Run For The Money

Lou said, loud and clear, completely audible now because everyone in the room had fallen silent, “I’m probably crazy, but you should know I didn’t invite you because of the damn tax law. That was strictly shooting from the hip. We’ll discuss it later.”

“No, we won’t. I’m calling a cab. Where the hell’s the phone?”

“You’re not leaving, Jane.”

“Oh, no? Hide and watch me. Now get out of my way.”

There was a moment of silence, followed by the distinct sound of a slap. “Who said you could kiss me? Oh, my God! I have got to get out of here. If you don’t step aside I’m gonna scream, and won’t that be embarrassing for you!”

“I’m never embarrassed.”

“Yes, I can see how that might be. You’re too arrogant to be embarrassed.”

Ignoring the chuckles around the room, I rose from the table, intent on saving Mom from what would surely be the most embarrassing moment of her life, but before I could step away from my chair, Mr. Wu made a strange noise. I looked across the table and saw that his face was bright red and he was sweating profusely.

“Sir, are you okay?” I asked, moving around the table toward him.

Steve stood, calling for a towel from one of the waiters, while I loosened the ambassador’s tie.

“I…can’t…breathe,” he croaked, clawing at his throat.

“He’s choking!” someone yelled.

Hauling the man to his feet, Steve moved behind him and performed the Heimlich, but when Mr. Wu vomited it became apparent he wasn’t choking.

“Is he having a heart attack?” someone asked.

An attractive woman hurried toward us, shooing people out of her way. “I’m a nurse. Let me see.” She took one look at him and said, “Get him to the couch, and somebody call an ambulance.”

Steve and one of the generals carried the heavyset man into the living room and laid him on the couch, where he promptly threw up again. Dinner forgotten, the entire party crowded around the couch, anxiously watching. I noticed that Mom and Lou were there, but with everyone’s attention on the ambassador, they didn’t realize how public their private conversation had been.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and when I turned, Olga was gesturing me toward the kitchen. Evidently I had a phone call. As if I cared right now! But recalling her persistence in cleaning the salad dressing, I followed her to the kitchen. As I reached for the wall phone, I wondered who would call me at Steve’s. I said hello over the noise of the waitstaff, the cooks, water running and dishes clinking together.

“What do you want?” I heard Taylor Bunch say on the other end of the line.

“Shouldn’t I be asking that question? You called me.”

“Pink, what are you up to? I didn’t call. You did. So what’s this about? If you’re calling to apologize for this afternoon, save your breath. You’re going down, sister, and soon. When I got home from the office, I found a package on my doorstep that’s gonna put you away for the rest of your natural life.”

Thoroughly confused, I stared at a stack of plates. “Taylor, I’m at a dinner party, and I didn’t call you.”

“Well, somebody did. Told me to hang on, and here you are.”

I glanced over my shoulder but didn’t see Olga, or anyone else who looked out of the ordinary. The kitchen was a hive of activity and frantic chatter about the ambassador, and no one appeared to notice me. Turning back to the stack of plates, I asked, “What was in the package?”

“Everything I need to prove you ripped off CERF. I’m about to call Parker. Then I’m calling the police. Maybe the FBI.”

“I don’t know what you’ve got, or where it came from, but if it points to me, it’s fake. I didn’t do it, Taylor.”

“Yeah, well, tell the judge.” She hung up.

I returned the phone to its cradle, my mind leaping ahead, wondering what on earth Taylor could have that would hang me. And who had left it on her doorstep. Things were quickly spiraling out of control and I suddenly panicked. I felt an overwhelming need to see Taylor, to find out what she had, to talk her out of calling Parker, or the police.

Turning to leave the kitchen, I noticed Olga as she slipped out the back door. She wore a light jacket over her uniform and had a backpack slung over her shoulder, and an alarm went off inside me. I asked the waiter closest to me, “Why is Olga leaving?”

He looked confused. “Who’s Olga?”

“One of the waitstaff.”

“She’s not with us. Must be a regular of the senator’s household help.”

She wasn’t with the household staff. Steve had a housekeeper named Carla and a driver named Bill and that was it.

One of the catering staff rushed into the kitchen to announce that Mr. Wu was dead, probably from poisoning. I gasped.

