Deadly Dues (32 page)

“Those boots cost me two hundred dollars on eBay,” wailed Mitzi from her deflated position.

“Do you have any hiking boots? Runners? Nikes? Anything else with laces?”

I knew the answer to that question. No way would Mitzi have anything ugly in her shoe closet.

“But those are Mary Quant—”

I gave her the slow look I had perfected as the noir femme fatale (dimples and all) in the Raymond Chandler remake, and she pressed her lips together immediately.

I trussed up Sherilyn until she looked like an overweight rubber chicken with bad colouring and pink lipstick. Mitzi leaned against the shoe rack and rested, breathing heavily. She was beginning to doze off again.

“Mitzi!” I shook her shoulder.

Her eyes opened and almost focused on me.

“You and Stan?”

“I did it for you, Lu. I thought if I kept him dangling—”
Damn, I wish people would stop using that word.
“—that I could make him tell me where your money was. I finally realized it wouldn't work. But he wouldn't give up. Just too irresistible, I guess.”

I knew she was talking about herself, not Stan, as I had heard from several dozen men just how irresistible Mitzi was once she got rolling. Mitzi's head tilted back and she segued into a little snore, even more burbling than the last edition. I wondered if she ever did this around the several dozen men who found her irresistible.

I leaned down to listen to her breathing, reassuring myself that she was just groggy and not in any danger of kicking the bucket, leaving me alone with the trussed-up Sherilyn.

I looked for my cell, and—
oh no, not again
—saw a shoe. A very unattractive shoe. It was a man's runner, stained, worn, somewhat smelly—
I am cursed with an excellent olfactory sense
—and a little pudgy. My gaze travelled up from the shoe to the worn jeans with flour stains, then to the faded lumberjack jacket, and finally to what was no surprise, Pete's face.

“Thank goodness you're here—” and then I stopped. Maybe this wasn't cause for celebration.

I felt Mitzi come back to awareness and stiffen beside me. I imagined we were both trying not to think what we were thinking. Pete. Wonderful, sensitive, sombre Pete. And now, maybe, Pete the murderer. A terrible thought, when you have known a person for years. And especially when you are with him in a shoe closet, and he is standing between you and the door.

I stood up. Mitzi tried, but immediately shimmied down the wall to a prone position, as if she had fainted. I tried to be charitable and assume it was due to the hot chocolate, but part of me remembered the time a tattooed biker had trapped us in an alley and she had dived into a garbage bin in a faint, leaving me to deal with him alone. Luckily, I had just come from a vocal workshop and my scream had attracted every cop within twenty blocks. Sometimes, she was as good as a Brinks guard in a crisis. But other times, like now, she would conveniently take a nap.

I settled Mitzi against a rack of Kenzie wedges, then slowly turned to face Pete.

“It's not what you think, Lu.”

“I don't know what I think,” I said. Except that I was thinking that I wished I were anywhere else in the world, even on the worst blind date ever, or a karaoke bar, or a wrestling match. Anywhere but here.

“Stan ruined my life,” said Pete quietly.

I couldn't disagree.

“Sally's met a guy, an investment banker. She's moving to Chicago with him. With the kids.” He paused. “My kids are going to grow up in Chicago.” His voice broke.

I was sympathetic, but I was also trying, with my peripheral vision, to assess the situation. I was the last dame standing. Both Mitzi and Sherilyn were on the ground, and I was the only target. And those damned lumpy bodies were going to make it difficult to escape, unless I could manage the sort of balletic leap I had perfected twenty years ago in the private eye series. Mitzi's eyes were closed, and she was breathing the deep, slow rhythm of the zoned out. Sherilyn's eyes opened for a moment, and then she drifted off again.

Pete continued to look at me sombrely.

“I went to his office that night,” said Pete. “Early. Before we were supposed to arrive. I wanted to know what he wanted. He was going to apologize. Apologize.” And his voice broke again.

“A little late. Way too late.”

I nodded. I was in total agreement, after two years of being a flinger of fries, but Pete ignored me.

“I hated him for what he had done to me and Sally, and to Gretchen, Bent and Geoff.”

