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Anatoly’s mouth formed into a little half smile, and he leaned forward a bit more. Half an inch. “You were going to say something?”
I could feel his breath. Say something, right. I had turned around in order to say something. What was it? Take me now, my Russian warrior? No, that wasn’t it. Make me your love slave? No, that was off the mark too.
“Well?” he said.
Anatoly still wasn’t touching me, but damn if every inch of me wasn’t responding to him.
Strength. Strength and resolve. I scrunched my eyes shut. “I’m having a hard time thinking. You’re in my space.”
Anatoly’s smile broadened as he took a step back. “Is that better?”
No. “Yes.” I dug my nails into my palm. “You really are a jerk, you know that?”
“As I explained on the day we met, if you’re going to insult me you’re going to have to be a little more creative than that.”
“All right, how about this? You’re an egotistical, arrogant piece of Soviet trash. You know, I didn’t like the paintings in there either, but I didn’t feel the need to criticize and belittle Donato in front of Marcus. The fact that you did just shows what a pathetic and scummy little prick you are.”
Anatoly leaned back onto his heels. “That’s definitely better.”
For a minute or so we just stood there while he turned over what I had said and I tried to find a stable focal point.
“I’m not sure anyone can qualify as a piece of Soviet trash anymore, but you were right on all your other points.”
Okay, I hadn’t been expecting that.
“Donato rubbed me the wrong way as did that stuff he’s trying to pass off as art, but that didn’t give me the right to be cruel. I can be overly judgmental, it’s a character flaw. I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m wrong.”
So now he’d gone and screwed up my first impression. I hated it when people did that. Plus, it was a lot easier to resist him when I thought he was a Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal. Now he was moving into the Homo sapiens category, which meant we just might be sexually compatible, and, considering how long it had been since I’d had sex, if I had to share a cab home with an extremely attractive, heterosexual specimen of Homo sapiens, with a slight Russian accent, no less… Well, I might do something unforgivable like knock him over the head with a club and drag him up to my apartment by his hair.
“If you’ll still share a cab with me, I promise to be nice.” The streetlight caused the shadows of a tree to play against his shirt.
Well, what kind of life would it be if you didn’t take a few risks? “You’d better call a taxi now if we’re going to get one within the next half hour.”
Anatoly raised two fingers to his mouth and let out a shrill whistle that left me temporarily hearing impaired. “I told you, you can’t hail a cab here.”
But I was once again destined to look like an idiot because a cab pulled up right in front of us.
“This never happens.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.” Anatoly held the door and climbed in next to me as I gave the driver my address.
He seemed distracted now. I felt pretty focused. Granted, the things I was focused on were Anatoly’s hands, but I was focused nonetheless.
“That man in the gallery, the one wearing the biker jacket, you knew him?”
“Thank God for small favors, no.”
“How do you think he knew your name?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he read one of my books. My picture’s on the back cover.”
“You’re a writer?”
“Yep…murder mysteries.”
“Really?” He repositioned himself so that he had a better view of me. “And the art lover back there, he’s your target market?”
“Very funny.” I pulled on a stray thread hanging from my hemline. “I don’t know. I guess my target would be pretty much anyone who likes a good novel with a lot of action, suspense and sex.”
There was a brief silence as Anatoly thought about that. “I like action, suspense and sex.”
The driver must have turned the heat on because suddenly it had gotten very warm.
We were getting close to my apartment when the cab had to pull to the right of the narrow lane to make way for a police car. I visually followed the flashing red lights until it pulled to a stop next to two other police cars and an ambulance just a block and a half away from where I lived. “Something pretty major must be going on.”
“I’ll say.” But Anatoly wasn’t looking at the police cars.
