Authors: Kelly Rey
She screwed up her nose at me. "That was unnecessary. Just for that, I vote for old sweet Ken."
"It's not Ken," I said. "I just don't see it."
"Then what's he doing on your list?"
I creased the page in half and stuffed it in my handbag. "Do I look like I have all the answers?"
Sherri shook her head. "You don't even look like you have all the questions."
I got to work early on Tuesday with a purpose. The purpose walked in five minutes later and poured herself a glass of orange juice. I joined her at the kitchen table, and she said immediately, "I don't want to talk about it."
"Neither do I," I told her. "I don't even want to know about it."
She shrugged. "It's a job."
So was cleaning toilets. "Paige." I leaned forward. "Tell me about Spanish fly."
Her eyes widened. "What?"
"Look, I don't care about the Black Orchid." Little white lie. Actually, I had all sorts of questions about the Black Orchid, but they'd have to wait. I wasn't sure I was old enough to hear the answers. "I'm sure you know people who've used it, and I need to find out what you know."
"I'm not naming names," she said.
"I don't want names, I want symptoms."
"Oh." She nodded. "That's easy. It makes you horny. That means—"
"I know what it means." I remembered the feeling, vaguely. "But I heard that wasn't true. I heard it can be very dangerous."
"I don't know who you're hearing from," Paige said. "But Hilary's wrong."
Hm. "It wasn't Hilary," I said.
"Missy, then."
"It wasn't Missy, either." She opened her mouth, and I said, "I'm not naming names."
A hint of a smile flickered across her face. "So you have some bitch in you after all."
"When necessary," I said. Truthfully, I didn't have much. Or maybe I did, but it never had the strength to get out before. Whichever the case, it felt pretty good now.
Paige got up to put her glass in the sink. "What are you, writing a medical textbook or something?"
"Or something."
She turned on the faucet. "Sorry. That's all I know. You'll have to do your Sherlock Holmes bit somewhere else."
The catch being, there was nowhere else. The murder had happened at the office, and the answer had to be at the office. Fortunately, a good-sized library was also at the office, and I planned to make use of it before the day started.
* * *
My mother used to say that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, and after twenty minutes in the library, I knew just what she meant, because I'd learned little and felt dangerously incompetent because of it.
Because of his medical malpractice caseload, Ken had an impressive array of medical reference books, and I had several of them stacked on the table in front of me. I knew next to nothing about Spanish fly and nothing at all about how it could have ended up in Dougie's protein powder. According to the reference books, Spanish fly was not a fly at all, but a species of beetle which fed on flowering plants like alfalfa. It had once been used to formulate something called cantharidin, a blister-inducing agent used for medicinal purposes. Surely Dr. Dennis or the pharmacist Braxton Malloy, or possibly even Wally with his chemistry degree, would be aware of its medical applications. Deadly in small doses even to creatures as large as horses, it sounded as though a mere mortal like Dougie hadn't had a chance. Like Curt had said, he was dead when he swallowed. Sounded gruesome, except each book was careful to say that while it had been widely used in the past, it wasn't used at all in modern medicine. There was also some mention of its once-rumored benefits as an aphrodisiac, which brought me right back to the Black Orchid. Basically, back to the starting point.
I slid the books back onto the shelves. I wasn't much of a researcher. I hadn't learned anything I couldn't have found out by asking any hippie from the '60s. I certainly hadn't learned anything I could take back to Curt. I hadn't uncovered any new additions to my spreadsheet. It wasn't even nine o'clock, and I was already counting the day as a total failure.
Until I remembered Frankie Ritter.
If the booth had been any farther from the entrance, I'd have needed a road map to find it. The hostess led me part of the way, thrust a menu into my hands, and pointed, and I understood why. Frankie Ritter was waiting, sprawled across the bench like a stain, wearing faded denim shorts and a white T-shirt with dark spots blooming in both armpits. I wasn't surprised he'd beaten me there; he didn't look like he'd ever turned down a free meal. I slid into the opposite side of the booth, pretending not to notice the sympathetic glances from the other diners.
