The Granite Moth (15 page)

I've felt worse, but I didn't feel human when I woke up the next morning. A quick glance in the mirror told me that I didn't look human either. An overlooked bobby pin had lodged itself in my cheek, leaving a two-inch mark, but that was nothing
compared to my raccoon eyes and cow-licked bangs. I put the whole mess in the shower and felt better after a few long inhales of steam. Occasionally the water would slip to scalding without warning, but the tub was wide enough to avoid the spray until it resumed a bearable temperature. With hot water included in the lease, I wasn't about to complain. I wasn't a water waster, considering how much time I spent sleeping at the office, but I wasn't winning any showering speed races. By the time I emerged, my skin was pink, and I nodded at myself in the mirror as I would a stranger. A savvy stranger since she had being doing more than shampooing; she'd also been brainstorming.

Wasn't motive as likely to be love as hate? Bomber's callous behavior had made me reconsider the possibility of violent lovers in both my cases. Did Ernesto ask too much of his club-owning paramour? And did young Martin know that his fella Bobbie was fooling around with co-worker Carlton? What are teenagers if not reckless, and maybe Martin didn't expect the float to explode, only catch fire, teach his boyfriend a lesson.
Romeo and Juliet
is no way to live a life.

At the office, Meeza pulled up Martin's Facebook page, complete with school information: The Holy Cross of the Upper East Side, an all-boys institution known for its pageant of alumni luminaries, including at least one Supreme Court Justice and an A-list movie star. I glanced through the photographs that were public and didn't see anything too alarming. No beer bottles or shirtless poses. Smart kid.

“Jimmy Holliday, too,” said Meeza, referring to the NYU undergrad she'd been paid to tail. “Hasn't missed a class, yet. I, on the other hand, have gotten the boot from swimming. ‘No roster, no diving board,' the instructor said. As if I wanted to jump off that death trap anyway.”

It was the most I'd heard from Meeza in days, and I laughed at her bad imitation of the swim teacher.

“Italian,”
I guessed.

“No,
arð baapa rð!
British.”

This made me laugh more, and when V.P. poked his coconut-smelling head into the office, we were both wiping our eyes.

“Working hard or hardly working,” he asked.

This made Meeza laugh harder, but my sense of humor must have slipped out when he slipped in. I could easily add V.P. to my growing list of suspicious lovers, making the whole romance thing pretty unappealing, Lars Dekker's pretty blue eyes notwithstanding.

If V.P. noticed the glares I shot in his direction, he didn't seem to mind and kissed Meeza before holding out his hand to me. I shook it and didn't flinch when he painfully tightened his grip. His rings pressed into my almost-healed scrapes, but macho isn't that hard to fake. I didn't even stick my tongue out at him, winning some major adult points.

“I thought my girl might like some breakfast.”

Meeza glanced at the bagel I had brought her, and I shook my head at her reluctance to offend me. “No, you crazy kids have fun.”

“You sure?” Meeza asked, but V.P. was already ushering her out. I could hear her uninhibited laughter through my office's thin walls. I shared the floor with other loosely called entrepreneurs, a ragtag bunch of mostly lawsuit attorneys. I didn't see them very much, and the floor secretary who replaced Meeza had yet to speak to me. Maybe she didn't recognize me in my various getups, but more likely, she didn't care. If I wanted to run a one-woman call girl ring, who was she to object? Sometimes on my way to the bathroom, I could hear snippets of conversation as she held her cell phone between ear and shoulder to leave her hands free for computer solitaire, but otherwise, she might as well have not been there.

I scrolled through Martin's Facebook page again to make sure I hadn't missed anything, then jotted down the address of his school. He didn't strike me as the extracurricular type, so I was betting I could find him smashing his tie into his backpack at 3:01
P.M.
In the meantime, there were a hundred or so “tips” to hear from the flyer Dolly and I had distributed. I dialed the voicemail number and slumped down on the futon, resting the phone base on my stomach and expecting to be entertained if not enlightened. A woman's voice said “hello” then hesitated. “I don't want to get anyone in trouble,” she began then hurried on. “But I think I saw someone push that man throwing the fire.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he tipster had called me from a pay phone in the Union Square subway stop. When the trains screeched into the station, I couldn't hear her, but the gist was that she didn't want the juggler to be arrested, never mind about the reward. Her story matched Martin King's, which made me think the juggler really wasn't involved. I knew he'd been questioned by the NYPD on the night of the explosion, and they hadn't arrested him. But they hadn't so much as detained a single person. Had the juggler seen who pushed him? If so, he probably would have told the police, but I didn't want to cross out the possibility. In fact, I wanted to rush straight to the circus school that had been a parade entry, but the remaining messages weren't going to hear themselves.

