“And who would be asking?”
“Sam Acquillo. I was a friend of Iku Kinjo.”
Her sloped shoulders fell a few degrees forward.
“It’s horrible,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
She leaned against the doorjamb, taking the weight off one long leg. “How did you say you knew Iku?” she asked.
“I didn’t. I knew her from work.”
She stood up straight again and reached for the door.
“Not a client, I hope,” she said, her voice gaining a notch in volume.
“Not Angel, if that’s what you mean,” I said.
“Fucking Angel is how we put it.”
She started to close the door. I put my hand out to stop her.
“I’m the one who found her.”
She let go of the door and leaned back on the jamb, and studied me. At least I think she did. It was hard to tell with her eyes blacked out.
“It’s malarkey, you know,” she said, after a pause.
“What is?” I asked.
“Suicide. Would never happen.”
“That’s what they’re saying?”
“Possible suicide. It was on the news this morning.”
News to me.
“What do you think?” I asked. “If not suicide.”
“I have a kettle boiling. You drink tea?”
“Under duress.”
“Come in anyway. Maybe I can find some coffee.”
She fell back into the house and I followed her. The style of the interior carried through the general motif. I was glad she was leading the way. The woodwork was so dark I could barely see where I was going as we moved through the front hall, which was dominated by a stubby grandfather clock and the stuffed head of a black bear. The ceiling might have been seven feet high, probably less. Zelda almost had to crouch to get through the doors. In the kitchen things lightened up considerably, helped along by a wall-length window made of maybe fifty individual panes of glass. The kitchen was packed into a tight space, but sparkling clean and organized.
The smell from a thick, blue-grey spice plant, I guessed thyme, filled the air. A fat little tea kettle whistled on the stove, as advertised.
“I used to drink coffee,” said Zelda, “until my father died of cardiac arrest one morning at breakfast. The sight of him sitting there in disbelief sticks with a person.”
She scooped up the kettle and dumped the steaming water into a mug. It smelled great.
“I’m sold,” I said. “Give me one of those.”
“It’s Hibiscus Paradise. Irresistible aroma.”
“Apparently.”
After handing me a mug, she leaned up against the counter and clinked around hers with a spoon. She still wore the black-dot sunglasses. The kimono told about as much as any kimono about the shape underneath. The V at her neck took a pretty severe plunge, but I was trying hard not to look. I was only able to judge the shape of her shoulders, which were wide and angular, like a swimmer’s. The fingers that held the mug were also long and thin.
“I only knew Iku on the job,” I said to her. “I’m glad to know she had friends. Had a life outside.”
Zelda clinked the mug a few more times.
“How did you know she was a friend of mine?”
I picked a
“You get these at Bobby’s house.”
She pursed her lips.
“Quite the long shot,” she said.
“With a name like yours?”
“My great-grandparents owned a place out here two doors down from Gerald and Sara Murphy. My mother married a pretty drunk named Mike Fitzgerald. You can guess the rest.”
She told the tale like she’d told it a thousand times, which she probably had.
“Lucky for you Tallulah Bankhead preferred Atlantic Beach.”
Something like a smirk formed across her narrow lips.
“Funny,” she said. “No, honestly. Very funny. What did you say you did?”
“I didn’t. But I used to be an engineer. Iku advised the company I worked for. How’d you know her?”
“Robert, the dear heart. He brought her home like he’d found a wet puppy by the side of the road. Not exactly wet. Wrecked would be more like it.”
I clinked my own mug a little. Getting into the groove of Zelda’s kitchen.
“Where was home?”
She pointed at me with the handle of her spoon.
“You don’t think it was suicide either, do you? And you’re not an engineer, are you?”
“I am. And I’m not a cop. And no, I don’t think it was suicide.”
“You think somebody killed her,” said Zelda.
“I do.”
“And you are, again?”
“Sam Acquillo.”
“Should I be expecting a call from the police?”
“Probably.”
“I thought so,” she said, half to herself. “From the moment I saw you walking toward the door. You were intense.”
She put her foot up on the rung of a kitchen chair, and in so doing allowed the kimono to part across her leg. It was a very long, very slender leg that I could follow almost as far as it went. The way she covered up when she noticed me looking made looking feel that much worse.
“I hope you find him quick,” she said, pretending what had happened hadn’t happened. “We can’t have people out there killing our brilliant and beautiful.”
“So where was home? Vedders Pond?”
“You engineers are very persistent,” she said. “Dogged even.”
“If you like dogged, I got some in the car.”
“Yes. That was our place, on the pond. Robert, Elaine and I. Robert has rented it every summer since college to get away from his parents and we chipped in. Others would come and go, and help spread the burden. Like Elaine’s brother this summer, with his unfortunate girlfriend.”
“Sybil Shandy?”
She nodded.
“The hostess at Roger’s,” she said “You probably know her.”
“If I could afford to eat at Roger’s. And Iku?”
“She joined the party this summer.”
“As Bobby’s girlfriend?”
She looked startled. Then she smiled an actual smile.
“Is that what I should tell the cops?” she asked.
“Is it the truth?”
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“Yeah, it matters. Your friend’s dead. Not coming back. It matters how that happened.”
She pushed herself off the kitchen counter and leaned over the table, supporting herself with her palms flat on the cherrywood surface.
