by Chassie West
“Shit, don’t ask. I don’t acknowledge anything that reminds me I’m over thirty. You called me Beev! It’s so good to hear that again. Hey, gorgeous,” she called over her shoulder, “hand me my coat, will ya? Thanks for the ride. I’ll call when I’m ready to go back.”
She accepted the full-length fur he pulled from the backseat, draping it carelessly across her arm. He gave her an amused smile and mock salute, then got back in the car.
Bev watched him go and sighed. “Not only married but with four kids. Oh, well. Come on,” she said, looping her free arm around mine. “Jesus Christ, will you look at all these steps! That’s Helena, still playing Queen of the Mountain after all these years. Hey, Campy, we’re here!” she bellowed. This was one actress who never needed amplification onstage.
The door opened and three heads peered out: Helena, Debra Anastasio, and Mary Ellen Flaherty. Helena shouted, Debbie squealed, and Mary Ellen shrieked, a ritual begun one night when we were all three sheets to the wind and they were spoofing the way in which the members of their college sororities greeted one another. Bev and I had never joined one and had simply contributed to the cacophony by laughing our heads off.
“Y’all remembered,” Bev said now, tearing up, a talent of hers. Bev could bawl her head off at the drop of a derby. “Oh, it’s so good to see y’all.”
“Somebody find the damned Kleenex,” Helena said, pulling us indoors. “Let’s all have a good cry and then we can get down to some serious merrymaking.”
“Manischewitz?” Bev demanded, glaring at Helena nose to nose.
“Manischewitz.” Debbie, standing behind Helena, held up the bottle so Bev could see it.
“Awwww.” Bev dropped the mink on the floor, folding Helena in her arms, tears streaming down her face. Debra moved in, draping her arms around the two of them.
“Group hug, group hug!” Mary Ellen joined them, yanking me into the mass of bodies. “The Bitches of Brandywine Hall, together again!”
I’d forgotten the appellation our study group had been given by the lone male who had assumed he would be the leader and found the position usurped by Helena. He’d considered it a slur. We adopted it as a title complete with sweatshirts with the name silk-screened across the front. He never quite got over it and eventually dropped out.
“Enough,” Helena announced, and ducked out from under all the arms. “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry.”
Thus the party proceeded, after the obligatory tour through the house, which was a darned sight larger than it looked from the street. Forty-five hundred square feet of hardwood floors, ten-foot ceilings, contemporary Italian furniture, a sauna, hot tub, exercise room, and small indoor pool. In other words, money. Helena had done herself proud.
We settled in her family room, plopping down on the floor around a coffee table as big as my bathroom, our backsides cushioned by a thick jewel-toned Persian rug. The table fairly groaned under the weight of a dozen varieties of hors d’oeuvres and an assortment of wines and soft drink bottles. It was much the way we’d spent any number of weekends, sitting on the floor while we demolished tons of carryout food and argued about the law.
The years had been kind to my old friends. They wore maturity well. Helena was still bony and angular but far more polished now, the hard edges that had once put people off buffed with the best sandpaper money could buy. Mary Ellen was as drop-dead gorgeous as I remembered, a red-haired, green-eyed beauty, smarter by half than everyone else around the table and with no patience for those who judged books by their covers. Deb-ra, on the other hand, was usually written off as plain when one first met her. Her hair was a veritable mane, dark and unruly, her brows thick over pale blue-gray eyes. In a crowd she was easily missed, especially since she was quiet and rarely indulged in idle chitchat. Put her in a courtroom however, and she was someone you’d never recognize as the same person, and you damned sure wouldn’t forget her afterward. She could be passionate in her defense of her clients, with a way with language that bordered on the poetic. She rarely lost a case.
Then there was Bev, who could have modeled for the Old Masters. There was a lot more of her than was fashionable. She was, in a word, voluptuous, with an hourglass figure that had been compared to Mae West’s in a number of reviews. With a porcelain complexion under a smooth cap of thick blond curls, she also had something of the Kewpie doll about her. And, as Helena was wont to say, she could act her ass off. Onstage, she could appear frail or lithesome, mousy or flamboyant.
