by James Turner
*******
After the pogo disaster, the reception picked up for another hour, though the Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World servers assumed more traditional roles, passing through the crowd on foot.
Thrilled with the turn of events, while at the same time bracing herself for the Opera performance, Ella joined the pack drifting out of City Hall across Van Ness Avenue to the Opera House. The crossing was no easy undertaking, and quite a lengthy process as well taking into consideration the average age of the attendees. But what with winning the Frackle listing, and one arm hooked in the elbow of her dashing date, Ella couldn’t have been happier. She was approaching the nexus of her career, and felt confident she’d sell the Frackle Mansion soon. But something niggled the edge of her conscience.
“Jeff, you know the old saying ‘over my dead body?’” The light changed and they started across the broad avenue.
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know how I feel about this, sure it’s huge, but what does it mean, do you think, that I got this listing literally over someone’s dead body, Tiffany Reynolds’ to be precise?”
“It means you deserve it. Look, Tiffany’s death had nothing to do with you, and someone’s got to sell that mansion, so why shouldn’t it be you?”
Ella thought for a moment. “It’s…I don’t know…messy. Like bad Karma or something.”
“Bad Karma? Give me a break, it’s business.”
“You’re right.”
The buzz of the crowd overwhelmed their conversation when they entered the War Memorial Opera House, a grand French Renaissance style structure built in the early 1930s, the façade freely decorated with Doric columns, balustrades and high arched windows. The vaulted and coffered lobby echoed with jabbering excitement as the opening night throng crowded its way forward. The more exalted audience members followed signs to the Box and Orchestra seats, while lesser beings ascended to the balconies. Jeff and Ella had switched tickets with colleagues in order to sit together, sixth row center in the Orchestra. Not that Ella cared about the performance, but the seats rated a definite plus on the status scale.
A vivid blue dress caught Ella’s eye in the foyer, and before she could turn the other way, she and Jeff stood face to face with the amazonic Delicia Cardosa and Hank Barker, Ella’s ex-husband. The blue in Delicia’s dress practically vibrated, rich and deep like the waters off Hawaii. It covered only one shoulder, before sloping down across her graceful clavicle and cosmetically enhanced bust to disappear under a slender arm. The dress hugged her voluptuous body nearly to the floor, where it flared out at the ankles, mermaid-like. She wore an oversized, angled white hat more appropriate for promenading down Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday than an autumn evening in San Francisco. White stilettos rounded out the package. A very light skinned Latina in her early 40’s, Delicia had big red glossy lips which contrasted with her long, luxurious once-dark hair, now dyed blonde. Ella could see the roots.
Delicia fixed her black, Colombian eyes on Ella and smiled, a look of victorious contempt raining down from above, the look of a woman for whom everything had always come easy, one who had never been denied. She exuded personal power, and in her vicinity one could almost pick up the rich aroma of coffee, the heady scent of her endless fortune, descended from the plantations of Medellin.
“Why Ella,” she said in accent free English, “what a surprise. I expected you would be sitting higher up. Hank and I are entertaining the Finnish royal family in our private box.”
Ella looked at Hank, who smiled in a non-committal way. Hank had just turned 50, a date not unnoticed by Ella the previous week. She refrained from congratulating him. He was athletic and tall, a slender, light skinned investment banker with a thin, handsome face. A senior partner in his firm, with the eye popping earning power to match, he had a full head of white hair and the requisite tuxedo. Ella still found him attractive.
“How nice for you,” Ella answered. “I’d like you both to meet Jeff Arnold.”
The men shook hands while Delicia looked down on Jeff. “And what business are you in, Mr. Arnold?” she inquired.
“I’m a mortgage broker.”
“Not a bad business to be in these days,” Hank said amiably.
“I suppose there are those who need mortgages,” Delicia sniffed.
Ella just wanted to escape. Despite her exciting new sex life with Jeff, even hearing about Hank could bring on painful pangs, much less running into him with the very woman who had made such a determined and successful effort to steal him away.
“By the way, I do imagine you’ve heard we’re expecting.”