When the taxi finally slowed to a stop, I literally threw some money at the driver and leaped out of the car with such velocity that I needed to grab hold of a lamppost to steady myself. Unfortunately Anatoly followed me out. The driver screeched away. He probably wanted as much distance from me as possible before I could think twice about giving him a twenty for an eleven-dollar fare. In truth the extra nine dollars would have been money well spent if Anatoly had just stayed in the car. I have never been very good with willpower. Recently I had resolved to limit my chocolate intake to one piece per week. It took me exactly a half-hour to break that resolution. And Anatoly was looking a lot tastier than your average chocolate bar.
“Shouldn’t you have stayed in the cab until he got to your place?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask to come up.”
Damn.
“I just live two and a half blocks up, so I figured I’d walk. However, I was going to ask you what you’re doing this Saturday night.”
Uh-oh, he wanted to go on a date. It was one thing to fantasize about sleeping with him, it was a whole other thing to plan to spend several hours talking to him. “I have a prior engagement.”
“Saturday afternoon, then. I’ve been here for a little over three months but I’m still not all that familiar with the city. You could give me a tour. Show me where all the good coffee shops are.”
“That’s a pretty long tour.”
“Well then, just show me the Starbucks.”
“That doesn’t shorten it much.”
He moved in a little. “I don’t bite.”
A little biting might not be such a bad thing. I took one more look at his hands. “Saturday at noon. You can pick me up here.” I dug into my purse and wrote my number on an old business card. “Good night, Anatoly.”
“Good night, Sophie.” He slipped the card into his back pocket and proceeded up the street.
I watched until he had turned the corner. “Wow, he’s even got a cute butt,” I murmured aloud. I looked to my right where there were still rescue vehicles congregated. The excitement seemed to be around a little garage located on the first floor of an Edwardian apartment building. The dark and the distance made it impossible to see much. The paramedics were loading someone into the back of the ambulance. Was it a body bag? I instantly felt the alcohol I’d drunk begin to lose its grip. I was aching to get a closer look, but it was doubtful that the police would view my credentials as a novelist as enough to let me dig around a crime scene. I wrinkled my nose and went up to my apartment.
“Hey, Mr. Katz, you haven’t been killing the neighbors again, have you?” Mr. Katz didn’t make an immediate appearance. That was odd. He usually liked to greet me in hopes of obtaining a late-night snack. I spotted him hiding under a chair. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked, and tried to coax him out. The only time Mr. Katz acted like this was when strangers were around or when he had done something he knew I would be unhappy about. A horrible thought entered my mind. “You did use your litter box tonight, didn’t you?” Mr. Katz wasn’t owning up to anything, but he also wasn’t coming out from under the chair. Maybe Friskies would be more persuasive.
I got up and noticed my cell phone on the coffee table. Well, at least that mystery was solved. I stepped into the narrow kitchen and immediately saw the source of Mr. Katz’s agitation. One of the glasses I had left by the sink lay shattered on the floor.
“Is that all?” I bent down to collect the pieces. “How the hell did you knock it so far off the counter anyway…ouch! Damn it!” I sucked the blood that was dribbling down my finger. For someone who had virtually built a reputation on writing graphic violence, I really was a major wimp. I put my finger under the faucet and watched as the pink water flowed down the drain. Something was off. Why was I having a déjà vu feeling? I shivered a little as a cold wind blew in from the window in front of me. It was half open. Had I left it like that?
I heard the floor make a little creak. Someone was watching me. I slowly lowered my hand into the sink and clasped the dirty knife I had left there. I drew a quick breath and whipped around, knife outstretched, silently praying that whoever was behind me wasn’t holding a more ominous weapon.
But it was only Mr. Katz.
