The Rooftop Party

by Ellen Meister

  The sarcasm wasn’t lost on anyone, except maybe Kenneth. Dana glanced over to study his expression, which gave away nothing.

  “I actually just signed a lease on a bigger place,” she said. “But my dad thinks this apartment is more than adequate.”

  “I assume you don’t usually have so many guests,” he said, and Dana wondered if he had ever, even once in his life, admitted to being wrong.

  She turned to Sherry and changed the subject. “I was thinking about how I can manage on the set with my cast. Maybe you could get me a tall stool and I could sit on that behind a display.”

  Sherry nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time we accommodated a host with a leg injury. But we can talk about it Monday.”

  “Monday?” Dana said, surprised. “What about tomorrow...and Friday?”

  “I already arranged a substitute host for the rest of the week. I figured we’d see how you feel after that and take it from there.”

  “But I’m fine,” Dana insisted. “I can work tomorrow. Once they got the cast on I—”

  “You really should take a little time to rest,” Jennifer said.

  “But they need me.” She turned to the Shopping Channel executives. “Don’t you need me?”

  “We want you healthy,” Charles said.

  Ari laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure they can get along without you for a couple of days.”

  Dana felt a rising panic. Without the distraction of work, she would have nothing to do but dwell in her misery over losing her Sweat City role...and replay her frightening memory about the night of the murder. She might go out of her mind.

  “What am I supposed to do with myself?” she asked.

  “You’re allowed to rest,” Megan said.

  “But I don’t need to rest.”

  Nathan glanced down at his phone. “Uh-oh, the whole gang is coming over. They’re on their way.” He looked around at the crowded room.

  “The Sweat City Company?” Megan asked, incredulous. “Aren’t there like eleven of them?”

  Worse than that, Dana thought. Her two worlds were about to collide. And yes, she had just been taken out of the show, so technically she was no longer in breach of contract. But if Sherry found out that she had been sneaking out to rehearsals in defiance of her decision, there was no telling what could happen. And sure, maybe none of it mattered anymore, in light of how well the show had gone. But this was Sherry Zidel, who was a bitch even when she was drunk.

  Dana gave Megan a pleading look. It took a moment for her friend to register her concern, but in one flash, she got it.

  “Hate to be a party pooper,” Megan announced, “but I think we need to make room for the second shift.”

  “We’ll leave,” Jennifer offered. “These folks just got here.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Charles said.

  Dana gave Megan a silent scream for help, and her friend obliged.

  “I’m sure Dana would love to visit with you a bit longer,” she said to the Shopping Channel executives, “but I think she’s getting tired.”

  “Tired?” Eleanor said, studying Dana’s face.

  Dana looked at Ari, her eyes pleading for reinforcements, and he understood.

  “People,” he said, in his authoritative detective voice. “I’m concerned about safety.”

  “Fire codes,” Megan offered.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  At that, her coworkers said goodbye and filed out, followed by her father and Jennifer. Several minutes later, her fellow troupers piled in. Dana knew she should feel grateful for the visit, but her mood went from irritated to morose. Her friends chatted excitedly, trying to cheer her up, but she only got more and more despondent. Losing the role was a terrible blow, and she already felt a hollowness at the thought of all those nights they would be rehearsing without her.

  She tried going through the motions and pretending to be cheerful, but she didn’t have the energy to perform. At last, they acknowledged that she looked worn out from her long day. Their goodbyes were heartfelt and conciliatory, but after they closed the door behind them, Dana could make out their bright and happy voices in the hallway, and at last, she let herself cry and cry and cry.

  30

  The cast made it hard to get comfortable, but eventually the long day caught up with her and Dana fell into a deep sleep. The early-morning hours were punctuated by fitful dreams as Ari moved about the apartment getting dressed for work. She stirred as he was leaving, so he bent to kiss her, saying he had an important meeting, but promised to be back soon.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on,” he said. “Just as easy for me to do it here as in the office.”

  “Honestly,” she insisted, “I don’t need to be babied.”

  Ari ignored her and put the crutches next to her bed. “I made coffee,” he said. “And I’ll bring back some breakfast.”

  By the time he returned with food and a large box of files, Dana was awake. She even managed to get as far as the hallway, determined to practice walking with her crutches so she wouldn’t feel like such an invalid. But after one short test drive she stopped. What was the point? She couldn’t do her Sweat City play. She couldn’t go to work. She couldn’t even try to track down the bartender who might be able to shed light on her memory about Ivan.

  “Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” Ari asked, as they ate breakfast at the small table off the kitchen.

  Yes, she thought. Tell me where you are with the murder investigation. Tell me you know who the killer is, and it’s not me. For a fleeting moment, she even considered revealing her haunting memory to him. She could imagine him saying, Oh, babe, and taking her in his arms. It’s not you, he would whisper. It’s not you. Or, his face would go stone cold. His winter-blue eyes would ice over. His love would turn to frost.