Ella froze at Delicia’s pronouncement, a stabbing pain shooting through her chest and stomach. She looked searchingly at Hank, who avoided her gaze. Hank convinced Ella in the early years of their marriage that children would only get in the way of their freedom and careers. He’d driven home the supposed fact that they would always have each other and could seek comfort, companionship and fulfillment through their lasting and committed marriage. So much for that. With her own career looming large and bountiful, Ella had reluctantly agreed. Only much later did she seriously regret not having a child, but by that time the hour had passed.
Jeff took his cue from Ella’s expression. “Congratulations, you must be very excited. But we’ve got to get to our seats.” He took Ella’s hand securely in his, and led her quickly away from Delicia and Hank.
*******
During the opera, Ella’s mind raced in a tangle of jumbled emotions, what with the joy of securing the Frackle listing on the one hand, and the pain of Delicia and Hank’s pregnancy on the other. In the end, distraction helped her make it through the Weimarian performance, despite the avant-garde thinking involved in adapting a zany 20th century American comedy with an Italian art form invented in the 17th. Chasing a fortune across the southern California landscape just didn’t mix with the dour chants and yodels drawn from the German creator’s musical imagination.
Nevertheless wild applause, cheering and “Bravos!” filled the theatre after the more than welcome finale. As Ella and Jeff inched their way their way back out to the lobby, she began to feel better about the encounter with Hank. It could still hurt momentarily, but how he must have changed to put up with that pretentious phony Delicia, no matter what the size of her fortune.
Once back in City Hall, Ella and her tablemates took their seats for dinner in the North Light Court. As a Gold Level sponsor, the second highest level available, Barker Brokers’ table commanded a position slightly off to one side for the all important game of see and be seen. Along with Ella, Jeff, Mark, Marcos, and Ella’s loyal secretary Bootsie, Ella bestowed coveted invitations upon several of her top agents and loyal office managers.
Giselle Frackle reigned on high from a more prestigious, centrally located table, as she was naturally a top Platinum Level sponsor. Ditto Delicia and Hank, but all sat within a generally close view of one another.
“My feet hurt,” Ella said quietly to Mark, who sat to her left. “These shoes are killing me.”
“Take ‘em off, no one’ll see under the tablecloth.”
Ella discreetly leaned down to unfasten the ankle straps of her sandals. Using one foot, then the other, she slipped the appealing but torturous shoes off, a wave of relief flooding over her sore feet.
“What’s going on?” Bootsie asked. She turned around toward the entrance of the North Light Court, where some sort of commotion had broken out, with people speaking in loud, undignified voices.
Ella craned her neck. “I can’t see anything. Can you?” she asked Jeff.
Before he could answer, a small group of uniformed police officers and Lt. Guy Rothschild of the SFPD appeared in the midst of the crowded room. They stopped at the Barker Brokers table. Ella expected them to keep moving, but the Lieutenant looked straight into her eyes. She gripped Jeff’s arm.
“Ella Barker?” the lieutenant asked in a booming voice, his tone entirely too serious for Ella’s taste.<
br />
“Yes?” she responded dubiously.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Tiffany Reynolds.”
Gasps and shocked murmurs undulated noisily through the socially prominent opera crowd.
“What?” Ella asked. “There must be some kind of mistake.” Beyond the cops she could see Giselle Frackle, fork frozen in mid-flight on the way to her gaping mouth. Safada’s emerald eyes were riveted on Ella.
“We’re going to have to ask you to come with us.”
“But..”
“You have the right to remain silent…”
“Honey,” Mark said urgently, “don’t worry, we’re behind you, I know you’re innocent.”
“Innocent? All this talk of crime, I…”
Jeff kissed her on the cheek. “Sshhh, something’s obviously very wrong, don’t say anything else.”
Bootsie, Marcos and Ella’s other guests only stared. By now the entire dinner crowd had gone completely silent, utterly captivated.
One of the uniformed cops came around behind Ella’s chair holding a pair of handcuffs. “Please stand up, Mrs. Barker.”
