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Cheyenne

Visit Miles A. Maxwell’s StateOfReason.com

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“What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses.”
— Albert Einstein

For every organism there is a vibration that will heal . . . or kill it.
— the work of Dr. Royal Raymond Rife

This novel is dedicated to the enhancement of human life.

One

Six hours before Mauve Kincaid died everything was fine. Mauve and her sister Sarah had both enjoyed the special at Harold’s Bistro, veal piccata cooked to mouth-watering tenderness, with capers and parsley that made every taste bud on her tongue stand at attention. They’d had three delicious glasses of lively French red and some excellent men-talk.

Mauve stretched and yawned. What a nice summer evening! There’s no one I’d rather hang out with than Sarah, she thought, slipping out of her latest Versace, fitting it to a thick cedar hanger in her bedroom’s huge walk-in closet. Her home was one of two spacious penthouses in a building on New York’s fashionable Upper West Side.

As Mauve pulled on her lavender silk jammies, she tried to remember, What’s that old movie that’s supposed to be on tonight? She plucked the remote off the nightstand and slid backward into bed, pulled up her knees and slid her feet under the covers. The wall unit came on. The time in the corner of the screen said 9:05 PM. She took a chance on the channel and smiled. Yes! Ingrid Bergman. What a beauty! Cary didn’t deserve her!

It was the middle of their first kiss when Mauve’s enthusiasm turned to nausea. And unconsciousness suddenly overtook her.

Two

The dream began with a fever. Her skin was hot. She was struggling to push something suffocating away from her face. The filmy fabric was holding her down, pinning her arms with enormous pressure! If only she could raise her hands to rub away the spiraling headache behind her forehead, pulsing at her eyeballs. Her joints hurt. Her limbs felt numb.

Mauve forced a hand up across the perfect skin of her cheeks, across her forehead. Her skin was on fire and breaking out in pea-sized bumps. The flesh of her face, of her whole body, felt swollen, loosening, almost detached, as if it were vibrating right off her body.

Her stomach rumbled. She burped . . . and again . . . a long deep belch of terrible indigestion. Her chest fluttered wildly. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears — beneath the ringing. And then she couldn’t, as her heart skipped a long, long empty beat . . . seven very fast beats followed . . . another long pause, more belching. But it was when her colon let loose that she became really frightened.

Mauve tried to think. It’s the fear making me feel like this, isn’t it? This is only a dream! Her heart stopped . . . beat . . . beat-beat-beat . . . She hadn’t thought it would ever start again. In the dim bedroom light she squinted, trying to see. She focused her blurry vision on the static-filled television. Forced one hand to search out the remote and hit a button. The screen’s upper right corner flashed 3:06 AM, and then she knew: This is no nightmare, this is real!

Her heart stopped for another moment, and she was filled with such overwhelming dread, she knew she was about to die. Even worse, she hadn’t the slightest idea why.

1

“Whew! That’s cold!” I said.

“Sorry about that, Ms. Soul. Let’s see what we have here, shall we?” said the little old gray-haired lady in the white lab coat. She looked like the twin of a German psychologist I’d seen on YouTube late one night. Even Dr. Shemling’s high pinched Austrian accent made me think of the famous miniature sex therapist, Dr. Ruth.

“Hmmm,” said Shemling.

“What does hmmm mean?” I asked.

“Well, everything looks okay.” She took the usual sample. “Everything is basically normal. I could be wrong but, shall we say, you aren’t getting much use out of the equipment?”

“You can tell that by looking?”

“With experience, one is able to discern certain differences in muscle tone.” My gynecologist looked around down there a little more, then added, “Oh-kay.” She released what I knew was technically called a speculum. I call it the clamp.

“You can get down now.”

I took my feet out of the stirrups.

“Go ahead and get dressed. We’ll have your PAP and other tests back in a few days. Everything looks fine. A lot of GYNs won’t tell you this: professionally, my opinion is a healthy sex-life is part of a healthy life.”

Usually, I thought, my old doctor left the room about now, didn’t she? But my new doctor leaned against the wall, reviewing notes on her clipboard.

I shrugged and stepped into my underwear. “I’ve kind of been letting things cool off a little in that area, Doc. Taking a breather.”

“That can be okay. Sometimes a breather, as you put it, can be a good thing. But I wouldn’t recommend letting it go on too long.”

“It’s just a break from men for the moment.” I pulled on my bra.

She looked at my chart. “You’re strictly hetero, I believe?”

“I’ve never had any interest in women.”

“Well, a good orgasm now and then is important. Masturbation?”

“Is that a question?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never been too good at that. It seems kind of clinical, you know? It’s kind of difficult to get excited about my own — equipment, to use your term — if you know what I mean.”

“Sex is eighty percent imagination, twenty percent stimulation. You can still fantasize without actually becoming involved.”

“I haven’t given up on men.”

“Good.”

“I just need a break.”

“Certain women, and you may be one, find the stimulation part can be taken care of with certain relatively inexpensive devices.”

“What, like sex toys? A vibrator or something?”

