Deadly Dues (21 page)

Later, I tried to forget the look on Hal Shapiro's face. While Mitzi had stared at him, agog, he had said, “You didn't return my calls.”

“You called?” I said, dimpling in surprise, knowing that he had, and that I had deleted the messages.

“I'll try again,” he said, his face perfectly blank. Too blank. “Perhaps this isn't the best time. Here's my card.”

He propped his card on the hood of the Sunfire, being careful not to get too near me.

Then he had backed up a few steps, as if retreating from an unearthly vision, and had turned and slid into his car, a natty little red Camry. He looked strange, as if his face were breaking into a jigsaw puzzle. As he started his car and pulled away, I got a good look at him. His face was bright red, broken into ten million little wrinkles. This made him look quite unattractive, which was a great relief to me. Then he had opened his mouth, and it looked as if he were roaring with laughter.

Of course I was mistaken. He was probably just having an allergy attack.

• • •

Mitzi and I met at my condo. I had lowered my smelly self onto the plastic sheets in my Sunfire and driven home, my head ducked low behind the steering wheel, praying that nobody would point at me at intersections, squealing, “Doggie Doggie Bow Wow!”

Once I was in my driveway, I spread the plastic sheets on the ground and peeled off my chemical layered look. I threw everything but the boots into the pile, hoping no vigilant neighbours were watching. I pushed it all into the black garbage bag I had stashed by my driveway.

I was still in my jeans and T-shirt, and they smelled only a little bit. I think. I was wearing the helmet because it had sentimental value and, being metal, probably hadn't picked up the smell.

Mitzi stood back on the walk, a few feet behind my car, and played with her BlackBerry. I knew it was a ploy to pretend she didn't know me.

I sighed and trudged up the path. Mitzi followed me, grunting a bit, either in exasperation or because my walk was on a slight slope. At the condo doorstep, I leaned over and pulled off my boots, leaving the handkerchief inside the right one. I didn't want to touch it until I put on rubber gloves again.

“I need a bath,” I said as I opened the door. I put the boots on the mat beside the door. “Find yourself some tea or a glass of something.”

“I vote for a glass of something. Have a nice long bath,” she said earnestly, turning her head away, which I tried not to take personally.

I dragged myself up the stairs, leaving little trails of goo and gum wrappers on the steps, stuff that had found its way inside my protective clothing
. Oh, why couldn't I afford Nora anymore? Where were my royalties? Why did the most gorgeous man I had seen since the Lexus commercial shoot have to see me this way?

But as I turned the corner toward the bathroom I thought, I probably don't look that bad. Some girls look good in plastic.

I glanced in the mirror in the bathroom and emitted a shriek that bested the one I had emitted when I was being bumped off in that independent horror film,
Petrified Party Girls from Pluto
.

“Lu! Lu!” I heard Mitzi drop something and heave herself toward the stairs. If she tried to make them, I might have to call 9-1-1 again and I didn't want anybody seeing me looking like this.

“It's okay, Mitzi! I just looked in the mirror.”

There was a pause. I heard her breathing heavily at the bottom of the steps.

“Big mistake.” I heard her walk back to the kitchen.

I turned my back on the odious mirror and stripped off my layers of scented clothing, jumbling them into the laundry hamper.

When I crawled downstairs, clad in a pair of maroon sleep pants and a pink T-shirt that said,
“
Dinner Theatre. Eat it!” I found Mitzi in my downstairs den, intensely working the keys on her BlackBerry.

“Mitzi?”

Mitzi jumped, pushed a few keys and slammed the BlackBerry back into its case, dropping it by her bag near my laptop. It was rare for Mitzi to look or feel guilty about anything, so the expression on her face puzzled me.

“Hey, Lu, how do you feel?”

I looked at her blankly. Mitzi was my long-time agent, protector and best friend.

She pushed her chair back and hauled herself onto her wobbly heels, managing to keep her balance, malgré tout.

“Just checking my messages.”

I took a moment, and then said, “Let's have that drink.”

But inside my rumbling heart, I was wondering why Mitzi was so skittish.

After some grumbling, Mitzi helped me move the now odious love-seat onto the back patio.

“You mean a guy really died on this ton of upholstery?” she huffed as she dragged her end of it. I was doing most of the front-end work, so I didn't see why she was making such a big deal out of it.

“Mitzi, I don't want to talk about it.”

“Did he do the death rattle and the whole thing?”

“Mitzi! Let it go! I don't want to relive this! You weren't there! I was! It was awful!”

We had reached the patio and let the loveseat thump onto the wooden boards.

“But did he really die? Right on top of you?”

She stopped and stared at me.

“Lu, don't look like that. Just take a few breaths. I'm sorry.”

Mitzi looked good and guilty. And she should have. Mitzi isn't the affectionate sort. She shakes hands like a stevedore. (I have learned Never Ever to shake her hand or I end up wearing a splint for three months.) She is not a cuddly sort of gal, no matter how many pillowy pounds she is packing.

Mitzi determinedly closed her peach Lancôme lips and looked away.

“I'm sorry, Lu. Sometimes I get carried away. I know this has been rough for you.”

I nodded and slammed the patio doors shut behind us. Mitzi and I settled into a drink and rehash.

