Confessions of a Red Herring

by Dana Dratch

  “Ten days ago. But . . .”

  “Well, since you had a negative balance, there was an NSF fee for that, too. Oh, and there was a twenty-five-dollar penalty fee for dropping below your required one-thousand-dollar minimum balance.”

  “Let me guess, that also came with an NSF fee?”

  “Yes, it did. “

  “I don’t need to keep a minimum balance. I have free checking. No monthly fees, and I get free check printing, too.”

  The only time I ever had more than a thousand in my checking account was when it was time to pay the mortgage. And that lasted three days, tops.

  “I’m sorry, but you’re no longer eligible for our employer-sponsored Platinum Free Checking. As of”—and there was a pause while Allie clicked some computer keys—“Monday, that privilege was revoked. You’ll be getting a notice in the mail. You’ve been switched to our Premium Checking product.”

  Man, C&W wasted no time sharing the good news. Was there anyone in greater D.C. who didn’t know I’d been fired?

  “Since I was switched without my knowledge or permission, can you at least erase the current fees? As a courtesy?”

  “I’m sorry, we can’t do that. Notification was mailed promptly. It’s up to you to keep up with your account.”

  I have to say, she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded like she was eating ice cream and enjoying it. The bank wasn’t stealing money from my account, I was “incurring fees.” It was my fault they were draining me dry.

  “Yes, but I signed up for free checking with no minimum balance. Your bank switched me. Without telling me.”

  “There’s nothing we can do. The Platinum accounts are only for employees of client businesses. Once you’re no longer with a participating employer, you’re no longer eligible for the program. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

  “Else? What exactly have you done so far?”

  “Good-bye, Ms. Vlodnachek. Have a nice day.”

  Chapter 21

  That afternoon, my living room took on the air of a 1960s Vegas caper movie.

  Gabby had me in a kitchen chair with an apron around my neck and was applying makeup with the swift, sure strokes of a true artiste. My shoulder-length hair was wrapped tightly around my head, held in place with dozens of bobby pins and a few globs of hair gel. The polish on my fake crimson nails was still drying, and I’d been instructed not to move.

  I felt like a mummy undergoing the embalming process.

  “You look kind of like a drag queen,” Nick said, as Gabby added a few dabs of scarlet lip gloss.

  “Honey, I’ve got news for you,” she drawled. “All beautiful women are drag queens at heart. Real glamour doesn’t just happen. It takes work.”

  I slid my eyes over to Trip, who was struggling not to laugh. And losing the battle.

  Gabby slipped a dark brown wig onto my head, tugged twice, and clipped a couple of fasteners into place. Then she stepped back, looked me up and down, and broke into a big smile. “Gorgeous. Ab-so-lute-ly gorgeous.”

  “She does look different,” Nick said.

  “I wouldn’t recognize you,” Trip said, studying me from all angles.

  I reached for the mirror, but Gabby blocked my hands.

  “Un-uh,” she warned. “Not ‘til that polish dries. I don’t want you to touch anything for another ten minutes.” Instead, she held up the hand mirror.

  My wavy, red-gold hair had been replaced by a brunette Julia Roberts halo that fell to my shoulders. And false eyelashes made my brown eyes look huge and cat-like. Even the shape of my face looked different. And somehow, with Gabby’s experienced hand wielding the glue, my eyes didn’t itch. Come to think of it, neither did my scalp.

  Good lord, this might actually work.

  “OK, kiddies, gather ’round,” Trip said, clapping his hands. “Time to get to know the players in our little drama.”

  He tossed photos from a stack onto my coffee table like cards from a deck. “These are pix of the crew from Coleman & Walters. Obviously, you have to wait on everyone tonight. But you want to pay special attention to these folks. Stay near them as much as you can. Try and listen in on their conversations. And remember any interesting morsels.”

  “Where’d you get those?” I asked, pointing at the candid shots.

  “Snapped them last night with my cell phone. Surreptitiously, of course.” He held up the first one. “This is the grieving widow, Margaret Coleman. Former nurse. Currently the office manager-slash-power-behind-the-throne at the firm.”