  “Maybe you could give me just a tiny hint on how the investigation is going,” she said, trying to look pathetic. Maybe, just this once, he’d give an inch...to appease his poor, suffering girlfriend.

  “Babe,” he said, his tone measured, careful.

  “Please?” she begged. “Just a hint. Do you have a suspect? Someone you’re looking at?”

  “You know I can’t tell you.”

  Dana sighed and pushed her plate away. “You think it’s okay to smoke weed while on Vicodin?”

  “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “I’m bored.”

  “If I were you,” he said, “I’d spend the day in bed, playing video games and binge-watching whatever I wanted. And I wouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

  “If it’s okay with you, I’m just going to sit here and stare into space for a while.”

  She was laying it on thick, but Ari pretended not to notice. He cleared the dishes and got himself situated on the sofa with his paperwork. It was a challenge, as the massive flower arrangement took over the entire coffee table. He set his heavy file box on the couch next to him, and did the best he could.

  Dana was dying to peek over his shoulder, but she knew he wouldn’t take kindly to it, so at last she went into the bedroom, where she opened her laptop and searched for something to binge-watch. She settled on a comedy a lot of her friends had been yammering about, but she couldn’t get into it.

  After a while, she heard Ari on his cell phone, and it was clear he was being summoned to another murder. He appeared at the bedroom door in his coat.

  “I have to go out for a while,” he said, his face stoic. She could tell he was in murder police mode.

  “Someone get killed?”

  “A kid.”

  Dana knew how removed he was when dealing with grisly realities of his job, but it was different when a child got killed.

  “Shit,” she said.

 
; He nodded. “You need anything before I go?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Dana got onto her crutches and walked him to the door. When it shut behind him, she turned back toward the living room and saw that he had left his file box behind, but he had put it on the coffee table and placed the massive flower arrangement on top of it. The message was clear: Do not even think of trying to snoop.

  But how could she not? All the answers she needed were inside that box. And even if it didn’t lead her to the murderer, at very least she could find out Margaux’s last name, and maybe even her contact info.

  She knew she shouldn’t do it. If Ari found out he would be furious. But he would be gone for hours. If she was careful, he would never know.

  No, she told herself. Do not do it. Go back into the bedroom and find something else to binge on. Maybe rewatch The West Wing or something.

  She leaned on her crutches, staring into the living room, and at last decided that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. She hobbled over and studied the box as she devised a plan of attack. First, she laid her crutches on the floor. Then, balancing on her left foot, she bent over to see if she could lift the massive arrangement. It was heavy, but she was able to raise it. The problem was carrying it. Dana tried taking a few hops while balancing it, but she teetered. If she tried to move even an inch, either she or the flowers would topple. She set it back down and regrouped. What next?

  Dana tried sliding the box to the left while keeping her hand on the flower arrangement to keep it from falling. That might give her just enough room to put the arrangement down next to the box. But the table began to topple from the weight and she didn’t have an extra hand or foot to hold it up. So she pushed it back in place and bit her lip, thinking. She considered sliding the centerpiece onto the sofa, but decided it would certainly fall over. If only I had another set of hands, she thought.

  Then Dana got an idea. Ashlee.

  She picked up her cell phone and called her assistant. “What are you up to?” she asked.

  “Just shootin’ the shit with Felicia and Jo. Not much for me to do here when you’re not around. Need anything?”

  Dana took a breath. “How fast can you get to my apartment?”

  “I can leave this very minute. But I’ll need to stop and pick up lunch on the way, if you don’t mind.”

  “As long as you don’t bring more flowers,” Dana said, “I don’t mind at all.”

  Thirty minutes later, Ashlee arrived carrying a bag from the deli, and the smell of hot pastrami wafted through the apartment. Dana had discovered months ago that the girl couldn’t get enough of New York food. I can’t understand why you people don’t eat this every day, she had said, biting into a football-sized sandwich.

  “Now, what can I do for you?” Ashlee asked, putting down the deli bag.

  “Besides share your sandwich?”

  “Oh, darlin’. I wouldn’t think of sharin’. That’s why I bought one for each of us. And also two Diet Cokes.”

  “I think I love you,” Dana said.

  Ashlee waved it away. “Why am I here?”

  “You see that file box?” Dana said, pointing. “I need to get inside it.”

  “I’m not sure you’ll fit, even skinny as you are.”

  Dana reacted with a good-natured eyeroll.

  “Alright, alright,” Ashlee said, as she folded her arms as she assessed the situation. “Why is it under the flowers?”

  “Ari did that. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t peek inside.”

  “Oh, they’re Ari’s files!” Ashlee exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say so.” With that, she scooped up the massive flower arrangement and set it on the floor. “You think the identity of the murderer is in here?” she asked, taking the lid off the carton.

