Slow Squeeze (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 2) Read online

“Fifty K,” Iris confirmed.

  “It’s amazing that some people have that kind of money,” Penny said.

  “Some people do.”

  “How’s the chili?” John asked.

  “Good,” Iris said, “but it needs salt.”

  “Penny helped me in the kitchen,” John said. “She stopped me when I went for the salt.”

  Penny sat straighter, assuming a more forceful posture, as if she were about to express an opinion that no one else in the room held but she felt compelled to voice anyway. “Without all the salt, Iris, you’ll find the food’s natural flavors come through. I haven’t used salt for years. No caffeine or booze, either. I’ve felt so much better, like I’m clean inside.” She smiled in a way that alluded to her inner glow.

  Iris took another small spoonful of the chili, chewed it a little, and swallowed it quickly.

  John said, “I’ve decided it wouldn’t hurt me to clean up my act, too. New year and all.”

  “So you helped John cook, Penny?”

  “I came over earlier this afternoon to pick up Chloe to go camping. John and I got to talking…” Penny smiled robustly at John. “You know. Old times. The new year, it makes you reflect.”

  “Seems like the new year has a lot of ramifications in this house,” Iris said. “So, where are you going camping?”

  “The Grand Canyon, with my brother and his family. Ever been there, Iris?”

  “Never made it there.”

  “Iris in the Grand Canyon?” John said with amusement. “Paris is too rustic for Iris.”

  Everyone laughed good-naturedly. Iris too. “Oh, that’s not completely true, John. Paris is tolerable when I stay at the Ritz.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes.

  “Chloe’s looking forward to camping out under the stars.” Penny reached to pat her daughter’s leg. “Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

  “If you say so,” Chloe said.

  “Well,” Iris said. “I’m sure you’ll have a good time. How long did you say you were going to be gone?”

  “I didn’t say, but we’ll be gone a week. Until next Sunday. I’m trying to talk John into coming with us. I think I’ve just about got him convinced.”

  “Really?” Iris said flatly. She stood, holding her bowl. “Excuse me.” She walked down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  She was digging through the cupboard where John kept his herbs and spices when he came in.

  “Iris…”

  She turned away from the cupboard and looked at him. She waited for him to speak.

  He took a step toward her. “I haven’t decided to go. I wanted to talk it over with you first.”

  “That’s considerate.”

  “It was Penny’s idea.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, I started thinking, with Chloe’s…issues lately, she needs both her mother and father.”

  “And Penny needs a man.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Oh, isn’t it? Penny sure as hell knows how to punch your buttons. Some coincidence that she suddenly wants all this family closeness right after she got dumped by Phil. Oh, sorry, Philip. Chloe was screwing up months before that happened.”

  “You’ll be mad if I go?”

  “Yes. Wouldn’t you be mad if I went camping with another man?”

  “Penny’s not exactly another woman.”

  “Puh-leese. She’s the ultimate other woman.”

  “It’s not like we’d be sleeping together.”

  “I trust you. It’s just that it would hurt my feelings if you went.”

  “Okay.” John put his arms around her and kissed her. “I won’t go.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She kissed him, long and hard. When they broke, his eyes were half-mast.

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s right. You just closed a deal. It always makes you frisky.”

  “Too bad we’re not alone.”

  “They’re going soon.” He found the salt shaker that she had been searching for and handed it to her. He held her around the waist as she salted her chili.

  “Did you ask Chloe about my bracelet?”

  John’s grip loosened slightly.

  She turned to look at him. “What? You’re mad now?”

  He let go of her completely. “My daughter did not steal your bracelet.”

  “Did you ask your daughter about it?”

  “She said you’re out to get her.”

  “That’s pretty much the response I expected.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “That’s part of the problem, John.”

  He turned and left the kitchen.

  Iris let him leave with her lipstick still on the corner of his mouth. She picked up the bowl of chili and the salt shaker and rejoined the party.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Later that evening, John was in the bathroom making familiar water sounds. Iris looked through the dresser drawer where she kept a few clothes. She picked up a slinky, short turquoise gown. John liked her in that number. He liked to wrap his arms around her and rub the slick fabric against her bare skin.

  Not tonight.

  She opened one of John’s drawers and found plaid flannel pajamas that were threadbare in the seat. She put them on and rolled up the waist to take in the length. They felt worn and familiar.

  The dog sniffed Iris’s crotch through the pajamas. Iris shoved him away. “Damn dog.”

  “Buster, go to bed,” John shouted from the bathroom.

  The dog dutifully walked to the other side of the room and lay down with a grown in a basket lined with a cedar-chip mattress.

  Iris climbed onto John’s water bed, propped a pillow against the headboard, and leaned against it. Small waves undulated beneath her.

  John came out of the bathroom wearing boxer shorts and an old sweatshirt. He climbed into the waterbed. “You cold or what?”

  “Both.”

  He propped a pillow against the headboard and leaned against it. “You’re not still thinking about this Penny thing, are you?”

  “Yes. Why did you make fun of me in front of her?”

  “Iris. I was just teasing.” He slid his arms around her and pulled her closer to him. “I love you.”

