frames were everywhere, covering the walls, the end tables, the fireplace mantel, frames of every description, from dime-store plastic to contemporary wood to silver antiques. A lifetime of memories.
“Coffee for Evie,” Maggie said. “And you, dear? Coffee? Tea? Cold drink?”
“Coffee’s fine, thank you,” I said. “Cream or milk, please, whichever you have on hand.”
“How polite. Evie, are you taking notes?”
Evelyn opened her mouth, but Maggie vanished before she could respond. I continued to look at the pictures, then zeroed in on an old one propped next to the telephone. In it, two young women grinned before Mount Rushmore. Maggie and Frances. I could tell by the smiles, which hadn’t changed in the forty-plus years since the photo had been snapped. Age had favored Frances best. In the old picture, she was severe looking, her features too strong for her youthful face. And Maggie? She’d been jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with blond curls, dimples, flawless skin and a figure that could have body-doubled for Marilyn Monroe.
“A knockout, wasn’t she?” Frances said. “Of course, she still is.”
“Nice save, darling,” Maggie said as she pushed through the kitchen door. “Time has not been kind to this old broad, but it got me what I wanted.”
“An early and comfortable retirement,” Frances said. “We didn’t make a fortune, but we did well enough.”
Maggie grinned wickedly and slid her fingers down Frances ’s arm. “That’s not what I meant.”
Frances blushed and dropped her eyes like a sixteen-year-old, then quickly grabbed two coffee cups from the tray Maggie had laid on the side table. She leaned forward to hand me one.
“Has Evie told you what we did in the old days?” Frances asked.
I shook my head.
Maggie held up a hand, motioning for Frances to let her explain. “A variation on the oldest and best female confidence scheme in the books. First, you find a lonely rich man…and believe me, all rich men are lonely. Then you send in someone who looks like that.” She pointed to her image in the old photo. “She wrangles a private invitation back to his house, and makes sure the doors are left unlocked behind her. While she’s busy cooing over cocktails, in comes her partner and cleans the place out. Frances could pick a mansion clean in thirty minutes.”
Frances grinned. “And Maggie could tease for thirty-five, so it worked out fine.”
“Thirty-five? Darling, I could tease for sixty and do no more than peck his cheek.”
Frances rolled her eyes. “Sixty? Remember that Swede? In Atlanta? If I hadn’t-”
“I’m sure Dee and Evie didn’t come to hear us reminisce,” Maggie said. “How may we help you ladies?”
“We need to talk to someone who would have been with the Nikolaev family in the seventies. You still keep up with Peter, don’t you?”
“We’re going down to Florida next month to see him and Chance.” She frowned at Frances. “Is it Chance? Or Enrico?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Frances said. “Since Ivan died, it’s a new Chance or Enrico every time we meet him. Eighteen-year-old pool boys. Some men hit a certain age-straight or gay, it doesn’t matter-they’ll empty their wallets on the first flat stomach that comes along.”
“But we don’t need to call Peter to find you a Nikolaev contact,” Maggie said. “Little Joe is in an old-age home outside Detroit.”
“A retirement home?” Evelyn said. “Little Joe is Boris Nikolaev’s brother, isn’t he?”
“Hell of a thing to do to your own brother,” Frances said. “But Boris never had much use for Joe. Not that I blame him. There was some scandal a couple of years back, Joe flapping his gums when he shouldn’t have. Boris shipped him off to a fancy rest home. Joe was never the sharpest tool in the family shed, but if you’re looking for someone to talk, he’ll talk all right. Problem always was getting him to shut up.”
“Will there be a problem getting in to see him?” I asked. “They’ll have him under security still, won’t they?”
Frances shook her head. “When the family puts someone out to pasture, he’s persona non grata. They’ll visit him, keep up appearances but, as far as they’re concerned, he’s out of the business. They won’t tell him anything, so there’s nothing he can tell anyone else. On current events, that is. The past? Well, no one cares much about the past these days.”
Frances searched the Internet for private rest homes in the Detroit suburbs until she found the one that tweaked her memory. Then we took our leave and prepared for a trip to Michigan.
“He’s an old man,” Evelyn said as she pulled into a mall parking lot. “Flash him some T and A, and he’ll tell us everything we want to know.”
“Great,” I said. “We’ll find you a push-up bra and miniskirt.”
She pinned me with a look. “After a certain age, all the push-up bras in the world don’t help, as you’ll discover. With a man like Little Joe, the horseflesh has to be young and it has to be firm.”
“Did I mention I don’t do Mata Hari?”
“ Dee…”
“I’m not pulling some feminist bullshit. I can’t play the seduction card-I don’t have the look for it. When I was on the force, Vice nabbed me once for undercover, stuck me in a microskirt and halter top, put me on the street corner. I looked like the world’s only crack ho with a personal trainer.”
“We can skip the microskirt.”
“And the halter top?”
A sigh. “And the halter top. Let’s see what we can find.”
I folded my sandwich wrapper into quarters, tucked it into the take-out bag and folded that into a neat square. Then I leaned forward to shake the crumbs from my cleavage. Amazing what they can do with bras these days. Slap together some elastic and some underwire, toss in a couple of gel-filled “contouring pads” and I felt like I should be ticketed for false advertising.
Evelyn had picked out my sweater-a low-cut job that was 50 percent Lycra, 20 percent angora and 100 percent skanky. She’d completed the ensemble with skintight jeans, ankle boots, red press-on nails and jewelry that clanked when I walked.
Back at her place I’d finished up with hair and makeup. I’d considered Jack’s platinum wig choice, but it tweaked the outfit over the line to street whore. So I’d kept on Evelyn’s long brown one, borrowed a curling iron and hair-spray, and teased the wig until it looked like what I’d worn for my eighth-grade yearbook photo-a shellacked ode to the era of big hair and heavy metal. Mafia bait. All I needed was a wad of bubble gum and a Jersey accent.
We’d taken turns driving, picked up lunch and arrived at Glory Acres just past three-thirty. The place had once been a home-a real one-occupied, undoubtedly, by a real family. It appeared to have begun life as a two-story Victorian but, like most of us, had spread with age. There was an addition here, a wing there, none of it the same style as the original building. Two skeletons of porch swings were propped against the house, seats and cushions gone. Burlap covered the shrubs and rosebushes. Birdbaths had been emptied and turned upside-down. A house in hibernation.
“I’ll talk to him alone first,” Evelyn said as we walked up the front steps. “I need to refresh his memory on some…past deeds of mine. So he knows I’m not conning him.”
“Maybe you can get him to talk to you, skip my role altogether.”
She said nothing, and I had the feeling it wouldn’t matter if she could get Little Joe to talk-she’d still bring me in. Testing me. Or showing me who was boss. Probably both. Typical “new partner” bullshit. One reason I liked working with Jack-he never pulled this crap.
“It might take ten, fifteen minutes, so use the washroom, freshen up.” She gave me a once-over. “Put on more lipstick. And pull the sweater down.”
“If I pull it down anymore, I’ll fall out.”
“All the better.”
“So what’s my story?” I said as I pulled open the front door. “Your niece? Nurse? Tax accountant?”
“For occupation, we’ll stick with the truth.”
I stopped, the door half open. “Seriously? Dressed like this?”