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. In any case, baring anything unusual, which I don’t foresee, my nurse Barbara will contact you with your test results. As they say in L.A., have a nice day.” She glanced at my chart. “Oh, and happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

Dr. Shemling left the exam room, and I finished getting dressed. Some of my friends thought the good doctor to be a little over the top. But one thing everybody agreed on was that Shemling was one of the finest gynecologists New York City had to offer. Using the equipment, though? Sheesh!

At the front desk I paid my bill. Out on the street I grabbed a taxi home. I remember at that point thinking my annual would be the craziest thing I’d have to deal with all day.

My name is Naomi Soul, former Olympic skier, former FBI agent out of DC turned private New York City investigator. How was I to know that morning, my sex life would be so quickly moved far to the back burner, by a series of desperate clients and a massive and diabolical case that would leave me feeling the most helpless of my career.

2

As my cab hooked a left onto Broadway, we passed one of the world’s best book stores, the Strand. Through the front window was my old partner Xue’s novel, Wanted, in a big stack on display. Next to Wanted was an even larger stack, The Pen Killer  — the bestselling lotto ticket that had bought my loft in Soho — with my name, the least famous of three, along the bottom of the cover. The Bureau had had to approve my participation, of course, and reluctantly gave their blessing, though the other two very famous authors would have told the story anyway. Better accurate, than a book full of half-truths.

I looked away, then back again and blinked. There in the warm sunlight, for a moment, I thought I’d seen a specter, what I imagined to be Xue’s terrible zombie-scared face.

I searched among the people on the crowded sidewalk, shook my head in confusion. What was wrong with me lately? Was it that I hadn’t been there when the cranes and the demolition crew went in? Maybe Xue’s body had never been found at the bottom of that elevator shaft, but she was gone.

We turned onto Greene Street and slowed in front of my recently acquired digs. Mom was living and working with me now. It hadn’t been difficult to talk her into moving up from DC to be my secretary, receptionist, and dog-sitter, as soon as she’d sublet her house. We had no way of knowing we were less than a year from the night someone would drop The Big One on New York.

As Tee let me in, I smiled at Joe and Tee, my daytime doormen. “Happy Birthday, Ms. Soul! Happy Birthday!” they said as I went by.

“Thanks, guys!”

They’re fantastic, always looking out for me. I put my key card in the elevator slot, which automatically illuminated the PH button, and up I went. Our combined office and residence occupy half of the top floor.

I keyed my way into the suite and —

“Surprise!”

My besties were all there: Mom, Cindy, Denise, Chloe, and my dog Winnie.

Winnie’s white, except around the mouth where he’s black. He reminds me of a short, chubby, Winston Churchill, without the cigar of course. Since I don’t have kids of the two-legged variety — someday, I hope — Winston’s my boy. He looked up at me. His wheeze was worse today. I knelt down and gave my poor boy a good hug. It seemed to calm him a little. He had me pretty worried. He hadn’t been feeling well for a while now. Last week I’d brought him to the vet.

British bulldogs have enough difficulty breathing with their noses all naturally scrunched up. Over the last few months Winnie had started to sound like an old steam train coming into the station — The Winston Express, Mom and I used to joke. Not any more. Winnie was getting worse. It had been tough to get a handle on. For a couple of days he’d get better — then bam, he’d relapse. By the time I got him to the dog doctor, he’d been barely able to suck in a lungful of air.

The vet had drawn his blood to test for heartworm, parvo — a dozen other common doggie diseases — while Winnie and I sat there in the waiting room with the other dogs and owners, waiting for his test results. A couple of dogs over, there’d been a big rottweiler staring at us. Fortunately, Winston ignored him. The owner of a Dalmatian sat down next to me. The dog must have had a hangnail or something, he was so energetic; he tried everything to get Winnie to play. Winnie just wheezed at him. Winnie loves to play. My boy was really sick.

An hour later the vet came out and handed me a sheet of paper. On each line, next to the name of every test she’d run, it said: NEGATIVE.

“I guess we can try some of the more exotic possibilities,” she said. “We still have enough blood for a second panel.”

I didn’t want to think about how much this was going to cost, but I’m ashamed to say I did. I couldn’t help it. Another hour’s wait, and the vet was back.

“Well, we’ve found something,” she said, “and it’s not good.” She handed me another piece of paper and pointed at something circled halfway down where it said POSITIVE. To the left was a very scary word: Lyme.

I looked at her. No! Winnie has the tick disease?

“It’s potentially fatal and very difficult to cure,” the vet told me.

“But I’ve never seen a tick on him.”

“Sometimes you don’t. They’ll drop off before you find them. They can be very tiny. I’m giving Winston an antibiotic and a relaxant. I’ll send my assistant out here with some pills when they’re ready.”

Fifteen nervous minutes later, a young dark-haired woman in light-blue scrubs had come out of the hallway next to the receptionist’s desk. She’d explained that Winnie’s vet was putting him on an antibiotic called doxycycline, and a drug called hydrocodone that was supposed to reduce Winnie’s anxiety and relax him, just in case his breathing ever got really scary. I’d thought his breathing was already frightening enough. “Hydrocodone?” I’d muttered. “Isn’t hydrocodone an opioid?”

