Love Sold Separately

by Ellen Meister

  “Oh?” Dana was surprised. She and Lorenzo were keeping their relationship a secret from their coworkers, so if he was passing a message through Ollie, it had to be important.

  “He asked you to please come to see him before your show. He has a new microphone for you. He needs to test this.”

  Dana nodded as if the request were no big deal, and pretended to reread the notes for her show one last time before hurrying downstairs. Lorenzo was busy in the sound booth when she arrived, but when he saw Dana through the window, he nodded toward the hallway and met her out there.

  “Marks is here,” he said, his face tight.

  “In the building?”

  “He’s upstairs with some uniforms, nosing around Kitty’s office again.”

  “That could be good news,” she said, “if they’re on the trail of something solid.”

  Lorenzo let out a breath before looking up and down the hallway to be sure they were still alone. “He cornered me again,” he said quietly. “Made me go through everything that happened that day.”

  Dana shook her head. It was infuriating that Marks still didn’t believe Lorenzo...or her.

  “How many times is he going to question you? It’s ridiculous. There are other leads he should be following.”

  “We just have to be really careful,” Lorenzo said. “About us.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “I haven’t told anyone here.”

  He nodded absently, his mind on something else. “And I thought this was going to be a good day.”

  She searched his face, looking for any trace of hopefulness. Dana didn’t want to get ahead of herself, but she thought she saw something in his eyes, some tiny spark. “Any particular reason?” she asked.

  He gave her an enigmatic grin. “Can you handle some good news?”

  “Always.”

  He waited a beat, licking his lips. “I’m in the clear,” he finally said.

  “The drug test?” she asked, just to make sure she was understanding. Because this was glorious news, a huge weight lifted. She had been envisioning his parole officer showing up with handcuffs to drag him off, leaving poor little Sophia without her daddy.

  He nodded. “It came back clean.”

  “Oh, thank God!” she said. Dana was just about to hug him when she saw an alarmed look on his face. He took a step back.

  Dana turned to look over her shoulder and saw Ari Marks. He hadn’t actually witnessed anything other than two people talking, but she sensed he had picked up on a feeling of intimacy.

  “Can I speak to you for a few minutes?” he asked her.

  “I’m on the air soon.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  She glanced quickly at Lorenzo and then walked off with Marks, who led her to the unused studio across the lobby. The room was dark and cavernous, its high black ceiling dotted with dim emergency lights. Officially, it was Studio E, but staff members had nicknamed it the planetarium. She could just about make out Marks’s shadowy features.

  “Anything you care to tell me?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “About you and Mr. DeSantis.”

  “We’ve been through this,” she said. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Nothing?”

  She took a steadying breath. This zealous cop had very nearly cost Lorenzo his freedom—and Sophia her childhood—for one drag on a joint. And he was still stuck on breaking Lorenzo’s alibi.

  “Come to think of it, there is something,” she said, her tone icy. “He’s a single father. Did you know that when you got him in trouble with his parole officer?”

  “You seem to care a lot about someone who’s just a coworker.”

  “I’m a human being, Detective. I don’t have to be romantically involved with someone to care if their child is left orphaned. But I guess you’re cut from a different cloth.” Even as she said it, Dana realized she sounded like someone’s prissy aunt. Or more precisely, like Mrs. Woodbridge, as she had borrowed the phrase directly from her script. Still, it was accurate, and she waited through the silence for his response.

  For several seconds she heard nothing except hard breath coming from his face in the darkness. At last he said, in measured calm, “I have a job to do.”

  “I understand that,” she said. “You’re trying to find out who murdered Kitty Todd. But you have to know it wasn’t Lorenzo.”

  He didn’t say anything, and she wanted to shake him.

  “He has an alibi,” she said through gritted teeth. “I was with him.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Why the hell don’t you believe me?”

  “Because you don’t always tell the truth.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You want me to believe that a man entered your apartment alone at 9:45 on Thursday night and left sometime after midnight, but you’re nothing more than coworkers?”

  She took a step back, a breath catching in her throat. “What the fuck? Are you staking out my apartment?”

  “Take it easy,” he said. “I’m not.”

  Take it easy? Was he kidding? She wanted to kick his shin. “So what—you’re following Lorenzo? Jesus!”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Answer my question,” she said.

  “What question is that?”

  “Did you know that he had a little girl, and that her mother is in prison and Lorenzo is all she’s got?”

  “I know a lot of things.”

  “And that means nothing to you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Lorenzo’s been clean since the day he was arrested, and you damned well know it. Plus, there are plenty of people around here who had the motive to murder Kitty, and Lorenzo isn’t one of them.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Hell, no, I’m not finished. Here’s another question. Why aren’t you investigating Charles Honeycutt? Unless you’ve really screwed up, by now you’ve seen the inscription on Kitty’s bracelet.”

