Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss (2 page)

“Oh, yeah, that’s weird…is that a formal dining room?” I ran past Scott into the next room. Sure enough, it was a dining room, and it was stunning. Not huge, but certainly bigger than anything I’d ever had. Right now it contained an antique oak sideboard complete with carved winged griffins and a beveled mirror. It also held a table that was long and rectangular and covered with a white lace tablecloth. In fact, the table was set as if someone had been preparing for a dinner party of six. There were two beautiful silver candleholders holding long, tapered cream candles, and each place setting shone with Victorian rose-patterned fine china.

“He set the table?” Scott choked.

“Guess he thought that setting the table would give the place a little more ambiance or something,” I muttered, glancing over at the door that led to the kitchen. There had to be a problem with the kitchen, right? No house was perfect.

I carefully stepped inside and broke into a grin—a totally charming kitchen. The cabinets were white, and while I usually prefer a natural wood finish, this white actually worked well with the Victorian ambiance. There wasn’t a huge amount of counter space, which would be a problem for Anatoly, who loved to cook almost as much as I loved to eat, but I could always put in an island or something.

The thought tickled me. Last month, Anatoly and I had been on the Marina watching the ferries riding over the bay. He had kissed my cheek and then my neck while mumbling about the way the salt water tasted on my skin. Then, out of the blue he had taken my hand and suggested we move in together. He wanted to wake up with me in the morning…every morning. Only a year ago he had expressed discomfort with the level of commitment implied by the words
boyfriend
and
girlfriend
and now he wanted to share his life with me. It had almost made me cry.

Almost. The truth was that I didn’t want to move him into my apartment, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to move into his. I have come to believe that domestic partnerships have a higher chance of success when they exist within spacious houses. Conversely, cramped quarters and limited closet space is a recipe for domestic violence. But Anatoly made significantly less money than I did, so if my dreams of romance and elbow room were going to come to fruition I was going to have to find a house that fit
my
budget. He could help me with the mortgage if he chose (and I knew he would), but the down payment was a burden I would have to bear alone. I hadn’t detailed my objections for Anatoly, knowing that he would have dismissed them. Instead, I had stalled for time with whispered abstract promises of future arrangements. He hadn’t argued, but he hadn’t been happy, either.

I glanced at a paned glass door in the back of the room and was hit by yet another wonderful revelation. “Scott,
this place has a yard?
Why didn’t you tell me?” I ran to the door and flung it open. Yes, the yard was about the size of your average master bathroom, but in San Francisco any house that came with grass was a huge commodity.

“He took his small appliances with him.” Scott was now standing in the doorway. “The man took his appliances to the Nikko.”

“Or maybe he moved them into a storage unit,” I suggested, not really caring what had happened to some soon-to-be ex-owner’s toaster oven. I walked across the room and opened a door discreetly adjacent to the pantry. “Or maybe he put them in here with the washer and dryer.”

“Huh?” Scott peeked inside and noted the coffee machine, blender and a few other basic kitchen tools on the floor of the laundry room. “Why would he do this?”

“Why are you so freaked out by it? The guy wants to sell his house so he spruced it up a bit. That’s normal, Scott. As a real-estate agent I would think you would know that.”

“Sophie, the reason I got this listing is because I know the owner. Oscar and I…travel in some of the same circles.”

My eyes slanted in suspicion. “
You,
the man who once speculated that life after sixty wouldn’t be worth living—
you
travel in the same circles as a seventy-year-old with the beginnings of Alzheimer’s.”

“He’s a friend of…a friend. He called me at, like, six this morning all agitated and upset, insisting that I come over immediately and help him sell this place. I made him wait until eight and then I sat and listened to him rant about the ghosts who were driving him out of his house. He’s not well, Sophie. In addition to the mental stuff he’s got a heart condition. There’s no way he has the physical strength to move the furniture around. This is just weird.”

