Bird, Bath, and Beyond

by E. J. Copperman

  Barney, clearly upset by the flames (which were moving slowly because I assumed they hadn’t hit the cooking oil yet) and the smoke (which was just starting to be visible), began to fly around the small area of the trailer where Dad and I were exchanging panicked glances and trying to communicate with our eyes.

  I forced myself to look around the room and consider possibilities. There was no sharp object within reach to cut the exercise bands, and they didn’t stretch enough to wriggle out of them. I had tried very hard to push my tongue against the duct tape so I could yell for Bostwick, but that stuff actually lives up to its reputation and would not move. Maybe we can use it to stop terrorism after all. But that wasn’t my problem at the moment.

  I searched frantically for some tool to use, but there wasn’t much in the room and little chance of getting to the next area, especially since that’s where the fire was starting. All I could reach with my hands was the back of my chair. All I could reach with my feet was the carpet.

  The items on the table—a fragment of Patty’s cell phone that had flown up when she stomped it and a small piece of wood the police had left there after it had ricocheted off the windowsill when Dray was shot—didn’t seem like much and I couldn’t reach them with my hands anyway. Neither could Dad, who was trying to raise his chair by using his hands on the back to lift himself and the seat. He wasn’t getting very far, but it was an effort.

  “Don’t know much about history,” Barney said. His agitation was causing him to fall back on phrases he’d learned in his early training.

  Wait! Barney. A piece of wood on the table just small enough. Maybe I couldn’t reach it with my hands, but my hands weren’t necessarily the problem right now.

  This was going to take some flexibility, which has never been my strong suit. But my father, who started his showbiz career as a stand-up comic emceeing for magicians, had learned a thing or two. Sure, it had been almost fifty years, but you take what you can get.

  I grunted at him to get his attention, then gestured with my eyes toward the table. Dad looked at the table, then back at me, confused. Then I followed Barney’s flight path as he yelled, “A lot of people want you dead, Dray.” And I looked back at Dad.

  You could see the thought process, and I was hoping it wouldn’t take long. The wood … Barney … the wood … Barney …

  The flames reached the cooking oil at the entrance to the kitchen and I could see the line head toward us, picking up speed and volume. There wasn’t much time.

  Dad saw it too, took another look at the wood, then at Barney, and his eyes widened.

  He’d gotten it.

  Positioned closer to the table than I was, he could lean over and get his face close to the table’s surface. There was enough play in the duct tape that Dad could manage to open his mouth enough. He lifted, very carefully, the small scrap of wood from the table. He kept it on the duct tape and leaned his head back very carefully. We couldn’t afford for him to drop that wood or we were dead. Literally.

  Dad sat back, wood on the duct tape. But Barney, freaking out, was not paying attention. And Dad probably knew that trying to shout would cause enough vibration to knock the wood loose. He sat as still as possible, head resting on the seatback.

  I tried to yell, “Barney!” but only an incoherent sound emerged from my mouth. Barney did not show any interest.

  The thing about a fire is that the flames don’t actually kill you. It’s the smoke. It fills the space from the bottom up, and that meant Dad and I probably only had a few minutes left before we were unable to breathe at all. I shouted for Barney, louder this time.

  And he stopped and perched on the table. That was when I saw my father perform the single most amazing, brave act of his career.

  Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his head and kept the wood on the corner of the duct tape holding his mouth. Then he leaned forward to where Barney could see and, more to the point, smell it.

  That did the trick. Barney walked over to Dad’s face, stared for a moment, and then pecked at the wood. Dad miraculously held on.

  Barney clearly liked what he’d tried and pecked at it again. And again. And a few times more. He finally realized Dad wasn’t going to let go, so he tried to hook his beak around the back of the wooden chip so he could carry it off. He gave that a few tries, each time inadvertently tearing at the edge of the duct tape.

  Sure enough, one time was too many and Barney grabbed the wood out of my father’s mouth.

  I let out a gasp, the best I could do under the circumstances. But Dad saw that the tape on his mouth had wilted at the end where Barney had been pecking. Dad had a few scratches there too, but he could open his mouth.

  “Police!” he screamed. “She got out around the back and set the place on fire! She’s out there in an NYPD uniform! GET US OUT OF HERE!”

  Bostwick must have been right outside the door because he had pried it open and entered before Dad was finished screaming. Barney took his hard-earned prize to his window perch and sat there gnawing away at it.

  The cops rescued us from the trailer in seconds, literally, and I made sure Barney got out even though his cage did not. They also grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall of the trailer and put out the flames as quickly as possible. But by that time I was cut out of the chair and standing on solid ground, my legs shaky and my arms fairly useless, breathing in air like it was going out of style. Because for a few moments there, it had been.

  Dad hugged me hard, so I guessed his arms were recovering faster than mine. “I don’t know what I would have done if something happened to you,” he said.

  “Me? It was happening to you too.”

  “I’m used to stuff happening to me. I can deal with that.”

  “Call Mom,” I told him, eyeing some news vans in the distance. “She must have heard by now.” Dad took his phone, which amazingly was not melted, out of his pocket and started pushing buttons as he walked away. I exhaled. It felt like it had been a long time since I’d done that.

