by Marvin Kaye
“Gene, what are you driving at?”
“Flo was a lousy liar, I have personal knowledge of that fact. Her story must’ve been so feeble that I suppose Lara figured it’d be seen through immediately by the police. Except that didn’t happen. That’s probably when Lara decided to go after Florence herself, with me as her principal tool.”
“That’s absolute nonsense!” Lara exclaimed.
“Is it? Tell me this, dear Cousin Lainie—‘who could always get away with things without being caught or scolded’—do you intend to have an abortion?”
Lara stiffened.
“Well,” I said, “isn’t that what Hilary meant just now by saying the situation got ‘more complicated’? I hope you weren’t counting on me to make you an honest woman.”
Lara looked as if I’d punched her. I had to keep reminding myself what an actress she was, or I couldn’t’ve continued. I faced Hilary again. She was as pale as her cousin. “I imagine Lara planted the idea in Florence’s head of hiring me to track down evidence of Joanne’s guilt. Of course, Flo pretended my job was just to clear her of suspicion in Niven’s death, but it didn’t take long to surmise what she actually wanted me to do. Yet my real assignment—the one Lara scripted for me—was to nail Florence. To make it easier, she slipped Joanne a dose of Antabuse.”
Lara stood up. “I don’t have to stay and listen to this.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself. But if you go, you’ll just have to wonder what else I said to Hilary.”
Lara sat down.
“Florence’s hatred for Joanne,” I resumed, “was well known at ‘Riverday’ So was her habit of going off by herself to prepare for upcoming scenes. All anyone had to do was look at a taping schedule and consult a floor plan of the day’s shooting to see that Florence could’ve been near the hospital set unobserved before Joanne got sick.”
“Gene,” Hilary said, holding up a hand for silence, “maybe you’d better not tell me anything else. Unless you’re prepared to back up what you’re saying.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have anything that’ll hold up in court. But call Joanne and ask her about the lunch she and Lara had on Monday.”
“Why?”
“Because when I phoned her earlier today, Joanne said she remembered how Lara steered the conversation around to the subject of illnesses. She seemed especially interested in finding out whether Joanne ever had any serious physical problems. Such as heart trouble.”
“For God’s sake,” Lara objected, “since when is personal health a taboo topic? What in hell does this prove?”
Hilary answered it “It suggests you might’ve done homework on the contraindications of Antabuse and wanted to make sure Joanne wouldn’t be in any genuine danger.”
“Hilary, you’re not starting to believe him?”
I said, “When I jumped in front of the cameras because Joanne looked ill, Lara was right behind me, urging that we take Joanne straight to Polyclinic. Manny the druggist advised the same thing on the phone. You don’t treat an Antabuse reaction solely with first aid.”
“And then,” Hilary murmured, half to herself, “there’s the matter of one Joseph T. Ames.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Besides you and me and Micki Lipscomb, the only other person directly to hear about Tommy Franklin’s proposed ‘Bible’ was Lara—and she immediately told Florence. Franklin intimated he thought he’d come up with a way to write the part of Mother Jennett out of ‘Riverday.’ Lara must’ve figured the suspicion naturally would fall on Florence if Franklin’s pages disappeared from Ames’ desk.
“My guess is that Ames came in unexpectedly and Lara had no choice but to hit him so she wouldn’t be discovered going through his things. In a way, it was my fault. Lara heard me say the poisoning was at a stalemate, there didn’t seem to be any way to pin it either on Florence or Joanne herself. So Lara tried another ploy, one that culminated in Ames getting his head bashed.”
That was all I had to say. I waited for one or the other cousin to move or talk or do something, but neither one did, so after a long time, I got to my feet.
“I’m feeling marginally better,” I told Hilary. I’m going to splurge on a taxi to ‘the Heights’ and get my car.”
“What about Lara?”
“What about her?”
“You have no real proof she did anything to Ames or Carpenter.”
I’m aware of that, Hilary.”
“You also realize I’m going to ignore whatever you’ve said?”
“That’s your privilege.” I grasped the knob of the front door. “Or maybe your duty.”
“Gene, what about this tape? How can I give it to Lou Betterman without landing you in trouble for removing it from Florence’s apartment?”
“You can’t. Better let me have it back.”
Hilary handed me the cassette. “Maybe,” she suggested, “you can mail it to him anonymously.”
“That’s a possibility,” I agreed. “Or I might just burn the damned thing.” I turned to Lara, steeling myself against the artful vulnerability she was projecting. “Which do you suggest, ‘Cousin Lainie’?”
