Diva's Last Curtain Call (21 page)

“Wow,” I said taking it all in.

“I loved her dearly, but Vivianne’s taste was always just a little bit on the vulgar side,” Harriet said. “I remember mailing the manuscript to the publishing company weeks ago. If the disk is still here than I bet Vivianne hid it somewhere.”

She opened the double doors of a walk-in closet almost the size of my kitchen. I came over and stood beside her. The closet was filled to the gills with clothing. One whole wall was rack after rack of shoes. Purses, belts and scarves hung in plastic garment bags. The top shelves held boxes with names of various old-school designers such as Oleg Cassini, Bob Mackey and Halston. Harriet looked at the boxes and frowned, then got on her hands and knees and hunted around on the floor of the closet.

“What are you looking for?”

“There was a box of junk in here that Vivianne had been bugging me for months to take up to the attic. I don’t see it. Huh. Maybe she took it up herself.”

“What was in it?”

“Like I said, junk. Old stuff she didn’t wear anymore. Shoes, purses, some hats.”

Junk. Kurt had recently sold a box of Vivianne’s stuff to Donald Cabot. He told me he only took old stuff she wouldn’t notice was gone. Hadn’t Donald Cabot told me that the purse of Vivianne’s that I’d bought had just come in, which must have meant it was in the box he’d bought from Kurt. The purse! I gasped out loud and Harriet looked at me like I was crazy. But I didn’t care. I knew where the disk was. I thanked Harriet, whose mouth was hanging open in dumbfounded confusion, and raced back to my apartment. Mrs. Carson was sitting on her porch and trying to say something to me about Mama looking for me, but I tossed her a breathless hello and breezed past her up the steps and into my apartment.

Once inside I had to calm down and stop to think about where I’d put the little black evening bag of Vivianne’s that I’d bought from Cabot’s Cave. I finally remembered and pulled a large suitcase from under my bed. Since my apartment was so small, I had to find creative ways to use my space. I stored all of my purses in a suitcase under my bed. I popped the lock and rooted through it until I found the purse. Really looking at it for the first time since I’d bought it, I again noticed the purse’s hard bottom that I’d originally thought must be cardboard. I turned the purse inside out and noticed a tear in the lining along one side. Something hard and blue was poking out and I pulled it free. It was a three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk. Thank God.

Vivianne must have hidden the disk in that box of junk not thinking that Kurt would steal it. I’d had the purse with me at Vivianne’s memorial service and Cliff must have recognized it as having been hers. That was the only thing I could think of that made sense as to how he’d have known I had the disk, though it didn’t explain everything. But who cared how Cliff knew? I had the disk and that’s all that mattered. It was four-fifteen. I still had time to kill and was dying to read Vivianne’s book and wanted to make a copy of the disk for the police. Only, I didn’t own a computer. I headed out, and as I passed by my landlady’s porch, she called out to me.

“Kendra, your grandma is boilin’ mad. You better be on your way over there. She done called me three times already askin’ if I’ve seen you.”

“If she calls again, tell her I’m on my way over there now,” I lied. I hopped in my car and took off. Lynette’s life and clearing Allegra’s name were much more important than barbecue at the moment. When all was said and done, Mama would understand. Until then she’d just have to get over it.

Since everyone else I knew who had a computer would ask entirely too many questions, I ended up at the Willow Public Library. The library had recently installed ten new computers for patrons to surf the Internet and do word processing. Much to my disappointment, all ten computers were in use when I arrived. I added my name to the sign-up sheet at the reference desk and waited impatiently for a computer to become available. The computer disk was burning a hole in my pocket and I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. Twenty long minutes later, I was finally able to sit down in front of a computer. Before I could insert the disk in the drive, a large hand reached over and covered the slot.

“My friend wants this computer,” said a belligerent voice next to me. I turned and found myself face to face with an overweight teenaged boy with long hair that hung in his eyes like a sheep dog’s and wearing a tight yellow T-shirt that showed off his love handles, man boobs, and sporting Kiss My Fuzzy Logic! in big green letters.

I looked over my shoulder and saw another boy, who could have been Fuzzy’s twin, shifting from foot to foot impatiently like a toddler doing the pee-pee dance. How precious.

“I was here first,” I said and once again tried to insert the disk. Once again Fuzzy covered the slot.

“There’s another computer behind you, lady. My friend and I want to sit together.” His voice had taken on a whiny quality that to someone like me, who hates whiners, was equal to nails on a blackboard.

