The Accidental Detective

complexion. She was someone worth having, a woman who could captivate desirable men—economically desirable men, that is—while passing hot hors d’oeuvres or answering a phone behind the desk at an art gallery.
    But this was not the woman Rory had seen, she was realizing. Rory had not seen a woman at all. He had seen clothes. He had seen her shoes, high-heeled Christian Lacroixs that were hell on the cobblestones. And her bag, a Marc Jacobs slung casually over the shoulder of a woman who could afford to be casual about an $800 bag because she had far more expensive ones back home. Only “home” was Barry’s apartment, she realized, and lord knows what he had done with her things. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t yet alerted the credit card company, because he was back in New York, destroying all her things. He would be pissed about the T-shirts, she realized somewhat belatedly. They were authentic vintage ones, not like the fakes everyone else was wearing now, purchased at Fred Segal last January.
    And then she had brought Rory back to this room, this place of unlimited room service and the sumptuous breakfasts and the “Have-whatever-you-like-from-the-minibar” proviso. She had even let him have the cashews.
    “You think I’m rich,” she said.
    “I thought you looked like someone who could use some company,” Rory said, stretching and then rising from the bed.
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-four.”
    He was she, she was Barry. How had this happened? She was much too young to be an older woman and nowhere near rich enough.
    “What do you do?”
    “Like I said, I don’t worry about work too much.” He gave her his lovely grin, although she was not quite as charmed by it.
    “Was I … work?”
    “Well, as my dad said, do what you love and you’ll love what you do.”
    “But you’d prefer to do men, wouldn’t you. Men for fun, women for money.”
    “I told you I’m no cocksucker,” he said, and landed a quick, smart backhand on her cheek. The slap was professional, expert, the slap of a man who had ended more than one argument this way. Bliss, who had never been struck in her life—except on the ass, with a hairbrush, by an early boyfriend who found that exceptionally entertaining—rubbed her cheek, stunned. She was even more stunned to watch Rory proceed to the minibar and crouch on all fours before it, inspecting its restocked shelves.
    “Crap wine,” he said. “And I am sick to hell of Guinness and Jameson.”
    The first crack of the door against his head was too soft; all it did was make him bellow. But it was hard enough to disorient him, giving Bliss the only advantage she needed. She straddled his back and slammed the door repeatedly on his head and his neck. Decapitation occurred to her as a vague goal and she barely noticed his hands reaching back, scratching and flailing, attempting to dislodge her. She settled for motionlessness and silence, slamming the door on his head until he was still.
    But still was not good enough. She wrestled a corkscrew from its resting place—fifteen euros—and went to work. Impossible. Just as she was about to despair, she spied a happy gleam beneath the bedspread, a steak knife that had fallen to the floor and somehow gone undetected. She finished her work, even as the hotel was coming to life around her—the telephone ringing, footsteps pounding down the corridors. She should probably put on her robe. She was rather … speckled.
    “H OW OLD ARE YOU, THEN ?” the police officer—they called them gardai here—asked Bliss.
    “How old do I look?”
    “You look about twenty-five, but the records require more specific data.” He was still being kind and solicitous, although Bliss sensed that the fading mark on her cheek had not done much to reconcile the investigators to the scene they had discovered. They were gallant and professed horror that she had been hit and insulted. But their real horror, she knew, was for Rory.
    “Really? Twenty-five? You’re not just saying that?”
    “I’d be surprised if you could buy a drink legally in most places.”
    Satisfied, she gave her real age, although it took a moment of calculation to get it right. Was she thirty, thirty-one? Thirty, she decided. Thirty.

A GOOD FUCK SPOILED
    I t began innocently enough. Well, if not innocently—and Charlie Drake realized that some people would refuse to see the origins of any extramarital affair as innocent—it began with tact and consideration. When