Deadly Beloved

Behind the lenses of the glasses, his dark blue eyes blinked owlishly. “Why what?”

“Should I trust you.”

He frowned. “Because you trust Mike, and he trusts me. I know you feel...left out.”

I smiled at him the way a teacher does a problem student. “That’s right. Things are going on around here, cases looked into, that I’m not part of. There’s more whispering than a teenage slumber party.”

Suddenly he seemed ill at ease; or I should say, even more ill at ease.

“You’ll have to take it up with Mike,” he said, and was off to the privacy of his office.

Dan Green, on the other hand, was genuinely friendly, and we hit off. We followed a couple of the same TV shows and that gave us some common ground for office chitchat, and we both had a jones for Gino’s deep dish pizza, which led to an occasional business lunch or dinner.

Just the same, he never got fresh with me; we were strictly business buddies.

But when we hired Bea Vang away from the Chicago PD—where among other things she’d worked undercover vice and, along the way, picked up a taste for fun if mildly slutty clothes—Dan took more than a professional interest. Or was that less?

Ms. Vang was a good-looking young woman whose attributes may have been emphasized by the Betsy Johnson fashions she preferred, but even in Ann Taylor she’d have been the kind of attractive nuisance that could lead a Dan Green to spend way too much time stopping by her desk.

Bea hadn’t complained to me, but I could see she was getting uncomfortable, so I brought the subject up with Dan—boiled down, it came to “Cool it!”—and then reported to Mike.

“I had to talk to Dan today,” I told him.

“About hitting on Bea?”

“Right. Last thing a new small business needs is a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

My point, admittedly, was undercut by our being naked in bed together at the time I brought this up....

Mike’s bed, in his apartment.

He threw the paperback he’d been reading onto the nightstand, moved closer and slipped an arm around me. “Sexual harassment, huh? Isn’t this where I came in?”

“Never mind where you came in,” I said, thumping him on the nose with a forefinger, gently. “Bea’s got a solid law enforcement background, and—as we expand—we need to get her out from behind that desk and into some real case work.”

“Is this a veiled criticism?”

I beamed at him—one hundred watts of sarcasm. “About my being stuck behind a desk? Why, no! Not at all! I would never accuse you of bait and switch. Not in a million fucking years....”

He slipped his arm out from around my shoulders and sat up in bed, sheets gathered at his waist, his muscular chest and broad shoulders meaning absolutely nothing to me, much, and gave me his most earnest look. “Hey. By next year, you will be out from behind that desk. One way or the other.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He had this puckish expression going; just plain silly, on a big hairy ape like him. “It means...you might be expanding, yourself.”

I frowned. “I’m working out every other day, I’ll have you know.”

“I didn’t mean that. You’re perfect. It’s just...I have big plans for you, Michael.”

“Plans. Plans. How about something right now?”

“Okay.”

He reached for the nightstand, opened the drawer, and came back with a little black box.

Of course I knew.

So do you.

But surprise washed over me just the same, when I took the tiny box and flipped it open and saw, nestled there in pink satin, a diamond ring. Simple. Elegant. A karat, maybe.

And Mike Tree knew, for all my talk, dangling a karat in front of me would get this woman’s attention....

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said softly. “You’re out on the streets all you want, a P.I. just like the big boys...and girls...as long as you take a year off every time we have one.”

I frowned in confusion. “One? One what?”

“A boy. Or girl.” He was moving in for the kill now, nuzzling my neck. “Some detective,” he said.

Then he was crawling on top of me, kissing my neck, nibbling at my ear, and this and much else that’s none of your business went on for quite a while.

But this I will admit: before he slipped it in, he made me slip it on—the ring, I mean.

He said, “Gotta...start...making an...an honest... honest woman...out of you....”

“Take,” I said, “your time....”

FOUR

The doctor’s pen scratched at his notebook paper, filling a lull.

Then he said, “Let’s get back to new business, Ms. Tree. What was it about the Richard Addwatter killing that touched a nerve?”

“The other victim,” I said.

“The woman with Addwatter at the motel?”

“No. The other other victim—Mrs. Addwatter.”

“All right. What about her case touched a nerve, then?”

I glanced over at him. Reflections obscured the eyes behind the lenses and his solemn visage with the spade-shaped beard made him a figure in the kind of dream he might be asked to interpret.

“I’ll ask you one, Doc. How often does a homicide lieutenant encourage a P.I. to get involved in a murder case?”

Cook County Memorial Hospital, on West Harrison, takes up roughly fifteen city blocks and works at keeping the citizens of Chicago alive and well. When that doesn’t pan out, the Cook County Morgue, located at the hospital for 130 years or so, takes over.

The female Chicagoan on the metal tray—pale gray in her dead nakedness—was getting the kind of exam that doesn’t do the patient much good, no matter how thorough Dr. Pravene might be.

In his late thirties, a bland, blandly handsome East Indian in white, from lab coat to pants and even shoes, Dr. Pravene was just about to begin his autopsy, which seemed overkill, considering the cause of death just might be the three bullet wounds, one in the throat, another in the chest, last in the stomach.

Rafe and I were keeping a respectful distance. Autopsies don’t make me sick but they aren’t my idea of a good time. And if it had been any more unpleasantly cold in that cement-block chamber, our breaths would’ve been showing. Everybody’s but the corpse’s, anyway.

Rafe was saying, “Dr. Pravene found something interesting in the vic’s tox screen.”

Pravene, a scalpel in hand, paused, as if he’d been about to slice a birthday cake but somebody at the party reminded him that first the candles needed blowing out.

“Rohypnol, Ms. Tree,” Pravene said.

“Roofies?” I squinted at the doctor, as if trying to bring him into focus, then looked at Rafe the same way. “No offense to the deceased, gentlemen, but why would Richard Addwatter need a date rape drug to ply his charms on this debutante?”

Pravene placed the scalpel in a small tray and came over to give me his full attention; his patient didn’t seem to mind, even though the physician gestured at her in a dismissive manner.

“The drug wasn’t in the female victim’s blood,” Pravene said.

Then he moved over to another metal slab, where his next patient awaited: Richard Addwatter, who had taken bullets in the forehead, center chest and lower belly. The doctor gestured to my client’s late husband.

I said, “The male vic?”

Pravene nodded. “Female’s screen did show heroin, among other things—plus she was HIV positive.”