“Look, I was here first and I’m in a hurry. I’m sure it won’t kill you and your friend to be apart this one time. Hey, it’s a beautiful day out. Why don’t you two go outside and get some fresh air and maybe some exercise,” I said eyeing their bulk. At the mere mention of fresh air and even worse—exercise—both boys made gagging noises as though I’d just suggested they eat maggots.

“We don’t have to take this, Wayne,” said the boy behind me in a high-pitched nasal twang.

“Are you gonna let my friend sit here or not?” asked Fuzzy aka Wayne.

“Not,” I said, holding my ground but I didn’t like the sly look that passed between the two boys one little bit.

“You asked for it, lady,” said Fuzzy, reaching over and clicking the mouse on my computer. The Internet browser, which had been minimized and out of sight when I sat down, instantly popped up and was filled with vulgar pornographic images of people in sexual positions that could only be achieved by contortionists. My mouth fell open in shock.

“Porn! Porn! She’s looking at porn!” yelled Fuzzy and his friend, pointing at me and the screen.

I frantically started pushing buttons on the keyboard and clicking the mouse trying to clear the images from the screen to no avail. New windows of filth kept opening up one on top of the other. Everyone turned to stare at me and a librarian rushed over to see what all the fuss was about. My hands were covering the screen but she could still see that what was underneath wasn’t anything G-rated. Her face turned bright red, or at least what I could see of her face underneath her long thick bangs.

“Ma’am, we do not allow this kind of…of…perversion in the library. We have impressionable young children here!” She pointed to a large sign hanging from the ceiling between the two rows of computers. It read: Absolutely no Pornography! Anyone caught viewing pornography will be banned from the library for thirty days. No exceptions!

“But this was on the screen when I got here,” I tried to explain.

“No, it wasn’t. I watched her pull it up,” said Fuzzy Wayne smugly with his fat arms crossed over his boobs. His friend was nodding his head and looking equally smug.

“You little liar!” I said, indignantly abruptly standing up and towering over the still-seated teen.

“My son does not lie,” exclaimed the librarian. I looked at her and instantly noticed the resemblance between them. Wayne had his mother’s sheep-dog hair and cup size.

“I’m telling you, this was on the screen when I got here. I really need to use this computer. I don’t have a lot of time,” I pleaded.

“She was mean to us, Mom, make her go away, please.” Wayne’s bottom lip was trembling, but when his mother looked away, he grinned at me. Unbelievable.

“Ma’am, I must insist that you leave the library this instant before I call security.”

“All right. Fine. I’m going,” I said through gritted teeth. I’d barely stepped away from the computer when Fuzzy’s friend practically knocked me over in his rush to get his round hiney in the chair.

A vision of Wayne in about ten years shoving Twinkies in his face while watching Internet porn and being supported for the rest of his life by his mother flashed in my mind as I walked away, making me realize I should probably be afraid of the little sociopath in the making. I walked out of the library with visions of tearing Fuzzy away from the computer and forcing him and his friend to run laps around the block until they puked. Now what was I going to do? Where else could I get access to a computer? Then it hit me. Rollins. Didn’t he have a computer in his office at Holy Cross? Yes, he did.

The Holy Cross Church parking lot was filled up with cars. I’d completely forgotten that today was the church’s annual car wash. About a dozen teenagers and several adults, including Morris Rollins, were up to their elbows in sudsy water washing cars. I had to park across the street. I was debating whether I should try and sneak into Rollins’s office and use his computer while he was busy washing cars when he spotted me across the crowded parking lot. He grinned as I approached and playfully flipped a wet towel in my direction spraying me with water. I laughed and looked around on the sly for Winette Barlow.

“Have you come to help or do you need your car washed?”

“Neither. I need a favor,” I said. Honesty was going to save me time in this instance. Rollins looked intrigued.

“I really need to use your computer.”

“Sure, no problem. My office’s is unlocked. Is everything okay?” he asked, squeezing my shoulder. Our eyes met and I could tell he was thinking about our kiss last night. I broke eye contact first.

“It will be,” I said and headed into the church.

