“Let’s split,” Lawrence said, taking her hand. He opened a door that seemed to lead to the basement. “I want to see what’s down here.” He touched the inside wall, then she heard a click and a light came on. “Man, this is great.” He dropped her hand and bounded down the stairs.
She held on to an unfinished wood railing and went halfway down the wooden steps leading into a large, cold room that smelled damp and musty. There were no basements in the houses in Miami, and this one definitely creeped her out. She quickly took in the wood shelves, hanging pipes, rusting water heater, and some other mechanisms she couldn’t identify. A large workbench was shoved up against a brick wall that oozed mortar.
Lawrence was poking around in some cobwebs and seemed to be enjoying himself.
“Lovely,” she said. “Can we go now?”
“You want to go? But this place is far out. I’ll ask Michael if we can use it as Stormdrain headquarters. We can get some folding tables and chairs. Maybe a printing press to do our own flyers.” He wandered from one side of the room to the other. “This area will be great for supplies.”
What kind of supplies? she almost asked, but she didn’t really care. She just wanted to get out of there. “I’m going up for another brownie,” she said.
“Okay, baby. I’m coming, too.” He raced up the steps behind her, stopping when he was inches away. “But wouldn’t you rather check out the rest of the house?” he whispered in her ear.
“What did you have in mind?” she said, though she knew exactly what he had in mind. She did, too.
He led her up the stairs to the second floor, past people drunk or stoned, blocking the way.
Joe Cocker was screaming about needing help from his friends.
They reached the top of the stairs, and Lawrence opened a door, releasing the smell of incense, candle wax, pot, and something more human. She peeked inside the room. Candles threw shadows against the walls. Flesh-colored blobs were writhing on the white rectangle on the floor. Arms and legs and heads and tongues and breasts and penises.
Di took a step back.
Lawrence laughed. “I’m guessing this is a little too groovy for you.”
One of the bodies separated from the others and slid off the mattress. The naked goddess came to the door, her black braid mostly undone, her brother’s dog tag hanging between her perfect naked breasts.
“Come back here, Gert,” a voice called from the room. Di recognized the growl as Jeffrey’s and was surprised Gertrude let him call her by a nickname.
“Go fuck a law book, Jeff,” Gertrude called back, then turned to smile at them.
“Have you had a brownie?” Gertrude asked Lawrence, though it sounded like she was offering him something else.
He stared at her just like he had ogled Di earlier, with the same hunger. “Yes,” he said. “They were primo.”
Di flinched. That word belonged to her.
“I made them,” Gertrude said. “Old family recipe.”
He smiled at her. “I’ll always be Alice Toklas,” he said, “if you’ll be Gertrude Stein.”
An inside joke between them, and Di was very much outside.
“So are you coming?” Gertrude grinned as she reached for his hand.
He glanced back at Di.
“Pollyanna, too.” Gertrude grabbed Di’s hand. “Come join the huddled masses.”
Di felt herself being pulled into the room, into the frenzy.
But this was all wrong. Sex was supposed to be about love, not just groping bodies. Di jerked her hand out of Gertrude’s and ran back into the hallway.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks. She was a fake. A poseur. Not the real thing like Gertrude. And she had lost him, probably forever.
Jefferson Airplane was crying about truth and lies.
Then his warm hands encircled her waist, his warm breath on her neck. He spun her toward him. She closed her eyes and licked the chocolate from his lips, melting into this man she wanted so desperately. She felt a burning sensation on her back, as though a pair of eyes were boring into her.
She turned, expecting to see Gertrude watching them.
But no one was there.
Diana’s eyes flew open. Her heart was pounding. There was something in the memory she’d forgotten, but it wasn’t about Gertrude. It was Jeff. Jeffrey Schwartz. She hadn’t thought about him in twenty years, so why now? She tried to slow her breathing. Jeff had had a thing for Gertrude—Diana had always known that. But what she’d forgotten was that Jeff had been a law student at Columbia. At the same time as Jonathan.
It couldn’t mean anything, could it? Then why couldn’t she shake this feeling that Jeff was just beyond the door, watching her. Laughing at her.
CHAPTER 22
The Coconut Grove Ritz was on a slight bluff overlooking the bay, a ten-minute walk from Aubrey’s house, but it had taken her six. She had hurried in order to see Kevin and check on what was happening at the Simmers’ command post, but she was also eager to get back home to her computer to continue digging into her mother’s past. She hoped to find something on those two women in the photo, or anything that might relate to the brownstone explosion.
She stepped into a hushed, sumptuous lobby filled with earth-tone marble and grand columns, where a number of reporters were milling about. She followed the desk clerk’s directions to one of the meeting rooms off the lobby. A man in a dark suit stood at the door with an iPad. He checked for her name on his tablet, then asked for ID before allowing her into the room. She wondered whether the police had been so careful the day before when someone slipped the greeting card in with the mail.
The large room buzzed with voices. Aubrey took in the different stations of the Simmers’ command post. Two women in T-shirts that said “National Center for Missing & Exploited Children” sat at a table near the front of the room. They were both wearing headphones and typing on their laptops, probably fielding calls from the hotline. At a nearby table, Detective Gonzalez was talking to another police officer.
A half-dozen men and women in suits had commandeered several tables in the back and were busy at their computers or on their phones.