  “I know. But Penny hanging around so much lately rattles me.”

  “Why? There’s no romance there.”

  “That’s not what rattles me. It’s you feeling like a failure as a family man. If you hooked up with Penny again, you could put your family back together.”

  “Iris, c’mon.” He shook her. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

  She gazed into his eyes for a long time.

  He playfully shook her again. “Tell me about Ms. Fifty Thousand.”

  “Barbeh Stringfellah,” She imitated Barbie’s accent. “A blowsy Southern belle. Dragged herself up from the dirt. Widow. Married well. Ran this high-class restaurant in Atlanta with her husband. Lots of dough, no class, but she has this old-world propriety like being embarrassed by profanity.”

  “She’ll enjoy herself with you.”

  “She’s actually kind of fun.” Iris chuckled, remembering the evening. “She’s a character. She’s got street smarts. She’s fragile but she’s tough, too.”

  “You have something in common.”

  “She played that up. This is no dummy. But a couple of things bug me.”

  “What?”

  “For one thing, she wanted to know what I thought of her. I mean, really thought of her.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Sort of. I tried to be diplomatic.”

  “That’s an odd thing to ask someone you just met.”

  “She said she wanted to see what I was made of, but it was more like she wanted to see how she was doing. Like she was selling herself to me. Hell, I would have taken her dough anyway. I need the business. The fact that my sales have been off hasn’t gone unnoticed at the office.”

  “Think her
money’s good?”

  “I’ll soon know. I won’t act on it until it clears the bank. Money talks and bullshit walks. But why go through dinner and everything just to give me a bad check?”

  “Well, you’re sort of a minor celebrity. Maybe she’s a stalker.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Policeman. I feel so at ease now. You know what else? I think she made a pass at me.”

  “You think she did? What did she say?”

  “She asked if it bothered me when she touched me. Then she touched my hand.”

  “That’s a pass?”

  “There was definitely something sexual there, between the lines.”

  “You’re always finding something between the lines.”

  “That’s where all the action is.”

  “Want me to check her out?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Maybe you should invite her over.”

  “Why?”

  “A little two-on-one.”

  “You’re disgusting. Fucking men.”

  He pulled her on top of him. “Fucking men. Can’t live with us and can’t live with us.”

  “Screw you.” She slid the loose pajama bottoms down her hips and kicked them off. She straddled him.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do.” He moved his hands underneath the flannel pajama top. “I thought you were too mad for nookie.”

  She grabbed the hem of the pajama top, pulled it over her head, and threw it off. She held his face between her hands, looked at her hands against his cheeks, and realized again how different he was from her. She touched his wiry red hair, touched the few strands of gray at his temples, and looked into his eyes. “I am mad.”

  They kissed. She traveled to that place where warm water and warm sand rushed over her body and settled into every crevice.

  “I’m giving you an opportunity to make it up to me,” she said.

  “Oh, are you?”

  “So, are you gonna?”

  “Gonna what?”

  “Make it up to me.”

  “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  “Good boy.” She suddenly sat up on her elbows and looked over her shoulder. “Jo-ohn.”

  The dog was lying with his head on his crossed paws, staring at them.

  “But he likes to watch.”

  She looked at him incredulously.

  He laughed. “Buster, let’s go.”

  The dog slowly rose and left the room, giving John a baleful look over his shoulder as he crossed the threshold.

  John aimed a pillow at the door and knocked it closed. “Now, where were we?”

  John was snoring, but it wasn’t his snoring that woke her, it was the dog’s, whom John had let return to his cedar bed. Normally, Iris slept through the cacophony, but her meeting with Barbie Stringfellow and evening with Penny kept replaying in her mind.

  She quietly slid out of bed and tiptoed out the door and down the hall. She opened the door to Chloe’s room, went inside, and closed the door behind her before turning on the light. She surveyed the room.

  It was an updated version of what Iris’s own room had looked like when she was a young teenager. There were posters and pictures of singers and actors cut from magazines, there were tapes and CDs, books and magazines, school paraphernalia—play programs, pennants, booster buttons from athletic events, ticket stubs—and stuffed toys cluttered on the bed. Clothes, shoes, jewelry, and hair ornaments seemed to be everywhere except in their proper places.

  Iris surveyed the mess with her hands on her hips. She walked to the dresser and lifted the lid of a pink jewelry box. A tiny plastic ballerina sprang up. A preteen relic. Fortunately, Chloe hadn’t wound the music box, so the ballerina just wobbled silently on its spring. Iris dug through the box, then closed it.

  Too obvious.

  She casually looked through some of the dresser drawers. Nothing. She looked at the stuffed toys on the bed. One of them, an alligator, was fatter and broader than the rest. She picked it up. There was a zippered opening on the bottom. It was a pajama bag. She unzipped it, put her hand inside, and retrieved her bracelet.

  She found a spiral notepad of colored paper and a pen. She wrote: “I won’t tell your father about this, but don’t steal from me again. Let me know when you want to talk. Iris.”

