong ones thrive.”

That theory always sounds vaguely Nazi-ish to me, but I was too tired to argue. I gave him directions, and in ten minutes we were on Brady Street. “That’s my place.” I pointed to Magenta’s shop, closed up and dark.

“You own that shop?”

“I rent a flat from the guy who owns the shop. Just drop me here in the street.”

“Mazie, the only advantage to having MD plates is I get to park wherever I want.”

He double-parked in front of a Mini Coop, came around, opened my door, and escorted me to my apartment.

I opened the building’s entrance door, surprised when I didn’t immediately hear Muffin inside, making a racket. Then I remembered that Muffin was staying with Magenta tonight. The poor little guy spent so much time with Magenta, he was confused about who his real mom was. Unlocking the door to my place, I turned, half in and half out of my flat, and faced Jared.

“Thanks for the ride.”

He surprised me by bending and kissing me, a light brush of the lips. “It was nice,” he murmured. “I’ll call you.”

I went inside, closed the door, and locked it.

“I can’t believe you let that schmuck kiss you,” said a voice from the dark.

Chapter Ten

There are few disasters in life that can’t be eased by scrambled eggs and toast.

—Maguire’s Maxims

My heart catapulted off my diaphragm. I whirled around, clutching a hand to my chest. “Dammit, Labeck—give me a heart attack, why don’t you?” I snapped on the lights. “How did you get in here?”

Bonaparte Labeck lounged, arms folded, against the pine wardrobe that housed my third-hand TV set. He looked haggard. He had dark circles under his eyes and his color was off. His hair looked as though it’d been styled with a windshield scraper.

Well, it served him right. Probably Rhonda had kept him up all last night, making him jump through hoops, demonstrating exactly what she’d meant by “Nothing is off limits, Ben,
nothing
!”

I yanked off my coat and tossed it in a chair. “Who I kiss is not your business. Anyway, what were
you
doing with Rhonda Cromwell last night—removing her tonsils with your tongue?”

Against my will, I felt Labeck’s magnetic field sucking me in, pulling me closer until I was within sniffing range. He smelled like snow and shaving foam and didn’t-use-quite-enough-Right-Guard. I had to jam my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out and stroking the hair off his forehead.

“You were spying on me?” he asked.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I sneaked into Rhonda’s house to retrieve my coat. Then you came in with—”

“Mazie, Rhonda is dead.”

I stared at him. He stared back at me. My mouth opened but nothing came out.

“She was in the neighbors’ backyard, stretched out in a lawn chair, frozen.”

“But … maybe she was just passed out.”

Labeck looked at me as though he thought zombies had been chewing on my brains. “She was
dead
.”

“Sometimes people are just in a deep coma.”

“For God’s sake, Maze—it wasn’t a coma. It was
death
. Jumper cables and a bulldozer battery could not have brought her back to life.”

Labeck rubbed his eye sockets with the heels of his hands. His voice shook. “She was strangled. Something was wrapped around her neck.”

“God.”

“Got anything to drink?”

I went to the refrigerator. My apartment is very simple. You entered through the living room, where my sofa opened into a bed. There was a small kitchen just off the living room. Labeck followed me into the kitchen and leaned against a counter.

I pulled a bottle of orange juice out of the fridge.

He shook his head. “Not unless it’s eighty proof.”

The closest to eighty proof I had on hand was a bottle of supermarket red wine so cheap it didn’t have a cork, just a screw-off top. I took out two wineglasses—wedding gifts that had somehow escaped my mother-in-law’s grasping claws—sloshed wine into both, and handed one to Labeck.

“Start from the beginning,” I said. “You and Rhonda left her house together Monday night. I was hiding under the table. I heard you say you were going out for drinks.”

He nodded. “We went to O’Malley’s.”

“Classy. Peanut shells on the floor and wet-tee-shirt contests.”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t dressed for anything fancy. We ordered sandwiches and drinks. I tried to keep the conversation on my project—a documentary on meth addiction among the Chippewa tribes up north. I was telling Rhonda about it at her party and she seemed interested in contributing financial backing.”

I nodded, took a sip of wine. It would have made an excellent disinfectant.

“So we agreed to get together on Monday night, talk about the project over dinner.”

“Only it turns out
you
were on the menu?”

He nodded gloomily. “I don’t think she gave a damn about the project. She kept running her foot up my leg and I had to keep moving away until I was backed up against the end of the booth. After we ate, she wanted to go dancing, but I told her I had to get up early the next morning. Then I drove her home.”

“What time?”

“Ten thirty, maybe eleven.”

“Did you kiss her goodnight?”

He scowled. “If you’re asking did we have sex—”

“Don’t tell me!” I clapped my hands over my ears.

Labeck gritted his teeth. “Rhonda was all over me as soon as we got into her foyer. She dug her nails into my back, unbuckled my belt, tried to—I thought I’d have to pry her off with a crowbar.”

“And then?”

“Then I drove home.” Labeck started pacing around the room.

“But tonight—why were you the one who found her?”

“I wanted to drop off the information she asked me for, the cost projections and stuff for the documentary. I was filming a school board meeting in Brookwood, so I thought I’d just swing by Rhonda’s and drop off the packet. Save having to express it over.”

Labeck sloshed more wine into his glass. “She didn’t answer when I rang her bell. I saw a light on in the back, and went around to the rear of the house. No answer there, either. I was about to leave when I caught something out of the corner of my eye, white, like a nightgown. I thought maybe Rhonda had gone back there and fallen down or something. I walked into her backyard and saw that the white thing was the cover on her neighbors’ lawn furniture, flapping in the wind.”

I gnawed on a knuckle, knowing what was coming.

“I figured I’d be a good Samaritan and dog down the tarp—my dad’s a carpenter and he’s always yammering about how weather wrecks furniture. But then I saw a hand in the folds of tarp. I whipped off the tarp and saw her—Rhonda. It was dark out, but I could still make out her features. She was frozen stiff, her eyes were wide open, bulging, and something was knotted around her neck.”

“What was it?” I remembered all the women at her office who’d joked about wanting to strangle her.

“I don’t know—something skinny and dark, maybe a belt, a piece of fabric. It was too dark to tell. I thought about calling for an ambulance. But it would have been pointless—she was beyond help. She looked like she’d been dead for hours. I just got out of there fast. I felt guilty leaving her there, almost like I’d killed her myself. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

I nodded. “There’s no way you could explain to the police that you just happened to stumble across a woman’s dead body. They’d have arrested you on the spot.”

He groaned. “They’re going to arrest me anyway. My fingerprints are on that tarp.”

“Maybe the snow will wash them off.”

“Why the hell did I have to go check that tarp? Why didn’t I just mind my own business?”

“Because you’re a decent person. You thought someone might be in trouble and you went to help. That’s how you are.”

“I wasn’t being decent. I was being stupid.”

“So you came straight here, to me?”

“Am I spilling my guts at the corner bar or am I in Mazie Maguire’s kitchen?”

Labeck was in trouble and he’d turned to me. Not Aspen Lindgren, not a lawyer. For once
he
needed
me
. “You knew I was living here?”

“Of course I knew. Did you think I’d just let you drop off the edge of the earth? Magenta fills me in on everything. He told me you kept a spare key duct-taped to the drainpipe, so I took it and let myself in.”