by Lynn Harris
As Lola bent a knee and put one clog on the floor to stand up, the jacket and tie guy—must be a detective—noticed that she’d come to.
“Welcome back,” he said, not smiling. At least he was blocking the view of Mimi. It occurred to Lola that his dimensions might actually be square. His black hair was slicked back, perpendicular to his mustache, and he had those thick oversized glasses that make the wearer look a bit like a grouper. Which reminded Lola of someone.
“Detective Bobbsey,” he said. “You all right?”
“Relatively,” Lola said. She grabbed his outstretched hand and hauled herself onto her feet. “Thanks. Bobbsey?” Lola asked before she could stop to think. “Is your partner your twin?” She immediately regretted her impertinence, though she had nothing but respect for the Bobbsey Twins mysteries of her youth.
“Nope,” he said. “My partner is my wife. Maternity leave. Due in a couple weeks. They still haven’t found me my requisite rookie replacement.” His arm behind Lola’s shoulders, he guided her out into the hall. She didn’t look back.
“Well, congratulations,” Lola said. “Your first child?” Was that what you were supposed to ask? she wondered.
“Thanks, and yes, our first,” he answered, then deadpanned, “… that we know of …” in air quotes. He looked about ten years older than her, maybe; seemed to Lola like he’d have a whole brood of squarish children by now. “And thanks for the straight line,” Bobbsey added, still not smiling. “Mind answering a few questions?” He raised a teeny memo pad and poised his golf pencil. Why do detectives always have unsatisfactory note-taking equipment, Lola wondered. Maybe his partner-to-be will be green enough to bring a couple of decent Papermates to the relationship.
“No problem at all,” said Lola. She felt a sudden wicked thrill, the thrill of being in on something, close to something. Then, just as quickly, she felt like an ass. Hi, Lola? Mimi is dead. That is what you’re in on, she thought. I know I have to talk to Bobbsey, but boy, do I need to see Doug’s face.
“You a friend of hers?” asked Bobbsey, nodding back toward the storeroom of death.
“Not close, but I know her. Knew her,” said Lola.
“I’m sorry,” said Bobbsey, adjusting his glasses. “What were you doing down here?” he asked.
“Going to the bathroom,” Lola said. “I mean, looking for it.”
Bobbsey nodded. “Did you see anyone else around?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Hell’s bells. Does this mean I don’t have an alibi? Do I have to call a lawyer? Who do I know? Lola racked her brain. C’mon, I must know one attorney who doesn’t do environmental law or electronic civil liberties. “You don’t think I—”
“Slit her throat, wiped the blood off your hands, and then fainted?” asked Bobbsey.
Right. “Not so much,” said Lola. You go, Miss Marple.
“Detective, buddy, you got a sec?” Apparently someone had talked his way past whoever was guarding the stairs. Someone tallish and thinnish, with reddish wavy hair and freckles he could stand to outgrow. Someone who looked incredibly familiar.
“Nope,” said Bobbsey.
“Okay, how about now?” asked the interloper.
“Nope.”
Oh, for God’s sake, thought Lola. It had come to her.
I totally went on a date with that guy.
Lola’s mother’s friend Fern—this fellow’s aunt—had set them up forty-eleven years ago. (“You’re both single, you’re both writers, and you both have red hair and freckles!” she’d exclaimed.) The two of them had had a perfectly nice time, which was the kind of date Lola used to hate the most. If you don’t have a great time, you at least deserve a good story.
Neither he nor Lola had seemed to have any interest in a second perfectly nice time, and that had been that. Lola had not thought about Wally at all on the way home—this had been her litmus test for whether or not to see someone again—and therefore not at all thereafter. He had left her a voice mail just to say thanks, but that was it. He was not even looking at her right now.
“Wally Seaport, New York Day.” He extended a hand to the detective.
Sure enough. Wally was a reporter for the tabloid New York Day, whose weekly chick lit bestseller list had once been a weekly source of torment for Lola. Everyone knew Wally also wrote Royalty , the must-read blog for the New York publishing industry. Royalty was impossible to describe without using the word snarky, but given its success and taste-making status, the Day looked the other way, even though Wally’s posts openly mocked its shameless tabloid style. They requested of Wally only that, for the sake of appearances, he use an open-secret pseudonym. Lola had quit reading both the blog and the Day when her yoga teacher had said something about “being compassionate enough with yourself to limit the ‘shoulds’ that serve only to cause stress.” Which for Lola also included yoga, but whatever.