  Before I could do the same and call Consuelo, Bostwick walked over with a face full of reprimand. “Didn’t I tell you not to go into the trailer?” he asked.

  “My dad was in there and she had a gun. What would you do?”

  There were maybe ten uniformed officers surrounding the trailer and another three in cruisers parked nearby. I started scanning each of them suspiciously and Bostwick caught what I was doing. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We got your pal Patty right after your father called out. The uniforms they give people on the show aren’t exactly the same, and hers really didn’t fit.”

  “Those actresses are like a size zero,” I said. “I’m surprised it fits any human over the age of eight. You arrested her?”

  “No, we bought her a hot cocoa and sent her on her way. The woman took two people hostage in a trailer and tried to burn it down. Not to mention we had enough on her for Dray Mattone’s murder to arrest her before you got her to confess. Yeah, we took her away. If you’re still her lawyer, you have a lot of work to do.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’m off that case,” I said. “It’s so awkward when the defense attorney has to testify against her client. Where’s Barney?” I hadn’t seen what the cops had done with him.

  “Officer LaRosa put a coat over him so he wouldn’t fly away on the way out. Then we put him in one of the cruisers. Nobody wanted to go back in for a hot birdcage.”

  “That was the smart thing to do, but I wouldn’t want to have to ride home in that cruiser,” I said.

  “We put him in the car nobody likes,” Bostwick said.

  “Did Patty tell you her whole story?” I asked.

  “Patty wouldn’t tell me the score of the Yankee game if I asked her. Patty has clammed up other than to say she wants her lawyer. The other one.” Jamie would be getting the phone call if he hadn’t already. I wondered what he would think, but the fact was he was probably on his way to defend his client even now. That’s the way our justice system is set up, a
nd it works.

  I did my best to fill Bostwick in on what had been said in the trailer. It wouldn’t be usable in court because it would be hearsay evidence unless I was the one on the stand, but I figured it would be helpful to Bostwick for building a case. He listened, took a few notes, and asked a couple of questions but mostly just let me talk. If I’d been at all attracted to him, he would have been the perfect man for those few minutes.

  When I’d finished, Bostwick chewed over what I’d said. “You’re saying that someone framed whatever-her-real-name-is for a crime she really did commit? That’s crazy.”

  “And yet, I think it’s true. Patty could easily have gotten away with the murder, or assisted suicide, or whatever you want to call it,” I said.

  “I want to call it murder. We’ll see what the D.A. wants to call it.”

  The news vans in the distance started getting closer; the cops must have given them the okay. They still wouldn’t allow reporters really close to an active crime scene, but they would allow photography. Lo and Sam would be seeing me on television, which had become kind of routine over the past week or so.

  “Either way, she could have just left town and become anonymous after she shot Dray,” I answered. “Instead she chose to stay in the house she’d rented and keep acting like she was sick so she could send me to the set with Barney every day and scurry around in her curly wig when she wanted to find out who was setting her up. I guess it was personal.”

  Bostwick shook his head at the sheer nuttiness of the situation. “And she never found out who it was.”

  “No, but I think I know,” I said. “Are you interested in making another arrest?”

  I saw Dad get off his phone looking oddly pleased with himself. I imagine it felt good to know how much Mom cared about him, as if that had ever been in question.

  “For what?” Bostwick asked. “You can’t be held responsible for pointing police to a crime the person really did commit.”

  “What about fabricating evidence? Knowing in advance the crime was going to take place and doing nothing about it? Lying to investigators? Is there a charge in there anywhere?” I don’t know why, but the idea of manipulating the investigation (and in some ways, me) was getting me annoyed.

  “Again, that’s for the D.A.,” the detective said. “But I am curious to see who and why.”

  “Good,” I said. “Come by my office in about two hours.” Then I texted Sam and said I’d be late. He immediately answered: We’re always open.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Are you still looking for an agent? I might be interested in a few new clients.”

  Mandy Baron was sitting in the client’s owner chair in front of my desk. She smiled an eager, ingratiating smile I’m sure had gotten her over a number of hurdles in her past. “I sort of figured,” she said. “Your text said you might be able to help. But I thought you really didn’t work with, you know, people.”

  Consuelo chuckled quietly behind her desk, pretending to be engrossed in paperwork. Barney, reunited with Maisie in the only birdcage we had now, fluttered his wings a little but otherwise did not comment on the action.

  “Well, since we spoke I’ve been thinking it over,” I told her, leaning forward in my chair to appear interested, if not fascinated with Mandy. “A few people who I know are reliable and will work regularly wouldn’t be a bad addition to my base. The thing about animals is that if there’s a part, they have very little ego about auditioning and that sort of thing. But with you I know from what I’ve observed that we can get along.”

  “Oh, I think we can,” Mandy agreed.

  I’d texted Mandy with the number she’d given me on her business card after checking with Heather Alizondo about Mandy’s actual lack of an agent. Heather had pulled the “TV directors don’t know anything” card and referred me to Les Mannix, of all people, who said after checking his records that Mandy had been signed with an agent when he’d hired her for the guest spot on Dead City, but he had no idea if she’d left the agency since then, a time of about three weeks. He gave me her agent’s name and contact information and hung up, saying he was negotiating with a cable network at this moment. So clearly he’d stop to take a call from the bird’s agent.