  She tiptoed back to John’s room, slipped the bracelet into her purse, and climbed back into bed. After she was snuggled in, Buster woke, dreamily raised his head, and half-heartedly growled at her before dropping his head heavily back onto his bed. Finally, Iris fell asleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  On Friday morning, at 4:25 a.m., the New Age music selected to gently nudge Iris awake clicked on. But she was already awake, having long grown used to her early hours that matched the East Coast stock market schedule. She climbed out of bed, pulled on a robe hanging from a hook in the attached bathroom, walked down the corridor past the condominium’s second, smaller bedroom that she’d set up as an office, and then past the guest bathroom, walking by the light of the small lamps she left on each night. In the living room, the floor felt prickly, then cool under her bare feet as she crossed the Oriental rug, then the hardwood floor. In the long, galley-style kitchen, the coffeemaker had already brewed her coffee, its red light shining energetically. She poured a cup into a squat-bottomed commuter mug and took a few sips.

  “Friday,” she said to no one. “Whoop-de-doo.”

  She pulled open the drapes covering the French doors that led to her terrace, rattling the string of brass bells that she’d hung from all her doorknobs to warn of intruders. She’d installed the bells and extra locks after the McKinney Alitzer murders the previous year. After her job promotion, she’d replaced her sliding glass doors with French doors. She looked through the windowpanes at the Santa Monica beach. It was an hour before sunrise, and the waning moon hung pale and low in the sky, right above the inky black ocean. Iris sipped her coffee. Thinking about the day that lay ahead made her tired. She chose not to think about it. She’d just do it. She clicked into high gear.

  “Meet with Dexter at ten.”

  She walked back through the condo, turning off lights and opening drapes and blinds.

  “See the Khalsa family. Turban fiesta.”

  She picked out a woolly suit and examined a blouse that she’d worn once since stripping it from the dry cleaner’s plastic. She smelled the armpits.

  “It’ll do.”

  She showered, moisturized, combed and curled her hair, put on her makeup, and dressed in half an hour.

  “Finish Barbie’s proposal. Dinner with her. Early night, I hope. Then home. Home, Toto! Home!”

  In the garage, she set the commuter mug on the ground, unshrouded the Triumph, and stashed the cover in the trunk. She got inside the car, pulled out the choke, stepped on the accelerator twice, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired and the Triumph’s loud baritone roared in the garage. The owner of the Porsche parked alongside had finally adjusted his car alarm so that the Triumph’s rumbling didn’t set it off. The neighbors had complained.

  Iris put the car into reverse, creating enough clearance to slide the pull-out stereo into its chassis. She backed the car out and looked disinterestedly at the Triumph’s nightly excretions that had oozed onto the two drip pans positioned underneath its length, her grip on life’s details having relaxed by the end of the week. She’d check its bodily fluids on Monday. She clicked the garage gate, which slowly rolled open.

  She paused at the end of the driveway before pulling out onto the street. A movement in the shrubbery to her left caught her attention. She glanced in that direction and was startled to see a homeless man rising from a camp that he’d made beneath her terrace. He ignored her.

  She gunned the Triumph’s engine, feeling both angry and afraid, and quickly pulled into the street.

  She entered the Ten at its mouth, near the sign that said CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS TRANSCONTINENTAL HIGHWAY, at the edge of the new world, and headed east. At 5:15
in the morning, traffic was sparse.

  Forty-five minutes later, the elevator opened on the twelfth floor of the office tower. Iris pulled open the large glass doors affixed with brass letters that said MCKINNEY ALITZER FINANCIAL SERVICES and walked through the mauve-hued lobby. Once inside the suite, she picked up her pace and moved with precision and purpose. The heels of her pumps left small, round indentations on the plush carpet.

  “Fake it till you make it,” she muttered.

  “Morning!” she sang at the receptionist, snagging her mail from the slot labeled with her name as she sped by. She turned left into the sales department and walked briskly past the investment counselors’ cubicles. They were wearing telephone headsets. Everyone was on a line.

  “I got sixteen bid, what can you do for me?”

  “Let it go to fifteen and three quarters, then we’ll move.”

  “I told you I wasn’t paying cost of carry, asshole!”

  “Look, braindead, don’t give me nine when I need twenty!”

  “Morning, hi, how are ya, happy Friday, ça va?” Iris snip-snapped along, waving, winking, nodding, and making eye contact with everyone who looked her way.

  Sean Bliss watched her legs. Dark and slender and fresh out of college, Sean had been with the firm just a few months. He had a good background, came from a good family, wore expensive, discreet clothing, and was appropriate in every way except one. He couldn’t look Iris in the eyes but felt no compunction about staring at every other part of her anatomy.

  Amber Ambrose waved a perfect French manicure in greeting. Her cute name belied her businesslike persona. She was the only other female investment counselor in the office, having joined McKinney Alitzer from a competing firm. She was in her late twenties, with a square face, small nose, hazel eyes, and short, stylish, auburn hair. She wore a forest green coat-style dress that had a conservative round neckline and was belted around her slender waist.

  Sam Gold was the office’s oldest sales rep. He’d worked in the industry his entire adult life and was retiring soon. He was wearing his favorite tie, a broad, shiny model with big diagonal stripes, with a twenty-year-old brown plaid suit. He smiled at Iris with tobacco-stained teeth.