Malicious Mischief (A Rylie Keyes Mystery) (Entangled Select) (11 page)

“Sweet Jesus,” Zach said in the background.

I stared at him, bewildered. What did he know that I didn’t? And what did the word dope have to do with it? Then it hit me. Sweet Jesus was right.

Before I could think, I babbled out a slew of panicked apologies. Never once did I consider my suicide training. How could I? My mind was empty. Gone was all knowledge of negotiation, of taking command of a tense situation.

“Walter,” I began. “Please don’t be mad.” I was too scared to meet his eyes. “I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t know it was a live call. I was only a trainee on the suicide hotline. Believe me, please. I’m begging you.”

“You dumb bitch. I almost killed myself that night.”

“I’m sorry,” I said repeatedly, my eyes blurred by tears.

And then, out of the haze around me, Solo came up from behind, wrapped his arm around Walter’s neck, and yanked. Walter wilted, tongue out. I was halfway into a sigh of relief when the gun slipped from his hand, bounced on the floor, and discharged. A female scream only vaguely penetrated. To clear my vision, I blinked several times. All eyes were on Zach. He had Tita pressed against the wall behind the desk, his forearm thrust against her throat. Angry color flooded his face.

“Zach, no!” I scrambled to my feet, swayed.

His eyes met mine, held. I got a vague feeling that what Zach feared most—a flashback—had happened. I couldn’t move. I could only stare back at him, his tortured gray eyes, and his white-knuckled grip on the arm he had pressed to her throat.

“Let her go,” I said softly. “This isn’t the convenience store.”

Slowly he released her, and slowly disbelief crept into his face as he stared at his open hands. “I heard the shot,” he said. “She was—was firing on us. I had to stop her. Kill her.”

I rushed to him on woozy legs, but he shook me off.

“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”

Footsteps approached, thundering. The broken door flew open, glass shards scattering across the floor. A sea of officers rushed in, guns drawn. A lot of shouting arose, followed by a cacophony of explanations and thanksgiving in several languages.

Eventually two officers led a stirring Walter to the holding cell, while another carted off the gun to the evidence cage. Yancy tended to Zach’s head wound. Solo and I stood by in silence, awaiting our turn to give statements.

I cast a sideways look at Tita, whose statement had followed Gilad’s and appeared to be wrapping up. “Boy, no free rides around this place. He grilled me like I was still a
Las Chicanas
,” she said in reference to her former gang affiliation. “Damp, cold, and barely fit for people, these cop hideouts are, you know?”

Gilad joined us from the front window where he’d stood for the last fifteen minutes. “I had no idea Otto was dead. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

All three of our mouths stayed shut for several seconds, and then Solo described the accident, how Otto’s body was found, concluding with, “It was no random act of violence.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Gilad said. “Come on, you three. Do I have to spell everything out? We’re all suspects.”

The station chief strode in, looked around, and asked to speak to Zach in private. He rose, followed her through the broken doorway. He never looked back.

~Due to recent cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off~

“I hope Zach is okay,” Solo said for what was the tenth time in the last hour.

I put on a brave face. “He’ll be fine.”

We were mainlining Slurpees from 7-Eleven as we worked FoY’s booth at the ongoing marathon. Actually, it was more a canopy with tenting overhead and no sides. Runners drifted past in patchy groups or as singles on the cordoned off street. Lots of spectators still milled about, but few stopped to pick up FoY brochures or ask questions. Most hurried past, eager to sample some hot wings from the Roaring Wing’s booth next door, or juice from Jamba Juice across the street.

“You can’t always be sure,” Solo went on, frowning. “My mom’s kid brother was never the same after he came back from the Iraq War. PTSD did a real number on him.”

“Zach will be fine,” I said again, a little desperately.

“Hope so. Tao just took off one night. We haven’t seen him since.”

Beneath my calm veneer, my nerves wheeled. But that wouldn’t help Zach. I needed to be strong for him. He was a fighter. Fighters fight. Fighters win. I’d seen that on a bumper sticker once, it had to be right.

“Uh-oh, your hair is dull again,” Solo said. “We should hit the mandala again.”

“I’m okay.” I tossed my empty cup into the trash. “My karma is in good shape.”

“How do you know?”

“Walter didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “You were awesome, by the way.”

I couldn’t say more, couldn’t call attention to my failure. Yet I could not ignore the truth, either. Even if I had remembered my negotiation training—stay calm, meet their eyes, no pleading, and no apologies—I doubt I would have used it, my fear had been so deep.

Solo rested a hand to my shoulder. “For a minute there, I thought we’d lost you.”

“Thanks for saving my life.” I said the words, but recognized their inadequacy.

“I think Walter will be okay,” he said, looking shaken. “The paramedics thought he would. I sure hope he is. I’d hate to have hurt him for good, like brain damage or something.”

I covered his hand with mine. “I know violence bothers you. I’m sorry.”

For a minute neither of us spoke, just looked at each other, thankful to be alive.

“The good news is the monks weren’t mad about the wrecked mandala.” He held up a small silk bag. “They even gave me some sand.”

“What for?”

“To scatter over water, spread the blessing of the mandala. Good timing, too. I need my karma squeaky clean by audition time.”

