The Dog Collar Murders (22 page)

“The fucking around was with men, right?” I asked cautiously.

Miko snorted. “Of course! Lesbians don’t fuck around. They wash each other’s underwear and have long discussions about their ex-lovers. Lesbian sex has been a big disappointment, I can tell you.”

“Then why are you a lesbian?”

“Because men are boring out of bed. And because I like women’s bodies. I want to like my own. I want to
understand
my own.” Miko put down her delicate cup. “Before Nicky,” she said, “I’d been celibate for two years.”

“You? I thought you had a carnal knowledge of almost every lesbian in Seattle.”

“It’s hard for me to have a relationship,” Miko said. “At bottom I’m scared of being pushed around like my mother was. Maybe I’m afraid of love, maybe I make art instead of love. If I’m provocative it’s to scare myself out of shyness, to challenge myself, to show myself I’m not shocked by bodies or sexuality. I think I was attracted to Nicky because she was so willing to explore her own sexuality in a way that terrifies me.”

“Did she really say she wanted to leave Oak?”

“Yes, she did. It may have only been because she wanted to seduce me, but it
felt
real. She said she was starting to feel bored with the sameness of sex with Oak and that even though they’d both had other lovers, she always felt she was more into non-monogamy than Oak. She thought Oak was beginning to get too possessive.”

“Do you believe her? Or do you believe Oak?”

“I don’t know anymore,” said Miko. “I probably just believed what I wanted to believe.”

I got up to leave. The shaded light in the room was very lovely, falling on the many images and art books. Miko’s studio was like an elaborate, rose-tinted carapace that she had built around herself.

“About Hadley,” Miko said, looking up at me. “I did want to sleep with her.”

“I know.”

“But you two don’t have that kind of relationship,”

“No,” I said. “We don’t.”

“You’re not mad at me then? I was only checking.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “It’s okay to check. Maybe someday it will be all right. It’s not now, that’s all.”

Miko smiled at me. “So—I’ll take a look at these reels tomorrow and give you a call. Any chance you could come over to the office if I find something?”

“Of course.”

The next afternoon I sat with Miko in a small cubbyhole in a building belonging to the Seattle School District, watching three twenty-minute porn videos made circa 1970. They were blurred black and white and in very bad condition.

“Probably because they’re copies,” said Miko. “With this kind of video you get real reproduction problems.”

The first reel showed a very young Nicky with long curly hair and a firm body stripping down to her bra and underpants and then wandering around the room, at first looking at herself in the mirror and then very selfconsciously lying down on the bed spread-eagled and starting to touch herself. There was no editing to the video and everything took place in real time. Finally the door opened and a man I didn’t recognize came in. With considerable nervousness the two of them pretended to have a conversation. Nicky couldn’t help giggling and looking off camera. In response to some unheard direction the man pulled down his jeans and lay down on the bed. The camera caught his erect penis just before Nicky straddled him. They bounced up and down a few times and then the video ended.

“Not too much foreplay,” Miko commented. “I think you’ll be more interested in the next one.”

It looked like the same bed. Nicky was sitting on it cross-legged, smoking a joint, when the door opened and Hanna came in. Both of them were only wearing bikini underpants.

“I think the director must have had them start without clothes so they could cram more action into the short amount of time they had,” Miko said, adding, “It’s hard seeing Nicky, knowing she’s really dead.”

I was fascinated. Hanna didn’t seem half so nervous or silly as Nicky. Lithe and blond, she advanced right into the room and gracefully seated herself on the bed. Nicky handed her the joint.

Tentatively the two women, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, touched each other’s breasts. Nicky was still receiving a lot of encouragement from off-camera. Hanna looked strangely self-confident. Perhaps she thought of it as another role. Maybe she was stoned.

Hanna began to take the initiative. She took Nicky’s small breast in her mouth and began to pull Nicky’s underpants down. The door opened and a very sweet and guilty-looking young man came in. David Gustafson.

“Oh, my god,” I said.

He had long hair and a tie-dyed shirt and bell bottoms. He too was smoking a joint and trying to look cool. The two women were supposed to be too occupied to notice, but of course eventually they did and invited him to join them.