“But you know, given how things are going, you could maybe take advantage of this to launch a new career.”

I froze.

“What new career?”

She stretched her pudgy arms upward, looking up at the stars, which were really just the decorations on my kitchen ceiling, while the cursed loveseat sneered at us from the patio. I quickly closed the blinds so I wouldn't have to look at it.

“Think about it! Talk shows! Tell-all memoirs! Maybe your story as a death row survivor!”

“Death row??? How did we get to death row? I am the one who was attacked, remember?”

She paused, frowning, her tiny little eyebrows working overtime under her wild curls.

“Oh yeah. Okay. Your story as a survivor of a drug-induced goth black magic cult attack.”

“Mitzi, he was an overweight guy who loved dogs and wanted to kill me.”

A pause.

“That could work, too.”

Later I closed the door behind Mitzi as she wobbled away, swearing that I still loved her and we would still have lunch at Clearwater Grill later that week, I leaned against my once reliable door.

The lies were unbearable. Actors are supposedly great liars. I was beginning to fear that I was a lousy liar. How on earth were the rest of the gang doing? What were we thinking, when we slunk out of the HAMS office and beat a path to Murphy's, instead of reporting the murder? Whose idea was it, anyway?

I couldn't keep track of what I was supposed to know and what I was supposed to not know. It was like being in a nightmare production of a French farce and never knowing your cues. All actors know this nightmare. You hear your cue, and you can't get to the stage in time. You spend hours in the nightmare, fighting through curtains and randy stagehands to finally reach the stage and be dishonoured under loud lights and ridicule. Of course this sometimes happens in real life, but it can be overcome by massive amounts of Scotch and the support of friends who have suffered through the same ordeal.

I fumbled with my phone and tried to decide who to call. I needed to talk to somebody, anybody. I closed my eyes and focused. Who? Gretchen? Supposedly an old friend, but becoming more and more like Ms. Havisham every day—and with a very weird personal ambience? Geoff, with his shaky moral barometer? Bent, who scared everybody, including me? Pete, with his overwhelming sadness and great baking?

No-brainer. Of course it was Pete I would call. Cookies and comfort. What a combo. Nobody who baked could be a criminal.

As I turned on my cell phone, it suddenly shrieked. So did I. I dropped it, then grabbed it, and checked the caller ID. Unknown number.

I stared at it for a few moments, wondering if it was a call from the Cayman Islands offering me a great investment opportunity, or if it was a person of interest.

Curiosity won, and I punched in.

“Hello?”

“Lu?”

It was Ryga.

“Sort of.” Darn, my voice was a little wobbly.

I heard him sigh.

“What's happened now?”

I could hear exasperation in his voice, as if I invited mishap. Excuse me. I was a famous person until recently, and I had no need to invite disaster. It had just happened. No disasters had ever happened to me before, except when Moira Wickham had sicced her terrier on me in her dressing room because of a misunderstanding over her much younger boyfriend. She apologized later and bought me a new outfit.

“Nothing!” I shouted.

A long pause.

“Right. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

“Nothing happened,” I said, looking at Ryga with the wide-eyed innocent gaze that had got me the part in the TV movie about the doll killers.

“If nothing happened,” he said, inspecting me over the rim of the Mickey Mouse mug into which I had thrown some hot chocolate granules and some microwaved water, “then why are you so pale?”

“I have a lot on my mind. And my dog is missing.”

I noticed lines around his eyes and mouth, and realized that he might be overworked. Surely not on the Lulu/gnome case. What difference did it make to him? Zonko was probably just another random home invasion in his records.

I wondered why he was visiting me after hours. Was this usual for detectives? I had no idea. I had to squelch a dimple. Perhaps I could emerge from all this gore and stress with another man on my list of possible dinner dates. (Although I had to admit to myself that this nadir in my life was not the best of times to embark on any new relationships. Low self-esteem, however temporary, is never sexy or appealing. Neither is a constant desperation about money, although I tried to hide it.)

I had drifted off into a meditation on whether I had an aura of financial worry, and what colour this aura might be to the enlightened few who could see it, when I noticed Ryga looking at me with a pained expression.

I knew that expression. It usually meant a man was about to make an important declaration, often of a romantic nature. But Ryga and I barely knew each other. Was he going to ask me out? If so, he had lousy timing.

“Lulu,” he said, ponderously.

This was good, I thought. Ponderous is good. It means great thought is attached to the words that would follow. And I now knew what those words were going to be—something along the lines of my charisma, irresistible charm and compelling, incandescent eyes.

His hesitation was intriguing.

I wondered what was coming next . . . He is hopelessly bewitched by me, but has to warn me that he has a rare and incurable ailment? He is totally kosher? His parents have an unreasonable prejudice against artists and actors? He is in debt to the Mob?

I drifted off into another meditation on the imaginative overtures I had received over the years from lovelorn men, including several celebrities whose photos I see regularly on magazine covers at the supermarket, while counting out the dollars for Horatio's dog food.

“I need to wrap up this case as soon as possible so Angela and I can prep for our engagement party.”

“Oh.” I was thrilled that I managed to say that word with such pleased surprise, as if I were perfectly delighted at this piece of good news. Maybe a little gurgle might have come through, but I am sure he didn't notice.