Lola also knew for a fact—though she thought she’d gotten over it—that Royalty had never once mentioned Pink Slip. (Her yoga teacher had never said anything about limiting the Googling.) Wally had to have known about the book. Not only had she gotten a pretty decent advance—the kind of thing Wally normally snooped out and reported in his weekly “Lucky Them” list—but Pink Slip was itself about a media scandal. If that wasn’t Royalty material, Lola didn’t know what was. Why the snub? Right now, standing not twenty feet from the murdered body of someone she considered a friend, Lola was ashamed to feel the sting of wounded pride start to flare anew.
“Hi,” Lola said to Wally, as nicely as possible.
“Evening.” Wally nodded, still not looking. “Now?” he asked Bobbsey.
Jeez Louise. He doesn’t remember me a bit. Not even a glimmer.
“Maybe, maybe when I’m done talking to this young lady,” Bobbsey replied. “Can you give us a minute?”
Wally hesitated.
The detective didn’t. “How about now?” Bobbsey asked.
Wally backed off and pretended to be very absorbed in his notes.
“So. Sorry, miss. How well did you know Miss McKee?” Bobbsey asked. Lola knew Wally was listening. Maybe she could drop a hint that would trip some sort of memory wire.
“We’re—we were—friendly acquaintances, I guess,” said Lola. “I mean, we’re both, you know, writers—”
“She have a boyfriend?”
“Yes, she does. Did.”
Oh my God, poor Quentin.
“Oh, really?” asked Bobbsey.
“Yes,” said Lola. Quentin and Mimi hadn’t been dating for long—maybe two months?—but as far as Lola could tell, it had appeared to be heading toward the magic three.
“Really?!” asked Bobbsey again. “Like, steady?”
“Uh, yes, steady,” said Lola, puzzled. “You sound surprised.”
“I mean … well, I mean, the book,” said Bobbsey.
“The book …”
“The book. Miss McKee’s book. I thought you had to be, like, perpetually single and unhappy to write that stuff, the chick flicks or whatever you call them,” said Bobbsey. “I mean, I don’t know, it seemed really, you know, true-to-life to me.”
Lola had to smile. Wally shot the detective a look. “It was in my wife’s beach bag.” Bobbsey shrugged. “I thought it was great. Really funny.” He glanced back toward the storeroom. “Poor kid.”
I love this guy, thought Lola. “Yeah. Chick lit. They’re not necessarily a hundred percent autobiographical,” she said. Sensing an opportunity, she went on a bit too loud. “I mean, even my recent book, while based on fact, was mostly fictionalized.”
Wally didn’t bat an eye.
Damn.
Bobbsey nodded, all business once again. “So, the boyfriend,” he prompted.
“Right,” said Lola. “Poor guy.” Lola opted not to mention that she’d dated Quentin, too. Very, very briefly. Years ago. Not pertinent.
“He got a name?”
“Quentin. Quentin Frye.” The detective scribbled in his noteboo
k. Quentin can be more help than I can, Lola figured. He might know if Mimi had some sort of cyberstalker, had received any threats, that kind of thing.
“Thank you very much, Miss—”
“Ms.,” really, but anyway. “Lola Somerville.” Zero reaction from Wally. Unreal.
She gave Bobbsey her number. He offered a card in return. “Call us if you remember anything else. Why don’t we all go upstairs now.” It was not a question.
“Excuse me—” said Wally.
“You, too, c’mon up. We’ll give you something outside.” They were already halfway down the hall. It was too late for Wally to argue.
“Time to talk to the boyfriend,” Bobbsey said to the empty space ahead of him. Then he looked back at Lola, a flicker of sorrow behind his big square lenses. “It’s always the boyfriend.”
No way, thought Lola. No way. It can’t be. He can’t be. Cannot be. And not just because I was the one who set Quentin and Mimi up.
