Love Sold Separately

by Ellen Meister

  “Adam,” she said gently, “I’d like her to have this.” She unhooked the chain around her neck and put it into his hand. She didn’t mind the sacrifice as she never really liked it very much. In fact, it had been a present from her cheating ex, Benjamin, and she had considered hocking it at least a dozen times. She only wore it today because she thought it might complement the pale pink polo dress she got from wardrobe. “People think it’s silver but it’s actually white gold,” she said.

  “White gold?” he repeated, staring down at the puddle of precious metal in his hand. She was pretty sure he was calculating the gold’s value in baby formula.

  “It’s brighter than silver. See?” She angled his hand toward the light.

  Adam went silent as he assessed the necklace. Finally he nodded, dropping the chain into his pocket, and they made plans to meet at the file room after the show.

  A short time later, Dana was onstage, staring at the ceiling as Lorenzo affixed the microphone bodypack to the back of her bra strap under her dress and threaded the wire through to the front. He clipped the mike to her collar. They were in front of the display of sandals she would be selling in her first segment.

  “Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he whispered.

  “Can you move this a little to the right?” she said, pointing to the tiny mike on her collar. “It’s hitting my chin.”

  He unclipped it and found a better spot. “I said I was sorry.”

  “And I said, ‘Good luck—I hope you get the job and that you live happily ever after in Pennsylvania.’”

  Lorenzo glanced around to make sure no one had heard. “I just want what’s best for Sophia.”

  “And lying to me was best for Sophia? That’s the part I don’t quite get.”

  He pointed to her microphone. “This better?”

  Dana moved her head side to side. “I think so,” she said, and then rocked her head up and down, to be sure. When her chin was lowered, she thought she noticed something strange about the display table.

  “Does this thing look a little crooked to you?” she asked.

  He turned around and assessed it, cocking his head. “Maybe a little.” He lifted the skirt of the table. “Whoa.”

  She bent down to see what he was looking at. One of the table legs was missing and replaced by a cracked-off yardstick.

  Ordinarily, Dana would have assumed a prop guy was simply being resourceful. But when she thought about the misplaced charts and the severed microphone cable, her pulse raced.

  “Is that stable?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Looks like the whole thing could come crashing down.” Lorenzo poked his head farther under the table. “And there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the actual table leg. Someone just folded it up and replaced it.”

  Dana fought a wave of nausea. She couldn’t chalk this up to drug-fueled paranoia or a freak accident. Someone was trying to sabotage her. She waved frantically at Adam, who came running over.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “The display table,” Dana said. “It’s been...compromised.”

  “Compromised?”

  “Look!”

  Adam poked his head under the table skirt. “What the hell?” he said. “I checked this ten minutes ago.” He turned toward the crew. “Someone get another table!”

  “We’re on in sixty seconds,” the tech director said over the PA, and dispatched a crew in an instant. Two guys carefully lifted the table straight up while another crawled underneath to remove the yardstick and unfold the table leg. They tested it for stability. There was nothing wrong with the table leg.

  With five seconds to go, the crew moved out of the shot, Dana hit her mark and took a slow, steadying breath. She could not afford to let this rattle her. Whoever was trying to sabotage her could go to hell. She was going to make this her best show yet.

  The green light when on, and she looked straight through the camera lens into her best friend’s eyes and made her believe all she needed for her life to be complete was a pair of strappy bejeweled sandal flats that could go from the beach to a romantic dinner. She was all in. And the show was fun, fast and fabulous.

  When it was over, she unclipped her microphone and threw it down. She knew she had done well, but once she broke character, the contained fury had nowhere to go.

  “We never sold so many beach blankets,” Adam said as he rushed over with his tablet. “You broke a Shopping Channel record.”

  “Yeah, and I almost broke an entire display, live on the air.”

  “I’m going to find out who did this, Dana.”

  “You’d better.”

  * * *

  When she went back to her dressing room, Dana called Megan to tell her what had happened.

  Her manager friend listened very quietly. When she finally responded, she was all business.

  “This is unacceptable. I’ll set up a meeting with Sherry as soon as possible. In the meantime—”

  Dana cut her off, because she knew what Megan was going to say. “In the meantime, I shouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Oh, hon,” Megan said, “I was going to tell you, in the meantime, watch your ass.”

  After changing into her street clothes, Dana went down to the basement to meet Adam at the file room, but he wasn’t there. She waited a couple of minutes and texted him. I’m here. Where are you?

  He wrote back almost immediately. Was there earlier. Unlocked door.

  Coward, she thought, though she couldn’t work up too much anger. The guy had so much more at stake than she did. With a family and a mortgage, the idea of getting fired was just terrifying to him. Dana wasn’t exactly calm about it herself, but was pretty sure that if she were careful enough, she could pull it off without getting caught.

  She took a long look up and down the deserted hallway to make sure no one was coming, and then checked the door. Sure enough, it opened. She slipped inside and flicked on one light switch and then another. The room was awash in green-hued fluorescents.