"Thanks for the invite, babe." He gave me an oily smile. "I was just gonna have some Trix for lunch, you know what I mean? This is top frigging notch."
"The only five-star diner in the country," I said, but his slightly psychotic expression didn't waver. "I'll have a Scotch and soda," I called to the waitress hovering at the safety perimeter. I needed the reinforcement. The idea of drilling Frankie for information had lost some of its panache on the way from the office. For one thing, I'd seen Frankie eat. For another, there was the broken so-called engagement to my sister. The timing could have been better, but I had a murder investigation to bungle, and I figured even Frankie Ritter couldn't be classless enough to bring up the subject of Sherri.
"You know your sister's whacked," he said.
Wrong again.
"I mean, what's she lookin' for, anyway? I gave her a diamond ring, for Chrissake. Hey." He dropped his arms onto the table hard enough to make the salt and pepper shakers jump and drawing frowns from nearby booths. "You're a legal babe. She don't wanna give me the ring back. Don't she have to give it back? She broke her promise, right? I know about this shit." He bobbed his head up and down. "I seen it on Jerry Springer."
"I'll look into it," I said. What was keeping the waitress, anyway? I could fix the drink faster myself. I knew how to make a Scotch and soda. Hell, I didn't even need the glass. Or the soda.
He sat back, satisfied. "She say anything to you? She tell you why she broke it off?"
I shook my head. "Listen, the reason I wanted—"
"It ain't like I'm a stiff in the sack," he said. "I don't need none of that Viagra shit. I'm a plank, babe."
In more ways than one. I began shredding a napkin into rice-sized pieces. "Speaking of that," I said, "what do you know about Spanish fly?"
If he was shocked by the question, he didn't show it. His blowfish cheeks flattened out, and he leaned forward again, steepling his fingers like a professor. "Spanish fly," he said. "Comes from nasty little suckers called blister beetles. They travel in swarms, like killer bees, mate in the summer, and sometimes they get crushed when alfalfa hay gets harvested. Hay gets fed to some poor freakin' horses and punches their clocks for 'em in like two seconds. Nice life, huh?" I looked at him, and he shrugged. "I know a little about it. Why?"
"Do you know where I could get some?"
He blinked at me. "Babe, I had no idea you were so—"
"I'm not. I don't actually want any."
The waitress reappeared with my drink, slapped it down in front of me, and vaporized. I pushed the napkin bits aside.
"I don't get it." Frankie eyed my glass. Or maybe he was trying to look through it, to my chest. "Why do you wanna know where to get it if you don't want it?"
"I'm the curious type." I took a good long drink of watered-down Scotch. If that was the best they could do, I'd have to order by the pitcher.
"I think I dated the wrong sister," he said. "Tell you what, you help me get my ring back and it's yours."
"I don't want it," I said. "All I want is information. Where could a ridiculously low-paid secretary buy Spanish fly?"
"You mean someone like you."
"Okay," I said, and took another drink. I wasn't about to share my suspicions with Frankie Ritter. Even though his little lecture had given me more of them.
The waitress swooped in on us, pad and pen in hand. From one look at her, I could tell she was holding her breath. I ordered a cup of soup. I was pretty sure I could hold that down. Frankie ordered the roast chicken breast with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables and a serving of cornbread on the side.
When the waitress had exhaled and left with our order, Frankie said, "Will you marry me?"
"Absolutely not," I said. "And I'm not paying for lunch if you don't help me out here."
"Christ. Women." He steepled his pudgy little fingers again. "Spanish fly, huh?"
I nodded. "How easy is it to get?"
"A whole lot easier thirty years ago. Before the brainiacs found out how it can make you dead quick."
"But nothing's
hard
to get if you know where to look, right?" Or so I'd heard. On TV, from the safety of my living room. Living dangerously is a relative thing.
He thought some more. "I know a place you might be able to score some, called the Black Orchid. Pretty scary place, you ask me. Babe like you might not want to go there alone."
"Been there," I said. And I didn't want to go back. But he'd just told me what I'd wanted to know. If Spanish fly could be had at the Black Orchid, then either Paige or Hilary could get it. Anyway, I now had ammunition to use at Ken's barbecue next weekend, which was worth the price of lunch.