  “There’s a woman who could definitely use a makeover,” Gabby said, shaking her head. “Not much to work with, though. Maybe one of those TV extreme thingies?”

  “Say what you will, she can hold her booze,” Trip said. “I saw her knock back three scotches in an hour last night, and she didn’t even wobble.

  “And these are the kids,” he added picking up a photo in each hand. “A boy and a girl. Twins. Pat and Patti. Both were supposedly away at college when it happened. But the time of death on Sunday gives them plenty of leeway. Plus, they could spill some interesting stories, especially if they’re drinking.”

  “Ooooh, they look just like Momma,” Gabby said, shaking her head.

  “Yeah, pretty unfortunate,” Trip said. “And this is the mistress, Jennifer Stiles.”

  “Hey, now she’s cute,” Gabby said. “I like the hair. Very Angelina Jolie.”

  Nick gave me a thumbs-up.

  “I can’t believe she showed up at Margaret’s,” I said.

  “She had to,” Trip said. “Think about it. It would have looked funny if she hadn’t.”

  “She might be pregnant, so she may or may not be drinking tonight,” I added. “And I’m curious to know, either way.”

  “This is the business partner,” Trip said, holding up an image of Benjamin Walters. Even in a color photo, Walters looked gray. “We think he was getting cut out of the company. What would help is to know a few of the details.”

  “Who else will be there?” Gabby asked.

  “Chaz, the office weasel,” I chimed in.

  Trip gave me a pat on the back. “One of Alex’s coworkers, who’s spreading some pretty nasty lies to the press. Don’t have a picture of him because he wasn’t there last night.”

  “Just look for a short, stocky guy with bleached blond streaks who’s oozing slime,” I added. “That’s Chaz.”

  Trip grinned. “For the most part, you’ll be serving senators, congressmen, aides, lobbyists, corporate honchos, media and P.R. types,” Trip said. “It’ll be a regular ‘Who’s Who’ of D.C.”

  Gabby threw back her shoulders and grinned. “This is sooooo exciting. Anything else we need to know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Odds are, one of the people in that room tonight is a killer.”

  * * *

  When Trip left for the funeral, Nick took Lucy over to the Clancys’, where she would spend a well-supervised evening. Gabby retreated to the guest room to finish getting ready.

  Hand it to The Barclay, the uniforms were a lot better than what I usually wore to work these days. A white long-sleeved blouse with a simple black skirt (for the girls), or a white dress shirt with black dress slacks (for the guys). Men wore ties. Women: a gold chain and earrings.

  It was nice to dress up for a change. Even if I was still the hired help. Best of all, we’d get to bring home the leftovers.

  Which reminded me.

  I grabbed my cell, tried to dial, and—thanks to my new nails—fumbled. It was like having chopsticks glued to my fingertips. How did Annie manage this stuff?

  I retrieved the phone from the sofa, where it had landed. Gripping it in my left palm, I clutched a pen in my right fist and poked out the call-block code, followed by the number to Gravois & Co. I swear I’d seen apes do the same thing on the Discovery Channel.

  “Allô.”

  I coughed into the phone. “Mr. Gravois,” I wheezed, using my best raspy voice.

  “Oui, this
is Gravois.”

  “Mr. Gravois, this is Al . . . uh . . . Gabrielle. I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. Bronchitis. And it’s aggravating my asthma. I won’t be able to work tonight.” I punctuated that last statement with a couple of coughs for good measure.

  “Is fine. No work, no cash money.”

  That’s when I remembered: today was payday. And Gravois, high-flying financier that he was, paid cash.

  “I can collect my pay when I come in on Monday,” I said, scraping my throat with a few more coughs.

  “No cash on Monday. Cash on Friday.”

  “But you can hold my cash and pay me Monday.”

  “No work on Friday, no cash money.”

  “I’ve scrubbed toilets and cleaned offices all week. You have to pay me.”

  “You say you not work. No work, no cash money,” he said, his accent suddenly getting a lot thicker. His English might be sketchy, but his grasp of capitalism was first-rate.