My gaze went to the door where Olga had disappeared. Could she have had something to do with his death? Was that what the whole salad thing was about—she’d given Steve the wrong salad?

The thought made me breathless with terror.

I glanced at the telephone. Olga had to be the one who called Taylor, then brought me to the phone. Why? What did that have to do with Ambassador Wu?

My mind raced with possibilities, and it occurred to me that the quickest way to get answers was to ask Olga.

Not stopping to explain, or even to grab my handbag from the dining room, I took off after her, through the back door, through the garden gate and into the alleyway behind the row of houses along Steve’s street.

Running has never been my strong suit and my strappy high heels took my pathetic athletic ability to new lows. Taking them off on the rough ground would slow me even more, so I hauled it as best I could out into a side street, looking both ways. I caught a glimpse of a dove gray jacket turning the corner. I ran after Olga, my mind churning through what had happened, and no matter how I sliced it, I kept coming back to wondering if I was supposed to be Olga’s hit. Had my discovery that morning marked me as a dead woman?

I thought of the salad, of how disappointed Olga was when I failed to eat it. Had my salad also been poisoned? If so, it was no wonder that Olga had been upset. Someone had sent her to off me, and I had to go and be goofy over Steve, killing any desire to eat. I sent a quick thank-you to God for making me crush on Steve Santorelli.

Two blocks later, I had to admit defeat. Olga had vanished. Probably just as well, I decided, if the woman was out to kill me. Nobody but a fool chases death.

I kept walking until I came to a major thoroughfare, where I hailed a cab and gave him Taylor’s address. I knew she lived in a condo complex a block over from my loft, because I’d seen her leaving a couple of times when I passed the building on my way to work. When we arrived I realized I had no money, which naturally annoyed the cabbie to no end.

“Look,” I said, trying to mollify him, “if you’ll just wait here, I’ll be right back with some money.”

“Do I look stupid, lady?”

Taking in his hairy face and hard eyes, I shook my head. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Hurry up about it, will ya? The meter’s gonna keep running.”

In the lobby, I signed the guest book, but when I explained that I had no purse and no ID, the security guard waved me on, barely looking at me as he read a magazine.

At Taylor’s door, I sucked in a breath of courage, raised my fist and knocked.

“Come in!”

I reached for the knob, opened the door and was instantly hit with a sense of seriously bad karma. I’m not psychic or anything like that. I just get this bizarre feeling of impending doom sometimes, and it never fails to pan out.

Inside, it was gloomy, with only one lamp lit in the far corner of the living area. The wooden blinds were closed, blocking any light from the city outside. “Taylor? Where are you?” It felt strange walking into someone’s home without that person there to greet me. Strange, hell. My hair was standing on end.

She didn’t answer, so I went toward the only other light, streaming through the doorway to the kitchen.

I found Taylor. On the kitchen floor. With a telephone cord around her neck. Her wide green eyes stared up at me without blinking. Maybe I wasn’t a fan of Taylor’s, but Jesus, I didn’t want her to die. I felt sick to my stomach seeing her there, so twisted and dead, a look of startled fear frozen on her face.

It hit me then. If Taylor was dead, who had called out for me to come in? The voice had been muffled and indistinguishable.

I turned quickly, just in time to see the front door closing. I booked to the door, jerked it open and saw the sleeve of a dove gray jacket just before the fire-exit door slammed shut. I nearly fell several times rushing down the concrete steps in my heels, but I didn’t want to stop long enough to take them off. Maybe I should have. By the time I reached the ground floor, the outside exit door was closed. I ran outside, into the alley, but it was pitch dark and I knew it was way past stupid to continue any farther.

Unfortunately, the damned exit door locked behind me and I couldn’t get back in. I had no choice but to walk down the alley, in the dark, and hope I made it to the street alive.

For approximately one nanosecond, I considered jumping in the still-waiting cab and gettin’ the hell outta Dodge. But I knew it would bite me in the ass later. I’d signed in at the front desk. I’d probably left something in Taylor’s apartment, like a hair, or carpet fibers from Steve’s house. Hey, I watch CSI. I know about those things.

There also was that pesky problem with the Kansas bank account, and all those people who saw the catfight between Taylor and me that afternoon.

