The Hinky Velvet Chair (35 page)

She didn’t feel a thing.

Clay said, “How was that?”

“Allow me.” Randy stalked up to Jewel in his orange
crushed-velvet and ruffles. “Stand up.”

She stood.

“Look into my eyes.”

She looked.

No weird pictures. Definitely no picture of herself
curtseying to him in milkmaid costume.

“I value you,” he said in a low voice.

“I know you do. I almost wish you didn’t,” she blurted.

A funny look crossed his face. He backed away and put his
hands in his coat pockets. “She’s cured,” he announced to Clay.

She wondered what he had been thinking about her just then
because, obviously, if she had been able to see it, she would have killed him.
So it was a good thing she couldn’t.

“My brain hurts.”

Clay patted her. “Never mind. The important thing is, you’re
cured.”

Griffy said, “But what do we do with the Venus Machine?
Sovay sold it to Dr. Kauz, but—”

“He’s in jail,” Clay said. “The cops may want it—”

“I’m keeping it,” Virgil said flatly. “And the
psychespectrometer. I was thought we had a deal, but she got annoyed with me
after last night and sold it to the fruitcake.”

“Hey!” Jewel said feebly, thinking she ought to be acting
more like law enforcement in this situation.

“What will you tell Sovay?” Clay said.

“It all got stolen out of the garage,” Virgil said.

“That’s true,” Clay said.

For once Jewel didn’t feel like arguing. She felt cold and
limp, like leftover noodles. “Can I go to bed now?”

“Not yet,” Griffy said. “The pantry is full of FBI.”

“Oh,
shit,
right,”
Jewel said, and everyone else groaned.

Virgil felt behind himself for the workbench stool and sat
down with a bump, looking gray.

At that moment the service elevator opened. The cook came in
in her bathrobe. “Sorry to intrude, Mr. Thompson, but I thought you should
know. It’s about Mellish.”

Everyone froze.

“Well?” Virgil said harshly.

“He’s gone, sir. And he took Miss Sacheverell away with him.”
The cook frowned. “He said to tell you he works for the FBI, and he charged her
with murdering her last five husbands. He said he found the poison she used on
them in your closet.”

Closet!
Jewel made
a noise.
That’s what Mellish found!

“I guess I can’t cure her after all,” Virgil said, not
sounding sorry.

“Don’t be mean,” Griffy said.

Virgil said evilly, “Don’t waste your pity on her. If she’s
killed five husbands, she deserves a few toads. If she uses her looks, she
could get off scot free. Provided she can keep her mouth shut.”

“Toads?” Clay said.

The cook said to Virgil, “Sir, I hope you won’t be angry
with me, but I didn’t think it my place to interfere—”

“No, no.” Virgil waved that away. “It’s fine.”

“Tell me,” Jewel said to the cook. “Did Miss Sacheverell, well,
use any bad language to Mellish as she left?”

“Oh my, yes, how she cursed. Toads
and
snakes. Snakes is new,” the cook said, sounding impressed.

“Toads and snakes?” Clay said to Jewel.
“What
toads and snakes?”

“Weren’t you a little surprised by the toads?” Jewel asked
the cook.

“Well,” the cook said, “I’ve been cooking them all week, but
I didn’t know where they came from, if that’s what you mean.”

Jewel smiled.
I love
Chicago. Nothing fazes us.

Randy made a face.

Clay raised his hands heavenward.
“What toads and snakes?”

Virgil said, “Tastes like chicken.”

Next day, Jewel sat at her workstation, trying to write a
report without saying,
They’re all
criminals but we got the ones who counted.
Ed called her into his office.

“I’m not done yet.” She closed his door behind her.

“Screw the written report. I wanna know what happened.”

She drew a deep breath. “Well, you were right about Kauz’s
spa. He was beta testing a potion through a retailer. He hoped to get people
addicted to it so he could control them.”

“And you know this how?”

“I didn’t hear him say this myself, but he told a witness.”

“Will the witness testify?”

“If we can get him for making the potion.”

“So? Subpoena her ass.”