“You got an audition?” I asked, surprised. “When? How come you didn’t tell me?”

He looked playfully at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “It’s sort of been a busy morning. I’ve only known a few hours. It was on my recorder when I stopped by the sailboat. It’s in October, right before Halloween.”

Though my heart sank, I made a triumphant gesture with my fist. “So many cities to perform in, so little time to be at home. I’m gonna miss you.”

He blushed. “It’s been awhile since someone missed me.”

“Mama birds love to see their fledglings soar,” I said, my cheeks burning now at my clumsy attempt to catchphrase like Alistair. “Point is, your mom will, too.”

“Maybe,” he said, looking doubtful. “But Cirque du Soleil isn’t the NFL.”

“I think we’re going to need to bring in a referee on this one. Cirque du Soleil is
so
much more than the NFL.”

“Thanks.” His face pinched with concern. “Here comes Gilad and Tita.”

“Why the frown?” I asked.

“Here we are putting all our energy into proving Booth guilty, but is it wise to focus on only one suspect? We can’t exclude anyone from last night’s fundraiser.”

I considered a moment. “Looks like I’ve reached my first investigative low point,” I said. “I should have known that. We need to get them apart, question them. I call dibs on Tita.”

“Be careful,” he said. “She may be a friend, but she has a dark past.”

I was nodding now, certain we both had our work cut out for us. “No need to ask what strategy you’ll use. Gilad responds best to flattery.”

“Paved with good intentions of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

Tita and Gilad sauntered up to the brochure table. As usual, they were bickering.

“So it’s official. I’ve run out of patience,” Tita told him. “Just suck it up. A bit of fat won’t kill you.”

Gilad’s eyes bugged. “When one asks for a fat-free blintz, one oughtta get a fat-free blintz.”

Tita grabbed the blintz and pushed it into her mouth. “There. You’ve dodged a bullet.”

“Astounding,” he said. “You would clog your arteries for me.”

“Don’t get all mushy. To shut you up, I’d eat bacon fat.”

“Now you’re just embarrassing yourself,” he said. “And here you’re married to a Jew.”

“Was married to a Goldberg, not anymore,” she told him.

“Either way, you know we don’t eat pork.”

“Don’t be silly. Otto did, and he was Orthodox.” She looked to each of us before going on. “If you wanna know the truth, Otto slipped me something extra to bring him breakfast in bed. Coffee with milk, eggs, and bacon. It’s no secret now because I already told the police. The
dinero
wasn’t huge, but it fed my new car fund. I wanna buy a Subaru.”

“I’d have never guessed,” Gilad said, scratching his head.

“You saying I don’t look like the outdoorsy type?” she asked him.

“What?—no,” he said. “I just never knew an Orthodox who ate pork.”

“That’s it,” I said, looking at Tita. “That’s what you were hiding on the phone.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I was afraid the cops would think I’d tried to shake down Otto for more
dinero,
maybe killed him by accident,” she said in a voice riddled with worry. “No way was I gonna take that chance. I’ve got two kids. They need me, so I told them
pronto
. A Detective Talon took my statement over the phone. Hot accent,” she said with a lusty whistle.

“Hot guy,” I said, then felt my cheeks go pink again.

“About damn time,” she said. “Face it, you and Zach are destined to remain friends.”

“I think Talon is soft on Rylie,” Solo said with a wink.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Tita said. “Why don’t you ask him out?

I gave a start. “Are you crazy? I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I just couldn’t, that’s all.”

Gilad cleared his throat. “On a more important note, those yentas at the deli said something interesting about Leland.”

Solo and I exchanged an anxious glance.

“What?” I asked.

“The whole thing sticks in the head as idiotic,” he said in lieu of an answer.

“What did they say?” I asked again.

“I can’t believe Leland would be so stupid,” Gilad said.

“And the streak continues,” Solo said. “Just tell us what they said about Leland.”

“Well.” Gilad leaned in. “Supposedly he has a skull tattoo.”

“That’s bad?” I asked. “Like bacon?”

“Worse. A skull tattoo was the insignia of a select SS group of concentration camp guards, and is
ech
to my family after the personal blow they delivered us. Most of the war criminals I brought in were from this SS-Totenkopfverbande Division. They called their insignia
Death’s Head
and proudly tattooed it on their bodies. And even when they burned off the tattoo with cigarettes, claiming it was a bullet wound, we caught them. Their x-rays showed no bone damaged. We got ’em, all right. Those filthy bastards.”

Nothing about this made sense. Leland revered his family, his religion, and paid homage to Holocaust victims by housing them at FoY for reduced rent, or in Otto’s case, no rent at all due to his impoverished state. Then it hit me, Leland’s disbelief earlier in Otto’s excuse for not wearing his watch. It wasn’t due to his psoriasis, but I suspect more because he feared he would lose his rent-free room if it got out that he owned an expensive piece of jewelry.

But that was that, and this was this. I could not wrap my head around Leland getting a Nazi tattoo, especially at seeing his near coronary at learning he had eaten taboo dog meat.

