Dooley promptly turned to Max.“What’s a gigolo, Max?”
“Um…” was Max’s eloquent response. “Well…” He gave Odelia a strained look.
She crouched down and tickled Dooley under the chin.“A gigolo is a man who keeps lonely women company,” she explained. “Women who have no husband but still want to enjoy the company of a man, and so they pay him for the privilege.”
“Oh, so he’s like a nurse?”
She grimaced.“Yeah, something like that.”
Max mouthed,‘Thank you,’ and she gave him a wink.
CHAPTER 6
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Bud Zuk, Laia’s ex-boyfriend, turned out to be the tennis pro at our local tennis club. He was certainly dressed like a tennis pro, in white tennis shorts and shirt, swinging his tennis racket like he meant business. He also had one of those funny wristbands on his left wrist, but I saw that his right wrist was bandaged up.
“Had an accident?” Odelia asked the moment we sat down with the guy in the club canteen.
He held up the damaged appendage and studied it for a moment, as if contemplating an alien object. Finally he said,“Just a light sprain. The doc says it should be fine in no time. And I intend to hold him to that promise!” He laughed, flashing two rows of perfect white teeth.
All in all he was a very attractive young man, fully tanned and looking very fit.
“I don’t think he sprained that arm, Max,” said Dooley, who sat next to me underneath Odelia’s chair. We’d both tucked in our tails, so as not to make them a prime target for any passersby. Humans do love to trample on a cat’s tail, you see. Must be some innate taste for the sadistic.
“You don’t?” I asked.
“I think he burned it when he was putting that burning bag of dog doo-doo on Laia and Jay’s porch.”
“It’s possible,” I conceded.
“By the way, how do we know that doo-doo belonged to a dog?” my friend now added to his musings. “It could have been cat doo-doo.”
“Considering there was a lot of it,” I said, “it’s safe to assume that excrement was of canine origin. Cats don’t produce that much, you see.”
“It could have been human doo-doo. Humans produce a lot of doo-doo.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “Humans are indeed big doo-doo producers.”
“They should have taken a DNA test down at the station when Jay brought the doo-doo in for questioning.”
“I don’t think he ever did take the bag into the police station,” I said. “And he certainly didn’t take it in for questioning, Dooley. I mean, how does one question a bag of doo-doo, whether human, canine or feline?”
“No, I see your point,” he conceded. “It’s hard to question doo-doo, isn’t it?”
But the notion of taking a DNA sample was a valid point, and one I made a mental note of to relay to Odelia once this interview was over. If Laia and Jay had kept the bag as evidence, of course, which might not be the case.
“So you’ve been talking to Laia, huh?” said the tennis pro, casually leaning back and nursing a soda. He smiled a wistful smile. “How is she these days? Doing well, I trust?”
“Like I said, she’s the victim of a harassment campaign,” Odelia reminded him.
“Yeah, you mentioned that,” said the pro. Then he frowned, and it was obvious that the penny had finally dropped. “She’s not accusingme, is she?”
“She mentioned you in passing,” said Odelia smoothly. “She claims you took it pretty hard when the relationship ended.”
“Well, she’s right about that. I did take it pretty hard.” He shrugged. “Then again, these things happen, and I’ve put the whole thing behind me. I mean, did I think we were meant to be together? Sure. Absolutely. Which just goes to show: you just never know. But life will throw you thesecurveballs sometimes.”
“Had you been together long?”
“Didn’t she tell you? Laia and I have known each other since we were kids. Our parents are best friends, you see. Have been for years. My dad is president of the club, and Laia’s dad is his treasurer. And I guess they thought we’d end up together one day, and when we did, it made the old buzzards very happy.”
“But it wasn’t to be.”
“No, it wasn’t to be. Jay Green arrived on the scene, and Laia took a shine to him, and suddenly her childhood friend was old news.” He spoke with a touch of bitterness, I noticed, even though he tried to keep his tone light and cheerful.
“So how do you feel about Jay?” asked Odelia.
“Oh, I think he’s probably a great guy, and a great artist, otherwise Laia wouldn’t have chosen him as her boyfriend. But apart from that…” He toyed with a paper umbrella that someone had left on the table in front of him. “Look, I don’t really know the guy, okay? We don’t exactly move in the same circles.”
“How did Laia and Jay meet? Do you know?”
“No, to be honest I don’t. One day she just told me out of the blue that she’d met this artist fellow and that she was breaking up with me, and that was that.”
“That must have upset you a great deal.”
He flashed her another smile.“It was a painful experience, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn psycho and start harassing them. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“You’re sure you didn’t leave a bag of flaming… excrement on your ex-girlfriend’s doorstep?”
He shook his head decidedly.“Absolutely not. Such poor taste.”
“Or sign Jay up for a dating site, promoting him as some kind of gigolo?”
This time he actually laughed out loud.“Oh, my God, that’s the funniest thing I ever heard! That actually happened?”
“Yes, it did. Jay gets messages and calls from strange women, wanting to engage his services.”
He gave Odelia a clever look.“Are you sure he’s not secretly a gigolo, and when Laia found out he made up this story about being harassed?”
“That’s what the police think,” Odelia admitted. “But not what Laia believes.”
He took another sip from his drink.“She always was too naive for her own good. I’ll bet you this guy Jay is bad news, and now that Laia is caught in his web, he’ll do anything to keep her.” He arched a meaningful eyebrow. “Her family is loaded, you know. Her parents made their money by launching one of the first online gambling sites. Last I heard they’re billionaires. And I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but Jay Green popped onto the scene exactly one week afterTime Magazine devoted an article to Algis Twine, calling him the original cyberbillionaire, long before anyone had even heard of such a thing.”
“So you think Jay is stringing Laia along.”
He held up his hands.“Awfully big coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“Okay, but let’s assume for a moment that Jay isn’t a gigolo, and that he really is the victim of a harassment campaign. Can you think of anyone who could be behind this?”
He drew a wrinkle between his brows for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully.“Have you talked to Loretta Everyman?”
Odelia consulted her notes.“Jay’s ex-girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Real piece of work. Real skank, if you catch my drift.”
“How do you know so much about Jay?”
That clever look was back.“The moment Laia told me she had a new boyfriend, I made it my business to find out more about him. Laia has always been my best friend, Mrs. Kingsley, and even though she broke up with me, that doesn’t change the way I feel about her. Look, frankly I was worried about her. I still am.”
“So you hired a private detective to spy on Jay?”
“No, nothing like that. I just asked around, and let me tell you: the stories I heard weren’t good. But when I confronted Laia with them, she said I was just being jealous. So for my own sense of self-preservation I decided to step back.”
“Very noble of you.”
“I know,” he said, not catching the irony. “But hey, even though I adopted a hands-off approach, I still worry. How can I not? I care for Laia. Always have, always will.” He nodded. “She’s a great gal, and Jay Green doesn’t deserve her.”