Sex, Murder and a Double Latte (11 page)

I dropped the book.

There was no uncertainty this time. And if it had been in the right place before I went to bed and if I hadn’t left the apartment since then that meant someone had been in here….

“Oh my God.” I could see the front door from where I stood. It was bolted and locked. I couldn’t see any evidence of forced entry, but then there was always the window. Had they come in when I was asleep? When I was taking a shower? Were they still here? I tried to block out the faint street noise that filtered through my bay window in order to focus on any sounds that might be coming from inside. I thought I heard a quiet
thump
—so subtle that I couldn’t swear that I had heard it at all. It could’ve been nothing. A figment of my overly anxious mind or a bird that had inadvertently brushed against the panes of glass in the bedroom.

Or it could’ve been an intruder lying in wait.

Mr. Katz purred and curled around my feet. Keeping my back against the bookcase, I bent my knees and with one arm scooped up the cat and with the other carefully picked up the book by the pages without touching the cover. I straightened to a standing position.

“Are you ready, Mr. Katz?” Mr. Katz struggled against me.

I took that as a yes and ran for the door. I fumbled with the locks, almost dropping the book and my pet. I needed to get out. I needed to get out and call the police, and this time they were going to take me seriously. I flew out the door and down a flight of stairs to the flat below, Mr. Katz hissing and clawing the whole way as I held him in a death grip. I pounded on the door of my neighbor’s quarters.

“Theresa, it’s me, Sophie. Let me in, it’s an emergency.”

Theresa threw open the door looking predictably sour-faced. Her expression became even more pinched when she saw Mr. Katz. “If you think you are going to bring that flea-bitten animal into my home…”

I pushed past her. “Theresa, I’m not kidding, there really is an emergency. I need to use your phone.”

“You’re trespassing. If you and your rodent don’t get out of my flat this instant I am going to call the police. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Here, I’ll save you the trouble.” I dropped Mr. Katz in favor of her princess phone sitting on the antique side table.

“Nine-one-one emergency,” a voice recited on the other end of the line.

“Someone’s broken into my home.”

“Are they still on the premises?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are you, ma’am?”

“I’m at my neighbor’s in the apartment below.”

“What’s the number of your place?”

I gave her all the necessary information. After listening to my end of the conversation, Theresa seemed somewhat less inclined to kick me out and instead pulled a kitchen chair under her doorknob. The dispatcher didn’t let me off the phone until the assigned officers buzzed the apartment. I picked up my book and Mr. Katz, who, by this time, was only marginally less traumatized than myself, and fought the urge to kick the door down as I waited for Theresa to let us out. I stepped out into the foyer just in time to see Officer Gorman coming up the stairs. We looked at each other, unsure of how to react.

Gorman’s partner, a short, muscular young guy, ran up the stairs after him. He looked at Gorman questioningly.

Gorman nodded to him. “The next one up.” He jerked his head back in my direction. “It’s open?”

“Yeah, I didn’t hang around long enough to lock up.”

“Stay here.” He and the short guy took the stairs two at a time.

I knew that I should stay where I was, but now that the police were there to give me a false sense of security I felt my curiosity getting the better of me. I gave them a few minutes to get in and look around before cautiously climbing the stairs after them. When I stepped through my door, Mr. Katz leaped out of my arms and dashed under the coffee table, a maneuver that almost sent Officer Gorman sprawling.

I shrank into the corner. “Sorry about that, he’s a little nervous.”

“Uh-huh.”

The young cop came out of the bedroom. “No sign of anybody here. No sign of forced entry either.”

“Nope.”

I slammed my fist against the wall. “I did not make this up. Somebody was here. I don’t know if they came and left in the middle of the night or if they were here more recently, but I know they were here.”

The young one scratched the back of his head. “What was it that alerted you?”

“There was a book out of place.”

A good sixty seconds passed before either of them found his voice. Finally Gorman cleared his throat. “A book?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. This just couldn’t be happening again. “Okay, I know how lame that sounds, but you have to hear me out on this. I am not a crackpot. I know someone was here and I know it was the same person who vandalized my car.”