“Well, turns out the potion wasn’t addictive. Nobody ever
wanted more than one dose. It made them, uh, eccentric.”

Ed’s forehead wrinkled. “What the fuck? You got a sample?”

“Well, no. I took the last supply off his retailer—”

Ed nodded. “Buzz.”

“— But it, uh, got destroyed.”

“Shit.” Ed brightened. “But you put an anklet on him.”

“Had to take it off. It was illegal. But Kauz got busted.”

“So he’s put away.”

“Overnight, for disturbing the peace. But his spa is closed,
and his reputation is in shreds since the news footage.”

“Footage?”
Ed said
dangerously. “Anything hinky?”

Jewel swallowed. “A little. The perp — our other perp — started
spitting live toads and snakes on camera. Mostly it was just, like, socialites
getting naked in a Marine Drive garden.”

“Holy Jesus. The Fifth Floor must be shitting bricks.”

“The snake-spitter-lady blamed Kauz.”

Ed looked relieved. “That’s good.”

“And the eccentrics told the press how wonderful he is.”

“Lemme get this straight. I send you after a magician—”

“More of a mad scientist.”

“— Mad scientist and his pusher, and he gets a slap on the
wrist, and you lose your samples of the drug, and you had the pusher on a
tracer and then you let him go. Don’t tell me the pusher ain’t that homeless
kid because fuck that.” Jewel opened her mouth and shut it. “Plus we got a
broad who spits toads on TV, and the mad scientist gets a testimonial.”

“From crackpots, Ed. The whole block party was vomiting.”

“Block party? A whole
block?
How many people saw this?”

“Probably the toads and snakes made them gag,” she added
conscientiously. “But the people in the orgy missed everything.”

Ed looked like his head hurt. “What about your other perp?
This is the golddigger with the hinky machine?”

“Turns out she’s a serial black widow. The FBI got her.”

Ed seemed to weigh this. Then something outside his office caught
his eye. “What’s that guy doing here?”

Jewel looked through the venetian blinds. Randy and Clay sat
at a workstation. “Basic computer training. He worked well with us on this—”

“He
what?”

“And Clay felt he could be more helpful with some skills—”

“He’s not a city employee!”

“It was a three-investigator job.”

Ed turned color and jabbed a finger at her. “Look, missy.”
He stuck his head out his door. “Get in here, you two.”

The boys trooped in, looking innocent.

Ed announced, “I got youse all here at once so’s there can’t
be no misunderstandings. You,” he pointed at Jewel, “are the senior partner on
this team. You,” he pointed at Clay, “are the junior partner. You,” he pointed
at Randy, “do not belong in this office at any time.
Capisce?”

“He’s my stealth teammate,” Jewel said quickly. “We work
well together.”

“Fuck that. Tell me you work well with golden boy here.”

“Clay was great. Full of initiative and ideas.” She didn’t
look at Clay. “And Randy was a huge help. He wrestled Buzz to the floor at
Water Tower Place.” Ed looked pained. “He also sweet-talked this socialite
until she quit threatening to sue—”

“I don’t wanna hear this.”

“And then he was, uh, in the suspect’s bedroom and—”

Both Ed’s hands were in the air. “I
don’t
wanna
hear
this.”

“And he protected our cover by clobbering the butler for me —
well, he turned out to be FBI—”

Ed clapped his hands over his ears. “La la la la la, I ain’t
listenin’ to you!”

“I mean it, Ed!” she protested. “He has skills we need.”

Randy raised his eyebrows to Clay.

“Oh, say, can you see!” Ed bawled.

Clay put a hand on her arm. “Not so much detail, partner.
Stick to the big picture.”

Ed stopped singing and took his hands off his ears.

Clay said, “Sir, we did the job. We shut down Kauz’s spa and
ruined his mayoral campaign before it could start. We got rid of the hinky
machine complaint. Buzz is out of the picture.”

Ed glowered. “For the next ten minutes.”

