Deadly Dues (15 page)

We both had been in Leo Naramo's acting class. We had learned all the tricks. And she had just pulled two of them on me. Wild neediness masquerading as raw emotion, followed by extreme emotional fragility, permeated with guilt trip. Did she think I was that dumb?

“Gretchen . . .” I said, and I tried to put into that one word all the impact of knowing we had been in the same class, had done the same emotional exercises and had each studied the other's bag of tricks.

To her credit, she sighed and looked away, and led me into her so-called living room.

Hello, Ms. Havisham. There weren't any cobwebs, at least not at eye level, but the rest of the room looked as if it hadn't been touched since Dickens toured North America. Bric-a-brac and knick-knacks covered every inch of space. Ornate old pincushions leaned against dust-covered china spaniels, while half-finished pieces of needlework in hoops slanted against every piece of furniture. I guessed that Gretchen's points extended to her hobbies. There wasn't a single soft or cuddly item in the room, unless you counted one particularly well-crafted, rounded cobweb in the upper right corner. I tried not to inhale too deeply and prayed that she still had spectacular booze (some of which also dated from Dickens's tour).

Alas, she didn't offer any refreshment. She slouched down elegantly into the faded sofa, landing on a pillow that exuded little clouds of pale grey dust, and swirled a slender claw (
whoops,
hand) towards the armchair. I examined the chair carefully, tried to do a quick and subtle mental inventory of what I was wearing, which items would require drycleaning and which could be washed, and how much it was going to cost me to sit in her armchair. What I came up with was Jones New York jacket (six seventy-five at Discount Drycleaners) jeans (machine washable, cost negligible), T-shirt (washable and also disposable if things got really grim). I figured if my hair touched the back of the chair, I could get in the shower at home. Or maybe just get a haircut.

“Lu, there is something you should know.”

I hate sentences that begin like that. Nothing good ever comes of them. Is the next part ever “You won the lottery?” or “Your ex-boyfriend just sobbed into the phone for an hour about how much he loved you?” You know the answer to this question.

“Stan and I—”

She paused, and nibbled one of her tiny, ragged, pointed little nails.

I looked at her, revolted. After everything he did to her career, she was going to confess that they really did have something going? Big-time barf.

“—were both being stalked by Sherilyn.”

It took me a moment to process this. Sherilyn was a witch in pink lipstick, but I thought she and Stan were a relatively happy couple. And why would Sherilyn stalk Gretchen?

I asked the obvious. “Why would Sherilyn stalk you?”

She looked at me for a long moment.

I looked back at her, like a big, unaware dodo.

She raked her pointed little nails through her hair and stared at the ceiling.

“Gretchen?”

She looked around, pulled a needle from a pin cushion on the table beside her (although I couldn't swear that she didn't get it from her hair), hauled a bit of faded tapestry onto her lap, dislodging a cloud of dust into the air around her, which sent me into a coughing fit worthy of Garbo in
Camille
. Maybe she said a few things in the next few minutes, but I missed it.

“You don't understand,” she said pointedly.

I squinted at her. “Could you give me a teeny clue? That would maybe get me more into understanding what you are talking about.”

“Sherilyn's so beautiful,” sighed Gretchen. “I've never been with anybody like her. She wanted me to move to Paris with her.” Gretchen looked around reverently. “But I just couldn't leave my beautiful home.”

I took a few moments to absorb both of these amazing statements. I couldn't decide which was more hair-raising, the notion of having a relationship with a person as awful as Sherilyn or the idea that the room in which we were sitting could be described as beautiful.

I remembered that one of Gretchen's parting shots at Geoff was that an affair with him could turn a girl off men forever. I thought her phrasing, as told to me, was sexist and overstated. He thought it was laughable. Poor Geoff. He wouldn't be laughing when he heard about Gretchen and Sherilyn. Unfortunately, everybody else would be. This would probably have a disastrous effect on his love life. I suppressed a giggle at the thought.
Lu, don't be mean.

These musings were interrupted by something dark with wings flitting around Gretchen's head. In the interest of my mental health, I decided to view it as one of my old floaters acting up, which happened whenever I forgot the lutein supplements, and not to see it as anything else. Like maybe a bat. It flitted out of sight and I let out my breath. I tried to focus on Gretchen, which was a useful way of not noticing anything else lurking in the room. My feet were itching, my back was crawling with phantom insects, and my underarms were in desperate need of a blow-dryer. Other than that, I felt just fine.

I reassessed her news and blurted out my honest, non-edited reaction.

“Gretchen, why would you?”

Sherilyn Carp was an icon of bad taste and pure meanness. Everything about her radiated ego, nastiness and pathetic bitchiness. I couldn't see her as a trophy lover for either sex.

Gretchen picked at the decaying doily on her armchair. She looked at me from under spiked black lashes, and I felt a pang of pity. When she didn't answer, I tried again.

“Gretchen, you are talented. You have won awards. You can do better than Sherilyn—”

Gretchen's eyes narrowed into angry slits. Two bright red spots flashed on her extremely white cheeks. I stopped mid-lecture.

“That's easy for you to say, Lu. You have dimples.”

“Dimples! What do dimples have to do with it?”

“Dimples are cute. Dimples have dollar signs. People love dimples. People look at you and see the dimples.”

I grabbed my bag and stood up.

“Easy for you to say, Gretchen. You live in a million-dollar mansion and you're dissing me for having dimples?”

It wasn't my finest moment, but I was having a rough time weighing the difference between Gretchen's reality and mine. She drifted around a mansion (okay, with maybe a few bats) while I was slinging burgers to make my mortgage payments.

