“She’s very wise. She always can find her way.” Lara held her hand up to Dora’s image. Was she offering the characters a toke?
“Then she’s wiser than I am. Is Jake here?” I didn’t want to inspire one of Lara’s cultural theses, but I didn’t want her to drift off and forget why I was there, either.
“He’s in the shower, he’ll be out in a moment, she has so much to teach us,” Lara continued as though each thought flowed naturally into the next. She took a hit off the joint herself as the girl and the monkey both clutched their heads in distress. Apparently, a small star had fallen out of the sky and gotten lost. Lara nodded in sympathy. “All of us, we’re lost stars.”
“Swear to God, I’m gonna call DirecTV and cancel Nick right now,” Jake growled as he emerged from the bedroom, buttoning his shirt slowly so I could have a glimpse of chest as he approached me. I would’ve restricted her smoking, not her viewing, but that was between them and I was happy to stay out of it.
Lara draped herself across the black leather couch in a languid pose. “I bought the DVD,” she sniffed. “It’s a powerful metaphor for the inability of the culture to embrace what is different without crushing that very individuality into nonexistence.”
Jake rolled his eyes at her and opened his arms to me as he came across the room. Seeking to block his hug in the most gracious way possible, I held up my breakfast offerings. Properly derailed, he took the tray. “Thanks.”
“There’s a vanilla cap, a chai latte, a macchiato, and a house blend. Your choice.”
“I love options,” he said, plucking the macchiato from the tray. “I’m glad you called.”
Let the sales pitch resume. “I was so impressed by your tribute to Lisbet and that got me thinking about your wordless cinema theory again.”
“You heard any more about the investigation?” Jake glanced up from going through the bag of bagels. “Did they arrest David yet?”
“Why would they?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“Lover’s spat gone wrong, isn’t that what it looks like?”
“You think David’s capable of that?”
“We’re all capable of anything. One of the guiding principles of my life.”
“You tell the police that?”
“Course not. They’d take it the wrong way.” Jake shook his head, bemused, as I tried to imagine the right way to take it. “One way or the other, sucks to be him.”
Especially with such loving and supportive friends. I waited while Jake decided on the onion bagel and chomped a chunk out of it. He pointed back to the bedroom. “C’mon in here. Let me show you where I make my magic.” He waggled his eyebrows to make sure I got the joke and led the way. I put the coffee and bagels on the table in front of Lara, but she didn’t move as we walked by, still intent on decoding Dora and the monkey.
The bedroom was as deliberately austere as the living room. There was an unmade king-size bed in the center of the room, a massive sound system on one wall, and a dazzling rack of computer equipment on the other. Jake began reeling off the specs of all the equipment, that tech speaking-in-tongues men do. I nodded and tried not to look at the bed or wonder how well visited it was.
Jake placed me in the chair in front of the computer and thumped his fingers on some keys. The tribute sprang to life on the screen. “The core idea of wordless cinema is the primacy of the image, so it seemed so appropriate to honor Lisbet with images showing her full of life because she isn’t. Anymore.”
Perhaps Jake was such a fan of wordless cinema because he was so impressively clunky with words. An art form that encouraged him not to talk was making more and more sense. “You’ve known David since college, right? How long’d you known Lisbet?”
Jake tapped the bagel against the end of his nose and did some quick math in his head. “They started dating like four months ago, I guess.”
“You didn’t know her before?”
“I knew her work, but not her.” He leered, leaning in much too close to me. “Interesting exception. ’Cause most of David’s girls were referrals from me.” He winked and I swallowed hard, trying not to grimace. “That’s what friends are for.”
The downside to investigating a mystery is that you wind up with a whole lot of information that you would’ve been happier not to know. The idea of most of David Vincent’s girlfriends being scraps from Jake Boone’s table was going to haunt me.
The footage had played to the final scene. I tapped the computer screen to refocus Jake’s attention. “Why’d you end here? Were you trying to make a statement about the abrupt end of her life?” I vamped, trying to sound like a semiauthentic film critic.
“No, I was making a statement about Lara dropping the camera.”
I chewed the inside of my lip in frustration. “So you didn’t shoot anything after that?”
“Let me see.” He pressed his body against mine and slid down to sit in the chair with me. I started to get up and he pressed down on my knee with his free hand. “Don’t get up.” Figuring he’d be more helpful if I played along, I stayed in the chair with him, edging over just enough so he could half-perch next to me. He was wearing Chanel Pour Homme, which struck me as far too classic for him. Probably a Christmas present from his mother.
He took the mouse and started clicking on icons, pulling up snippets of film. He opened and closed them efficiently, not giving me much chance to register what I was seeing before he moved on to the next one. He seemed to know what he was looking for.
“Here,” he said after a moment. “This is after Lara picked the camera back up, but Lisbet’s too deep in the frame for it to be an effective shot. Besides, Lady Diva marches into the shot and destroys the composition. Lara should have panned with Lisbet, but she got caught up in the emotion of the moment. She’s a little high strung, but she has a lot of raw talent.”