Running from the problem would not make it go away. It would only make me look more guilty. Deciding to face it head-on and be completely honest, I made my way around to the street side of Taylor’s building, winded and pissed off because I hadn’t caught Olga. At the security guard’s desk, breathing heavily, I said, “You need to call the police. I went up to see Taylor Bunch and she’s dead. Whoever killed her ran out the fire exit in back.”

Naturally, Mr. Macho didn’t believe me. He had to go up and see her dead body for himself. As soon as the elevator door closed, I looked at his guest book to see who’d signed in within the past three hours. There were only two names. Mine, and somebody named J. Smith. Yeah, right. No doubt it was “J. Smith” I’d just chased down the stairs. I used the security guard’s phone and called the cops.

They arrived quickly and we all went upstairs to Taylor’s apartment, where we found the security guard wandering around, looking in closets and under the bed. Clearly, he hadn’t gotten it when I said the killer ran out the fire exit.

The two uniformed officers told him to go downstairs, said that they would question him later, then asked me to have a seat in the kitchen, which seemed odd to me since Taylor was there. It unnerved me, her body lying so close, her eyes staring up at me.

“Tell me what happened,” the taller of the two said as he took the chair opposite mine and the shorter one went off somewhere else in the apartment.

I’d already given some thought to what I would say, and it seemed to me that being honest was the best way to go. Start lying and I was bound to trip myself up. As briefly as possible, I told him.

He wrote it all down, then had me read it over and sign it. Several minutes later, a middle-aged, ordinary-looking man in a dull brown suit came in and walked around Taylor’s body, checking her out before he sat across from me.

“I’m Detective Schumski. I know you’ve already given your statement, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

He stared at me as I spoke, without asking any questions. When I was done, he got up and left the room, then came back and said, “Did you leave a cab driver downstairs without paying him?”

“I told you, I was chasing Olga and didn’t take the time to get my purse before I left.” I glanced at the entry to the kitchen. “Is he still there?”

“I paid him. You owe the city thirty-two bucks.”

“Thank you.”

He gave me another hard stare. “I’m taking you in, Miss Pearl. There are way too many questions I need answered, and there’s a dead foreign dignitary across town. Until I have a better handle on what went on tonight, you’ll be a guest of the city.”

So I went downstairs and rode to the police station in the back of a squad car. Once there, I sat around and waited aeons before Schumski and another detective came in and asked a thousand more questions. Not only did they have the deposit and check copies from the office, the ones I’d handed over to Taylor and she’d conveniently taken home, but they also had the contents of Taylor’s surprise package—multiple Valikov Interiors invoices made out to me, covering three hundred thousand dollars’worth of Chinese antiques and furniture. For ten thousand bucks, an antique fish pot with a wooden stand, and three pairs of Chinese wedding shoes, the tiny kind women wore when their feet were bound. A real bargain at twenty-two thousand dollars was a jade horse from the Yuan Dynasty. All of the invoices were for similar items, equally pricey.

I said to Schumski, “Why would a person embezzle money, then spend all of it on this kind of stuff? It seems to me a person would buy things like cars, or go on a trip, or maybe blow it on some expensive jewelry.”

He glanced at his partner. “You tell me, Ms. Pearl. Maybe you have a thing for Chinese antiques.”

“Detective, I am not behind this, and I didn’t murder Taylor. I’m being honest and forthright because I want you to find the woman who did do it. Besides, if I bought all of this stuff, where is it?”

“My guess would be that it’s in your home, either here or in Midland. That’s why we’re getting a search warrant for both places. We’re also going to get the signature card from that bank in Kansas, and I’ll bet it’s a spot-on match with yours.”

He was wrong about that. The signature card had to be my ace in the hole. I would have to remember signing a signature card. I’d hire the best handwriting expert in the country to prove it. I was not going to prison. Period.

Nevertheless, thinking of all the circumstantial evidence against me, including the phone call and the catfight, I felt my heart sink.

It sank further when Schumski implied I had something to do with Ambassador Wu’s death. After he spoke to the detective who’d been at Steve’s, he said I had the opportunity to put poison in the ambassador’s salad when I went to the kitchen.

