Deadly Dues (9 page)

I found a brown rice casserole that I had made earlier in the week, and sat elegantly on the kitchen floor, my back against the fridge, eating the clumps of aging rice and veggies delicately with a sterling silver fork (fifty cents, Saint Michael's rummage sale, and I'm still looking for the rest of the set). It was cold, but still edible, which might have been overstating its virtues at this point in its career as a meal.

Forced at last to contemplate the day, which unfortunately also required some cursory thought on the events of the night before, I was not heartened. I, along with my pals, had found the definitely dead body of a man who had done evil things to each of us. We had fled the scene in a totally amateurish way, no matter how many detectives Pete and I had played. My heart began to pound at the thought of the police breaking down my door in the next few days, waving guns and threatening me, the famous Lu of Doggie Doggie Bow Wow, with prison and worse. What if they still used rubber pipes to interrogate people? What if they used cattle prods or worse? What if they took away my lipstick? I suddenly realized that I was chewing my so-called lunch at the speed of a buzz saw, and forced myself to slow down. Acid reflux is no picnic, and I didn't want to invite a visitation.

Then there was Mister Size Twenty, who had died on top of me. Who was this guy? What on earth did he think Stan had passed on to me, before he had passed on? Had he followed me home from the bar and waited until Geoff left? Did Mr. Size Twenty have a best friend, a wife, a mother? Would they miss him? What was he like when he wasn't trying to kill people? A tear rolled down my cheek and fell onto a piece of red pepper that I had just speared. The casserole needed salt anyway, and I popped it into my mouth and chewed solemnly. I was becoming overly maudlin if I was wasting a prime fifteen minutes of my life weeping over the brute who had tried to kill me last night.

The police, in the form of Ryga, would be crazy to think I was a suspect, but common sense can disappear momentarily in all professions. How on earth was I—although not svelte, still a relatively petite person—supposed to have clunked him on the head from my prone position? I suppose they didn't believe I was prone. If only Horatio were around to speak up for me.

And where was Horatio? Every now and again, despite city bylaws governing the roaming of dogs without a leash, he would get frisky and go out, looking for action. Although I had never done that myself, I understood that he was a boy dog, and boys just have to have fun. As long as he was careful. But, darn, I needed him now. I needed a hug, no matter how smelly the participant.

I wondered how much it would cost to print flyers. I missed Horatio. How does one look for a dog? Should I call the Boy Scouts? The Marines? The Army? The animal shelter? What if Horatio were imprisoned in a cell at the animal shelter, having to fend off the attentions of brazen poodles and chihuahuas? Oh, poor Horatio. I made a note to call the animal shelter.

I chewed down the last of the casserole, hoping it wouldn't kill me, but also noting that it appeared to be second or third on the list of potential killers, considering last night's events.

Then I got to the part I didn't want to think about. Who had beaned Mr. Size Twenty with the garden gnome? Could Geoff have come back? Unlikely. Geoff was basically a coward. He would have run to a phone and called the police (or maybe his pals at the
Daily Sun
) before taking any action on the scene. And even if he had, he would be taking centre stage, gloating and glowing to reporters, enjoying the glory of being a hero. If a friend had done it, surely he would have hung around for a few moments to see if I was all right. And if a stranger had done the deed, why didn't he bash my head in while he was at it? One-stop shopping for anybody with a murderous bent. Who else? Mrs. Lauterman? I couldn't imagine her getting her walker into my condo and out again so quickly. Although she was pretty energetic. That green hair had really perked her up. I discounted my other neighbours, who were infinitely boring and would have nothing to do with murders or rescues on general principle. Not when
Survivor
or
American Idol
were on television.

This was even more depressing. I devoted a few self-righteous minutes to cursing North American culture in general and agreeing with the H. L. Mencken quote about nobody ever going broke underestimating the taste of the American public. Having done that, I suddenly remembered that the Bow Wow Dog Food commercials, however adorable, might not necessarily have been a watershed event in North American culture, and I beat a quick critical retreat and decided that there was room for everything in North American culture, as long as it satisfied and enriched society. I thought that sounded pretty good, and grabbed a pen to jot it down, in case I could use it in a future grant application. I was somewhat long in the tooth for grant applications, but in my profession, you never knew when the perfect project might be ripe for a few thousand dollars from a benevolent foundation.

