The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes

by David Handler

  “Would you like a four-footed nursemaid?”

  “A four-footed . . . ?” Monette frowned at me before she noticed Lulu there. “Oh, certainly. By all means.”

  Lulu settled herself on Monette’s hip and plopped her head down on Monette’s stomach.

  Monette petted her. “You’re a very sweet girl, aren’t you?”

  I poured each of us some wine, handed her one glass and sat down with the other in a chintz-covered armchair that was positioned next to the bed. It amazed me how quickly I was getting tired of chintz. After a mere two days in Aintree Manor I felt quite certain that I never wanted to see it again for as long as I lived. “How are you really, Monette?”

  “How am I really?” she repeated wearily. “They hustled me out of here like a criminal. Drove me downtown, dragged me into police headquarters, fingerprinted me, questioned me. Everyone was incredibly polite. And yet I still felt as if I’d suddenly become someone else. I’ve worked terribly hard to build a life for myself. Today, I realized it can all be taken away from you in an instant.” She set the ice pack aside and sipped her wine. “Joey didn’t say one word to me when I got home. Danielle couldn’t stop crying. Reggie has been incredibly supportive and strong. She’s really come through for me.”

  “She’s your sister. That’s what sisters do.”

  “I know, but I wasn’t expecting it. Not after all of these years. I’m glad she’s here. And I’m glad you’re here,” she added, coloring slightly.

  “I won’t be for long if we don’t hear from your father again.”

  “I’ve been lying here wondering if this dreadful mess will scare him off.”

  “It might.”

  “I hope and pray it doesn’t. If Dad disappears back into the fog, then all I have to look forward to is this—the agony of an endless, horrible trial in which they’ll paint me as a bitter old hag who murdered her famously likeable husband for taking up with a younger woman. How pathetic and humiliating is that?”

  “Plenty pathetic and humiliating. But your attorney won’t let them get away with spinning it like that. He’ll retaliate.”

  Monette furrowed her brow at me. “How?”

  “By leaking to the news media just exactly what kind of a man your famously likeable husband really was—especially while he was using illegal drugs. And the medical examiner will find illegal drugs in his system.”

  “He came at me like a madman,” she said, her pale blue eyes gleaming at me in the lamplight. “I had to stop him. I’m not sorry. But I am sorry that Joey and Danielle no longer have a father. And I did love him once, before I saw the ugliness that was inside him.” She took another sip of her wine, glancing at me nervously. “Would you do me a small favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “Would you sit here on the edge of the bed and hold my hand?”

  I moved to the edge of the bed and took her hand, which was cold from the ice pack. Also strong. Monette had one hell of a grip.

  “Hoagy, do you think they’ll send me to jail?”

  “No. Your attorney will plead self-defense and you’ll get off.”

  “What about afterward? Assuming I get off, that is. Will I still have any kind of a career? And what about Danielle and Joey? Will they ever be able to lead normal lives again?”

  “You’d know that better than I would. You went through the page-one wringer yourself when you were young.”

  “And I barely survived,” she recalled, her hand still squeezing mine tightly. “I felt so alone. I feel the same way now. Alone.”

  “You’re not alone. You have Reggie.”

  “That’s true, I do, thanks to those letters from Dad.” She fell silent for a moment. “Assuming they really are from Dad.”

  “You think they’re not?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m so tired. I just . . .” She gazed at me searchingly. “Can I trust you, Hoagy? Really trust you?”

  “Of course you can. Why don’t you just go ahead and do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell me what really happened in that bedroom today.”

  She let go of my hand. “I told you what really happened.”

  “And I didn’t believe a single word that you said. If you confide in me I may be able to help you. But if you don’t then I can’t.”

  Her eyes avoided mine, examining the ceiling and the closed shutters before they settled on Lulu, who lay there staring up at her.

  “Lulu has my complete confidence. Anything that you want to say to me you can say in front of her.”

