Authors: Janice Weber
“Any witnesses?”
Only one, presently cocooned in bandages, maybe dead. Dagmar didn’t need to hear about that fizzled comedy. “Not creditable.”
“Any evidence?”
“No. The killer retrieved her arrow. It apparently went right through Guy’s guts.”
Dagmar didn’t even blink. “Is she going to break down and confess?”
“I don’t know,” Ross said. “I wouldn’t call her altogether sane. When she’s not completely drunk, she lifts weights. I don’t
think a gorilla would want to fight with her.”
“Where is she now?”
“At Diavolina. She’s the manager there.”
“What’s her name?”
“Drusilla Ward. No one has ever called her by anything but her last name.”
“Are the police suspicious of her in any way?”
“There’s a Detective O’Keefe working on the case. I don’t
think he’s gotten very far. The loose ends are just too loose. And the motive’s preposterous.”
Dagmar plucked one rose from the bouquet on the table and dabbled her nostrils with it. “So what are you worried about?”
“Absolutely everything, Dagmar. Most of all, my wife finding out.”
“Finding out what? That you told an unstable woman where Witten might be on a certain night? That’s hardly a crime. If anyone
should feel sorry about anything, I’d say it should be your wife. None of this would have happened had she behaved herself
in the first place.”
“I should have just let it go. Taken my lumps like a man.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dagmar snapped. “Once they start, they never stop. Eventually you would have ended up like me. Without
the art collection, perhaps. You don’t know how much I admire you for having taken matters into your own hands. And the risk
seems to have paid off, in case you hadn’t seen the forest for the trees. You’ve removed the lover and retained your wife.
How is she reacting to her deprivation, by the way?”
“She’s been quiet as a ghost. At the moment, she’s visiting her sister in California. I hope she’ll return home ready to start
over again.”
“She’s a very lucky woman. Her husband has paid her the ultimate compliment.” Dagmar poured each of them an inch of scotch.
“Thank you for taking me into your confidence.”
Ross swallowed the sweet fire. “Normally I would have burdened Dana with it.”
“And what would he have told you?”
“Exactly what you did, I hope.” Ross kissed her hand. “Could I hear about you and Joe someday? I’d like to know everything.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“Try me. I’m an excellent listener.”
She was about to speak when the phone rang. Dagmar went to the hallway and had a very brief conversation. When she returned,
Ross saw that her cheeks were as red as the roses. “Someone else knows about this place?” he asked, not pleased.
“It was a wrong number.”
Lie: That conversation had lasted two sentences too long. “Aha.”
“One of Joseph’s mistresses, I presume. I told her the party was over.” Dagmar’s diamond rings quavered as she lit a black
cigarette.
“How is it that you didn’t know about this place, Dagmar?” Ross asked after a moment.
She blew tersely at the ceiling. “I had an idea. A fairly good idea. But what would have been the point of sending in the
bloodhounds? It wouldn’t have changed a thing.” Dagmar’s eyes glinted behind a veil of smoke. “Men are terrible with secrets.
They think that silence is a protective shield when in effect it’s a dead giveaway. Women do somewhat better, but their eyes
and voices eventually betray them. That woman in your office, for instance. Miss Fischer, is it? She’s in love with you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ross sputtered.
“Forgive me, but I’m not convinced, and I’ve never even seen the two of you together. I’ve only heard her voice when she says
your name.”
“She’s been with me for years,” Ross protested feebly.
Dagmar smiled. “You’re protective of the women close to you. I’m glad to see that.”
Again, fiercely, Ross missed Emily. If she were on the sidewalk beneath Dagmar’s balcony, he would have leaped over the railing
to be with her. All this confession and dissection had created a giant vacuum in his guts: If he didn’t become a husband again
soon, he would collapse. Wedlock had been his natural state for too many years. He was not cut out to be a lover to Marjorie
or a confidant to Dagmar. He was only good, only content, being both to Emily. Dreadfully homesick, he said, “Would you mind
if I took one more look at that statue?”
“By all means.”
He crossed the hallway to Joe Pola’s sanctum. Frail light from the sun drew the sculpture from the shadows. “Pretty,” Ross
whispered, running a finger along the cool, glowing cheeks. “It looks like my wife.”
“Really? You may have it, then.”