I took a break from my ruminations on potential grant-worthy projects to wonder just when my phone would start ringing with the news of the demise of Stan. I would have thought that great celebratory cackles would be emanating from everybody who knew him. And yet, nothing.

I called the number for the animal shelter and left a message, trying to sound sane and measured. I might have babbled a bit, but surely whoever checked the messages would understand.

Then I punched in Gretchen. Everybody called Gretchen. They loved to hear her whisper. It was almost as good as telephone sex. Except she only whispered about her stalled career. Plus, she was almost always at home, floating around in the spookiest house of all time.

After ten long rings, she answered. Her tiny little whisper was like a desperate vibration into the phone line.

“Hello?”

It was so unfair. Most men would probably have either fainted or leapt into their cars to rescue her (from something) after hearing that voice.

“It's Lu. Have you heard anything?”

“About what?”

I stared at the ceiling. She was still losing IQ points by the day.

“About you-know-who,” I said, very carefully.

There was a pause through which maybe Peter Fonda and twenty bikers could have driven.

“Oh,” she said faintly. “Him.”

“Gretchen, are you awake?” I shouted. “I am trying to carry on a conversation here. Remember last night?”

“Last night.” Another long pause. “I thought we weren't going to talk about that. It's so upsetting.”

She didn't sound upset. She sounded slightly inconvenienced.

I walked around the room rapidly, hoping it would calm me. Instead, it just made me more anxious to speed over to Gretchen's and shake her until she woke up.

“Hold that thought,” I said slowly. “I'll call Geoff and get back to you.”

I hung up, being careful to be gentle so as not to disturb Gretchen's delicate state of whisper, and punched in Geoff's number. After ten rings—
what was wrong with these people? They obviously were living half a life if they hadn't been nearly murdered by giant thugs with black masks
—his groggy voice moaned into the phone. Hungover, of course.

“Geoff, it's me. Lu.”

“Don't hit me again,” he whimpered. “And don't sic your neighbour on me.”

I breathed deeply for a few moments, trying to remember what Gus, my yoga instructor, had taught me so many years ago, before he was arrested for procurement. (I never got over that; it turned me against yoga for at least a decade.)

“Geoff,” I said. “Have you heard anything?”

Pause.

“About what?”

Was I the only person in this crowd with a brain to throw around? I was ready to consider giving up booze if this was what it did to a person.

I tried to speak nicely, but it was difficult when the steam was sizzling from between my extremely expensive crowns.

“Remember last night?” I said delicately. “Remember when we were all together and we found a certain person with a certain something in their—”

“Right!”

He cut me off with an anguish that was a nice balance between the theatrical and the truly panicked.

For a moment there was an uneasy silence, punctuated by our careful breathing.

“Don't you think—” I said, trying to phrase this in an appropriate and non-incriminating way, “—that by now, people would have gone into the office—”

“And then would have discovered the you-know-who on the you-know-what with the you-know-what in his you-know-whatever,” continued Geoff.

“Yeah,” I said. “Don't you think?”

Silence.

“Makes sense,” said Geoff.

I couldn't stand it any more. I shouted into the phone, even though this is an unkind thing to do, particularly to somebody who is hung–over. “So! Have you heard anything from anybody?”

“No!” Geoff shouted back. My ear hurt, but at least I finally had an answer to my supposedly simple question.

I grabbed the remote and clicked on the television to the news channel, hoping to find something on Stan. I muted it and grazed the local headline news. Decayed fish in the drinking water. Toxic fumes in the daycare centres. Reminded me of Stan. But no specific news on Stan.

“Geoff,” I said. “Shouldn't there be something on the news by now?”

“Why don't you call the office?” he said.

“Why don't you call the office?” I said.