She must have seen the look in my eyes. “Don’t worry,” she said, “dogs don’t get addicted.”

The first thing I did was stop at PetSmart and buy him the most expensive tick collar I could find. A little too late, I know. I’d put on a brave face for my boy, wondering what else I should be doing.

Today, so far, the antibiotic didn’t seem to be working that great. His breathing was one big wheeze. But Winnie still gave me his little bulldog smile. I finished petting him and gave my two best buds — since I lost Xue — a group hug hello. Cindy and Denise had come all the way up from DC just for my birthday.

Cindy is tall and blonde, and I don’t mind admitting, better looking than not just me, but anyone. Cindy is ex-FBI turned — I can hardly believe it — trainer-to-the-stars at the Washington Health and Racquet Club. From what I’ve heard, she’s pretty tough. Congressmen and senators love working out under Cindy’s whip hand.

Denise is a brown-eyed brunette with wide hips, and probably the best lab rat the Bureau’s had in the last ten years. She’s smarter than me by quite a lot, and they’re extremely lucky to have her. She’s not going to be there much longer, though. I heard the Director himself was pretty upset when Denise gave notice last week. She’s joining this big DC think-tank called The Jefferson Protectorate, for twice what she’s been making.

The fashionably-dressed black guy in the pink shirt and black suit wished me, “Happy Birthday!” with a quick hug. Chloe’s my assistant and all around gopher extraordinaire. The three men I’d been seeing off-and-on last year, weren’t there; they weren’t invited. Mom smiled and nodded at three presents lined up on the coffee table. I glanced at the little cards. Tommy, Chip, and Geoff. I’d open them later. Maybe.

“They still want you, dear. All of them.”

“It’s nice to be wanted,” I said. Discussion closed for now.

“So what have you been up to lately, Chloe?” Denise asked.

Chloe poured me a glass of Merlot.

“My one year anniversary working for Ms. Soul was last weekend. Two more years and I can get my own license.” He glanced at me. “I’m hoping someday to be good enough to become a full partner in this operation.” Then once again Chloe felt it necessary to proclaim the mantra he’s so fond of: “I will be the world’s first gay detective!”

“A gay dick?” Cindy laughed.

“Exactly,” Chloe grinned back.

“I think there’s already a gay detective somewhere,” Denise said.

“Not that I’ve heard of. I will be the first —”

“I still don’t see what being gay has to do with being a detective,” Mom cut in, honestly puzzled.

“Plenty,” Chloe laughed.

Cindy turned to me and handed me a present. “Here, hon. Happy Birthday!”

I untied the pink ribbon and tore off the pink wrapping paper around the box. She wore a mischievous smile I’d never seen on her face. “What?” I said, as I opened the box.

Cindy turned her face away, hiding an out of control grin.

Out slid the biggest anatomically-correct rubber pe- well, I don’t even want to say it. Let’s just say this was literally what the doctor — Dr. Shemling — ordered. I stared at the thing in disbelief.

Cindy said, “I figured you needed a little help, girl. It’s got everything you need, complete with batteries.”

“Not everything she needs,” Denise laughed, she and Cindy in hysterics.

Cindy’s device had a kind of handle. The whole thing was curved. Its outside was some kind of pink rubbery texture. “It’s called the Hot Bunny,” she said. “It gets stronger when you squeeze it.”

I nodded, smiled, sighed, “Thanks, Cindy.”

“Sure,” she laughed. “Don’t mention it. Ever.”

Denise’s present had no paper wrapped around it. The box was decorated with little slanted HAPPY BIRTHDAYs in blue and yellow, and about the same size and shape as Cindy’s present. I was beginning to get an odd feeling about what was going on here. Denise had a hand over her mouth, trying to stifle a severe case of the giggles. I opened the box.

“Denise! Another one?” Denise’s model was kind of generic-looking, hard white plastic. Long and straight.

“You can run it from you smart phone,” she giggled. “And it’s got a heater. You can set it to warm up ahead of time.”

“What is with you people?” I said.

They burst out laughing.

I spotted my largest present there on the end table. The gold box was about the size of a loaf of bread. The card said simply, From Mom, with Love. At least I could count on my mother getting me something other than these —

But Mom didn’t hand me her present. She was on the other side of the room at the bar, busily pouring herself another drink.

I tugged it open. I stared. I couldn’t believe it. “Oh, Mom, not you too?”

“Well, you’ve been a little out of circulation, dear. I didn’t know everyone was thinking the same way.”

Mom’s present was elaborate in the extreme. “The Eroscillator?” A list of features on the brochure identified various parts of the kit. I read them under my breath. “Ball and Cup? Grapes and Cockscomb? Golden Spoon? What the heck is this stuff?”

My face was on fire. Chloe was roaring. Cindy and Denise were propping each other up to keep from falling on the floor. Winnie joined in, running around snorting and wheezing and barking, trying to understand what was going on. So embarrassing. The device’s list of bonus features continued on down the page: “The French Legionnaire’s Mustache. Seven Pearls of the Orient. Ultra Soft fingertip. G-Point?”

“It’s supposed to be the finest money can buy,” Mom said, beet red, realizing maybe she’d gone too far.