Gorman sat down on the couch and the other officer leaned against the wall wearing a rather bemused expression.

I took a shaky deep breath. I had to make them believe me. “Okay, I told you about
Sex, Drugs and Murder,
right?”

“Sex, Drugs and Murder? Is that one of those alternative lifestyle courses they teach at Berkeley?” asked the young cop. Gorman lifted his hand as if to say, Don’t ask.

“Look.” I held the book out in front of me by the corner of two pages. “This is the book. This is also the book that was out of place on my bookshelf. It was placed on its back so that it was sticking out. Someone wants to be sure that I know that they are reenacting my book. And I think I just might be playing the part of the murder victim.”

Neither of the officers said anything.

“All right. Maybe I’m not the murder victim. Maybe I’m the protagonist, Alicia Bright, and it’s my job to figure out the crime. But I could be Kittie. Don’t you guys get it? What the fuck am I supposed to do if I’m Kittie, the victim?”

“Drink milk?”

The young cop busted up laughing.

I bit down on my tongue. What exactly was the penalty for assaulting an officer? “You know, my life might be at stake here. Is it too much to ask that you pretend to care?”

The young cop pulled a glove out of his pocket and after putting it on took the book. “Tell you what. If it’ll make you feel better, we can dust this for prints. You’ll have to come down to the station and give us a set of your own prints so we can compare. If someone with a criminal history has touched this, we’ll know.”

Gorman looked at the other cop as if he had caught my infectious disease.

“Hey, what can it hurt? Joey’s working today, he’ll do it.” Gorman shook his head but didn’t offer any protests. The cop turned back to me. “How ’bout you? You up for it?”

Okay, they may not have been convinced that I was sane, but they were at least willing to check out my story. I put a calming hand on my stomach. “Thank you so much. Can we do that now?”

Gorman rose to his feet. “Yep.” He motioned for his partner to follow him out, but before he made any progress I reached out a restraining hand.

“I’ve got a question.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was there ever a point in your life in which you spoke in full sentences?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so.”

When I got back to the apartment, Mr. Katz was still hiding under the coffee table. I tossed my purse on a chair and prepared a bowl of kibble as a means of apology. The trip to the police station had been awful. The only prints on the book were mine. Neither Gorman nor his partner thought anything I said held any credibility, and for a few scary moments I thought I was going to be booked for making a prank call to 911. Were they right? Was I losing my mind? I looked over at the empty space on the top bookshelf.

No, someone had been there. Someone was toying with me.

I placed the bowl of cat food in front of the coffee table, and Mr. Katz cautiously inched out from underneath.

I gently stroked my cat’s ruffled fur. “Maybe we should stay somewhere else for a while.” But what good would staying somewhere else be? I would still have to go outside. And how long would I have to stay away from my home before it was safe? A week? A month? How would I know?

I used my index fingers to apply gentle pressure to my temples. There had to be a smart thing to do. I just had to figure out what it was.

The phone interrupted my thoughts. I put my hand on the receiver and let it ring again. I was actually leery about answering my own phone. I shook my head. I couldn’t let them do this to me. I wouldn’t. I picked it up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“I’ve got to get out of the house.”

“Leah, this really isn’t a good time.” I collapsed onto the love seat. Ever since my sister had given birth to my nephew a year and a half ago, our contact had been reduced to frequent quasi-therapy sessions in which I listened patiently and pretended to empathize with her trials and tribulations as a stay-at-home mom. Normally I could rise to the occasion, but at the moment I was a bit too caught up in the trials and tribulations of being a potential homicide victim.

“I’m not kidding, Sophie. Jack is absolutely driving me nuts. I cannot spend another day following him around the house as he systematically tears the place apart. You’re taking us out to lunch at Chevy’s.”

“I am? I hadn’t realized. Am I paying?”

“Of course you’re paying. It’s your way of being supportive of me while I’m on the edge of a breakdown.”

“How considerate of me. Where’s your husband?”

“Bob had a golf game today.”

“Is that his way of being supportive?”

