Staying Cool

by Catherine Todd

  I had to try to upset her enough to break her concentration and then jump her and get the gun. I didn’t hold a big chance of getting it away, but it was better than lying down in the bathtub and waiting for a bullet in the brain.

  “If you’re dying anyway,” I asked her, “what’s the point of killing me?”

  “Dying is the whole point,” she said seriously. “I won’t get another chance. Do you think I want to be remembered as a laughingstock?”

  “Is it better to be remembered as a murderer?”

  She gestured toward the stairs with her gun. “No one will suspect me. You didn’t yourself. Now come.”

  It was now or never. “Does it matter to you that you killed the wrong woman?” I asked desperately.

  She looked at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re stalling.”

  “I’m not eager to go upstairs with you, Julia”—scarcely an exaggeration—“but I’m telling you the truth. Bruce wasn’t having an affair with Natasha Ivanova.”

  She didn’t believe me. “Then why was he going there to meet her at night?” she scoffed.

  “He wasn’t going there to meet Natasha. He was having an affair with Melanie Klein. He still may be, for all I know.”

  She was very pale. “Absurd. I don’t believe you,” she said in a whisper.

  “It’s true. The receptionist was fired because she saw them together late one night. You can check it out yourself. I did.”

  Under other circumstances, I might have felt sorry for her; she looked so stricken. The moment to act, to jump her if I could, was very close. She looked at me.

  “So what is it going to be, Julia?” I said. “Are you going to kill Melanie, too? Why stop at her? You could also gun down the receptionist. And the cleaning woman. She heard voices late at night. Manhattan Beach has never had a serial killer. You could be the first.”

  It was dangerous to ridicule her, but it seemed to be working. Her mouth dropped, slack-jawed in surprise and despair. The gun dropped a fraction. Now!

  It was a great plan, except that just as I jumped for the gun, the squirrel took a flying leap and hit the sliding door screen, surprising us both. The gun jerked upward and shot me through the upper arm.

  There is a pain-free millisecond before the signals reach the brain. I stared at my arm in amazement. Then the blood started bubbling out of the hole, and my legs buckled.

  Julia stood over me with the gun, a look of horror on her face. After the explosion, it was unnaturally quiet. I felt as if I were watching the scene from a great distance away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  This was the moment when the weapon was supposed to drop from her nerveless fingers. Except that she raised it instead, looking at me uncertainly. She seemed to be hesitating, thinking it over. “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  Not as sorry as I was. It would be a totally pointless killing. I wanted to tell her that, but I was finding it very difficult to speak, or even think. “There’s no other way,” she said and aimed the gun at my head.

  I closed my eyes. I felt almost at peace, despite the pain. I felt a rush of wind, as if I were already being borne away.

  Nothing happened.

  “Ellen?”

  I kept my eyes tightly shut. If I didn’t open them, I wouldn’t have to see what would happen next.

  “Elena?”

  I opened my eyes then. Scott was bending over me, and my brother was holding a gun on Julia. Even in my confused state, I could see that she was no longer a threat to anybody. I tried to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Scott said. “You’ll be okay. Mark will be right back.”

  “Back?” I managed to ask.

  “Your cars were there, so we knew you had to be home. After your messages, we were sure something was wrong. We were getting Mark to let us in. The key was practically in your lock when we heard the shot,” he said. “Hush, now.”

  Mark arrived with bandages and painkillers. In my dreamlike state, I wondered how they had gotten there together. Fate, or accident? Everyone looked so worried. I wanted to say something clever that would put them at ease. Except for Julia, of course.

  They were all looking at me with concern. It was far too much trouble to be clever.

  So I went to sleep instead.

  33

  A successful relationship is not so much a matter of finding the right person as of being the right person.

  —Ellen Santiago Laws, in an interview with Cynthia Weatherford for City of Angels magazine

  My room had a view, and a bed that assumed every kinky position in the book. If I’d been in the mood, I might have been more impressed, but I was determined to enjoy every other luxury. Since I had Connections on the medical staff, I wasn’t even hustled out of the hospital on the day of my surgery. A couple of days of R and R were just what the doctor ordered.

  Except that it wasn’t restful in the least.

  Not that I minded.

  “I owe you,” I told my brother and Dorie, when they appeared at my bedside. “You saved my life.”

  Tommy grinned. “It was a joint rescue effort. I wanted to let you know I’d found out that Bruce Livingston had been charged with embezzlement in Florida. Except he didn’t call himself Bruce Livingston then. Dorie told me about your phone call, and I got worried when you didn’t answer the door, even though your car was there. I ran into Scott coming to visit you, too. He said your neighbor might have a key, so we—”

  “Wait a second. How did you know Scott?”

  He looked surprised. “I’m a policeman. How could I not know one of L.A.’s most famous attorneys? Of course,” he said with a smile, “I liked him much better when he worked for the D.A.”

  “So tell me about Bruce Livingston,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I promised Scott I’d let him fill you in on the whole story. A lot’s been going on,” he said. “Besides, we’re taking our niece to lunch.”

