CHAPTER SEVEN

 

When I'd had all the good news I could handle from contractors, I took an Uber back to my apartment, where Toby greeted me with slobbery kisses and violent tail wags. While he crunched on his dinner kibbles, I heated a bowl of soup and made a grilled cheese sandwich, which I barely tasted since I was immersed in dreams of winning the lottery or stumbling onto sacks of cash fallen from a Brinks truck. I wasn't greedy; I didn't need millions and millions. Just one sack of cash would do the job.

When we were each finished eating, I washed all the dishes, gave Toby a dessert bone, and kept the cookie for myself because I needed all the comfort food I could get. Toby was sympathetic enough to my plight to spend the evening beside me on the sofa, although he did it sprawled on his back so that I could rub his belly while I watched television. We went to bed around eleven, and my dreams were filled with half a dozen contractors chasing me down the street, each clutching unpaid invoices.

The phone rang the next morning while it was still dark. Sometime during the night, Toby had swapped out his doggy bed for the real thing, and he lifted his head from the pillow beside me, looking at me blearily before sagging back into sleep. Toby's day didn't begin until the sun came up.

Although half asleep myself, I registered the delicious scent of peppers frying. Mr. Bitterman must have gotten to work early, this time with real food. My stomach growled faintly as I reached for the phone.

"Have you been online today?" Irene asked in my ear.

I glanced at the bedside clock. Five forty. "It's not today yet." I rubbed my eyes. "What time do you get up, anyway?"

"Oh, I've been up for hours. You know I don't need much sleep."

Yet she functioned like an astrophysicist. Life just wasn't fair.

"I've got a full day of VC meetings ahead of me," Irene continued. "This is my Zen moment."

Too bad her Zen moment couldn't happen at ten o'clock. "And you're calling me during your Zen moment because…?"

"We've gone viral!" she squealed, sounding positively delighted about it. "Well, Sherlock Holmes has, anyway. But we're the brains behind him."

"There is no him," I said automatically, fully awake now. I could think of several different reasons Sherlock would go viral, and none were good. "What happened? Did someone finally find out he's fake or something?" I suddenly thought of the reporter both Watson and PS Rossi had mentioned.

"You have so little faith in me," she said sadly. "It's just the opposite, actually. Ever heard of an alternative media blog called the Irregulars?"

"No," I answered, putting her on speaker while I googled it.

"Someone named Wiggins owns it."

"Last name or first name?"

"No clue. Anyway, he wrote a post about Sherlock Holmes. And it's gotten picked up by everyone."

The Irregulars didn't exactly sound like the ideal place to land publicity-wise. More like a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Define everyone," I said, hoping it didn't include Detective Lestrade. He didn't strike me as an internet surfer.

"Look for yourself," she said.

Resigned to the worst, I navigated to the site and its bold headline: Case of the Disappearing Diva.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Isn't it great? Wish I'd thought of it." Irene sounded practically giddy.

A headache tapped at my temples as I scanned the article.

New detective in town Sherlock Holmes—he wasn't in town because he wasn't real, but okay, no damage there—has been retained to solve the Case of the Disappearing Diva, also known as Rebecca Lowery, the coloratura soprano in the traveling company of Ethereal Love, which is set to open—

"Who is this Wiggins character?" I demanded.

"Who cares?" Irene asked. "You can't buy publicity like this. Sherlock Holmes could be famous nationwide by noon. We could have a new case every week just from this one article!"

"I don't want a new case every week," I nearly moaned.

"Sure you do. It'd solve all your problems," she said. "I should send Wiggins a thank-you note. On behalf of Sherlock, of course. Since he's out of the country on another case."

"Maybe he'll have an awful accident there," I said. "He might even die."

She laughed. "Sherlock can't die. He's going to make us a lot of money."

"You already have a lot of money," I pointed out.

"When I said us, I meant you," she said. "Think about it. You can fix everything that's wrong with the house, and then you could actually move in there. No more 2B. No more Mr. Bitterman. Or Mrs. Frist, the geriatric peeping Tomasina."