Three
Quentin wouldn’t hurt a mouse, this Lola knew for sure. He would attempt to avoid hurting a mouse by setting a glue trap, but he would also forget that he’d eventually have to find a way to dispose of sticky Mickey. Lola had learned this the first and last time she’d slept at Quentin’s place. They’d just slept slept, for the record—which, you see, is what happens sooner than you mean it to when you live in Brooklyn and your suitor lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Because while Brooklyn and Manhattan indeed share a mayor and are separated only by one narrow river, as far as cabdrivers and Manhattan dwellers are concerned—who, by the way, think it’s never-fail hilarious to ask if they need a passport to cross the bridge—the distance between the two boroughs might as well be, oh, 508 miles, which is the mathematical difference between Brooklyn’s underdog 718 area code and Manhattan’s coveted 212.
That morning, when Lola had been trying to clear out of Quentin’s apartment as quickly as possible, a yelp had brought her jogging into the kitchen, with only one contact lens in so far.
“What? Are you okay?” Lola squinted. She could barely make out the form of Quentin, handsome, scary-smart, well-meaning Quentin, Quentin with a bit of an old soul, Quentin who favored comfortable suede English teacher shoes and who accepted though didn’t quite understand Lola’s good-natured ribbing about how he’d worn a sweater vest on their first date, Quentin who wrote crossword puzzles for a syndication service and owned his own once-used rice cooker, Quentin who was losing a bit of his fine blond hair, but only from a bird’s-eye view, Quentin who was sitting on a kitchen stool, gripping its sides, staring at an open door beneath his sink.
“Quentin, what the dilly?”
“Lola? Can you do me a favor?” His voice was steady, but only with effort.
“Does it require binocular vision?” she asked.
“Can you get rid of the mouse under the sink?”
Lola winked her useless left eye closed, grabbed a piece of paper towel, picked up the poor creature—who, the trap’s “humane” intentions notwithstanding, had succumbed—dropped it into the blue plastic bag in which the New York Times had arrived, took out the trash, washed her hands, put in her left contact, found Quentin in the kitchen, and said, “You know what? I’m not sure this is going to work out.”
Quentin and Lola were indeed cut out to be friends, nothing more. She didn’t mind getting rid of the mouse; she just needed to be with someone who, you know, could get rid of a mouse. And now, friends was definitely all they were, their brief past the most non of nonissues. She’d still e-mail Quentin now and then to find a five-letter word for Caspian tributary, or at least a hint on the name of the second musketeer. He’d playfully refuse, and they’d e-mail back and forth nonetheless, trying to “coordinate” to get together, finally trailing off and falling back out of touch, until Lola needed an eleven-letter word for expedient.
Quentin was really not cut out to be a killer.
I’m sure the cops will figure that out on their own, Lola thought. I’d rather not embarrass him by telling them about the mouse.
She and Bobbsey, Wally trailing, made it back upstairs into the club, now brightly lit and nearly empty but for a couple of somber waitresses collecting their purses. Lola looked around. With a flick of the light switch, Cabin 9 had gone from dim and sleek to garish and clunky. The picnic benches looked beat-up and splintery, creating a heretofore unseen hazard to panty hose. The bunk beds, once funkily enticing, looked dingy and depressing. And the mattresses ! Eew. You know what hides dirt? Lola thought. Darkness.
The sidewalk in front of the club was still clotted with partygoers, every one of whom was talking on a cell phone. The spinning yellow lights of three parked cop cars tiddlywinked off the slick, just-rained-on street. A cluster of women dressed in black, soggy signs leaning against their shins, lingered half a block up the Bowery. One was talking to a cop.
Oh, them.
The Jane Austen Liberation Front. The JALF could be counted on to protest every single chick lit reading or party, insisting that the genre cheapened both literature and women. Their leader, Wilma Vouch, who’d chained herself to Barnes & Noble the day Bridget Jones hit American stores, was not someone you’d want on your bad side. So, as far as the low JALF turnout at her own book party was concerned, Lola had never complained.
Lola looked back around the crowd. “I don’t see Quentin,” she said to Bobbsey. Good.
“It’s okay, we’ll get ahold of him.”
“Lola!”
Finally.
It was Lola’s newly minted husband, Doug, her best friend, Annabel, and Annabel’s friend Leo, whom Lola was secretly much happier to see than any of Annabel’s various other consorts. Leo served as Annabel’s gentleman walker to most parties, as she openly admitted that most of her suitors didn’t “get along that well with humans.”
“Are you okay?” Doug kissed Lola just to the left of her still-bright lipstick.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Lola. It was really, really good to see him. “I found the body, you know.”
“What?!”
