Footprints in the Butter (8 page)

“You weren’t inside our locker room, Ingrid. He called her Mother-effing Goose.’”

“Why?”

“He said that Mother Goose, the old lady not the bonnet-clad waterfowl, looked like she needed to get laid.”

“Well, of course she did. The nursery rhymes were composed during Puritan times.” I scowled at my coagulating eggs. “I wonder why Wylie got engaged to Alice.”

“He didn’t. She got engaged to him.”

“What does that mean?”

“Wylie had to scratch for a living and Alice had plenty of scratch. She bought Wylie, or at least she bought his food and art supplies. He absolutely refused to leave that roach-infested rat trap he called an apartment, even thought Alice would have paid for a nicer place.” Ben strolled over to the coffee table and stared down at my plate. “You haven’t eaten a thing.”

“I’m not hungry. Why don’t you nibble my share?”

“I’d rather nibble your—”

The phone rang again, this time cutting off Ben’s appetizing innuendo.

“Let your machine get it,” he suggested, but I had already lifted the receiver.

“There’s someone prowling around outside,” said Patty, “and I’m scared. Could you come over, Ing? Spend the night? Is Ben there? He is, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Calm down. It’s probably a reporter who—”

“No. They went away.”

“Maybe it’s Kim O’Connor’s cat.”

“A cat doesn’t shine a flashlight.”

“Call the cops, Patty!”

“I don’t want cops. I want you and Ben and Hitchcock.”

“Okay, but it might take some time. We have to change clothes and hustle Hitchcock into the car, which is like trying to lasso a stampeding buffalo with a choke-collar. Meanwhile, call one of your neighbors.”

“I haven’t met them. I don’t have their telephone numbers.”

“Run next door. The O’Connors have security to spare. A dog named Tonto and—”

“No!”

Holding my hand across the mouthpiece, I said, “Ben, talk some sense into her. Patty says there’s a lurking prowler but she won’t contact the police or a neighbor.”

He took the receiver from my outstretched hand. “Hi, beautiful,” he said calmly, as though stroking a schizophrenic Afghan hound. Then, of course, I could only hear his side of the conversation.

“Yes, Ingrid told me…okay, lock the doors and don’t go outside…yes, we’ll come as fast as we can, but you’ve got to promise to call the police…look, if the reporters show up, I’ll bet your prowler hotfoots…no, that’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?” I reached for the receiver.

Ben waved me away. “Leave the gun where it is, honey. Promise? And you’ll call the police? That’s my good girl. You’re welcome. Yes, we’ll hurry. Bye.”

I felt my eyes widen. “She has a gun?”

“Apparently Wylie’s absent friend keeps one handy. Let’s get dressed.”

There was a crescendo of thunder, followed by lightning, or maybe it was the other way around. The whole house vibrated as I scurried into the bedroom, opened my bureau drawer, reached for a pair of jeans and said, “What’s the rush? The cops—”

“She won’t call them. She promised she would, but she won’t. She’s afraid the reporters will hone in on the police radios and today’s circus will start all over again.”

“Better a circus than another funeral!”

“Ingrid, you don’t have to convince me.”

Without warning, I felt hysteria build. Gun! Prowler! Patty all alone! Scared!

“You call the cops, Ben,” I said, tugging my lucky orange sweatshirt on inside-out and backwards so that the washing instructions tag rested beneath my chin.

“Right.” He reached for the bedroom extension, listened, replaced the receiver. “It’s dead.”

“But it can’t be. We just talked to Patty.”

“The lightning—”

“Where’s my other knee-sock? Rats, my sneakers are missing! Who kicked them under the bed?”

“Take it easy, babe.”

Ben’s voice had regained that calm–the-schizophrenic-Afghan quality. Except considering the physical discrepancy between Patty and me, it was probably more like calm-the-schizophrenic-Yorkshire terrier.

“Ingrid?” Ben buttoned his plaid flannel shirt.

“Rats! My shoelace just snapped.”

“Ingrid?”

“What?”

“Everybody knows an elephant charges with a credit card, but how do you make an elephant float?”

I psyched out what he was doing. He was making a valiant attempt to calm my rising hysteria with a verbal nudge rather than a face slap. I resisted his efforts. Racing toward my bureau again, I dug through my underwear drawer until I found an extra pair of shoelaces. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and played a game called miss-all-the-tiny-fraying-sneaker-holes.

“Answer me, Ingrid, or I’ll stroke Ace Promazine down your throat.” Ben grabbed my sneaker and began to cobweb the laces like an efficient spider. “How do you make an elephant float?”

“Add two scoops of ice cream and one elephant to a quart of root beer. What on earth is Ace Promazine?”

“A pet tranquilizer more potent than Valium. I have some in my emergency doctor’s pouch.”

