Killer Cocktail

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  He pivoted slowly, hands on his hips. I could see glimpses of the true blue behind the angry clouds in his eyes, but I held my breath anyway, not sure of my next step and unable to anticipate his. He pinched his lower lip, held it for a moment, then dropped his hand. “Have you ever been in a situation you couldn’t talk your way out of?”

  “Twice. Want my mother’s phone number?”

  “Maybe later.” He took a deep breath. “This isn’t the way things are done.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to help you, but I’m obligated to help her and you may have conflicting interests.”

  “I know.”

  “So I’m going to go see David by myself. And when you get inside and call his sister, would you please not say anything that’s going to make it more difficult for me to talk to him.”

  I was mad at him all the way upstairs. But by the time I’d slammed a few cabinet doors, literally kicked my shoes off (for which I apologize here and now to Kate Spade; I usually treat your handiwork with the utmost respect), and inhaled three Oreos, I could see his point. That’s another downside to being involved with a cop. They have might and right on their side and it makes it really tough to get indignant, or at least stay indignant, for long.

  Since Kyle had already determined that I was going to call Tricia before he got to David, I felt compelled to do so. Not being sure where in her travels she might be, I tried her cell.

  “Hey honey, how are you?” she answered, sounding tired.

  “I’m okay. How are you and where are you?”

  “About half an hour outside the city. Cassady’s driving, so we’re making great time while courting grievous bodily harm. A thrilling combination. I might actually enjoy it if I’d had something stronger than grapefruit juice for breakfast.”

  “Where’s David?”

  “With Richard and Rebecca in their car. Detective Cook said he could leave Aunt Cynthia’s as long as he came back to the city and stayed put for a few days.”

  “Kyle’s waiting for him. Kyle found out about the assault complaint. And not from me because I didn’t know.”

  I could hear Tricia’s breath catch in her throat and when she spoke, she was struggling with tears. “There wasn’t supposed to be any record. It was a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “And the drunk and disorderly?”

  “What? No, that’s a mistake. That never happened.”

  I believed her and that worried me. Because it meant Tricia didn’t know everything her brother had been up to. We were working on bad assumptions. But I couldn’t shake the image of David’s face when he’d knocked on the bedroom door. That wasn’t the face of a killer, it was the face of someone whose whole life had fragmented and vanished before his eyes.

  “Well, it would be helpful if you could get the whole story from David. And tell him to cooperate with Kyle. He doesn’t want to hide anything because this makes it look like we’ve all been hiding stuff. That’s not good.”

  “I’ll have Cassady go straight to Mother and Dad’s.”

  “She should drop you off with them and then come meet me at the Avenue of Dreams Theater at two o’clock.”

  “You’re going to a play?”

  “Better yet. I’m going to put on a show.”

  9

  “I should have been an actress.”

  “You mean you’re not?”

  “Professionally.”

  “But your acting reaps you great rewards—vacations and jewelry and lots of other pretty things.”

  “By that definition, all women are professional actresses.”

  “Yes, but most of us are the back row of the chorus in summer stock. You, Cassady, are a Broadway headliner.”

  Cassady and I were lurking outside the locked doors of the Avenue of Dreams Theater, the off-Broadway house that had planned to present Lisbet in her New York theater debut in two weeks. The Avenue of Dreams Company was a group of rising young Hollywood stars who had started out as starving actors in New York and had now pooled their celluloid gains to fund a theater company that made them feel less guilty about selling out and gave them a place to showcase themselves in between films and television projects. One of the founding members starred in a TV series Lisbet’s mother had developed; hence, Lisbet’s summer job.

  Cassady hadn’t quite abandoned the Hamptons aspect of the weekend yet, greatly to our benefit. Sunglasses pushed up to try and tame her hair, she was wearing Moschino jacquard floral capris and a matching halter, with gold Edmundo Castillo T-strap sandals, and she looked like the first breath of summer blowing through these spring streets.

