The Hinky Velvet Chair (23 page)

“If you’re doing this because of Sovay—”

“I want to.”

“But if he doesn’t want a birthday party—”

Griffy stroked the edge of the parasail. “I want to fly.”

Jewel gave up.

The instructor started his training spiel for Griffy. She
was so comfortable being looked at.
I
don’t think it’s being undercover I like. I like the idea that nobody knows who
I am.

The woman with the peaceful smile paddled her mattress up to
the sand and beached herself serenely amid the children and dogs. Jewel felt
calm. It seemed for once as if her bare feet touched the ground by choice, not
because she was some ground-bound land mammal.

She should sneak off and deliver Griffy’s invitations. And
look at those reports Clay had brought. Retreating up the beach, Jewel glanced
over her shoulder.

On the sandy slope, Virgil’s picnic sat like a tea party at
a riot, Virgil pouring wine for Sovay, Kauz looking at something through field
glasses, and Clay biting his lip, staring in the same direction without field
glasses.

Virgil looked up. He tapped Kauz on the shoulder and Kauz
handed over the field glasses.

Jewel looked where they were looking.

On the breakwater, Griffy was getting harnessed to the
parasail. Her excitement lit all the faces nearby. She looked younger at this
distance, or maybe it was the Venus Machine effect. She seemed like a little
kid, full of bounce and glory.

Jewel couldn’t help but smile.

Then she walked back up the beach toward Virgil’s house.

In the pedestrian tunnel under Lake Shore Drive, Jewel met
the woman with the sparkling brooch again. The sun slanted through the city
buildings and poured pink fire down the tunnel onto the brooch. The brooch said
‘Beulah’ in script.

It was the Neiman’s customer who smelled bad!

“You’re the girl who flew,” Beulah said. She didn’t smell
bad now. Of course, she’d recently been in the lake.

“That’s me.”

“Even from below I could see you’re a convert,” Beulah said.

“A convert to what?”

She smiled like a saint. “To self love.”

Jewel pulled her coverup tighter around herself. “That’s a
religion?”

“I can tell you’ve tasted the potion. There’s no mistaking
your—” She broke off, wavering the edge of her hand in the air. “I can’t
explain how you look so — so —”

“Green. There’s too much green in my aura.”

Beulah conceded the point with a graceful turn of her wrist.
“Whenever I see the prophet, I buy every bottle he has.”

The prophet. That
would be Buzz.
“You drink them all?” It would explain why Beulah seemed
crazy.

“Oh, no. Once is enough. I share them with women who still
wander in the night of self-hatred. I’ve seen so many turn from the path of
self-destruction to love, light, and joy.”

Good grief, Kauz wasn’t making potions. He was manufacturing
a cult, and he hadn’t even met his cultists yet.

Beulah said in a thrilling voice, “They no longer torment
their bodies, their skins, their dead proteins.”

“Dead—?”

She indicated the rat’s nest on her scalp. Self Love hair
was not a selling point.

Jewel got a fiendish idea. “You like to talk about your, uh,
Self Love experience, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” Beulah frowned for the first time. “I wish I
could interest the media. They’re all blinded by the regimens of self-hatred.
Since I stopped wearing makeup, no one sees me. Not that they saw me when I
wore it,” she said, descending from her Self Love cloud.

They walked out of the tunnel onto Marine Drive. “Well, I — wait,
uh, hi, my name is Jewel—”

Beulah stuck her hand out and Jewel shook it. “So pleased.
I’m Beulah.”

“—I know how you can get some great media coverage. See that
house over there?” Jewel pointed at Virgil’s marble-fronted mansion. “A whole
lot of important people will be in the alley behind that house tomorrow night
for a block party. Reporters. Cameras. You should come. Tell them your message.”

Beulah lit up. “They’ll want to try the potion! Perhaps I
can get more. I expect to see the prophet tomorrow.” She might be as appealing
as Griffy, if she would comb her hair.

