Deadly Dues (6 page)

Finally, I rolled him off my somewhat flattened body. (I briefly wondered if this would work as a weight-loss technique, then decided it would never be popular). He landed on the floor with a thud that must have registered on the Richter scale. Where was Mrs. Lauterman when I needed her? Something else hit the floor, too. The garden gnome rolled around the carpet and ended up two inches from my Sylvac jardinière. (Four dollars, Saint Martin's rummage sale.)

I lay for a few long minutes, catching my breath and thinking that garden gnomes were a great thing after all, if they could haul themselves out of the gully, up the walk and into my condo and save my life. Then I rethought that last premise. Okay, if garden gnomes generally don't travel by themselves, then somebody must have picked it up, come in the front door, and bashed Mr. Size Twenty on the head.

I looked around the room. The front door was open, and I could see the night sky and a few bushes.
Damn.
Horatio must have run out the door. I hoped he was just under the Mortons' window, across the street, inhaling the garlic from the pizza they ordered almost every night. It wasn't like him to take off like that.

Then my heart started pounding again. Mr. Size Twenty wasn't going to stay out forever. When he came to, it would be same old, same old: foot on stomach, hand on throat, corny dialogue. I scrambled up from the couch, promptly tripped over his foot and fell facedown on the carpet. Lousy balance, between the wine, the shocks, the near asphyxiation. Nothing damaged but my dignity, but then, did it have much further to fall? I got to my knees and tried to crawl away from the gigantic lump. I pushed my foot into his side, and was relieved when he didn't stir. He must have knocked over my wine, because my foot got wet.

I turned around and looked back at him. There was a red ooze under his head, and that's what was making my Enzo loafers (three dollars at Sally Ann, what a find) sticky.

I crawled over to the Sylvac jardinière and was sick. Then I called 9-1-1.

I was lying on my kitchen floor, with a bag of frozen peas on my head. The crew from the police department were in my living room, doing all the official things, and I had a killer headache. I was pretty sure none of them would ever be in a position to cast me in a commercial or film, so I lay on my floor with veggies on my head and tried to relax. The noises from the living room were not comforting. The zip of the body bag was particularly distasteful. The heart-rending groans of the men who had to hoist the remains of Mr. Size Twenty weren't happy either. They would all be seeing their chiropractors soon, no doubt. Damn, my friend Lisa was a wonderful chiropractor. I should have handed out her card.

As I was musing on this, I noticed something beside my left ear. I turned slightly, trying not to dislodge the frozen peas. It was a loafer, showing years of wear, but with the appealing lustre of good leather. It appeared to be attached to a body that was sitting on one of my kitchen chairs.

I looked at the sock next. It had that nice soft Lauren look, but maybe it was a cheaper version. Still looked great. And no smell, which is what usually happens when the socks of unknown men are anywhere near your face. Not that this happens to me often. Then I contemplated the slacks. They were good. Couldn't get a handle on the maker. I frowned slightly and tried to sort through the names of the designers in my mental file.

“Ms. Malone?”

Ms. I could have kissed him, whoever he was. At least it wasn't a ma'am.

I looked up at the rest of him, as he sat on my kitchen chair—the corduroy sports jacket and the crisp cotton shirt with the tie. The face was a lived-in sort of face, which is infinitely preferable to a face where nobody is home. Unfortunately, it was also a forbidding face. Brown hair mixed with grey streaks, stylishly unkempt. Hmmm. Entirely too stylish a man for my tastes. I had moved to authentic. No, cancel that, I had moved toward non-existent.

I guess I had been in some mild form of shock, because when the police officers had arrived, I hadn't made much sense. I vaguely recalled a melodramatic babble that ranged from desperate wails for Horatio to repeated requests for lip gloss. They had banished me to the kitchen, to my immense relief. I was still clutching a business card one had pressed on me—something about a cleanup crew. Didn't the police do their own cleaning?

“I'm Detective Ryga,” he said. “I have a few questions. First—we need to confirm your name . . .”

Oh, groan. Here it was. Every idiot in the world wanted to know if I was Lulu Malone of Bow Wow Dog Food fame. I had been happy to answer those questions when I was still making money from that stuff. Now that I was cut off from that particular food line, my fuse was shorter.

“Doggie Doggie Bow Wow” I crooned from the floor, sarcastically. “There. Satisfied?”

There was a long moment while he looked at me sombrely. I assumed it was the fond memory of those unforgettable commercials, which everybody in Western civilization (and a few in Afghanistan) had seen. He continued to look at me.

I sighed. One more time.

“Doggie Doggie Bow Wow,” I said, then closed my eyes.

“Will that do?” I asked, very weary and bored with being once famous.

“No,” he said calmly. “I just need your full name. Is Lulu short for Louise?”

I opened one eye and looked up at him.

Had this bozo never seen any of my commercials?

“Yes. You mean you don't know who I am?” I said, weakly, from my disadvantaged position.

There was a pause.

“Am I supposed to?”

I sighed.
Sic transit gloria mundi
. I loved to complain about people recognizing me, but I was annoyed that he did not.

“You don't watch television, I gather,” I said.

“Yes, I do,” he said, very politely

“Yeah, wrestling, I bet,” I sighed. “You obviously never saw any of my commercials.”

“I guess not,” he said. “I only watch PBS.”

I glared at him.

We struggled through my essential information, and I closed my eyes again.

“Could you tell me what happened here tonight?”

So I told him exactly what had happened, a very well rendered and accurate blow-by-blow account, except that I, of course, excluded any mention of the earlier events of the evening or Geoff's visit. And I omitted Stan Pope's name entirely from the dramatic dialogue as I was being choked. I didn't want to invite any linking of my name to Stan's.

