You Don't Know Jack Page 12

  She started to frown and I realized I was wrong on all counts. It was my scratched and patched face.

  "Ms. Smart," she said in a tone that asked what I was doing darkening her door.

  I took in the too round face that no amount of dieting would thin. I'd assumed she'd won the confectionery nickname from her fudge brown page boy with the vanilla ice cream streak and unnatural sheen like waxed coating. But maybe it had more to do with her smelling like mint candy. She was still eyeing my bandages.

  "You should see the other guy," I said, deciding to play it friendly.

  "Looks painful." She wore mourning-black including an arm band. "I heard about your accident."

  Heard about it? Or caused it? Was she the one who'd pushed me into the path of that speeding car? My mouth went dry and anger shredded my self-preservation instinct. "It will take more than a little push to get rid of me."

  She ignored the reference to attempted murder. She pulled back the chair opposite me. "May I?"

  I stopped my eyebrows just short of giving away my surprise. I figured I'd be lucky to find her at this store today, lucky to get her to give me the time of day. But here she was, eager to talk to me. Either she was falling into my trap, or I was falling into hers. "Sure."

  Patty sat, gaze glued on the book separating us, her brows less trained than mine climbed into her bangs. I would bet the cover price that she was mentally adding, subtracting and dividing reasons for me to be in her bookstore in possession of this book. She said, "There are better reads, if that's your genre. We have a local author in store today. I can recommend her highly."

  I sipped my espresso. "You don't think much of Ruth Lester's... talent?"

  "I didn't say that... exactly." Her lips pursed as if weighing the right response. Unbiased bookseller? Or honest critic? A dark fog shifted through her eyes, a whiff of disgust, but when she spoke, it was as impartial critic, "But a few reviewers suggested there was room for improvement."

  I sipped more coffee and waited for her to go on. I'd learned this technique from Stone. It was supposed to rattle a suspect into filling the silence with chatter until they accidentally say something incriminating. Peppermint Patty obviously didn't know that.

  No matter. I would do whatever it took to rattle her cage and enjoy it as I did. I threw a hammer blow against the monkey bars. "I hear you prefer Lars' books."

  She ignored that and tapped the cover of Ruth Lester's book with one of her typist-short fingernails. "I admit I did read it. Not when it came out. Only after she filed the lawsuit against Lars over her so-called second book."

  "And?"

  She sighed, keeping her voice low. "The plot is... plausible, but the prose... could use polishing. A lot of polishing."

  I was less surprised that she'd read the book and more that she permitted a copy or two in her store considering the rancor dripping from her assessment of Ruth Lester's writing. "I heard her publisher dropped her."

  Patty's smile was nasty. "Like a hot potato."

  "You don't know what became of her, then?"

  She looked away. "If she's writing under a pseudonym, it's as unknown as the Zodiac killer's identity."

  I needed to shove the needle deeper. "Kind of a shame, really. I mean, you can't buy notoriety like hers."

  Peppermint Patty puffed up like an offended skunk. "That woman didn't deserve to publish another book after accusing Lars of plagiarism."

  "Oh?" I was starting to rock at wide-eyed innocence. Too bad there wasn't a career for that. "I'd think that kind of controversy would make a second book pure gold. You know, 'bad publicity being good publicity' and all."

  She grunted, the scent of mint ripe in the space separating us. Okay, so she stank like a box of Campfire Girl Mints not a skunk. My espresso was nearly gone. I needed another. A double, double.

  Peppermint Patty leaned toward me. "Lars' did not steal that woman's plot."

  Finally, a rise out of her. I felt mean and powerful. It felt good. "The judge seemed to believe that, too, but between you and me, I wouldn't put it past Lars. He could be one selfish, disloyal son of a bitch."

  Patty's face flamed. She looked ready to knock me off my chair. Or worse. I stifled my glee. "How–how-could—?"

  "How can you defend him?" I cut her off. "I heard he was trying to get a restraining order against you at the time of his death... of course, his murder curtailed that."