As I paused to be impressed that Jake had actually paid someone a compliment, a woman walked into the shot on the screen, just as he had said she would. I had to lean in a moment to make sure I was identifying her properly. “Veronica Innes?”
Jake stretched, yawned, and snaked his hand around the back of the chair and my shoulders like an eighth grader on his first date ever. “Wherever there’s drama, Veronica can’t be far away.”
“I don’t remember seeing her follow them out.”
“I think she was already in the hallway, snitching a smoke or something. I tried to get her to leave it alone, let them work it out, but Veronica leaps to center stage every freaking chance she gets, so there was no stopping her.” He tapped the screen as the footage showed Veronica following Lisbet down the hall and out of sight. David was nowhere to be seen.
I leaned against Jake, hoping it would encourage him to share more information. “Veronica and Lisbet were friends?”
“How broad’s your definition?”
“They weren’t close?”
“Had a lot in common. Didn’t make them friends.”
“Veronica was Lisbet’s understudy. What else?”
“David.”
In a totally involuntary rush of adrenaline, I grabbed Jake’s thigh. He loved it and grabbed my thigh in return. “Veronica was with David?”
“Right after she was with me. And right before he was with Lisbet.”
“Did he dump her for Lisbet?”
“Depends on your point of view. Veronica was convinced she and David were soul mates, never to be parted, all that crap, so she probably thinks so. As I recall, David burned out on the high maintenance.” Jake leaned in, all but licking his lips, and I dove out of his line of fire, scooting close to the monitor again.
“Can you play the tribute for me again? Your work is so incredible.”
Fortunately, the praise was sufficiently distracting and Jake turned his attention from me to the screen. As the footage played again, I pretended to study it appreciatively, nodding periodically as Jake went into another one of his declamations, and tried to absorb this new information.
Much as it prides itself on being the Big Apple, New York City can be very small. At least the circles in which you travel can be, especially when you all have the same profession or same alma mater or same bank handling your trust funds. A lot of busy people like to date what’s within reach and why move on until the supply’s been depleted? I know some social butterflies who’ve taken multiple flights around a circle before moving on to fresher flowers. So incestuous cliques are not particularly remarkable and years of round-the-clock Friends reruns made them palatable for the rest of the country. But I still like to take the time to be amazed by the convoluted branches of some people’s dating trees.
The new pressing question seemed to be, how did Veronica feel about understudying Lisbet in more places than the theater? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so God help the soul who crosses an actress. Veronica had looked pretty intent as she’d followed Lisbet out. Had she wanted to help a colleague in emotional distress or had she been closing in for the kill? Had Veronica been with her when Lisbet had thrown the ring away? Some might see that as an opportunity to get back with David, but had Veronica taken it as an insult to the man she still loved? Had Veronica and Lisbet wound up outside and come to blows?
“Can I see that last piece with Veronica again?”
“You questioning my editing choices?”
“No, no. Studying them.”
Right answer. Jake nodded in appreciation and clicked. I watched anxiously as Veronica stepped into frame, then followed Lisbet down the hallway until I could see her full length, holding the glistening champagne bottle in her hand.
I sat back in the chair as much as Jake’s shoulder would let me. “How does Veronica feel about being edited out of this?”
“We don’t talk more than absolutely necessary.”
“You seemed very close at dinner Friday night.”
“That’s for show. Most of what she does is for show. When she can control it. One of the big issues in our relationship. I like to call the shots, so does she. How ’bout you?”
“I’m more into give and take.”
Jake pressed against me. “That’s got possibilities.”
“So does this article.” I popped to my feet, half-hoping my sudden movement would tip the chair over. “I wanted to come by today and find out a little bit more background so I can do a righteous job of pitching this to my editor.”
“Let me pitch it.”
I started easing my way to the door. “I have no doubt that you’d be hugely persuasive, but that’s not how it works. Not at my magazine at least. But I’m sure if I get the go-ahead on the article, she’ll want to meet you. And I’ll certainly be in touch if I have more questions.”
“I have a lot more I could show you,” Jake said, rising to follow me.
“Let’s save something for next time, shall we?” I couldn’t bring myself to wink at him, but I did give him my best flirtatious tone. And he was enjoying it a little too much.
I walked through the living room as quickly as I could without making it look like I was running away, but I stopped short at the sight of Lara in her lingerie dancing along with Dora and the monkey on the big screen. Her hands were in the air, eyes blissfully closed as she half-bounced, half-swayed to the song on the DVD.
I wasn’t sure I should intrude on her reverie, but I felt compelled to make some sort of farewell statement. “Thank you, Lara,” I attempted, not even sure she’d hear me.
Her eyes drifted open. “We got the star home. But the presentation of a happy ending is detrimental to the audience unless that happiness is possible for the masses.”
“That’s … great.” This was Jake’s current relationship, but he called Veronica high maintenance? What an interesting measuring scale he must have.
“I know you from the dead girl’s party,” she said, eyes working to focus.
“Yes.”