“Maybe he just called another friend…someone who travels in his eclectic circles, and asked him to help fix the place up. Really, Scott, for a man who has mastered the fine art of lying you sure don’t have a very good imagination.” I shut the door to the laundry room. “Show me the bedrooms.”

Scott’s expression morphed again, this time into something that made my stomach churn. “Soapy, I thought you’d never ask.”

He showed me the one downstairs bedroom (which would make a great office) and half bath, then led me up the staircase and brought me to the second bedroom and full bath. They were both beautiful. The house was so underpriced it was
sick.
But sick in a good way. I could deal with this kind of sick.

With each room Scott made another comment about how everything was different from this morning. When we looked at the second bedroom he shook his head and pointed to a ceramic vase that hadn’t been there before. “It’s weird,” he insisted again. “It’s like he tried to make this place look more…” He snapped his fingers a few times as if trying to command the word he was looking for to pop into his mouth.
“Victorian,”
he finally said. “He made the place look more Victorian.”

“It’s a Victorian house, Scott. What did you expect? That he would try to make the place look art deco?”

“I didn’t expect
anything,
that’s the point! I thought he was just going to leave and let me deal with fixing it up for the sale. You should have seen him this morning. He didn’t even feel comfortable hanging around here to talk. Now I’m supposed to believe that he spent the day here redecorating and cleaning?”

“Are you going to show me the master bedroom or are you going to just stand here flipping out over a vase?”

“Right, the master bedroom…let’s just hope he didn’t get rid of the bed, I’d really like to show you that….” But the flirtation lacked conviction. Oscar the redecorator had thrown Scott off his game.

The door to the master bedroom was closed and for a second I entertained a disturbing thought. “You don’t suppose he’s in there, do you? Maybe he’s been sleeping the whole time we’ve been wandering around his house.”

“Oscar assured me that he would be out of here by six at the latest.” He reached forward and opened the door to reveal a charming, if somewhat foul-smelling, room with delicate moldings and paned glass doors that were left open to reveal a pretty little deck—and there was Oscar…sitting on the bed…mouth wide-open…face tilted up toward the ceiling. It didn’t look like a natural position and he didn’t acknowledge us.

He didn’t move at all.

“Oscar?” There was a slight tremor in Scott’s voice.

I crept toward him. “Hello?” I whispered, although I had an ugly suspicion that I could scream and not get a reaction out of Oscar. Something crinkled under my foot and I realized that I had just stepped on a bunch of antique photos. They had that lovely golden glow that always made me think of horse-drawn wagons and Ellis Island immigrants. But these photos weren’t of people, they were of rooms. I was tempted to take a moment to examine them more closely, but I knew that was just my natural inclination to put off the inevitable. “Oscar? I’m Sophie…can you hear me?” I got a little closer and very carefully checked for a pulse. Nothing.

I pulled my hand away and stared at the two white prints the pressure of my fingers had left on the corpse’s flesh.

“Scott, I think he’s dead.”

“You
think?
” Scott asked.

I looked down at Oscar’s lower half and realized his pants were wet with urine, which explained the smell. “He’s definitely dead.”

I waited for Scott to respond and when he didn’t I turned to look at him.

“Scott?”

He held up a finger as if to indicate that he needed a minute, then ran to the attached bathroom where I could hear him promptly regurgitate whatever it was that he’d had for dinner.

And now I was alone with a dead stranger. Hesitantly, I turned back to Oscar. I didn’t see any blood or sign that he had struggled with someone, although the expression on his face was anything but peaceful. He looked kind of horrified, like he had seen the grim reaper. My eyes traveled to his left hand. His fingers were curled around a piece of jewelry. I leaned over, not wanting to touch him again, and realized that the jewelry was actually an antique brooch with a cameo. Little goose bumps materialized all over my skin and I tried to suppress the anxiety building within me. I wished Scott would pull himself together and handle this. But I expected that would take a while. Scott liked to deal in fantasies and what-ifs. Death was one of those things that was just too real for him.