He looked over: Dagmar’s voice sounded exactly like Ardith’s that day she had trashed the contents of Dana’s office. “That’s
very kind. But I couldn’t.”
“It means nothing to me. In fact, I’d prefer it away from here. I’m quite convinced it’s a statue of Joseph’s first mistress.
Even now I can’t look at the thing without wishing I had killed her.”
Quickly crossing the room, Ross embraced her. She seemed fragile as a rose, stiff as a sequoia. “Shhh. Don’t talk like that.”
Withdrawing from his arms, Dagmar said, “Thank you so much for coming today. No one’s given me flowers in years.”
“I’ve upset you.”
“No. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I have to go out of town for a few days. Let’s get together when I return. Bring
your wife along. I’m very interested in meeting the object of your affection.”
“Sounds good,” Ross lied. “Where are you going?”
“New York. Estate business.” As she straightened his collar, Dagmar said, “You’re a brave man, Ross. Really.” Her eyes glittered
as she closed the door.
After news of Philippa’s shooting became tabloid grist of the week,
Choke Hold
surged to the top of the box-office charts. Crowds camped out on the hospital lawn beneath her window, whence Aidan Jackson
delivered hourly bulletins on the victim’s condition. Enough flowers for fifty funerals arrived. As videos of Philippa’s films
became scarce as great screenplays, theaters across the country began planning retrospectives. Simon’s office received more
inquiries in one day than it had in the last year. Unfortunately, lying in a stupor, the star was in no condition to enjoy
this midlife rush of popularity.
Emily’s appearance at the hospital had nearly sent Simon back to his bed at the Enema Capital of the Universe. “Who are you?
What kind of joke is this?” he had shouted when she had taken off her scarf and sunglasses. “Police! Get this woman out of
here!”
“I’m Philippa’s sister, Emily,” she had said, going to the bedside. “Who are you?”
“Her manager, Simon! She never told me about a sister!”
“You’ve talked to me on the phone on several occasions,” Emily reminded him.
“That was with her baby sister!”
“I’m eight minutes younger.” Emily took Philippa’s hand. It felt dead. “How’s she doing?”
Simon slumped into a chair, overwhelmed with double vision. “She’s barely making it.”
“How’s Franco?”
“Fine. That dipshit could wait tables tonight if he wanted to.”
“Have the police found anything?”
“No.” Simon looked more closely at Emily. “You’re Phil’s sister who lives in Boston? Now I see why she never introduced us.”
Emily lay her cheek on Philippa’s hand. “Has she talked to you?”
“No. She’s been out cold.” Simon’s mobile phone rang. “Yes? Hi Marv. You do, eh? Send it over. I’ll take a look maybe next
week. No, that’s the soonest I can get to it. There are hundreds ahead of you in line, believe me.” He hung up. “Christ, Phil
had better snap out of this. I’ve got enough work to keep her going until the next century.” He sank into a chair. “Why’d
she have to get shot in the gut? Why not a little nick in the arm or something? Crap! By the time she’s back on her feet,
she’ll look like Norman Bates’s mother! Did you ever take any acting lessons, Emma? Maybe talent runs in the family. Obviously
looks do.”
“Why don’t you go home and rest,” Emily said. “I understand you’ve been under the weather lately.”
He paused, confused; that voice, that inflection: stress was playing tricks on his hearing. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Simon
said. “I think I need a good night’s sleep.”
After he had left, a nurse came to check Philippa’s vital signs. Eventually a doctor appeared and reviewed the gory details.
Philippa had been shot twice at close range with a .40-caliber pistol. Miraculously avoiding serious organs, both bullets
had plowed through her side, exiting cleanly into the car seat; had they exploded into any bones on the way in or out, Philippa
might have gone to the morgue instead of the hospital. But she had barely survived the loss of so much blood; sheer willpower,
it seemed, had kept her heart beating those last few miles in the ambulance.
Since Philippa’s grip on life was still precarious, Emily was allowed to stay with her at the hospital. The first night was
bad. Philippa groaned terribly, then lay so still that Emily thought she had stopped breathing. The second day was the same,
but with little snorts and starts: Philippa’s body was adjusting to two ragged tunnels. As she lay comatose, invaded by dribbling
tubes, Simon visited, saying little but staring a lot. Philippa’s third husband, George, who still received generous alimony
payments, checked in on his golden goose. Franco dropped by with a fresh head bandage and a photographer, to act stunned.
