by April Hill
“Can you believe it?” Barry had asked when I last talked to him. “There was a reporter here yesterday from the National Inquirer! The son of a bitch asked me—and I quote—if I ‘shared Mr. Tannhauser’s more unusual proclivities?’ How well did I know Monica Howard and Luke Thatcher, that kind of thing. Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? They bought the Hochstettler place—that horrendous pink wedding cake thing with all the fake balconies? It was on the market for fifteen months, so they probably got good deal in it. They closed almost three months ago, but dear Monica is supposedly having it redone, top to bottom. Like we don’t have enough to deal with here, already, with people peeing on the ice plant, and beer cans and medical waste and headless corpses all over the beach. And Regina, for God’s sake. Now, we’re going to have the reigning king and queen of the Brat Bunch living six doors away.”
Gabe had not been a real celebrity, of course, but he had been a regular at some of the raunchier sub-sub-celebrity hangouts, where the great and near great like Monica Howard and Luke Thatcher sometimes came slumming. Rumor had it that Luke was about to get an Oscar nomination for his latest piece of crap, and Monica’s latest breast implants were getting rave reviews. I hadn’t known for sure that the Darling Duo Two were moving into Encantada Cove, but if they were, it was time for Carlotta to put up that “For Sale” sign. Property values were about to go sky high.
It’s a funny thing how someone you love can know exactly how you think, isn’t it? I was just two minutes away from Carlotta’s when my new little red cell phone rang, and guess who it was?
“Pull off at the Shell station at Randolph,” Matt ordered, without so much as a hello. “Then go inside the office and wait there with the attendant. I’m sending a patrol car over, right now.”
“Screw this,” I barked into the phone. “Go spy on someone else for a change. I’m busy!” I clicked off the phone and kept driving. A half-mile further up the highway, I pulled off into the shoulder and parked the car just short of the gated entrance to Encantada Cove. Most of the snooty developments along the beach have these little gated checkpoints. Some of them have a security guard, and some simply require a code to open the gate. By law, though, the beach itself has to be accessible to the public, which means that you’ll get stopped if you’re in a car, but if you just walk in somewhere on either side of the gates and the purely ornamental walls, all you’ll get is dirty looks from the homeowners. I wasn’t eager to be seen, so I climbed over the slump-stone wall and made my way through the weeds down to the alleyway that runs behind the houses, parallel to the beach.
Seen from the back, Carlotta’s house looks even worse than it does from the beach side, and as I got closer, the place looked sort of forlorn, like a gaudy, unwanted stuffed animal someone had tossed out the car window. It always looked that way, of course, but I’d been away long enough to have almost forgotten how ugly it was. I was surprised to find the bright yellow police tape the cops had strung across the back of the house was still there. There were also two police cruisers parked further up the alley, which I hadn’t expected. The cops in the first car were busy talking, and the one occupant of the second car seemed to be asleep, so I decided to risk it. I ducked between the oleanders that Barry had planted to avoid looking at Carlotta’s, crept around to her neon pink garage door, then knelt on the stoop to feel under the broken tile for the key. With any luck, there was no one inside the house. Not that it mattered. I was screwed, anyway. Matt knew where I was.
I knew what was going to happen when I got back to Matt’s place, of course. I was going to get my rear end roasted—the spanking to end all spankings. Matt was sure to take his time, plan it carefully, and make it very, very special. Memorable. No, unforgettable. The possibilities were endless, like in a game of “Clue.” Will the victim meet her doom upended over the arm of the couch for five shrieking minutes of unspeakable agony with a wooden hairbrush? Or in the bedroom, thrown face down across a pile of pillows while a thick, wide leather belt slashes her naked, quivering buttocks? Maybe in the cozy yellow kitchen, bent gracelessly over the butcher’s block table, her bared bottom a livid mass of egg-shaped welts from a wide assortment of large wooden spoons? Whatever it was, I’d be sitting on a foam cushion for a while, if I could sit down at all.