  “What if you gave my money to Elia? She can hang on to it for me.”

  “No substitutions!” he barked. “No come to work, no cash money.”

  The guy was a broken record.

  “I’ll be in on Monday,” I said. Fortunately for my new fingernails, you couldn’t slam a cell.

  Like it or not, I needed access to that building. Even if it meant cleaning toilets for free.

  Chapter 22

  The events manager at The Barclay kept his instructions short and sweet. “Keep your trays loaded, and don’t stop moving.”

  Nick, Gabby, and I were clustered around a booth in The Barclay’s special-events room, along with a regular waiter named Travis, and the restaurant’s ancient maître d’, Ralph. The five of us, plus a bartender who hadn’t shown up yet, would be staffing the wake.

  Gianni (who was a friend of Tom’s), had already presented the three of us with the black, pearl-button vests that completed our “uniforms.” We looked like waiters, but I was dubious. Any minute now, I was certain I’d be discovered and tossed out.

  Which pretty much described my life at the moment.

  The room itself was impressive. Definitely not the usual four-walls-and-a-banquet-table-jammed-into-a-claustrophobic-backroom that most restaurants offered. Think small hotel ballroom. Fitted out with a full bar, recessed lighting, and lots of polished oak and brass, it was more like a slightly smaller version of The Barclay itself.

  “Don’t worry about smiling, this is a wake,” Gianni stressed. “Be omnipresent and invisible.”

  My new motto.

  “At the end of the night, the event gratuity will be split seven ways,” he continued. “Two shares for Ralph, one for everyone else.”

  Ralph, as well-known in D.C. as the Washington Monument and twice as old, nodded gravely.

  With an open bar and a room full of heavy drinkers, that math could still net me more than $300 at the end of the night. Take that, Gravois.

  Since Coleman had been buried earlier this afternoon, this wasn’t a wake in the traditional sense. This event was strictly for the living.

  And two hours later, the room was packed.

  I quickly discovered that Gianni’s advice was easier in theory than in practice. Keeping the trays moving meant either pushing people aside (not great wake etiquette), or trying to find an open space where virtually none existed. I’d said “excuse me” so many times I was beginning to sound robotic.

  Gabby, on the other hand, made it look effortless. She waltzed through the crowd with her tray like she was on Dancing with the Stars. She didn’t even seem out of breath.

  Whatever else my new sister-in-law was into—or up to—she was a first-rate waitress. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or guilty. So I settled for vaguely uneasy.

  Nick received a field promotion to bartender when the regular guy didn’t show. He was ensconced behind the massive oak bar pouring twenty-year-old scotch—the liquid of choice for this crowd—along with a fair amount of wine and imported beer.

  I’d heard Ralph tell him that if any of the guests “requested anything more complicated than scotch and soda,” he’d shuttle it over from The Barclay’s main bar. But from what I could see of the empty glasses, that hadn’t been necessary.

  I was a wreck. Lifting trays apparently used a whole different set of muscles than cleaning toilets. My legs throbbed. My back ached. My arms felt like they were going to fall off. And, since I hadn’t eaten all day, I was starving.

  Margaret was holding court in a corner booth, with Walters at her elbow. Gabby was covering that area.

  “Your boss’s wife is a witch,” she confided in the kitchen, as we restocked our trays.

  “No argument here. What’d she do this time?”

  I reached for a mini-quiche, and a cook slapped my hand. “No tasting!” he said. “At The Barclay, the waitstaff serves the food. The waitstaff does not eat the food.”

  I glared at him.

  But Gabby flashed a big smile and—I swear I am not making this up—batted her lashes. “We just wanted a liiiitle nibble. It all smells so goooooood.”

  “OK, just a bite,” he said, winking. “And don’t let anyone catch you,” he called over his shoulder as he headed back to the main kitchen.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  “Sugar, it’s all in the attitude. Besides, that’s why we’re here tonight, right? Charm the socks off these nice folks and get some information?”

  Some reporter I am.