Ross called every few hours, asking if Emily would like him to come out. No point, she replied, so he sent books instead.
To pass the time, Aidan Jackson pumped Emily for intimate family memoirs for transmission to the fan club. He spent hours
cataloguing Philippa’s get-well cards. The police, getting nowhere with their investigation, requested that they be notified
the moment Philippa opened her eyes.
“Fucking wig,” Philippa snarled on the second night.
Emily went to the bed. “It’s Em,” she whispered. “Can you hear me, honey?”
Philippa lay absolutely still, as if she had just been disconnected from a power source. She lay that way for another fifteen
minutes, then tossed her head. “The white truck! Watch out!”
That white truck again: Philippa had been raving about it when they lugged her into the operating room. The police had been
tracking down every white truck in Los Angeles despite Franco’s assertions that their attacker drove a white Mercedes. “Phil,”
Emily whispered. “Don’t worry. You’re all right.”
Philippa dropped off again, this time until daybreak. Then she said, very calmly, as if conversing with a maiden aunt, “Oh
dear. Rare steak gives me such hemorrhoids.”
What could possibly be running through Philippa’s mind? Unable to sleep, Emily began making notes of her sister’s
strange utterances. When Philippa recovered, they could amuse themselves trying to figure out what she had meant.
“I’m not a plum,” Philippa snapped. “Don’t call me that.”
Emily’s pen wobbled as she wrote the words in her date book. Someone had called Philippa a plum? That was what Guy used to
call Emily. As she waited for her sister’s next outburst, Emily glanced over the thirty little squares on the page in front
of her: This had been the worst September of her life. Guy had been dead for nine squares. Soon it would be ninety, nine hundred....
Those squares would accumulate forever. She still couldn’t comprehend that infinity. Emily looked for less empty squares.
Oy, Ross’s brother had turned fifty-three last Tuesday. Perhaps Ross had remembered to call. Her great-aunt would be eighty-nine
on the thirtieth; Ross would be forty-five next week. What would she do for his birthday? Just a month ago, Emily and Dana
had been discussing a surprise party on his boat; obviously that was out of the question now. Poor Ross. Poor Dana. How long
had he been dead already? Emily counted: twenty squares and rising.
From long habit, she looked for the little dot on the date marking her last period. Reeling between murders and masquerades,
she hadn’t paid much attention to her body this month. Hmm, no dot in September. Emily turned back to ... Wednesday, August
16; over five weeks ago. All this zipping between time zones must have discombobulated her cycle. And yet... Emily ran her
finger down the Wednesday column, stopping two weeks after that little dot. What had she been doing the thirtieth of August?
Nothing. It was just another Wednesday. Had she slept with Ross? Hadn’t he been in Dayton that week? Of course he had ...
that was how she had been able to sleep one blissful night with Guy. That had been September 2. Past her prime time, as the
doctors had been telling her for years. Her eggs only lasted minutes. Last month’s ovum would have already degenerated into
a corpus luteum by the time Guy’s sperm had begun whipping down the pike. Yes?
Simon turned up around nine o’clock with a snail pizza, one
of the most popular take-out items from Luco’s. “How’s the patient today?”
“She talks in her sleep. The nurse tells me that’s a sign of recovery.”
“Great! How long before she’s back on her feet?”
“No one knows.”
Simon frowned. He had just breakfasted with a heavy producer who wanted Philippa to star in a vampire movie. The current leading
lady, a manic depressive, had just been fired and shooting was to begin in mid-October. The producer suggested that they do
the blood-sucking scenes first; that way all Philippa would have to do was lie down and writhe. When she felt better, they
could shoot the more active things like Victorian swimming parties. Breathless at the offer, Simon had 99 percent accepted;
every actress in Hollywood had been gunning for that role. All he had to do now was snap Philippa out of this aggravating
coma.
“This morning I landed her the gig of a lifetime,” Simon said. “But she’s got to be on her feet in two weeks.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Simon lifted the window a crack, waved to Philippa’s fans picnicking on the lawn, and lit a cigarette. “Listen, Emma, I’ve
been thinking. Have you ever wanted to be an actress? See your name up in lights? Get hundreds of letters from people who
adore you? Put an Oscar in your trophy case?”