Death Turns A Trick (Rebecca Schwartz #1) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

well. She cast doubt on my professional expertise. Seemed to think you’d be better off with the famous Isaac Schwartz for a lawyer.”
    “Your father?” Parker actually laughed. Perhaps the shock was wearing off and he was beginning to feel more himself. “I hope you gave her the well-known piece of your mind.”
    “I wasn’t the soul of politeness.”
    “Good for you.”
    I told Parker things were looking better, without going into much detail. I let him know about the times, of course, but I thought it better to spare him the nuances that cast Kandi in an unflattering light. He had had enough hurt on that score, and he was bound to be in for more eventually. He had good news for me, too; he’d decided to take the polygraph the next morning.
    I left feeling better, feeling more as if I could depend on him to call on his inner resources and not expect to draw his strength from me.
    In fact, I felt damn good. It was a beautiful day, and I was going to a party that night. Not just any party, either—a celebration of thirty years of marriage. An astounding accomplishment.
    I had nothing to do but think of frivolity for the rest of the day. Murder just wasn’t on the program. It was a good afternoon for Scarlatti.
    For once that weekend, my parking space was empty. A good omen. I parked, went in, performed the now-familiar rug-squeezing, feather-picking ritual, and settled down at the piano. As my fingers tripped lightly over the Scarlatti, I looked out my window at the financial district. The sun glinted playfully on its windowpanes, seeming almost to keep time with me, performing its own glad, baroque Sunday afternoon dance.
    The dance slowed, though, as evening fell, and finally stopped. I felt some sober Bach would be appropriate, though better on an organ. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” was just the thing. Sober, yes, but always accompanied by tingles and goose bumps—the result, no doubt, of too many viewings of
The Phantom of the Opera
. Perhaps, even as I played, someone else was playing the same piece, a few blocks southwest at Grace Cathedral.
    I have no idea what time Episcopalians hold evening services, but for some reason that thought made me look at my watch. It was 5:30, and Mickey was picking me up in an hour. I just had time to read a bit and get ready.
    The reading I did in the bathtub. That accomplished, I was able to apply myself, clean of body and enlightened of soul, to the fascinating details of my toilet.
    This I did with much pleasure, though vanity is not something to which we intellectual, ambitious types are supposed to aspire. Perhaps this quality of indulging myself in the forbidden is one of the reasons for my ambivalent attitude toward prostitution. In fact, I know it is. But be that as it may, I am much better able to accept vanity in myself lately. Now that I have done well in college and law school and am starting to make it in the professional world, I don’t worry so much that people will think me frivolous. I know that I can cope, and I don’t need to prove it by neglecting my appearance.
    For this occasion, though, false eyelashes and carmine lipstick were best forgotten. Just a little make-up, the sort that’s supposed to make you look “natural,” and a good fluffing-up of the workaday hairdo. That would do it.
    No worry about selecting an outfit, either. That had been done weeks ago: a red embroidered Chinese-style dress that had to be worn with pants, owing to the authentic side-slits. I’d discarded the tight black ones that came with it, found some soft jersey in the right color, and talked Mickey into making me some red ones. The effect was unorthodox, but very gay in the old-fashioned sense of the word.
    At 6:30, I looked out my window, saw no sign of Mickey’s Volkswagen, and cursed myself. Mickey was invariably twenty minutes late. If I’d remembered that, I wouldn’t have been sitting around crumpling up my new outfit. I was too impatient to read, and I was burned out on playing the piano. It wouldn’t take twenty minutes, but I could water my plants.
    After slipping on an apron to protect my dress, I filled my two-gallon watering can and emptied most of it on the potted palm. Moving on to the asparagus fern nearest the piano, I picked up the foliage to get the nozzle near the dirt and gave it the tag end of the two gallons. But it wasn’t nearly enough, so I refilled the can and splashed it liberally. Absentmindedly, I picked up the foliage of