  “What bracelet?”

  “The gold alligator bracelet. It was on her desk—in the dish with her rings.”

  Marks paused. “There was no bracelet.”

  “Of course there was. I saw it.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It’s gold—about an inch thick—and looks like a curved alligator, with emerald eyes and a diamond tail. And it has an inscription inside—Love, Charles.”

  He looked dubious. “You were able to see a bracelet inscription from the doorway of the room?”

  “I didn’t see the inscription. The manicurist told me about it.”

  “Manicurist?”

  “Jo—she works here.”

  “Last name?”

  Dana shrugged.

  “What does she look like?”

  “Petite,” she said, concentrating. “Blue-black hair—an undercut on the left side. She wears smudgy black eyeliner under her lower lashes and has four studs in each ear.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She has a reedy neck and likes bright pink lipstick.”

  “What else?”

  She paused, realizing he was teasing her. “I could go on,” she said.

  “Oh, please do. I’m curious to see where this ends.”

  She thought for a moment, still indignant, but eager to prove he could trust her powers of perception. “She has an underbite. Her nails look like hell, but that’s true of most manicurists. She wears a citrusy perfume. Skinny ankles. And she’s a Capricorn—or at least I think she is. She wears a pendant with a symbol for that sign.”

  “Is that all?”

  “She sounds like Cyndi Lauper. Usually wears sleeveless shirts. You want more?”

  “I think I’m good.”

  “Are yo
u serious about the bracelet?” she asked. “You didn’t see it?”

  “I’ve been over the evidence several thousand times. There was no bracelet in that dish with the rings. No bracelet like the one you described anywhere in her office or her dressing room.”

  Dana closed her eyes. She could envision what she saw on that day. The blood on the window, Kitty’s body and a hundred other details, including a gold bracelet in the shape of an alligator. That meant someone had taken it before the police arrived.

  She remembered Charles Honeycutt rushing through the crowd and taking charge. She imagined him panicked about leaving behind any evidence, and grabbing the bracelet before anyone saw it.

  “You have to believe me,” she said. “The bracelet was there, in the room, when she died. Someone took it—someone who didn’t want you to see it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s it?”

  “It’s an interesting story.”

  No wonder this guy was divorced. He was infuriating. “Listen to me,” she seethed. “Find that bracelet and you’ve found your killer.”

  “I’d be more inclined to trust you if you were honest about your relationship with Lorenzo DeSantis.”

  Dana tried to steady her breathing. If he had someone watching Lorenzo, then he probably knew they had gone out to Long Island together. Still, she was going to stick to her story.

  “I know why you’re targeting Lorenzo,” she said. “But you’ve got the wrong guy in your crosshairs.”

  “Exactly how much do you know about Lorenzo DeSantis?”

  “Enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Marks rubbed the stubble on his cheek, as if contemplating what he could divulge. “There may be something your boyfriend isn’t telling you.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Have it your way. Just don’t make any assumptions about him.”

  She squinted, trying to read his face in the dark. She didn’t know if he was playing her, or if this was a real warning.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she repeated, “but he’s a good man.”

  “Sometimes good men keep secrets, too.”

  20

  On air, Dana faltered. She was edgy thinking about whatever secret Lorenzo was keeping from her. Why did Marks have to drop that bomb right before she went on? Again and again, Dana told herself to focus, keep her head in the game. But her mind wandered and she mixed up the iced vanilla and warm cream-colored handbags, kept referring to the green one as “sage” instead of “avocado” and, most egregious of all, referred to the “summer sky” selection as simply “light blue.” She pictured Adam in the control booth holding his head to prevent a blood pressure explosion.

  Dana glanced at the sales figures with mild panic. She wasn’t meeting her projections. With an hour to go, Dana closed her eyes right there on camera. She had to go deep inside to find her ebullient sales persona—the one who had gushed about the Hector Comb at the audition. The one who spoke to the viewer as if she were her best friend. And then...she found her. Dana opened her eyes and she was back, right there in the zone, gushing effusively about the large-size version of the handbags she had been selling. And just like that her numbers started to climb. By the end of her segment, she raised her figures enough to reach her minimum. It was a squeaker—and Sherry wouldn’t be pleased—but she hadn’t failed.

  “Everything okay?” Adam asked.

  She thought of a million excuses. The lighting was bad. The displays were crooked. The color chart was confusing.

  “I’ll do better tomorrow,” she said.

  In her dressing room, she texted Lorenzo. They had to talk. Soon. She didn’t want to do it at work, with everyone around, and he said he had to go straight to pick up Sophia from day care. He suggested she come to his place after Sophia’s bedtime, and since she didn’t have a Sweat City rehearsal that night, she agreed.