You think?

The whole kit fit into this very expensive-looking golden pouch sort of thing. It was endorsed by — would you believe it — Dr. Ruth. What do you say when your mother buys you the world’s best vibrator for your birthday?

“Um — uh, thanks, Mom.”

“You’re welcome, dear. Use it in good health.”

“Happy birthday, boss,” Chloe said, handing me his present.

“You too?” I frowned at him.

He shook his head, a muddled look on his face. The box Chloe handed me was about the size of a submarine sandwich, covered with cheery white wrapping paper decorated with colorful balloons, and a lime green ribbon with a hand-tied bow. The box beneath was white. I popped the flap on one end and slid out an elegant bronze-colored box that bore only one word: MACEDON — the designer — to the collective response of Cindy, Denise, and Mom: “Ooooh!”

I opened it and tears filled the corners of my eyes. It was the most beautiful silk scarf — soft as fluffy new snow, I’d ever seen — swirls of bronze and copper and royal blue. I pulled it around my neck, looked at my surprising assistant and whispered, “Thank you.”

Chloe looked bashfully at his feet.

Mom slid into my office in the corner of the great room. A minute later she stepped out with a thick creamy chocolate cake, lit with candles. I love chocolate and I love cake. Mom makes a dilly. A great one.

I made a wish of good health and long life for all my friends and blew out the candles. Mom was cutting each of us a nice wide slice when the office phone interrupted — the doorman’s ring from downstairs, a kind of trill. I was closest.

There on camera was Joe at his desk. “A woman is down here,” he said. She wants to come up and see you . . .”

“It’s not really a good time, Joe.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed.

“I told him!” Mom mouthed silently.

In the background I heard a voice insisting it was quite urgent.

“She wants to speak with you, on video here,” Joe said. “Just for a moment,” he added at the woman’s urging.

“All right.”

I heard the phone being handed over, and a beautiful well-coiffed woman’s face appeared. “Please, Ms. Soul,” she said, “can you see me, for just a few minutes?”

“I’m sorry, we’re in the middle of a celebration. Perhaps tomorrow?”

“Just for a minute? It’s about my sister. She died last night. She donated her body to Sciencecare.com and they want to take her body tomorrow.”

I told her to put Joe back on the line. I told him to send her up.

3

Outside my door stood the saddest-looking blonde I’d ever seen, two or three inches taller than me. “I’m Sarah, Sarah Kincaid,” she said, just before she collapsed in a dead faint. I caught her six inches before her head hit the floor.

Her hair was almost white, that expensive color you get from a salon like the one at Bergdorf’s. Dark tear tracks had cut through the makeup on her perfect cheeks. The misbuttoned Chanel sweater suggested something in her life had recently gone very wrong.

Chloe lifted her head and shoulders; the rest of us on her feet and rear, we carried Sarah’s limp figure over to the couch and laid her down. I hoped she wasn’t ill from the same thing that killed her sister. She was breathing okay.

I was about to call for an ambulance when she opened her eyes. She looked around in surprise at all the concerned faces standing over her. “Sorry,” she whispered. “That’s never happened before.”

“Just take it easy,” I said. We helped her sit up against the armrest. Chloe slid a fluffy pillow behind her back. Mom handed her a glass of water. Sarah took several sips, then a longer gulp.

“I guess I forgot to eat,” Sarah said. “. . . or drink any water today, now that I think about it.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so. I got your name from a friend. She said people talk to you. They say when no one can get at the truth, you can.”

“Who is your friend?” I asked.

“Laura Goodman.”

I nodded. Three weeks ago I’d found Laura’s kidnapped daughter.

“The police won’t investigate my sister’s death,” Sarah continued, sliding her feet to the floor, twisting around to sit on the couch. “They’re — they called it natural causes. That’s —”

Her eyes flooded. She tried to blink the tears away and failed. She doubled over at the waist, clutching her face to her knees. A single racking sob drifted up as I knelt alongside her, my hand gently patting her back. I know why people like Sarah end up here. I don’t advertise but word’s gotten around. I guess I care a little too much.

Sarah’s face finally lifted, her eyes bright and wet. “Natural causes? That’s — BS,” she whispered. “That’s what they call it when they don’t know what caused it!”

“Why do you suspect foul play?” I asked. Wheezing, Winnie walked over by Sarah and sat down on the floor next to her legs. Sarah’s hand absently stroked his head.

Usually Winston just stares at the client. Typically, I set my fee on a sliding scale that has little to do with how much money a potential client has, and a lot to do with how nice he or she is to Winnie. He’s my hassle-meter. Sometimes I think he can smell my future pain. Ignoring my boy will cost you. A client once asked during our first meeting if I could put Winnie in the bathroom. The client wound up having to go over to the bank for a nice big cash advance on his credit card before I’d take his case. I charged him double.

“When you said they’re calling it natural causes,” I said, “I assume you were referring to the police, not the medical examiner?” I knew that’s what she meant. It’s part of my job, asking questions I already know the answers to.

“Yes, because of how we found her.”

Sarah explained that her sister had been found in her locked apartment, in her pajamas, with no signs of struggle or injury.