  When she saw what she was up against, Dana understood why Adam said it was a daunting search. The room was huge—about fifty feet across—and filled with thick metal walls of putty-colored file shelving units. They were labeled only with numbers, so it was impossible to know which one belonged to the security department. Dana let out a breath and clicked off one of the light switches to dim the room, just in case. Otherwise, she’d feel like a spider crawling across a white tile.

  She walked across the concrete floor to the far end of the room. There was nothing to do but start at the beginning.

  She entered the first corridor between the tall shelves and eyed the rows and rows of blue folders. She pulled out a random file and saw that it was from the payroll department. She pulled out a few more from the same section to satisfy herself that the files were organized by department. She was tempted to sneak a peek at what her coworkers were earning, but it was too risky to linger. She had a job to do.

  The next corridor of files appeared to belong to the accounting department, as it was filled with pale green folders containing tax returns. That department seemed to generate more paper than a printing press, because the next three shelving units were taxes and more taxes.

  After that came the quality assurance files, in no-nonsense manila. Then marketing, which used bright, lots-of-nonsense yellow folders. She was about to walk to the next aisle when she noticed that the files on the opposite shelf were red. She pulled out a random folder, and it contained a visitors’ log. At last—she was in the right section.

  Dana began pulling out files to determine how they were arranged, and was glad to see it was chronological. She thought she heard the door to the room open and stopped, her heart thudding. She held perfectly still. Nothing but silence. It had been her imagination. Or maybe someone had poked their
head in and left. She hurried down the rows of files to find the folder from the week of Kitty’s murder. She pulled out the file and there it was—photocopied pages instead of a spiral logbook. Before she could scan the pages, though, Dana heard footsteps. She tucked the folder under her arm and moved toward the wall, hoping to hide in the shadows in case the person walked past. They were heavy footsteps. A man. They got closer, and Dana didn’t breathe, holding perfectly still as a bead of sweat ran down her forehead and dripped into her eye. At last, she saw a figure move into her line of vision.

  Dana blinked. She couldn’t see the face, but she knew the jingle of keys and the bulky silhouette. It was Beecham! She froze, hoping he couldn’t see her, but he stopped, backlit and broad. For several moments he remained perfectly still.

  “Who’s there?” he said, his deep voice cracking the silence as his hand reached for something on his belt.

  On his belt?

  Sweet fancy Moses, did he have a gun? Time became a wall of molasses, and it seemed to take forever for Dana to open her mouth and respond. Before she could, the thing in his hand pointed at her and then...a bright white beam shone in her face.

  It wasn’t a gun. It was a flashlight.

  “It’s me, Dana,” she choked out.

  “Ms. Barry?” His tone was gruff, almost angry.

  “Hi, Mr. Beecham!” she chirped in the same cheerful voice she used when she passed by his desk.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “You don’t have clearance.”

  “Um...”

  “Who let you in?” he demanded.

  “No one!” Dana protested. She wasn’t going to rat out Adam.

  “That door locks automatically,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I guess it’s broken or something?”

  “You sure no one let you in?”

  “Positive,” she said.

  He shone the flashlight onto the folder. “What’s in your hand? And why were you hiding from me?”

  “I, uh...”

  “Don’t...lie,” he said, pronouncing the words with slow, weighty, intimidating precision.

  Dana swallowed hard. Lying had been her first instinct. She ran through her options, but faced with a man who clearly had lie-detecting superpowers, she understood she had no other choice. And so she did what he asked. She told him the truth. Not all the details, of course, but enough for him to understand that Marks was breathing down Lorenzo’s neck, and that Ollie had access to an incriminating sex tape that might clear him, but wouldn’t turn it over until he could be convinced Honeycutt might be guilty.

  “That’s why I wanted to see these visitors’ logs,” she said. “If someone unidentified came into the building to see Honeycutt...”

  “No one comes into my building unidentified,” Beecham said.

  “Maybe with a false identity?” she offered.

  Beecham went quiet. He wasn’t a man who felt the need to fill uncomfortable silences with chatter.

  “You should have come to me,” he said, his tone starting to soften.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  In the silence that followed, she hoped he was remembering the Dunkin’ Donuts card, and thinking about her charitably.

  At last he said, “Follow me.”

  Dana blotted her damp forehead with her sleeve. “Where to?” she asked, wondering if he was going to take her to some secret room in the bowels of the Shopping Channel where errant on-air hosts were fingerprinted and read their version of the Miranda: You have the right to remain talking. Constantly. Live, on the air. Everything you say can and will be used to get you fired.

  He didn’t respond, and she trotted behind as he marched to the other end of the room and turned right after the last row of shelves.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a wooden table against the wall.

  “There?” she asked, her throat dry.

  “We’ll look at the logs, find out who came in to see Honeycutt.”