  The strapping young man who strode up to the theater door almost put his head through said door, he was so captivated by the vision. He looked vaguely familiar; I believe he’d recently played an intense young doctor on a series that had been advertised for fourteen weeks and then run for two on ABC.

  He tried to turn the near-collision into a nonchalant lean. “Here for the show? We don’t have a show today. The last show closed early and we don’t open until the end of the month. Maybe later, because we just lost a cast member. But if you’d like to get tickets for when we do open, I could help you out with that. Or with anything else you need help with.”

  He did seem fully prepared to buff Cassady’s T-straps with his T-shirt, if not his tongue. I felt like firing off a flare gun, just to see if he’d blink. I settled for clearing my throat. “We’re actually looking for Veronica Innes.”

  Babbling Boy didn’t seem nearly as startled by my presence as I’d expected. He nodded to me pleasantly and checked his watch. “She should be inside. She likes to come early and prepare.”

  I thought of Veronica framing her breasts for us at dinner Friday night and wondered if that figured into her preparation for rehearsal, too.

  “We knocked and no one responded,” Cassady explained.

  If he’d had a tail, he would have wagged it for her. With a flourish, he pressed a buzzer next to the door, painted over the same color as the wall so you could barely see it, even if you knew it was there. “You friends?” he asked Cassady. I could see him doing the calculations of how many favors he’d have to do for Veronica to get Cassady’s phone number.

  “We were just with her in Southampton.” I insisted on answering, really just trying to keep the poor kid’s eyes moving so they didn’t pulse right out of his head. “We need to talk to her for a quick second.”

  To his credit, he got very solemn and I could hear his libido shift down to neutral. “So you were there with Lisbet. Wow. Such a tragedy. We’re really going to miss her. Veronica most of all. They got so close during this whole understudy thing.”

  The door creaked open and a lank-haired young woman, dressed in a formless black linen housedress and dreadfully scuffed black leather clogs, peered out. She looked like she’d last seen the sun in junior high. “You’re early,” she scolded Babbling Boy. She squinted at us with weak-eyed suspicion as she pushed the door open farther so he could enter. She didn’t seem eager for us to follow.

  “Friends of Veronica’s,” he told her. “This is Abby, our director,” he told us.

  Abby nodded, more in agreement with his introduction of her than in encouragement to us.

  “We’ve been trying to reach Veronica.” That was the truth. I’d called her once, which counts as trying, and her answering machine’s obviously brand-new message had announced that she was “probably at rehearsal for my new starring role in Sweet Twilight at the Avenue of Dreams. Call the box office for ticket information or leave any other message after the beep.” I smiled warmly at Abby, even though warmth seemed like an alien concept to her. “I don’t mean to interfere with your rehearsal process, it’ll only take a minute.”

  Abby shoved Babbling Boy into the building and stepped a little closer to Cassady and me. She gave us a frank onceover, including disdainful looks at both pairs of shoes, then stepped back again. “It’ll have to be quick. I just finished redoing the
entire schedule because of—” She tapped her cheek, searching for a polite way to say it.

  “Lisbet. Yes, we know. We’re sorry for your loss.”

  Abby looked askance at Cassady. “You’re not cops, are you?”

  “Even undercover, they don’t dress this well,” Cassady assured her, vaguely insulted.

  “Why would we be cops?” I asked.

  Abby shrugged. “When people die, cops ask around.” She didn’t seem to be speaking from any particular suspicion of Veronica, just the experiences of city life, so I let it go and trotted out the newest cover story. “We’re putting together a tribute album for Lisbet’s fiance and we want Veronica to be the centerpiece.”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “’Cause she’s not enough of a diva yet. Fine, whatever, come in.” Abby disappeared into the dark lobby, her pale hand halfheartedly trailing behind to keep the door open for us.