Ella felt sick to her stomach. Cameras flashed, and several bystanders pointed cell phones in her direction. But she managed to somehow stand, her bare stocking’d feet flat on the cold marble floor. The officer pulled one arm then the other behind her back, locking her wrists into the uncomfortable vice-like grip of the metal restraints.
“Please come with us,” Lt. Rothschild said.
“Ella, your purse,” Mark said. One of the cops took the small clutch from Mark’s outstretched arm.
The arresting officer pulled Ella away from her Gold Level sponsor table, and began to weave through the packed tables toward the door.
Jeff threw his chair back from the table. “I’m going with you.”
“Me too,” said Mark.
“Gentlemen,” Lt. Rothschild said sternly, “you can go down to the station, but you cannot accompany Mrs. Barker.”
Ella looked around frantically for signs of comfort, her gaze instead landing on Delicia Cardosa, who sat back in her chair, arms crossed, a look of sheer amazement on her face. Hank looked at Ella helplessly, and shrugged. She glanced down at her shoeless feet, then swept her panicked gaze around the room again. This time she saw Kearney Frackle and his pixie-ish date. Kearney slowly shook his head, waving his jowls at her.
Safada however, realized Ella’s shoes were missing.
“Espera aí,” she yelled. “Wait moment now.” She jumped up from her table and ran to Ella’s, swooping in under the tablecloth to grab Ella’s elegant, lonely sandals.
Ella neared the entrance of the North Light Court. The blinding light of a TV camera awaited. Then another, and another. Safada ran up, handing off the shoes to one of the cops.
“Here, your feets remain warm.” The flimsy, heeled sandals were hardly intended to provide warmth, but Ella looked at Safada gratefully. Safada smiled wanly, then drifted back.
“Why did you do it? Why did you kill Tiffany Reynolds?” asked a sharp female voice. Ella looked around to see Chirley Wixon, the reporter from Action Eagle Eye in the Sky News Team 12. “Did you want the Frackle listing that bad?”
Chapter 11
The next flash Ella saw blazed forth from the mug shot camera in the San Francisco jail. Actually she’d been taken to the architecturally significant County Jail number 9 on Seventh Street, which handles intake duties. After the photo and fingerprinting they moved her to a holding cell.
Ella’s extravagant, brilliant red opera gown fell into the general scheme of some of the other wardrobe choices made by incoming prisoners. Mostly prostitutes, she noted however. This being her first ever incarceration, Ella quickly became aware that in jail one sees, and hears, extremes of human behavior. Screams, shrieks, accusations and pleas echoed through the county jail’s 19 holding tanks. Ella had been subdued and scared since her ordeal began, and as a result of her tranquil behavior was spared a so-called safety cell, in essence solitary confinement. Later she wished maybe she’d acted up more.
Ten or so women occupied the holding cell when Ella made her entrance. Some sat on bunks, staring blankly forward, one or two laid with their faces to the wall. Another yammered away on the prisoner phone in the corner. One woman in her late 30’s, face and teeth scarred by the obvious and excessive use of methamphetamine, turned her skanky visage and ratty, dull hair toward the tank’s latest arrival.
“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” she drawled. “You been workin’ the Nob Hill hotels?”
Ella looked at the woman in disgust, ignoring her. She wanted only to use the phone, but judging by the ongoing, rambling conversation this would not happen anytime soon.
The meth woman’s hot, stinky breath suddenly steamed up the back of her neck. She’d leapt to her feet and rushed up behind Ella. “What’s the matter, honey, you takin’ a big fall from your high falutin’ fancy schmancy soc-i-ety life? You think you’re too good fur us here?”
Ella looked quickly around toward the cell door. No jailer patrolled the corridor and she didn’t have it in her to scream, nor did she actually feel that threatened. More repulsed than anything. To think an hour or so ago she’d been sitting in the War Memorial Opera House enduring a Teutonic adaptation of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” with a Who’s Who crowd of San Francisco’s most elegant, connected and moneyed. And what a mad world it was, she considered, that someone in her exalted financial and social position could plummet so far, so fast. The Who’s Who of County Jail number 9 had a very different and more complex makeup than that of the North Light Court in City Hall.