I turned my back to the body. Actually, this was a little too real for me, too. With shaky hands, I gathered up the photos I had stepped on. One Victorian room after another…a bedroom, a dining room…
this
bedroom,
this
dining room. These were pictures of the house as it once was. The furniture had been different, obviously, but not the placement. Oscar had rearranged his furniture to fit the images in these pictures. Even the table setting was similar. Mechanically, I turned back around.

“How did you die, Oscar?” I whispered. I reached over and tentatively touched the brooch in his hand. It was cold, colder than the dead hand holding it. The colorless depiction of the woman on the cameo was surely meant to be flattering, but to me her sharp chin and unseeing eyes appeared sinister. It was then that I became vaguely aware that I was frightened.

At that moment Scott stumbled out of the bathroom and looked purposely at the floor. “So,” he said in a scratchy voice, “do you still want the house?”

“Report this,” I said pointing to the phone on the nightstand closest to Scott. “Dial 911 and tell them we found a dead man.”

Scott looked up at the phone, noted its proximity to the bed and then quickly looked away. “Didn’t I read that you discovered a body in Golden Gate Park a few years back?” he asked hopefully. “You have more experience with this kind of thing. Why don’t you call?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, be a man, Scott,” I said, once again inching away from the body.

“I am a man! I just happen to be a man who suffers from necrophobia.”

“What?”

“I have a fear of dead things. I’m working on overcoming it. Still, this,” he waved toward the bed without looking at it, “is a bit much for me to deal with.”

“You weren’t necrophobic when we were married.”

“Yes, I was, we just didn’t talk about it. Remember how upset I got when we went to that restaurant and they served us the fish with its head still on? That was a traumatic moment for me, Sophie.”

“Wow, Scott. I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Now suck it up and call the police.” I stared at the floor. The urine was getting to me. The smell had been bad when we first entered the room, but now that I knew what it was and why it was there, it had become unbearable. I had to get out of the room.

Scott swallowed hard and then pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll call from this.” He walked over to the bedroom door and motioned for me to exit with him, which I gladly did. I left the pictures where I had found them.

As we walked down the stairs Scott dialed 911 and I used my cell phone to dial Anatoly’s number.

“Hey there.” The lightness of Anatoly’s tone was jarring considering my circumstances. “I was just thinking about you. A minute ago I accepted another case and it turns out my new client is a huge fan of your books.” Anatoly was a P.I. and lately it seemed that everybody in San Francisco wanted his services. Businesses wanted to prove that their employees were stealing, wives wanted to prove that their husbands were cheating and so on and so forth. But right now all of those problems seemed paltry and inconsequential.

“Anatoly, I’m in Ashbury Heights.” It was amazing how I could keep my voice smooth even as my hands shook. “A Realtor was just giving me a tour of this Victorian he’s representing and—”

“Now? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

“Yeah, I know it’s unusual, but that’s not why I’m calling. Listen, the owner’s here and he’s sort of…dead.”

There was a moment of silence followed by a Russian curse. “You found another dead body.”

“It would seem that way, yes.”

“Are you safe?”

“Yeah, I’m here with the real-estate agent and he’s calling 911.” Scott and I had now reached the bottom of the stairs and he was standing by the bay windows answering some dispatcher’s questions. “The owner was old so he probably died of natural causes. Still, could you come over? I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been through something like this, you know that and…well, you’d think it would get easier, but…”

“Tell me how to get there and I’ll come over immediately.”

I looked up at Scott. He was describing the state of the body to someone on the phone and gagging between sentences. Thank God for Anatoly because I was pretty sure Scott wasn’t going to be that big of a comfort to me.

2

Smart Agoraphobics Invest in Real Estate.

