Kitty Kitty (18 page)

While I waited for Dadzilla’s not-at-all-setting-my-knees-atremble arrival, I entertained myself by making up jokes such as:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Life.

Oh, I won’t be needing one of those.

I also decided, since it was pretty clear I was about to be locked in a dungeon for period ever period, to check my email. Not that I was looking for anything in particular (message from Jack). I just wanted to see what had come in (and if it was a message from Jack).

There was only one email.

(Not from Jack.)

Oh, goodie! More mysteries! Now new and improved with Creepy-sounding Names!

This would undoubtedly come in very handy in the case of awkward pauses during the upcoming Once Upon a Time There Lived a Girl Named Jas Who Was a Massive Disappointment to Her Father and Was to Be Locked in Her Room Forever story time.

As if Dadzilla was going to be letting me get le word in edgewiseo.

But my way is not Abandon All Hope Avenue. I prefer to travel on Making the Best of It Boulevard. So when Dadzilla pounded on my door like he meant to pulverize it, I put in a sad-yet-winsome smile and let him in.

Little Life Lesson 63: Apparently to a father, there is no difference between his daughter being escorted home by police because she
is
a murderer, or his daughter being escorted home by police because she helped them
catch
a murderer.

Things started off well. He said, “Get that drippy smile off your face. You have nothing to smile about.”

Exit: One smile, pursued by a bear.

Then he moved from Anger to Grave Disappointment. He shook his head. “That’s it, Jasmine,” he said. “No more.”

“No more what?” I felt it was important to be clear on that. Food? Shelter? Breathing?

But I don’t think he was really listening to me because he said, “Seventeen-year-old girls are not supposed to be meddling with death. They are supposed to be playing with dolls. And tea sets.”

Yes. That is what most seniors in high school are doing. When they’re not making bonnets for their stuffed animals and chasing rainbows. But since such nuances are lost on the man who made me keep training wheels on my bike until I was fifteen, I simply said, “I don’t have a tea set.”

I thought it was relevant and to the point, but he ignored it. “This ends now, Jasmine. The deception. The lies.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I told you what was happening. The other morning. You laughed.”

“I did no such thing.”

That made me mad. “You did too. And I don’t see why I am in trouble. I didn’t do anything except avenge someone’s death. Besides, how am I supposed to behave honestly when I don’t have a good role model for it?”

“What are you talking about?”

I actually had no idea what I was talking about, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Smokey LeBraun.”

It was like I’d dusted him with magical lose-all-the-blood-in-your-face powder. He went totally white and stared at me.
“What do you know about Smokey LeBraun?”

“Enough,” I lied. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep this up, but it seemed worth it. Especially if it delayed the “you are being sent to a reformatorium-slash-place-where-they-make-sausage-out-of-naughty-little-girls” portion of our discussion.

Dadzilla ran his hand through his hair and it looked like he’d started to sweat. “How on earth did you find out about him?”

“On the Internet,” I said. Which was not strictly untrue.

“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out about your mother.”

BUH-BOING!

That is the sound my eyeballs made popping out of my head. Who had said anything about my mother?

Dadzilla kept talking. “I’ve tried so hard to protect you. I didn’t think you needed to know the truth.”

EYEBALLS. STILL. POPPING.

“Lying is never the answer, Dad. You should have told me.”

“That’s enough, Jasmine. Go to your room.”

“Um, we are in my room.”

We stared at each other, him with Dadzilla Expression number five: Scowling Menace; and me with Jas Expression number one: Blank Innocence (Because I Have No Idea What I’m Talking About and Also My Eyeballs Are Stuck Somewhere on the Far Wall). And then he did the last thing that in eighteen million six hundred ninety-five thousand and
two years I would have imagined. He said, “You might be right.”

I almost fainted. In fact, I think I did faint, but it was like a mini-faint, so I was back in time to hear him saying, “I should have told you about your mother. I will tell you.”

“When?”

“When we get back to Los Angeles. We leave next week.”

More almost-fainting now with heart rate picking up with joy. “We do?”

“Yes. I got word yesterday that Smokey is back in jail.”

Back
in jail? Is what I wanted to ask. Instead I said, “What about your book on soap?”

He smiled. And not in his dangerous Dadzilla way. In this far-off oh-the-times-we-had way. “I did the research for that twenty-one years ago. That’s how I met your mother.”

“You and she met here?”

“In this hotel. She loved Venice.”

“Is that why we came here now?”

“That, and I knew you’d be safe. Thought you’d be safe. I never would have guessed what kind of mess you’d end up in.”

“What mess? Nothing bad happened! In fact, the police—”

“Pfui.”

We were back to our old selves.

“Don’t forget that you have Italian class tomorrow.”

“Golly, no. I so enjoy it.”

He made a stern face. But at the door he stopped and turned back and looked at me. “You’re just like her, Jasmine. In every good way.”