She’d gone into law school to please her father, who considered trodding the boards an unsuitable occupation for a woman able to trace her ancestry back to those arriving at Plymouth Rock. Bev had stuck it out for a year and a half before phoning her dad and telling him to stuff it. From there it was Yale Drama School, a stint at Actors Studio, summer theater, theater in the sticks, off-Broadway, you name it, paying her dues. She wasn’t a household name yet, but was certainly well known by those who counted.
We stuffed our faces, rehashing the old days and bringing one another up to date. Bev entertained us with the foibles of members of the repertory company, of a Romeo who loved garlic, a Hamlet with a case of poison ivy.
“Well, I take it everything went okay in Chicago,” I said, wiping away tears of laughter. “The reviewer practically frothed at the mouth about you.”
“Didn’t he though? Here’s to him.” She downed a mouthful of wine. “How’d you know? You read Chicago papers?”
“Not as a rule. You sent it to me, remember? Where’s my purse? I brought the article so you could autograph it for Nunna. She’s never forgotten you.”
Bev squinted at me nearsightedly. “And I’ve never forgotten her oatmeal raisin cookies. But, sorry, Leigh, honey, I didn’t send anything to anybody. I don’t even send reviews to Dad. What made you think it came from me?”
“Wait a sec.” I got up, which wasn’t easy, and served as a reminder to forgo any more wine. I wound my way back to the living room, found my purse, and returned to the Persian rug.
“Here,” I said, unfolding it. “You’re telling me you didn’t send this?”
“I sure as hell didn’t. Lemme borrow your specs, Debbie. I couldn’t get up if you paid me.”
Debra’s reading glasses were hanging around her neck, so she passed them over. “The right side is double strength.”
“Whatever.” Bev merely glanced at the review, then the writing on the bottom. “‘What could have been, no thanks to you.’ What the hell does that mean? I didn’t send this, honest Injun, Leigh.”
I slumped onto the sofa. “Shit, shit, shit. Her again.”
“Her who?” Mary Ellen demanded. “What’s going on?”
“Give,” Helena ordered. “Maybe we can help. One for all and all for one and the like.”
“From the beginning,” Debra said, maneuvering into a lotus position. “And don’t leave anything out either.”
I poured myself a glass of Pepsi and slapped a pillow behind my back. As much as I normally resisted boring others with my problems, there was something nostalgic and comforting about sharing it with these four. We’d done it often enough in law school.
“I’m not sure how long ago it started,” I began, since I couldn’t remember when the first incident had happened. “Sometime after Halloween and before Thanksgiving.”
“So early November,” Helena said, getting up. “I’m going to take notes. Don’t stop, I can hear.” She headed toward the kitchen, returning with a steno pad.
“Okay. I moved out of my apartment about then and have been staying with a good buddy directly across the hall. Someone left a clump of dog poop in front of my old apartment.”
Mary Ellen wrinkled her nose. “Ooh. Not nice.”
I went on from there, trying to put things in order and to include even the most insignificant detail. “The review came in the mail on Monday.” Somehow it seemed like a month ago, so much had happened since.
“Mailed from the main post office here,” Bev
said, fingering the envelope. “This is the first time I’ve been back to D.C. since the auditions for the repertory company. Jeez, that was back in the spring.”
“And didn’t call any of us,” Helena said, glaring at her. “So what then, Leigh?”
I described the events of this week, the raving e-mail messages, the circumstances surrounding Claudia’s death, and the attempts to track down this pox on my life while she stood on the corner watching and probably laughing her fool head off.
“I still haven’t found Nell Gwynn, the West Indian lady, and unless she’s in cahoots with this Bernard, I doubt she has anything to do with all this. Although I’d dearly love to know whose bathroom she used out of pure curiosity. But Georgia Keith is definitely out of the picture.”
“Georgia Keith?” Bev gazed into the distance, frown-ing.
