Snarky Park
Page 14
“I might not have believed any of this before tonight, but I think you could be on to something. It’s a possibility, anyway.”
They rode in silence for a few more minutes. “That bonfire, the chanting and the gunfire – I can’t imagine getting that excited about grease,” Bertie said.
Cully snorted. “Bert, I’ve seen you go after a hamburger and fries. A guy could lose a finger if he got in your way.”
“Very funny. I think we’ve got to try even harder to find something that would tie Rowley Poke’s murder to Buddy. Maybe Poke found out that Buddy was greasing his pockets … oh! Ha, ha! Did you hear what I said? Greasing his pockets? Ha, ha!”
Cully grinned. “I get it. It could’ve been dangerous tonight, though.”
“It could’ve been, but it wasn’t. Let’s do this, Cully. But first, let’s go get a burger and some fries.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
“It’s the Opera Society’s annual When the Fat Lady Sings Gala. How could you not know about it?” Howard Schompe’s voice reached octaves that Bertie hadn’t heard since Tiny Tim tiptoed through the tulips. “It’s a big deal and you should have had it on your calendar from the minute you started here. Dillard Johnson and Blythe Kees are both on the board.”
Bertie conceded to herself that Howard had a right to be indignant. She’d been so wrapped up in Buddy’s greasy schemes and Howard’s possible extramarital escapades that she’d been ignoring the job that was paying her bills.
“I’m so sorry, Howard, you’re totally right. I have this toe infection and the pain is really distracting me. It’s starting to ooze pus. Would you like to see it?”
Bertie bent over, as if to remove her shoe. She’d been called into Howard’s office as soon as she’d arrived at work the Monday after she and Cully had raided Buddy’s grease collection.
Her toe did hurt, she’d stubbed it on something while running across the field after Buddy started shooting Saturday night. The evening’s escapade, which had begun to assume the seriousness of a Keystone Cops movie, had become very real once Buddy started shooting. And very frightening.
She and Cully had talked briefly about what had happened and both agreed that with guns and illegal grease added to the mix, it was probably too dangerous to snoop at the Laird compound any more. Then Cully pulled his disappearing act again, leaving Bertie wondering where he went and why he was shunning her. “Have I gotten that bad at sex over the years? I mean, I haven’t had much practice the last few months, but… “ Without talking to Cully about their night of shared passion, there was no way to know what was bugging him. She just had to wait till he got over it.
And now she was in Howard’s crosshairs Monday morning.
“No, no,” he said, stopping Bertie before she could bare her pus-filled toe, something she’d counted on since it didn’t really exist. “I don’t need to see it, just write something about the gala so we can get it in the paper. I shouldn’t have to tell you these things, Bertie.”
His prissy, pissy tone drove Bertie to recklessness. “Are you and Mrs. Schompe going to the gala? I’d love to meet your wife.”
He looked at her, expressionless. “I’m not sure. We’ve been invited, of course.”
Bertie started limping toward the door. “Maybe I’ll see you there, then.”
Another gala? “Where am I going to get a dress?” she thought. Her budget wasn’t designed to accommodate all this dressing up.
Shortly after returning to her desk, she received a phone call from Bobert, The Big J’s boy Girl Friday telling her that the weekly meeting with Dillard Johnson was called off. That was it. No reason why. She spent the rest of the morning worrying about the consequences of refusing to let her boss sexually harass her with a statue of a Greek god and how she’d explain that to an ethics board.
Shortly after hanging up from Bobert, the phone rang again. Bertie sighed. It was turning into one of those days.
“Beacon-Banner, this is Bertie Mallowan. Can I help you?”
Silence, then, “Hello, is this Bertie Mallowan?” The phone robbed the voice of any identifying features.
“Um, yes, this is Bertie Mallowan.”
“I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.” And the dial phone kicked in with its annoying whirrrrrrrrr. Bertie was so surprised she pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it, then put it slowly down.
“Weird,” she mumbled and went back to work.