And suddenly I found it a little hard to breathe. Or see. Or swallow.

When Polly came back she said, “You’ve been crying! Was it awful?”

“No, it was fine. I think I just have allergies. Late-onset.”

“Late-onset allergies. Got it.”

And because she puts the RAD in BEST FRIEND EVA, she didn’t ask any more questions. Not that I would have known the answers. But I would have made stuff up. Anyway, after everything that happened, my head was spinning so much as we went to bed that I barely even thought about the fact that Jack still hadn’t called back. Or emailed. Or probably even thought about me one half a time.
⁴⁹

Venice looked different to me the next day as I walked to Italian class in the outfit Polly had laid out for me (dark green sweater, denim skirt, beige cowboy boots with the nuts on them, floaties). Maybe it was because I knew it was my mother’s favorite city. Or because I knew there was one less killer on the streets. Or maybe it was because I knew we’d be going home soon. But somehow even the prospect of whatever dialogue Professore Rossi had in store for me seemed appealing. The birds—even the pigeons—were
adorable and the tourists were charming and the croissant I had for breakfast was extra flaky and delicious.

As I walked, my brain kept wandering to the hole in my life where the call from Jack should have been, so I tried to keep it reined in by thinking back over the investigation. There were still a ton of unanswered questions. I thought back to all the evidence, the prints on the glass and the pen and the phone.

The phone. My brain hiccupped. Why had Max left the phone when he knocked me out the first time? He had plenty of opportunities to take it. He had to know that his call would be on the call log, like a neon arrow in the night pointing toward a connection between him and Arabella.

Oh. My. God.

The last pieces fell into their places like checkers in a Connect Four game. The ruffles in her bathroom being wet, the ones on the couch all pointing in the same direction. The missing curtain rope and dust on the window. The fact that the killer had left the phone when I was knocked out. Beatrice being the next victim. Arabella asking Professore Rossi how to say “birth certificate.” I knew why the brooch had been taken. I knew how Arabella had been killed.

The killer had been scattering evidence around like birdseed for me to find. Laying a trap I’d walked right into.

The killer had said, “This is only fun if it’s a real competition.”

There was only one person who could have done all of it.
One person who would have said that. And it wasn’t Max. Max never used contractions.

I wanted to hit myself over my own head when I thought of it. It was so obvious, staring me in the face, and I’d missed it like a train to Bologna.

I had to get to the police. I turned around to run to the station and saw a shadow loom up over my shoulder. Even before I felt the searing pain, I knew what it meant. I hugged my arms around myself to minimize the chances of broken ribs as I fell and was out cold before I’d even hit the pavement.

When I woke up, Bobby was hovering over me with a knife. I thought my eyes were blurry because he seemed kind of out of focus, but then I realized it was because his eyes were doing this weird rolling around thing, and he was sort of weaving back and forth. My wrists were taped together over my chest and he kept jabbing toward them with the knife. My feet, I discovered when I tried to move, were also taped together.

“I’m sorry, Jas,” he said. “I think you could have made a better man out of me.”

He rose up, holding the knife over his head like he was going to stab me through the heart.

I said, “Bobby, you don’t—” but stopped as he came plummeting toward me. I rolled out of the way. The knife blade sliced into the floor. And stayed there, quivering. Bobby was passed out cold.

That’s when I saw the hypodermic needle in his arm. And the murderer standing behind him.

“How sweet that he was trying to free you,” she said. “He really did have his moments.”

“Hi, Maria.”

“Hi, Jas.”

“Or do you prefer Beatrice?”

“Beatrice doesn’t exist. I borrowed that name from the woman Dante wrote his
Divine Comedy
for. She’s just a phantom, a nom du murder, if you like.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s nice.” I tried to keep it light, conversational. “What did you do to Bobby?”

“It’s only a tranquilizer. He’ll wake up just in time, don’t worry.”

“In time for what?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. All I was sure of was that the longer I kept her talking, the longer I stayed alive.

“You’ll find out.” She looked at me carefully. “You’re not just asking questions to buy yourself time in the hopes that your precious pals will come looking for you, are you? Because that would be completely pointless. They all think you’re in class for another hour.”

“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” I lied.

“I’m glad. I’ve been so looking forward to having a chat with you. Tell me, how long have you known?”

“That you were Maria? Or the killer?”

“Both. I want to know what I did wrong.” She leaned toward me like she was really interested.

“Nothing, your crimes were perfect. If I hadn’t refused to believe in Arabella’s suicide, you would have gotten away with everything. But even when I proved it was murder, you still had a suspect all lined up.”

“Max was easy prey. I would probably have had to kill him anyway, but him getting arrested is just as good. And it holds up so beautifully.”

“You mean because he was obsessed with the Neals?”