He paused.

“And you, Lu. It cut me up to see you going downhill, sinking deeper and deeper into depression, buying dog food for Horatio instead of groceries for yourself, working at that trans fat hell of a place, eating macaroni and cheese, until finally I could see you turning into a tub of lard, asking for handouts on the street.”

I thought he was going over the top with this, especially since I had prided myself on always keeping a cheery face, an arsenal of dimples and a decent weight, no matter what. Although perhaps there was a teeny, tiny grain of truth in it.

Furthermore, McDonald's had become vigilant about trans fat, and I felt I should set the record straight on that, as a loyal ex-employee. But before I could say anything, Pete sighed and continued.

“I wanted to kill him. And I tried.”

I held my breath.
Don't let it be so.

“But I couldn't do it.”

I let out my breath. Pete was still Pete, the friend I trusted and knew was good to the core.

“I tried to strangle him. But ever since that shoot in Alaska, my grip hasn't been the same. It was the frostbite.”

I shut my eyes.
So much for Pollyannaland.

“I tried and tried, but he just passed out on his desk.” Pete said. “To tell you the truth, I guess I was a little grateful. I'm just not cut out to be a killer.”

I tried to forget the fact that he would have been a killer, except for the good fortune of casting.

He took a step toward me. I pulled back. “But Lu, what happens now? Are you going to tell anybody?” He was so intense, it was scary.

Maybe I overreacted, but my fingers grabbed the bottle of Snake Venom perfume in my shoulder bag. I pulled it out and sprayed him in the face.

He screamed. “Oh my God!” He collapsed on the floor of the shoe closet and writhed around, gasping, clutching his chest. I felt terrible, but also knew I had saved my life—and Mitzi's—by spraying him.

“Oh, hell. Oh, damn.”

He was writhing so much that I knelt beside him to make sure I hadn't given him a lethal dose.

“Pete! Pete! It's only perfume.”

“I thought you were my friend.” He choked and hacked for another moment.

“I was, until you tried to kill me.”

“Are you crazy? I saved your life,” he wheezed. “Who do you think knocked out that thug with your garden gnome?”

I wished I could have taken back all that perfume spray.

“You did? You did the garden gnome?”

He hacked some more. And spewed some fumes back into my face, which nearly knocked me out in turn.

“I followed you home, saw Geoff leave and thought you were okay. Your neighbours had just had a pizza delivered, and the garlic smell was driving me crazy. But just as I was about to drive away, I saw this big shadow in your doorway, like a Sasquatch.”

He wheezed some more.

“I didn't know if you knew him or what. Then Horatio came running out. He threw himself against my car door, and when I opened it, he practically dragged me to your door. Then he smelled the pizza, I guess, and ran across the street. When I saw that guy choking you, I didn't know what to do. Then I remembered that gawdawful garden gnome, and ran and got it and banged him on the head. Knocked him out good.”

“Pete. You killed him.”

“I know,” he moaned. “Don't you think I feel lousy about that?”

I was mostly on Pete's side, as I noted that if he hadn't killed Zonko, I would not be around right now, carrying on illuminating discussions in Mitzi's shoe closet.

“I had a bad feeling. I went to your condo to make sure you were okay. But you drove right past me, as I was pulling into the cul-de-sac, and when I saw your face, and the way your dimples were vibrating, I pulled a U-turn and followed you here. Parking is a bitch in this neighbourhood. How did you find that spot between the the hydrant and Mercedes? Do you know where I had to park?”

This was a long speech for somebody who had just inhaled Snake Venom, and Pete fell into another bout of wheezing.

As he did, I saw a very pointed shoe beside Pete's head. It was a black patent stiletto. Not a knife. A shoe. My eyes travelled up the tight black jeans, the black sweater and tailored jacket to Gretchen's pointed little face.

“Sherilyn showed up with a knife,” I wailed at her. “She was going to kill me and Mitzi. She wanted that stupid key Stan gave me in the handkerchief. I don't even know what to do with it. We have to wake up Mitzi and get Pete to a window.”