“—I’d have stopped him,” Gilad was saying, “had I known. I would have reminded him of
my
mother,
his
great grandmother. How the Nazis arrested her and my older brother while they visited family in Poland, how one Nazi bastard robbed her of jewelry sewn into her clothes in exchange for my little brother’s life.”

My mouth dropped open in horror.

“You get where I’m going with this, don’t you?” Gilad asked me.

I shook my head, not wanting to know.

“What counts here as unclear?” he asked. “My mother had only a few pieces of jewelry: a ruby necklace, an opal ring, a timepiece, a cameo broach, and pearl earrings. In spite of that, the bastard demanded more, so she gave him her body.”

I gasped.

“Still he left her behind to be gassed,” he said.

“And your big brother?” Solo asked. His eyes were moist.

“Dumped at a nearby farmhouse, he died of typhus a week later. The farmer kept his diary. He gave it to my father after the war. In it, my brother described the skull insignia, how Alric Mueller’s hand was tattooed with it. How it terrified him. I dedicated my life to hunting down Mueller for what he did to my mother, my brother.”

“Did you find him?” Solo asked.

He shook his head, sadly. “His trail went cold, but I did manage to capture others—many others from the SS-TV group. I got ’em, all right. The filthy bastards.”

“Gilad, you look like a man in need of a blintz,” Solo said. “Come on. My treat.”

“It must be fat-free,” Gilad said.

And as they strode toward the deli, Solo cast a
watch-yourself-with-Tita
look back at me just before the crowd swallowed them.

Several people dropped by the booth over the next ten minutes. Then it quieted down again. After another group of marathon runners rounded the corner, the street cleared as well.

“Hey, before I forget, here.” Tita handed over my cell phone. “I had to toss your jacket,
chica
. No saving it. Bloodstains, Zach’s blood.” Ours eyes met, and I registered a war waging inside her. “I could have handled him, you know? Someone gets up in my shit, I take ’em out, but it was Zach, you know? He and I go way back. Catholic school, years of catechism with not much to show for it but stupid collages. I couldn’t hurt him, you know. Couldn’t.”

I pretended to fiddle with my phone. I was pretty sure what I was about to say would anger her and gave myself a little time to prepare. “Tita, did you kill Otto?”

She said nothing for a moment, but eyed me shrewdly. “No.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

She shook her head. “Straight talk, that’s rare,” she said. “I gotta a long sheet, you know? Been bounced out of jail more times than I care to think about. But something funny happens when you get kids, you go sort of soft, you know?” There came a pause where her face took on the look of someone eating something sweet. “But thanks for thinking I could kill Otto. I never wanna come off weak.”

“You scare the hell out of me,” I said.

She smiled as I opened the contact list on my phone. Tita was there, as was Leland and Gilad. Booth, too. All suspects were still on the table, but to my mind, Tita and Leland were at the bottom of the list.

On a sigh, I dialed Zach’s number, but hit cancel. I waited a few beats and called again. I was looking at my feet when he answered.

“You gonna stand there staring at your feet, or are you gonna say something?” he asked.

“How—how did you know?”

“You always stare at your feet when you’re nervous. Rylie, I screwed up today.” His voice held a note of desperation. “Looks like I’m a head case.”

“Zach—” I tried to say
I think I love you
but stopped, not out of my usual cowardice, but more that it felt oddly insincere, wrong somehow. “You can fight this,” I said. “Have faith.”

A tense silence fell between us.

“What did you say?” he said finally.

“You can fight this,” I said again.

“Not that.”

I had to think. “Have faith.”

“You always did know what to say. Pure and simple,” he said and hung up.

“Zach, wait!”

Tita nudged me with a shoulder. Sympathy, girl gang style. “He’ll beat this.” She crossed to help a woman inquiring about accommodations at FoY.

I wandered the booth, straightening this, stacking that. I was relieved that Zach had opened up a little more. It was a positive step toward healing, and it helped relieve my fears that he would do something totally out of character, something desperate. My sense of panic had departed with the silly urge to complicate his life with my true feelings. I thought about those feelings, what my heart wanted. A strange flatness came over me, as when finding savory food flavorless. The best explanation was that feelings went into hiding during troubled times.

Then my cell phone rang. The number was unknown. “Hello?”

“Judging by the sound of your voice, you fared well. I am relieved,” a man said, his voice heavily accented and aggravatingly charming.

I was tempted to ask, “Who is this?” But of course, I knew it was Detective Talon. “Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences,” I said.

“Robert Lewis Stevenson. One cannae go astray with a Scotsman’s quote,” he said. “But sounding well and being well are two different matters. Are you okay?”

“Not really, but I’ll survive.”

“I admire your honesty.”

Now I was curious. “I said something insensitive on a hotline and hurt a man who was suffering, and it almost cost several people their lives. Do you still admire me?”

“Will you make that mistake again?” he asked.

I said no, meaning it.

“Well, then—” he began.

“Please don’t say all’s well that ends well,” I said. “I have no desire to forgive myself.”

“It’s a pity, how much you suffer your failures. Your successes, are they felt as keenly?” he asked. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, Rylie, but by the seeds you plant.”

More Robert Lewis Stevenson. “Is there something else you want?” I asked.