  “Great,” I said. I pulled a client intake form from my top drawer, stuck it on a clipboard with a pen attached to it, and handed it to Mandy. “Why don’t you fill that out and then we can talk?”

  Mandy looked over the form and began writing on it as Consuelo and I did our best to look busy. She stopped at one point and looked up at me. “You need the phone number for my old agent?”

  “Yes, for the records. I need to confirm with him that you are no longer a client.” No reputable theatrical agent will accept a client who is still affiliated with another agency.

  “Oh,” Mandy said, but she kept writing. After a few minutes of our dramatic “working” pageant, she handed me back the clipboard.

  I looked it over. “Okay, great,” I said with just the right level of enthusiasm (not very much). “Now I have a couple of questions.”

  Mandy looked up, audition face on, interested but not desperate. Years of practice had gone into this look. “Shoot,” she said. It was only apropos.

  “Why did you leave your last agent?” I asked.

  “Well, it was sort of a mutual thing, but the truth is, I wasn’t getting the kind of roles I was hoping for.” Mandy pretended to see something on the back of her hand and brush it off.

  “Really. The Dead City role was a guest star on a network show. That seems pretty good.”

  Knowing Mandy couldn’t see her, Consuelo looked over at me and gave her head a slight shake. I was overplaying my role.

  “Yeah, but it was all about my body,” she said. “It’s a zombie, so I’m in lot of makeup, but they manage to get me into what amounts to a bikini and it’s implied I’m naked under the sheet at the morgue. I’m tired of that. I want to act.”

  “So you want me to find you roles that are about your talent, not your looks,” I said.

  “Yeah. Not that I mind them thinking I look good. It’s gotten me places before.” She smiled with an expression indicating that we girls understand that kind of thing.

  Unfortunately for Mandy, I understood it only too well. “Just one more question,” I said. “Have you ever framed a colleague for murder?”

  If Mandy wanted to convince me she could act, she’d have to do better than the shocked face she put on at that moment. Surprised, sure. She hadn’t seen the question coming. But shocked? Not even close. Her eyes told me she had already concocted the response.

  Here it came: “What are you talking about?” Original, huh?

  “I think you know. You planted the letters that were supposedly written by Patty Basilico saying she was pregnant with Dray Mattone’s baby. You told the police she’d been sleeping with Dray. You wanted them to think she had shot him in a rage over their broken love affair. The part that I don’t understand is why. What did that get you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was still trotting out the old standards.

  “You don’t? You’ve been lying to me the whole time. This isn’t even your agent’s phone number; I got that number from Les Mannix fifteen minutes ago. You were asking me about representation because you wanted to hear more about the case against Patty and you knew I was working with her. So I’ll ask again: Why? Why frame Patty for Dray’s murder?”

  The expression in Mandy’s eyes turned cold and angry. She took a dollar from her purse and laid it on my desk. “I’m retaining you as my lawyer, so anything I say is protected,” she said. “Yeah, I framed Patty because she was moving in on Dray at just the time he was going to get me a part in a spin-off of Dead City. A regular role!”

  “You were sleeping with Dray?” As if I hadn’t figured that.

  “I don’t ever remember sleeping, no.” Mandy laughed, but it wasn’t with pleasure. “You know how it is for actresses.”

 
I didn’t really know how it is for actresses, but that seemed a minor issue at the moment. “So that justified getting her arrested for murder?” I said.

  Mandy waved a hand. “It was just to shake her up. I mean, where does the girl who owns the parrot get the nerve to move in when I’m trying to get a full-time job?”

  “How’d you get into the trailer?”

  Mandy gave me a look indicating my naiveté. “Didn’t we just establish that I could get in there whenever I wanted? She wrote out the letter and signed it. I just found it in the trailer and left it out where it could be found. I figured they’d check the handwriting and see it was hers and that would be it.”

  I knew she hadn’t taught Barney all the new phrases he’d seemed to have learned in a fraction of the usual time; Patty herself had set that up and then feigned innocence to indicate someone else had access to the parrot. Me, maybe. Luckily the cops hadn’t cared much about that.

  “Well, here’s the crazy part of it,” I told Mandy. “You set up the woman who actually shot Dray Mattone. And even if you didn’t know that—and I’m sure you didn’t, based on the way your jaw just dropped a foot—it’s still a crime to plant false evidence. So I’ll be alerting the police to that immediately.” I nodded to Consuelo, who picked up her phone and punched in the number I’d given her.

  Mandy, having retrieved her jaw from the floor, stood up and looked me in the eye somewhat haughtily. “You can’t,” she reminded me, pointing at the picture of George Washington lying on my desk. “I retained your services.”

  Following her lead I stood up too. “First of all, if you think you can buy my work for a dollar, you clearly have a very poor sense of economy. But there’s one thing you didn’t take into account—I never accepted your offer. I’m not your lawyer, lady.” I picked up the dollar bill and stuffed it into her jacket pocket. “Find another. You’re going to need one.”