I suddenly realized that Gretchen wasn't contributing much to the conversation, not that she usually did, but you would have thought that she could have whispered a few exclamations of horror or sympathy.

“I do,” she whispered.

“Do what?”

“Know where the key fits. It's for Stan's safety deposit box at City Trust.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Now all we have to do is go to the bank and see if they'll let us into the box.”

“Lu, there's no ‘we' in this,” said Gretchen. It was only then that I noticed she was holding a tiny, purple, pointed revolver.

“I didn't know they made guns that elegant,” I said brightly, my years of improv kicking in. “It really suits you. Did it come in any other colours?”

Usually one was able to distract Gretchen with fashion talk, but she wasn't blinking.

“There was a dark green, but it was really depressing,” she whispered. “I had to settle for this.”

I beat a path in reverse through Mitzi, Sherilyn and Pete, and backed up into a rack of Stuart Weitzman pumps in every colour of the rainbow. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big purple ball rolling—
no, crawling
—around the corner of the Steve Madden and Kenneth Cole shelves. Mitzi was leaving me alone with Gretchen.

Sherilyn's eyes popped open and she gasped.

“Gretchen, I told you to stay away. I said I'd handle this.”

Was that real concern in Sherilyn's voice? Impossible. I was hallucinating.

“Oh, Sherilyn,” said Gretchen sadly. “Please.”

Pete was still on the floor, wheezing. He tried to get up, but couldn't. He grabbed at Gretchen's ankle bone, but it was so sharp that he couldn't get a grip without cutting himself. She kicked his hand away with her pointed toe.

“Ouch! Gretchen!” He was hurt and reproachful. After all, he had fixed her broken window and even chased a weasel out of her house once. He had been a loyal friend, even though he had never tackled the bats.

She barely looked at him.

“I need that key, Lu. I have to get into that box before anybody else.”

“Why? What's in there?”

“Photos. Photos of me and Sherilyn.”

“Not your family-type photos?” I was trying to be breezy and sophisticated in my last moments.

“You are such a dope,” muttered Sherilyn. I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or Gretchen, but I didn't have time to get offended again.

“If anybody saw those photos, I'd lose my house. My parents left a clause in their will about public nudity,” she whispered sadly. “They hated that I was an actor, and they wanted to make sure I never disgraced them or the family name with any nude scenes.”

“But who would show the photos to anybody?”

Gretchen turned slowly to look at Sherilyn, who (and I shouldn't be mean) looked extremely unattractive in her trussed-chicken, red-faced mode.

“I told you,” said Sherilyn, plaintively. “I never would.”

If I were Gretchen, I wouldn't know whether or not to believe her either, because, realistically, Gretchen was the one holding the sweet little purple gun, and Sherilyn was the one looking like a chicken ready for the roaster.

“You sent Zonko to my condo,” I said, belatedly playing catch-up.

“Zonko?” she looked puzzled. “Oh,” she said after a pause. “I called him Godzilla. I guess Zonko was his real name. I paid him in cash, so I never wrote a cheque. It's nice when you write cheques, because then you have people's names in your cheque register, and you can remember them better.”

She looked sort of vague, and I could see her going off into a Gretchen moment.

“And then?”

“I got him to move Stan's body and clean up the desk, too, to buy me time to find the key before anybody else got into the safety deposit box.”

Her face acquired a few more bitter little pointy lines. “Do you know he charged me extra to put Stan into that dumpster? What was it for him to take a little detour and heave Stan in there? Do you think he belongs to a union?”

“Gee, Gretchen, I don't know,” I said, very nicely. “Probably not. But it's something I have wondered about myself. There must be a lot of danger pay involved.”

“Yeah, good thing I told him to come back for the money after he went to your place.”

“When did you tell him to do that?”

“Oh, right after you drove me home. I called him at his mother's and told him to take care of Stan and go to your condo and get that key from you.” She sounded proud of herself.

“He tried to kill me.” I was hurt and astounded. How could Gretchen have done that? I had been on call for her after every breakup and failed audition, boosting her spirits. And she had sent a thug to kill me?

“He did?” she said, sounding vaguely surprised. “He was only supposed to shove you around until you gave him the key.”