“That’s what he said.”
“Who?”
“The other detective.”
“Uh-huh. Well, we’re not ruling out anything at this point. I know this is a terrible experience for you, but one possibility is that her death was an accident—that she may have died while engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation. Do you know what that is?”
She winced as if not wanting to hear the explanation. “Vaguely.”
“It’s a way to heighten sexual pleasure through partial strangulation. I’m sorry to have to ask—and I don’t know how close you were—but is this something you think she’d be into?”
“God, I don’t think so. I’ve only known her for a few months, but no…” She trailed off.
“Do you know if she had a boyfriend?”
“No, but she was a fairly private person. She said she’d broken up with a guy last year before moving here. I think she just wanted to remain unattached for a while.”
“Do you know the name of this guy?”
“No. But I think he moved out of state and got married.”
“So, you don’t know of anyone she might have dated.”
“No.”
“What about family?”
“Her parents passed away a few years ago, but she has a brother in Chicago I think and a sister in upstate New York. I never met them, and she didn’t talk about them much.”
He interviewed her for several more minutes, taking down names of friends and acquaintances. Then Beals opened her handbag and removed a photograph. “I was going to give this to her,” she said, her voice choking.
In the shot Farina was dressed in a tight pullover and jeans in front of a woman’s clothing store. She had struck a cheesecake pose, making a saucy expression at the camera, one hand holding a shopping bag, the other behind her head. Her hair was auburn, unlike the apartment shots of her.
“How recent is this?”
“Two weeks ago. We went shopping and had so much fun…I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“May I hold on to this?”
She nodded. “You can keep it. I have a duplicate.”
In the photo, her hair was pulled back to reveal her face. Looking at it, he remembered what it was that had caught his eye the first time they had met in the coffee line months ago. At first he couldn’t put his finger on it—the cast of her eyes, the mouth, the heart-shaped face—but something about her had struck him as familiar. Only after they began chatting did he realize that it was her vague resemblance to his wife, Dana.
Looking at the photograph reminded him of that resemblance. Then again, since their separation half the women on the street seemed to resemble Dana.
4
“I’ve had it with this nose. It sits on my face like a damn dorsal fin.”
Dana stepped out of the bathroom with her hand cropping the top of her nose. She turned her profile to Steve, who was struggling to slide an air conditioner into the window. “What do you think?”
It was nearly nine that same day when Steve arrived to install the AC in their bedroom window. He was exhausted because they had reworked the Farina apartment for five more hours then scoured the neighborhood with the local police. Nobody had seen or heard anything. Her only known relatives—a sister and a brother—had been notified of her death. Pending the M.E.’s autopsy report, the Farina case was being treated as suspicious.
“Get rid of the bump and maybe narrow it down a little.”
“Shit!” Something jammed against the rear casing of the machine, leaving it suspended against his stomach and the windowsill edge while he stretched with his free hand to reach a hammer from his tool kit to bang in a nail head that was sitting too high on the slide track. “They can make computers that fit in your ear, but they can’t make an AC that won’t cause hernias.”
He glared at her with the unit against his stomach, the sharp underside edges cutting into his fingers, his lower lumbar screaming for relief. “Not to distract you, but would you please get the hammer and slam down that nail?”
She looked at him. “Why don’t you just put it down and do it yourself?”
“Because if I put it on the table, it’ll leave a scratch, and if I put it on the bedspread, it’ll leave a stain. And your vanity chair is piled with clothes. And if I put it on the floor, I’ll probably end up in traction trying to get it up again. And if I have to give any more explanations I’m going to hurl it out the window.”
“Nice how all those hours at the gym are paying off.”
“Deadlifting an AC is not part of my workout.”
She snapped up the hammer and whacked the nail head flat.
With a heave, he slid the machine onto the track and brought down the window to hold it in place. A breath exploded out of him. They had been separated for more than half a year, but he still came over to help with chores. It was how he hoped to stay connected.
“By the way, I thought you were going to do this yesterday.”
“I got tied up.”
“You could have called.” She turned back to the long floor mirror. “I also think I need a lid lift. What do you think?”
He lay flat-out on the bed. “I think I’ll never be straight again.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She turned toward him with her hands on the sides of her face and pulled back her skin.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m asking if you think I need a lid lift. They’re beginning to droop. In a couple years I’ll look like Salman Rushdie.”
“I think I had that at Legal Seafood once.”
“I’m being serious.” She was now looking in a hand mirror at her face.
“Dana, you don’t need a lid lift. What you need is to come down here and jump on my bones.” He looked at her and tried to flush his mind of the images of Terry Farina.
Dana made facial contortions in the mirror. “They also make my eyes look small.”
A few copies of
“My mother had droopy eyelids,” she continued. “What luck! I got her eyelids and my father’s big fat Greek nose.” She put the mirror down, and with her middle fingers she pulled up her eyelids then turned to him as he stared up at her from her pillows. “What about this?”
“You look like you’ve been zapped with a cattle prod.”
She then held up her lids and with the sides of her hands stretched back the skin. “How about this?” And she turned her face toward him again.
“You just hit Mach five.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your face is all swept back, like a test pilot.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“And you’re taking it too seriously. Your eyes are not small, plus your lids give you a sexy hooded gaze.”
“
“Okay, bad choice of words.”
“At least admit I need a nose job.” Her voice began to crack and she sat at the edge of the bed, fighting back tears.