“People get in deep water and then find out they can’t swim,” she said with an odd edge.
“Excuse me?” Was that a philosophical observation or a specific statement about what had happened?
Jake scooped his arm around me and, giving me little choice in the matter, walked me to the door. “She’s a little … muddled at the moment.”
I looked back at Lara, but she was already dancing again, eyes closed, lips tweaked into a little bow of satisfaction. What a trip, in more ways than one.
Jake opened the door. “Talk to you soon.” He leaned in yet again and I got my cheek turned just in time.
“Thank you so much.” I slid out into the hallway and closed the door behind me, feeling like I’d just dragged myself back through the looking glass. I wasn’t sure whether to be concerned about them or be happy they’d found each other. Lara was in no condition for me to put much stock in what she’d said but I found her pronouncement troubling. Did she know something or was it all just jumbled up in her head?
My head was feeling pretty jumbled itself in the cab on the way back to my apartment. It was a pretty Sunday, the traffic sounds muted, and the pace on the sidewalk slightly less frantic than during the week. People looked like they were marching off to fun destinations—couples pushing kids in strollers to the park, dressed-up couples on the way to brunch, punked-out couples straggling in from last night, tourists threatening to tip over as they craned their necks back to study the tops of the skyscrapers. It was a perfect day to sit on the steps of the New York Public Library, watch the people go by, and wait for the lions to come to life as I’d always imagined they would when I was a kid.
But when I was a kid, I didn’t think about people killing each other except in war or imagine that people hated each other enough to do much more than not speak to them ever again. That point of view seemed so luxurious now as I contemplated crimes of passion and the magnificently stupid and venal choices people make in the name of love.
As I got out of the cab, I was so intent on figuring out how to get to Veronica that I almost walked right by Kyle. He was waiting for me out front, perched on a planter, head bowed in thought. I walked up to him with open arms, anxious to start on a positive note this morning. “What a nice surprise.”
“Really.”
It might not have been the coldest greeting I’d ever gotten, but it was easily in the top ten, with lots of potential for upward movement. The Pause that followed came equipped with its own lethally sharp icicles. He only glanced up at me, then dropped his eyes back down to the sidewalk.
“You could’ve waited inside,” I attempted.
“I’m not staying.”
“Oh.”
“Why didn’t you tell me David Vincent has an assault history?”
The bottom of my stomach dropped, bungeed down around my sandals, then rocketed back up to the roof of my mouth. “I didn’t know.”
“Never charged, so nothing popped for Suffolk County, but I did some extra digging around. A girlfriend filed a complaint, then dropped it. There’s also a drunk and disorderly.” Kyle stood, hands diving into his pockets. “What’s going on here?”
“How’d you know to dig around?” I asked gently. I knew he was angry and frustrated; I was stunned, but determined to make some sense of this.
“Because I’m a good cop, Molly. Or I thought I was, before I agreed to be part of this.”
“So all of a sudden David’s guilty because of dark marks in his past?”
“He’s sure as hell not the poor maligned angel you were making him out to be.”
The front door of my building opened and instead of any of the dozen neighbors I’d be hard-pressed to recognize in a restaurant or anywhere else out of context, it had to be Liana Mayburn, the ancient, mountainous gadfly in 3C. You could always hear her coming, between her labored breathing and the vipp vipp of floral polyester rubbing against itself.
“Molly dear, good morning,” she wheezed.
“Mrs. Mayburn,” I answered, keeping my eyes on Kyle so he didn’t take this opportunity to walk away.
/> “You and your young man enjoying the sunshine?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kyle answered with an old-school politeness that impressed even me.
“Young couples fill my heart. The promise of such joy. Be good to each other. Be happy.” She might have suggested names for our children, but she started coughing and her momentum carried her around the corner before she could talk again.
When you have a conversation on the street in New York, it’s like starting a parade. You have to be prepared for the fact that some people are going to want to jump right in and join you, while some will stand and watch, some will give you a wide berth, and some will shake their heads and critique.
Kyle took two steps backward, in the direction of the street. I circled back into his path, not ready to let him go yet. “How did you know to dig around?” I repeated, trying to trace that idea back to the source, fully suspecting it to be—
“Detective Cook.”
I gave the opportunity for editorial comment a wide berth. “She had a hunch?”
“A tip.”
“From someone who wanted to make sure David looked bad.”
“Or to make sure he didn’t get away with anything else.”
“Who was it?”
“Didn’t say.”
“But she’s immediately more credible because she’s a cop and I’m a civilian with emotional biases.”
Kyle grasped me by the shoulders, his contained emotion vibrating in his hands, and moved me out of his way, gently but firmly. “I’m going now.” He stepped past me.
“I want to go with you.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“You’re going to see David, aren’t you?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Why would I?”
“Because you want to see this through, even though it’s not your case. Because you want to talk to him, get your own feel before you talk to Detective Cook again and give her your take on things. Because you want to give Tricia and me the benefit of the doubt one more time. Because even though you deal with horrible things all day long, you’re still an incredibly good guy.”
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