“Wow, I just hate hearing that,” he said, speaking mostly to her breasts. “Men don’t understand, the ladies do so much to put their best self forward, and what do guys think, that they don’t have to make an effort?” Manetta shook his head as though the thought left him dumbfounded beyond belief. “I mean, look at you. You must work out, right?”
“Yes I do,” Stella said, touching her fingers to her hair so that the swoopy part tipped forward over her eye in a sexy fashion. Encouraging man-lust was not the main reason she kept up her running routine and the near-nightly Bowflex sessions and the occasional martial arts bout, but it was certainly a nice by-product.
“And look how nice you’ve fixed your hair, your makeup, your outfit … your whole package, really. Um, I hope I’m not being too forward if I ask if you are over forty…”
“Why, yes I am, in fact,” Stella said, trying to keep her earsplitting grin under control. “A
bit
over forty, anyway.”
“I know it’s a rude question to ask, and I hope you’ll forgive me,” Manetta said, “but it just goes along with my theory. A
lady
hits forty and she evaluates herself and makes whatever modifications to her routine are called for. A man who won’t do the same, he just makes the rest of us look bad. Brings down the reputation of the entire gender. I myself am forty-two, and I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life. I think earlier I was tempted to just coast, but now I understand that romance is a two-way street.”
Stella was still feeling swelled up enough with modest pride that she decided to let him slide on the six years he’d shaved off his age. “That it is.”
“I’m still, you know, hoping to find the right lady. I mean, a really special lady,” Manetta said, slipping off his wristbands and dropping them on the hall table. “And when I do, I know we’ll both make an effort for each other. I mean, that’s what ManTees was supposed to be about—respect. Know what I’m saying?”
“Um, I think—”
“Hey, would you like a cup of coffee? A soda? I’d offer you a glass of wine but I know you’re on duty and all.”
Stella wouldn’t have minded a little wine, or—even better—a little shot of Johnnie, which she hadn’t had since leaving Missouri, but it wouldn’t do to lose focus now.
“I’d love a soda, thank you. A
diet
soda, of course.”
They laughed in unison as Manetta led the way into his condo, which Stella had to admit was tricked out nicely. As he busied himself pouring the soda over ice, she took in the soft green walls, the sofas loaded down with decorative cushions, the candles laid out on little gold plates.
“I like the way you’ve done this room,” she said, though the truth was she preferred what Noelle called “eclectic clutter,” which was just a nice way of saying a lifetime’s worth of treasures and junk, arranged on whatever surface happened to be handy.
“Thanks. I read in a magazine, women like green. They find it soothing.”
Stella was starting to think Manetta took his woman-prowling a little too far, if he based all of his decisions on the collective tastes of the fairer sex.
He brought her glass and toasted it with his own. Stella thought the cologne smell was stronger now and wondered if he’d spritzed himself on the sly while he was in the kitchen.
“Want to see the rest?” he asked, as she took a sip.
“Um…”
“Of my
place.
” Before she could respond, he’d motioned for her to follow him down the hall.
“I use the extra bedroom for my gym.”
“Nice,” Stella said, peering in to see a treadmill and a rack of free weights in front of a wall entirely covered with a mirror. Next to them, copies of
Men’s Health
and
GQ
were arranged on a little table.
“And this is my bedroom…”
The bedroom was painted a mauve-ish purple, with gold-leafed curtain rods holding bouffant sheer panels twisted and knotted this way and that.
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Those curtains are silk, and that painting has genuine brushwork added to the print. The bedding’s all down, and I have a little fridge in here with water bottles and wine.”
“Huh … so you don’t have to get up and go to the kitchen, is that it?”
“Exactly!” Manetta beamed at her, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to ask her if she wanted to take a romp on the spot, but to her relief he led her back out to the living room, and they sat on the sofa, Stella putting as much distance between herself and Manetta as she could.
Even if he wasn’t a murder suspect, she doubted she would ever find him attractive. He was afflicted with a taint of desperation that was as unmistakable and off-putting as body odor.
