THE NEXT DAY FRANK Simmons was arrested for the murder of his brother-in-law, on the basis of the bloody knife found in his home.
PJ was still trying to fit that into her idea of a two-person murder team when she got news of the contents of the box in her car. It was another album of nude pictures, close-ups of small areas. A foreplay album. Arlan’s distinctive U-shaped scar was present. A butterfly tattoo looked just like the one Schultz mentioned Fredericka had. Their fingerprints had been found on every page, and two of the pages were stuck together with Arlan’s semen.
Who left the foreplay album for PJ to find? Apparently it had been spirited out of Fredericka’s home the night that the woman had a feeling her place had been broken into. Someone obviously wanted to bring the love affair to light. So how did Frank Simmons figure into all of this? Was Fredericka playing around with him, too? She drew a diagram on a pad of paper, with arrows to indicate who might have been sleeping with whom. There were more arrows than in Cupid’s quiver.
“Let’s go to Millie’s,” Schultz said. He’d knocked on PJ’s office door and opened it before she could respond. “I’ll spring for a meal. ’Course, I might expect something in return.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows rapidly. PJ’s imagination responded to the suggestion of something in return and felt a rush of warmth below her belly.
The first time they made love, she’d wondered whether her over-forty body with padding on the hips still held any interest for a man. PJ had lost confidence since the divorce. When she’d expressed her fears, Leo told her she was beautiful. He’d been worried about the same thing, since he didn’t have the corrugated abdomen and muscular chest he’d had as a young cop. She told him he was beautiful, too, and she meant it. He was a great lover, playful, tender, and passionate, sometimes all three at once.
“I could use a break,” she said. “I have a lot more to do here, though. I’ll have to come back and work into the evening.”
“Hell, me too. Detectives don’t get regular sleeping hours, Doc. Regular loving hours, either.” He tilted his head to point toward the hallway. “Coming?”
PJ pushed open the door of Millie’s Diner and breathed in deeply. The scents of coffee brewing, sweet rolls baking, burgers frying, and onions sautéing entered her nose and went straight to the pleasure center of her brain. A smile spread over her face, and the wrinkles between her brows flattened out, leaving her with a smooth, untroubled forehead, at least for now.
It was dinnertime and most of the tables were occupied, but there were several spots open at the counter. She strode across the black-and-white linoleum and headed for her usual stool. The stools had round padded tops and chrome legs. She gave the top of hers a twirl to lower it enough that her feet wouldn’t dangle. Schultz took her coat and his, and hung them on a peg that was already used. There weren’t any empties, because Millie refused to put up more than ten of them. He settled into his usual spot, leaving one stool between them, the one that had uneven legs and rocked slightly. The one that the regulars avoided.
The windows that spanned the front of the diner were steamed up from the contrast between the indoor temperature, which hovered somewhere between bake and broil, and an outdoor temperature that had slipped below freezing. Millie’s clientele had seen the large expanse of window glass as ripe for finger-drawn graffiti. Limericks, phone numbers, sketches inspired more by hormones than an artist’s muse, and several hearts with initials graced the space. In a few places, Millie had obliterated freedom of expression with a towel.
A three-foot aluminum Christmas tree occupied a section of the floor underneath the pay phone, between two doors with “Women” and “Others” neatly lettered on in white paint. A spotlight with a rotating filter stood next to the tree, lighting it alternately with red and green. Above each door, a few Christmas cards were tacked to the frame. A sprig of plastic poinsettia in a small vase on each table completed the seasonal decorations.
Schultz spotted the proprietor, a woman in her sixties, and waved her over. “You can take our order anytime,” he said. “We’ve been here fifteen minutes already.”
Millie snorted, made a U-turn, and headed away from them.
“Hey, service here,” Schultz said.
Millie made the rounds of the tables, chatting and refreshing coffee cups, taking her time. Finally she headed their way with a pot of coffee in one hand and her order tablet in the other. Schultz and PJ turned over the coffee cups in front of them, and a stream of coffee filled each. Not a drop spilled as Millie switched from one cup to the other. There was only one type of coffee—hot and strong. No vanilla crème, no hazelnut latte.
“Nice to see you, Dearie,” Millie said to PJ, pointedly ignoring Schultz’s remarks.