“I think Duck is probably right,” Mary Ellen said, eyeing the remains in her wineglass. “This woman’s no fool. She wouldn’t give the man in the dry cleaners her real name, but I’ll bet my salary her initials will be the same as whatever alias she’s using.”
They went off on a tangent, Helena expounding about a case of identity theft she’d handled a couple of years before. I felt a nudge from my bladder and asked for directions to the nearest bathroom, which turned out to be the size of Janeece’s apartment. I answered the call of nature, washed with Helena’s French hard-milled soap, and was drying my hands when someone knocked.
“Your purse was beeping,” Debra said, handing me my cell phone. “Thought it might be Duck.”
I didn’t recognize the number in the readout but answered as I strolled back toward the others, Debbie trailing me.
“You bitch!” a voice screamed in my ear. “You conniving, double-crossing bitch! No wonder you held me up so I couldn’t make the audition! You knew that fat, whey-faced cow! She looks like a polar bear in all that white. You ruined my chances because you knew her! You ruined my career! I’m going to kill you, do you hear me? I’m sorry about the old lady but I’m looking forward to taking care of you!” She disconnected, evidently slamming the phone onto the cradle.
Stunned, I stood in the family room doorway, trying to make sense of what she’d said.
“That was her, wasn’t it?” Debra said. “Jesus, I could hear her from here. She’s crazy, all right.”
“Helena, write down this number,” I said, calling it up on the readout, then dialing Duck’s cell phone. “Bernard just got me,” I said. “She called from . . .” I gestured at Helena.
She jumped up, showing me the notepad, and I repeated the number for Duck. “Can you get someone to trace it for me? She followed me here, Duck. She must have. She mentioned the white outfit Bev’s wearing. And I think . . . wait a minute, hon. What, Bev?”
She was bouncing up and down, waving at me. “I just put it together. Nell Gwynn was the name of one of the English kings’ mistresses.”
“So?”
“She was also an actress, a famous one in her day. Don’t you remember Prinny Kline’s mom going on about being a Howard Player back in the fifties, and the drama professor who named his dog Nell Gwynn?”
I looked at the ceiling in disgust. That’s why the name had seemed familiar. Prinny’s mom had been one of the few to encourage Bev to follow her star. How could I have forgotten that?
“And wait!” Bev snapped her fingers. “Georgia Keith. Georgia Keith. Sure! That was the name of a character in August Flames, the last play I read for at Arena Stage. Didn’t get the part, but Georgia Keith was the main character, a dynamite role.”
I was getting a weird sensation in the pit of my stomach, my mental gears beginning to mesh. The memory was faint but was slowly coming into focus. “Duck, were you able to reach Roland’s wife?”
“Yeah, I was gonna tell you when you got back. Bernard told them her first name was—”
“Sarah,” I cut him off. “Oh, my God! Not Bernard. Bernhardt! She’s an actress!”
Bev grinned. “That was the next thing I was gonna say. Bernard, my ass! Salut!” She tossed down the last of her wine.
“Beverly?” Duck asked.
“In spades, and thanks to her, I know who’s been dogging me, Duck. I even talked to her. Oh, my God! I remember now. I know who she is!”
15
“THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” I GROUSED AS XAVIER, Bev’s driver, reached in to help me out of the Town Car in Duck’s underground garage.
“Know what?” Duck said, slipping a twenty into Xavier’s free hand. “I don’t give a damn. We had to get you away from there without that lunatic realizing you were leaving. Thanks, man. And thank Beverly for me, too.”
“My pleasure.” Xavier took Helena’s wig and coat from me, his expression implacable, as if his passengers played this kind of game all the time. He returned to his place behind the wheel, backed up, and aimed for the exit to the street.
“Let’s move it,” Duck said, hurrying me into the elevator. “Tank and Tina are upstairs.”
“What about the Corvette? I feel responsible for it. I can’t leave it sitting on Helena’s street all night.”
“They’ll go get it when they leave here. By the way, that call to you was made from a phone outside a gas station on Connecticut, so she wasn’t that far away. Gone by the time the squad car got there, of course. But one of the attendants heard her—not what she was saying, just that she was yelling. He figured it was a lovers’ quarrel or something.”