  "That's a lie." Her coloring flared redder than flame. Almost purple. Not her best hue. "Books and reading were my salvation as a kid. Over the years I became an advocate for writers. Was I Lars' fan? Yes. Admiring someone's talent doesn't make a person a stalker."

  "Courts don't issue restraining orders against benign fans."

  "He wasn't getting a restraining order, and don't you dare spread such a lie." A fanatical glint flashed through her cocoa eyes. "If you must know, I wrote a book. I asked him to look at it."

  My eyes widened at this revelation. Not that she had written a book; more people wrote books than were ever published. But that she'd also thought Lars would help her. The only career he was interested in furthering was his own. I almost felt sorry for her. I'd been on the receiving end of Lars' view of aspiring writers. "He refused, right?"

  She tilted her head in unnerving amusement. "To the contrary. He insisted on helping me find a publisher."

  "What?" No. Fucking. Way. That was a flat out lie. I knew. Firsthand. Lars wouldn't. This was more nuts than a squirrels' winter stash. More nuts than a Planter's warehouse. I needed to cut to the chase and be gone. "Did you kill Lars?"

  She scooted back in her chair, turning on the laser charisma again. I sensed more bullshit about to spew from her pie hole. She lowered her voice to a whisper only I could hear. "In your clumsy attempts to get that hairdresser off the hook you'd best not tar me with your little black brush."

  When had I lost control of this conversation. "Don't threaten me."

  But for all my bravado I recoiled as she leaned a hand on the table and added, "You'd better hope the jury finds your friend guilty."

  I couldn't blink. "Or what?"

  But she was done talking. Done threatening. Next step: action? She offered a grin as cold as a Frappelli and sauntered away. I wanted to jump into a hot tub, chase off the chills. Just how crazy was this bitch? Murder crazy?

  I trash-canned my empty espresso cup, then went to the front of the store to pay for the book. I couldn't get out of here fast enough. I spotted a familiar redhead at the counter and my nerves jumped. Frankie. Dinah's husband. Had he followed me here?

  God, a minute ago I thought maybe Peppermint Patty was the one trying to kill me. Now I wondered if it was Frankie.

  He'd had means, opportunity, and he was big enough and for all I knew he was into knives. But was he a serial killer? Was that his motive? Was he stalking potential victims every time he disappeared from the nightclub for a few hours? Was that his secret?

  I wrapped my scarf around my neck, stifling the impulse to cover my face while I was at it. I lingered in the store a few more minutes, giving him time to leave, then I hurried into the dismal afternoon, scanning the packed parking lot until I reached Old Yeller. I checked the back seat, locked the doors, and took off.

  For all I knew he could be waiting anywhere along the road for me to pass and then follow me onto I-405 and home. Maybe it was time I got myself a nondescript car. Something that didn't identify me from blocks away. One with dark, tinted windows the kind you can't see through.

  But I couldn't afford a new pair of shoes, let alone a used car. It wasn't like this Mustang was classic, worth more than blue book. What if I traded it for something less recognizable and less reliable?

  By the time I arrived home I was jumping at my own shadow. The parking lot outside my apartment was packed with shoppers for the strip-mall stores. I recognized other vehicles as belonging to my neighbors. I thought about asking Sharkey to walk with me to my apartment, to make sure I got inside unharmed, but I could see t
hrough his window that he had customers waiting.

  I kept my head down, hugged the bag with Ruth Lester's book to my chest and ran to the stairs. Ignoring the stiffness in my sore limbs, I sprinted up the steps and emerged into the second floor hallway.

  Empty.

  My heart thundered.

  I reached my door. The second I touched the key to the lock, the door pushed inward. I froze. I heard noises coming from within. Someone was in my apartment. Run. The lipstick shaped tube of pepper spray appeared magically in my hand. My thumb on the nozzle. I stepped back.

  The door opened.

  I saw a man-blur.

  Arms reached for me.

  My thumb depressed.

  Pepper spray hit his eyes.

  And I lost all chance of ever getting back my BFF.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Take one man. Inflict damage. If he remains standing use larger weapon. Repeat until... until what? He cries "Uncle"? He's dead? I wasn't just a man-o-holic, I was a man-o-nilator.

