The Dog Collar Murders (17 page)

The Espressomat’s remaining employee, Lillian, slouched over with a tray of cups in her hand. “I’m sorry, Hadley, I just can’t handle it by myself. I mean, my naturopath really really advised me to keep away from stressful situations and I’m having my period and not feeling very well anyway and I never thought that working in a cafe would…”

“Okay, okay, Lillian.” Hadley unfolded her long limbs and took the load of cups. She looked sorrowfully at me. “I think you’d better go on home without me, Pam. I may be here until closing. See you, Miko.”

I didn’t think Hadley had seen Miko almost begin to cry and I wasn’t sure if I had either. She had pulled herself together slightly.

“Miko, what’s upsetting you so much?”

“It was just that, that evening. At my place. Afterwards.” Miko was crying in earnest now. Mascara ran down her cheeks like coal deposits, and it was hard to understand what she was saying.

“Nicky and Oak stayed and we drank a bottle of wine and had a long discussion about S/M. And they kept saying, I should try it. I’d really like it. So finally I said okay and we went to Oak’s house, she has a whole set-up in her basement. I mean, really like a torture chamber. I got completely freaked out. I mean, I was a little drunk, but not that drunk, so finally they gave up trying to persuade me and we went into the living room and then Oak went to bed and I was going to give Nicky a ride back to her place and then, I don’t know, Nicky and I ended up making love. Not S/M stuff, just regular stuff, it was wonderful. I felt so fantastic afterwards, I went home feeling really happy and peaceful… And now she’s dead. I can’t help thinking that Oak killed her and I’m so frightened. I don’t know what to do.”

“Why do you think that Oak killed her?” I said, trying to take it in. Was any of this plausible, at all? Was a woman who so fervently espoused S/M likely to make vanilla love with someone in her partner’s house? Could Miko be making this all up for her own purposes? “Why?” I repeated.

“Nicky wanted to leave her. She told me when I gave her a ride home. She told me a lot of things.”

“Do you have any reason to think that Oak might have killed Loie? Had Loie and Nicky ever been involved?”

“Loie and Nicky!” said Miko, completely astounded.

“Is that totally impossible? They knew each other years ago, after all.”

Miko was shaking her head. “I don’t understand any of this. I shouldn’t be talking to you anyway, I should really be talking to the police. Shouldn’t I?”

“Well,” I said. “Only if you’re sure. After all, accusing Oak could really open up a can of worms. The papers are already having a field day with Nicky’s job as an exotic dancer. Can you imagine what would happen if the media got hold of a torture chamber? Your name would be dragged right into it, you know. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be talking to the police—but you’d better be pretty careful of what you say and how you say it.”

“Christ,” said Miko, shaken, obviously seeing the headlines float before her:
SCHOOL EMPLOYEE IN S/M LOVE TRIANGLE
.

“What should I do? What should I do?” Miko was groaning.

“What do you say we take a little drive?” I said.

“Where? Why?”

“To see Oak. She’s unlikely to try to kill both of us. And maybe we could find out a few things. Like whether she even knew you and Nicky did it.”

Oak lived in the Central District, not far from Providence Hospital. Miko and I drove in separate cars, so I didn’t get a chance to ask her some of the questions that kept coming into my mind.

I wasn’t surprised that Miko had been persuaded into a closer look at S/M. After all, she was interested in exploring the whole subject of sex, her own fantasies as well as others, so it was probably natural that when the opportunity asserted itself she would take advantage of it. Perhaps she’d even created the opportunity herself, by inviting Nicky and Oak to her video screening.

But would Miko have gone so far as to make love with Nicky in Oak’s own living room, while Oak was asleep? And would Oak, if she found out about it, be so angry that she would kill Nicky? The news reports had said that Nicky had been discovered in an alley behind the Fun Palace in the early hours of the morning. If Oak had been the murderer, would she have been likely to do it there, instead of someplace where she could control the situation better? The alley indicated a surprise attack. And if Oak had killed Nicky, according to my theory, she must have also killed Loie. But what possible reason would Oak have for killing Loie? And how would she have had time? My thoughts jumped around. Could Oak have been the person in the classroom who was threatening Loie with consequences if she told? If Loie told the audience that she and Nicky had once been involved? Maybe that was in Loie’s manuscript too.