  “I don’t know,” Dana said, and walked over on her crutches. She peered into the box, which held a neat array of manila folders labeled with case numbers. They were held in place by a tall pile of slender writing pads filled with Ari’s handwriting. These were his notes—the inserts that went into the black leather folio he took to crime scenes.

  She picked one up and gave the pages a riffle. Then she took a close look at the top page.

  “These are dated,” she observed.

  “You reckon that’ll help?” Ashlee asked.

  “If his notes from the night of Ivan’s murder are here, they should at least have Margaux’s last name.”

  “Let’s find it then,” Ashlee said.

  The two women sat side by side on the couch, pulling out the pads, and checking the dates. They set them next to the box as they did so.

  “We’re getting warmer,” Dana said, as she found a pad that was dated just days before Ivan’s murder.

  As she was scanning the notes, Dana heard a key in the door and her heart seemed to stop beating. What in God’s name? Ari wasn’t supposed to be back for hours.

  “Shit!” she said, throwing the pad back in the box. “That’s him!”

  Before she could make another move, the door swung open and Ari’s tall form appeared. He surveyed the scene, his eyes going from Dana to Ashlee to the flowers on the floor. Then his gaze lingered on the open box and the pile of his note pads.

  “What...the...hell?” He spoke slowly, as if each word needed to contain its own explosion of fury. Dana could feel his white-hot rage from across the room.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t needed,” he said through his teeth. “So I left my colleagues to figure out who would stab a ten-year-old to death, and came back to help my girlfriend.” He pronounced the last word as if it were in quotes, and the venom in his voice was terrifying.

  “Don’t be mad!” she said. “Please!”

  “Jesus, Dana. Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I should have told you. But I needed to know if—”

  “This is beyond anything you could possibly explain.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know. It’s unforgivable.”

  “I think this is my cue to leave,” Ashlee said.

  “Just one minute,” Ari said to her. “I want to understand exactly what happened here.” He turned back to Dana. “You saw my files, which you knew were off-limits. And you saw that I had intentionally made it impossible for you to get to them. So instead of watching a movie or doing any of a thousand other things, you called your assistant to come and help you get to the information you had no right looking at.” He paused. “Do I have that right?”

  Dana swallowed against a rock in her throat. “I didn’t see anything, Ari,” she said. “Really. I was only looking for one thing and—”

  “And that’s supposed to be a comfort—that you didn’t find what you were looking for?”

  “It’s just that you wouldn’t tell me a thing. And I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “There was nothing you needed to do!”

  “Yes there was!” she cried.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded. She had never heard him angrier.

  Using the couch and the coffee table as leverage, Dana got herself into a standing position and grabbed her crutches. She put her weight on them, and stared at Ari, trying to figure out how to tell him that she might be the one who murdered Ivan.

  “That night at the party,” she began, but felt the blood drain out of her.

  “Yes?”

  Dana sat back down on the couch. It was impossible. She couldn’t tell Ari she might be the one who murdered Ivan. It would ruin everything between them. As bad as all this was, that would be much, much worse. She could handle his anger, but she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing his love evaporate.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

 
He stepped into the room and she looked up at him. “I need to ask you one thing,” she said.

  “You’re hardly in a position to—”

  “I know, but this is so important. Because you’ve told me nothing, and... I just need to know if you’ve found the killer. Can you tell me that much?”

  “For god’s sake, Dana.”

  “Just tell me if you know,” she said desperately. “That would change everything.”

  He went silent, and her heart thudded in anticipation. If he knew the killer, then it couldn’t be her. He would have left a long time ago.

  “Ari?” she pleaded. All she needed was a yes. One simple yes.

  “You’ve already compromised the case,” he said, pointing at the file box. “I’m not going to make it worse.”

  “But—”

  “You haven’t even told me why you were going through my files! You have no right to demand anything from me.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  His voice went as cold as the bottom of a quarry. “Is there something you saw at the party that you’re not telling me?”

  This is it, she told herself. This is your chance to confess. Tell him what Sherry said to you. Tell him about the memory you had. Tell him you’re scared you might have pushed Ivan off the roof. This could all end right now. He might scoop you in his arms and promise it wasn’t you.

  But it might go the other way. She looked at him, searching for any softness. But his heart was locked in ice.

  “She can’t recall anything from the party,” Ashlee piped in.

  “And how do you know that?” Ari said.

  “’Cause we were talkin’ about it. And she doesn’t remember a thing. This here was all my idea. I came by with lunch and got real curious. I thought maybe we could take a little old peek and see if we could help solve this thing.”

  Ari shook his head. He wasn’t buying it. “Well?” he said to Dana. “Is that your explanation for all this?”

  She hesitated. “Yes,” she said softly, even though she knew it was an obvious lie.