“Precisely. I just wish—well, I know it’s picky of me, but it would have been nice if you could have waited a little longer. I had it all planned for four fifteen when Max got home from work.”

“I’d been wondering about the time. That was quick thinking on your part yesterday. You went to his apartment to plant the brooch, the gun, and the trophy you’d knocked me out with, didn’t you? I bet that trophy used to sit on the dressing table here. Probably Arabella liked it because it reminded her of George.”

“God, I wish we’d talked before. This is so fun. You’re right, of course. I was at Max’s to leave all that stuff, but you walked in before I could get away, so I pretended to be tied up.”

“I bet you could have gotten away. I think you wanted to hear what we would say about your crimes.”

Maria gave a little minx-like smile. “Maybe.”

“Max’s brother didn’t commit suicide, did he? He died from drinking orange juice with ice you poisoned, hoping to kill Arabella, right?”

“You understood that? We’re such a good team! You know, I’ve never felt as close to anyone before as I do to you. I feel like you really get me. You feel it too, right?”

Hello not-so-fresh feeling. “Sure.”

“You’re right, George wasn’t supposed to die that night in London, it was supposed to be Arabella’s turn. It seemed like the perfect psychological moment for it. You have to get that, the right moment, it’s what makes the whole thing work, you know? She was depressed after her breakup, so no one would question it if she committed suicide. While they were fighting that night I poisoned her ice. But then she had to go and decide to make him breakfast.”

“People mess up even the best plans.”

“They do. That’s why you have to stay flexible.”

“Like the other night, after the ball, when we followed you. You hid in the water, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I’d left my scuba gear at the end of that dead-end
calle
. I didn’t expect anyone to come after me, but it’s always important to be prepared.”

“That’s how you got into The House that Kills the night you did in Ned Neal too, right? You swam up to the dock and hid behind the planters so the security cameras wouldn’t see you.”

“Exactly. Then I climbed up the side of the house into my own office window and went down the hall to his door. No one suspected a thing.”

“What was the psychological moment for Mr. Neal? Why kill him when you did?”

“That was a pity. I’d really hoped to keep him alive until his other children were dead, let him suffer a bit, and then do him in. But he started getting suspicious of me, asking questions. Nosing around at Prada about Maria Longhi. So he had to go.”

“Is that how Arabella got on your trail, too?”

“No, she found those old articles by my mother and started bothering people.”

“Your mother and Ned had an affair when he was here working on the Ca’Dario as an art student, right? And your mother got pregnant with you.”

“And Ned abandoned us. Bastard.”

“Lucien knew.”

“Yes. Funny thing, he’s disappeared.”

That sent a chill down my spine. “Did you have something to do with that?”

“No. I’ll have to hunt him down and kill him, of course. But that’s later. How did you figure out that I was Ned Neal’s illegitimate daughter?”

“I should have seen it earlier. One of the saleswomen from Prada called and asked me if Arabella was crazy. At first
I thought it was just because she did seem kind of nuts, but I realized she meant something else. I’d shown them a photo of Arabella that also had you in it. And they were wondering why Arabella was asking about you if she already knew you. Especially because Arabella had said there was a lot of money if she could find Maria Longhi. The saleswoman thought that meant a reward, but Arabella really meant inheritance. Because she was looking for another Neal heir. So I knew that Maria Longhi was Ned’s daughter. The piece I missed originally was that she was you.” I paused. “You didn’t have to kill Arabella, you know. She would have shared the money with you.”

“Who says I killed her? All the evidence points to suicide. No other possible explanation. They’re waiting for Max to explain it, but of course we all know how that will end.”

“I know how you did it. It was really smart.”

“Tell me.” Her eyes were glowing.

“Arabella didn’t die on the bridge. You just wanted everyone to think she had. I realized it when I remembered that she’d told me she would be in disguise when she came to meet me. There was a wig in her armoire that I bet she was planning to wear. But since she wasn’t wearing it when her body was found, that meant she was killed before she could change. You drowned her here, in her own bathtub. That’s why she had water in her lungs. If the medical examiner
had taken a sample, he would have seen that it didn’t match the canal water. You stripped off the outfit she was wearing and because it was soaking wet you had to get rid of it, which is why it wasn’t in the laundry hamper. Then you dressed her in a simple black outfit that would be easy to match.”

“Go on.”

“You dragged her from the bathtub and, using the tie from the curtains, lowered her body into a boat through the window. All the ruffles on the couch were pointing toward it—one of her feet must have dragged.”

“I didn’t even notice that!” she said, and clapped her hands like a little girl. “But if Arabella was killed here, how did everyone see her on the bridge right before the body was discovered?”

“You were wearing a nearly identical outfit, except you put on the brooch because you knew it would be identifiable. You parked the boat under the bridge, got out, and walked up and down a few times wearing the brooch to make sure you were seen, then went back to the boat, dumped the body, and took off.”