  Monette’s eyes met mine again, staring at me long and hard before she said, “You know what happened.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, you do. Please tell me that you believe me.”

  “What I believe,” I said, “is that you did what you had to do.”

  She sorted through that in silence for a moment before she said, “I think I’ll get some sleep now. Or at least try to.”

  “Good idea.” I bent over and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night.”

  She reacted in surprise. “How did you know I wanted you to do that?”

  “I just did.”

  “Will you still be around in the morning?”

  “I’ll still be around.”

  “I haven’t driven you away?”

  “You haven’t driven me away.”

  “You’re a dear. Good night. And good night to you, too, Lulu,” she said as Lulu made her way down off the bed by way of the steamer trunk.

  It was just after 9:30, according to Grandfather’s Benrus. Danielle and Reggie were still in Danielle’s room together watching Dirty Dancing. Joey’s room was still silent. Downstairs in the kitchen, Maritza was shoving pans of blueberry muffins into the oven for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. She didn’t say good-night to me as I passed by her on my way out the French doors to the patio. Wouldn’t so much as look at me.

  Lulu and I strolled the grounds in the cool night air before we retired to the pool house, where I headed straight for the telephone in the bedroom to call my phone machine in New York City. I had a slew of new phone messages from reporters and gossip columnists, not to mention cash offers from three, count ’em three, different tabloid editors for the inside dope on Patrick’s killing. The highest offer was for more money than I’d been guaranteed for the Richard Aintree project, which in the supremely glam world of ghostwriting is what passes for upward mobility. I didn’t return any of the calls.

  There was still no message from Merilee in Budapest.

  By now it was after 1:00 am in New York City, but I happened to know that the Silver Fox was partial to reading manuscripts deep into the wee hours, propped up in bed chain-smoking Newports and drinking snifters of Courvoisier.

  “I was just thinking about you, dear boy,” she said when she heard my voice on the phone. “Tell me, how are you?”

  “How do you think I am, Alberta? I came out here to help Monette Aintree make literary history. Instead, I’m smack dab in the middle of Hollywood tabloid hell.”

  “I do apologize, but it’s not as if I saw this coming. No one did.”

  “Boyd Samuels did—I guarantee it.”

  “How on earth could he do that? I realize Boyd’s a tad oleaginous, but even he couldn’t have known that Monette would shoot Patrick to death in the middle of their son’s birthday party.”

  “I’m telling you, somehow, some way, he’s mixed up in this. It was awfully damned strange the way he suddenly showed up out here yesterday. Monette was certainly surprised to see him. And he and Kat Zachry were oh-so chummy today. Went off by themselves, huddled, schemed, tried to steal my flight jacket.”

  “Tried to steal your what?”

  “I wonder how long he and Kat have been cooking up scams together. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he put her up to seducing Patrick and destroying his marriage. It made for one hell of a career move on her part. That girl’s hotter than hot right now. And Monette didn’t
, by the way.”

  “Monette didn’t what?”

  “Shoot Patrick to death.”

  “Of course she did. She was found standing over his body with the murder weapon in her hand. By you.”

  “I know.”

  “And she’s confessed to doing it.”

  “I know. But she didn’t kill him.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know yet. But the detective who’s been assigned to the case is no idiot. Neither am I, which is why I want out. I want to come home, Alberta. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  “I know it isn’t, dear boy, but it’s huge. Why, there isn’t a writer in New York who wouldn’t jump at the chance to be in your shoes right now.”

  “Glad to hear it. Anyone who wears a size 11B is welcome to them. I know exactly what you’re going to say now. You’re going to say that all of this publicity will turn our book into pure gold. But here’s the problem, Alberta. No one gives a damn about Richard Aintree’s return from oblivion anymore. All they care about is Monette’s arraignment on Monday morning. CNN will probably carry the whole damned arraignment proceeding like it’s a live courtroom drama. Besides, you and I both know that Richard will never show up here now. Not in the middle of this zoo. It’s never going to happen. The project’s dead.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Yes, we do. Seriously, can you get me out?”

