Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

the effect she’d created. “Ha. Got you, didn’t I? Yeah, she was thrilled. He wanted her to get all dressed up and meet him in this hotel suite. Very, very fancy hotel, I won’t say which one. Ordered room service, anything she wanted. Champagne, every kind of thing. She didn’t want to drink on duty, but he insisted. Paid her extra. And then he made out with her awhile.” She grimaced. “Ick. You know how whores hate to kiss. But he paid her for that, too. I think he took all her clothes off and everything. But he never did fuck her.”
    “Just didn’t? Or tried and couldn’t?”
    “Well, just wouldn’t, I think.”
    “But you’re not sure.”
    “Oh, okay, okay. I’m ornery before brunch. We’ll call her, okay? Will that make you happy?” And she left to get a phone.
    Pretty soon we were talking to one Claudia (aka Tami) Robinson, who said she couldn’t remember that much about it, because after all she’d been drinking, but to the best of her recollection, Mr. McKendrick had kept his clothes on.
    “What was that all about?” I asked.
    “Who knows? You get weirdos.”
    “McKendrick was a weirdo?”
    “Does that sound normal to you?”
    “Did he give any reason for it?”
    “He said he just wanted to be with me and hold me. In case you don’t know the technical jargon, that’s what they say when they can’t get it up.”
    “Did he do or say anything odd— I mean, except for that?”
    She thought for a minute. “Yeah. Yeah, he did. He cried.”
    “He cried?”
    “Yeah. He held me and cried all over me. I remember, I said to Elena, ‘Hey, you can’t get AIDS from tears, can you?’ I mean, they’re bodily fluids. But, anyway, he called me a name.”
    I stiffened, ready for a particularly nasty obscenity. “What did he call you?”
    “Sean. He called me Sean. He said, ‘Oh, Sean, I’m so sorry.’”
    “Did he say who Sean was?”
    “Look, all I wanted to do was get out of there. You think I asked? The guy was drunk and sloppy. No wonder he couldn’t get it up— nobody could have.”
    “Okay, just one more thing. Did he pay for a whole night?”
    “Yeah, by the time you added in all the extras— kissing and drinking and everything— oh, yeah, and me calling him. Then there was the suite and the champagne and dinner and everything. Jesus! Must have been about a fifteen-hundred dollar night for him.”
    If he’d made a habit of this sort of thing, that would explain where his money went.

Chapter Ten
    Tami swore she hadn’t ever told any of this to a soul (“I mean, why would I? Just who would you expect to give a shit?”) so we had to figure Tommy La Barre hadn’t known when he sent us over there. But what I couldn’t figure was why he sent us. I still thought he was our man.
    “So do I,” said Rob. “But we can’t afford to ignore this Sean thing.”
    “Okay. You've got to go help Chris plow through clips anyway. Why don’t you look for any Seans he might have panned while you’re at it. And I’ll call back everyone we’ve already talked to and see if they know what it means.”
    So we did— and turned up nothing.
    The only good news was, I got in nearly five hours’ work on my pending case before it was time to pop over to Mickey and Alan’s. Kruzick had left, as usual, at five— “got to go pluck that pheasant”— leaving me to slave for two more hours. But somehow it wasn’t pheasant I smelled when I walked in— it was pasta puttanesca, and I guess it was just that kind of day.
    I inspected the kittens and returned to the kitchen just in time for the ceremonial unveiling of the garlic bread. Mickey said, “I made pasta because it’s your security food,” which was so sweet I didn’t remind her it was all she ever made. Kruzick bore the salad to the table in triumph, and I found myself hungry as a horse.
    But I could barely eat because Mickey wanted details— lots of them. Kruzick had told her very little, saying I was coming over, she might as well get it from me. But of course he wouldn’t even have known about some of the things I wanted to talk about.
    It was just as well because I needed new eyes to look at this thing. The task, as I saw it, was to keep my law partner out of jail. I couldn’t see a way to do that without finding the murderer. Was I right so far?
    They nodded.
    Well, then, what to do now? Look for Jason’s enemies? I hadn’t found any. Look for Chris’s? She claimed she didn’t have any unless you counted Tommy