That little devil,
Buzz. He never told me any of this.
“You should come. Be a living example
for the — the benighted ones at this party.”

“I would be honored,” Beulah said superbly.

“Around eight. Bring all your friends. The ones who took the
potion and converted to Self Love. Oh, and here—” She dug in her purse for Mrs.
Noah Butt’s card. “I know some people you would love to meet. Bring them, too.”

“Thank you. I will.” Beulah moved away, slow and serene.

Jewel delivered Griffy’s invitations. Then she sneaked into
Virgil’s house and took the back stairs to her room.

On her bed she found the anklet-tracking unit, which was
about the size of a parking ticket book, and a pile of background reports. She
settled down to read.

Nothing on the cook or the maid or the chauffeur. She opened
the butler’s report and was confounded by a blank page with the word
‘classified’ stamped at a slant. “What the—?” A sticky note was stuck to the
page.
“Couldn’t get clearance for this,”
she
read aloud. “What am I, chopped liver?” This guy could be a serial killer or a
terrorist or something.

She stared at her flowery bedroom curtains, pondering, until
she heard a soft footstep in the hall.
Maid?

She flew to her bedroom door and locked it.

The footsteps passed.

Heart pounding, Jewel picked up the next report.

By comparison, Griffy’s life was transparent as a martini
glass. Until she was twenty-six she had stripped in Atlantic City, and accepted
short-term protection from life’s storms with various male philanthropists. At
twenty-six, her employment record ceased and her profile became a catalog of
increasingly expensive purchases. She did not seem to have been gainfully
employed in a very long time.

Jewel tapped the report on her front teeth. If Virgil had
kept her since she was twenty-six, at least he’d kept her well.

On to Virgil’s report. His records were more complete. Birth
in Utah sixty years ago,
that can’t be
right,
a year of junior college, a stint in the National Guard, an early
killing in tech stocks, a lifelong interest in antiques related to swindling,
and articles about same posted to the Internet. Back in the early 2000s he’d
been on the board of an oil company that did an Enron-like scam on a small
group of investors, but he was listed as a victim of the scammers, not a
suspect. That was the sum total of his interactions with the law.

Jewel didn’t believe a word of it. Griffy thought he was
seventy and she was incapable of lying.

Tucked in the back of the report was a loose printout, a
Google list of URLs. The names and data were all over the map, but the ‘search’
box on top gave her a clue.
“Virgil
Thompson” “Virgil Athabascan” “Virgil Marconi” “Virgil Dante NOT inferno” “Dante
Virgil NOT inferno” “Inaeas O. Virgilius.”

Now Jewel wondered if Griffy’s lack of employment history
might be due to a change of name. If Virgil changed his own name — she glanced
from Virgil’s background report to the Google printout. These were aliases the
department didn’t have.

On the other hand, going by this page, Google hadn’t found
much on those aliases, either. Only ten mentions for the list.

I should check AFIS
for these aliases.
She stuck the sheet into her purse.

On to Dr. Gustavus Katterfelto Kauz’s file, the one sent
over by the Fifth Floor. Jewel’s eyes popped. Then she smiled.

Gustavus (“Gussie”) Kauz had spent his childhood on a
commune in western New Jersey. His parents were disciples of a severely crunchy
demagogue —
maybe a role model for Kauz’s
persona? —
a good talker who peddled homegrown drugs and primitive
applications of zen. After college and a business degree, Kauz had done the
commune’s books for ten years. He then abandoned his Birky-wearing,
yogurt-brewing, flea-ridden parents and converted their muddy-ankled mysticism
into something that met the comforts — and sanitation standards — of a
luxurious spa.

Hm, this could be good
for something.
Jewel knew all about coming from a small, muddy place to the
big city. She might not be able to defeat Kauz with it, but with careful use of
this information she could unnerve the shit out of him.

At the bottom of the pile she found Sovay’s file. This
included the department’s skimpy findings and, again, Clay’s printouts. Jewel
licked her lips. This would be what had made Clay so hot to hide the whole case
from her.