“Merry Christmas, Millie,” PJ said. “I like your decorations.” They were the same, tired items Millie used last year. Probably most of the Christmas cards were the same, too.
Some of those could be decades old.
“Thanks.” Millie glanced at Schultz, and momentarily her lips flattened and nearly vanished, leaving a line across the bottom of her face that was as effective a rebuke as PJ had ever seen. “Would you like to see the menu?”
“Not today. I’ll just have a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake.”
“Strawberry, not chocolate like usual?”
“Red for Christmas.”
Millie’s eyes lit up. “Gotcha.” Her head swiveled to Schultz. “What about you, you prevert?”
“That’s pervert, for the educated among us,” Schultz said. “I’ll have the same, only make the burger a double, extra onions and can you spare a decent tomato, plus about twice as many fries as she gets, and a large Coke.”
Millie stuffed her order tablet into her pocket and turned away.
“You know, that’s the same order pad she had when she opened this place,” Schultz said. “I’ve never seen her write anything on it.”
“You really ought to be nicer to her. Christmas spirit and all.”
“She’s mad at me, which is nothing new. This time I think it’s because I didn’t send her a Christmas card.” He sniffed. “Haven’t ever sent one, but I guess she keeps hoping. She’s got the hots for me, you know.”
PJ sighed. Schultz’s relationship with Millie was in a well-worn groove long before she came along. There was true feeling, though, at least on Millie’s part. PJ’d seen a flash of it when Schultz got the news that his son had been killed.
“Probably jealous of you,” Schultz said, “but she treats you nice anyway. I give her credit for that.”
PJ leaned toward Schultz, and lowered her voice. “Have you turned up anything new?”
Schultz checked that they were out of earshot of the rest of the customers. She knew he’d been burned once by blabbing details of a case in the diner, and he wasn’t about to do it again.
“Arlan Merrett’s ID was confirmed by dental records, not just the wife’s say-so. The time of death is still estimated at six to nine o’clock Saturday night. Some of the wounds appear to have been made by a scalpel or similar instrument, but used clumsily. We’re not looking for a surgeon. Cause of death was a stab wound to the heart, although the guy would have bled out anyway. The thrust through the heart was anything but subtle, probably made by a butcher knife. There were a few wood splinters in the victim’s back, oak, so they tell me. Ligature marks on wrists and ankles. The skull fracture was postmortem, must have been when his head met cobblestones.”
“Are you still going with the gay murder?” she asked.
Schultz shook his head, nearly knocking PJ’s forehead because he’d leaned in so close. “I think Merrett was not only straight but screwing his partner who by the way inherits the business. That’s in addition to licking chocolate off his wife’s privates. Money and lust. All we’re missing is power, for the big three. Merrett wasn’t a botched sex change operation, either.”
“Why are we sure of that?”
He shrugged. “Because the ME says so. Oh, and June’s alibi checked out, at least so far. Several of the hotel staff recognized a photo of her, and said she was there for the entire workshop. A couple of the lecturers remembered her, too, because she asked a lot of questions. Would’ve made our job easier if they hadn’t remembered her. Arrest wife for killing husband, neat and clean.”
“Nothing was neat and clean about Arlan’s death.”
Schultz waved a hand. “I mean prosecution-wise.”
A customer headed for the men’s room, passing behind where they were sitting. Schultz cut off the conversation and slurped his coffee noisily.
Millie arrived with heavy white plates loaded with food, Schultz’s actually overloaded. The buns had a sheen of grease and were pierced with toothpicks that held tiny American flags held out stiffly in a phantom wind. PJ could see crystals of salt riding her fries. A few sautéed onions had escaped from the cheeseburger and left shimmering grease trails across the plate. Her mouth watered and she realized it had been a long time since her last meal. There was a plump, perfect strawberry perched atop a dollop of whipped cream on her milkshake, and a small green bow on the tall spoon that came with it.
“Millie, you’ve outdone yourself,” PJ said, waving the spoon with the bow.
Millie half-curtsied in a surprisingly graceful move. As she left, her eyes passed over Schultz as if he were a food stain on the wallpaper.
“Aw, now you’re spoiling her,” Schultz said. “She’s gonna expect compliments every time we come here.” He shook the saltshaker over his already-terminally-salted fries.