“Did he get a good look at her?” I asked, as the elevator eased to a stop at his floor.
“No, he was around the side, checking the air in someone’s tires.”
I cussed. It was incredible how well the woman’s luck was holding. I just hoped mine would too. I’d felt like an idiot, sneaking from Helena’s garage entrance into the Town Car in an auburn wig and one of her ankle-length Burberry trench coats over my own, hers so long on me I had to hike it up to keep from falling on my face. Bev had come up with the idea and the others had voted for going along with it, including Duck, yelling his two cents at me over the cell phone.
“So who is she?” Tina demanded as soon as we got through the door. “What’s the bitch’s name?”
“I don’t know.” I shed my own coat and tossed it over one of the easy chairs. Duck, Mr. Neatnik, took it and hung it in the guest room closet, leaving the door open so he could hear.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Hands on her hips, Tina glared at me.
“Just what I said. I don’t know. I just remember how I met her months ago, that’s all. But once I did, remember, I mean, it began to make sense.”
“Well, it’s about time,” she said, throwing herself onto the sofa. “Let’s hear it.”
Tank came in from the kitchen, greeting me by raising the bottle of beer in his hand. “Hey, Leigh. It finally clicked, did it?” He passed a second beer to Tina and settled himself on the floor, his back against the couch.
”Yeah, finally. I keep wondering if I’d have put it together eventually, but I doubt it. I don’t have the right background. Thank God for the Bitches of Brandywine Hall.”
“Who?” Tina asked, taking a sip of her husband’s beer.
“Old law school friends,” Duck supplied, nudging a chair in my direction. “Okay, babe, you’ve got the floor.”
I sat and tried to recapture an event that, at the time it happened, had meant nothing special.
“Remember back in the spring, around the middle of March, I think it was, when there was a gas leak in a house on Sixteenth Street and we had to evacuate everyone in the block and the one behind it?”
Tina looked blank but Tank and Duck nodded. “Oh, yeah,” they said together.
“Most everybody working the day shift in that district was assigned to check to see that all the houses and apartments had been vacated and then cordon off the area until the leak had been repaired.”
“Guess I must have been in court or something,” Tina said. “So?”
“People groused
about having to stand out in the cold so long, but they cooperated because the house could have gone up any time. But this one woman kept bugging me every ten minutes. She was really agitated, kept asking how much longer it would be because she had to be somewhere soon. She lived in the area and needed to go home and change and get her car. I explained that no one was allowed behind the sawhorses because it was too dangerous. She’d go away for a few minutes, then back she’d come, pleading for me to let her pass. I told her no; it wasn’t safe. I mean, you could smell the gas from where I stood.”
“Shoot, you could smell it from Piney Branch Park,” Tank said. “That’s where I was but damned if I can remember why.”
“Yes, well anyway, the next time she asked if she couldn’t just get her car. Even if she couldn’t change, if she could get her car, she might make it on time. It was her big chance, she kept saying. She’d been working toward this for years, she was perfect for it, just what they were looking for. She might have mentioned an audition, but I’m not sure. I think I assumed it was a job interview or something. I felt sorry for her, I really did, but I couldn’t let her through and that’s all there was to it. She freaked, began cursing at me, saying I was ruining her life. She was completely out of control, practically frothing at the mouth. By that time, I’d had enough. I told her if she took one step beyond the sawhorses, I’d arrest her. Then one of the other uniforms came over and asked what the trouble was. Maybe being confronted by two of us in uniform convinced her to give up. She stormed off. That was it.”
“So what’s this about an audition?” Tank drained his bottle.
“It turns out that’s where she was going, to open auditions for the Shakespeare repertory tour. Bev mentioned it, and that, along with the review of Macbeth, started the wheels turning.”
“What review?” Duck asked.
“Look in my bag. I got that earlier this week and assumed Bev had sent it. Then when Bev caught the implications of the names she’s been using . . . And to think I actually met her today, dammit!”