Miko pulled up behind me and we went up to the neatly kept, dark-painted house.

“Who is it?” asked a subdued and cautious voice.

“Miko and Pam Nilsen.”

Oak opened the door, not slowly, but with a jerk. “What do you want?”

I started to say, “To ask you some questions,” but Miko suddenly broke down and threw herself at Oak. “I can’t believe she’s dead. I’m so sorry, Oak.”

I hadn’t imagined tears being part of Oak’s hardcore image, but suddenly she was crying too, not easily and dramatically like Miko, but in a kind of stunned, quiet way. For the first time I looked at her without her leathers on and realized that she was much younger than I’d thought, in her mid to late twenties. She was medium height, stocky, with a strong torso. Under her tee-shirt her breasts were small, like those of a fat man. And her face was almost pretty, with a cleft chin and dark blue eyes. I hadn’t noticed that at all before. I’d only seen the leather jacket and pants.

Oak finally let us come inside. The small living room was surprisingly old-fashioned, the furniture and decor from the thirties. It looked as if it had been passed on intact from an older generation: lace doilies under ceramic pots; a braided rug, twin armchairs, twin end tables, twin lamps. The only thing that was modern in the room was a large TV set and VCR and behind it, rows and rows of video cassettes.

It was hard to believe there was a torture chamber downstairs. I told myself I didn’t want to see it, but of course I did.

Oak sat down in one of the armchairs. Grief had come out like measles all over her face, blotching her fair skin. She said, “Until you got here I was just feeling relieved. Neither the police or the newspapers have connected me with Nicky. I guess I was just in a state of shock. I found out like everyone else—on the news last night. I don’t want the cops to come, but it feels like, unless they do, nothing has really happened.”

“So Nicky didn’t live here then?” I asked.

“No—she had her own apartment, downtown. She didn’t stay there much, but she needed it for being alone sometimes, and for sex.”

“You mean—she was a prostitute?”

Oak looked at me as if I were crazy. “I said for sex—with her other lovers.”

I felt Miko freeze beside me on the sofa.

“We had an agreement,” Oak said. “Mondays and Thursdays we both saw other people if we wanted.”

“Did that work out for you?” I asked.

Oak nodded. “Yeah. Nicky and I had been together for about three years. The S/M was there from the beginning, but after a year or so the romance started to go. We had the choice to let the whole thing slide or figure out new ways to deal with it. So that’s what we decided.” Oak wiped the last of her tears from her eyes.

Miko said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, Oak, but last Thursday…”

“I know all about it.”

“Nicky told you then?”

“She didn’t have to,” Oak said and for the first time she smiled a little. “I watched it.”

“You
watched
it?”

Oak seemed apologetic but she was still smiling. “Nicky had these ideas sometimes. It was her idea to bring you to my house in the first place, to see if we could get you to see what we saw in S/M. Then when you got freaked out and left the basement Nicky said she still thought she could seduce you. I said I doubted it. So she told me to pretend to go to sleep and then come to the top of the stairs in an hour.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Miko. Her round face had gone dark red. “She said she was fed up with you—she wanted to leave you. What happened was a natural thing between us. She would never have suggested it to you. If you did watch us—and I doubt it—I’m sure it was your own sick idea.”

“Then why did Nicky get you in that weird position just inside the living room, on the floor then? Why didn’t you make love on the couch?”

Miko looked up at the door to the living room with its clear view to the landing. She seemed completely humiliated.

I intervened. “The important question is—Who killed Nicky—and why?” I didn’t think we could assume it was Oak in a jealous rage, unless she was totally dissimulating now.

“It must have been a customer at the Fun Palace,” Oak said. “In the beginning when she started working there I used to pick her up at night. But after a while she told me not to bother. Shit, those guys are animals, some of them.”

“But don’t you think it had any relationship to Loie’s death?” I said. “They were both killed by dog collars. Where is Nicky’s dog collar?”

“Umm,” said Oak, stalling.

I’d deliberately said nothing about the leash, about Nicky and Loie most probably having been surprised by the leash and strangled before the dog collar was fastened on.

“Did Nicky give her dog collar to someone?”

Oak looked worried. “Not exactly.”

“What happened to it then?”