  Empty theaters are strange places. Like empty churches. So much emotion, so many people bringing their own stories to bear, you can feel where it’s soaked into the walls, sunk into the carpets so that sound and light don’t bounce around the way they’re supposed to, but drift from one place to another, lingering a moment longer than you’d expect.

  Abby led us straight backstage to the rabbit warren of storage and dressing rooms. Walking up to a door with a piece of masking tape that said “Lisbet,” she stopped, ripped the tape off the door, and knocked. “Who is it?” Veronica called from inside.

  “Friends of yours,” Abby replied. She reminded us sternly, “I need her in five,” and walked off.

  The dressing room door swung open and Veronica stood there in her best All About Eve pose, hair pulled back, silk dressing gown revealing a calculated amount of breast. “Hello,” she said slowly. “I’m sorry, I can’t quite place you.”

  “Molly Forrester and Cassady Lynch. We met Friday night,” I said, holding my hand out.

  She didn’t reach out in return, still trying to remember us. Then Cassady framed her breasts with her arms and it clicked for Veronica. “Oh, Jake’s table!” She grabbed my hand and shook it so enthusiastically that I declined to correct her assumption about our level of rapport with Jake at the moment. “Come in.”

  She pulled us into a dressing room that was a glorified utility closet with shiny black walls, a vanity table and a hat tree crammed into it. But I was happy to attempt to wedge myself in. The important thing was to get her talking and see what she might reveal about her relationship with David and her true feelings about Lisbet. That’s all I was hoping for, a piece of information. Which is why it took a moment for the bottle on the vanity table to register. The champagne bottle. From Aunt Cynthia’s vineyard. From Friday night.

  “You brought home a souvenir,” I said lightly, catching Cassady’s eye in the vanity mirror. Cassady looked at the bottle, then stepped back into the hallway, looking after Abby.

  Veronica seemed puzzled, so I pointed to the bottle. She flushed. “I really shouldn’t have.”

  No way she could be confessing so easily, but my heart still skipped a beat. “Shouldn’t have what?”

  “Brought it home. It’s tacky. Like at a really nice restaurant, when my grandmother wraps the extra rolls in a napkin and stuffs them in her purse. But in a way, I’m so glad I did. I mean, I just grabbed one on my way out because it was such good champagne, but now it’s much more meaningful.”

  “I hate to interrupt, but where’s the bathroom?” Cassady asked.

  Veronica pointed. “Third door on your left.”

  “Right back,” Cassady said, giving my arm a little squeeze, which I was supposed to be able to interpret but couldn’t. My only thought was, no matter how full her bladder was, she was leaving me with a crazy actress with a murder weapon on her vanity table. Go ahead and go, but send Dick Powell in while you’re gone.

  “More meaningful?” I said, trying to get us both to focus.

  “For the part. Lisbet’s part. My part. Our part.”

  “In the play.”

  “Yes. Sweet Twilight. Have you read it?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “My character’s a young woman struggling to come to terms with her sexual addiction following the death of the music teacher who seduced her when she was a teenager and was the father of the man she’s having a sadomasochistic relationship with now.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the explanation or the champagne bottle that made me feel slightly dizzy, but I nodded. “A drama.”

  “A musical. Dark, but not without its moments of humanity and humor, and ultimately, very uplifting,” Veronica said. Nice she already had the review written.

  “Okay, but why the champagne bottle?”

  “It makes me cry. I look at it and I think of Lisbet and I cry.” She gestured for me to watch. Taking a deep breath, she turned to face the bottle, reached out and barely touched it with the tip of her index finger, and started sobbing. It was a very impressive and rather alarming display, but how necessary for a musical, I couldn’t be sure.

  Clapping seemed like the appropriate response, so I did, gently. “Wow.”

  Turning off the waterworks with frightening speed, Veronica grabbed the last fistful of tissues from the dispenser next to the champagne bottle and alternated between blowing her nose and blotting her eyes. “My performance will be a lasting tribute to Lisbet. She’s helped me enlarge my gift.”