At noon, she ran into Tiffany in the bathroom where they waited for the stalls to clear.
“Do you suppose people will think we’re, like, lesbians we’re in here alone so much?” Tiffany asked after the bathroom emptied.
“Maybe,” Bertie said, aghast that anyone would think she couldn’t do better than Tiffany if she were a lesbian. She didn’t want to tell Tiffany about the drama with Buddy, but she asked Tiffany to do some research on him.
“What kind of research?”
“See if he has a legal gun permit,” she said. “And who has the title to 1313 Mockingbird Lane.”
“A gun permit? But Rowley Poke had his throat cut, why do we care about a gun?”
“Ummm, don’t you think we should be thorough? And his real name is Buddha Laird, there shouldn’t be many people with that name so it should be fairly easy.”
“Buddha? Oh, you mean like the fat guy in those funky statues,” Tiffany said.
Bertie closed her eyes briefly. “Yeah, the fat guy, that’s right.”
Bertie spent a few cathartic minutes whining about her clothing dilemma.
“Well, duh, Bertie, how about thrift stores? You’re right outside Beverly Hills, what do you think the rich bitches do with the stuff they wear once and then get rid of? That’s how I can afford to dress the way I do.”
“Oh,” Bertie said, at a loss for words, “uh, good deal.” She eyed Tiffany’s drab sweater and skirt.
“Not this stuff, this is Target. No, the stuff I wear on the weekend.”
Holey fishnet stockings, black leggings and paint-spattered mini-skirts – “what thrift store sells those,” Bertie thought, “Sloppy Seconds?”
***
Bertie didn’t think it was possible, but in Beverly Hills, even the help at thrift stores were snotty. She’d found one that looked like a possibility, fought rush-hour traffic to get there and now was being eyed with disdain by an ultra-thin woman who looked and dressed like a high-paid model. “In a thrift store! Where do they get these people?” Bertie wondered.
“No thanks, I’m just looking for now,” Bertie replied to the cut-rate model’s offer of help.
She wondered the aisles, roaming down one and ending up facing a row of fur coats, stoles, hats, and – “Good God, is that a pair of mink spats?” Bertie thought. Hanging among the items were two mink coats streaked with red. The Bellingham line of pre-streaked fur, for women who feared PETA kamikazes armed with red paint. “Take the dread out of wearing dead animal skins,” was Bellingham’s advertising catchphrase.
Bertie found a row of little black dresses and started hunting. She was looking for something plain that she could dress up with accessories for a different look, cutting down the necessity of buying a new dress for every gala. But if something fit, it cost too much money; if she could afford it, it was the wrong size. It was the Murphy’s Law of the bodily disadvantaged.
She finally decided on a relatively plain dress with a silver thread running through the black material. It was more than she wanted to spend, even for a second-hand dress, but she wasn’t in a position to choose. She either spent the money, or she went naked and she was pretty sure no one wanted that.
“I’ll just have to write some more greeting card verses to make extra money,” she thought as she checked out, a possibility already running through her mind:
If you don’t have the dough
but you want to dress nice,
try limiting your meals
to water and rice.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Bertie wandered through the crowd, her eyes open for the guests on Dillard Johnson’s approved list – they were the people he wanted mentioned in her column. A pianist tinkled his way through a medley of songs from Harry Potter movies while a svelte young woman with orange skin clutched a microphone to her overly large lips and blubbered, “He’s a boy, he’s a wizard, make him mad and he’ll make you a lizard.”
Cully, who continued to be standoffish after their night of near-death-inspired passion, was rounding up people in threes and fours and taking them into a nearby empty room he’d set up for his “studio.” She saw him conferring several times with Blythe Kees, her beautiful silver hair gleaming in the light from three crystal chandeliers.
“Where’s Annabelle Johnson? I mean, Khov?” Bertie had asked Cully when their circular routes through the room had crossed early in the evening.
“She’s over there,” Cully nodded toward the center of the room.