The first three pages were wedding pictures. Every bride was
Sovay.

The next two pages were obituaries of the guys who had
married her.

Holy crap.
No
wonder Clay was worried. His whole charade clicked into perspective.

While Jewel had been risking her neck, Clay had been trying
to find out what his father was up to.
He
can’t kill me for asking.
Over the shrieking of volleyball players, he
yelled, “Where’d you put the bed, Dad?”

Virgil signed for silence, then jerked a thumb. He marched a
few yards away from the picnic table, and, when Clay followed, he took off his
sunglasses, a DefCon 4 act of aggression. Virgil’s naked, pale-blue eyes were
something out of nightmare.

“What have you been saying to Griffy about me?” he demanded.

“We didn’t talk, we had sex,” Clay said airily, and enjoyed
the old man’s horrified double take. Wow, that got a bigger reaction than he’d
hoped for. Virgil looked so taken aback that he pushed. “So she’s old enough to
be my mother, eh, well. She can do more with a twinkle than most women do
naked.”

His father’s eyes narrowed. “You had a crush on her when you
were a kid. Sticking up for a stupid bimbo all the time.”

“Take her off your hands,” Clay suggested. “Problem solved.”

Virgil ruffled up like a scrawny turkey confronting a bear. “You
can’t afford her.”

“She doesn’t want money. She wants love. You’ve always
confused the two.”

“Good thing, since you can’t make any money,” Virgil hissed.

“Bet?” Clay smiled without humor. “Bet you I get Sovay’s
money before you do.”

At that Virgil grabbed him by the arm with a strong claw and
yanked him close. “I have videotape of you and your girlfriend doing the
hoky-poky on that bed.”

Clay felt his skin shrink up cold. “You’re bluffing.”

“Try me.”

Thinking fast, Clay sneered, “Videotape! How twentieth
century is that?” His heart was in his mouth. Then it occurred to him to ask
what he should have asked in the first place. “What do you want?”

The old man laughed delightedly, as if he knew how
off-balance Clay was. “There’s an investigation focused on my house. I want
your girlfriend looking at someone besides me.”

“You dope, she’s watching Sovay.”

Virgil waved a hand. “I don’t give a hoot about your fool
job. There’s a real investigation, FBI, and they’ve put someone in my house,
and I want you to find out who it is.”

Clay was shocked. Virgil
never
got caught. “You sure?”

“Him or her. I heard about it through my own channels. I
need the mole’s name.”

“You can’t con the FBI, Dad.”

“Leave that to me. Do this, or I’ll play the tape where you
least want it aired.” He shuffled closer and lowered his voice. “Who’ll hate it
worse? The girl? Her boss? Anonymous gift in the mail, wonder what this is, pop
in the cassette, looky!”

Jewel would hate it worse. Clay knew the pupils of his eyes
had betrayed him. The old man was good. He fumbled for damage control. “The
boyfriend’s jealous. Lord Darner.”

“Your rival, Lord Pontarsais?” Virgil corrected. “He’s gone.
Sneaked out the window when I caught him in bed with Sovay. If he dares to come
back, I’ll show him the tape, too.”

Videotape. Probably a
cassette.
At least it was old-fashioned video, not a digital file. Clay’s
eyes narrowed, hiding his relief. “You’ll have trouble finding him. He’s in
that bed.”

“In
the bed.”

“Yeah. He’s a sex demon. He’s possessing that bed now.”

“Still believing your own fairy story. Well, then you should
care as much as your partner cares. Make her cooperate.” Virgil chuckled. “Magic
is for marks, boy.”

Clay flung away, trembling with fear and rage, trying to be
calm.
Tape. Good.
If it had been
digital, finding and destroying all copies would have been hopeless.

He waited for Jewel to come out of the sky. She would not be
happy about any of this.

But Jewel scrambled out of the parasail and walked away down
the beach, looking behind her as she made her getaway.

Then, of all people, Griffy started harnessing up. Clay
forgot his partner for a few minutes.