Meeza could take over when she got back, but it seemed unfair to leave this entire tedious chore to her. The other calls were from, by and large, conspiracy theorists. I doubted the parade organizers had links to Egyptian princes wanting revenge for tomb robbing. Come to think of it, I wasn't sure Egypt even had princes anymore. The caller fingering the
Masons had used a voice disguiser, but that wasn't half so frightening as the man who believed that all the fake blood sold in Halloween stores is from test lab animals. He ended his rant by asking about the reward and leaving his number. I didn't write it down.

Two hours later, and Meeza still hadn't returned. Perhaps she had gone straight to NYU to tail Jimmy Holliday, but I doubted it. V.P. seemed pretty determined to keep her away from me, and I hated to admit it, but maybe he was right. The fear of Salvatore Magrelli I had felt when I testified against him had been replaced with anger—the deep, simmering kind that might lead to an explosion. Anyone near me was likely to get hit with some debris.

There were ten or so messages left to hear, so I took a break and exited the building, unhappy to find that the temperature had dipped since the morning. The sidewalks were littered with leaves that crunched when I stepped on them, and the sky threatened snow. As I walked around the corner for a sandwich, I tried to sort out the possible suspects in my head for both cases, letting the Zeus Society hover above everything, a charming murder-minded umbrella.

While listening to the more innocuous messages, I'd multitasked by researching hate groups and wasn't happy with what I'd found. For one, KKK membership rates were on the incline, with Louisiana a veritable rattlesnake's nest. Other parts of the country weren't winning any Nobel Peace Prizes either. If drug dealers scared me, white supremacists made me want to build myself a fallout shelter and live off beans until the apocalypse took care of a few bloodlines. But I knew thinking big was the wrong way to solve a crime—two crimes to be more precise. I've been out of school for awhile, but I still knew to start with the details.

The bodega cat meowed at me as I added potato salad to my order, and I bent down to scratch his ears. He purred and
rubbed his body over my hand, petting himself. Not particularly ferocious, but I guess I would feel differently if I were a mouse.

For Ernesto, there were five other people in the room when he died: John “The Texan” Thornfield, Glenn “Mr. Manners” Dalton, Sybil Sheridon, Lars Dekker, and me. I paid for my meal and thought about what other names should be added. A Google search had yielded an alarming amount of information about poison residue that could be left on a glass undetected until ingested by a victim. There were even substances that could be dormant in the body for a few hours before mixing with something else and causing a deadly reaction, sometimes accidentally so. That meant adding other folks Ernesto might have seen that day, including his non-grieving boyfriend Bomber and other Skyview staff members.

On the other side of this chaos, lay the bodies of Roberto Giabella and Taylor Soto. Poor Taylor. Not even the center of attention after being killed. Had any of the eulogists mentioned him? Not while I was there. I waved to the floor secretary as I headed into my office, but she didn't glance up from her computer screen. I may have glimpsed a queen of hearts being moved to a king of spades.

Poor Taylor or not, Bobbie seemed to be the target, or one of them at least. Dolly had shown me all of his hate mail letters, but none were as explicitly threatening as the funeral invitations. Awful, yes, but not the “I want to eat your organs” type. Dolly affirmed my guess that the other staff members looked up to him. He wouldn't go so far as to say “idolized,” but I would. What was perhaps more surprising was that he didn't consider any of them close, and I wondered if that could be significant. Could someone have been vying for Dolly's spot as headliner?

“Who are your friends?” I had asked, assuming there was a gaggle of smart, well-dressed men to accompany Dolly to art
openings and benefits. “I work hard, kitty cat” was his reply. I didn't think Dolly and I had much in common, but maybe I was wrong.

