Lust, Loathing And A Little Lip Gloss

Confused and slightly inebriated, I walked to the door as Anatoly opened it. “Did you forget something?” I asked as I acknowledged Maria.

“No, I…may I come in for a moment? I promise not to be long.”

I glanced at Anatoly who looked more than a little peeved at this point. Reluctantly, he stepped aside as I waved her in. She was frowning, intensifying the few wrinkles in her face.

“Maria, this is my boyfriend, Anatoly.”

Maria either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. “Did Enrico call and tell you why he wasn’t coming?” she asked, glancing at the round, rented table, now the only piece of furniture not holding a box.

“No,” I said carefully, not really wanting to relive that particular phone conversation. “He just said he was having a bad day.”

“Did he say he was going somewhere?”

“No.”

“Did he say he was feeling ill?”

“Why are you bothering me?” I asked bluntly. I was required to attend these people’s séances, but there was nothing in my escrow that stipulated that I had to play twenty questions.

She sucked in a sharp breath and toyed with the belt of her trench coat. “I went to see him.”

“So?” Anatoly asked impatiently.

“I still have the key to the building, so I let myself in, and when I was standing outside the door to his condo I smelled food and I could make out the sounds of Gabrieli playing on the stereo, but he didn’t respond to my knock or to the doorbell. When I called out to him, the only response I got was from that damn parrot.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want company tonight,” Anatoly suggested. “Maybe he has a guest over and he’s in the middle of enjoying some wine and other pleasures and your presence would have been an intrusion.”

I suppressed a smile. Subtlety was not something that Anatoly was comfortable with.

“I didn’t see any evidence of a guest.”

“How could you see evidence of anything when you’re standing outside a door?” Anatoly continued reasonably.

“Because I have the key to his apartment,” Maria admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “I tried to let myself in, but the chain lock was on. Enrico may want to avoid me, but my trying to come into the condo on my own accord should have thrown him into a rage. I expected a confrontation of some kind. But he didn’t scream at me or even acknowledge my attempt. I’d say that he might not have been home, but then he wouldn’t have left the CD player on.”

“And he wouldn’t have been able to chain lock the door,” I pointed out.

“Well, that would be explainable, but the music…”

Her voice trailed off and Anatoly and I exchanged looks. Last I checked it was a lot easier to leave a stereo on than chain lock a door from the outside. But I didn’t really want to argue the point.

“Maria, I don’t know where Enrico is or why he has his music on,” I said slowly. “All he essentially told me was that he was having a bad day. His exact words were that he was being haunted, whatever that means. He said he was going to be late and then we kind of got into it.”

“You got in an argument? What could you two possibly argue about? You don’t even know one another.” Then her eyes widened in horror. “You didn’t insult his food, did you? Or did you praise another chef? Perhaps you said something nice about Wolfgang Puck. Enrico is very jealous of Wolfgang Puck.”

“Wolfgang never entered into our conversation. I was just a little flippant when he said he was being haunted.”

“Enrico doesn’t believe in ghosts,” Maria said firmly. “He comes to the Specter Society meetings because he finds them amusing…although now I suspect his reasons for coming have more to do with me than anything else.”

“I don’t know anything about any of that,” I said. I was beginning to lose patience with this line of questioning. She was uninvited and she was preventing Anatoly from ravaging me. “All I know is that he told me he was haunted, I made a joke about that and then he called me a fucking bitch and hung up on me.”

“What!” Maria gasped. “But he only uses such profanity for food critics and diet gurus!”

“Yeah, well, I’m neither,” I said drily.

Maria now looked even more agitated than she had when she walked through my door. She started wandering around the room, weaving in and out of boxes like a confused rat aimlessly exploring a maze. “Something is amiss.”

“It might be,” Anatoly agreed. “But it’s not our problem. Now if you’ll excuse us.”

Maria glanced down at the empty wineglasses on the box near where I had been standing and comprehension spread across her countenance. Unfortunately, the comprehension didn’t seem to be mixed with even the slightest bit of acquiescence. “If you’re right,” she said, directing her comments to Anatoly, “if Enrico isn’t answering the door because he specifically doesn’t want to talk to me, then I’m going to need another person to act as my decoy.”

“Forget it,” Anatoly and I said in unison.

“I’ll pay you,” she said quickly. “A hundred dollars. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call him.”

“And if he doesn’t answer?” Anatoly asked.

“I’ll pay you two hundred more to go over to the house and find out what’s going on.”

“Excuse me, but I’m about to invest in a million-dollar property. Three hundred dollars isn’t even enough to pay for the sales tax on my upcoming furniture-shopping spree. If you want a decoy you’re going to have to find someone who is a little more desperate.”

“Me for instance,” Anatoly said.

“You?” I squeaked. “But you already have more business than you can handle!”

“This is a one-night job, correct?” Anatoly asked.

“Yes,” Maria said uncertainly. “Do you do this kind of thing often?”

“I’m a P.I.”

“Like Magnum,” she exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes. “You just gave away your age.”

Maria flushed, but kept her focus on Anatoly. “This is perfect,” she continued. “You can call him and if he’s not available then sneak over, break in and—”

“No,” Anatoly said quickly. “I’m not going to break the law for you. But I will find out if he has a guest.”

“You can do that without breaking in?”

“Of course.” Anatoly smiled. “Magnum did it all the time.”

“You shouldn’t have come,” Anatoly mused as we followed Maria through the winding traffic.

Enrico hadn’t answered his phone, not even while Anatoly was leaving a message on his answering machine telling him that he believed someone was in the process of breaking into his restaurant. After that the three of us piled into two cars, Maria into her Mustang and Anatoly and I into my Audi, and we all went over to Enrico’s condo on Telegraph Hill. Since I had been the one doing all the drinking, I had given Anatoly the keys.

“I thought you wanted me to,” I lied. The truth was that I couldn’t stomach the idea of sitting home alone, thinking about the sex I wasn’t having. At least this was distracting. “Besides, it’s not like we’re trying to hunt down the Zodiac Killer,” I noted. “Maria basically hired you to knock on a door and ask if anybody’s home. I don’t see how I could screw that up for you.”