  First I get Apollo arrested for murder, then I blind him. He yipped, swore, tumbled back into the apartment landing hard on his bony butt. Double ouch.

  I scrambled in after him. "Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod! I'm so sorry."

  Like "sorry" would stop his eyes from frying. "Don't touch your face. Don't rub your eyes."

  I tugged his hands to his sides. Resisting the urge to rub at his face for him. I'd read the instruction manual, knew the after effect. "Oleoresin capsicum is oil based and will spread to everything you touch, prolong the pain and even infect you worse."

  "I can't see, I can't see." he whimpered.

  If my eyes were on fire, I would be screaming. But though he writhed in anguish, he was almost silent. My remorse deepened, for I knew this response to pain originated in the years of abuse he'd suffered at the hands of his brutal father.

  I forced myself to assess the damage. Apollo wasn't asthmatic, but sometimes pepper spray produced allergic reactions. "Are you having trouble breathing?"

  "No."

  "Okay. Blink. And keep on blinking. It will help clear the oil from your eyes." Trembling, I palmed my cell phone and started dialing.

  He heard the beeping of punched-in numbers. "What are you doing?"

  "Calling 9-1-1."

  "No. No ambulance."

  "Then I'll drive you to the Emergency Room."

  "No hospital. No press. Internet. Find antidote. Get water. Wash my eyes."

  My brain seemed to be running on slug-speed since the concussion, but the word "water" sliced through the sludge. I knew an antidote. I rushed to the sink, pulled down the huge bowl I used for making double batches of Christmas cookies. I filled it three quarters full with water and then added one-quarter part Dawn, the grease cutting dish liquid.

  I gingerly carried the bowl to Apollo. His eyes were swollen and red. I managed to get him into a sitting position. "Close your eyes, hold your breath and dip your face into this, while I go get something for your eyes."

  I hurried into my bathroom, digging through the medicine cabinet for the saline solution. The stronger the dosage of capsicum, the worse the effects. My lipstick tube of pepper spray was the lowest strength possible. I'd wanted a deterrent, not a deadly weapon. The stinging would cease within the hour, maybe less, but to Apollo every second had to feel like an eon.

  Two hours later, Apollo had showered in Dawn, twice, and now wore some sweats Stone had left that I sometimes used on Ken-doll. They hung on Apollo, but were clean and capsicum-free. His face looked sunburned. His eyes bloodshot. We sat opposite each other on the futon, drinking wine. Ken was posted at the window, glaring at the parking lot. Of the three of us, he seemed the most comfortable in the stilted silence.

  I'd never seen Apollo so subdued. It was as if someone had turned off his hyper-energy switch. He asked, "How did you know what to use as an antidote without looking it up online?"

  I was hoping he wouldn't think to ask this, and felt my own face grow red. I muttered, "Experience."

  This piqued his interest. "When?"

  I mumbled into my wine, "A while ago."

  "What happened?"

  I couldn't bring myself to admit exactly how foolish I'd been. Think bee-stung lips. Big, burning bee-stung lips. "I, uh, got some on my hand."

  "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

  "Haven't you ever done anything" — stupid — "that you haven't told me?"

  He plucked at his hair giving the spiky-do more definition, his mouth puckering as if the wine were sour. "Like writing angry, threatening letters to your BFF's ex-husband?"

  I glanced fully at him. I hadn't been hinting he reveal the contents of his letter to Lars, and wasn't sure he'd believe me if I told him so, but this was an opening and I took it. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the tie. I didn't realize Stone would try to frame you with it." But I had feared he might. Though Lars wasn't strangled, the tie being in the death room was suspicious. Apollo had to realize that, yet he offered no explanation.

  He exhaled slowly, nodding, staring at his wine. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the letters. I'd forgotten about them actually."

  A knot inside me loosened. Could it be as simple as this? Two apologies, and we were back on speaking terms? My suspicious side wasn't so quick to celebrate. I needed proof that we were back on track. "What were you doing here?"

