Edited to Death (28 page)

“Basketball stats,” offered Stuart.

“I know,” shouted Josh. “Girls!”

“Girls?” Michael inquired.

Josh laughed and carved an hourglass in front of him. “You know, like in
Playboy
—36, 24, 36.”

I fixed Michael with a look. “I can’t imagine where, when, or how he’s seen a
Playboy
,” I said sternly.

“Hetero indoctrination,” said Stuart. “You’ve got to start very early.”

Anya sighed and contributed, “Piers.”

“Piers?”

“Yes,” she said, sighing again. “You know, where the ships come in. And where that
restaurant is—you know, Pier 23? My friend, Harrison, from Good ’n’ Gutters, took
me there to hear music.”

The boys continued their suggestions, getting sillier and giddier by the moment, thoughts
of contraband ice cream for breakfast egging them on.

Michael sipped his wine and looked thoughtful.

“Maggie, wait a minute,” he said.

“Pipe down, you two. What about piers? Suppose there’s something coming in, or going
out? Isn’t what’s-his-toes in partnership with import-export big shots?”

“Orlando,” I said, “John Orlando. Jack Rowland, whoever the hell he is.”

“Mom!” protested Josh.

“Sorry, sweetie. Okay, let me think.” I closed my eyes and pictured the string of
piers, a long necklace of hangar-looking buildings along the Embarcadero. Something
was nagging at me, some little tumblers in the lock, rolling and rolling and not yet
clicking.

I sighed. “I don’t know, Michael. The numbers looked more like numbered art prints.
You know, 16/231572, like that.”

Michael shook his head. “You’re the detective,
cara
, despite all my excellent counsel to the contrary. You and the gang here,” he gestured
at the boys.

“If you please,” protested Anya, “I came up with the pier idea.”

“There you go,” said Michael. “And Anya was motivated by romantic memories. That’s
got to be good luck.”

“Not always,” said Stuart. “Maggie, pass me that wine bottle.”

“Only if you’re spending the night,” I said. “Otherwise, it’s some lovely black coffee
for you.”

After dinner, Stuart and I companionably cleaned up in the kitchen.

“Here we are again,” he said, loading the dishwasher, “two little hausfrauen doing
the dishes.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said, swiping the counters. I took a deep breath. This was
my chance to find out about Quentin’s mysterious access to drugs and money.”

“Hey, Stuart,” I began, “I was just wondering.…”

“Maggie Fiori, girl detective, is back,” he said.

I forged ahead.

“About drugs.”

He looked perplexed. “Drugs?”

“Drugs and Quentin. Did it seem to you that Quentin had a lot of drugs around?”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Oh, recreational stuff.”

Stuart laughed, “Well, old-fashioned stuff. A little hash, lots of dope—marijuana,
I mean.”

“Where’d he get it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. He just always had a stash around. He never introduced
me to his dealer, if that’s what you mean.”

“You think he had a dealer?”

Stuart shrugged. “Meaning somebody who actually sold stuff for a living? Not that
I know of. It’s just that he always seemed pretty well supplied.” He closed the dishwasher.
“He didn’t do drugs all that much,” he said, “but he was pretty generous with his
stuff.”

Almost exactly the same language Stare had used at Hot Licks. “So what about money?
Did Quentin seem worried about it?”

Stuart thought for a moment. “Not really. He wasn’t cavalier about money, and he certainly
thought that Claire was a tightwad and that the magazine didn’t pay him nearly enough.
But he seemed to have enough to live the way he wanted to. Although.…”

“What?”

“Well, it’s funny, you asking about money. Shortly before he died, Quentin told me
we might have to tighten our belts a little in the future.”

“Did he say why?”

“Nope. But he was pretty close mouthed about money.” Stuart leaned against the counter
and shook his head. “I’m sure he thought I was too much of a dim bulb to follow any
complex financial arrangements.”

“Or,” I said, “he was protecting you.”

