“Not at all. You’re beautiful, Maizie.” If we could just go on like this, I thought. Like friends. Chatting. Gossiping. “You have the skin of a twenty-year-old.” And the earlobe of a twenty-one-year-old. Upstairs. Under the lawn ornaments. I was losing it.
“Elizabeth Arden day spa. And I got my eyes done last year.” She patted her hip under her denim apron. Where the gun was. “Being ten pounds overweight minimizes wrinkles. Not that I wouldn’t like to be skinny, but I am one damn good cook, and I’m not making foie gras for my three-year-old. Oh, my goodness, did I ever offer you some?”
“Foie gras? No.” What was foie gras? Liver?
She looked at her watch. “Well, too late now, but you saw it in progress, so I thought you’d like to taste the result.”
“I saw it?”
“Saturday night. The bird. Oh, there’s so much to talk about. Such a shame. I always felt an affinity for you, Wollie. You know Emma thinks we’re cousins? And you’re Grammy Quinn’s favorite, on that show of yours…” She stood, reached into her apron pocket-not the gun one, but the middle one-and pulled out a piece of Tupperware. It was the size of a hockey puck. “Lucky you. Fentanyl, far better than morphine. Nap time.”
“And then what?”
“Hey.” She winked. “Let’s not get into that, okay?”
“No, really,” I said, my voice shrill. “What will you do with my body? It’s not easy to lug around-my feet alone-. Believe me, this is something I know about.” Perhaps I was going into shock, talking about my body as though it were a suitcase.
“Honestly, you don’t want to know. People get so squeamish. A guy in my charcuterie class Sunday had to leave the room when I pulled out Goosie’s liver.”
“That was Goosie?” I gasped. “I thought it was a turkey.”
She laughed. “It was a pain in the ass, frankly. It took seconds to wring her neck, and forever to turn her into foie gras. But that’s life: moments of drama, hours of cleanup. No time for that tonight, I’ve got dinner cooking. And you’re right, I can’t carry you anywhere; I could barely drag Rico across the room.”
A murder confession. That was awfully easy. I swallowed. “This room?”
She shook her head. “Upstairs. I dropped him through the trapdoor.”
“Then what?” I whispered.
“If you must know, I had to get his limbs off. I tried a Skilsaw, but tissue splattered everywhere, so I went with a hacksaw, fit the torso and head in one Hefty bag, ground up arms and legs in the meat grinder, the small parts, and got the large bones out to the car in a second trip. Not bad.”
My mouth was very dry. “You’re losing me. Wh-why the meat grinder?”
“I had to limit trips to the car. Not so important on this end, but in Antelope Valley that kind of thing attracts attention.”
“Why Antelope Valley?” I asked, keeping my voice conversational.
“Good distance. Nice Dumpsters.”
“But wasn’t there a lot of… blood?”
“Oh, at first, just spewing out, and his body thrashing around, but not so bad once his heart stopped pumping. I used an aluminum tub for his parts, the kind we use at picnics to store ice and drinks, and a six-mil plastic sheet to contain things… Thank God for custom ventilation. Gene made a big fuss over the expense last year, but you don’t do aromatherapy, let alone drug production with a ceiling fan.”
What to do? She had to be a little mad. Maybe a lot mad. These were not words I used lightly, considering my brother’s history with schizophrenia, but it helped me. I don’t know much about real evil, but mental illness is a world I’ve lived in. It could work to my advantage. Since she was armed, it was perhaps my only advantage.
“What a week for you,” I said. “You’re not just creative, Maizie, you’re brave.”
Maizie shrugged but looked pleased. “It’s no different from a surgeon or butcher. Once you get past the smell of blood and cutting through bones, it’s a series of tasks. Killing him was harder in one sense. It comes down to a moment. You can’t hesitate or you lose your nerve.”
“Was it because he wanted to be a partner?”
“Oh, please. Fifty percent of my gross? For what, his people skills? Not in this lifetime. The problem was, he threatened to turn me in. Think about that. I’m arrested, Gene’s arrested. Forget losing the house, the cars, Emma growing up in Palm Springs with Grammy Quinn. Prison would be the least of it, because by then I’d met Yosip and Frito-”
“Frito?”
“Tcheiko’s lieutenants. I could identify them. I know some organizational details the Feds would be interested in. And Tcheiko would lose face among his peers, because of my error in judgment, and he’s very unforgiving about that sort of thing, that was made very clear to me. I don’t think federal custody is really the place for me, do you?”
“Then it was… self-defense. Killing Rico.”
She smiled. “I’m not sure a jury would see it that way, since he was naked at the time. In front of the fire. Unarmed, except for prosciutto and olives, and a loaf of sourdough.”
“What’d you kill him with?”
“The Wüstof.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bread knife. Using what’s at hand, that’s a core homemaker philosophy. I went down on him, he fell asleep, I slit his throat. I always have my knives sharpened for the holidays, a little cutlery store in Beverly Hills. Ear to ear is what you always hear, so that’s what I focused on, one good incision. And from there it was just a step at a time. You can do anything in the world if you break it into small, manageable parts. Oh, please.” She was looking at me now, eyes narrowed. “Don’t waste your sympathy on him. Do you know he came over on Saturday to ask if I’d killed Annika? You told him she was looking for a gun, so he thought I’d killed her. Thought he could squeeze me for a bigger percentage. Do you need a Kleenex?”
My nose was running, the way it does when I try not to cry. I thought of Lauren Rodriguez, the look in her eyes that would never go away now. She’d never get over losing her son. I couldn’t stop my nose. I felt as though my face were leaking. “His mom,” I whispered.
Maizie stood. “She shouldn’t have raised such a selfish kid. I’m sorry for her, I truly am, but everyone’s got a mother-you can’t let that stop you. I have a child.” She glanced at her watch. She was like Bing, ready to yell “Cut!” the minute the conversation palled.
“Capricorn,” I said breathlessly. “Emma’s the Capricorn. The logo on your pills.”
Maizie smiled. “Yes. Emma.” There was a counter between us, a white counter, sparkling clean, no trace of the blood that must have spattered here from Rico Rodriguez going through a saw. “Because you know what real euphoria is? An epidural, after fourteen hours of labor. And then the prize. My Emma. Giving birth to my baby was the best day of my life.”
“Maizie,” I said. “She’s so wonderful.”
“Thank you. You’d have been a good mom, too, Wollie. I’m sorry, I had no idea you’d keep at this the way you did. And you figured out a lot. Surprisingly. Not to be offensive, but you just don’t look that smart. I think it’s your hair.”
“I suppose-” I cleared my throat. “If I didn’t want to take this-fen-”
“Fentanyl,” she said, and her hand once more reached into her denim apron pocket. She drew out the gun. It was small. Black. “It’s a twenty-two. It’s all I could find; Gene’s always walking off with the keys to the gun cabinet. It’ll do the job, I just can’t guarantee how fast, and you could be conscious the whole way out. And consider the mess. I don’t have time to clean and even if Lupe were here, I couldn’t ask her, she’s Catholic. And it’s loud. The room’s insulated, assuming the trapdoor worked. It should close automatically-” Maizie walked over to the spiral staircase, heels clicking across the white tile floor. I looked around frantically, but there was no place to run, hide, no door, nothing. A weapon, then, something, anything. I tried a kitchen cabinet. Locked. Each cabinet had little locks.