I could practically hear Leah grimace.

“Are you going to meet me at Chevy’s or not?”

I considered the alternatives. Go to lunch with my sister and her toddler son, or hang around my place and wait for someone to hack me up with an ax. It was a tough choice but the scale did seem to be tipping slightly in Leah’s favor. “You’ll have to pick me up—my car’s out of commission.”

“So now I have to drive across the city just to have lunch at Chevy’s?”

I loved my sister. Really I did. “You don’t have to drive anywhere, Leah, you could stay home. But if you want to have lunch with me, particularly if you want me to
treat
you, then yes, you’ll have to come get me.”

“Fine. We’ll go to the Chevy’s at the Embarcadero, then. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Be ready, I don’t want to have to wait long with Jack in the car.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Whatever.” I hung up and went back to trying to massage my headache away.

An hour and a half later Leah buzzed the apartment. I gave Mr. Katz a goodbye pet. “I’m going out for a little while. If anyone tries to break in while I’m gone, I want you to meow really loud, okay?” Mr. Katz kneaded the rug in response.

I met my sister down at her car and slipped into the front passenger seat. “Have trouble getting out of the house?”

“You have no idea.” Leah pushed her Volvo into Drive and headed toward the Embarcadero.

I twisted myself into a position so that I could see the back seat. “Hi, Jack! How are you today?”

“NO!”

“Jack’s going through a ‘no’ phase,” Leah said.

“A ‘no’ phase—got it.” I didn’t get it at all, but then again I didn’t have to. All I had to do was remember to use contraceptives.

Leah pressed a button to crack open the moonroof. “Half the reason I’m late is that nitwit Cheryl.”

I made a face at the mention of Leah’s sister-in-law’s name. She
was
a nitwit. Kind of like her brother.

“She called while I was trying to get Jack together and I simply could not get her off the phone. Can you believe she’s still groaning about that whole Tolsky thing?”

“The Tolsky thing?” I pulled the sun visor down and checked my lipstick in the mirror. “Why, was she going to write a screenplay for him too?”

“No, she just thought she was going to get to meet him.” Jack began to babble to himself as Leah carefully maneuvered around a cable car. “He made a reservation at the Ritz the morning before he killed himself. Cheryl had the pleasure of taking the reservation and canceling it.”

I snapped the sun visor back up. “Wait a minute, you’re telling me that Tolsky made a reservation at a San Francisco hotel less than twenty-four hours before he killed himself?”

“Apparently so. Can you imagine how impossible Cheryl would have been if she
had
met him? It’s bad enough listening to her go on and on about the time she met Meg Ryan. I mean, she’s a hotel clerk, not a Hollywood insider.”

“Leah, doesn’t that seem strange to you? Why would anyone make a hotel reservation shortly before committing suicide?”

“Who knows what he was thinking? The man was obviously sick. Did you see his movie
Deathly Seduction?
Ugh. Anyone who could produce and direct something so—”

Jack let out a scream at a pitch that would have damaged the hearing of a dog. Leah whipped her head back in his direction to chastise him.

“Leah, look out,” I gasped.

She brought her attention back to the street just in time to miss a bicyclist, but in doing so almost slammed the car into a bus. The tires squealed against the pavement as she struggled to gain control. She hit the brakes and the car jerked to a stop as the traffic light turned red. I sat immobile, clinging to the door.

Leah cleared her throat. “Jack’s going through a screaming phase too.”

I’m never having kids.

For the rest of the ride Leah focused on driving and I focused on deep-breathing exercises. When we arrived at our destination Leah locked Jack into a high chair and collapsed into her own seat. “God, I’m tired. Jack had a bad night last night.”

Well, he was having one hell of an afternoon. I flipped open the menu. “Have some coffee.”

“That will just make me agitated.”

“Then have a margarita.”

“Sophie, you can’t think that I would drink alcohol while watching Jack.”

“Okay,
I’ll
have a margarita.”

“Hello, ladies, would you like to order something to drink while you decide?” asked a young man with bright red hair and a smile that was only somewhat strained.