Stuart shrugged. “Who knows? Too late to speculate.” He leaned over and kissed my
cheek.

“Thanks for dinner, Maggie. It’s nice to hang out with you guys.” And he was gone.

Anya’s pier idea seemed worth passing along to Inspector Moon. After Stuart had disappeared,
I called and left Moon a message. I was tempted to leave it in Spanish to see how
his Neruda study was coming along, but my street Spanish just didn’t seem up to the
task. Plus I didn’t know the word for smuggling.

23

High-Tech Detective

When I hit the office the next morning, Calvin was once again occupying my chair.
Drinking coffee from my cup. Leafing through my magazines on my desk.

I pointed this out to him.

“My, my,” he said, not looking up, “aren’t we proprietary about a—what’d you call
this, a ‘temp’ job?”

“Yeah, well, the mug’s not temp,” I pointed out. “It’s got my name on it.”

Calvin examined the mug and grinned at me. “Well, whaddya know? Hey, aren’t I a secure
guy? Drinking from a mug with a girl’s name on it?”

“Oh, you’re secure, all right,” I observed. “That’s why you’ve got to keep half a
dozen women on the string.”

Calvin’s face lit up with a wicked smile. “Why, Mags? Are you jealous? Would you like
to apply? Actually, I think I’m down to no more than two or three at the moment. There
may be openings. You know, we men of color have to live up to our mythologies.”

Before I could squash him like the inconsequential, ego-driven, testosterone-ridden
fool that he was, Andrea appeared at the door. “Openings?” she asked. “Who’s applying
for what?”

I smiled sweetly at Calvin. “Oh, Calvin will explain.”

He leapt to his feet and gestured I should come take my chair back.

“Another time,” he said. “Now look, girls, as long as all of us are here, let’s have
a little detective catch-up. What say?”

Andrea sat, straight-backed and composed, and regarded Calvin as if he were a lab
specimen. “What say?” she repeated incredulously. “Is there some reason you have to
sound so, so—”

“Episcopalian? “I chimed in.

“Ladies, ladies,” Calvin said. “Let go of those outworn ethnic clichés. This is San
Francisco, this is the millennium, this is multi-culti heaven.”

“You’re right, it is,” I said. “We’ve got detectives who read Neruda, and a dead editor
who slept with people of every persuasion, and his ex-lover who, according to my kids,
has an awesome hook shot, so, why shouldn’t we have a black—excuse me, African-American,
photographer who sounds like a highly privileged, over-educated, spoiled little snot?”

“Because,” Calvin beamed, “that’s exactly what I am. That’s how my Mama raised me.”

“Children, children,” said Andrea, “let’s not have any unpleasantness.”

She raised her hand. “Now, let’s do what Calvin—the aforementioned spoiled brat—suggested.
Let’s review what we do and do not know.”

They both looked at me. Expectantly. I began to protest, thinking about deadlines,
the magazine, the temp job I was beginning to feel a little too passionately attached
to, and the presence of Gertie, the Editor’s Conscience, probably lurking just outside
the door. But, well, the hell with it. I already knew Moon’s passion and priority
about this case had cooled. We were way past seventy-two hours. Michael already knew
I had reneged on my promise to let the police handle things. He’d even said, “go,
fight, win,” hadn’t he? And if we didn’t figure it out.…

“Okay,” I said. “Here goes. First, we can assume that Quentin was murdered by someone
who knew him. No sign of struggle or forced entry. Correct?”

They nodded.

“Next. We know that he was murdered by a tallish woman, or an average sized man. Right-handed.
And we know that shortly before or after the murder, Madame DeBurgos heard the sounds
of very un-Quentin-like music coming out of the apartment.”

“Excuse me, Miss Marple,” said Calvin, “but I have a little theory about that.”

“And that would be.…”

“Suppose whoever did the big guy in just punched the stereo system to create some
noise, any noise. He—or she—wasn’t interested in the music. He or she just wanted
to cover up noise in the apartment. So Madame heard the kind of music she did just
because that’s the CD that happened to be in the player. It’s not that Quentin chose
that music, it just happened to be on because Stuart had been listening to it last.”