“Because I'm scared of Lorraine,” he said.

“She has ethics,” I reminded him.

Lorraine was the only executive assistant at the HAMS office who had lasted more than a week. Most couldn't take more than two days of Stan's leers, lewd jokes and threats. But Lorraine had been there for over three years. She was in her early fifties and had left a career in the oil industry, and then a job in a stockbroker's office, for the more relaxing state of fending off calls from five hundred actors every day, while dealing with irate casting directors, aggrieved producers and, worse, dear old Stan.

Although she looked like a benevolent mother of the bride, with a kind, pie-like face and soft brown eyes, Lorraine was full of surprises. Her hair changed colour every month or so, varying from blonde to light auburn to rich brown, and once, to everybody's amazement, a cherry red that was so incongruous with her matronly outfits and ergonomic shoes that one gasped at the vision. I have never understood why anybody still mobile would want to wear things that looked like large, carved loaves of leather bread on one's feet, but then, my years of wearing stilettos hadn't caught up to me yet. Maybe in twenty years I would be walking in large loaves of bread without embarrassment. Of course, then my life would be over.

In her spare time, Lorraine did historical re-enactments with a group of history buffs, cooking over campfires in traditional pioneer dress and learning to shoot authentic early firearms. Maybe this was why Stan was afraid of her.

She frequently booked long weekends to attend fencing tournaments, and again I fantasized about her turning up at the office with an épée and scaring the hell out of Stan.

Whoops.
Hope that wasn't what she did, with maybe a little more exuberance than necessary. I liked Lorraine, and really hoped she wasn't homicidal despite all those ethics.

We all knew that Lorraine was more qualified to run the HAMS office than Stan, despite his cutthroat ways. Lorraine had a quiet integrity that registered with people. It didn't hurt that she was one tough cookie. No wonder Geoff was afraid of her. Anybody with a slight aberration from sainthood would be well advised to tremble in her presence.

Strangely, she and Mitzi were friends, and met regularly for dinner. Mitzi, of the cash-register soul and the designer shoes, and Lorraine, of the high morals and the low, low shoes. Go figure. I often wondered what they talked about at dinner, besides me. Being an actor, of course, I often assumed, mistakenly, that people loved to talk about me.

Actors cried on Lorraine's shoulder all the time. She endured all this mess and saltiness with kind pats and tough love, and drycleaning bills that she submitted to HAMS.

Lorraine was well aware of the hardships that Stan had imposed on Gretchen, Bent, Geoff, Pete and me, but when she had tried to intervene, she was given a choice. She chose her job, and I didn't blame her. She was a tough cookie, but she was also single, divorced and committed to all those expensive fencing tournaments and historic re-enactments.

Her assistant, Sylvia, was extremely tall and thin, but any resemblance to a runway star ended there. Sylvia had cavernous cheeks and lines around her eyes and mouth that qualified her to be a stand-in for a pirate on a ghost ship. Her blonde hair was clipped into a buzz cut. Maybe the fact that she was a recovering crack addict who carried a switchblade inside her patent leather boots had something to do with her ability to cope with our Mr. Pope. The first time she flashed the knife at Stan, he backed into a potted plant and ruined his leather jacket and pants (bought, no doubt, with my Bow Wow royalties). Elsie Lamonde, an elderly actress who now does mostly extra work, was in the office at the time and hit high C with her scream of terror. By the time Lorraine had called the nurse from the optometrist's office down the hall, and they had revived Elsie, Stan was locked in his office. Many a glass was raised to Sylvia at Murphy's that night.

Lorraine had admonished Sylvia severely, we were told, but, ha ha, we guessed it was an admonishment carried out over double Scotches.

Sylvia was supposed to be temporary, but the office had been understaffed since Katrina had taken maternity leave. Katrina, as the office manager, targeted for national promotion, had kept Stan in line. Now Lorraine had taken on that challenge. Katrina was in babyland and Lorraine and Sylvia were left to answer the phones, while two assistants typed at their keyboards in the back office.