  He lived uptown in Washington Heights, in the semisubterranean apartment of an attractive brownstone with an ornate cornice and wrought-iron handrails lining the stoop. When she arrived, he opened the private entry door to let her in and she understood why he had moved so far uptown. In addition to a modern kitchen with a granite counter, the place had ample charm and space, including a long living room with overhead windows facing the street. There was an ashtray perched on one of the windowsills, and Dana imagined Lorenzo standing and smoking after Sophia went to bed, carefully exhaling out the window. Behind the sofa there was an oak wall unit. Toys lined the lower shelves, and an assortment of old radios was perched on the upper shelves. A few of them were just the naked interiors, as if Lorenzo had been working on restoring them. Dana realized she knew so little about this guy.

  In the middle of the room there was a big square wooden coffee table with rounded corners, and she imagined Sophia sitting in front of it on her tiny painted chair, playing games and coloring while her dad watched the game on TV. At present, it was the folding station for laundry, with clothes stacked in neat piles. Lorenzo began putting the clothing into a plastic basket.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s hard to keep up.”

  He had a lot on his plate as a single father, and she almost felt guilty for being so suspicious...but not quite.

  “Nice apartment,” she said.

  “I guess. We’re a little cramped with only one bedroom.”

  “Where do you sleep?” she asked, surmising that Sophie had the bedroom.

  “Right here,” Lorenzo said, pointing to the couch. He shrugged, as if it weren’t a big deal. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  She shook her head. “Sophia’s asleep?”

  “Should be.”

  “Can she hear us talking?”

  “Not unless we shout.”

  Dana paced the apartment, studied the radios, tried to figure out where to begin.

  “Why don’t you sit?” he asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Dana inspected the colorful Bakelite radios, which looked like they were from the thirties and forties. Another had a burled wood cabinet with rounded edges and the distinctive cutouts of art deco design. It had to be about ninety years old. “Do these work?”

  “Most of them.” He put the laundry basket on the floor. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  She shook her head and faced him. “Marks said there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  He stared at her for a moment, alarmed. His expression went somber and he turned to open a locked liquor cabinet. He pulled out a rarefied bottle of Scotch with a gold painted label. It looked like something her father might drink. She knew, then, that she had struck a nerve. Lorenzo was a Heineken kind of guy. If he was going for the Scotch, there had to be a reason.

  “On second thought, pour me one of those,” she said. Dana didn’t much like Scotch—the burn was too intense. But now that he looked so guilty she wanted to cost him a little of his precious nectar. He poured the drinks and handed her one.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “What did he say exactly?”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “I’d like to know what he knows.”

  She put down her drink. “How many secrets do you have?”

  He took one gulp and then another, swallowing audibly. “There is something,” Lorenzo finally said, his back to her. “About another woman.”

  The back of her neck went icy cold. She glanced around the apartment looking for evidence that someone else lived there, but could see nothing but a man and his daughter. “Lorenzo—”

  “Maybe I should have told you.”

  “Of course you should have told me! Who is she?”

  “Was,” he corrected,

  “Was
? You mean Evelyn? Sophia’s mom?” She was confused. This wasn’t even close to being a secret.

  Lorenzo shook his head. “I mean Kitty.”

  For a quick second, her brain couldn’t process it, and she tried to imagine a different Kitty. “I don’t—”

  “That had to be what Marks was talking about. I slept with her. With Kitty Todd.”

  “You?” she said, her tone sharp.

  He shrugged, as if to say he had nothing more to add.

  “I thought she hated you. And that the feeling was mutual.”

  “It’s a little more complicated,” he said.

  Her face burned. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this,” she said, trying to contain her anger. Here she was, doing everything possible to exonerate him, and he had withheld this critical piece of information.

  “What difference would it make?” he asked.

  “For one thing, it helps me understand why Marks thinks you’re a suspect.”

  “And for another thing?”

  “How many things do there need to be?” she said, seething. This wasn’t an innocent omission. It was a lie. “What did you think would happen if you told me? Did you think I’d fly into a rage because you had a past?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s not the kind of thing women like to hear.”

  As if she had to be handled. “Did you think I wouldn’t go out with you because you’d slept with Kitty?”

  “That was part of it.”

  “What was the other part?” she asked, and then got it. He needed her as his alibi and didn’t want to take any chances. “Oh my God. You thought I’d turn on you...with the police. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t know how you’d react.”

  How little he thought of her! White-hot rage rose up in her, and before she knew it, Dana held the glass of Scotch over her head. She wanted nothing more than to smash it against the wall, but the knowledge that Sophia was sleeping in the next room constrained her fury, and with no other outlet she flung the liquid at Lorenzo. It splashed into the middle of his T-shirt, darkening the area over his heart.

  “Take it easy,” he said.

  “I won’t take it easy. How could you think so little of me?”