“This might surprise you,” he was saying, “but I didn’t always have a lot of success with women. Nowadays, sure, I’m out three, four nights a week. Ski club, spinning class, Latin dance, you name it, I’m into it—and I’m having more fun than ever.” Something about the grim set of Manetta’s jaw made Stella wonder if he was telling the truth. “But there was a time when I couldn’t get a woman to look at me. I mean, I’m a scientist—a geek, you might say. Well, other people said it, anyway.”
He laughed, but there was little humor in it. Stella thought she saw a glimpse of the lonely, awkward man he’d been. Well, more than a glimpse, really—more like a full-on life-sized slightly older version, just with a makeover and a support garment.
“I can’t even believe that,” she lied.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s true. Me and Benton, know how we met?”
“You worked together, right? That’s what our records show…”
“Yeah, but more specifically—it was my first week on the job, and Benton had been off at some conference. I’d moved into my cubicle and I was trying to get to know the ropes, and there was this one secretary—really cute, a tight little redhead with big … a big personality. She was being really friendly, showing me around, all that. She was
flirting
with me, saying we should have drinks, making all these suggestive jokes, and I was—well, I couldn’t believe my luck, I was falling for it. Hell, I told myself it was because I’d landed this great job—I was successful, I had as much of a chance as the next guy, know what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” Stella said.
“Then Benton gets back from his trip and sees what’s going on and asks me to have a cup of coffee, and that’s when he tells me. This woman, she’s
playing
with me. She does it to all the new guys. Her and her friends, they get guys all riled up, convinced they’re gonna get lucky. And then they wait until everyone goes out to happy hour, when they’ve had a few drinks—lead them on and then drop them flat. Cut ’em off at the balls, right in front of everyone. They think it’s fucking hilarious.”
The mask had slipped, Manetta’s light tone giving way to the fury that was simmering underneath. His mouth twitched at the corner and he squeezed his hands into fists.
“That’s terrible,” Stella said.
“Yeah. Tell me about it. Benton said we had to stick together, that he wouldn’t let that happen to me. He told me to just be polite but keep my distance, and that’s what I did. After a while we started going out after work sometimes, places where the girls aren’t as snobby. Or as attractive, but that was before I really started taking care of myself, so I couldn’t be as picky.”
“So let me get this straight,” Stella said. “You were okay with hitting on plain, ugly girls because they were the only ones who’d have you?”
“Well, like I said, I hadn’t done my personal
work
yet. Now, a fine-looking woman like you, you’ve never had to deal with that, I imagine, so maybe you can’t understand what it’s like. But Benton did. He was just like me. Average-looking guy, not much experience with the women. So we stuck together. We were each other’s wing man. And when we came up with the idea for ManTees, we were the very first to wear them. We were the first success stories.”
“You mean they really helped you?”
“Well, yeah. We started talking to women. We started getting dates. Like … on our own.”
Stella didn’t figure they’d taken each other along when one of them snagged an unsuspecting woman, but she let it go. “How’d it happen that only Benton’s name ended up on the patent?”
“That was no big deal. He said he’d take care of it, I said fine. Benton is more of a detail guy, I’m big picture.”
“But when Benton sold to LockeCorp—”
“That wasn’t anything more than a paperwork hassle. I mean, we had to pay the wiring fees and so on to split the funds into both our accounts—”
“What do you men, both your accounts?”
“Don’t you have that in your paperwork?” Manetta gestured at her sheaf of papers. “We had to sign like a hundred different forms. It was kind of a hassle to figure out for taxes, but it worked out, and we both got half. I mean, within a few bucks one way or another.”
There went his entire motivation. “So you’re saying you benefited equally from the sale of the patent.”
“Yeah. Which I guess means I need to make sure he gets half of whatever you-all have from the state.”
Stella recovered from her disappointment. “Oh, oh yeah, sure, I’ll make sure he does. Uh, if I can find him.”
“Look, Stella,” Manetta said, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder. “You can see I’m set up nice here. The money from ManTees let me do a few things. Got new furniture, clothes, some speakers would blow your mind. Sure, I’ve got all the bells and whistles. But some things don’t change, you know? What’s between a woman and a man, for instance … especially if they respect each other enough to always put their best self forward … well, I can just tell that you and I are cut from the same cloth. And if you’d ever like to explore that further, I know a place we can go where the waiters still wear ties and treat you with respect. Have you got a card on you?”
“Uh … well, I just moved offices and I’m having some new ones printed up.”