Locked room case, I thought. Not good. Murder? Doubtful.

Though Sarah admitted her sister had been divorced, supposedly Mauve Kincaid had no known enemies, and had never given the slightest hint of being suicidal. She wasn’t into drugs. She lived a seemingly neat, clean life, that somehow came to a sudden end.

I should have halted the meeting right there. My phone even rang once, giving me a simple way to politely step away before I put a stop to this. But my eye kept catching on Sarah’s misbuttoned sweater, and her trembling hands that would not stop wringing.

So I asked the obvious question: “Is it possible your sister had a medical condition she was hiding? Perhaps she didn’t want to upset you? Something maybe she wasn’t ready to deal with?”

Sarah shook her head. “Mauve and I came in sixteenth and seventeenth in the New York City Marathon last year. We train together three times a week in Central Park — rain, snow, or shine. We both had checkups a week before her death. Her health was perfect.”

“Have you spoken with the physician that performed the physical?”

Sarah opened her large white bag. It did not go with her outfit at all — yes, a distraught woman. She rummaged around until she produced a large iPhone. I watched her trembling thumbs work the keys. Was she going to call her doctor right now while she could barely function? She handed me the phone.

The screen displayed a medical report, the name Mauve Kincaid on top. I read through it twice, then stared at it for what to Sarah probably seemed like forever.

Finally, she reached over and tapped the screen, brought up a photo.” This is Mauve,” she said.

The woman was something to look at, even more beautiful than Sarah, though I thought I sensed a sadness in her eyes.

I knew what Sarah was doing. It’s what I would have done had I been her, had I lost, say, Mom or Winnie. I didn’t want to think about that. Winston rubbed against my leg. He was rasping lightly so I reached down to loosen his collar. It was already plenty loose. I stroked his back as I tried to figure out a graceful way not to get involved in this thing.

Sarah reached over again and tapped on the screen to display contact information for the physician. “Please give Dr. Cohen a call,” she said. “The second number there is his cell. Adam’s a personal friend.”

I didn’t want this case. People die every day for all sorts of reasons. It was likely doubtful I could do anything. When the police make a strong, clear interpretation of the facts, ninety-nine times out of a hundred they get it right. Admittedly, sometimes something weird happens, that one-in-a-hundred chance. Still doesn’t mean it’s murder.

Winnie was flat on the floor, staring up at Sarah, softly whining. He looked at me. Barked once in a rasp, that polite Brit bark of his, like he was trying to tell me something. I knew what it was. Denise, Cindy, Chloe, and Mom, seated over at the bar that divides the kitchen from the great room, hadn’t said a word. I could see it in their eyes. They too felt for this distraught woman. There was something authentic, and honest, and very sympathetic about Sarah Kincaid. And there was something off kilter about her sister’s death. Not necessarily murder, but — I didn’t know enough to put my finger on it.

Sarah stared silently at me like the others.

There are women in this world who get what they want. They want to be sure. They want the truth. And they want the best. They don’t even consider an alternative. Often they wear Chanel.

4

I took Sarah Kincaid’s check. I took the case.

The retainer I asked for was half my usual. It surprised Sarah. I didn’t explain. I didn’t think there was much I could do for her, or her sister. I walked her over into my office, waved Chloe to follow, gave Sarah a comfy chair, and said, “Tell me everything you know about Mauve.”

For the next hour and a half I listened and recorded everything, while Chloe took notes. Sarah cried a lot, laughed sadly a couple of times, and surprised herself with the things she told me she hadn’t thought of in years.

“When Mauve was two and I was three, she found a half-dead butterfly, a big yellow and black one, a tiger swallowtail, I think they’re called. The wings were barely moving. She went around trying to find which kind of flower it might like best.” Sarah shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you these things,” she cried, smiling. “I don’t know how it can possibly matter.”

“We can’t know yet how it might matter,” I said, “until we get there.”

She nodded. “I guess I’m trying to prove to you that Mauve just wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

I asked her to call Mauve’s super, a Mr. Englethorpe. She brought his number up on her phone. It took a couple of rings to get him. She told him to expect me and asked him to give me his full cooperation.

When Sarah disconnected, she frowned at her phone. “Maybe I better go with you,” she said. “He can be a little prickly.”

“It’s better if I form my own first impressions,” I told her.

“Oh. Okay,” she nodded, and reluctantly handed me Mauve’s keys. She said the people Mauve had donated her body to were pushing for its release.

Cindy and Denise were staying the night, but they both encouraged me to jump into the case right now. I told Sarah I would. She left my office looking marginally better, a feeling I doubted went very deep inside. She was putting a braver face on things than I could have.

*

Twenty minutes later as Chloe and I stood clinging to metal handles on a crowded B train, I couldn’t get past Mauve’s death as something medical — a disease of some sort maybe — which meant: no case; not for me, anyway. I wouldn’t take money for something I couldn’t solve. I’d told Sarah I’d do my best and I would. At least I might be able to get the police to look a little harder at the evidence they had. It sounded like the case was already closed, though it wouldn’t be the first time I’d turned something like this around.