  “Charm’s good,” I said, grabbing a quiche. “So what’d you learn about Margaret?”

  “She’s more worried about the insurance money than she is about losing her man. The insurance company hasn’t paid yet, and she is teed off.”

  That was weird. The company should have mailed a check by now. Or be preparing one.

  “Did she say what the holdup was?”

  “The pale guy told her that the company was just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s before writing a couple of checks that big. He kept saying it was ‘completely routine.’ Those were his exact words.”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “OK, sugar, she said, ‘Everybody knows the redheaded bitch is responsible. I want my money.’”

  “Did either of them happen to mention how much money we’re talking about?” I was curious. What did a slightly used Everett P. Coleman go for these days?

  “Thirty million for the business policy,” Gabby said. “Another fifteen million for the family policy.”

  Ka-CHING! The not-so-merry widow has another motive. And this one’s impossible to hide.

  “Bland guy told her he could buy her half of the company with part of the business insurance,” Gabby said. “Something called a ‘key-man policy?’ Honestly, that part didn’t make a lot of sense.”

  I’d learned about key-man policies from Peter. They were a fairly common business tool, and his firm used them. You took out life insurance on all the principals in a company, both to cover what it would cost the business to replace them and—in the case of the actual business owners—to compensate the spouse and kids for the deceased’s share of the company.

  It gave high-strung corporate types some assurance that they wouldn’t wake up one morning to discover their new partner was an eighteen-year-old demanding his late father’s corner office and a company Ferrari.

  “What did she say to that?”

  “She said, ‘That’s not going to happen, Benjamin.’ Super cold. Then a bunch of folks came up, and she went back to being the tearful wife. At that point, my tray was empty, so I had to shake my tail feathers back to the kitchen.”

  I started to tell her she’d make a great spy. Then I remembered the multiple IDs and bit my lip.

  “You did great,” I finally said.

  Gabby beamed.

  * * *

  “Cheddar popover, sir?”

  Trip put one hand to his chin and pretende
d to study the tray. “These people would give the newsroom bunch a run for their money in the drinkers’ Olympics,” he said softly.

  “Hey, it takes real effort to drown your soul and keep it dead,” I replied. “Any front-runners?”

  “I wouldn’t rule out Pat and Patti.”

  “Any reason? Besides the fact that their parents named them Pat and Patti?”

  “I know. Sounds like a bad lounge act. Now playing at the Oxnard Airport Hilton, the smooth, soulful stylings of . . . Pat & Patti. I’ll tell you one thing, Pat can’t hold his liquor. Two beers, and he was facedown on the bar. Nick had to walk him into the kitchen for some coffee.”

  “Then he doesn’t take after his dad,” I said. “That man was a gold-medal lush.”

  “So’s his wife. By Nick’s count, she’s had five scotches already. Good thing she’s got Walters for a designated driver.”

  “Is that what he’s telling people? Walters never drinks. At least, not that I’ve seen.”

  “Oh, and here’s a newsflash: Ralph’s already thrown Mira out twice.”

  “She’s here?”

  “With pad and pen at the ready. All she needs is a little badge that says ‘press.’”

  “I’m surprised Walters didn’t whisk her to the head table. It’s his fiction she’s ghosting.”

  “She doesn’t know that. Besides, plausible deniability dictates that he has to be ‘highly offended’ by all the dirt she’s digging up. Oh, yummy!” he said, finally plucking a flaky pastry from the tray. “Thank you, serving wench.”

  * * *

  “My fazer waza sunovabish.”

  I slammed into the kitchen to find Nick propping up a seated Pat Coleman.

  “Two beers,” Nick said, holding up two fingers in a “V.” Pat’s head hit the table with a thud.

  “Look, I’ve got to get back out there,” he added. “If we cut off the booze flow, it’s going to get ugly. Can you handle him?”

  Pat was now snoring softly. How tough could it be?

  “I’ve got him,” I said. “But where’s the other one? I thought twins were supposed to share some mystical, psychic bond that alerts one when the other’s in trouble.”