"She peeps because she cares," I murmured, distracted once more by the possibility of a lot of money.

"She peeps because she's nosy," Irene said. "How'd it go with the contractors yesterday?"

My growling stomach did a slow roll over my appetite at the new topic. "My wiring might burn the place down, and it's going to cost ten thousand dollars to bring it up to code."

"You have to fix that, Marty." Her tone was stern. "That's too dangerous."

"On the upside, all the electrician should have to do to break through the walls is lean on them."

"What does that mean?"

I groaned. "It means I need money."

"Well then, lucky for you, Sherlock is gonna make you some," she said.

I hated to admit it, but she was right. I already knew my day job wasn't going to repair the Victorian. That was a given. But finding Rebecca Lowery's body would be an awfully good start. And once we knew that Barbara'd had nothing to do with her death, we could cash that check with a clear conscience.

I only prayed that was what we would find.

After Irene and I agreed to talk later in the day, I managed to catnap for another forty minutes or so, intermittently listening to the building wake up around me. When it became apparent my sleeping was finished, I slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Toby, and took a quick and gratifyingly warm shower. By the time I made my way into the kitchen, he'd transferred back to his doggy bed so that he could keep an eye on any breakfast morsels that might hit the floor.

Between two slices of toast and a semi-stale chocolate chip muffin, it occurred to me that while Barbara Lowery Bristol had a solid motive to have her sister killed, and Bryan Steele had the means and the temperament to do it, we had no real evidence against either one. As far as I knew, you still couldn't look up hitmen from some directory, and I was unaware of any connection Barbara might have to The City to facilitate any plot to kill Rebecca. Still possible…but Bryan Steele, on the other hand, did have that connection. Yet something told me he'd be harder to pin down. And Bryan Steele scared me a little.

And there were still those missed rehearsal days leading up to Rebecca's death. I had a hard time believing she'd just been calling in sick. The timing was too coincidental. So what had she been up to?

I decided it might be useful to reconstruct Rebecca's last day, to walk in her footsteps, and see where—or to whom—they led me. Although Irene would be tied up in her meetings, that plan seemed safe enough to go it alone, and I had plenty of time before I was due at work.

I pulled on a purposely nondescript outfit of jeans and a forgettable beige sweater, then gathered my hair into a low ponytail. I wanted to go unnoticed by Rebecca Lowery's neighbors. Keeping with that thought, I decided it wouldn't be wise to show up too early, either, so I clipped on Toby's leash and took him for a nice long walk, giving him plenty of time to meet and greet hydrants, fence posts, and trees as he saw fit.

When we got back to the apartment, I reviewed the notes from our meeting with Barbara. The logical place to start seemed to be Rebecca's apartment in the Hayes Valley section of The City. Only problem was, how to get there. I didn't want to use Uber in case I found myself hot on the trail of an actual lead. For the same reason, my bike was out. There was only one solution.

I called Irene back. "Can I borrow a car today?"

"Use the Prius," she said without hesitation, as if that wasn't a strange request at all. "I'll have it dropped off within an hour. What's your plan?"

"I thought I'd check out Rebecca's apartment building."

"Good idea. I've got to run now, but call me later, okay? Be careful, Marty."

The Prius arrived in just over a half hour. I forced myself to wait nearly another hour before threading my way through morning traffic to the address in the Hayes Valley neighborhood that Rebecca's sister had supplied us. Unlike my building, Rebecca's was filled with light and warmth and cheerful colors. The residents seemed quiet, the place was clean, and there were no toxic cooking fumes leaching from under any doors. I was instantly jealous of the dead woman.

Her apartment was on the fourth floor, just across from the elevators, which unfortunately would make it less likely for the neighbors to have noticed her coming and going. I knelt in the hallway, pretending to re-tie my shoe, while I studied her door. It was a perfectly ordinary door, with no crime scene tape or bulky lock affixed to the knob. Clearly this was still being classified as an accidental death. I wondered if Barbara had visited yet to begin cleaning out and boxing up the apartment's contents. Or if she even planned to. Maybe she'd just let the landlord deal with disposing of Rebecca's possessions.