His eyebrows lifted. "Wild. About that wedding thing—"
"No."
"Okay." He swung his massive head to the side, looking for the waitress. "But if you should get a little horny from this Spanish fly, you know who to call, right?"
"Absolutely," I said, and I meant it. I'd be on the phone to a therapist immediately.
"Here's the thing," Curt said. We were sitting side by side on his sofa watching the Phillies trounce the Pirates in a gentle rain. A bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa sat on the coffee table, and in keeping with the evening's theme, we each had a bottle of Corona. The front door was open, and I could hear the rain sluicing down the window and hissing off the front steps. Very cozy. If this was what marriage felt like, I could understand Sherri's lust for matrimony. "You have to stop playing with Hilary Heath," Curt told me. "Your little road trip to the Black Orchid wasn't all that very helpful and was, in fact, stupid. You don't want to play with those people."
I reached over to drag a chip through the salsa. "Why not?"
He took it from me and popped it in his mouth. "For one thing, you got Paige's antenna up."
"Hilary did that." I took another chip. "She accused her of murdering Dougie."
"See, now, that's what I mean." He frowned at me. "Did that seem like a good idea at the time?"
I slapped a hand to my chest. "Don't blame me. The two of them almost got into a brawl. I've never seen Paige like that."
"Maybe there's a reason for that."
"I know. People show you what they want you to see." I'd heard this lecture before. I glanced at the television, where Jimmy Rollins had just launched a fastball into the right field stands. Not all that impressive, since Citizens Bank Park was the size of a shoebox. "It was just so out of context to find her there. And by the way, she didn't deny it." I hesitated. "Did you know they walk people around on leashes in that place?"
He dipped another chip, laughing. A teardrop of salsa splattered onto the coffee table. "That sophistication's what I love about you."
Blood rushed to my face. "Don't make fun of me. I suppose you see that sort of thing all the time, but it's kind of rare in a law office."
Curt grinned. "You mean to tell me Heath never went to a sex club?"
"Not only did he go," I said, "he slept with Paige while he was there." Or maybe she tap-danced on his back in those heels, for all I knew. In truth, I still wasn't sure what went on in the Black Orchid. I knew it involved dungeons and leashes and leather, but I didn't know if it involved actual sex. These were the suburbs, after all. "The point is," I added, "they were together at the Black Orchid. I can't see Hilary green-lighting that."
Curt put down his beer bottle. "Maybe they had an open marriage. After all, they were both on a first-name basis at the Black Orchid."
He had a point. We were hardly talking about the Huxtables here. "Then there's Howard," I said. "His father is a doctor. And Wally has a degree in chemistry." I chewed a chip, thinking. "Oh, and Janice is probably embezzling from the firm. I heard her lying about—"
"New computers," he said. "You already told me."
I sat back, deflated. "You don't care."
"It's not that I don't care," he said. "It's that the more you learn, the less you know."
"And you have a short attention span," I said.
He grinned. "That, too. Look, why don't you just leave that place? You don't seem to have much in common with your co-workers."
"Is that a job requirement?" I snapped. Another addition to my pet peeves list: being told what to do. "What about your co-workers? The ones with wives and families? You don't seem to have much in common with them."
"Hey," he said, alarmed. "Don't take it so personally. I just don't want you to—"
"Have a brain of my own? Sorry to disappoint you."
"Get yourself killed," he said. "Is what I was going to say. Murder isn't a game, Jamie. The bad guys don't want to get caught. Usually they'll do what it takes to avoid it."
My lips snapped shut. I might be testy but I wasn't stupid. I glanced at the TV, where the Phils fans were standing for the seventh inning stretch, happy with a 7-2 lead and bellies full of overpriced beer.
"And here you are," Curt said, "holding hands with Hilary Heath—very publicly, I might add—with no thought to the position you might be putting yourself in. Not to mention, last time I looked, your resume said 'legal secretary,' not 'homicide detective.'"
That showed how much he knew. I didn't even have a resume. I shoved a tortilla chip in my mouth, chewed violently, and didn't bother to swallow before I asked, "Are you done?"