  I blinked at him. “Your niece?”

  He nodded. “Andrea.” He patted my hand awkwardly. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”

  Andy bent over and kissed me on the cheek. “Uncle Tommy’s nice, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said. I looked at my brother. “Uncle Tommy?”

  He shrugged. “Would you have preferred ‘Uncle Tom’?”

  “Mom?” Andy whispered in my ear.

  “Yes?”

  “When you see Mr. Crossland, don’t mention that I forgot to tell you that he called, okay? He called before…you know, to say that his father was in the hospital, and I forgot to give you the message. I’m sorry.”

  I smiled at her. “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Mom, there’s something else.” She looked unnaturally grave. My heart thudded.

  “What is it?” I asked gently.

  “I was going to tell you. I’ve been reading Emma for this English class.”

  I let out my breath. “And?”

  She looked at me wide-eyed. “It’s not too bad.” She sounded as surprised as if aliens had landed on the front lawn.

  I resisted the impulse to make too much of it. I didn’t want to kill her enthusiasm by gloating. “Great,” I said calmly. “Maybe we can rent the movie when it comes out.”

  She smiled. “Maybe.”

  When Andy and Dorie had left the room, my brother stayed behind a moment. He put a small cardboard box on my lap. “I thought you’d like to have this,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets like a boy and looked away.

  I lifted the lid. Inside were three or four pictures with crinkly edges, the kind that were probably made with a Kodak Brownie camera in what Andy referred to as the Olden Days.

  I lifted the top one. A man looked back at me with dark eyes and black curly hair slicked back from his face. He wore a terrible fifties shirt, but he was drop-dead handsome anyway. Something lurking in the corner of his smile told you that he knew it. He looked about twenty-five years old, jus
t a little older than my daughter.

  My brother was looking at me. I turned the picture over. Victor Santiago, Hermosillo, México read the caption on the back.

  My father.

  There were a few other pictures showing him with his arms around a couple of young women I didn’t recognize. None of them were my mother.

  “I’m sorry,” Tommy said. “This is all I could find.”

  I studied the face in the picture. I didn’t know what to feel. It was like seeing a picture of Moses or some famous figure out of history. Interesting, but I didn’t feel the emotional connection. “Do I look like him?” I asked my brother curiously.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  I looked at his face. “Neither do you,” I said.

  He laughed. “Maybe it’s just as well.”

  I laughed, too. I would have to sort out my feelings for my father later. Right now the present, and the future, was what was important, and a big part of that was in the room with me. “Thank you,” I told my brother sincerely. “For more than the pictures,” I added.

  His lips brushed my forehead. “Get some sleep,” he said.

  Cynthia called to tell me that Jeff Riley was ecstatic about my zeal in getting wounded in the service of my City of Angels story. “He’s says you’re going to be on the cover. You’ll be famous. He’s sure Hollywood will go for it, too. There is one thing, though,” she added.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I have to write it. You can hardly be the subject and the author.” She sighed. “And, of course, the dating and matrimonial services series is on indefinite hold again.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “That’s okay. I’m getting the walking cast tomorrow, and then I’ll be over to interview you, okay?”

  “Sure,” I told her. “I just got my cast on, so you can give me tips.”

  “Deal,” she said, with a laugh. “We make a pretty good team after all this time, don’t we?”

  “Not bad,” I admitted, with only a touch of reluctance.

  “Well, since the dating services series still hasn’t been done yet, maybe, after you get better, you’d like to—”

  “Not a chance,” I told her.

  Ramon was ecstatic about my getting wounded, period.

  “Shit, man,” he said, when he called my hospital room, “I never even got shot once.” He sounded jealous. “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  He mumbled something that might have been “sorry,” but I wasn’t sure. “Guess I should say ‘thanks,’” he added.

  Yes, he should. “You’re welcome,” I said. “Besides, if you hadn’t identified that sculpture, we never would have known who the real killer was,” I told him.

  “Really?” He sounded pleased.

  “Really.”

  “Uh…you won’t say nothing to Aunt Rosa about that thing, will you? She really hates to be called fat.”

  “All women hate to be called fat,” I told him. “You should keep that in mind for the future. Anyway, if everything goes well, you can tell her whatever you want, yourself. I hope you’ll be getting out of there before too long.”

  “Maybe,” he said cautiously.

  “Look, Ray, did you graduate from high school?”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, while you’re waiting, why don’t you get your GED, then? It’s not that hard. I’m sure they have all the information at the prison. At least think about it,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Um, I’m going to be starting an art program for Latino students in the South Bay.”

  Getting shot rearranges your priorities quite wonderfully. As I lay on my hospital bed, I’d decided that I was going to do something like the Art Park if I had to sell my townhouse to finance it. I was pretty sure the publicity from City of Angels would be helpful in getting sponsors, but even if it wasn’t, I was going to find a way.

  “Think you’d be interested in something like that?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said cautiously. Well, I was cautious, too. “What about Johnny?” he asked me.