“It sounds complicated.”

“It was. And brilliant. You fooled everyone.”

“Except you. I realized it yesterday when you said that there was too much evidence. I knew you’d figure it out eventually. And I couldn’t take that chance.”

“Why did you do all this?”

“To get what is mine. The Neal money.”

“That’s not the only reason. I mean, you planned this for ages. You worked for Ned Neal for a year.”

Maria smiled then, a mischievous girly smile. “You’re right. It was also fun.”

“That’s why you went from trying to scare me to trying to fool me?” I remembered something else then. “You were surprised when Bobby called you from outside of Prada and said I still wanted to come to dinner. You thought shooting at me would have frightened me off.”

“I admit, I underestimated you, Jasmine. But after that I worked with you. To lead you, not fool you. I fed you little drops of evidence. It was so gratifying to watch you digest them.”

“You’re the one who sent me the magazine, aren’t you? Because you wanted me to see the picture of George with Arabella in the article about her death. So I’d make the connection to Max after you’d so skillfully steered the conversation we had in Mr. Neal’s office. You didn’t even know I’d be interested in any other pictures.”

“Guilty as charged!” she said with a girlish shrug.

“But you got lucky, too. There’s no way you could have planned for me to test the inks on the different notes I’d gotten, but you’d had Max meet you at The House that Kills once—how did you do that, by the way?”

“I promised to put him in touch with Arabella. Easy.”

“Of course. Anyway, he must have taken one of the pens with the custom ink while he was there, so the ink of his note matched the ink on the one you sent with the invitation to the ball. Your luckiest moment, though, was with the phone. You left it the day you knocked me out because you wanted to make sure there was evidence of your call that morning to Arabella, establishing that you thought she was still alive. But you couldn’t have known that Max had tried calling her too, right before she died.”

“That was a good break. It added a little something extra.”

“And then the way you taunted me. That night in Ned’s office you purposely pointed out that blue thread in front of me. That must have given you such a thrill.”

“It did.”

“So, what happens to me now?”

“Oh, I have something special in mind for you.” She started walking around, like a director setting a scene. “You see, you and Bobby were having an affair. Naughty! You asked him to meet you here and he showed up, drunk, and told you he didn’t want to see you again. He’d been discussing it with me and realized I was the woman for him.”

“But you’re his sister.”

“Neither of us knew it at the time. That was what was going to precipitate his hopeless suicide in a few months, but
I had to move the timetable up a bit.”

“The psychological moment.”

“Exactly. You were upset and hit him over the head, but he managed to stab you fatally first. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a mild sedative for the pain before I use the knife.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you. You’re a really great collaborator. Or should I say partner in crime?” She giggled. “Anyway, after realizing what he’d done, he stabbed himself as well. It will make exciting reading, murder—suicide, the last casualties of The House that Kills.”

“Why do it here rather than at the house?”

“I don’t want to get the rugs dirty. Besides, have you met the landlady here? She’s a bitch. It’ll be a pleasure to watch her try to rent this hovel again after something like this.”

It sounded like a lovely way to go, but I wasn’t quite ready yet, so I made my move. I
had
been trying to buy myself time, but not for the reason she thought. As we’d been talking I’d been working my left floatie down. Now I could just grasp it with the fingers of my right hand. I felt around for the two wires, said a small prayer to the smoke-bomb gods, and smushed them.

The smoke-plus-purple-spark light show that erupted from my arm, startled both of us with its size and majesty.
Maria leaped away from me and I leaped to my feet.

My throat was burning and I was coughing and my eyes were watering but I tried to hop to where I thought the door would be. Only I missed and fell onto the couch.

Maria was back then, now holding a syringe pointed at my throat with her left hand. She used her right hand to tape my palms and fingers together.

So much for tactical planning.

She was coughing too. “Don’t do that again. I admire the effort, but…” She dragged me with her to the window so she could open it and air the room out, pressing me against the wall so I was immobile.

I took stock of the situation:

I had no hands.

I had no defense.

I had Miss Crazy holding a syringe to my neck.

Every time she coughed I was in danger of being jabbed by the syringe. Things did not look good. But they looked worse when she shoved my head out the window and said, “Take a last glance at Venice. It’s a lovely city to die in.”

That might have been true, but it was so not how I wanted to die.
Please
, I prayed silently,
if I make it through this, I promise to be the best, most Model Daughter in the
world. I’ll never make anyone upset, never give Dadzilla a moment of worry, never even call him Dadzilla, never have my name in the papers, never—

It hit me. I was never going to get to kiss Jack again.

Three things happened at once:

I started to cry.

She plunged the syringe into my neck.

The shiny black cat with the green eyes came out of nowhere and leaped through the open window onto Maria’s chest.

Little Life Lesson 64: Sometimes being attractive to cats isn’t such a sucky superpower after all.