Bertie stood on tiptoe, not an easy thing to do in four-inch heels, and spied Annabelle/Khov with a good-looking young man. Shock rippled through her: It was the young star of the “You Suck” movies who’d hit on her a few weeks ago.
“That’s Annabelle’s brother,” Cully said.
“Whoa, I’m impressed,” Bertie said.
“Don’t be, he’s an idiot.”
“Oh, it runs in the family,” Bertie replied.
She wandered away to check out the appetizers already stacked high on tables stationed around the room. She was waiting to get close to the crab leg table when she felt a hand on her back, fumbling between her shoulder blades near the top of her dress.
She turned to see an older woman smiling at her. “Oh, so sorry,” she said, nastiness etching the words with acid. “It’s just that I used to have a dress exactly like that. I wanted to see the label, to see if yours was made by the same designer. I gave my dress to the thrift store on Smillton Street, do you know it?”
Bertie often imagined the worse that could happen in any given situation; now she realized she’d have to work harder if she was going to come up with something as embarrassing as this.
“No, I’m not familiar with places like that. Obviously, you are,” Bertie said, giving her a long up-and-down look. She fled for the ballroom door leading to the hotel lobby, which had huge double doors of glass opening onto a wide driveway where late arrivals were still being greeted by a man in livery and ushered inside.
Bertie needed a break. She wandered outside and stood in the shadows, breathing in the fresh night air.
“Well, hello, Miss, how are you?”
Bertie turned to the uniformed chauffeur and, to her surprise, recognized Brown, Dillard Johnson’s man-of-all-trades.
“Mr. Brown, it’s so nice to see you. How are you?” Bertie reached out for one of Brown’s gnarled old hands and held it tightly. He blushed.
“Please, Miss, you don’t have to call me mister, I’m just Brown.”
“OK, Brown. You look lovely tonight.”
He blushed again, and straightened in pride. “Thanks, Miss. Uh, I was hoping I might talk to you about a matter …” A long, black limousine glided up and Brown pulled his hand free to open the door. Bertie stepped back, and bumped into Cully, who had just come outside for a break, too.
“Cully, you should meet Brown. He works for Dillard Johnson and he’s the sweetest man.”
“Yes, I already know Brown,” Cully said to Bertie’s surprise. She wondered, “When did he meet Brown?”
As Brown ushered the couple from the limo into the lobby, Brown turned and opened his mouth to say something –
A loud BANG! BANG! rang out and Bertie felt a sharp pain. She doubled over and grabbed her side, which felt sticky and warm. She started to fall, a graceful slide to her knees and then to the ground.
Cully knelt next to her, shouting, “Bertie … Bertie!”
Neither noticed as Brown staggered backward and, missing the step down to the driveway from the sidewalk, crashed to the cement of the street.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
A sharp sting in her arm jogged Bertie into consciousness. She was lying on the ground; a figure in white hovered over her.
“Jesus? Jesus, is that you?” she said out loud.
But since Jesus never carried a syringe or wore a badge that read EMT Phillips (as far as she knew), she guessed he might be the person who’d just stabbed her with the needle. He looked fairly pleased to be mistaken for Jesus, though.
She turned her head slightly and saw Cully, white-faced, gripping her hand so hard it hurt. It wasn’t the only thing that hurt. There was a pain in her side that felt as though someone was jabbing a red-hot poker into her.
“What happened?” she asked so faintly that no one heard her over the wee-ooo, wee-ooo, wee-ooo of police cars. “What happened?” she asked again, louder.
“This is a good sign,” EMT Phillips, aka Jesus, said, reaching for her wrist and holding his fingers to her pulse.
“You were shot, Bertie,” Cully said, “but it’s only a graze, you’re going to be fine.”
“Shot? Who shot me? Why would anyone shoot me?”
“I don’t know, Bert.”
“Oh my God, my side feels like it’s on fire. This is just a graze? It hurts like hell.”