  I closed my eyes. What had I gotten myself into? “Is he interested in art?”

  He laughed. “I was thinking maybe he could help you with the kids, or something like that.” He hesitated. “He’s really sorry about what he did, you know.”

  “What he did?”

  “You know—getting one of the homeys to break into your house.”

  “Your brother did that?”

  He realized he’d confessed unnecessarily. “Oh, shit, man. You mean you didn’t know?”

  “I thought it was somebody trying to discourage me from looking into your case, Ray. I’m afraid I don’t see the point of having one of your friends do it. To tell you the truth, it scared the shit out of me.”

  He was quiet a moment. “Sorry,” he said. “I was pissed off at you after, you know, that first time we talked on the phone. I told Johnny. He said he’d show you that if you didn’t show us respect, we could get you anytime. You know, if things got fucked up. Sorry,” he said again.

  “At the risk of sounding trite, Ray, respect is a two-way street.”

  “Okay,” he said. He sighed. “I guess this means you’re sorry you helped me, right?”

  I couldn’t begin to tell him that he’d done at least as much for me as I had for him. “No, it doesn’t,” I said. “And I’m not condoning breaking into my townhouse, but at least they didn’t hurt anything. It’s ironic, but in a way, the break-in is what helped convince me that someone else must have killed Natasha Ivanova. So I guess you could say it all worked out for the best.”

  He hesitated. “Why’re you doing all this, Ellen? Is it just that jury thing?”

  The question required either a ten-minute treatise or something cut to fit the length of a phone call from the prison lounge. I opted for the shorter version. “It’s just a second chance, Ray,” I told him. “Everybody should get one, don’t you think?”

  After all the sympathetic phone calls and get-well cards, Karin Deacon was bracingly astringent. “Are you okay, toots?” she asked me.

  “Never better,” I told her. I was out of a job and had a big bullet hole in my arm, but, surprisingly, it was absolutely true.

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “I have some news I think you’ll be interested in.”

  “Shoot,” I said—then I had to laugh. “I didn’t mean that.”

  She chuckled. “I’m glad you can joke about it. Anyway, the news is that what you identified as a Botero statue was a fake. A really, really good fake, but a fake nonetheless.” She filled me in on the details.

  “Wow,” I said. “Like the Livingstons’ marriage. The symbolism is too perfect.”

  “Before you get lost in some Art Major reverie, let me tell you the rest. Botero’s representatives are very interested in you. So are a lot of other people. It seems there was quite a little traffic going on in these small-scale fakes, and not just in Boteros, either. There are a number of artists whose work is being ripped off.” She paused dramatically. “So, Art in America wants to do a story on how you tracked it down in the first place.”

  “Wow,” I said again. “Really?”

  “Really. Now what do you think of them apples?”

  “I think it might be a good time to hit you up for funding for my art project,” I told her. “You know, the one we talked about the other day.”

  She sounded amused. “It’s that important to you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then you’ve got it,” she said. “But there’s something I’d like from you in return.”

  “What’s that?”

  She told me.

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  Diana Tolbert approached my bedside unheralded, bearing the largest arrangement of orchids and tropical flowers I had ever seen. Some florist had probably denuded half of Hawaii to provide it. It teetered precariously on the tiny table in the hospital room when Diana tried to set it down, spilling w
ater over the sides, so she ended up setting it on the floor in the corner. She pulled a chair very close to my bed and picked up my hand to pat it reassuringly. If she hadn’t hurt my arm in the process, I would have been amused.

  “I got your message,” I told her.

  “What can I say?” she said, giving me an intensely sorrowful gaze. She was wearing very large diamond ear-studs, three-quarters of a carat apiece, at least. She was pulling out all the stops, reminding me of how prosperous her business was. I knew then that my job was safe, if I wanted it. “I didn’t know anything till I read about the Livingstons in the paper.”

  “No,” I said. I wasn’t going to help her.

  She reached for my hand again. I winced and tried to shrink back in the bed, but to no avail. “You’re upset,” she said. “You’re angry that I fired you. Of course, that’s only natural.”

  “Actually, Diana, you’re hurting my arm,” I told her.

  “Oh.” She dropped my hand and sat back. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “Well. I’m still not admitting that you were right in pressing on about the murder. It’s just lucky that the publicity is going to be in our favor.” She’d heard about the Art in America piece, obviously. “But what I am saying is this: I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. You can have your job back.”

  “Diana—”

  “Take as much time as you need to get back on your feet,” she said magnanimously. “You can come back whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Diana, but I can’t.”

  She frowned. “Why not? The wound’s healing, isn’t it? I mean, you’ll be back to normal in a few weeks, won’t you?”

  “Actually, it will probably be a bit longer than that, but that isn’t what I meant.” I drew a breath. “I’m not coming back to work with you, Diana.”

  She folded her arms. “You may be getting a lot of attention now, Ellen, but you won’t get that much business on your own. Besides, rich clients don’t like notoriety. They may not like people who are getting plastered all over the media. You can’t be sure of getting any commissions.”