I briefly thought about picking the lock to have a peek for myself, but at this hour it was all too likely someone would be stepping on or off the elevator or leaving their apartment at exactly the wrong time. Besides, if someone had killed Rebecca in her own home, chances were they'd been sure to clean up any evidence of it before leaving. My better bet if I wanted to know what Rebecca might have been up to in the days leading up to her death was to find a nosy neighbor like Mrs. Frist.

I started with the neighbor on her left. No answer. Ditto the one on her right. Four unanswered doors later, one finally opened to reveal an exhausted-looking thirtysomething woman with a toddler perched on her hip. A baby cried lustily in the background. Her free hand tugged her ragged ponytail free from the toddler's hand and flung it back over her shoulder where it belonged. The toddler immediately reached for it again.

"Michael, don't," she snapped. She looked at me. "What?"

I swallowed. "My name's Marty Hudson. I work for a detective named Sherlock Holmes." Why hadn't I brought any of Irene's fake-but-convincing business cards? "I'd like to ask you about your neighbor, Rebecca Lowery."

"Who?"

"Rebecca Lowery," I repeated. "She lived down the hall." I pointed, in case she didn't understand the concept. "The apartment by the elevators."

"Did she?" The woman frowned. "I wouldn't know. But I don't get out much. Did she get evicted or something?"

"No, she—"

"Stop it, Mike." She paused for a deep breath. "You got any kids?"

I shook my head.

"Don't." She pulled Mike's chubby little hand from her ponytail. "Rebecca Lowery. I don't think I know her. Like I said, I don't get out much."

"Did you ever hear any kind of fighting coming from down the hall?" I asked. "Maybe some unusual sounds, like banging or thumping?"

"Only unusual sound I hear is silence," the woman said. "I don't got to leave this place to hear banging and thumping. Michael Patrick!"

I said a hasty thank-you and moved on. Another "don't know her" and one shout of "go away—I'm not interested!" before I struck pay dirt across the hall.

"Rebecca? Sure, I know Rebecca." He was in his early forties, clean cut, neatly dressed, clean shaven. The sort of guy you'd see with an enigmatic smile behind the wheel of a luxury car in a television commercial. "Or I guess I should say I knew her." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Josh, by the way."

"Marty." We shook. "Why do you say that?"

"She's no longer with us, right? A friend of mine sent me a link to this Irregulars blog post about it. Some famous detective's been hired on the case, got a weird name. Hey!" His eyes widened. "You don't work for that guy, do you?"

Irene had been right; Sherlock Holmes was officially racing out of our control. Except in this case, Holmes's notoriety might work for us. "I'm one of his investigators," I admitted, fingers firmly crossed behind my back. "Did you know Rebecca? Can you tell me anything about her?"

"I've never talked to a PI. That must be interesting work, right?"

"It has its moments. Rebecca Lowery?" I prompted him.

"Right. Sorry. I can't tell you much," he said. "I only knew her as a neighbor. You know, we'd say hello in the lobby, ride the elevator, see each other at Buttercream. She was a singer, right?"

"Opera," I murmured. "Coloratura, to be precise."

"You don't need to be precise. I don't know much about opera." His grin became a self-deprecating smile. "I'm more of a reader. That's what I do for a living."

I frowned. "You read?"

"I'm a freelance editor," he said. "I work from home. In case you thought I was a bum or something, being here this time of day."

The thought hadn't occurred to me. "What's Buttercream?" I asked.

The smile fell away, replaced by a moue of astonishment. "You don't know the bakery, Buttercream? They have the best cupcakes in The City. You should check it out. It's only two blocks from here. Rebecca was in there all the time."

He didn't have to sell me on cupcakes. I was so there.

"Did you see Rebecca last weekend at all?" I asked.

He thought about it. "No, I don't think so. But when she wasn't rehearsing, she'd do a lot of entertaining. If you know what I mean."

"Men?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Rebecca was rarely alone. She was a beautiful woman."

"Any of these men in particular stand out to you?"