“Some Valium?”

“No, you nut. Ace Promazine.”

“Good. That’s good. Where’s your doctor’s bag?”

“Inside the trunk of my car. Why?”

“You said Ace Promazine is a pet tranquilizer. Wait until Hitchcock gets a whiff of Tonto.”

Chapter Eight

Tonto’s welcome volley didn’t bother Hitchcock. However, Sinead’s pussy perfume agitated the bloody heck out of him. Hitchcock roved through Patty’s borrowed house like a bloodhound, nose to the floor, paw and tail angled, a shaggy semaphore. Once I even thought I could decipher his frantic signal: E-X-I-T. When I pointed this out to Ben, he laughed and said, “Where did you learn semaphoring, Ingrid?”

“Girl Scouts.”

Hitchcock didn’t really know the difference between a cat and a caterpillar, but he could smell eau de feline, and he could growl, whimper, bark—lord, could he bark!

“Ace Promazine!” I shouted. “Hurry, Ben!”

“Ingrid, we don’t want to sedate our watchdog, do we? Hitchcock, sit! Hitchcock, stay!”

My mutt gave one last quivery sniff and flopped to the kitchen floor. His expression seemed to suggest that he had done his job, warned the stupid humans who, for some reason, were totally unaware of strong, distinctive, odoriferous scents. In other words, a morally offensive, carnivorous mammal lurked.

Not the prowler. He or she had vanished into thin, rain-slashed air.

“Ingrid,” said Patty, “your shirt’s on backwards.”

“Yes. I panicked needlessly, too.”

“There
was
somebody outside,” she insisted. “I’m not crazy. He shined his flashlight. I could see it shimmer.”

“Maybe it was the police,” Ben soothed.

“Police don’t skulk.”

“Ingrid says they do.”

“Wrong! I said they screw up. Skulk and screw are not the same…” I swallowed the rest of my words, thinking about how Wylie had, first skulked then screwed me inside my hotel room. As usual I stashed the image, like storing snagged pantyhose at the bottom of my bureau drawer.

“I’m such a baby.” Patty gave a tremulous smile. “That kid in
Home Alone
could cope better than I.”

“That kid,” said Ben, “had a script.”

“Well, I can’t thank you enough. Ingrid, too.”

“Don’t forget Hitchcock,” I grumbled, feeling cranky again. And hungry. After all, I had abandoned my ethnic feast for sexual gratification.

As if she had read my mind, Patty said, “I know it’s late but I have food already prepared. Lots of friends stopped by this evening. Alice and Dwight Cooper, Tad Mallard and Junior Hartsel, just to name a few. They all left donations. Tuna casserole, roast beef, soup-salad-and-breadsticks from Tad. She said it like it was one word. I think it’s restaurant fare. There’s also a blueberry pie, Ingrid, your favorite.”

“It used to be my favorite, before I joined Weight Winners.” Gazing enviously at Patty’s size six cranberry slacks and black cotton turtleneck, I tried to justify the consumption of pie. “Too bad you don’t have ice cream.”

“But I do. Häagen Dazs. Honey—”

“Vanilla. Wylie’s favorite. Okay. It’s an emergency, so I’ll break my perpetual diet with berry pie a la mode.”

Seated at the kitchen table, I savored every bite. “This is delicious, Patty. Very sweet. Who baked the pie?”

“I don’t remember. There had to be a dozen visitors and everybody handed me food along with their platitudes. Tad was the worst. She kept blubbering about how she had told Wylie to die but she didn’t really mean it. Another piece, Ingrid?”

“I really shouldn’t. Well, maybe a sliver.”

After filling a bowl with minestrone soup, Patty sat next to me and glanced toward Ben, who was scratching Hitchcock’s belly. “Don’t you want something to eat, Ben? The soup’s tasty, and Ingrid says her pie—”

“I don’t care for desserts, honey, thanks anyway. Maybe later I’ll fix myself a roast beef sandwich.”

“In your dreams,” I said. “We need to get some sleep. What’s wrong, Patty? Your face is all scrunched up.”

“I thought we might watch TV, just to make sure the prowler doesn’t return. I have crème de menthe and fresh-brewed coffee. There’s a VCR and hundreds of tapes. We could watch Alfred Hitchcock movies.” Restless, almost twitchy, she scrubbed our bowls, spoons, my fork, then stuck everything in the dishwater and turned it on. Her gaze swept the kitchen. “Would you take the leftover pie home, Ing? Please? I hate blueberries. They stain your teeth.”

Self-consciously, I ran my tongue across my teeth. “Dump that forbidden fruit down the garbage disposal, Patty, or I’ll be tempted to sneak a piece for breakfast.”