  “Seriously? I can give you some advice. Get some sleep.”

  “Does that mean no?”

  “It means that this will look a lot better in the morning. Really.”

  “No, it won’t. Really.”

  “Good night, dear boy.”

  I turned out the lights, stripped and got under the covers. Lay there in the dark with Lulu sprawled across my chest and watched the lights in the big house go out one by one. First the upstairs lights, then all of the downstairs lights except for the ones in the kitchen and Maritza’s room. Then those went out, too, and there was only the moonlight and the faint blue glow of the swimming pool’s nightlights. I lay there, my wheels spinning.

  The French door to the kitchen clicked open and shut so softly that I almost didn’t hear it. But I heard it. I also heard the quiet footsteps on the bluestone path that were heading directly toward the pool house. Lulu let out a low growl of warning. I shushed her, got out of bed in the dark and went to the bedroom window for a look.

  It wasn’t Monette paying me another late-night visit.

  It was Maritza who I spotted out there in the dim lights of the pool. And she hadn’t come sneaking out of the darkened house to pay me a social call. She was toting a black plastic trash bag over toward that fenced enclosure by the service gate where the trash barrels were kept. When she got there, she eased open the gate to the enclosure, deposited the trash bag soundlessly in a barrel, closed the gate and hurried back to the house, closing the kitchen door softly behind her.

  Silence.

  I waited several minutes before I put on my silk target-dot dressing gown, opened the pool house door and made my way in barefoot silence to the trash enclosure. I retrieved the trash bag and carried it back to the pool house. Closed the living room shutters, flicked on a light and got busy. The trash bag had been closed with a twist tie. I untwisted it and dumped the contents of the bag out on the kitchen floor. Monette had a garbage disposal for food scraps so I wasn’t too concerned about anything wet or disgusting being stuffed in there. What came tumbling out was junk mail, plastic food wrappers, used paper towels . . .

  And a wadded-up pale blue bath towel.

  I spread the bath towel open on the floor. Lulu immediately busied herself snuffling and snorting at the things that were balled up inside of it. There was a rumpled white T-shirt that even my human nose could tell smelled of something oily and metallic. There was the pale pink dental hygienist’s uniform that Maritza had been wearing before the shooting—which had smears of blood all over it. When Lulu was done sniffing at it she moved on to the flannel shirt, Nirvana T-shirt and jeans that Joey had been wearing before the shooting. The boy’s clothes were smeared with blood just like Maritza’s were. Unlike Maritza’s, Joey’s carried the scent of gunshot residue on them. Lulu let me know this with a low whoop.

  I sat back on my heels, my mind racing. After the shooting, Lulu had followed the residue scent to Joey’s room and found it on his sneakers. Joey had neglected to change out of those, although he had bothered to wash his hands and face. The collar and cuffs of his shirt had been damp. Why had he done that? To wash off more blood? Did this clothing prove that he’d been in the master suite at the time of the shooting? He sure as hell hadn’t been in his room with his headphones on. What did it mean that there was blood on Maritza’s uniform but no gunshot residue? Why had she lied to me about the door to the service stairs being locked? What had really happened in that master bedroom suite today? A staged homicide, Lamp had called it. Staged how? What was I missing?

  As I sat there, wondering, I reached for the black trash bag and discovered that I hadn’t completely emptied it. There was still one more item in the bottom of the bag—a rolled-up pale blue hand towel. I unrolled it and found two more bloodied articles of clothing that I hadn’t been expecting to find. I stared at them for a long moment, my pulse quickening, before I gathered up both towels full of clothing and stashed them in my empty suitcase in the bedroom closet. Then I stuffed the trash back into the bag, tiptoed out into the darkness and returned it to the trash barrel.

  I was starting my way back to the pool house when a voice whispered, “What in the heck are you doing?”

  Reggie. She was standing outside my door in a T-shirt and shorts, barefoot.