He looked up, as if trying to recall. "There was this one guy I saw go into her apartment a couple of times. Big. Not too friendly."

That sounded like Bryan Steele, alright.

"But I haven't seen him around much in the last couple of weeks."

"So he wasn't here last weekend?" I clarified.

"Honestly? I couldn't tell you. I hadn't seen her in a while."

"How long is 'a while'?"

He frowned, as if trying to remember. "Maybe a week? Week and a half? But you know these entertainer types. They keep odd hours, right?"

"And you didn't see anyone else go into her apartment this weekend?" I pushed again.

He shook his head. "Sorry."

"Thanks anyway."

"Sure." He shared another easy smile. "It's nice to talk to another human being during the week. It gets kind of lonely working from home."

Josh the Editor disappeared back into his apartment, and I moved on to the next door. No one home. After hitting half a dozen more doors, I only got one more neighbor—an older women—who said she knew a singer lived down the hall but she hadn't seen her in couple of weeks. Then again, she was wearing bifocals that looked thick enough to double as bulletproof glass, so I wasn't sure she'd seen much of anything lately.

After canvassing the entire floor, all I knew was that Rebecca kept odd hours, if she'd had a visitor last weekend he'd been stealthy, and the diva liked Buttercream cupcakes.

For lack of a better lead, I left the building and followed Josh's directions on foot to the bakery two blocks away. Ten minutes later, as I finished up a red velvet cupcake, I decided he'd been right. They were definitely the best in The City.

After two cupcakes, I licked cream cheese frosting from my fingers and wiped the crumbs from the screen of my cell phone, bringing up Rebecca's picture, and approached the counter girl again.

"Ready for another one?" she asked with a smile. "Red velvet, right?"

"To go, please." I held up the picture. "Can you tell me if this woman looks familiar to you?"

She looked at it. "Sure. That's that singer who died, right? I read about it online. I didn't know her name, but I recognized her face. She came in here all the time. Are you related to her or something?"

"Or something." I slid the phone back into my handbag. "I'm looking into her death for her sister."

Her eyes widened with newfound respect. "Cool! You must work for that Sherlock Holmes dude, right? I read all about him. Disappearing Diva." She giggled. "Sounds like fun. So you're, like, following her trail, right?"

I nodded. "Did she come in last weekend?"

She shook her head. "Sorry. I hadn't seen her in a while. I know she had a big show coming up, so I just figured she was laying off the baked goods, you know?"

I resisted the urge to suck in my own gut. "Did she ever come in with anyone? Meet anyone here?" I fished.

She shrugged. "Sorry, I don't really remember." She paused. "But I know she talked to Carlos, like, all the time."

"Carlos?"

She nodded and pointed out the front window. "He owns the newsstand over there. She bought the trades every week when they came out, to read the reviews."

Someone cleared his throat behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the thirtysomething guy waiting in line. His shaggy sandy blond hair fell low on his forehead over light brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. Not bad looking, if you were into geek chic. He met and held my eyes in a hurry up, before the double chocolates run out! kind of way.

I thanked the counter girl for the information, bought a couple of doughnuts to go along with the third red velvet cupcake (purely for research purposes), and left Buttercream, headed for the newsstand across the street.

My cell phone chimed with an incoming text. Looking forward to chatting more about your celebrity boss at dinner.

Watson.

I let my head drop back as I blew out a sigh. Was there anyone who hadn't seen the Irregulars post? Didn't he have better things to do than read blog posts about fictitious characters all day? Didn't he have enough official duties to keep him busy? Worse, what if that post prompted Lestrade to look into the credentials of Sherlock Holmes? What then? It was against the law to pretend to be a police officer. Was it against the law to pretend to be a private investigator too? I wondered how many times we could get away with saying Holmes had been called out of the country.

I should just forget about Sherlock Holmes, sell the Victorian, and resign myself to living in a dilapidated apartment building next to Mr. Bitterman and across the hall from 2B. There were worse things in life.

"Help you?"

I just couldn't think of them at this moment.

"Lady?"