I left before she answered.
But as I expected, Lara caught up with me in the lobby.
“Gene,” she began, “you can’t really believe there was nothing more between us than—”
“Than what? Can you even find a name for it? Do you really want to? The only thing I believe is that you took me to bed to gain my total cooperation and trust.”
“How can you think a woman could be that calculating?” The classic feminine Innocence Wronged act, and she was very good at it “Yes, okay, I loved Ed, and I was hurting. I turned to the nearest decent and sympathetic man. If that’s what you call being used, then all right, Gene, I’m guilty. But—”
I cut her off. “But you weren’t too upset to forget you had to get up early next morning for work.”
“Wh-what”
“I doublechecked. You keep your alarm clock in your bedroom. Except for Monday night, when it was in the living room where I was bunked out. Signifying you knew that’s where you’d end up before morning.”
A few seconds while it sank in, then I started to walk away, wondering how far I’d get before—
“Gene, don’t go...please!”
Halfway to the front door was how far. I waited while she caught up with me.
“Yes, Lara? What now?”
“It...it doesn’t have to be over, you know.” She rested her fingers lightly on my arm. “Isn’t there anything I can do to...to make things up? Anything?”
I was tempted to call her bluff, just to see if I could shock her, but it wasn’t worth it. I shook my head. That’s when Lara finally stopped acting. Stepping backward, she brought her eyes up level with mine. I saw nothing tender in them.
“How much?” All the warmth was gone from her voice.
“You can’t buy it.”
“Then you’re going to the police?”
“That’s how little you know me,” I said, equally cold. “You’re still Hilary’s cousin.” I put the cassette into her hand. ‘I’m not about to drop the last shovelful of dirt on her—though neither of us can prevent her from reading a newspaper or catching a telecast and drawing her own conclusions about that contradictory ‘suicide note’ you stuck on the front of Florence’s aquarium.”
Lara snapped her purse shut on the cassette. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Not much you don’t. There’s no reason why Flo would’ve left two notes. The one we just listened to is exactly what she said it was, a memo to her lawyer, Willie Frost, nothing more.” I ruefully shook my head. “I really bought the whole bit, didn’t I? Dragging in Willie so Florence might get off as lightly as she could, because I thought that’d please you most. The irony must’ve infuriated you.”
She ignored the remark. “And why,” Lara asked, “would I stick up a message on the fish tank? What possible reason—”
“C
ome off it. You murdered Florence and you know I know it.”
“For Christ’s sake,” she snapped, “lower your voice!” She glanced nervously about to make sure no one in the lobby was listening.
“Maybe you don’t consider it murder,” I conceded. “Possibly you regard it as an execution. You might be right.” Possibly. I had grave doubts about Flo’s ability to shove Niven hard enough to kill him. Especially when there was a sharp knife nearby, the same knife I saw resting across the top of the open peanut butter jar, its blade thickly smeared with the sticky stuff. Admittedly conjecture, but something else was a fact: Lara was Jess Brass’ spy on “Riverday,” and Florence knew it. It took some wrangling to verify it, but Brass finally decided to protect herself, not her source. Lara, already annoyed that Flo might get off lightly for Niven’s death, suddenly was faced with her “friend” threatening her for bringing me into the case in the first place. If Flo divulged Lara’s secret to the producer, Lara’s career in soap opera (and possibly on TV) would be over. So after we all left Brooklyn Heights and Florence—sitting in front of her aquarium waiting for the Valium and the graceful mesmerism of the goldfish to lull her to sleep—recorded her memo to Willie, not even noticing when the tape ran out. Lara, meanwhile, affected a convenient anger at me. It enabled her to enter her building alone, wait a while, then return to Brooklyn and let herself in with her key. By then, Flo must’ve been perfectly catatonic and Lara could do what she wanted without fear of disturbing her. Of course, Lara couldn’t risk signing the fake suicide message, but then everybody on “Riverday” was aware that Flo never willingly put her name to any piece of paper.
Lara knew I knew she did it—her need to get her hands on the cassette gave it away—but she was brazening it out, anyway, now that she had the tape safely in her purse. “I wonder,” she said, “how you can possibly believe I killed Flo when you talked to her on the phone from my apartment less than an hour before we found her today?”