  Now I was thinking about crying. I tried to ease ahead. “When you think of Lisbet, how do you think of her?”

  “The way I last saw her.”

  “Dead in the pool?”

  Veronica looked at me blankly for quite a long moment, then shook her head tightly. “I’d already left the party when she was found.”

  “So where’d you see her last?”

  “In her bedroom. I tried to talk to her downstairs, but she stalked off. So I went to the kitchen to get her some coffee. I took it upstairs, we talked a little, David came in, I left. I never saw her again.”

  So David had been upstairs with Lisbet the last time Veronica saw her. But something, maybe the tears on demand, kept that from ringing true. “I’m really impressed by how you’ve been able to throw yourself right into your role. Her role. You know.”

  “Why are you here?” She stood and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dressing gown, the first genuine thing she’d done since she’d opened the door.

  “I wanted to talk to you about this memorial CD idea we had, but I’m not sure it’d be appropriate for you to be involved after all. Sorry to have kept you from rehearsal.” I drifted toward the door.

  “CD?” she asked, wiping her nose again, but taking care to use a different swath of sleeve.

  “Yeah, with all her parents’ clout in L.A., we figured we might be able to get it distributed, but it’s really mainly for David. And if you were with Lisbet the last time he saw her, the association might be too painful. Forget it.”

  “No.” It was sharp and tense and as she reached behind her toward the vanity table, I braced myself for her to pick up the bottle and come at me swinging. But she dug into the junk on the dressing table and came up with a limp tissue.

  As she blew her nose again, I tried to steer her along the story path. “No, forget it, or no, that’s not what happened?”

  “Yes.” She honked a few more times and sat back down. “I saw Lisbet again. Down by the pool.”

  “But not in it.”

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  Not yet. “No, I’m just trying to understand.”

  “You can’t possibly understand because you couldn’t know all the time, all the love I devoted …”

  “To Lisbet or David?”

  She flinched like I’d slapped her. “Don’t drag David into this.”

  “But it’s all about David, isn’t it?”

  “You think I fought with her about him?”

  “Okay, what did you fight with her about?”

  “I didn’t, I fought with Jake
.”

  The dizziness returned. “Jake? What’s he got to do with this?”

  “I left the bedroom so Lisbet and David could talk. I didn’t want to go back into the party, so I went for a walk by the pool. Lisbet came wandering down, ranting and raving about having broken up with David and it all being a huge mistake and thank God she’d figured it out in time and he and his lousy family could stuff it, yadda yadda.”

  If she was telling the truth, that would have been after David and Lisbet had argued, and Lisbet had thrown her ring away “So where does Jake fit in?”

  “He shows up—thankfully, without that vicious little arm candy of his. But with his camera. He’s got more champagne and he suggests we make a little movie. In the pool house. Lisbet and me. Or maybe the three of us.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer, but for the record, I asked anyway. “What kind of movie?”

  “What do you think?” Veronica rolled her eyes in exasperation, as though men wanting to tape communal sex acts was a regular occurrence. Maybe in her social circle. No business like show business and all that.

  “So is it coming out on DVD?” I said, trying to keep her from getting angry one eye still on the champagne bottle.

  “You don’t think I did it.”

  I shrugged, not sure what answer would be more insulting to her. “Guess it was a pretty offensive request.”

  “To say the least. Jake has no sense of composition and his lighting always sucks.”

  I wanted to laugh. I wanted to be able to step outside all the questions that were running through my head and enjoy the preposterousness of this diva refusing to perform not because it was degrading but because the director couldn’t guarantee decent production values. But I couldn’t laugh because it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that either Jake or Veronica was a monumental liar. And whoever was lying had killed Lisbet. “So what happened next?”

  “I left,” Veronica said indignantly. “Jake turned on the camera and they were all over each other right away. No effort at art or eroticism, just—” She caught herself, realizing she was admitting she’d stayed a bit longer than her indignation indicated. “I left.”