I realized that was directed at me. I recalled Rebecca Lowery's photo on my cell phone and showed it to the newsstand clerk. "Can you tell me if you remember seeing this woman last weekend?"

Carlos ignored it. "What, you think I take names? You gonna buy a paper or what?"

I dug for some change. "Let me have a Chronicle."

He handed it over with an impatient snap. I paid him and showed him the screen again. "Please have a look. It's important."

He gave an impatient shake of his head but glanced at the picture. As soon as he did, his eyes widened in recognition. "Yeah. That's Miss Lowery."

"You knew her?"

He shrugged. "Just to say hi to. It's not like I knew her. You know what I mean? She bought the papers all the time. Read all about the other singers and shows in town, you know?"

"When did you see her last?" I asked.

"Maybe a week ago? Week and a half?" He paused. "Wait. I know why you're asking me these questions."

I froze. "You do?"

His head bobbed up and down in sudden realization. "I read about her on this online thing my wife showed me this morning. They're calling her the Disappearing Diva. You must be one of them Sherlocks that I read about." He regarded me with open suspicion and maybe a little hostility, making me wonder what he had against "them Sherlocks." Regardless, I wasn't making the same impression here that I'd made with Josh back at the apartment building. Might be best if I nudged things along.

"You said you last saw her here a week ago?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No, not here."

I raised an eyebrow his way. "Not here?"

"I seen her outside Lucky's Deli, over on Leavenworth, in the Tenderloin. Between Golden Gate and Turk? I was picking up some pastrami for the wife. She's pregnant, and she's got the cravings, you know? Some days she—"

A man in a business suit interrupted that train of thought, hurrying toward the clerk with some change for a newspaper. They made the exchange, and then he hurried away with it folded under his arm.

"What were we talking about?" he asked, turning back to me.

"Rebecca Lowery."

"Oh, right, yeah. Like I said, I saw her outside Lucky's. Weird, no? I don't know what she was doing there when there's, like, lots places to eat around here."

"Weird," I agreed. "Was she alone outside the deli?" I asked, thinking of Bryan Steele.

"Oh, she was with someone alright. Arguing."

This was getting good. "Can you describe the man she was arguing with?"

"Woman," he corrected.

"Woman?"

He nodded. "She was arguing with some redheaded broad, with big…" His hands moved outward from his chest, then froze, his cheeks going red. "Tetas. Grande tetas."

My mind went immediately to Tara Tarnowski, Rebecca's understudy and now star of the show.

"What were they arguing about?" I asked.

"See, that's the thing. I don't know." He scratched his chin. "I heard it clear as day, but I didn't get it. They were arguing about a fluffy bunny."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"That's what I thought too." He nodded. "That's why I remember. It was so weird, no? She say she was going to buy a fluffy bunny at the deli. Don't ask me. I been going there for years. I never seen them selling bunnies, fluffy or otherwise."

"Did the two of them go inside?"

"Your Disappearing Diva did. She wasn't having none of what that redhead was saying. I could tell 'cause I've seen it before, with my wife. When the hands go on the hips, you know it's over for you, and you might just as well do what she wants you to do, because—"

"The redhead didn't go inside?" I clarified. "Did she leave?"

"Don't ask me," he said. "I don't know nothing from there. Don't know what the redhead did. Don't know how long your girl was inside. I had to get over here to work. I got five mouths to feed, you know what I mean?"

I knew what he meant. I had two mouths to feed, one of them mine, and it was problematic. Still, he did have a pregnant wife, and he had given me another lead, so I felt I owed him some token of gratitude. I dug for some more change. "I really appreciate your help. I'll take an Examiner too."

He handed it over. "All my customers appreciate me that much, I'll have that mansion in no time."

You just couldn't thank some people.