—
The Lighter Side of Death

LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES LATER, A POLICE CAR AND AN AMBULANCE
arrived. The paramedics and one of the two officers immediately went upstairs to check out the body while the other officer, a sergeant with salt-and-pepper hair and a face like Paul McCartney, lingered in the living room to ask Scott and me a few questions. He introduced himself as Sergeant Poplar, but in my head he was Sergeant Pepper. After giving him a quick rundown of why we were there and what we had found, his partner (a cute blond woman who looked more cheerleader than cop) appeared at the top of the stairs and said something about it looking like “natural causes,” at which point Sergeant Pepper asked us to stick around while he took a look for himself. Once both officers were out of sight, Scott and I simultaneously collapsed on the couch and stared up at the vaulted ceiling.

“Well,” Scott said dully, “I’ve never had a house showing like this before.”

“Did you know Oscar well?” I asked. The cushions on the couch were overstuffed to the point of discomfort, but neither Scott nor I moved to find a better seat.

He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “He’s more Venus’s friend.”

“Who’s Venus?”

But before he could answer Anatoly burst through the door. His hands were still encased in the thick black gloves he so frequently wore while riding his Harley, and he creased his forehead in concern. Without a second thought I went to him and he received me with a tight embrace. “You seem to have a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he scolded, but his tone was gentle and comforting.

“I just wanted to see the house,” I said, my words muffled by his shirt.

Anatoly pulled back slightly and took in his surroundings. “Nice,” he noted before his eyes landed on Scott. “I take it you’re the Realtor?”

Scott nodded and wiped his palm sweat on his designer jeans before extending his hand to Anatoly. “Scott Colvin, Sophie’s Realtor, friend and ex-husband.”

Anatoly’s smile of greeting froze midhandshake.

“He’s lying,” I said quickly. “At least about being my Realtor, or my friend for that matter.”

“And the ex-husband part?” Anatoly asked, keeping his eyes on Scott. He hadn’t let go of his hand yet, and judging from Scott’s expression, Anatoly’s grip had gotten a little tighter than necessary.

“That part’s true.”

Anatoly released Scott and turned to me. “You came to this house in the middle of the night with your ex-husband?”

“Eight-thirty’s the middle of the night?” Scott asked. “Guess you must be an early-to-bed guy. Sophie and I have always been night owls.”

“We haven’t seen each other in ten years, Scott,” I hissed. “You have no idea what my sleeping habits are like now.” The cool damp breeze coming in from the open door was beginning to get to me and I rubbed the back of my arms in an attempt to increase my circulation.

Scott cocked his head to the side, and shot me the first real grin since we had discovered Oscar. “There’s no way you’ve turned into an early bird. Not my Soapy.”

“Soapy?” Anatoly raised his eyebrows.

“You didn’t tell him about that nickname?” Scott chuckled and refocused on Anatoly. “Man, you’re going to love how she got it. We were washing her car and she was wearing these Daisy Duke shorts and this sheer white tank top—”

“They were
regular denim shorts
and the tank was not sheer,” I snapped. “I can’t believe you’re trying to play juvenile head games while the paramedics upstairs are trying to determine the cause of death of one of your friends.”

“Whose friend is dead?” a Kathleen Turner–type voice demanded.

We all turned toward the front door and standing there was a human hanger.

Actually “human hanger” was my friend Dena’s term. She used it for runway models and those who looked like them; in other words, women who were too skinny, angular and narrow in the hips to look sexy in lingerie, but managed to make clothes look fabulous. This particular hanger was hanging a delicate off-white long-sleeve top under a spaghetti-strap charcoal-gray empire wool dress. The outfit would have made me look like a matronly dwarf. She, on the other hand, looked ethereal. She glided over to Scott and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Scott, darling, who’s dead?”

“Venus, what are you doing here?” he croaked.

She pulled back, her height enabling her to look him in the eyes without tilting her head. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me, darling. I asked you who was dead. That
is
what you said, isn’t it?” she asked, whirling around to look at me. “You said that there were paramedics upstairs determining the cause of someone’s death.”

“I think you should answer your girlfriend’s questions, Scott,” Anatoly suggested. “This woman is your girlfriend, right?”