Puzzle lines appeared on Andrea’s Grecian brow. “What kind of noise?”

Calvin shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe—”

“Wait!” I yelled. “Wait, suppose the murderer was searching for something, turning
drawers out, rummaging through closets, you know?”

Calvin looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Maggie. How much noise could that cause? And
besides, wouldn’t the cops have found evidence of a search that was so messy?”

“Yeah, okay.”

We sat glum, silent. “Okay, let’s keep going,” Andrea said. “What else do we know?”

“Lots of weird, probably unconnected stuff,” said Calvin.

“On the day he was murdered, Quentin wanted to sic Maggie and me on a story at the
Cock of the Walk.”

We all began talking at once. “Hey, hey,” protested Calvin. “I’ve got the floor. All
right, lots of loose ends there.” He held up his hand and began ticking things off
on his fingers. “One, Mr. Banana Republic, man-of-a-thousand-identities John Orlando
owns the joint. Two, he owns it with a bunch of other folks, also somewhat suspicious.”

“Buyers from Macy’s are suspicious?” Andrea inquired politely.

“Whatever. They are when they’ve been shuttling back and forth from the Far East,
land of sin, opiates and Suzy Wong.”

I laughed. “Boy, are you behind the times, Calvin,” I said. “I think it’s officially
the land of electronic components, capital, and action movies these days.”

“Whatever. May I continue?”

Andrea and I exchanged a glance and nodded at him. “Okay, so there’s John Orlando,
but he’s got his ass covered with some convenient alibi for the time of the murder.
On the other hand, he does have this squirrelly thing going on with these anal little
illustrations, and clearly he had Quentin over some barrel about running them.”

“And they had to be run at a certain time.”

“Huh?” Calvin and Andrea were staring at me.

“That’s what was nagging at me last night when the kids were coming up with theories
about these numbers. Remember?”

They both looked blank.

I was getting that edgy, something’s-about-to-happen feeling I get when I’m on a roll
with a story. “See, here’s what I mean. Suppose those little numbers in the bottom
of John’s illustrations were coded signals for something that had to happen at a certain
time?”

“Like what?” Andrea asked.

“Like, like,” Calvin was on his feet, pacing, “something getting delivered? Or someone
important arriving?”

“Deliveries?” came a voice from the door. It was Glen. Andrea waved him in and patted
the couch next to her.

“Hi, it’s the a.m. session of the Happy Detectives Club. Come on in.”

He leaned against the doorjamb. “No, thanks, not my kind of thing. And besides, I
thought Maggie had been persuaded to give all that up.” He waved a sheaf of page proofs
at me. “So will you have time to look at these later this morning?”

“I will. I do, right this minute,” I said. “Scram, you guys; I am supposed to be working
for a living. Actually, we all are. We’ll leave this to the cops.”

Andrea and Calvin exchanged glances. “But, Maggie—” began Calvin. I held up my hand.
“Enough, guys. Really, truly, I’ve got to get through a pile of stuff today.” Calvin
sighed and reached a hand out to Andrea.

“Come on, Andrea, let’s go back to your office and I’ll see if I can’t have my way
with you on that tidy desk of yours.”

Andrea shot Calvin a serene, pitying look, ignored his hand and sailed out the door.

Glen perched on the edge of my desk, shaking his head. “Formidable conquest, that
Andrea. Calvin’s a brave man.”

“He’s a nitwit,” I said. “He doesn’t know any better. You should see the kind of girl
he’s used to.”

“I have,” said Glen. He began sorting through the proofs, circling corrections in
the margins for me to see. “Maggie,” he said, “I thought you were retired from the
detective enterprise.”

“I am, I am,” I lied. “But the cops keep showing up at Michael’s office to ask him
questions.”

Glen frowned, “Surely they can’t think Michael was involved.”