Deadly Dues (17 page)

Sherilyn resented any woman with education and a semblance of manners. She was vicious to Ramona, a gentle and cultivated casting director who was revered by actors. Why? Because Ramona treated people with respect, and was respected in return?

Sherilyn had embarked on a smear campaign against Lisette, a feisty, outspoken director who had dared to say what nobody else would: that Sherilyn relied on Stan for her career. Lisette was difficult, vibrant and smart, with impressive credits, including an Emmy award–winning TV movie, but she was now on Sherilyn's hit list. Lisette didn't take any guff from anybody, including Sherilyn, and wasn't overly concerned. She said as much to me, over drinks at a wrap party. “Lu, watch your back. You're smart and you have style. Sherilyn will try to get you, trust me.”

Then, once she had aired her opinion of Sherilyn to all and sundry, any project with Lisette attached suddenly had major contractual problems with the actors cast. Stan found amazing ways to undermine any shoot have didn't have a Sherilyn benefit. No extra muffin on meal break? Penalty! Only one loo in each trailer? Penalty! One minute overtime? The entire production was jeopardized. On the other hand, if any of Sherilyn's films went into overtime, forgot wardrobe calls or were late with royalties, Stan seemed to take an ethical snooze.

All of us encounter unpleasant people on occasion. The challenge is to defuse or diffuse their impact on one's life. Sherilyn Carp was one of the truly poisonous personalities I had encountered in my years in the business. Sometimes I wondered why she had so little humanity. Had she been so deeply hurt or abused in her past that she had become incapable of kindness or compassion towards anybody? What sort of unhealthy power did she have over Gretchen and Stan?

My face started to hurt all over again, thinking of this.

I tried to relax into evolved thoughts.
Om. Om.
No luck. I snuggled back into my pillows and reminded myself that I should be grateful that she hadn't been carrying a laptop.
Om. Om.

The doorbell rang. A further annoyance. Who wanted to kill me now?

I stumbled down the stairs, grabbed the rolling pin at the bottom (I never bake, but I suddenly viewed my grandmother's rolling pin in a new light, as a major security tool, after the events of the Zonko night), and went to the door.

I now had enough of a sense of self-preservation to check the peephole, and what I saw was Ryga's face.
Sigh
. I reluctantly unlocked the door and opened it.

He looked at my Winnie the Pooh pajamas and then at my black eye. And then at the rolling pin.

“Hot date?”

“I lead a very exciting life,” I said. I didn't move back to invite him in. I was hoping my body language and the rolling pin said it all.

“Yes.”

An awkward silence (with, alas, absolutely no sexual undercurrents) hung between us for an interminable minute.

“I have a few questions,” he said. “But not about your intruder.”

Uh-oh. Not about your intruder.

I reluctantly opened the door further and followed him into the living room, where he carefully chose an arts and crafts chair (five dollars at a totally fabulous garage sale in Glendale) far from the plastic-covered loveseat on which Mr. Size Twenty had expired. I carefully seated myself on a lovely pine chair (three dollars at the same sale).

“Nice eye.”

“Thanks.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“You know Stan Pope?”

“Of course.”

I found myself clutching the Winnie images on my jammies in nervousness, then decided this wouldn't be a good idea when Ryga became interested in all the clutching.

“When did you last see him?”

Aha.
I was way ahead of him. I had thought this out. “At a reception at the Arts Club last week. He sneezed on me.”

He looked at me for a long moment.
What did he want from me? A confession?

Duh.

I hate it when people do this. But then, I am an actor. I know all the tricks, how, onstage, dragging out a moment makes it so much more important than it really is. (And how, in film, it quickly gets you fired, because of the vast amounts of money involved in film production, compared to the theatre.)

“Do you know Stan?” I asked, innocently. Before I could stop myself, the dimples came into play. Knee-jerk reaction when under stress.

Ryga stared at my dimples and sort of smiled.
Aha. Gotcha.

“His assistant reported that he hadn't been to work since Monday and that he wasn't answering his cell or e-mail. She was concerned.”

“Mmmmm.” I nodded neutrally. No point in pretending I would be in a state of worry over Stan.

“We checked his phone. He had made a number of calls on Monday evening, and one of them was to your number.”

“I didn't answer my phone Monday. I wanted to concentrate on the full moon meditation.” As soon as these idiotic words tumbled out of my mouth, I remembered that the full moon meditation had happened the week before, and I had missed it because of my shift at Big Mac's. Luckily, this guy wouldn't notice.

“The full moon meditation was last week.”

“Well, I was busy with something, because I remember getting his message too late.”

Stalemate.

Ha ha.
He can't prove I talked to Stan, instead of my answering machine. I had erased all messages, then reset the machine
. Ha ha ha. Sometimes, Lulu Malone has presence of mind beyond her wildest dreams.
I tried to cover my moment of glee, which, even as I felt it, I realized was entirely inappropriate, given that one human being (however nasty) was dead and another (even more nasty, being Zonko) was also dead. I was frazzled and scared.

“Ms. Malone,” he said, ponderously. So we were back to formality. This seriously reduced the attraction factor in our exchange. Which was a moot point, as the attraction factor appeared to be a repressed element, solely in my department. I have never been attracted to ponderous men, and he was definitely growing more ponderous by the moment. Perhaps this was a good thing, as I had no time to engage in frivolous, and no doubt fruitless, fantasies about eccentrically attractive police detectives.

“Somebody was murdered in your home. I am surprised you aren't more concerned.”

I wanted to scream at him,
“I have other more important things on my mind! Like who killed Stan!''
But I couldn't say that. I had to keep pretending that I was a normal person, not an actor beleaguered by bodies.