“Hang on.” She gestured at Bobbsey. “Well, here’s my card,” she said, feeling silly, as she’d already given him her number—but this particular card bore the title of her book. Who knew? Maybe Pink Slip would wind up in his wife’s beach bag.
“Lola, seriously.” Lola had turned back to face her friends, arms dangling limp at her sides. Annabel, concern showing in her nearly violet eyes, took hold of Lola’s elbows. “Are you okay?”
Lola looked at her. It was really, really good to see Annabel, too. What was that study she’d read about? The one where husbands said their wives were their best friends, but wives said their best friends were their best friends?
“I mean, Lo, you look worse than that night we … did that thing Doug doesn’t know about,” Annabel said, a sly smile curving her lips to the left. Lola couldn’t help but laugh. Doug, accustomed to being double-teamed, smiled and shook his head. Leo, Lola noticed, looked fleetingly peeved.
“No no, yeah, I’m fine,” said Lola. She took a breath and started to tell the whole story. By the time she got to the Wally Seaport part, though, she was really flagging. The survival dose of adrenaline served up by her hippocampus was dissipating, and she was starting to feel foggy and twitchy. Distracted, she watched two of the cop cars pull away.
“Holy moly, Lola,” said Leo, filling the silence. He looked cute in his white shirt and jeans, the outfit Lola was always trying to get Doug to wear. It made Lola forgive Leo the goatee. “What an experience. I bet you could use a drink.”
“Oh, no thanks, Leo, I’m good.”
“No thanks? You? Wait, are you pregnant?”
Doug blushed.
“Leo, I just fainted.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry.” He reddened. Annabel’s purple-streaked braids swung as she fished a bottle of Poland Springs out of her threadbare knapsack and handed it to Lola.
“I know your contract says Evian, but it’s the best I c
an do,” said Annabel. She had a wee silver stud in her nose, rings on thumbs and toes, and a tiny black-and-white tattoo of Bettie Page’s head on her hip. Bettie’s famous black bangs, matching Annabel’s, were visible just above the waistband of her low-slung fatigues.
“Thanks,” said Lola. She gulped down the entire bottle while her friends watched. Except Leo, who was watching Annabel. Even amid other distractions, the ladies, they notice such things.
“Where were you guys, anyway?” asked Lola.
“Subway hell,” said Doug, taking off his clunky glasses—Lola loved it when he skipped his contacts—and rubbing his army-green eyes. “Report of a suspicious package at Bleecker Street. Turned out Mayor Bloomberg had left his briefcase on the train.”
“But they shut down everything, so these guys were trapped downtown, and I was stuck coming from uptown,” added Leo.
“Anyway, this is totally insane and gross and terrifying,” said Annabel, sticking her hands in the pockets of her worn hoodie. No makeup, as usual. Upper East Side women always stopped Annabel at her schmancy gym—a single date with the owner had yielded Annabel a lifetime membership—to ask her where she got her eyelashes perma-dyed. She didn’t, of course; they were just that long and dark. “Who would have anything against Mimi?” Annabel asked. “I mean, besides you?”
“Hey. I wanted to kill her, but I didn’t want to kill her,” said Lola. “And don’t forget, it could have been just a stranger, some random crazy person, I don’t know.”
Right then, a reflection caught her eye, along with a familiar face behind it. She turned. The light had caught a pair of big square glasses, like Detective Bobbsey’s, only they were not on Bobbsey’s face. And this grouper, this guy lurking twenty yards away near a scaffold, Lola recognized: it was Reading Guy.
Reading Guy! Reading Guy came to pretty much every single chick lit reading, ever. Everyone knew who he was. He’d been sighted at the downtown Borders, the uptown Y, and everywhere in between. Fortyish and pasty, he wore suspenders on brown acrylic pants, his top shirt button buttoned, the bottom two not, and ancient black sneakers with black laces. His glasses were so large that the bottom edges rested on his cheeks. Every book reading, he’d come and sit in the back, listen intently, and lurk, sweating slightly even in winter. He never bought a book or had one signed, but there he’d stand, next to a shelf, upright and silent, until the last guest left. Reading Guy never crossed a line, but everyone wished he would so they could actually ask him to leave. You know, so he could go home and work on his “wallpaper”—Scotch-taped collages of creased chick lit covers and yellowed reviews and grimy authors’ photos marked with runic grease pencil. At least that’s what everyone imagined.