*

There are two types of supers in New York City. The mechanically inclined — grimy nails, smudged face, t-shirt, and jeans — the fix-it super. And the type who wears a suit and has a perfect manicure — the managing super.

We walked over from the subway. Waiting out front, Moses Englethorpe turned out to be the managing type, and a Hasidic Jew — the whole outfit — black curly ear-ringlets, black hat, white shirt, black suit.

“Ms. Soul?” he asked, in a tightly-affected Brooklyn accent.

I’d never dealt with anyone who practiced his type of Judaism before. I would tread lightly. “Hello, Mr. Englethorpe. Nice to meet you.”

Englethorpe elected not to shake my hand, nor Chloe’s, instead walking us inside directly to the elevator. Right off, the tall slender man’s terse responses gave an impression that the cops had been plenty, that he didn’t want anyone else poking around his building.

“Did Ms. Kincaid live here long?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you see anyone unusual around the building that night?”

“No.”

Never once did Englethorpe look me in the eye. My guess was he hoped Mauve’s apartment would be sold quickly; that the publicity of the odd death of a young and beautiful woman in his building would rapidly melt away.

“I hope you’ll be quick with whatever it is you plan to do in here,” he said as we stepped out on the top floor.

I smiled noncommittally. Already I didn’t like the guy. Walking the eighth floor hallway, I wasn’t surprised by the absence of yellow tape. Police had not sealed the apartment. This wasn’t a crime scene, it was a simple death. Natural causes.

I produced Mauve’s high-tech key and opened the door. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Englethorpe,” I said. “We’ll lock up before we leave.”

We went inside, and Chloe closed the door in Englethorpe’s frowning face. We pulled out our phones and began the systematic recording of everything we saw, the way I’d learned with the FBI.

“LINKS on,” we said into our phones. “Case Number SI-0018.”

5

“Wow!” Chloe said. “Look at the art!”

The art was impressive. The walls were covered with old and expensive-looking paintings in thick, gilt-edged frames. But the thing that caught my eye was the broken chain hanging next to the front door.

I forced my doubts into the background so I could begin a search for anything that told me Mauve Kincaid had been killed by someone, even herself. Following Sarah’s instructions, Chloe opened a cabinet at the right side of the foyer, punched in the code we’d been given and disabled Mauve’s alarm. As he entered the last digit, an old tune came up on hidden speakers, Nights In White Satin, heavily orchestrated, with a male voice professing his love for the listener.

The living room was immense. I considered what this room in a penthouse, nearly double the size of the great room in my loft, would cost in this part of the City. Yet, it was nothing compared to the Renaissance painters that decorated Mauve’s walls. I pay Chloe well, but not enough to buy any of the stuff he was drooling over. Chloe loves art. He’s a museum hound. The Museum Of Modern Art, the Guggenheim — Chloe visits at least one of them every week.

“Are these real?” I asked. “Maybe they’re copies.”

“I don’t think so,” Chloe said. “Unless they’re all perfect forgeries, which I very much doubt. In a place like this?”

He was already trying to locate some of Mauve’s paintings on his phone. I joined in. The signatures helped. So did the small silver plaques beneath them. There was no need to take notes or make sketches. The art, the furnishings, everything we saw and heard was going into LINKS: video, audio, laser room-measurements. LINKS — Latent Investigatory National Knowledge System — is a documentation software developed by my friend Chip. My Version II was faster than the one I had used with the FBI, and more helpful, if a little sarcastic at times.

“Got one!” Chloe held up his phone with the matching image of a little girl in a white head-scarf, painted several centuries ago: “Portrait of an Infant Princess. Last sold for more than two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Not bad,” LINKS replied.

It was my turn: a woman in a pale red dress stood in the countryside holding three naked infants: “Jan Massys’s An Allegory of Charity: Seven hundred thousand dollars!”

Small Ships In The Breeze by Van Ruysdael. On the wall next to it were two Van Goyens. There were millions of dollars in landscapes, seascapes, and portraits on the living room walls alone. I owned a couple of small paintings, but doubted I would ever have anything in the price range of the art here.

“Quite the motive for murder,” Chloe said.

I nodded. Except, “If it was murder it doesn’t look like they could have taken anything.”

“Nothing very valuable,” Chloe agreed.

The plush carpet, cushy polished mahogany furniture, and mahogany doors somehow made the idea of suicide seem less likely. Who would live like this then kill herself? From what Sarah had told me of the sisters’ last dinner together, Sarah certainly didn’t think so. Her word on suicide had been “Impossible!” Then again, you never know, do you? Even trust-fund babies are not immune to life-threatening depression . . . the locked room . . . an entire locked apartment — demanded self-destruction be considered first.

I made my way across the wide room, then down the hall along a framed rogue’s gallery. There were photos of friends, many that had posed with Mauve in various exotic locations: On the slope of a white snowy mountain, skiing. Sipping wine on the stern deck of a fat boat in what I recognized as the docks of St. Tropez. There was genuine affection for Mauve in the faces in the pictures, and the feeling had been mutual. Another strike against suicide, an avenue of investigation I was quickly turning away from.