Scott nodded mutely.

“Then why don’t you explain to her what Sophie was talking about. Fill her in on what’s happened and what it was you said that got Sophie so irritated.”

“Your name is Sophie?” Venus asked. She truly was beautiful. Her skin was a creamy-white and her chestnut hair, which was pulled into a loose, low ponytail, had enough sheen to make an Herbal Essence model jealous. Her features were kind of perfect, to the point that I had to wonder if she had been crafted by genetics, or a very talented plastic surgeon. When I stared directly at her I could see that she was wearing makeup, perhaps a lot of it, but everything was so perfectly blended and the tones so muted that it managed to look natural. The only things that didn’t quite fit were her hands, which were a little too big to match an otherwise delicate figure. However even this inconsistency served her well, making her seem a bit more powerful than her heart-shaped mouth would suggest.

But she wasn’t nice. I could just tell. Something about the icy sheen in her green eyes hinted at a foul temperament.

“What’s your last name?” she demanded, not waiting for me to answer her first question.

I inched a little closer to Anatoly. “My last name is Katz.”

“This is your ex-wife, Scott,” Venus said slowly. “How interesting.” Her mouth curved into a wry smile. “Now, someone is going to tell me why we’re all here and why there’s a police car and ambulance outside. I know Oscar’s staying at the Nikko tonight so—”

Scott put a firm hand on her shoulder and turned her back around to face him. “Venus, Oscar didn’t get to the Nikko.”

I couldn’t see Venus’s face, but her body had gone absolutely still.

“I’m so sorry, love. We found him in his bed and—”

“Stop.” Venus’s voice was shaky and discordant. She moved away from Scott and farther into the house, pausing before the fireplace. As skinny as she was she still had the presence to fill up the spacious room. “I don’t want to hear this from you. I want to hear it from Oscar.”

Anatoly and I gave Scott a questioning look. “Right…” Then Scott looked longingly at the door. “Venus, um, sees dead people.”

“Feel,” Venus corrected. “I can feel them. The circumstances in this room aren’t right for a ghost to actually make an appearance right now.”

Anatoly stared at her for a few seconds before pulling me closer so my ear was near his lips. “Why don’t I take you home and we’ll let your ex deal with the crazy woman.”

“I heard that,” Venus called over her shoulder. She turned around again to face us, her posture upright and her head high. A single tear trickled out of the corner of her eye and she allowed it to slide down her cheek, unchecked. Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of shedding tears in front of strangers, but Venus wore hers like a badge of honor. The effect was disconcerting because instead of making her seem vulnerable, the pride she seemed to have in her own grief made her appear stronger and maybe even a little bit unnatural. She reached a hand out to Scott and he was instantly by her side as she whispered, “I knew he wasn’t well, but I thought he had more time than this. It was a…natural death, wasn’t it? No one did him harm?”

“I think it was natural,” Scott said quietly. “Venus, why did you come here?”

But before she could answer, the police and the paramedics came down the stairs. The paramedics went out to the ambulance to fetch a stretcher while the police officers stayed to talk to us. “It was most likely a stroke or a massive heart attack,” Sergeant Pepper explained after establishing Anatoly’s and Venus’s identity and collecting all of our phone numbers and addresses. “We’ll need to do an autopsy, but there’s no evidence of homicide here.”

“Someone needs to tell his son,” Venus said. “Poor Kane will be devastated. I don’t believe he’s ever even recovered from the death of his mother.”

“Do you know how we can reach Mr. Crammer’s son?” the female cop asked.

“I have his number stored in my cell phone.” Venus glanced down at her hands as if expecting to find the cell there. “I must have left it in the car.” She gestured toward the door and a moment later she had Scott and both officers escorting her to her parking spot.

“So if Scott isn’t your real-estate agent, why did you come here with him?” Anatoly asked as we stepped aside to allow the paramedics to come in with a stretcher.

