Deadly Dues (13 page)

“What colour was it?”

“What?”

“The carpet you bought.”

“A mix of brown, pink and . . . oh yeah, peach . . .”

I closed my eyes and tried to get into a zen state.

Ryga sighed and looked around the room.

“About last night . . .”

Which part of last night? I almost asked, but restrained myself.

“If you didn't kill him, who do you think did?” he asked quietly.

Damn, it was hard living in a parallel universe. The one in which I had come home, innocent and devoid of any upsetting experience, and had been attacked by a home invader, and then the one in which I had discovered two dead bodies, one of which had recently been on top of me. Was life fair?

“I don't know,” I said. This was an honest answer for both universes.

He rose from the chair without any noticeable inconvenience. Yow, he was in good shape. I should really go to the gym more often. I used to go sometimes—
okay, maybe once in a while
—when I had an income. I was more a yoga, free-form dancing sort of athlete.

“Call me when you think you have an idea of who might have sent Zonko,” he said. And he gave me his card.

I took his card, but I was preoccupied by this new development. Zonko? What did this mean? Was this a cute police phrase for an unknown overweight thug? (And I knew he was overweight, did I ever . . .)

“Zonko?”

“We ran his fingerprints. He had a history of assault and armed robbery. The judges had always been lenient because he was a caregiver for his elderly mother, who, even though she has been in jail for fraud, now is in a nursing home and relied on him for visits and financial help.”

Oh no. Mr. Size Twenty was now a loving son who had dropped dead on top of me. Could things get any worse? Should I visit Zonko's mother in her nursing home and offer to play Trivial Pursuit every week in penance for her son trying to kill me and inconveniently dying in the process?

I slipped his card onto the side table, thinking I was doing well to have Ryga think I might actually call him. Ha. Maybe if I had just been pulled over for a parking ticket, calling him would seem reasonable and fun. But right now, further discourse was unwise and unwelcome.

Although I felt too zonko myself to volunteer to see Ryga to the door, he insisted that I did so. He said he wanted to make sure I locked the door. Was I an idiot? Of course I was planning to lock the front door. If I had a machine gun on the premises, I would have hauled it out. I am not a cool, prepared sort of gal who has a repertoire of defences. My improvisational training was pretty close to what I did in real life. Grab what you have and hope for the best. And I didn't have a lot to work with, I mused, as I closed the door behind him.

I am an artist. I just want to be left alone. I don't want to have to duke it out it the kitchen with carving knives.

It was past midnight.

I fell into bed and dreamed of a forest in which I was Little Red Riding Hood, wearing red knickers and not much else, being chased by a three-hundred-pound wolf with a cholesterol problem and a meat cleaver.

I struggled out of that dream to the sound of the answering machine in the living room. Damn. I had forgotten to turn down the volume— again. I was doomed to early morning messages, just because I hadn't had the presence of mind to unplug or mute the machine before I went to bed.

I heard Mitzi's coloratura shriek: “Lu. Pick up. It's important.”

I debated for a moment, then thought perhaps Mitzi might have a line on some income, as in money, for me and grabbed the phone just as she paused for breath.

“I'm here.”

“Of course you are. You never go anywhere before noon.”

I lay back with the phone on my ear and waited to hear more.

“Lu?”

“Yes.” I breathed deeply and started to go back into dreamland, however yucky it was.

“Shoe sale at Valucci's. I have a VIP pass.”

I moaned softly. Valucci's has the best shoes. Soft kid leather in seventeen shades of pink, metallic mules with kitten heels, killer stilettos in fire engine red, magenta sandals to make you drool . . . my breathing speeded up and my eyes opened. What was I thinking? Where would I find the money to shop at Valucci's today?

“Sorry, Mitzi. No dough. And I should be here for Horatio. What if he came home and I wasn't around?”

There was a long pause. Mitzi, unbelievably, had never been a Horatio fan, even though she had made pots of money from his cute face and even cuter behind as they both jiggled onscreen. She adored him as a client, but wanted nothing to do with him as a dinner companion or fluffy friend.

“There is always money for shoes,” she said with finality. And she was right. Of course there was. Eventually. Just not now. Even a pair of discount socks would be a stretch. And shoes at Valucci's? Impossible.

“And Horatio will wait for you if you aren't home. You can't be the needy one in this relationship. You have to let him know that he isn't calling the shots. It will be empowering if you show him you aren't waiting around for him to show up at your door.”

I wondered if Mitzi had mixed me up with somebody else, who needed dating advice.

“Horatio isn't manipulative.”

“Are you going to say he's a dog?”

“Dogs are sincere.”

“Sincerely oblivious to your needs. What do you need right now?”

After all I had been through in the last forty-eight hours, wasn't I justified in fantasizing about throwing myself into deeper debt for the sake of a pair of bronzed stilettos? People who don't love shoes wouldn't understand this, but I needed a pair of shoes as desperately as if they were prescription medication. (Shallow and selfish, but better for me and the economy than heroin. And I want to state right now that no matter how broke I am, a monthly debit comes out of my bank account dedicated to feeding the poor in Africa. This happens even at times when a package of Horatio's dog food has started looking good to me.) And, I reasoned, I could hang around all day waiting for Horatio and end up eating two bags of corn chips, which would be terrible for my health, and then how much good would I be to Horatio?

So I said, “Pick me up in half an hour. It doesn't hurt to look.”

I whizzed through a shower and hair wash, the sort where you spritz shampoo on your head, rub for thirty seconds, make encouraging noises, then rinse like crazy, and I was out, on my feet, ready for action. Maybe I took a few moments to find just the right clothes, but I was justified. A major shoe sale is an event, and you need to look just right, whether or not you are a serious customer.