But where did that leave me? Sarah had insisted Mauve had no enemies. She’d supposedly never been in a legal dispute with anyone, never taken advantage of a friend or an employee. Sarah confessed that she, herself, had been party to several legal battles over the years, but never Mauve. Supposedly Mauve would rather eat a financial loss than have anyone genuinely dislike her. Mauve paid her maid well  — from the figure Sarah mentioned, very well — and her part-time cook even better. If Mauve was killed by someone, the only area worth looking into was men; somebody who felt cast aside and was obsessively jealous.

Sarah said Mauve had been divorced three years earlier — amicably. She had offered, and been paying, alimony. Mauve and another man she’d been fond of had broken up more than a year ago. She hadn’t liked him well enough to leave her home in New York to follow his career to the West Coast. She’d dated a few times since then, nothing serious.

Problem was, in addition to the deadbolt, there was that broken chain hanging by the door. With the police watching, Sarah had made Englethorpe cut it to get in. This was a locked-room puzzle that said: If Mauve’s death wasn’t suicide, and it wasn’t something to do with her health, it had to have been caused by someone who had a key. But it couldn’t have been. The chain.

Off the hall in a small nook with a love seat, I looked down through a window into the street far below. There was no fire escape. Whoever got inside to do her harm didn’t just fly away.

We needed to consider more exotic methods like poison gas. Carbon monoxide, maybe? Or poisoned food. Could Mauve’s death have been accidental? I needed to get together with the Medical Examiner, and Mauve’s doctor.

We passed two guest bedrooms and a bright, medium-sized library shelved with hundreds of volumes. In the master suite I circled slowly around the modern, high-gloss wood sleigh bed, now stripped to its box springs — the place in which Mauve had breathed her last. I tried to imagine how she’d died. Sarah had told me she’d had to get people in to clean up the mess surrounding Mauve’s body, removing the sheets, mattress pad, even the mattress, all ruined. Apparently Mauve’s bowels and bladder had let go when she expired.

My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but I was expecting a call.

“Hello? Naomi Soul speaking.”

“Ms. Soul, this is Adam Cohen.”

“Hello, Dr. Cohen. Thank you for getting back to me.”

“Sarah Kincaid says she’s hired you to look into her sister’s death.”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be much help — in fact, I doubt anyone will be. I’ve gone over the autopsy report more than once. No one has the faintest idea why Mauve died.”

“Quite unusual, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. Very.” Cohen explained that the medical examiner had found no trace of poison, nor any unusual pathogen in her blood. Yet, according to Cohen, Mauve had experienced sudden kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure — as if her organs had just gone wild and shut down.

“It was very unusual,” he said. “Her white blood count and histamine levels were off the scale, but we don’t know why. We do know, at the time of her death, she developed a terrible, you might say catastrophic, skin rash, though no traces of any non-native toxin were found in her autopsy skin scrapings, nor in the subdermal biopsy I asked be done, nor in any organ. Neither myself nor the medical examiner were able to find any reason for her death. No sign of aneurysm was found in her brain, nor her heart. It may have been some sort of severe allergen or transient poison that somehow made its way into her home, but we have no evidence of either. No, she simply stopped breathing, her heart stopped beating. And dammit, we don’t know why!”

The sound of Dr. Cohen’s voice betrayed more than puzzlement, it was frustration, the emotion of a physician experiencing a helpless, overwhelming sense of personal guilt and medical impotence.

“Yet,” I said softly, “she’d had a complete physical with you not a week earlier. According to your report, Mauve was in perfect health.”

“Yes, I know.”

The signs must have been there, but Cohen hadn’t seen them. He was trying to maintain a rational viewpoint. Inside, he was tremendously upset.

“It sounds impossible,” Cohen went on. “But very rarely, the journals say, this can happen. There are statistics analogous to sudden infant death syndrome, in perfectly healthy adults.”

“I’m going to be meeting the Medical Examiner in —” I checked my phone — “Can we talk about this down at the Morgue? Can you meet me in an hour?”

He hesitated. “Well, I . . . yes. Yes, of course.”

“Thank you.”

“See you there.”

We disconnected.

Before Chloe and I left the apartment, I stared at the bed for just a moment, trying to take with me a better sense of what it had been like to actually be Mauve Kincaid. The toe of my right shoe rolled over a soft object, something beneath the bed. The apartment seemed too neat to find an old balled-up sock, but nobody’s housekeeping is perfect. I knelt down and reached underneath, felt something soft and fluffy — furry. I think a part of my brain knew by touch, but didn’t want to recognize, what it was, even before I pulled it out.

“Ewwwwww!” Chloe shrieked.

I dropped it to the floor. I’d picked up a small, light-gray mouse. Dead.

“Wash your hand, boss!” Chloe said.

It’s not the kind of thing you want to touch with your bare skin, but really, it wasn’t going to bite me, was it? I looked more closely. The mouse seemed to have died recently. There was no obvious decay. It gave off a very slight odor. Unless it carried fleas or disease, it presented no real danger.

I took Chloe’s suggestion. I walked quickly back to the wide modern kitchen filled with stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops, and as I soaped and scrubbed in one of the huge sinks, I wondered, Did some virus or chemical agent cause two animals to die in the same room of the same apartment at the same time?

