Don't Look Now (16 page)

‘That would be Andrea Heller. She’s our regional sales representative,’ Rhonda Salinger said. ‘If you’ll have a seat, I’ll see if she’s available.’

Paris sat in one of the dozen or so black leather chairs that were carefully arranged around the dimly lit reception area. Instinctively, he picked up a magazine, one he would have certainly been willing to read had it not been written in Italian.

‘What can I do for you, detective?’

They locked eyes, and in that instant, they both knew. It was the blonde from Wednesday night. The one who had tried to pick him up at the Impulse. But her hair was now a reddish brown and she wore far less make-up.

As a detective, Jack Paris had a failing in that he really wasn’t all that good with people’s faces. Never had been. He was far more adept at reading behavior, body language. So, at first, he was only 75 per cent sure about the woman. They shook hands and Paris saw it in her eyes.

The rabbit look. Scared beneath the cool.

He glanced at the woman’s left hand, saw her wedding ring, and decided to keep the obvious questions to himself until they were alone.

‘This way, please.’ She led him silently down a series of corridors whose walls were decorated with large, rear-lit slides of lips and eyes and cheeks and every other body part to which one might apply cosmetics. And each photograph bore the distinctive Cinq, Limited logo of a five that turns into a white bird, wrapped in a circle.

‘Abigail, isn’t it?’ Paris said, once they were ensconced in her spare but tastefully outfitted office. There were five windows and a spectacular view of the river.

‘Andrea,’ the woman said. ‘Andrea Heller.’ She sat behind her desk and beckoned Paris to sit in the chair opposite her.

‘It’s not Abigail?’

‘I think you have me mixed up with someone else, detective.’ The woman reached into her purse and took out a pair of glasses. She put them on and looked back up at Paris, as if they might hide a significant portion of her face and therefore obscure her real identity. ‘My name is Andrea.’

‘You weren’t at the Impulse Lounge Wednesday night?’

‘Uh, no,’ she said. ‘I was home that night. With my husband. I’ve never even heard of the – what did you say the name was?’

‘The Impulse Lounge. The bar at the Embassy Suites Beachwood.’

‘No. I played Scrabble that night with my husband,’ she said, committing the cardinal sin of offering up too much information without being asked.

Paris figured that the operative word here was ‘husband’, so he decided not to press her on this point. Yet.

‘Well,’ Paris said, ‘in the course of a homicide investigation we’ve run across a product of yours that was used by more than one of the victims. What I need is a customer list. Where the product is available retail in this area.’

‘What product is that, Detective Paris?’

She was back in control, Paris thought. She’s a pro. Kinky, but a pro. ‘A face powder called Chaligne. That’s one of your products, isn’t it?

‘It is.’

‘Would you be able to give us a customer list for Chaligne?’

‘That would be no problem at all.’

She rose from her desk, crossed the room. ‘There’s coffee on the credenza,’ she said. ‘Help yourself.’

When she left the office Paris poured himself a cup, did a casual nosing around of the room. Scandesign, high-tech furniture: gray and white. A quick glance at the photo on the desk neither confirmed nor denied the fact that the man in the picture was the guy hanging around the perimeter of the Impulse Lounge. This man had a long, straight nose and wavy hair. Paris studied it. Could have been the guy.

Which led Paris to two questions.

One: What kind of sex game were these people playing?

And two: If it had nothing to do with the murder investigation – which he fairly was certain it had not – why the
hell
was he so interested?

‘Here we go,’ Andrea said, striding silently into the office and handing Paris a short stack of photocopies. ‘I gave you all of Ohio. I wasn’t sure how far you wanted me to go.’

‘Ohio is just fine for now,’ Paris said. ‘And I really do appreciate your time.’

‘That’s quite all right.’

‘By the way, how much does this particular powder retail for?’

Andie sat on the edge of her desk. ‘Chaligne retails for anywhere from sixty to eighty dollars, depending on the store.’

‘Is that a lot?’

‘Not really. We have other lines that retail for much more. They’re sold online, and in Saks, Bergdorf, Neiman-Marcus. Because Chaligne is more affordable it is available in a lot of places. Over fifty stores and catalog outlets in northern Ohio.’

‘Is
that
a lot?’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said, smiling. ‘We have a very aggressive sales force.’

Paris saw a flash of the man-eater she was when she tried to pick him up at the Impulse.

Back, he thought as he stood to leave, when she was a blonde.