• • •

I slammed the door, dodging the debris that dropped from the eaves, hoping none of it was toxic. After I brushed off the worst of it, I drove home, feeling guilty and upset. If I were a really good person, I would turn the car around and drive back and make up, but the other part of me, the part that needed to be right, just wanted to go home and sulk. And hug Horatio.

Except that he wasn't there when I got home. It was nearly two days since he had run out the door, abandoning me to the attentions of Mr. Size Twenty. Usually, Horatio would have wandered home by now, happy and full of doggie ego over his escapades in the world.

When I checked my answering machine, there were the usual messages telling me I had won a magnificent Caribbean cruise, two from suspect banks with great deals on credit cards (Were they crazy? Offering me more cards? That was like giving a year's supply of Big Macs to a junk food addict who was trying to kick the habit) and then a message from Diana Blum, the publicist for the Arts for the Animals fundraiser I had agreed to co-host many months ago. Was it happening this week? How could I have forgotten? I was so distracted with wandering toward my closet to inspect my wardrobe that I almost forgot to check the last message.

When I did, I stood very still and tried to breathe quietly. The machine emitted the forlorn woofing of a dog, which I recognized as Horatio. A pause in the playback, as if somebody were coaching him, then another bout of sad woofs and the ping of disconnect.

After a few minutes, I realized I was still standing beside the answering machine, my hand on the button of my blouse, my purse dangling from my left hand.

Why would anybody kidnap Horatio? I didn't have a fortune for ransom. Was that really Horatio? Or a crank call from a dog food company?

I contemplated calling Ryga, but then realized I might blabber about other things I wanted to forget—for example, Stan's so far undiscovered body—so I stopped, even as my hand was on the phone. What was I thinking? We had found Stan in his office almost two days ago.

Stan was dead. Definitely.

His body was missing.

Sometime between Monday evening and yesterday afternoon, somebody had moved his body and cleaned up his desk.

Why?

Somebody thought I had something that was important and related to Stan and was ready to kill me to find out.

That Somebody was killed.

Somebody else had saved my life.

But Somebody else still had tried to kill me at the shoe store. Why?

What did I have that Somebody wanted?

And why was I assuming this was one Somebody instead of several Somebodies?

Oh, this was confusing.

As far as I could tell, I had nothing that Somebody wanted. I was a former Somebody, but now I was a Nobody, so why the heck was anybody bothering me? Did the dog call have anything to do with this? Was Horatio a runaway or a kidnap victim?

I rummaged in my cupboard for some mind-brightening gingko biloba tea, and then decided that herbal tea was a definite second choice to a restorative regroup with the gang at Murphy's.

Later, Pete, Geoff, Bent, Gretchen and I were at Murphy's, in yet another brave attempt to look normal. Geoff, who was usually Hunk Supreme, was pale and decidedly unhunky. I was sorry to see he was almost gnome-like in his anxiety. His six feet had shrunk into the booth as if he were the witch's puddle in the
Wizard of Oz
. Pete looked as if he had lost twenty pounds in the past twenty-four hours. Gretchen had kissed-kissed the air around my cheeks hello and I had done the same with her. We were friends again. She was more pointed than ever and looked as if she could etch glass with her nose or elbows. Bent seemed as if he were about to explode. I, on the other hand, looked perfectly normal.

“Lu, you're vibrating like an old car about to collapse,” said Pete. “Do you need a drink? Should I call the paramedics?”

He meant well, but I wanted to slug him. I remembered my yoga classes, took a few deep breaths, and smiled winsomely.

“Just fine here,” I said. “Except that Horatio is missing.”

“He's just out on a romp,” said Geoff, the great romper of all time.

“He needs time to himself,” offered Bent, the great hermit.

“Horatio is his own man. Let him do what needs to be done,” nodded Pete, the most soulful of our group.

“Which boyfriend was that?” asked Gretchen.

I deserved a medal for ignoring that and segueing into the next topic.

“What about Stan?”

There was a long silence while we all tried to figure out what to say about the unmentionable.

Finally Geoff broke the ice.

“Where the hell is Stan?”

Bent and I looked at each other, uncertain.

After a long silence, I looked into my Chardonnay, and said,
sotto voce
,“Yesterday, outside the HAMS office, Bent and I saw what looked like Stan's body in a dumpster.”

Pete recoiled. “And you didn't call the police?”

“We didn't know for sure!” said Bent. “It might have just been a maverick arm hanging out of a dumpster! Anybody's arm! Not Stan's!”

“Stop screaming!” I shouted. A drunk at a nearby table, the ex of way too many people in the industry, lifted his head and squinted at us.

“Breathe,” said Pete, extremely calmly.

We all took a few moments and breathed deeply in unison, just as we had done in so many acting classes so many decades ago, and smiled serenely at the drunk.

After a reasonable pause, I continued, very quietly and with a sweet smile zigzagging between my dimples.

“But there was the pinky ring. Definitely Stan's.”

“So what did you do?” asked Gretchen.

“I went to Mitchell's Bar and played the machines,” said Bent, without batting an eye. I admired his honesty.

“I went home and ate everything in the refrigerator,” I said. “Except the All-Bran and last year's fruitcake.”

Pete, Geoff and Gretchen nodded. They understood.

I set down my wine glass, maybe a little too heavily.

“How are we going to find Stan's body?”

Pete's face crumpled in disbelief. “Why should we have to find his body?”

“Until his body shows up, I for one am going to be in a state of constant twitching,” I said. And it was true. I was twitching.

“Aw, Lu,” said Geoff, putting his arm around me. “You're just too sensitive.”

I scowled at him. “You're too sensitive” is the standard line that totally insensitive people use to manipulate and put down people who actually feel anything for other human beings. Geoff isn't insensitive, just glib.