Clay put one hand on Jewel’s shoulder and one on Randy’s. “As
for Randy, we need him. He’s good. You’re not paying him. You don’t know who he
is. You’ll never know what he does. The existence and activities of this
division are classifired anyway. To use your own phrase, sir, don’t fix it if
it ain’t broke.”

For a long minute Ed breathed tensely through his nose. Then
he turned his back. He told the ceiling, “I don’t know nothin’. I don’t see
nothin’.”

Clay gestured. Randy opened the door, and Clay hustled the
three of them out of Ed’s office.

Packing her briefcase, Jewel said bitterly, “Thanks a lot.
How come he listens to you and he sings ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at me?”

“Because I’m a better liar,” Clay said. “A skill you need to
hone.”

“I do not lie to my boss!”

Clay looked at her pityingly. “No wonder you’re stuck in the
Hinky Division.”

“So explain this, smarty-pants,” she said, nettled. “Was
that thing magic or wasn’t it? I mean, it did all kinds of things. And,” she
warned Clay, “skip the chakras and potentiometers and shit, because I don’t
believe a word of it.”

Clay raised his eyebrows to Randy. “Over to you, Lord
Credibility.”

“It used the power of suggestion,” Randy said.

“Griffy called it a wishing machine,” Jewel said. “But then
you told that fairy tale, and Sovay started spitting toads and snakes.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Clay turn to Randy and
mouth,
What toads and snakes?
She
ignored them.

“What I can’t figure is, did you suggest that and it went
into her, like, subconscious mind, and she did the magic to herself? Did she
punish
herself
for talking mean? That
doesn’t make sense. She killed all those husbands. Why should she care about
talking mean?”

Randy looked at Clay. “Everybody’s got a sticking point,”
Clay said. “Look at Virgil. Sucks at blackmail, won’t do it.”

“He didn’t suck that bad,” she said darkly. “But Sovay?”

“The power of suggestion?” Randy said again. “Griffy’s
primary weapon of defense was her sweetness—”

“I’m glad you admit it!” Jewel put in.

“— So when I criticized Sovay for shrewishness, she may have
acknowledged the fault, if only in her heart. The Venus Machine did the rest.
Or she did.”

Jewel considered this. “I don’t know what’s scarier, the
idea that the machine did it to her, or that she could do it to herself just
because you suggested it. I mean,
you
don’t have magic powers — outside of bed — right?”

He said, “That we cannot know, unless you care to conduct
further experiments.”

She put her foot down. “No!”

“You’d need a control group, too,” Clay said.

“Absolutely not! Brrr! No fucking way.”

“Although Virgil may charge rent on the machine,” Clay said.

“Fuggeddaboddit. Oh, that reminds me. Did you know all along
that was the wrong bed, that day in Sovay’s room?”

Clay widened his eyes. “Absolutely not.”

“You’ve always said we should experiment,” Randy said.

She whipped her head around. Was it possible they were
double-teaming her? “No experiments. Anyway I think Ed’s getting used to having
you around.”

Her partner turned to her incubus. “Say, ‘Thank you, Clay.’”

Then Randy totally shocked her. “Thank you, Clay.”

Boy, if these two get
comfortable, I’m screwed. Thank God they’re jealous.
“C’mon, let’s pick up
some Thai food.”

o0o

Later that evening, after carryout Thai in her apartment,
Jewel let Clay resume the computer lesson with Randy in her living room while
she phoned Nina for some overdue girl talk in the still-sooty bedroom.

“So you hate undercover, after you’ve bitched for it for
years?” Nina said, cutting to the emotional jugular as usual.

“I don’t know.” Jewel lowered her voice. “I know I’m not in
Clay’s league.
He’s
perfect for it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I couldn’t have done it without him. Though I may smack him
if he keeps hogging my thunder.”

“Go ahead. He won’t mind, and it’ll relieve your feelings.”

“I know what’ll relieve my feelings,” Jewel said, lowering
her voice still further. “Thank God I have a sex demon on tap.”

“Girlfriend.” Nina gave a raunchy laugh. “You ever think you
need therapy?”

“All the time. But if I talk about my job, Ed will have to
have my shrink killed.”