She walked away from the meth hag over to the phone, where the caller wore a halter top, hot pants and steep heels. Did people really still dress like this? She tapped the anorexic looking woman on the back.
Whirling instantly, the woman hissed, “What?”
“I was just wondering, how much longer will you be? I’d like to make a call.”
The woman looked at Ella and laughed cruelly. “I bet you would.” She turned her back and continued chattering dramatically.
A voice from a nearby bunk pierced the holding tank’s fetid atmosphere. “Hey shut up, will ya?”
The voice reverberated with a disturbing familiarity. Ella looked over just as the brawny woman rolled away from the wall.
She locked eyes with Roberta Littlefeather-Jones.
*******
Roberta’s thick upper lip trembled in a kind of happy sneer when her gaze fell upon Ella, all decked out in her frilly ensemble.
“Oh my god, Roberta, what happened?” Ella asked a little too quickly.
Roberta slowly pulled herself to her feet and hiked up her 501s. “This has just got to be the coincidence of the year,” she said, approaching Ella with a swagger. “But I think the real question is, what the hell did you do?”
“Ahh, nothing…”
“Everyone in jail is innocent, ain’t that the truth?”
“I am innocent.”
“Of what?”
Ella did not want to answer this question. She found the accusation simply too horrible, too unbelievable, to even mention out loud. “It’s a big mistake,” was all she said.
Roberta gave Ella the up-down, eyeing the flamboyant dress. “It sure looks like a mistake.” She stepped closer, then without any warning raised her arm and slapped Ella across the face. “That’s what I’m in for, slappin’ Starka around. She asked for it.”
Roberta’s slap hit her with cold, blunt force, nothing like the newfound thrill of the sexy, highly charged smacks she’d recently exchanged with Jeff.
“Why you little…”
“Little what, Miss Real Estate perfect, dyke?”
“Oh god, you’ve really got me wrong,” Ella said, holding one hand to her stinging cheek. “That’s the last thing I care about, who sleeps with who. No, what I was saying is you’ve got a freakin’ multiple personality. You were so nice when I me
t you, and now you’ve turned.”
Roberta flinched. “You made us write that sickening, ass-kissing letter to the sellers. You called that trashy neighborhood the ‘new Pacific Heights.’”
Ella admitted to herself Roberta’s claims were true. But she said nothing, only looking the other woman in the eye.
Roberta’s angry expression transformed into one of profound sadness. “Tell them I didn’t mean to hurt Starka. Tell them I love her.” A tear streamed out of one bulging eye.
“I’m not sure how much pull I’ve got around here.” She peered over and saw the phone was free. She fled the blubbering Roberta to call Mark Allen. She needed him now for his connections, principally his Attorney General dad.
When she reached for the phone, she heard the tap, tap, tap of running footsteps on the cold floor. She turned to see the wasted looking meth hag flying across the holding tank. “You made Roberta cry,” she wailed, landing on Ella’s back like a clinging monkey.
“Yeah, you made me cry,” said Roberta. Ella heard one additional comment before Roberta’s fist slammed into the side of her head. “This one’s for the creative financing.”
*******
“Not more TV lights,” Ella murmured. Her eyes fluttered open to see Lt. Rothschild and another man staring down at her.
“Those are hospital lights. You’re in the prison ward at SF General,” said the Lieutenant.
“Wha? How?” She looked around the room, the cold, hard reality of her situation hitting home. Bland colored walls, thick unbreakable windows, a uniformed officer standing guard at the door. At least she had a private room, better than the holding tank.
“Mrs. Barker, this is my colleague, Detective Jemiah Gunner.”
Through her sharpening vision, Ella could see that Det. Gunner was a block of a man, but better dressed than Lt. Rothschild. He was in his later 20’s and must have been a football player in earlier times, in that he lacked a neck and had a college stud’s square face.
“How do you do, ma’am,” he said. He held up a small machine in his hand. “Please be aware this conversation is being recorded.” He murmured something into the recorder. Ella heard her name and the date.