When my hands were beyond clean (almost raw — I’d washed them three times — which allowed for a lot of thinking), I went through the cabinets: Glasses. Everyday glass plates. Good china. Mixer, toaster, coffee maker, espresso machine, a Cuisinart. Not what I was looking for.

On a shelf in the pantry I found some. A box of Ziploc baggies.

“You okay, boss?” Chloe called out.

“Fine!”

I went back to the bedroom. Knelt down, shook open the Ziploc, and bagged the mouse.

6

Chloe and I were the only living souls in the wide, echoey, stainless room. A female assistant had let us in and told us my friend Frannie would be right with us. The City Morgue isn’t the friendliest place you’ll ever visit — not that the people who work there aren’t nice — they are. It’s just that being surrounded by so much death, even when the big drawers are closed, reminds you that no matter how much joy you find in life, it ends. Sometimes horribly.

Morgues creep me out, from the stainless tables to the pull-down suction tubes descending from the ceiling, the saws, knives, scales, jars — the double drain in a wide field of yellow tile to let blood and other stuff flow out. And, of course, the bodies. The one waiting for us had already been processed, but the ME had brought her out again just for lucky me, covered with a sheet on the main dissection table.

I pulled back the sheet and sucked in my lips. I could barely make out Mauve Kincaid’s once beautiful face, now perfectly suited to a Hollywood horror movie. Blisters and boils ran right up Mauve’s neck, covered her distorted cheeks and lips. It was the grossest destruction of beauty I’d ever seen. More boils covered her breasts, waist, legs — everywhere — interrupted only by the slash of the glued-together autopsy Y-cut down her middle.

I heard a sound from the corner. Dry heaves.

Chloe was trying to retch quietly into one of the lab sinks, but nothing was coming up. His mocha skin had taken on a greenish tinge. Even the coating of VapoRub beneath his nostrils from the small jar in my purse hadn’t diminished his reaction. The morgue can take some getting used to — years of exposure to a large number of corpses — and some people never do. You can learn to compartmentalize, objectify and distance yourself from the bodies, but somewhere inside no sane person ever really does. Some people, and Chloe was one of them, think gays are more naturally sensitive. It may be true, I don’t know. But being gay or straight has nothing to do with it. Looking at Mauve, I was right on the verge of losing it myself.

“Good. You’re here, Naomi,” a voice said from the doorway.

An old friend from my FBI days, Medical Examiner Dr. Frannie Minor walked in. Red hair done up in a nice bun, Frannie was slim, and a little shorter than me. She was followed into the room by a good-looking dark-haired man, about five-ten. Both wore white lab coats.

“Doctor Adam Cohen,” Mauve’s doctor introduced himself, shook my hand, then Chloe’s. His grip felt warm and considerate.

But there was a look of confusion in both their faces. I’d never seen Frannie like this. Uncertain and bewildered, she took a deep breath of the formaldehyde-laced air and said, “I can give you a superficial appraisal now, Naomi, and I can send you a copy of my written report.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“The thing is, we still don’t know what caused this young woman to die. I ran her organ and skin samples through the whole process twice. I guess I’d better begin by telling you what symptoms we think Mauve Kincaid experienced at the time of her death.”

“Please.”

Frannie put on a pair of blue gloves and showed me what little they’d found, touching Mauve’s corpse here and there— skin lesions, bowels out of control, organ failure. “The only thing we can say definitely is that when Mauve Kincaid died, her body was expressing very high levels of natural histamines. We think that’s what caused the rash.”

“What causes high histamine levels?”

“Usually some type of allergic reaction. But I had my people collect samples from her apartment. They found no traces of mold or other significant allergens.”

“Here,” I said, “I have something for you.”

I produced the small plastic bag from my purse.

“Where did he come from?” she said, studying the small gray mouse closely through the bag.

“Mauve’s apartment. Under the bed.”

“Hmmm.” Frannie set the baggie on a stainless dissection counter along the side of the room, peeled off her gloves and replaced them with fresh ones. She unzipped the baggie and removed the mouse with a pair of forceps. Set it in the middle of the counter.

Cohen at her side, Frannie prodded its midsection, releasing a tiny terrible smell from the mouse’s bloated belly. She chose a scalpel from her tools — its sharp blade reflected in the bright overhead light — and laid the little beast open using a miniature Y-incision.

“Hmmm,” Cohen said.

“Hmmm indeed,” echoed Frannie. “Look here.”

“The same,” Cohen nodded.

Frannie rubbed a gloved thumb across the mouse’s snout. “See?” she said to Cohen.”

They both looked up at me. “Facial and body pustules beneath the fur.” There were loose hairs coming off, some of which were on Frannie’s glove.

“Possible organ failure,” Cohen added.

Frannie nodded. “Preliminarily speaking, subject to what I find when I go deeper, I don’t doubt that whatever killed Mauve Kincaid also killed this mouse.”

*

As we cabbed it back downtown half an hour later, Chloe exclaimed, “It just can’t be food poisoning! Not if that mouse died the same way!”

“No, it can’t,” I agreed. “Something in that apartment killed them both, and nobody knows what it was.”


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