It’s simple forensics, Lara. If she’d really been talking to me on the phone this morning, she never would’ve been so stiff thirty or forty minutes later. Rigor mortis sets in pretty fast during hot weather, but the degree of its progress was suspicious, to say the least. On top of that, Flo’s skin had a waxy, pallid appearance. Conclusion, lividity was already far advanced That’s the pooling of a dead body’s blood at the lowest level gravity can draw it The process tends to take a lot longer than half an hour.
“It took one more piece of evidence, though, to make me realize what you actually did last night. Once I saw it, the pattern fell into place...how you recorded the few words I thought I heard Flo say this morning.” I was really talking to Flo’s phone message device. Her voice was always easy to imitate. Impressionists had done it time and again on TV variety shows. “Of course, I noticed how strange and slow and flat she sounded, but I attributed that to her being drugged.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Lara said.
“I know I can’t It’s all gone now, or at least misinterpreted. If Fat Lou did hear that cassette, he might wonder about it, but I don’t think he’d come up with anything to suggest that Flo didn’t turn on her stove during the night. This morning, when I sent you to her bedroom to call an ambulance, I imagine you used the opportunity to erase the message you recorded last night for my benefit.”
Lara did not reply. The smart thing would’ve been just to stonewall me and maintain her cover, such as it was. But she had to ask it. Otherwise, it’d never allow her any peace of mind.
“Gene...?”
“What?”
“You claim you noticed one more piece of—uh—alleged evidence...?”
My lip curled scornfully. “I wouldn’t trouble your pretty little head over it, Lara, Fat Lou wouldn’t put any stock in it. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s the one thing I saw that positively convinced me that Florence did not commit suicide.”
“Wh-what?”
“If she’d wanted to take her own life, she could’ve simply OD’d on booze and pills. She never would’ve gassed Rathbone.”
I left her standing there, went outside and hailed a cab in front of Hilary’s door. When I told the driver where I was headed, he asked if he could follow the West Side Highway part of the way. I said I didn’t care.
It was twilight. I’d reach “the Heights” in time to stop at The Night Owl and buy the book from Bannister. It was Percy MacKaye’s Hamlet, King of Denmark—Hilary’s Number One Want—and I planned to send it to her for her upcoming birthday.
The cabbie turned west on Seventy-ninth and the angry red rim of the dying sun stung my eyes. I felt miserable, physically and emotionally drained, and I wasn’t greatly pleased with myself for the tawdry little dream I’d cherished out of loneliness. But that was all done now.
The driver said something to me in a voice as gritty as an oyster bed.
“What?” I asked him to repeat
“I said, see that sunset?”
“Yeah—what about it?”
“They put it out for tourists,” he replied. “It ain’t real.”
Acknowledgments
DEEPEST THANKS AND AFFECTION to the ineffably lovely dedicatees, LOUISE SHAFFER (Rae Woodard on ABC-TVs “Ryan’s Hope”) and BEVERLY PENBERTHY (Pat Randolph on NBC-TVs “Another World”), for arranging for me to watch their shows at work. Special thanks to Louise for her witty advice and keen insight into the psychology of daytime drama actors and to Beverly for her marvelous ceiling-to-roof guided tour of the labyrinthine NBC Brooklyn studios. Most of all, I thank both belles dames for the precious gift of friendship.
I am grateful for the cooperation of the above shows and their executive staffs, including “Ryan’s Hope” producer Ellen Barrett and her assistant Babs dePina (a fellow Wolfe Packer) and “Another World” producer Mary S. Bonner and her associates Holly Evarts and Kathy Chambers.
Special thanks to the guiding lights of Soap Opera Festivals Inc., Joyce Becker—with whose showmanship I am much impressed—and her gracious partner and husband, Allan Sugar-man. Thanks, too, to Audrey Wertheim for making such smooth arrangements for me to attend a Becker-Sugarman festival...) much more civilized than the event herein depicted.
The above persons gave generously of their time and knowledge. Any accidental or intentional errors or perversions of fact or probability are, of course, strictly my own.
Once more I thank my dear friend Dave Goldenberg for technical advice pertaining to pharmaceutical knavery, as well as those indispensable references, the Physicians’ Desk Reference and Dr. James W. Long’s The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs (Harper & Row, 1977).
Lastly, the eternal admiration of a serial buff to Carleton E. Morse’s pioneering “One Man’s Family” and its latter-day spiritual stepchild, “Days of Our Lives,” with its Hilary Quayle lookalikes, Deidre Hall and her charming sister, Andrea Hall Lovell.
• MARVIN KATE
Manhattan, 1981
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1982 by Marvin Kaye
cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4532-9446-8
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