“He was the agent representing the open house I went to this afternoon,” I said once the paramedics were upstairs again. “It was a total coincidence.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question, Sophie.”

“He told me about a house that just went on the market this morning and when he described it I knew I had to see it. I mean, look around you! This place is so
me!
”

Anatoly scanned the living room with disinterest. “Real-estate agents usually don’t give tours after dark.”

“He wanted to show me the house before anyone else and I agreed because he said that if I made the first bid I might be able to get it for nine-eighty.”

Anatoly’s head snapped in my direction. “This house is worth a million-seven easy.”

“Oscar wanted out of the house.” I walked over to the bookcases and fingered a hardbound edition of Jean-Paul Sartre’s plays. It was the most contemporary of all the literature held by the mahogany shelves. “He said it was haunted.”

Anatoly snorted. “Didn’t Scott tell him to up the price?”

“My guess is he was planning on making the suggestion, but probably not if I was the prospective buyer. Apparently Scott grew a conscience in the ten years since our divorce and now he wants to make up for all the wrongs he’s committed against me by setting me up in my very own Ashbury Heights three-bedroom.” My voice faded off at the end of my sentence. I had been so disturbed by the discovery of Oscar’s body I hadn’t yet thought about how his death was going to affect the deal. This house now belonged to Oscar’s son. What if he didn’t want to sell it? And even if he did, he probably wouldn’t want to do it for only $980,000. My hand moved from the book to the bookshelf and I clutched it so hard my thumb began to cramp, as if I could make this house mine if I just held on to it.

“It’s for the best,” Anatoly said, correctly reading my thoughts. “If you were to buy this place it would come with strings attached. By not convincing Oscar to sell at market, Scott was giving up on at least $20,000 of commission. Men don’t make those kinds of sacrifices because they want to make amends for the past. Those kinds of sacrifices are only made when men think they will be repaid with power or sex.”

“Well, obviously.” I spun around to face him. “That’s what makes my possible inability to buy this house all the more painful. How fabulous would it have been if I had been able to cheat Scott out of a huge commission and then turn around and reject him? Do you have any idea how much I wanted to inflict that kind of pain and suffering on that bastard? He used my distress over my father’s death as a way to worm his way into my life and then he screwed me over in every way you can think of. Do you know that he sold a diamond pendant my father gave me to a pawnshop just to keep some bookie from breaking his legs? And the bookie’s name was Vinny! Everybody knows you’re not supposed to borrow money from bookies named Vinny! He was not only a bastard, but he was a
stupid
bastard!”

Anatoly opened his mouth to respond, but then abruptly closed it when the paramedics reappeared. They were carrying Oscar on the stretcher and his body was covered in a white sheet. With his face hidden, the corpse took on an anonymity that scared me. The body being carried down the stairs could have been anybody. In fact, my father’s body had looked just like that when they put a sheet over him and carried him out of my parents’ house twelve years ago.

That isn’t my father,
I reminded myself. I pulled up the image of Oscar’s countenance and held it in my mind as Anatoly and I watched the stretcher go out the door. This was the body of a stranger who had been foolish enough to rearrange all his heavy furniture despite his age and reportedly bad health. No wonder he had a stroke.

My eyes moved to the couch. When I had first seen it all, I could think of was how unstylish it was. But I hadn’t thought about its mass.

I walked over to the armrest and threw all my weight into trying to push it forward. It moved, but only a half of an inch.

“What are you doing?” Anatoly asked.

“I couldn’t move this,” I said slowly. “Not by myself.”

“So don’t,” Anatoly wisely suggested.

“I won’t, but Oscar did. He had to have had help.”

“Excuse me.” Sergeant Pepper was standing in the doorway looking bored and irritated. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you both to leave the house.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s not yours,” he said. “If you stay you’ll be trespassing.”

With that statement my potential loss hit me with renewed force. I had already fallen in love with this place. I wanted it, and I wasn’t good at walking away from things that I wanted.