Aside from risking my life, which Matt regarded as a no-no, I had also broken a promise, and lied to him. To Matt, these are big-time offenses—like casual drug use or recreational cannibalism, I suppose. Anyway, it’s not like I was looking forward to facing him afterward, but there was something eating at me, and I needed to do this—to be in the house again, and to think. I’m no detective, but I knew that I had missed something. Something that might help Matt. Of course, there were also a lot of things I wasn’t especially eager to share with him. Things I wasn’t especially proud of.
Someone I can’t remember once said that every time he looked back on his life, it was easy to recognize and regret the sins he had committed. The problem was that at the time they were happening, those same things hadn’t seemed to him like sins at all, but simply decisions. Let me paraphrase it this way: I’ve done a couple of things in my life (Okay, a number of things) that make me cringe when I look back at them, but at the time I was doing these things, every one of them seemed perfectly logical, and maybe even necessary.
The house smelled musty and closed up, and most of Carlotta’s weedy plants had croaked. She was really going to be pissed. She believed that plants have souls, just like trash does. I had barely gotten inside the house before the living room phone rang. I ignored it, and started through the pile of unopened mail I’d left on the dining table. It was Matt, of course, on my trail again. Damn him! It stopped ringing, then immediately started again, so I picked it up, shouted, “Buzz off,” into the receiver, and then left it off the hook. I walked into the kitchen, and just as I opened the fridge to get a Coke, I heard the bleep-bleep of a cop car at the back of the house, and then a second one. And then the damned cell phone rang again. Shit! It was like a scene out of “Bonnie and Clyde.” I was surrounded. I answered the cell phone, and was about to yell something obscene when Matt’s grim voice cut me off.
“Go with the two cops at the door,” he ordered. “Do it now, and don’t argue with me.”
There was a small pause before he spoke again.
“Carlotta’s not in Mexico, Gwen. She’s been under the house all along.”
They had found Carlotta buried in two feet of sand, the crude grave covered with a hasty pile of the beloved, oddball junk she kept stashed there. From what the coroner could tell, she’d been strangled—probably a day or two after Gabe’s murder. Regina’s nasty-tempered little poodle, Puddle, had slipped his rhinestone leash and burrowed under the wood lattice that Carlotta had put in place to disguise the house’s crumbling foundation. As I left the house, bewildered and crying my head off, I saw the big “For Sale” sign in Regina’s yard. It was sad. As neighbors, Carlotta and Regina had waged a non-stop, no quarter-given war to force the other one out, and now it looked like both combatants would be leaving beautiful Encantada Cove— by different exits.
Matt took me back to his place, then sat on the couch and held me in his arms until I had cried it out—or most of it. I couldn’t actually say that I loved Carlotta, or even that we were close, in any normal sense, but she had befriended me when I needed it most. As peculiar as she was, she had been an important fixture in my life, and I knew I’d miss her terribly. Her colorful life, her sense of humor. At her age, she was still out there marching against unjust wars and for animal rights. Her Vespa had political bumper stickers pasted on every square inch of it, vying for space with the patches of rust. She had never given up the gaudy flowered Hawaiian muumuus she’d been wearing since the fifties, and still wore her hair down to her waist in a thick braid, its gloss black just beginning to show dull strands of gray. Carlotta had never known a pair of dangling earrings or jeweled sandals she didn’t like, and she never lied—except to the government
. Not a bad epitaph, all and all.
“So, the note we found was meant for Carlotta, and not me,” I said, when I could finally start talking about it again. But Matt still wasn’t convinced.
“Maybe, but it’s also possible that she just wandered into something she didn’t know anything about. I don’t know whether the medical examiner will be able to pinpoint the exact time of death, or not, so we’re still in the dark about just about everything. Tannhauser’s murder, and now Carlotta’s. When you’ve had some rest, we need to talk again, Gwen, about Tannhauser.”
I groaned. “I’ve already told you everything I know. I’ve told everybody everything I know!”
“How well did Carlotta know Tannhauser?”
“Hardly at all. We all lived so close that she knew him by sight, of course, but she despised him, even on sight.”
“Why?”