“Why would I tell the man about the China brides, then kill him? That makes absolutely no sense at all.”

He didn’t see it that way, but he was stretching it to charge me with Ambassador Wu’s death, so he settled with suspicion of only one homicide, along with embezzlement and fraud.

A little while later, while I cooled my heels in the small interrogation room, they got statements from a couple of the CERF staff who’d seen Taylor and me shout at each other, and me warning her not to screw with me. They got a statement from Parker about what I’d found, and how I’d approached him about it and wanted to do my own investigation. Yeah, that didn’t look good. But the last nail in my coffin was when they matched my fingerprints to those on the Valikov Interiors invoices. I knew for certain then that someone had gone to an extraordinary amount of trouble to set me up, to use me as their scapegoat. I had no idea how my fingerprints had gotten on those invoices, but I was hell-bent on finding out.

I got to make one phone call and used it to call my attorney, Ed. After I told him I was in deep doo-doo, he sighed, like he couldn’t believe I was such a pain in his ass, and I decided I’d kill him if he said he wouldn’t help me. Luckily for Ed’s longevity, he said he’d be there as soon as he could get a flight out.

“Whatever happens, Pink, whatever they ask, or say to you, don’t say a word. Understand?”

Kinda late for that, wasn’t it? “I understand,” I said anyway. “Ed, I left Mom at a party hours ago. Would you call and tell her what happened? They won’t let me make any more calls.”

“Does she have her cell phone?”

“Uh, no. It wouldn’t fit in her purse. The party was at Santorelli’s.”

Dead silence. Then he said, “I’ll call.” And then, in a very cold voice, “Remember, say nothing.”

“I remember.”

But it was damn hard not to say anything at all, especially when they booked me for murder and embezzlement, took a mug shot, then locked me up in a room with a lot of extremely sorry-looking women. To be fair, I probably looked pretty lousy myself.

I sat there all night and ignored everyone. One chick tried to pick a fight with me, but I turned away and closed my eyes and she finally laid off.

It’s funny, the things we think of in times of major crisis. All that night, the only thing I could think about was Mrs. Han, and how much she wanted to go home, and how much I hoped that she’d gotten what she wanted. Maybe she was from Siberia, a very unwelcoming, cold place to live, but it was her home, and her people were there. I had people back in Midland, which was also somewhat unwelcoming—a long, dusty stretch of flatland, broken only by oil-lease roads and pumpjacks, covered with scrubby mesquite and cactus. I was determined to go back there, to be with my people. I vowed that I would, as soon as I found the bastard who framed me.

Chapter 3

By nine o’clock the next morning, I had a sketchy plan. But it was a start. One thing was sure—no way I was gonna sit around and wait for the police or the FBI to find out who set me up. Why would they, when they already had a perfectly good suspect?

The guard, a hefty woman named Clara, came and let me out. She walked me down a long hallway, to a flight of stairs and another hall to a door with a window. Inside was Ed.

I almost hyperventilated. God, he looked good. Like salvation and sex. Dressed in one of his killer navy suits, with a red silk tie that was exactly like every other tie in his closet and his usually longish dark hair freshly cut, he could almost pass for another one of the millions of suits walking around Washington. But not quite. Something about Ed is unlike any other man. Maybe because I know what he looks like naked. Or maybe because he’s got an attitude that even the most expensive Brooks Brothers suit can’t disguise.

I’ve gotten in the habit of falling in and out of love with Ed, and at that moment I was dead dog certain he was the most supreme male on planet Earth. Overwhelmed with an emotion I never wear comfortably, I looked at Ed and wanted to marry him and have ten thousand of his babies.

It’s probably a good thing he didn’t ask just then.

Not caring if he hated my guts—and that’s not to say he did—I walked to him, slid my arms around his waist and burst into tears. I was so bummed out, I wasn’t even embarrassed about losing it.

Being the supreme male he is, Ed wrapped me up and let me bawl all over him and get salty tears on his tie.

Eventually, he set me away from him and pulled a chair out from the small metal table. He handed me a tissue from the box on the table and said, “This is some bad shit, Pink. They’ve got enough to nail your ass but good. They didn’t find anything in your loft here in D.C., or in your apartment in Midland, but it turned out the manager in Midland had taken all the boxes delivered to your door and stored them for you. There’s enough stuff to open a small Chinese antique shop.”