I sat behind Rollins’s round, islandlike oak desk, and situated myself in his leather chair before inserting the disk in the drive of his large computer. There was only one file on the disk and it was labeled Onyx. I opened it and for over an hour skimmed through Vivianne’s book. I was surprised to discover that Vivianne wasn’t a half-bad writer, though she was prone to exclamation points and flowery, unrealistic dialogue. And there was another thing that was also very obvious: she wasn’t at all sympathetic to her two main characters, Roxanne Gayle, who fled from her small town to try and make it big on Broadway, and Elwood Smalls, a black man who starts passing for white after going off to fight in the Korean War and stealing the identity of a white officer in his unit named Warren Duke.

The book was divided into three parts: Roxanne’s story, Elwood’s story and the last part telling how their paths crossed and the fiery, tumultuous relationship that followed. Even though Vivianne had made Roxanne Gayle a prescription-drug-addicted whore who had resorted to prostitution to make ends meet before getting her big break, there were a lot of parallels to Vivianne’s actual life: She and Roxanne were both from small towns and eventually made it in show business, she and Roxanne both married their agents, and, like Vivianne, Roxanne had a child, a daughter, though her child had been born out of wedlock fathered by one of her johns. There was even a scene reminiscent of what had happened to Kurt, where Roxanne’s child gets into one of her prescriptions while she’s strung out on painkillers. But unlike Kurt, Roxanne’s daughter dies.

As for Elwood Smalls, besides the fact that he was passing for white using a stolen identity, I had no idea what else he had in common with Cliff Preston that wasn’t a fictional embellishment of Vivianne’s. The character of Elwood Smalls had dreamed since he was a child of being in show business. He was born into a poor black farm family, who, despite looking white, were very proud of their black ancestry, except for Elwood, who felt trapped by the restrictions of his race. In order to escape a life of farming, Elwood joins the army just as the Korean War breaks out and is assigned to an all-black combat unit. He becomes friends with Warren Duke, a white officer in charge of his unit. During a combat mission Warren goes missing in action and Elwood is gravely injured and gets an honorable discharge. Instead of going back to the family farm, Elwood uses the name of Warren Duke to build a new life for himself as a white man in New York City. He goes on to become a sought-after talent agent who represents some of the biggest names on Broadway, eventually moving on to represent movie stars.

It all sounded like a simple case of stolen identity
until
I got to the part where the real Warren Duke turns up alive and well and tracks down Elwood Smalls, threatening to expose him, which results in Elwood killing him. I sat up straight in the chair. Was that part true? If it was then, Cliff Preston had a lot more to worry about than having his true race exposed. Had he killed the real Cliff Preston? Was this the info Vivianne claimed, as Harriet had put it, would keep Cliff off her back? Did she somehow find proof that Cliff was a murderer, as well as an identity thief? I rummaged around in Rollins’s desk drawer and found a box of blank floppy disks and, figuring he wouldn’t mind, took a disk and copied the manuscript to it. By the time I closed out the file and shut down the computer it was well after six o’clock. The car wash was still in full swing. I didn’t want to interrupt Rollins again. So I stuck a note thanking him on his computer screen and headed out a side door so he wouldn’t see me.

When I got to my car I turned my cell phone back on and saw that I had twelve voice mails. Four of them were from Mama, furiously wanting to know where I was. Seven were from Greg wanting to know what was going on with Lynette. His messages started out angry, gave way to desperate, and his last message was downright pitiful. The final voice mail was from a contrite-sounding Allegra apologizing for lying to me about the check and wanting to know if she was the reason I was refusing to come to the cookout. Leave it to Allegra to make it all about her. I didn’t return any of their calls. Instead, I put the disk I had copied into my glove compartment, along with a note telling anyone who found it to give it to Detective Trish Harmon, just in case anything happened to me at the park that night. I put the original in my pocket.

I was about to start up my car when I looked over and saw Winette Barlow talking to Rollins while he was washing a car. Winette was dressed in neatly creased and pressed designer jeans, a red shirt, white blazer, pumps and a long multi-strand beaded necklace that kept catching on her belt. Not exactly an outfit to wash cars in. I watched in amusement as she kept jumping back every time a stream of soapy water approached her leather pumps. She tried unsuccessfully to flirt with Rollins who was busy and looked a little annoyed. When she finally gave up and walked away, I could clearly see how upset she was. But it wasn’t until she angrily flung her long necklace over her shoulder that I remembered something Joyce Clark had told me. Vivianne had had a necklace that went missing at Cartwright Auditorium. Harriet Randall had accused one the custodial staff of stealing it. Joyce Clark had said the necklace was never found. But thinking back to what I’d seen pinned to the lost and found board in Joyce’s office, I realized they had found it and just didn’t realize it.