“Partly because of me, I suppose—the way he’d treated me—but mainly because she just hated jerks like Gabe. He never recycled, for one thing, and there was what he did for a living. You had to know Carlotta to understand. She was a lifelong defender of every variety of consensual sex, the free use of Anglo-Saxon expletives, and public nudity on the beaches or anywhere else, but she hated what she called ‘real’ pornography, because it exploited women.”
“Define ‘real’ pornography.”
“You know. Stuff that was ugly and abusive. Cruel, demeaning, etc. “
“Like bondage and sadomasochism?”
“She wouldn’t have liked it if it were for real,” I said, “but isn’t most of that stuff fake? Mainly fun and games?”
Matt chuckled. “Define fake, and fun.”
“Gabe took a lot of pictures like that—for those kind of magazines, and from what I heard, for individual clients, as well. And I know he sold a lot of stuff on the Internet. You know, men and women in black leather, with masks and whips? All the women wore black net stockings, and had enormous boobs and long legs, but most of what I saw was all pretty corny. You know—central casting’s idea of the dark underbelly of the Hollywood S/M scene.”
Matt hesitated for a moment, but I knew what was coming. “Again, how long was it that you lived with him?”
“I lived in the house with him for a few months,” I said, phrasing my words carefully. “I never ‘lived’ with him, Matt—not the way you mean.”
He sighed. “I didn’t mean anything but what I asked, Gwen.”
“Okay, then. That’s my answer. He hired me as a copyist, but I ended up doing a little bit of everything. Sometimes I got to be his house sitter, slash housekeeper or whatever else needed doing. When he wasn’t there, I painted and house sat. When he was, I painted, kept house, watered the plants, fed the fish, and fended off the creditors who called. Sometimes I helped in the photo studio, retouching. But, I slept in that little apartment at the back.”
“You were Tannhauser’s housekeeper?”
“No cracks, please. Like I said, I was hired primarily as a copyist. He sold copies of paintings by famous artists to a lot of furniture stores. But, yes, smartass, when I wasn’t doing that, I kept house. Gabe’s standards weren’t exactly high, of course. He sent me to Jurgensen’s for about four hundred bucks worth of microwave crap every week or so, and told me to keep the liquor cabinet topped off. That’s about all he expected from me in that department. He didn’t spend a lot of time at the house, actually. He showed up two or three times a week, when he had a shoot, and about once a month for those legendary parties of his. The rest of the time, he was out somewhere, arranging big deals, presumably.” I stopped, and gave Matt a hard look. “But that’s not what you want to know, is it? You want to know about …Well, about Gabe and me.”
“Only what you want to tell me,” he said quietly.
“Gee, why not?” I asked sullenly. “What girl wouldn’t be proud of having a scumbag like Gabriel Tannhauser on her romantic resume?”
“How serious was it?” Matt asked, his voice soft.
So, here I was, again—caught in a lie and wondering how to come clean without looking like an idiot. With a small groan, I stumbled ahead, trying to explain the unexplainable—what I had ever “seen” in Gabe Tannhauser.
“The thing is,” I began, “Gabe could be charming, when he wanted to, and at the time, I … I wasn’t thinking real clearly, I guess. If you knew exactly how un-exclusive the club was—the women briefly infatuated with Gabe. For him, of course, it was pure reflex. Gabe’s … equipment was kind of like those things they use at airports. You know a windsock? The slightest little breeze, and he … It didn’t take much to … well, you know.”
“That’s the only thing women liked about him? Just the ‘windsock’?”
“Well, it was a fairly impressive windsock, when fully …” I paused, blushing, “fully inflated, so to speak.”
“I never told you this before,” Matt said quietly, “but Tannhauser’s ‘windsock’, as you call it, was missing when we found him. It’s still missing.”
I gulped. “Missing? You mean like…?”
He shrugged. “Like missing. Detached, and unaccounted for.”
“Jeez!” I murmured, almost under my breath. “Most people didn’t care much for Gabe, after they’d known him for a day or two, but … Jeez!”
* * * *
Everything I told Matt that day was true, except for the details I left out—important details, as it turned out.