“Okay, well, I’m easy to find. I’m ManTeeMan on Facebook. Friend me, okay?”
Stella promised to do so, and endured a linger-y suggestive handshake before she made her escape, wondering what it was about a man who tried too hard—they were even easier to resist than the ones who didn’t try at all.
Chapter Eighteen
Stella could barely keep her eyes open on the way home. She was exhausted, and tomorrow when she woke up she’d be a whole extra year older and she wasn’t sure how she was planning to feel about that, and she wasn’t any closer to figuring out who’d left a dead guy in her nephew’s kitchen than she was when she arrived in Wisconsin, and all she wanted right now was a tumbler of Johnnie and a good long night’s sleep, though she’d settle for just the sleep. Now that they’d gotten the boys shipped off toward safety—or at least temporary storage, in Luke’s case—she figured she could just hit the hay and deal with everything else in the morning.
When she got to the house, however, Natalya had the place lit up like blazes. Every lamp, every overhead light was turned on, and she was sitting on the living room couch with a tangled pile of yarn in her lap. She had the news blaring on the television. A plate bearing a few neat slices of cheese sat nearby, untouched, along with a neatly folded napkin and a glass of milk.
Stella, who’d used the key Chip gave her to get into the house, cleared her throat when she saw that Natalya was crying, great glistening tears sliding down her cheeks, streaking them with mascara. She was staring in the general direction of the television, but her eyes were unfocused.
“Uh … honey?” Stella said after a moment, not knowing what else to do. She was plenty accustomed to crying ladies and had entertained any number of them in her living room, usually while trying to pry and suss and untangle and coax their stories from them, stories of beatings and cruel words and slaps and punches and falls down stairs and teeth knocked loose. Natalya, as far as she knew, had been the victim only of general oafishness and jealousy on the part of her husband, but emotions were bound to be running high with all the murdering and so forth, plus discovering one’s son was a drug dealer probably didn’t do much for one’s spirits.
“Natalya?” Stella said a little louder, making a move to put a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder. Instead, Natalya leapt from her chair with a shriek, tugging off the glasses that had been perched on the end of her nose and nearly knocking over the milk, and then both of them went for the yarn, which had fallen under the couch, and there was general confusion as the mess was cleared and the television turned down and tissues fetched and tears wiped away.
Then, not knowing what else to do, Stella guided Natalya back to the sofa and suggested she have a sip of her milk. Ordinarily Stella was quick with a hug in tearful situations, but Natalya’s high-strung jumpiness made her cautious. Not to mention her own nerves, which were wound up tight from exhaustion.
“Look here, Natalya, you got anything stronger than milk around here? And also you got any more of them snacks?”
Natalya waved weakly in the direction of the kitchen. “You are helping yourself.”
Stella took her at her word. She found a few dusty bottles in the cabinet above the fridge: the dregs of a bottle of peppermint schnapps, a few inches of gin, and a bottle of Scotch that still had a red plastic bow attached to the top. She squinted at the label:
LAPHROAIG
, it read.
SINGLE ISLAY MALT SCOTCH WHISKY.
It was a dilemma of the sort she didn’t run into every day. “Y’all aren’t drinkers, are you?” she called into the living room.
“No, is ruin of many men of my family. I tell Chip we are totalers.”
“Huh.
Tee
totalers, I expect you mean. Well, see here, I’m wondering if I can do you a favor and take some of this off your hands.”
Another limp wave was all the encouragement Stella needed, and she opened the Laphroaig. Not her brand, but she figured she could make an exception this once. She poured a healthy couple of inches into a juice glass and held it up to the light, then took a cautious sniff.
Damn.
She wrinkled her nose at the scent, which was redolent with notes of tar and WD-40 and paint thinner and practically singed the hairs on the inside of her nose. You had to wonder what they were thinking over there on the British Isles. Stella had no idea whether corn could be made to grow along the soggy moors of Scotland, or whatever they called their fields over there, but surely they could have called up the folks in Kentucky and asked for a few pointers. After all these centuries, Stella couldn’t imagine it hadn’t occurred to them to stop roasting their whisky over patches of sod they dug up from the ground, which apparently burned like a pile of Goodyears and imparted its nasty taint to every ounce along the way.