I turned to see the cat batting at the torso of a wooden reindeer leaning against a counter. The earlobe must’ve landed behind it.
I should run for it. Maizie stood between the door and me, but I could just barrel over her. We were probably in the same weight class, although I had two inches on her, even given her high heels. But she looked solid whereas I was a jellyfish. And there’d be no going back. There’s no alternative scenario, no polite reason for bashing into someone. Once you do it, from then on it’s all about who’s stronger, who’s meaner, who’s been to the gym more. And that wouldn’t be me.
But I couldn’t go down that staircase. Only an idiot would go down there.
Unless she had a gun.
She did have a gun.
It was in her apron pocket, not even hiding. Part of the outfit. Had it always been there, or had she gone to the house for it?
Okay, once a gun shows up, the rules change. Don’t they? Wasn’t it better for the gun to stay in her pocket than get pointed at me?
She was looking at me. Her hand went to her pocket.
“Maizie!” My voice was shrill. “I’ll do it. Before I lose my nerve. Feel the fear and do it anyway. I think that was the name of a book. Anyway, I love to see how other people do their houses. Did you design all this yourself? I think your husband mentioned that you did.”
“That’s right, you met Gene.” The cat knocked over the reindeer torso. Freaked out, he raced across the room. Maizie grabbed him. She walked toward me, the cat wiggling and mewing, wanting to get back to the earlobe. Rico’s earlobe. The earlobe of Rico Rodriguez.
The cat was no match for Maizie Quinn. Nor was I. She held him in one hand, the other hand in easy reach of her gun. The three of us were going down.
The staircase was a long one. The underground room had a high ceiling-or a low floor, depending on your perspective. And Maizie was right; it wasn’t cramped. You could have ballroom dancing down here or, more likely, a cooking class. Half the room was a test kitchen, with extra sinks and stovetops, all of it well lit and aggressively clean. Walls, floors, and counters were white, with copper hardware. And it smelled of perfume, something spicy. That scent again. Annika’s.
“What did I tell you?” Maizie said. “Does it feel like you’re underground?”
“No. It’s wonderful. Is this where you make your aromatherapy products?”
She smiled and stroked the cat, who purred so loudly I could hear him across the room. “That’s right. Shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, and methylenedioxymethamphetamine. Ecstasy. With a little something extra. Fentanyl. X plus F: I call it Euphoria.”
Another interesting thing about the human brain, at least my brain, is that while I expect it to work in an orderly fashion, one discovery leading to another, building to an inevitable conclusion, in fact it’s one big shopping bag I throw things into: tax receipts, toenail clippers, half a banana, nothing connecting to anything else until it all comes together in one big Aha! moment. That’s what Joey calls it, the Aha! moment, but in this case it was more of an Uh-oh! moment, followed by an I Can’t Believe How Stupid I’ve Been moment.
Everything I’d surmised about Savannah Brook actually applied to Maizie Quinn. Maizie, with whom I’d spent time on a practically-every-other-day basis, Maizie, dropping clues right and left, except I was too busy admiring her quilts and flowers and homemade lawn ornaments to notice. Maizie, who made her own sausage and bread, now standing between me and the staircase that was my only way out of here.
I found my voice. “Wow. For… how long?”
“Down here? Less than a year. Oh, you mean when did I get into the business? I cut my teeth on Ecstasy back in college. I was the sorority supplier.”
“But, Maizie-” I heard my voice squeak. “You act like it’s nothing, but you invented a drug. That’s historical. You’re the Madame Curie of Encino. How did it happen?”
Maizie laughed delightedly. “I just love you, Wollie. Thank you. It is a big deal, it’s huge, but you know, I was sitting around one night thinking about analgesics and hallucinogens, and voilà! Exactly like cooking. You know how that is?”
I said, “I don’t cook.”
“Well, but you paint. Cooking, painting, organic chemistry-same thing. The experimental spirit. If you’re willing to make mistakes, you can achieve anything.”
I nodded, thinking of my freehand mural. My West African goliath. My mistakes. Just stay connected to her, I thought. “But to go from an idea to an actual product-?”
She nodded too. “I derivatized some fentanyl, combined it with MDMA, and started test-marketing. People loved it. So then I had to talk Gene into a regular supply of fentanyl-he’s such a stick-in-the-mud, but once he saw the profit potential-” She guided me farther into the room, away from the staircase.
“That’s right, Gene’s a doctor, isn’t he?”
“Not the most inspired, but he’s found his niche now, running this pharmacy scam; he gets me all the fentanyl I need, in the form of pain patches. A man has to thrive professionally or he feels like a big fat loser. Remember that when you get m-. Oops. Sorry.”
“No, what about?” I said brightly.
“I was going to say ‘when you get married,’ but obviously you won’t. Now.”
Something inside me started to tighten up, in my throat, but I waved off the implication as if it were nothing: a party I wasn’t invited to, a bad haircut. I just waved it away, my hands doing air ballet. “Okay, but listen-Vladimir Tcheiko, it’s him, right? That you’re going into business with? Because I actually read about him in International Celeb-”
“My God, Wollie, I’m giddy.” Maizie laughed. “Did I tell you it’s tonight?”
“Tell me everything!”
Maizie nearly squealed. “We’re meeting here. It’s like the president coming for dinner. No, better, it’s like the Rolling Stones. I mean, the arrangements-endless. They didn’t want Gene here, no one but me, they did background checks on the family, Lupe, the gardeners, people in the neighborhood, the goddamn film across the street-”
“Why do this at all, if they’re so paranoid?”
“Because Vladimir’s bringing me into his organization, and he won’t take on anyone he can’t see face to face; he goes with his gut. And since I cannot get on a plane and you can’t drive to Africa, the mountain, so to speak, is coming to me.”
“Jeez, Maizie, it must be a big deal, it’s like you invented Velcro or something.”
“Yeah. It’s my year to be prom queen. I could’ve had Forio, or the Asians… That’s a big reason Tcheiko’s interested, because his competition is. And the timing’s good; he’s bored with hiding out, wants to show he’s still in the game and expanding.”
“But-what happened with Annika?”
Maizie rolled her eyes. “She brought Rico around. That’s what happened to Annika.”
“And he liked U4? He wanted in on it?”
“Loved it. He and his friends were my first distributors. But eventually he told Annika. And she might’ve gotten used to the idea, but she caught him kissing me one day and that was it. She was such a child about that, I wasn’t comfortable around her anymore. But by then I couldn’t send her home-Tcheiko doesn’t like changes in domestic staff close to a meeting like this-so I had to threaten her mother’s life, all sorts of nonsense. What a big, unnecessary mess.” Maizie sat on the staircase. “Rico should’ve seen she had a streak of puritanism.”
So what happened to her? I wanted to ask again but couldn’t. If the answer was bad, I wouldn’t be able to keep this up. I cleared my throat. “Rico was not, I take it, puritanical?”
She gave me a sidelong glance. “Not in any way you can think of.” I don’t know what my face was doing, but she laughed. The cat squirmed. She set him down. “Shocked that I slept with him?”