They continued talking in low tones, catching up on each other’s news about the investigation. When they left, Schultz paid for both meals, spun a quarter on the counter, and left it as his usual tip. She slipped a dollar under her plate.
Schultz kissed PJ outside the diner—“I like a greasy woman”—and then swept her off to his home in Lafayette Square, over her objections that she needed to get back to work right away.
His house was chilly, but he held her close on the sofa, his coat draped over the two of them, until she warmed up. She rested her head on his shoulder, letting his strength soak into her along with his body heat. PJ closed her eyes and let the corpse with the ruined chest and the sinister package with the red bow fade away, knowing her compulsion to see justice done would be back later.
His roaming hands excited her. She unfastened a button of his shirt, slipped a hand inside, and saw the hairs on his arms rise. She marveled at the power of her touch. Wherever their relationship ended up, she already evoked more of a response from Schultz than she had from her ex-husband for a long time before their divorce. Or had her touch ever been electric for Steven?
They moved to his bedroom, talking softly as if the world had let go of them.
She felt a surge of warmth for Schultz when she saw his room. He’d done something special for her. The room was as neat as she’d ever seen it—the compost pile he called his laundry was gone, and the dusty reference books were missing from his bureau. The wood floor shone, his mirror wasn’t fogged with a coating that made her reflection blurry, and the dust bunnies had been herded into the last roundup. The bed was freshly made with linens that smelled like a sunny day, and there was a rose lying on her pillow.
Forty-two-years-old and I’ve never had a rose on my pillow.
Other women might get turned on by expensive jewelry or trips to Paris or gourmet dinners. Clean sheets and a three-dollar flower was PJ’s aphrodisiac. She stepped close to Leo, wrapped her arms around his neck, and whispered in his ear.
“Very nice, Leo. Looks like you’ve taken lessons in hotel management.”
He pulled away, clapped one hand over his heart, and the other rose to his forehead. He looked like a Victorian heroine about to faint, except for the stubble on his chin and the evidence of his arousal. “You’ve hurt me deeply,” he said. “Deeply. Are you insinuating I don’t live like this all the time?”
“I’m not insinuating,” PJ said. “I know for sure.” She needed to be close to him, touching him, part of him.
“Hey, I read in a magazine that women go for this shit.” He moved behind her and began softly kissing her neck. His warm breath, even smelling of onions, melted the tension in her muscles and sent jolts of desire through her veins.
“I have to admit that under some circumstances, house-cleaning can be erotic,” she said.
“There’s something missing, though.”
“Mmm?”
“You, in my bed.” He deftly unfastened her bra, and her breasts nestled into his cupped hands. She moved her hips against him slowly, feeling his erection pressing against her buttocks, and was rewarded with his sharp intake of breath.
“I want you.” His words came in a hot rush.
She turned in his arms and slowly, thoroughly, kissed him. Thoughts faded, shoved aside by past images of their love-making and the tingling eagerness of her body. He pulled her shirt and bra up over her head and walked her backward until her legs bumped the bed. Somehow her jeans were at her ankles. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of the jeans, and out of her panties. In moments his clothes, too, littered the floor.
His eyes drank in her nakedness and came to rest on her face. “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” Leo said.
He wanted her in spite of the twenty extra pounds loitering on her hips, stretch marks left over from childbirth, and an ass that hadn’t qualified as trim and tight in a long time. She was still desirable in his view. A surge of desire spread up through her like lava rising from a volcano. She wasn’t just hot, she was incandescent.
“Less talk, more action,” PJ whispered. Her stroking hand drew a moan from him.
A cellphone’s distinctive ring invaded the bedroom. “Your pants are ringing,” she said. Just then another phone rang.
“Your pants are ringing, too,” Leo said. His hand slid between her legs, his fingers finding the knob that sent ripples of pleasure through her. “Don’t answer.”
The phones continued to buzz their urgency.
“Aw, fuck,” Leo said. He reached down to the floor, pulled the phone from his pants pocket, and flipped it open.
“What?” he said. His voice still had the throaty sound of passion, but his angry tone was unmistakable.
PJ sighed, dug around in her jeans, and answered her phone.