The disposal noisily consumed calories. It sounded as if it was grinding its teeth and smacking its lips at the same time. It sounded like my ex-husband who isn’t really my ex.

“You don’t have to bribe me with movies,” I said. “I’m always in the mood for Hitchcock.”

My mutt wagged his tail at the sound of his name, but he didn’t bark, thank goodness.

We shifted our bodies to an overstuffed family room. Ben perused the tape collection while I sank onto an overstuffed couch. Reaching out, I could stroke the fronds of a potted palm. Dark-paneled walls were filled with scenic prints. And one Wylie Jamestone painting. The Beatles. Above George Harrison’s head, his bubble stated: IS IT TRUE JOHN DENVER IS SPLITTING UP?

I turned to Patty. “Do you know the kid next door?”

“The one who found Wylie’s body?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen her. Why do you ask?”

“Do you think she might have used this house for assignations? Screwing around?”

Patty looked startled. “How did you know?”

“A friend of mine suggested it.”

“Your friend is right, Ing. There’s a finished basement with a sofa and a wet bar. We discovered junk everywhere. Soda cans, a Jack Daniels bottle, condoms, even a bra.”

“Wasn’t the house locked? How could she get inside?”

“The same way her damn cat sneaks inside. There’s a doggie door off the utility room, a big one. Wylie’s friends adopted a mongrel named Truman Capote. He came from the same litter as the dog next door.”

“Wait a sec! This house has no fence.”

“Truman Capote has been trained to stay in the yard. He’s very territorial, just like me.” Patty shrugged her slender shoulders. “I could have moved to a hotel after Wylie was killed, but it’s so much easier to coordinate the memorial service from here. Now
your
face is all scrunched up.”

“It’s hard to believe another Shar-Pei monster exists. What happened to Truman Capote? Where is he?”

Patty gave me a strange look. “With his owners, of course. They don’t like to board him at a kennel. They said they did it once and he came home with fleas.”

“What’s the difference between an elephant and a flea?”

“One’s huge, one’s tiny,” Ben replied. “Patty, when I give you the signal, please dim the lights.”

“An elephant,” I said, “can have fleas. But a flea cannot have elephants.”

“Aha! Here it is.
Psycho
. It was wedged between
Killer Shrink!
and
Halloween
.” Ben grinned. “Okay, kids, are you ready for a good safe scare?”

I waited for Patty to voice an objection. After all, she preferred romantic movies like
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. Wasn’t
Breakfast
scripted from a story by Truman Capote? Sure it was. Hadn’t Wylie once painted a portrait of Capote? Sure he had. Truman’s bubble had stated: ALL LITERATURE IS GOSSIP.

I pictured Tonto and Truman Capote gossiping through the fence. Lord, I was feeling fuzzy. It had been a long day and I was tired. But it would be rude to renege now, leaving Patty and Ben all alone, watching
Psycho
.

Psycho
. Jeeze! Maybe Patty had changed. People changed all the time. Me. Wylie. No. We hadn’t changed. We’d sold out. Maybe Wylie’s death had changed Patty. But only a short while ago she’d been frightened by a prowler. Why on earth would she want to watch a scary movie? Maybe it was okay to watch a scary movie because reality was so bloody frightening. Did that make any sense? Guess so, because my own senses were muddled. I felt scatterbrained, out of focus, as if I had borrowed someone else’s glasses. Wait a sec! I didn’t wear glasses. My vision was twenty-twenty. So how come I couldn’t see the forest for the trees?

“I’m ready,” said Patty, cuddling up in a stuffed armchair, clutching a stuffed toss pillow against her perfect breasts. “After we watch the movie, we can all take showers, one at a time. Ben can play Tony Perkins, Ingrid Janet Leigh, and I can pretend I’m what’s her face, the movie’s heroine.”

“Norman Bates’ mother?”

“Very funny. No, Vera something.”

“Miles. Ben has already bathed, Patty. In fact, we took a bath together. Spasm rhymes with orgasm.” Absurdly, I felt an orgasm build. I wanted nothing more than to push Ben down onto the floor, shed my jeans, straddle his hips, and ride him like you’d ride a merry-go-round horse. Up and down, up and—

“Easy, Ingrid,” Ben said. While Patty trotted off to the bathroom, he joined me on the couch, and I saw a crease of annoyance crimp his craggy brow. “Too much liqueur packs one hell of a wallop.”

“I haven’t had any crème yet, Cashidy,” I slurred, placing his hand between my thighs. “Not even one teensy-weensy drop.”

His hand lingered, his first two fingers pressing gently, intimately, urgently. My nipples peaked. I had always read that in books—her nipples peaked—but I had dismissed it as rhetoric. Now, I believed every word. Leaning back against the couch cushion, I raised my sweatshirt, anchored it beneath my chin, and rubbed my breasts suggestively.