“She had it in the pocket of her leather jacket. Someone took it out.”

I couldn’t help sounding a little skeptical. “When was that?”

“When we were at dinner. Nicky hung it up in the restaurant. On the way back to Seattle University she discovered it was gone.”

I remember seeing Nicky hang up her coat in the Ethiopian restaurant, but I still felt skeptical. “Why didn’t Nicky tell me any of this?” I asked, and Miko added, “It’s a little hard to believe.”

“Well, it’s true,” Oak said and was stubbornly silent.

I changed the subject. “I understand that Nicky and Loie knew each other in college.”

“They did more than know each other,” Oak said.

“What do you mean? Were they lovers?”

“Loie and Nicky? No, Loie was strictly het then. But she needed extra money I guess and she got involved in making porn movies. Then she recruited Nicky and some other people. That’s how Nicky got into the business. She used to laugh sometimes about what a hypocrite Loie was. She said it would really be a big surprise for the world if people found out.”

Loie—acting in porn movies? The mind reeled. “But don’t you see?” I said excitedly. “That’s a perfect motive for killing Nicky. Because she knew that about Loie.”

“Aren’t you forgetting,” said Miko, apparently over the first shock of finding out she’d been seduced for a purpose, “That Loie was murdered first? If Loie was already dead then what did it matter what Nicky knew?”

“Who were the other people that Loie recruited?” I asked Oak. “Do you know?”

“I don’t know. College types, I guess. Nicky used to joke about it sometimes. The idea of Loie becoming such a puritan after what she’d done.”

My mind flashed back to Loie’s speech at the end of the workshops. Was that what Loie had been about to reveal? That she’d acted in porn films? “Did Nicky keep a copy of those movies?”

“I don’t think so. She had some other videos she’d done for fun since then. I could show you those.”

“No thanks,” I said, looking at the rows of videos on the shelf behind the TV.

“I wonder if Loie had a copy…” I thought aloud. And to myself I wondered if that was the reason Loie’s things had been burgled from Hanna’s house. Because Hanna noticed the missing manuscript and notes we had all assumed that that was what the thief was after. But even an unfinished manuscript was nothing to what porn films featuring Loie Marsh would be.

I snapped back. Miko and Oak were staring warily at each other, caught up in feelings of mingled antagonism and grief. They had a lot to sort out.

They hardly noticed when I left.

I
ARRIVED AT PORTAGE
Bay after dark. The long wooden walk down to the houseboat swayed in the black water. I stood a moment by the side of the house and watched the way the small waves captured the reflected light. The old rowboat banged softly against the deck, reminding me that it had been a while since I’d taken it out. Maybe this weekend.

Hadley was in the kitchen making dinner. Red snapper baked in a sauce of tomatoes, cilantro and white wine.

“Penny called,” she said. “And Elizabeth Ketteridge returning your call. And Gracie London.”

“What’d she want?”

“Didn’t say. Penny and Ray want you to baby-sit Wednesday.” I tried Gracie’s number, but only got her answering machine. Then I called Penny and agreed to watch Antonia Wednesday evening and maybe all day Sunday as well.

Finally I called Elizabeth. She sounded pleased to hear from me, but as professional as ever. “Did you decide if you wanted to make an appointment, Pam?”

“Er, no, not exactly. It’s just that—I’ve got a couple of questions.”

“Yesss?” she said.

“You probably can’t tell me this, but was Loie ever a client of yours?”

“No,” she said, sounding relieved. “Loie wasn’t.”

“Okay. The second thing I’m interested in is if you know a therapist named Clea Florence.”

Elizabeth hesitated. “I don’t know if Clea would be the right person for you to see, Pam. She’s a little—spiritual. And she’s got a reputation.”

“For what? For having been into S/M?”

“No. I don’t think many people knew about that until the conference. No, it’s just a reputation… All right, I’ll tell you,” Elizabeth said. “Clea has apparently slept with a few clients, she’s had some scenes in public places, she just isn’t able to keep boundaries very well. She really shouldn’t be practicing—she doesn’t have a degree in psychology or social work. She gets away with it somehow, maybe by charging low fees, or maybe by calling herself a healer. I know a number of women who’ve gone to her and not been very happy. There, now I’ve said my piece. I’ll give you her phone number if you still want it.”