From where I was standing I could see all of the kitchen and most of the living room. Everything was in its place. My gaze rested on the diamond studs I had carelessly left on the counter that divided the two rooms. The overhead light was hitting them in a manner that caused them to cast a faint rainbow on the cream tiles beneath them. They hadn’t been touched. No sign of forced entry, nothing but a window that I had obviously forgotten to close, a broken glass and a cat with a suspiciously guilty look on his face. So why couldn’t I bring myself to lower the knife? And why did this feel so damn familiar? It was like I had seen this scene played out in a movie or read about it in a…
I sucked in more air as the vision of my fingers typing the words flashed before me. I had written this scene. It was from Sex, Drugs and Murder. But that was insane. Besides, it wasn’t as if Mr. Katz had never broken anything before. I had been forced to replace the vase on the coffee table three times in the last two years. If it hadn’t been for the phone calls…and the note. Oh God, I had almost forgotten about the note. Could that be connected to this? I spread my feet a little farther apart for better balance. This must be what it’s like to have a bad acid trip. You know that you’ve been given something that messes with your head, so you become unsure if your instincts can be trusted or if they are just the result of drug-induced paranoia.
The sting from the slice in my finger distracted me for a moment and I looked at the blood that had trickled onto the knife’s handle. It was then that Mr. Katz made his move. In one fluid motion he leaped onto the counter, missing a coffee cup by half a millimeter. He proceeded to rub against my arm in a pathetic attempt to redeem himself as I tried to recover from the near heart attack his sudden activity had brought on.
I jerked away from the menacing fur ball and steadied the cup that was on the verge of suffering the same fate as the broken glassware. Culprit identified and caught.
“Stupid cat,” I said, and threw the knife back into the sink. “No Friskies for you.”
CHAPTER 4
“There was no such thing as a slow news day. You could always count on the weirdos of the world to keep things interesting.”
—Sex, Drugs and Murder
Just trying to follow the little black words printed in the next morning’s Chronicle seemed to upset my equilibrium. I searched for some mention of what had happened in my neighborhood the night before, but as I expected, whatever took place had happened long after that edition would have gone to press. I might have found something out on the local news, but then I would have had to get up before nine. There was an interesting little article about Alex Tolsky. His daughter, Shannon, was convinced that her father was not capable of suicide and she was trying to lobby the LAPD to reopen the case, but to little avail. Even her mother believed it was a suicide, citing their impending divorce as the motive. That, coupled with the fact that Tolsky had a drinking problem and suffered from clinical depression, was enough to satisfy the police. Still, Shannon Tolsky was adamant.
A little voice inside me told me she was right. I reached past Mr. Katz for the scissors. Molded correctly, it could be a good premise for a future novel.
My eyes traveled to the kitchen window. It was open just a crack—exactly the way I had left it before going to sleep. Of course it was—why would it be otherwise? I had obviously forgotten to close it before going out with Marcus. Still, I would have sworn… I gently massaged my temples. My head hurt enough as it was, I didn’t need to add to my pain by stressing out over nonexistent problems.
I pushed myself into a standing position and went to the bathroom to perform my morning ritual, starting with a marathon shower. Today had “mellow” written all over it. After all, I had just completed a book, which meant that I had earned at least a month of laziness. After getting myself cleaned up, I threw some kibble in a bowl for Mr. Katz, put on some dark glasses and went out to search the corner market for more artificial energy which I found in the form of a can of Red Bull. I smiled at the petite Chinese woman behind the register.
“Hi, Alice, just the drink.”
“Did you hear what happened here last night?”
I slipped my sunglasses down my nose a bit to get a better look at the store’s proprietor. She had the flush of someone who had heard something horrible and shocking and now couldn’t wait to shock somebody else with it. “Does this have anything to do with all those cop cars and the ambulance I saw when I got home last night?”
“Yes. It’s really bad.”
I took my glasses off.
“You know Susan Lee?” Alice asked.
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“Oh, you know her. She’s in here all the time. She’s in her twenties, Chinese—she wears DKNY a lot.”
“Oh, right, Susan.” I had no idea who Alice was talking about. She had just described half the women in San Francisco.
“They found her body in the Dumpster in her garage last night. She’d been strangled.”