  “Tossing the dried mackerel remains from Lulu’s bowl. It isn’t a pleasant smell. What’s going on, Stinker?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Too much strange shit happened today. Thought I’d bum a nightcap off you. You alone?”

  “Why, you think I’ve got Monette sprawled languorously across my bed?”

  “It’s polite to ask. I do try to be polite.”

  “Do shut up and come in.”

  She shut up and came in, glancing around at the furnishings while I poured each of us a shot of single malt. “Monette’s accustomed to getting what she wants,” she warned me. “And she wants you. Big sis has a major crush on you.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “Yes, she does. She got all fluttery while you were gone for dinner. Kept wondering where you were and when you were coming back. And you should have seen her fuss over which color kimono to wear.”

  “We’re not getting involved,” I said, handing Reggie her Scotch.

  “Why not? She’s a widow now.” Her huge eyes twinkled at me wickedly. “As in available.”

  I drank down my Scotch in one gulp. “Well, I’m not. I never get involved with a celebrity employer. It’s unprofessional.”

  She drank down her Scotch in one gulp, studying me curiously. “You sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  “In that case can I snuggle with you for a while? My bed seemed awfully big and lonely. Not to mention cold. My feet are like ice.”

  “I seem to recall your feet are always like ice.”

  “Will you warm them up for me for old time’s sake? I won’t get frisky, I promise. I really just . . .” Reggie lowered her gaze uncomfortably. “I don’t feel like being alone right now.”

  I stood there looking at those thin white scars on the insides of her wrists. “For old time’s sake? Sure.”

  I turned out the living room light before we went into the darkened bedroom, where Lulu had already claimed more than half of the bed.

  “Shove over, Your Earness,” Reggie commanded Lulu as she dove under the covers in her T-shirt and shorts. “You’ve got company.”

  Lulu didn’t budge. Not until I told her to. Even then she moved a grand total of six inches, grunting at me with supreme disapproval.

  I took off my dressing
gown and slid under the covers. Reggie’s feet found mine right away.

  “Good God, they feel like two blocks of frozen hamburger.”

  “They’ll warm up soon.” She turned onto her side so that she faced me in the moonlight. “Hold me, will you?”

  I put my arm around her and she settled against me with her head resting on my chest. I stroked her long, beautiful hair, recalling the scent and feel of her like it was yesterday. “How was Dirty Dancing?”

  “Corny and old-fashioned, like out of the not-so-fabulous fifties. I thought we’d outgrown such silly fables.”

  “Never. Silly fables make people happy. How is Danielle doing?”

  “How do you think? The poor kid’s whole world is falling apart around her.” Reggie fell silent for a moment before she said, “Monette’s amazing. She’s so strong, not like me. I feel incredibly shaky right now.”

  “Monette thinks you’re the one who’s being strong, actually.”

  Reggie lifted her head up and gazed at me. Our faces were very close. Close enough that I could feel her breath on mine. “Well, she’s wrong,” she said softly before she lowered her head back down onto my chest, snuggling closer.

  “What about Joey? How is he doing?”

  “Stewie, why are you asking me so many questions?”

  “A lot of strange shit happened today, like you said.”

  “No, that’s not why. The gerbil wheel between your ears is going around and around. You’ve got something on your mind. What is it?”

  “If I ask you something, will you give me an honest answer?”

  “Of course I will, silly wabbit.”

  “What happened in that bedroom today?”

  She raised her head again, gazing at me. “You know what happened. You saw it for yourself.”

  “Did I?”

  “Just leave it alone, Stewie. As a favor to me. Will you do that for me?”

  “I don’t know what I saw.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said insistently. “You do.”

  “Okay, I do.”

  “Say it like you mean it. Say it or I’ll tickle you.”

  “That won’t work anymore. I used to be ticklish years and years ago, but I’m not anymore.”

  “Oh, really? We’ll just see about that . . .” Her nimble fingers went probing for the sensitive flesh beneath my ribs.