Ben gave a small groan.

I leaned sideways and reached for his fly. Patty returned. Ben jerked his hand away. “Ing’s already got a buzz,” he said, as if that explained my bared breasts.

“No, no,” I protested.

Smiling indulgently, he nodded toward my snifter.

It was empty.

Okay. Who the hell had gulped down my crème de menthe?

I had turned my back on the snifter while talking to Patty, so that eliminated Patty because I would have seen her drink. Well, not really. As I contemplated changing personality traits, Patty had left my line of vision to fiddle with the light dimmer. But why would Patty drink from my snifter? She had her own.

Ben had been hunched over the tape shelf, except when he joined Patty to help her adjust the lights. But, once again, Ben had his own full snifter. Why drink from mine?

That left Hitchcock. The snifter had been placed on a coffee table. Could my klutzy mutt neatly lap up crème de menthe and leave the glass intact?

Curious, I adjusted my sweatshirt, filled the snifter, and took a few sips, letting my tongue do most of the work. Yes, it was possible, if Hitchcock was very careful and very sneaky.

Ben turned off the VCR when I expressed an urgent desire to visit the powder room. Staggering back to the couch, I saw that my snifter was empty. Ben stood by the VCR, waiting to push the button. Patty sat, clutching her pillow. I glanced toward Hitchcock. He looked guilty.

But then Hitchcock always looks guilty.

I don’t remember the movie, not even the part where Janet Leigh gets stabbed. Because I felt woozy. Drunk. Dead drunk. And the funny thing was…the really funny thing was…I forgot what the funny thing was. It had something to do with my vanishing crème.

“Hey, you guys, I lost my crème. We’re little lost crème who have gone astray,” I sang. “Baaah, baaah, baaah.”

“She’s finished the whole bottle,” said Patty. “You’d better help her to bed, Ben. There’s a guest room on the second floor, third door on your left. I’ve already turned down the spread.”

“How do you get down off a goose?” I said.

“Hush, baby,” said Ben. “Let’s go beddy-bye, okay?”

“What has twelve legs, is pink, and goes baaah, baaah, baaah?”

“Six pink sheep?”

“God, Benji, you’re so liberal. It’s three pink elephants singin’ the Whiffenpoof song.”

“You’re three sheets to the wind, Ingrid.”

“Am not!”

“Yes, you are. The word is literal and you haven’t called me Benji in thirty years.”

“I can’t see the forest for the…something. Oh, yeah. Trees. Can’t walk. Legs don’t work.”

Scooping me into his arms, Ben carried me upstairs.

It was like that scene from
Gone with the Wind
, the one that fuels every rapist’s ultimate fantasy. For some dumb reason, when Rhett scoops Scarlett into his arms, ignoring her emphatic struggles, women see romance while men see the truth—control. Spousal rape!

I wasn’t feeling very romantic any more. In fact, I felt seasick. Everything mellowed, yet at the same time everything rocked. The stairs. Clark Gable’s arms.

Ben kissed me and laughed. “Your breath tastes like mint, Beaumont.”

I wanted to tell him I didn’t remember finishing the crème bottle. I wanted to explain that I had lapped crème with my tongue, testing my Hitchcock theory. I wanted to suggest that he examine Hitchcock’s tongue, which was probably very green.

But I couldn’t. Because I was gone with the wind, three sheets to the wind. In other words, by the time we reached the guest bedroom, I had passed out cold.

* * *

Hot. There was a burning sensation in my stomach. I felt sick to my stomach, throwing-up sick. Could I make it to the bathroom without waking Ben?

He had removed my sneakers and jeans. Good. It would save time. Because I knew that throwing-up sick wasn’t the whole story here. Diarrhea was a definite subplot.

“Oooh.” Despite my best intentions and my clenched teeth, the sound emerged.

Ben stirred but didn’t wake.

I struggled to a sitting position and felt worse, as if I stood on the deck of a storm-ridden ship. God, I felt dizzy, just like Ingrid Bergman in
Notorious
, just like Ingrid Bergman when she’d been—

“Poisoned! Ohmigod! I’ve been poisoned!”

“Ingrid? What’s wrong, honey?”

“Food poisoning,” I gasped. “Sick.”

“Are you sure it’s not the flu?”

“She didn’t have the flu?”

“Who?”

“Ingrid Bergman.
Notorious
.” I flopped back against my pillows. “I’m dying, Ben.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said, his voice tender. “Everyone feels like they’re dying when they have a bad case of the flu. Let me help you to the bathroom.”

“Too late. Can’t throw up. Can’t stand up. Sorry.”

I heard him fumble for the lamp, and the sudden bright light hurt my eyes.