Paris pulled the car over at the corner of West Thirty-fifth and Franklin just as the rain began to come down in sheets. Tommy, who had been standing in the doorway to Minerva Beauty Care, made a dash for it with a newspaper over his head, cursing each drop of water that hit his Zegna suit.

‘
Fuck
this weather.’ Tommy slid in, slammed the car door behind him.

‘We’ve got two left,’ Paris said. Chaligne was available at nine Cleveland locations in all. They had visited seven. ‘Allied Salon Products on West Forty-fourth, and DeQuincey’s on Clark and Fiftieth. We could almost walk.’ Paris handed Tommy the list and looked over his shoulder at the traffic. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll drop you off at Allied and swing by to pick you up when I’m done with the other place.’

‘No,’ Tommy said.

‘No?’

‘I’ll take DeQuincey’s.’

‘What’s the difference?’ Paris pulled out into traffic.

‘I want to hit Clark News. It’s two doors down from there and I want to pick up a
Racing Form
.’

‘I’ll get it, Tommy.’

‘Jack, I owe Benny DeMarco for like six months of forms. Gotta be up to a three hundred-fifty bucks by now. I was gonna take care of him today, but if you want to pay him for me.’

‘Um, no.’

‘A’ight, then,’ Tommy said, doing his wiseguy thing, shooting the monogrammed cuffs of his shirt like a mobster. ‘Drop me off close, though. I’m not walking in this shit.’

Paris opened the bell-clad door to Allied Salon Products and immediately noticed a rather plain-looking woman in her late thirties running a feather duster over a long row of aerosol cans. She had dishwater-blond hair that drooped into her face and wore a pale-lavender cotton dress, tan Rockport walkers.

‘Hi,’ Paris said, shaking off the rain.

The woman looked at the floor, as if he had shouted at her. Her name tag said ‘Sam’.

‘Hello.’

‘I was wondering if—’

‘Can
I
help you?’

The man appeared to Paris’s left. He was loud and fragrant, overdressed for the warehouse ambience of his showroom. He was fiftyish and balding, but impeccably groomed and accessorized. His tag said ‘Mr Hendershott’.

Paris turned open the wallet bearing his shield and got right to business. ‘Do you carry a product called Chaligne?’

‘Of course,’ Hendershott offered, snapping to attention, energized by the intrigue of having a policeman in the store.

‘Would you have a recent customer list handy?’

‘It’s all on the computer,’ Hendershott said. ‘Right this way.’

Hendershott moved with a feminine grace through the labyrinth of shelving. He reached the back counter and tapped a few numbers into his computer terminal. He brought his bifocals to his face and grimaced. ‘Just six this month. Not good.’

‘All to one person?’

‘No, no, no. Six separate sales,’ Hendershott said. ‘Chaligne is relatively expensive. For us, anyway.’

‘Can you tell me who bought them?’

Bifocals back up. ‘Five of them are cash sales. No record of their names, I’m afraid. One’s a credit-card sale, but she’s a regular customer.’

‘Her name?’ Paris held his pen expectantly over his pad.

Hendershott frowned but, after a few moments, gave in. ‘Dorothea-with-an-e-a Burlingame. But Miss Burlingame has got to be eighty-five years old if she’s a day.’

‘That’s okay,’ Paris said. ‘You never know where a lead is going to come from.’ He replaced his notebook and handed Hendershott a card. ‘If you think of anything.’

‘Certainly.’

Paris turned to leave – the weight of having to ask the same questions a thousand times suddenly draining him of all energy – and smiled perfunctorily at Sam. He placed his hand on the worn brass knob, and saw it.

It had been propped against the top of a wooden bin full of small shampoo samplers the entire time, daring him to notice, mocking him like the old arcade steam-shovel games that never gave you a really good grip on that pack of Luckies with the lighter strapped to it: ‘The Penrod Collection’, it read in faded blue and red type. ‘Mustaches of Distinction for Men of Action.’

Freddie Mercury, Paris thought as he walked back to the counter. The man in the Penrod Collection logo looked just like the late Freddie Mercury.

‘Let me see,’ Hendershott said. He keyed something into his computer, scrolling through screen after screen. ‘Nope, haven’t sold one of these mustaches in, well, I haven’t sold one this year. Last year either. Not a one.’ He looked over at the display card, wrinkling his nose. ‘Nobody really wants them anymore, you see. In fact, I don’t even know why they’re out here. I haven’t seen the Penrod Collection in a very long time.’ He shot a reproachful look at Samantha, who reacted by lowering her eyes and dusting a little faster.

