Hunting Sweetie Rose

CHAPTER 62.

Leo cabbed down to the Wilbur Wright, had the valet pull the Jeep around, and was behind the wheel when the concierge wheeled me out. Getting in, I saw a clumsy sort of wide strap that lay on the dashboard.

“You can wrap it around like a belt to hold your arm at your side, if movement is painful,” he said.

“Where the hell would you get something that barbaric?”

“Barbaric? That was Pa’s. From one of the times he fell, coming out of the tavern. He hurt his arm.”

“I don’t remember him hurting anything.”

Leo grinned. “He never spilled a drop.”

Instead of heading west toward the Eisenhower, he drove east, almost to the lake, and picked up Lake Shore Drive, southbound.

“No,” I said.

He kept looking straight ahead.

“I mean it, Leo. Amanda and I, we’re not, ah…” He was heading toward Amanda’s condominium.

“I know you’re ‘not, ah…,’ but from what you told me on the phone, some guy approximately half your size, and apparently a cross-dresser, keeps beating on you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Of course you can. If the killer cross-dresser comes for you again, I’m sure you can puncture his, or her, eardrums with your screaming.” He slowed to turn in front of Amanda’s high-rise.

She was waiting under the canopy, dressed in a glittering dark evening gown. Next to her stood one of the building’s uniformed security people, and a younger, dark-haired man who had the unsmiling face of someone who was used to shooting people.

“I can do this myself,” I said to Amanda after she opened my door. Getting out, I fell back against the Jeep. The young dark-haired man was at my side in an instant, and caught me before I fell to the ground.

“Of course,” Amanda said, “and if you can’t, Mike here”-she gestured at the unsmiling young man who was holding me up-“can throw you over his shoulders and carry you to the elevator like potatoes.”

“Ex-cop?” I asked Mike.

“Current cop, moonlighting,” he said.

Amanda reached to steady my elbow. “He does security for my father.”

Leo had stayed behind the steering wheel.

“How are you getting back to Rivertown?” I asked him.

“In this.”

“I’ll be stuck here.”

“In a high-security building, with extra security? Jeez, why didn’t I think of that?” He grinned, ever a smartster. “Want the strap?” he asked, reaching for the top of the dashboard.

“See those stenciled initials: R.P.D.?”

He looked down at the strap now in his hands. “Yes?” he said, uncertainly.

“Rivertown Police Department. It’s an old-time restraint, meant to cinch both arms tight to the torso. Supposed to work like a straitjacket, only it’s cheaper. Your pa probably found it on the street, thought it might be a way of controlling you.”

His grin got wider, and then he drove away.

Truth was, I didn’t like the idea of being alone in the turret that evening, not with a killer loose, and me feeling like I’d dripped the last of my strength away in Sweetie Fairbairn’s hallway. Then again, I didn’t like the idea of being alone with Amanda, either, because I didn’t want to think about what she’d been in the middle of, dressed as she was for a fine evening.

I said nothing more to any of them, and instead concentrated on beating Amanda and Mike to the lobby.

“I’m not helpless,” I said, unnecessarily, as we rode up in the elevator.

“Darn tootin’,” she said. “Thank you, Mike,” when we got to her condominium.

“We’ll be watching your door from the end of the hall, Miss Phelps.”

“Thank you, Mike,” I said.

“You’re a real prize,” he said.

“Darn tootin’,” I said.

I understood the reason for her evening dress as soon as I hobbled into her apartment. She’d been hosting a dinner. The last time I’d been there, several months earlier, the living room was sparsely furnished, containing only a low magazine table and a long sofa facing a sort of gallery wall on which she’d hung her big Monet, small Picasso, and the other works that together were worth over eleven million dollars. We’d made love on that long sofa.

Now that sofa was gone. In the room was new furniture, lots of it. An elegant dining room table was set for eight, on which remained plates of half-eaten food. The place smelled of candles, hurriedly snuffed.

I resented all of it-that new decor, the fancy food, the candlelit conviviality that she could enjoy without me.

“I didn’t want to come here,” I said.

“So I would expect.” She slid out one of the high-back dining room chairs. When I sat down, she turned up the dining room lights and bent to peer at the scratches on my face.

“A bite?” she asked, lightly touching my neck.

“Yes.”

“You look like you’ve just had sex with an angry woman,” she said, trying to smile.

“Not yet.” I could always be counted on for lame, inappropriate jokes.

She straightened up. “You can watch me clean up.”

“What? No staff?”

She didn’t know whether to take that as a barb or not. I wasn’t even quite sure how I meant it. The Amanda I knew, or maybe the Amanda I used to know, didn’t have nice furniture and elegant dinner parties, and she didn’t wear fancy evening clothes. That Amanda, my Amanda, had been content with her old, long sofa, to sit and study her artworks and to make love, as though those were the only things that would ever matter.

“Actually, I did have people to serve, this evening,” she said, evenly. “I asked them to leave, along with my guests, right after Leo called.” She picked up two plates. Starting for the kitchen, she asked, “Does that count for anything?”

“I’m a jerk,” I said.

“No lasting damage,” she said, going into the kitchen. Then, in the arch, mock-bitch voice she used to use, whenever I’d tease her about owning eleven million bucks in art, she said, “Besides, the fish was quite overdone.”