He listened quietly, writing in his notebook. From my horizontal position, I was able to peek up from under the bag of peas and notice that he wasn't wearing a wedding band.
Lu, stop that. Good grief, that is so old. Cosmopolitan women do not look for wedding bands. And sensible women never do so after a murder.

He looked down from his notes and viewed me seriously.

“What do you think this person wanted?”

“I have no idea,” I said truthfully.

He continued to study me.

“About the garden gnome,” he said, consulting his notes. “Where do you usually keep it?”

My headache was beginning to disappear, and I took the peas from my head and discreetly raised my sweater so that I could put the bag on my stomach, which was beginning to hurt a lot more than my head. I was going to have a lovely bruise there, which was fine, as nobody but my doctor and my alterationist had seen my stomach in nearly a year.

“Outside the front door,” I said automatically, fitting the pea bag under my sweater.

“There was some debris on the gnome, water and grass that indicate that it might have been lying in the gully at the end of your walk,” he said. “Can you explain that?”

“Nooooooo!” I wailed, suddenly reminded that somebody had grabbed the gnome and bashed in Mr. Size Twenty's head while he was on top of me, an image that might fade from my mind in a decade or three.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course not. You try having somebody the size of a buffalo stand on your stomach and see how great you feel!” I spoke a little more sharply than I intended, but, hey, I figured I was allowed, under the circumstances.

He was staring at my sweater, in what I momentarily thought (hopefully) might be a lustful way. I looked down, and saw a giant black footprint on my best cashmere sweater (two dollars at Sally Ann, never worn). Oh, groan. The Size Twenty Creep (not to speak ill of the dear departed) must have stepped in tar on his way to my condo.

“No question about the foot on your stomach,” he said. I was reminded of how I always felt when an interviewer was about to drop the bombshell question about the cultural and social meaning of my commercials. Although, to be fair, he wasn't unpleasant, just businesslike. I fleetingly wondered if he liked his job. He looked exhausted.

“It was definitely there,” I said, wincing slightly, as I balanced the pea bag, giving myself a charming maternity shape.

“The gnome?” he asked again.

“Oh—well . . .” Damn. I was supposed to be good liar. I tried to decide whether to play dumb or reveal Geoff's visit.

Ryga continued to watch me. I must have looked pathetic. Or desperate. Or—the very worst possibility—guilty.

I sat up, groaning, letting the bag of now not-so-frozen peas slide from under my sweater and onto the floor. Oh, if only I could think. What I would give for a distraction right now.

Thank you, universe. Two officers appeared in the kitchen doorway, One looked barely out of his teens, with bright red hair and energy to match; the other was older, solid, and looked as if his very favourite food was extra large pizza.

“Hey, Chaz,” said the older one. “We're finished here.”

“Have you seen my dog?” I asked.

They looked at me blankly, then froze. Their mouths dropped open, and they turned to each other as if their lotto numbers had suddenly appeared in front of them.

They looked back at me, and at each other, and then in unison sang, “Doggie Doggie Bow Wow!” They were really off-key, but it was darned cute. And very satisfying. The look on Ryga's face was something I could dine out on for the next year. If I lived that long.

I tried very hard not to look superior, vindicated, famous and adorably innocent all at once.

• • •

This state of superiority faded after two hours of questioning, waiting, then more questioning. By then, Ryga had closed his notebook, helped me to my wobbly feet, asked me if there was anybody I would like him to call (absolutely not—the top names on my speed-dial were all people who might babble about bodies), and called a cleanup crew on my behalf, as my hands were shaking too much to dial the phone. As I was about to close the door behind him and the last of the police officers, Mrs. Lauterman, wearing an amazing fluffy housecoat the colours of Neapolitan ice cream, careened across the lawn with her walker, told him what a nice girl I was, and demanded his card. Bless her. I waved at her, knowing she would want the literally gory details of my evening.

I scanned the street, looking for something big, white and furry, and started getting short of breath when I realized that Horatio was nowhere to be seen.

A battered van pulled up in front of my condo, and a skinny guy in his twenties and a thirty-ish woman built like a fire hydrant got out and started hauling mysterious-looking implements and appliances from the back.

The cleanup crew, whew. They made night calls. I waved Mrs. Lauterman a
good night, sleep tight
, and followed them inside.

“This isn't so bad,” said the woman, after a quick look at the living room.

“Yeah,” said the skinny guy. “You should have seen our last gig. It was a gang shooting in a restaurant kitchen. You couldn't tell the lasagna from—”

“Stop right there!” I said, maybe a little loudly. I dragged out my poor, overloaded credit card from my bag and shoved it at the woman, who seemed to be in charge. “You can bill that card, but make it as cheap as possible, or it will bounce.”

“Credit cards don't bounce. They get declined,” she said.

“Either way, if you want to get paid, make it cheap.”

“Now that's encouraging,” she said.

“Shouldn't take us more than an hour,” he said.

“Fine. Lock the door behind you. I need to find my dog.”

I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and escaped out the door.

As I drove down Rockvale Drive, I scanned the yards for Horatio. It was futile, but I was worried about him. And the thought of staying in the condo without him was unbearable.

Once I reached Cameron Avenue, my breathing was almost back to normal. No Horatio, but lots of dangerously alluring all-night donut shops.
Lu, stop that.

I called Pete from my cell phone. He answered mid-ring. God, the guy must be desperate to hear from Sally. He should play it a little more cool. No, maybe not, I decided. What's wrong with letting people know you need them?

“Yes?” he said, and the yearning in his voice made me ache inside for him.