‘Could one of these mustaches have been sold recently without having been recorded on your register?’ Paris asked.

‘Absolutely
not
,’ Hendershott said, somewhat indignantly. ‘Everything is rung up.’

‘I’ll need to take two of them with me. I’ll sign a receipt, of course.’

Hendershott rolled his eyes, as if he had been asked to donate a few thousand gallons of perfume to an old-hookers’ charity.

‘Will the department reimburse me if something happens to them?’ he asked as he reached beneath the counter and retrieved a narrow plastic box with a thin block of Styrofoam along the bottom. He put the mustaches inside and clicked the box shut.

‘Of course,’ Paris answered. He signed the receipt, took the box, dropped it into his pocket and headed once more for the door.

‘They’re fifty dollars, you know,’ Hendershott added. ‘
Each
.’

Paris stopped, turned in the doorway, glanced back. ‘You know, I’m going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that’s why you haven’t sold one in two years.’

UNTIL THE BLUE
Lantern, I hadn’t been completely sure.

We had dared the semi-public venue on a few occasions. Like the time she sat on my lap, wearing a full peasant skirt, sans lingerie, on the crowded RTA. During the twenty-minute ride I was able to work myself out of my zipper and deep into Saila. As we sat in the corner fold-down seat – lost in a forest of overcoats, elbows, umbrellas and briefcases – the rhythm of the train and the nearness of those sweaty strangers brought us both to a silent, blazing orgasm as the car roared through the East Fifty-fifth Street station, the lights dimming and flashing and strobing above us.

But that night at the Blue Lantern was the first time she ever went violent.

She wore a lemon silk dress.

We had eaten only appetizers, so we were still rather frisky, not too weighed down by the food. Friskier than usual perhaps because of the bottle of Wan Fu wine we had polished off and the half-joint of
sensimilla
we had smoked on the way to the restaurant.

‘Fuck me in the bathroom,’ I said.

Her voice dropped a half-octave. ‘Bad little
tomcat
.’

I moved closer, ran my eyes over her chest, her shoulders, up to her mouth.

‘Go into the bathroom,’ I said. ‘Take off everything under your dress and walk back to the table. I want to watch every man in here get hot.’

I glanced at the ‘Rest Rooms’ sign at the back of the restaurant and then at Saila, who was beginning to color. I moved my hand between her legs and squeezed gently. Saila responded with a short gasp and a slight arch of her back, thrusting her breasts up against me. She clamped her thighs around my hand and smiled.

‘What do I get out of this?’ she asked.

I grabbed her hand and brought it under the table. I moved it a few inches down my leg.

‘And what about later?’

A few more.

‘I think I’m going to order us a brandy,’ I said. ‘This is a brandy caper, don’t you think?’

She looked at me, her eyes full of a mischief, and said, ‘Make mine a double.’ She slid out of the booth, grabbed her shoulder-bag and started toward the back of the restaurant.

A full five minutes passed.

Then, a glimpse of silken hair in the dim light of the hallway told me that Saila was coming. The sexy, confident click of her heels on the hardwood floor kept time with my accelerating pulse.

Ten minutes later, in the car, she placed a perfect leg over the front seat and whispered my name. But before we could consummate our passions, we saw Emily Reinhardt walk across the parking-lot.

And everything changed forever.

* * *

If there was a kick to it all, besides the obvious, it was getting ready to go out. Because, despite the danger, despite the
forever
of it all, the foreplay was
my
end of things, and I could never get enough.

It may have been too early in the season but I selected a cream-colored ventless linen sportcoat by Valentino, flat front black slacks. My shirt was a straight-collared white Ike Behar. I wore no tie. My shoes were black Santoni.

Friday.

Saila had said, ‘look smart,’ on the phone and, in British vernacular, one of her favorites, that meant
dress
.

AT 12.40 A.M.
Saturday morning, while Jack Paris stood at the bar at the Emerald Lounge on Euclid Avenue dressed in his borrowed jacket, chatting with a short, thrice-divorced woman named Laurel Bettancourt, the man and woman responsible for the recent wave of killings in Cleveland, the ones who called themselves Saila and Pharaoh, but only after sundown, figured out precisely what they had to do. They knew how risky it was, of course, but they agreed, without discourse, that they had no choice.