I glared at my hand that had somehow positioned itself dangerously close to the Mon Chère chocolates on the counter. “Any suspects?”
“They didn’t say on the news. They think the body had been lying there for a long time. Hours maybe. Can you believe it? She was such a pretty girl, and someone just threw her in the trash.”
Of course I could believe it. The Dumpster bit was right out of a B movie. Definitely not something I could use in a book.
“They interviewed her brother on TV. He just kept saying the same thing over and over—‘But I just talked to her, I just talked to her.’ It was like he was in a trance. He couldn’t think right.”
I winced. How could I be so heartless? A woman had been killed and the lack of creativity of those who murdered her meant nothing to the people who loved her. All that mattered to them was that someone who was an intricate part of their existence had been taken suddenly from them, without even the chance to say goodbye.
Alice punched the price of the Red Bull into her register at a speed that indicated that she was not done talking. “Andy’s taking it really hard. He’s so sensitive, and I think maybe he had a little crush on her. Usually he won’t take his full lunch break, but today I made him. I told him to walk around the block and get some fresh air. I even offered to give him the day off, but he said no. He never takes a day off. Doesn’t matter if he’s sick. He always comes to work.”
I smiled and gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. I was only half listening. My mind had gone back to my window and the broken glass. But I was being stupid. If there had been a murderer in my apartment last night, why was I still in perfect health? Well, not perfect, but I’d have a hard time pinning my current condition on anyone other than my buddy Smirnoff. I pushed my sunglasses back in place. Nothing like starting off the day with a few paranoid delusions. Maybe I needed a little chocolate to help bring me back to reality. Really…how many calories could be in one Mon Chère?
I silently gestured to Alice that she should add the candy to my purchase before handing her a few crumpled dollar bills and scooping up my items. “Be careful when you’re locking up tonight.”
“Oh, I will,” Alice called after me. “And you be careful too. You never know what this crazy man might do next.”
I gave a little wave over my shoulder in response. I stepped onto the sidewalk, looked down to check that I had zipped my purse, and boom, I had a head-on collision with the Jolly Green Giant. Or at least that’s what I assumed upon impact. In reality it was just Andy. The corners of my mouth curled up.
“We’ve got to stop doing this,” I said.
“Gosh, I’m sorry, Miss Katz!” Andy retrieved my dented beverage from underneath a newspaper stand.
“It was my fault—again. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.” I craned my neck back to meet his gaze. His eyes were even more bloodshot than mine. “Andy, I heard about your friend Susan. I’m really sorry.”
Andy’s face scrunched up to about half its normal size and his breath shortened into little gasps. I impulsively reached my arms out to him. His huge body collapsed against me, and I gently stroked his back. “Shh…it’s okay, Andy. Shh.”
“No, no it’s not okay, I liked her. She wasn’t supposed to die—I liked her.”
“I know, I know. It’s messed up, but she’s in a better place now.”
“Really?” Andy pulled back to use the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt as a makeshift Kleenex. “You believe that?”
“Really.” Maybe. I gave what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze to the portion of his arm that hadn’t been soiled yet. “The best way we can honor her memory is to do everything we can to improve matters in this world so that things like this won’t happen anymore.”
“I don’t want anything like this to ever happen again. Never.”
It must be wonderful to be that naive. “Well, all we can do is our part, be nice to people, do unto others and all that jazz.”
The two thin blond lines that made up Andy’s eyebrows joined forces as he tried to figure out what the hell I was talking about. I tapped the top of my bloated Red Bull can with my fingernail. “Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.”
Some of the confusion and distress slipped from his countenance. “I can do that!”
“Yeah, you can. Andy, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay, Sophie.”
I patted his arm again and started my journey to my Acura, which was parked somewhere near Siberia. As sick as it was, the morning’s drama had actually put me in a better mood. I felt sorry for Andy, but I couldn’t help but feel good about having been able to help him. Hell, the guy had even called me by my first name.