“This is really feeble,” I said. “Every man’s fantasy of lesbianism—a couple of chicks just waiting for a guy.”

Miko gave me an amused look. “Then you’ll love the third one.”

“I can hardly wait to see Loie,” I said.

The third one began where the second left off, with Nicky, Hanna and David in bed. First Nicky and David did it, then David and Hanna. I waited for the ubiquitous door to open. Who was Loie going to fuck? Would it be her cousin or husband-to-be or Nicky? Or all three?

Then it all went fuzzy and pale. You could see the door open, and someone come in. It was probably a woman because it looked like long hair, but then again it could have been a man in those days. The ghost joined the others in a wispy white mingling and then the video ended.

“Oh no,” I said. “I wanted to see Loie.”

“How do you know it was Loie?”

“Of course it was,” I said. “That’s the point. That they were all in these films together.”

“I don’t know,” said Miko. “I suppose I’ve been wondering if Loie might not have directed them. She might have borrowed the Portapak from the drama department and talked her cousin and Nicky and David into a wild afternoon.”

“But if Loie wasn’t in the video why would Nicky say she was?”

“That was our construction,” Miko said. “All Nicky told Oak is that she’d made a porn film with Loie. We assumed that meant a professional or semi-professional film with Loie. But it could have been Loie who made the video. That might account for Nicky calling her a hypocrite. If Loie had been
in
the video rather than orchestrating it then Nicky might have tried to protect her, like she did Hanna.”

I wasn’t convinced. “It could have been the man in the first video who was shooting them. I wonder who he was?”

Miko nodded. “It’s also possible that Loie changed the light setting somehow—deliberately—so that her part wouldn’t be visible.”

“I wonder if Hanna and David know these tapes still exist?”

Miko shook her head. “That’s the frightening thing about committing youthful indiscretions in front of a camera,” she said. “I had a girlfriend who posed for
Playboy
when she was eighteen. She still worries, twenty years later, about those photos popping up sometime.”

“But these are hardly hardcore,” I said. “Why would any of them worry about little videos like this destroying their reputation?”

“Maybe they didn’t remember very well what they’d done on camera. Sometimes things have a way of getting worse in your memory.”

It still puzzled me. Obviously the person who would have been hurt the most by these was Loie. And she was dead.

When I got home that evening, Hadley was in the living room watching the sunset out the window with her feet up on the coffee table.

“Gracie called,” Hadley said without moving. “No message. Again.”

“I wonder what she wants?” I said, going to the phone. “I know now she hasn’t taken Loie’s manuscript or notes. I don’t know what else she could be calling about.”

Hadley didn’t say anything.

This time I reached her.

“Oh hello,” she said. “We finally connect. How are you?”

“Fine,” I said. “Ah, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, and paused.

“Did you have something to tell me?” I asked her, for the first time wondering if I should have shut the door to the bedroom.

“Well not exactly tell you,” Gracie laughed in her husky voice. “More to ask you—I wonder if you’re interested in going to a movie tomorrow night?”

“Oh,” I said. To give myself time I called into the other room, “Hadley, are we doing anything tomorrow night?”

“I have to work until nine,” she said neutrally.

“Oh. Ah. Yes,” I told Gracie. “That would be fine, that would be nice.”

“Great,” she said, and told me about the various films in town. While we discussed the options available I tried desperately to assure myself that there was nothing strange about this, it was perfectly normal, I went to films with friends all the time.

We agreed to meet at the Harvard Exit and said goodbye.

“That was Gracie,” I said brightly, coming into the living room. “We’re going to go to the early movie tomorrow night. It’s an Eric Rohmer film.”

Hadley gave me a sardonic look. “Well, that’s nice.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure it will be.”

I
F HERCULE POIROT COULD
carry it off, why couldn’t I? I called up seven people on Saturday and asked them to stop by Sunday evening for coffee and dessert. I thought David and Sonya were going to be the hardest, but Sonya was perfectly agreeable.

“Oh, are you still in town, Randy?” she asked. “Of course, David and I would be delighted to stop in. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go to church with us in the morning?”