When I started working for Gabe, he gave me his business card, which read: “G. Tannhauser—Photography.” Under that, in smaller letters, it said: “Portraiture-Portfolio Stills-Artistic Nudes.” The card was expensive, edged in heavy gilt, with embossed gloss black lettering. Then, a phone number, and address.
I liked him—at first. He was witty, breezy, and smart, and when I showed him my portfolio, he gave my work rave reviews. The way he explained the job, I’d be painting copies of popular art works by some late 19th century artists, which he would then sell to high-end furniture stores and interior decorators. I’d always been a pretty good copyist, and enjoyed precision work, so the job sounded perfect for me. Most of the orders would done on commission, so when I wasn’t painting, I was expected “help” around the house, which was okay with me as long as it wasn’t an everyday thing.
Physically, my new boss wasn’t especially attractive to me, but he was one of those guys who exuded sex in everything he said and did. He was like a bantam rooster, not tall, but broad chested and muscular, and very energetic. He worked out every day, and kept a first-floor gym with a tanning bed to maintain a year-round tan. I was, lonely, depressed, and “on the rebound,” but it was impossible to feel gloomy when he was around. He was generous with his compliments—not just about my work, but about how I looked, as well. He never passed me without a seductive wink, or touching me in some mildly intimate way. There I was, hanging out with near-celebrities, in a lavishly decorated beachfront villa with a marble hot tub on the deck. What wasn’t to like?
It took me about two weeks to figure out that Gabe was a phony. It was obvious that he living way beyond his means, and most of his “big Hollywood deals” were either flat out lies or wishful thinking. The phone rang constantly, and part of my job was to filter the calls for genuine clients, and make creative excuses to the bill collectors. By week three, I was repeating my lies so often I began to get them all mixed up. But of course, like the dolt I was, I was sympathetic. Poor Gabe, the overextended, always hopeful dreamer. It was during this period, while I was still thinking of him as a charming rogue, that we shared our one moment of lust—if you can call it that. He came home from a trip one Friday afternoon, and found me in the laundry room, bent over to take stuff out of the dryer. Either my allure was simply overwhelming, or he’d had one too many drinks on the plane, because the next thing I knew, Gabe’s humungous penis was pressing up against my behind, in a not especially subtle invitation.
Whatever Gabe’s other problems, he certainly hadn’t been shortchanged in this one, v
ery significant area, and that day, I was about discover for myself the answer to that age-old question, does size matter? Two weeks earlier, I might have been interested in doing some hands-on research on the question, but by this time, Gabe’s luster had faded. I tried joking to him that I wasn’t quite up for anal-play with something that looked like it should be holding up a courthouse roof, but he either didn’t get the joke, or thought I could be persuaded with some additional clumsy groping. I didn’t want to make a scene and maybe lose my job over what might be nothing more than a tasteless prank on his part. Then again, Gabe the “charming rogue” was looking less charming by the moment, and while I was no wide-eyed innocent, I sure as hell wasn’t the kind of “Girl Friday” he obviously thought I was.
I was still trying to be polite about things, when I tripped on the plastic laundry basket and fell backward into a tangle of sheets and pillowcases, with Gabe on top of me. He was apparently still under the impression that what he was doing amounted to foreplay, and that in trying to shove him off me, I was just being coquettish and playful. And since he was stronger, it looked like the boss was going to have his way with the unwilling laundress, after all.
If I’d had any interest in the laundry room fiasco, what finally happened would have been disappointing. As it was, it was simply gross. I’ll skip the details, but suffice it to say that most men take longer to brush their teeth than Gabe took—to come and to go. When the incomplete event was completed, I got up and went back to finishing the laundry. I was a little dazed by the whole episode, but Gabe didn’t seem embarrassed at all. I don’t think he even realized that he’d failed to “connect” with anything other than a warm towel. And I can’t be sure, after all this time, but I seem to remember that he patted me on the head and said “Thank you.”
While the “near miss” in the laundry room didn’t do a lot for my self-respect, it was a long way from being the most demeaning thing I allowed Gabe to do to me. That was still to come. My problem now, was how to explain that part of the story to Matt, without losing his respect.