I rallied.

“This guy died on top of me! Do you think this was a great experience for me?”

“Everybody reacts in different ways,” he nodded.

“And, worse, Horatio has disappeared.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“My dog.”

“Oh yeah, big fellow. I noticed the photos on the refrigerator door.”

“And somebody is trying to kill me.”

“No kidding,” he said.

Such a comedian.

“You don't understand. There was the big guy in my condo. With bad breath. And then yesterday, at the shoe store, somebody tried to strangle me.”

“At a shoe store?” he said, looking as if he didn't believe anybody committed crimes at a shoe store.

“I was in the side doorway and then somebody threw something over my head. I kicked him where it hurt—”

He winced.

“—and then he ran away. And the shoe store manager asked Mitzi and me to leave. It was humiliating.”

• • •

Ryga left, after many admonishments about locking my doors. I shut the door with relief—and then apprehension. I was on my own.

Without Horatio around as an admittedly undependable security alarm, I rigged the patio doors with piles of thrift store crockery. (No way was I going to put out my Susie Cooper. Instead, I pulled out the Made in Japan stuff, which although not highly valuable, still had some worth.) I balanced the cups and saucers, creamers and sugar bowls, with their white background and brilliant colours, in artistic heaps, so that anybody forcing the doors would make enough noise to raise me—and Mrs. Lauterman.

After that, I crawled up the stairs and ran a lavender salt bath, then abandoned my Pooh wardrobe for a clean sleep shirt, and crawled into bed.

• • •

I was awakened by the sound of crashing crockery. I entertained the thought of just pulling the covers over my head, then realized this wasn't sensible. I grabbed Grandma's rolling pin, which at least I had had the foresight to put on the floor by my bed.
Why the heck couldn't I have a Glock? Everybody in crime has a Glock! Why am I so deprived? All I have is a rolling pin!

I paused by my bedroom door, then felt my way to the top of the stairs. I really wanted to run back and hide under my bed, but I forced myself to keep going.

I tried to remember how my intrepid private eye, Dora Darling, had felt as she had confronted the baddies. I remembered my surge of bravery as I had embarked on the fight scenes in that long-ago series. Emotional recall,
yay
. I felt a surge of energy at the top of the stairs. I stepped down carefully, alert, making no noise in my bare feet. Perhaps it wasn't so great that I was wearing a Mickey Mouse sleep shirt, but I figured whoever had broken in wasn't going to be taking fashion notes. They were probably more interested in killing me.

Step by step, in the dark and the silence, I worked my way down the stairs. I figured the intruder was at a disadvantage. He (or she) didn't know my condo as well as I knew it. Or at least, that is what I told my pounding heart. The dark and the silence pressed in on me, even though all my senses were prickling. I wasn't really terrified. I was probably just shaking because I needed a sugar fix.

I felt like an idiot. The intruder probably had a gun or a knife. I had a rolling pin.

At the bottom of the steps, I paused and listened. I couldn't hear anything. No ragged breathing of the demented killer. No slow icy huffs of the psychopath. Why can't these people just come out with it and attack?

Be careful what you wish for. A rope dropped over my head and jerked back on my neck. It pulled me off balance, which led me to the brilliant conclusion that my killer—
correction: would-be killer, think positive
—was behind me.

I gagged. I couldn't get any air into my chest and reflected briefly on the roles I would never play, the shoes I would never wear and the garage sales I would never cruise, before remembering to heave up the rolling pin and swing it somewhere over my head onto what I hoped was the head of whoever was behind me.

Thank you, Grandma. The thing around my neck loosened, and I could breathe again. I leaned over and retched unproductively, happy to finally get some air into my lungs. Then I realized I shouldn't be lounging about, trying to breathe, and should be considering my safety. I whirled around, rolling pin in hand, and immediately tripped over a rolled up rug behind me.

Correction: not a rug.

I lay sprawled on the floor, disoriented, gasping, still clutching the rolling pin. I had landed on my left arm, and it hurt. At least it wasn't my nose. A face can only take so much unexpected harassment. Whatever I had tripped over wasn't moving. I stood up with much more energy and grace than I would have thought possible under the circumstances (all that boring yoga paid off) and squinted at the floor.

Finally, I had the sense to find the light switch by my shoulder, and flip it on.

A person was lying on my floor. It had a knitted cap pulled down over its head, a scrawny sort of build, a cheap polyester/cotton blend green-checked shirt, faded jeans, and dark blue Crocs on its feet. It seemed relatively masculine. Its chest was heaving slightly, with a little rasping noise. At least it was alive, so I wasn't a murderer.

He was still holding a rope in his hand, so I came to the brilliant conclusion that this pathetic creature was the same person who, thirty seconds before, had tried to strangle me.

Ethical dilemma. Part of me wanted to smack him with Grandma's rolling pin. The other part of me wanted to feed him chicken soup. The latter inclination lasted about two seconds. Then my first impulse took over, and it took all of my willpower not to pound him like a mound of pastry dough, flattening him into a nice pie crust.

What stopped me was my compassion, his pathetic appearance and my general unfamiliarity with the law.
Could I be charged with murder if I offed a home intruder? I had read about those hapless souls who had fought off an attacker, only to be sued by his or her family five years after the fact. How much money did I have in my union pension fund after Stan had tinkered with it? Enough to handle a rolling pin murder? No, I decided.
But I still held the pin aloft, waiting for Mr. Pipsqueak to wake up.

He opened his eyes, saw me with the rolling pin over my shoulder like Casey at the Bat, and started to tremble. His eyes filled with tears, which then spurted down his grubby cheeks as if his eyes were a leaky eavestrough.