I hastily declined with a not very convincing excuse about my relative’s health, and I gave her directions. Eight o’clock would be fine. I hoped as I hung up that it hadn’t occurred to David to check my story in Southern California.

Hanna I convinced by saying that I’d been thinking over our discussion and I’d come up with some new fundraising ideas. She said she could only come after eight o’clock, closer to eight fifteen or twenty, and I said that was fine. It would be no good if she and David met in the parking lot at the top of the hill.

I told Mrs. Marsh I had some photos of my grandfather and his relatives that I hoped she could help me identify. I purposefully didn’t invite her mother, just in case things got a little rough, but Edith assumed I had and said they’d both love to visit.

I told Miko I’d like to get to know her better and I told Oak the same thing.

Oak sounded skeptical, but agreed to come anyway. She was curious about the videos if nothing else.

Hadley said she couldn’t get off until nine because Doreen was still ill but I told her that was all right. She could help me pick up the pieces.

Everything seemed set until Penny called up and asked if she could drop Antonia off at nine Sunday morning instead of ten as we’d previously agreed. I had forgotten we’d agreed any such thing.

“Where exactly are you going again?” I asked, stalling.

“To that all-day meeting in Bellingham,” she said, her voice rising. “I
told
you about it ages ago.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Well, I don’t mind when you drop Antonia off, but you’ve got to pick her up no later than seven o’clock.”

“Pam,” she said. “That’s not what we agreed. The meeting isn’t over until five and then we were going to eat dinner with Tom and Martha and it’s an hour and half drive back….”

“I forgot I’d invited people over,” I said. “It can’t be helped.”

“Can’t Hadley…?”

“No, there’s a lot of flu around, she’s got to fill in until nine.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have offered unless you really meant it.” Penny’s voice was sharp.

“I
did
really mean it. I’m happy to take care of Antonia
all day.
But if you’re going to be any later than seven you’ll need to get a paid baby sitter.”

“A baby sitter!” she gasped as if I’d said paid child molester.

We argued for another ten minutes. Finally I agreed to take Antonia at eight-thirty in the morning and Penny said she’d pick her up no later than seven-thirty that night.

I was glad Hadley was working and couldn’t see me getting ready for the film with Gracie. I took a long bath, moussed my hair and put on my special red-and-white-striped shirt with my straight-legged black jeans. Then I drove off to the Harvard Exit on Capitol Hill.

Gracie met me in the lobby that was more like a drawing room with drapes, settees and a piano. It looked as if she too had dressed up a little. She was wearing a big mohair pullover in shades of peach and rhubarb over honey-colored wool slacks. Her cheeks were pink and her salt and pepper hair curled forward above her direct brown eyes.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek. I blushed even as I thought, surely she knows about Hadley. Surely June has told her.

I’d thought a movie was a fairly safe thing to do with a woman you liked but whom you didn’t want to get any wrong ideas. Still, that eighty or ninety minutes felt very long. I like Eric Rohmer, but I don’t remember much about the film, except that it was part of a series appropriately titled, “Comedies and Proverbs.” I was acutely conscious of Gracie’s perfume, of the sensation of her body next to mine. I experienced slightly dizzy feelings of lust that I hadn’t for a long time, and I lost myself in hopeless reasonings: Maybe Hadley had been right, maybe we shouldn’t settle down. Staying together in a houseboat was fun, but it wasn’t real life. If I could feel this way about another woman then maybe I wasn’t ready for long-term fidelity. I hadn’t had enough experience as a lesbian… for instance, I’d never been with a woman so much older, so much more sophisticated.

After the film we walked down to the B & O, a local cafe, and had decaf espressos and sour cream lemon pie. I couldn’t decide whether my disloyalty was to Hadley or to the Espressomat. Still, it was nice to be somewhere out of range of political lesbians and washing machines for a while.

“I suppose there’s no doubt that Pauline killed Loie and Nicky?” Gracie asked.

“I suppose not. The newspaper said the means of death was the same in both cases, and Pauline
did
take the manuscript. Still, I have some questions.”