I sniffled and watched him take the chair opposite mine, drag it around the table and sit next to me. “There were quite a few messages on your answering machine from a woman named Sasha, who was updating you about your plans to redecorate the house you’re buying.”

“I don’t know anyone named Sasha, and besides, why would I make plans to redecorate a house I don’t own yet?”

“You wouldn’t. It’s all part of the scam, Pink.” He leaned forward a little and looked directly into my face. “I want you to tell me everything, from start to finish. Don’t leave anything out. Got it?”

Nodding, I blew my nose, tossed the snotty tissue toward the wastebasket, missed, then turned back to Ed. I told him all of it, my tears drying up the longer I talked and the more pissed off I became. By the end of it, I could have put any televangelist to shame, I was so righteous.

In typical Ed fashion, he didn’t get too worked up about it. He reached out and smoothed my hair away from my face. “You look like hell.” His gaze dropped to the neckline of my dress, along with his hand. While his long, warm fingers dipped into my cleavage on the pretense of feeling the fabric, he said evenly, “Nice dress. I like that it’s pink. I bet Santorelli liked it, too.”

Turning away from him, I didn’t rise to the remark. “What does how I look have to do with anything?”

“You need to look more conservative to the judge for your arraignment.” He nodded toward a small bag next to the door. “I stopped at your loft after I left Santorelli’s.”

I shot him a startled look. “You went to Santorelli’s?”

“Your mother is over there. She spent the night.”

I stood and walked around the perimeter of the small room. “I hear about five stories in your voice. So let me have ’em. First, what did Mom say about this?”

“Lots, and most of it I can’t repeat because my mama taught me better.”

“So she’s just mad? She’s not crying? I can take anything so long as she doesn’t cry. I hate it when she cries.”

“Oh, she cried, then she went off on a shouting tangent, then she cried again.” He smiled wryly. “I’d like to beat up the senator and leave him for dead, but I gotta say, his dad is one cool dude. Did you know he was a POW in Vietnam?”

“Yes, I know.”

“It’s pretty weird, watching him and your mom. Can’t say I’ve ever seen Jane like that.”

I stopped walking. “Like what?”

Ed cocked his head to one side, as though he had to think about how to phrase his thoughts. Finally he said, “There’s some kind of strange chemistry there. On the surface, she can’t stand Lou. She must have told him to shut the fuck up at least five times, and I didn’t blame her because he kept coming up with wacked-out, commando ideas about how to help you. Jane said if we left it up to him, we’d all be in prison. Or dead.” Ed shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. “Lou is one of those guys who says exactly what he thinks, and to hell with being politically correct, or tactful, or whatever. He told Jane she couldn’t possibly be any help because she’s too damn emotional, that if she didn’t stop crying and shouting, he’d force-feed her a sedative.”

“Did the castration take long?”

Ed stared across the small room at me. “That’s the strange part, Pink. She agreed with him. Then she sat down and asked me what I planned to do to help you out of this jam.”

I told him what I knew about Lou and his attraction to Mom, and what we’d all overheard through the ventilation system before the ambassador became so sick. “I can’t believe, considering how she insisted she wanted to leave, that she spent the night there.”

“Naturally, after I called and told her you’d been arrested, she was upset. Lou wouldn’t let her take a cab and insisted on taking her home, but when they got to your loft, the cops were all over it and wouldn’t let her in. So Lou made her go back to Santorelli’s house with him, and she stayed all night. When I got there this morning, she was crying and he was fixing breakfast. Gave her a couple of fried eggs, bacon, sausage and toast with butter. Jane says, that’s a heart attack on a plate. Lou says, eat it now, dammit. And she picked up the fork and ate it.”

Oh, man. Mom was sliding into doormat mode. This was bad. On the other hand, it meant she was definitely not wishy-washy about Lou. All her shouting aside, Mom liked him. She wouldn’t be a doormat for a man she didn’t like. The problem was, how could she be involved with him and not become a doormat? Jeez, I wished Mom would get some counseling.

I glanced at Ed. “You’ve very carefully not mentioned Steve.”