I decided on a pair of Calvin Klein jeans (rust, boot cut, Salvation Army, three dollars), a matching rust T-shirt (Liz Claiborne, Women in Need, one dollar) and a muted paisley rust and green blazer (Seconds, my favourite consignment store, ten dollars) with no designer name but a tremendous cut, and a pair of Enzo Angiolini loafers (two dollars at Sally Ann, bless her).

I was so fast with my ministrations that I had time to make a quick walking tour of the cul-de-sac. I knocked on a few doors. The Mortons hadn't seen Horatio and, furthermore, hoped they never did again, since he had sat on their kid's bicycle. I reminded them I had reimbursed them for the bicycle, but it was clear they were still holding a grudge. I left pathetic notes in the mailboxes of the other condo owners. I made it back to my condo just as Mitzi roared up in her Mercedes,

She looked at me from under her wild red sausage curls.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Anything happening with the cute detective?”

“Nothing. He was here last night—but—”

“Last night! This is progress! What was he wearing? Boxers or Jockeys?”

She was so excited about the possibility of a liaison about which she could grill me endlessly that, if I hadn't grabbed the steering wheel as we rounded a corner in the West Gardens, she might have taken out a woman with a walker and a semi-comatose drug addict who was stalking her.

“Mitzi! Get a grip!” I yelled. “The detective and I are not happening. He suspects me of killing—”

Suddenly, I stopped. I couldn't remember who I was supposed to have killed. Was it Stan and or the tastelessly named Zonko?

“Killing? Killing?” She shrieked. “Who did you kill? What's his name?”

“Zonko!” I yelled. “But I didn't kill him.”

She started to garble a maddening mix of misinformation, and finally I put a hand in front of her pink Lancôme–laden lips and told it to her straight. That I had murdered nobody. That the police suspected me in what was, I suspected, only a casual way. And that the man who had inconsiderately died on top of me was apparently named Zonko.

She settled down and focused on getting to the shoe store. I leaned back in the seat and breathed deeply. I wondered why Mitzi kept me on as a client. And why I struggled on in the relationship. As my career was mostly over, I didn't have many options in the agent department. She seemed to have really lousy judgment, as in even thinking for a second that I, the peacenik of all time, could murder anybody. I ruminated for a few moments on whether or not one could do business with somebody who could conceive of one doing something vile and evil. I then contemplated the stack of money I had once made from Doggie Doggie Bow Wow, thanks to Mitzi's negotiating. No-brainer. I loved Mitzi. To give her credit, other agents might have dumped me after I had lost my major gig and, it would appear, all prospects, but Mitzi was still out there, pitching for me.

I sometimes wondered about our relationship. Did she realize that I was hurting deeply over the loss of income, thanks to Stan, and, on another level, the pain that my union would betray me? That I had paid dues for years—only to be treated as disposable? I wondered if Mitzi understood this. She was wild and funny, a shoe-aholic, but she had a cash-register mentality. If I told her I would go to bed with Stan and a contingent of bikers to get a part, she wouldn't flinch, just write a contract.
Sigh
. I loved her anyway. She was good-hearted and incredibly loyal. The fact that she was still my biggest fan, when I had become a nonentity to so many others (except for the Doggie Doggie singers), gave her a lot of credit with me. I could forgive her anything, because she believed in me. That was enough to keep me going some days.

Her Mercedes purred to a stop in front of Valucci's. We eased out of the car. Mitzi flashed her invitation and we strolled past the doorman and into the store, which, of course, was all velvet and glass and seventy-eight-pound sales clerks who were hoping to be discovered as supermodels. Perhaps they could have been discovered by Mitzi, but given that Mitzi was topping the scales at way more than three of them weighed collectively, it was unlikely she was going to jump up and down at viewing them. Mitzi had the crazy idea that talent was more important than poundage. It was amazing that she drove a Mercedes with such a wild and off-the-wall attitude.

Incessant, thumping house music pounded through the store speakers. I couldn't identify it, but I guessed it was what the young staff heard in their clubs on the weekend.

I saw a pair of Roger Vivier's, lime green with pink straps, that made me feel faint. Mitzi was looking at some Manolos and didn't notice. I slipped a Vivier on my right foot. Mitzi had moved on to a Peter Fox.

“Heaven!” She turned a plump and perfectly pedicured foot toward me, toes peeking out from an outrageous sandal with what looked like diamonds embedded in its metallic straps. Mitzi, like many Reubenesque women, revelled in accessories. The difference was that most women cruised and browsed. Mitzi shopped big-time. She bought full throttle. Her immense shoe closet, the last time I had seen it, rivalled the stock in the store. And hers was all in one size, seven and a half—damn, a full size down from mine, so I couldn't even scoop her leftovers.

I was still looking down at the lime green shoe.

“Lu, are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said.

I slipped off the Vivier and limped to the side door of the store, which opened onto a secluded walkway between the store and the next building. Was I crazy? Nicole Kidman and Oprah bought shoes like this. I was an ex–dog-food shill who had no doubt just been fired from McDonald's.

I looked out into the darkened afternoon sky, and thought that it matched my mood perfectly.
Get real, Lu. A storm is brewing. Don't blow whatever credit you have on frivolity, however wonderful it might be.
I had to live in the now, I told myself. Someday I would be able to afford great shoes again. But now I had to say no. And be a passenger on Mitzi's train.

I breathed deeply, somewhat off balance with one foot bare and the other still in my Enzo Angiolini, but I felt better. I had reached that state of knowing I must not exceed my budget. I was empowered. I was free.

As I took one last deep breath of the afternoon air in the boutique district, I was a little surprised when the sky went black. It was mid-afternoon. The sky had been gloomy but not totally black.