  And so they did, sitting side by side at the table. Dana’s stomach unclenched as Beecham turned the pages in the folder with his meaty fingers until he reached the day of Kitty’s murder. He ran his pointer down one page and then the next until he paused at the name Jason White. The column next to it listed the person he was visiting: C. Honeycutt. The time was 3:55 p.m.—just minutes before Kitty’s murder.

  At that, her perspiration evaporated, replaced by goose bumps.

  “That could be it, right?” she asked. “Honeycutt’s hit man?”

  He ran his finger horizontally across the page, stopping at the column on the far right. It was the space filled in by the security guard, and had the letter O in it. Or possibly a zero. Most of the other rows had a D in that box.

  “What is that column?” she asked.

  “It’s where the guard fills in the type of photo ID the individual provides. D for driver’s license, P for passport, SI for state-issued ID, O for other.”

  “Other?”

  He let out a breath. “Our guards are told to use their discretion when the individual does not have valid ID.”

  “So Jason White was let into the building without a valid ID?”

  “That’s what I need to find out,” he said, staring at the page. He turned to her and held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

  She had no idea why he wanted it, but he was so imperious she did as he asked.

  To her surprise, he deftly swiped it on, found the camera and took a picture of the page that bore Jason White’s name. He handed it back to her. “Show that to Ollie,” he said, “and get that tape. The police will want to see it.”

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek and got the distinct whiff of something familiar. Doughnuts.

  30

  By the time she got back to her dressing room, Ollie was gone for the day. Dana was disappointed, because she had already decided she would take her new evidence straight to Detective Marks on her way to rehearsals. Now it would have to wait another day.

  Not that she was looking for an excuse to see Marks. At least, that was what she tried to tell herself. It was all about the case.

  Then, while she was on the subway, Dana got an idea—why not pop into Farmer and the Fish on her way to rehearsals and see if she could track Ollie down? It was just around the corner from Marks’s office, anyway.

  She got off the subway at Twenty-Third Street and walked down Park Avenue South until she got to the restaurant. But once she reached the door, Dana hesitated. Ollie might not mind the intrusion, but was it fair for her to barge in? She wasn’t Ollie’s friend, she was his boss. Sure, he was so devoted he wouldn’t put up a fuss, but he deserved to have a personal life. And his friend Kimmo deserved a birthday celebration free from a visit from a stranger. She hesitated for a few moments, thinking about Marks. But at last she decided no. This wasn’t right. She had been acting like a desperate teenager with a crush. That wasn’t her. Or at least, it wasn’t who she aspired to be.

  Dana turned to go, and hadn’t taken two steps when she practically ran into Ollie and his friend.

  “Dana!” Ollie said, surprised.

  “Hi!” she said a little too effusively. She felt suddenly embarrassed and defensive. Because the truth about her clouded judgment was hard to face. She was ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Why are you here, Dana?”

  He looked so alarmed she felt bad for frightening him. “Everything is fine, don’t worry,” she said, and noticed that he took a step away from Kimmo. That was when she realized she had misinterpreted his expression. He wasn’t afraid that some disaster had occurred at work. Ollie didn’t want Dana to know that he and Kimmo were a couple.

  She wanted to reassure him that he had nothing to worry about. She didn’t care that he was gay. She had already made the assumption, anyway. But o
f course, it would be entirely inappropriate to even broach the subject, and so she stammered an explanation about her presence.

  “It’s just that I was in the neighborhood and I remembered you were coming here and...well, I hope I’m not intruding.”

  His expression was so guarded he almost looked like a different person. Dana wished she had thought this through a little more. This out-of-the-office surprise confrontation was so unfair.

  “It is okay, Dana,” he said, collecting himself. “Is there something you need?”

  “Yes, actually, there is, but...” She hesitated and turned to his friend. He was a little taller than Ollie, with strawberry blond hair and a square face. She thought they looked cute together, these boyish Finns in the middle of Gramercy Park. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to impose on your dinner. You must be Kimmo. Happy birthday!” She held out her hand and he shook it.

  “Yes, I am Kimmo. Thank you for the birthday wishes.”

  She turned to Ollie. “I shouldn’t bother you here. This can wait until tomorrow.”

  “Please, Dana,” Ollie said, his face still tight. “Tell me what it is you wish to say.”

  She sighed, grateful, and took out her cell phone to show him the photo that Beecham had snapped.

  “This is proof that Honeycutt might have...hired someone.” She didn’t know how much she could say in front of Kimmo.

  Ollie took her phone and stared down at it. He turned to Kimmo and said something in Finnish, peppered with the words Jason White.

  He handed back her phone. Then Ollie looked down and took a deep breath. When he glanced up again, his expression had returned to its normal state of obsequious attention. “This is distressing, Dana. I do not wish to think that Mr. Honeycutt could—”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “And it might turn out to be a misunderstanding. But I think you have to agree that it’s possible. That Honeycutt might have hired this man to kill Kitty.”

  Ollie went quiet for a moment, his eyes sad, and then Kimmo rambled something in Finnish. “Anna hänelle mitä hän haluaa. Anna hänelle flash-asema.”