  "I came to pick up some of my... things." He gestured to a cardboard box near the door. In all the commotion, I hadn't noticed it. I peered inside. CDs and cosmetic containers shared the space like neatly stacked dominoes. Okay. He hadn't come to make up. The knot tightened again. I doubted being pepper sprayed had softened his heart toward me, and cautioned myself against reading too much into our sharing a chat over a glass of wine. "Were you leaving when I arrived?"

  "I was waiting for you."

  "To tell me you never wanted to see me again?"

  He sighed, and half smiled. "I started a note—"

  "But I showed up too soon?"

  "But I saw your suspect wall." He looked at me finally, his eyes somehow more intense with the red streaks. "You've been trying to help me."

  Why did that seem to surprise him? We'd started the suspect list together. "Of course I have. You wouldn't murder anyone."

  His Adam's apple bobbed. "I know you said so, but I, I, didn't know if you were really sure."

  The admission was like concrete slamming my chest, like the car hitting me again and again. I just stared at him. I could have said, "If you hadn't been avoiding my calls, you would have known." I didn't. I couldn't get past that he should have known without being told. But he didn't. Why?

  As if on cue, I heard Stone's accusing voice in my head. "You never fully commit, Jack." Until this moment, I hadn't believed Stone. Or had I just not wanted to see it? The way I never wanted to see it? But now, it was like having a bandage ripped from my eyes, taking all my lashes with it, the insight sudden, blinding, painful as hell.

  I thought our friendship was the one relationship with a man I'd gotten right. I was wrong. The hurt ripped through me like a torn seam. Apollo didn't know me, and I didn't know him. We hadn't said it out loud, but it was there, the elephant in the room, more intrusive than Ken-doll.

  I could see the difference now as obvious as a gap between a cropped top and low slung jeans. I was an outfit needing more material. A life always incomplete. Missing something vital. But I wasn't the only one.

  My BFF was as damaged as me.

  He hadn't believed me when I told him I knew he wouldn't murder anyone. Neither of us knew how to completely trust anyone. Maybe there was no coming back from the kind of damage we'd endured in childhood, the brutality inflicted on him by his own father, the unsolved murder of my father. Maybe those unseen wounds would never heal. Maybe neither of us would ever completely give our whole self, our whole heart to anyone else, not even in friendship.

  I stared at my tattoo, also understanding in that moment, that this insight might keep us from
ever getting back to where we were before Lars' murder. Like putting the cork back into a bottle of champagne to maintain the fizz. Impossible.

  I'd never felt more lonely.

  From the misery in his eyes, Apollo likely shared the feeling.

  He set his glass on the end table, shattering the uncomfortable silence. "Who's your favorite suspect?"

  I cleared the emotion from my throat and strode to my office. "The more I dig, the more it changes. I was going to add another name when I got home."

  He followed me, crossing to sit in the desk chair. "Who?"

  I put the marker to the board and wrote: Frankie Steele.

  "Dinah Edger's husband? Really... tell me more."

  "I think he might have followed me to The Peppered Page today." I filled Apollo in on how I'd spent the afternoon, getting my hands on Ruth Lester's one and only novel, and my strange chat with Patricia Pepper, sparing him the chilling threat she'd made regarding his trial outcome. He had enough to worry without that. "Interviewing her was like jabbing at a sack of rattle snakes. Adrenalin-rush fun one minute and creepy dangerous the next."

  His eyes rounded. "You mean killer-creepy?"

  The chill that had come over me in the bookstore swept through me again. "Maybe. She must have threatened Lars someway or he'd have no grounds for obtaining a restraining order against her."

  Do you think she killed him? hung between us like a row of traffic lights. Green: she did it. Yellow: If she did, proceed with caution. Red: Stop. Look in another direction.

  I was torn between yellow and red at the moment. I didn't know enough to take the green light, and I was sick of not finding any solid leads or evidence. "I'm getting hung up on the fact that statistics say female murderers' preferred weapons of choice are poison or guns."

  "But Lars was stabbed."

  "Exactly. So unless Peppermint Patty grew up in a circus among a family of knife throwers..."

  "Not knife throwers..."

  "What does that mean?"