Once back at my desk, I pushed my sandwich to the side and brought out a legal pad. I turned my mental list into a real one, making a column for Ernesto and a column for Bobbie. Under Ernesto, Bomber was at the top followed by Mr. Manners. When I'd called to request an interview, he'd taught me some new euphemisms that I wouldn't be repeating to anyone. Sybil had been more polite if not more forthcoming, understandably suspicious of my swift change from hoity-toity philanthropist to unknown P.I. She'd asked me to direct all questions to her lawyers, a couple of sharks named Winston & Winston. I put Sybil in the Ernesto column, although my heart wasn't in it. Salvatore went at the bottom even though he didn't have a motive now and wishful thinking wouldn't create one for him.

Under Bobbie, I jotted down Carlton Casborough and Martin King to complete the love triangle. I added Aaron Kline since he was enamored with Carlton and had ducked out of the emergency room. I'd tried to set up an interview with him, but he wasn't returning my calls. The stack of headshots Big Mamma had given me yielded one remote possibility. The others were either successfully working elsewhere or long gone from New York City. I had run a background check on the one unemployed reject, and his past was squeaky clean. It seemed unlikely that a 30-year-old aspiring actor with a blog about cartoons would suddenly turn to arson, but I wrote him down, too. Looking at my names, it was hard not to circle back to my umbrella, Leader Cronos Holt holding the handle.

“What'd you find out,” Ellis said by way of greeting when I called him. While an inquiry about my general health would have been nice, it was a compliment that Ellis thought I might know something useful. Of course, he also wanted me to re-join New York's
Finest, and I wasn't warming to the idea, especially given their cavalier treatment of Big Mamma's concerns. Not to mention the fact that Ellis was the only who had expressed any interest in wanting me back. No one would bust out the ticker tape if I returned.

“There's a hate group in town.”

“The Zeus clan. Yeah, we're working that angle.”

I could hear someone hollering for Ellis's attention, but he must have shrugged them off because he didn't hang up, waiting for me to continue.

“Did you question Cronos Holt?”

“Quite a charmer that one.”

Ellis's sarcasm was apparent, but I thought Cronos probably was charming, at least to his followers. I remembered the worn copy of
The Iliad
that I'd been handed and decided not to underestimate the abilities of the slowest talking person I'd ever met. His brain was moving faster than his tongue.

“Is the DEA agent legit? John Thornfield,” I clarified.

“As far as I know. He's here in town for Magrelli, which means you can back off.”

I'd had the exact same thought, but that didn't keep me from taking offense. Where had he been five years ago when his help—anyone's help—would have been appreciated?

“I'm wondering if the three murders are linked,” I said.

Ellis didn't feed me a line about the float explosion not technically being called a double homicide, yet, which I appreciated. He also paused long enough for me to think that I was onto something.

“You asked me that already. Which case are you working on right now?

“Both.”

“I've got The Skyview kid under control. I don't care about Lars's meddling.”

There was an unspoken warning there, and I respected Ellis. Everyone did. But I'd accepted the case, and I'd see it through.

“I'm meeting your brother again tonight,” I said. There was another long pause, and I could hear someone yell again for his opinion on something. I'd spent a few weeks of my life in the precinct office, but I didn't miss the noise, the constant lobbying for attention to your case, your clues. I'd be happy if I never heard the term “non-priority” again.

“Where?” Ellis asked.

I mentioned the name of the restaurant, and he hung up on me before I could tell him about the fire tip I'd received that morning. I'd look into it on my own, but next up on my to-do list was to pick up a kid from school.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
he Holy Cross of the Upper East Side boasted wrought-iron gates that groaned emphatically when I pulled on them. No security guards came running into view, so I proceeded into the courtyard. It was Old New York nice, with a fountain statue of Adam and Eve sharing an apple. A serpent wound around their shoulders, water trickling from its mouth. It was an odd choice for a high school, but striking for its sheer size, eight-feet tall at least. Around the perimeter, there were five benches, one of which was occupied by a bored-looking dad staring at his iPhone. I'd worn my nicest black suit, but had made no efforts at disguising myself. I needed Martin to recognize me, and I warred with my instincts not to keep glancing over my shoulder.