 

*   *   *

 

I walked back to Rebecca's apartment building to pick up the Prius and drove to the Tenderloin district, munching on my research cupcake. I found Lucky's Deli on Leavenworth without too much trouble, but I wasn't sure I'd want to shop there, let alone park a Prius in the open. While Hayes Valley was an up-and-coming neighborhood full of trendy bars, boutique restaurants, and high-rise apartment and condo buildings, its neighbor, the Tenderloin, was full of drug dealers, overflowing dumpsters, and crumbling tenements and liquor stores. And Lucky's Market and Deli didn't look like the exception. I tentatively parked on the street and beeped the car alarm on, glad I was making this visit in broad daylight. Not that I was sure that meant the Prius would still be there when I got back. I crossed the street and pushed through the glass doors of Lucky's. The same pungent smell of cold cuts and dill pickles that perfumed every deli in America hung thick in the air, but this one had an underlayment of something else. I sure hoped it was garden variety dust and grime, and not dead bunnies.

The interior was one narrow aisle. On the left was a floor-to-ceiling shelf full of dusty canned goods—mostly dented—and a variety of ethnic foods ranging from jars of kimchi to pickled jalapeños. On the right sat a glass deli case featuring gray-looking chorizo and sliced meats along with a variety of cheeses growing mold that spoke of long past expiration dates. As icky as it was, I couldn't imagine how anything about this place would incite an argument between Rebecca and Tara. Unless Tara had refused to eat here.

I stepped up to the counter and was met with burly crossed arms and attitude from a fireplug of a man in a filthy white apron, his stare openly suspicious. Maybe he thought I'd come to steal a can of Cheez Whiz. His face had the bloated, flushed look of an experienced drinker. The hair missing on the crown of his head had moved to his arms and the open collar of his shirt. A soggy toothpick protruded from the corner of his mouth.

Suddenly I lost all appetite I might have had.

Knowing Irene's Prius was on borrowed time, I pulled out my most friendly smile and shoved it his direction. "Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

"Yeah, I'd mind," he snapped. "This ain't no information booth. Order something or get out."

With customer relation skills like that, he'd go far.

My smile dissolved. I took a deep breath. Might as well go for broke…

"I'll take a fluffy bunny, please."

His eyes narrowed and raked across me with excruciating slowness. Just when I'd decided that the newsstand clerk had played some kind of weird joke on me, he said, "Stay there," and stomped off into the back.

Where did he think I would go? I stood there inhaling mingling scents of pungent cheese and sliced salami, wondering what I'd just ordered. Could it be they really made sandwiches out of bunnies? I shuddered, the cupcakes in my stomach lurching.

I didn't have to wait long before the guy came back with a brown bag in hand. "A hundred bucks."

I tried to hide my surprise. I think I failed.

"Cash," he added.

I could buy a warren of rabbits for a hundred bucks. Or pay my phone bill. I dug in my purse. Normally, that number was way more cash than I carried around. Luckily, I'd emptied my coffee can savings this morning on the off chance I'd need to grease some palms. I just hadn't expected them to be this greasy. Reluctantly I counted off twenties until I had enough to hand over. He traded me the bag for them, and I hurried outside, anxious to escape from his gimlet-eyed scrutiny and to breathe fresh air again. I practically dove into the Prius (Still there. Yay!) and squealed off down the street, forcing myself to wait until I was well out of sight a few blocks away to reach into the bag.

Inside was a clear baggie containing four little pink pills.

I stomped on the brake, and the car swerved to a stop at the curb. I sat there staring at the baggie.

Pills? Drugs? Fluffy Bunny was code for some sort of drugs? Rebecca Lowery had been buying drugs. Barbara was right about her sister. If the diva had gotten clean in the past, she'd clearly fallen off the wagon again. Had her sister found out and killed her for it? Had Rebecca had some falling out with Tara over her use…and had Tara killed her over it? Or had her death been about a drug deal gone wrong after all?

A guy walking his dog moved down the sidewalk toward me, and I shoved the pills back into the brown bag, suddenly feeling guilty. I rolled up the bag again and stuffed it deep under my seat, out of sight of the dog walker or any police officer who might pull me over for reckless driving or speeding or running a stop sign or driving while petrified.

It took me almost half an hour to drive the three miles back to the Bayside Theater, since I drove at about ten miles per hour, obeying every light, stopping at every stop sign long enough to eat a three-course meal, and wondering the whole time what exactly I'd brought along with me for the ride.