“I know, Bert, I know.” Cully stroked her hand. “But it’s really just a scratch; it could’ve been a lot worse.”
“I’ll say,” the paramedic said. “Your underwire bra deflected the bullet. First time I’ve ever seen anything like it. You’re damn lucky.”
She tried to sit up, but the pain in her side made her gasp and lay back down. She was on her back on the sidewalk in front of the Advilla, where she’d fallen. Without the paramedic standing over her, she stared up into the branches of a gnarled old tree, its leaves rustling in a slight wind. She was dazed and confused and her back was cold. She was covered with a thin blanket and Bertie gradually realized she was naked from the waist up.
“I’m sorry, miss, I had to cut your bra and dress to get to the wound.”
“Oh, no, don’t tell me I ruined another dress. I can’t afford to keep buying new dresses. Oooohh, my side hurts,” she wailed.
Her shoes were gone and she was covered in blood. Cully’s white shirt was wet with blood, too.
Uniformed policemen were rushing back and forth past her and Bertie was glad Cully and the paramedic were barricading her, otherwise she might’ve been trampled.
“Can you sit up if I help you, Bert?” Cully asked.
“Yes, I think so.” With Cully’s firm grip on her arm, she sat up, grabbing the blanket as it slipped from her breasts. “Oh, great,” she thought, “now my chumba-wumbas are cold, too.”
Cully rearranged the blanket so it wrapped around her, making her look like a papoose, and she said, “I think I can stand up, too.”
“She’s going to be OK, I gave her a tetanus shot, and she should have the wound looked at by a doctor if there are any problems, but she’s fine, doesn’t even have to go to the hospital,” EMT Phillips said, packing up what seemed to Bertie like an enormous amount of equipment.
Cully led her to a stone wall separating the lobby entrance from the hotel’s front lawn and helped her sit. He sat beside her and they watched the hurricane of activity, swirling around an eye of calm on the street just off the curb.
The constant flashing of lights added to Bertie’s confusion.
“What’s up with all the lights?” she asked Cully, shielding her eyes from the glare.
Cully stood up and moved in front of her, blocking her from the lights and the mob.
“That’s paparazzi, taking pictures.”
Bertie gathered the blanket closer around her shou
lders. “Oh no, I’m not going to be in the tabloids, am I?”
“Probably, Bert. They always run pictures from things like this.”
“Like what? Things like what?”
“Uh, Bert, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“You weren’t the only one shot. Mr. Brown was shot, too. And, I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”
“That sweet old man? Oh no! Oh no, Cully! Why would anyone want to shoot either of us? I don’t understand,” Bertie said, and started to cry.
Cully put his arm around her and let her cry.
Bertie wound down just as a man in a rumpled suit with a rumpled face and gray hair walked up to her and Cully. She hadn’t noticed him in the crush of police and technicians. She groaned. “Hello, Detective Hausen.”
“Well, hello, Miss Mallowan. Fancy meeting you here.” Homicide Detective Harry Hausen had grilled her last year when a lawyer had dropped dead on her car. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience.
“Can you tell me what happened this evening?”
Bertie groaned again, then gave him a straightforward version of the events with Cully nodding in agreement.
He smiled at her, but Bertie was afraid of him. He was one of those people who look innocuous, but bares vipers’ fangs when provoked.
“How well did you know Mr. Brown?” he asked.
“Just to say hello to, really. I don’t even know what his first name is. I met him once before at Dillard Johnson’s estate, Snarky Park. I mean, Snarles Park.”
“And you, Mr. Cully?”
Cully shot Bertie a sideways glance before answering, “Uh, I’ve talked to him a few times. Uh, out at Snarles Park. But it was very casual, just a few questions about the estate and the cars.”
Bertie turned to look at him. This was the first she’d heard he’d been to the park “a few times.”
“OK, you two, if you give us your contact information, you can go. You’ll have to make a formal statement. But you know all about that, don’t you … Bertie.” He smiled at her again and walked away, leaving Bertie with a severe case of the creeps.