This was a good idea, I thought, drinking half the wine in one gulp. It would hit my bloodstream unimpeded by food, giving me a false sense of relaxation, and might even keep me from swallowing my tongue while attempting to make witty conversation with Boatwright.
“Stedman told me about the statements you made today,” he said. “I want to thank you for your cooperation. You and your sister gave us some good leads.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry we were a little rough on you yesterday. It’s the job, you know?”
“I didn’t really think you were that hard on us. Except for the laughing part . . . I felt a little ridiculous.”
“Hey,” he said, “laughter is a healing balm.”
“So is sex,” someone said, and I looked around to see who it was. But no one was there, and Boatwright was looking straight at me. Oops. I guess I said it.
Great, I winced. Now he’s going to think I’m some horny nympho-beast.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” he said, blinking. “I seem to remember that it was, anyway.”
Okay, okay. That was good. He was trying to tell me he was available. So maybe he liked horny nympho-beasts. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe I’d better clear up my statement.
“I didn’t mean to imply that sex with you would be, you know, you know, implicit, somehow, in all of this.”
So much for the wine loosening my tongue. Yep, I was really lighting the rhetorical world on fire.
Then he did something so endearing, I shall never forget it. He actually spat his wine back into his glass. Apparently he’d had a mouthful when I made that last statement, and had been trying hard to swallow it without laughing.
“Oh God,” I wailed, “everything I do around you is stupid! I’m not stupid, I was valedictorian!”
He laughed again and put his arm around my shoulders. “Congratulations. Would you like to go out some time?”
I stared up at him—the laugh lines, the blue irises, the nice teeth, the luscious lips—and my knees instantly turned to jelly. “You . . . you would go out with me?” I said, stumbling backward.
“Sure,” he said. “How about tonight?”
My head began to nod furiously, as if it had a mind of its own. Who was using my neck muscles?
“Okay, then it’s a date?” he asked to be certain.
I wasn’t about to open my mouth. I wasn’t going to blow it by saying something. Anything. But my damn head just kept bobbing up and down.
“Uh, okay then. I guess . . . I guess I’ll get your phone number from your booking sheet?”
Nodnodnodnodnod.
Stop with the head bobbing! I yelled at myself inwardly. You look like a brain-damaged cockatiel!
“You’re one of a kind, McAfee,” Boatwright said, just as my identical twin arrived with a drink in her hand.
One of a kind!
That did it. I was in love. He saw me as an individual, as separate from Terry. And best of all, he seemed to like me better! I thought I could risk a little more conversation on the strength of this revelation.
“’Bye!” I said.
Which I guess was a little abrupt.
He gave me a hesitant smile and set his drink on the table. “I should probably get back to the station,” he said.
I gulped the rest of the wine and handed my empty glass to Terry.
“So, did you get any scoop?” she said. “You were talking to him a long time. Wring any good info out of him?”
“Uh, no.”
She looked confused. “Well, what were you talking about?”
“Nothing.” I wadded up a cocktail napkin and tossed it into a trash can.
“You were, too. You were nodding like a maniac! What did he say?”
“You want to know what we were talking about?”
“Yeah!”
“For such a long time?”
“Yeah, what?”
“Sex!” I shouted, as a hush fell over the crowd. Everyone in the place turned to stare at us, heads swiveling our way in super-slow motion.
Legend has it that when the whole room falls silent at once, an angel has passed overhead. So I guess the one who yells suffers from angel insensitivity.
Sorry, Lenore.
“I’m glad you weren’t talking about fire,” Terry said. “We would have been stampeded by senior citizens.”
I closed my eyes and let out a breath. Then I opened them again to find Reba standing in front of us.
“Where were you?” I said, taking out my embarrassment on her.
“Backstage, darling.” She was flushed and fluttery, stoked on success, like a playwright expecting rave reviews in the late edition. “The director can’t just sit in the audience like the rest of the public. I had to make sure everything ran smoothly.”
Smoothly? She’d almost killed one of the world’s leading divas!
“Obviously, that last bit wasn’t planned,” she said hurriedly, anticipating this objection, “but I think it added something, don’t you? A statement of the precariousness of existence, the whimsicality of fate—”
“The importance of ducking when giant wings fly at your head,” Terry said.
“Yes, well.” Reba gave her an irritated look.
“Where’d you get that magnificent portrait of Lenore?” I asked to get Terry off the hook.
“Wasn’t it the perfect touch?” Reba was smiling again. “I found it in her garage. I had been contacted by a nice young man at the insurance company, and we went through the house together. You know, to put together a claim . . . and oh—” she suddenly remembered, “he said he knew you.”
“The insurance company? You mean Sidney Lefler?” I looked at Terry, who gave me a shrug in return.
“Yes. We were poking around, and I found the painting right there in the garage, leaning against the wall. I knew immediately that I wanted to use it today. But the strangest thing, dears—”
“Yes?” Terry said.
“I found the Judith Leiber bag in the trash bin in the garage, and what do you know? It had been chewed! No wonder Lenore didn’t return it to me.”
Terry frowned at her. “Chewed? By what?”
“Well, I assume by her dog. The one you have.”
“We haven’t seen him chew on anything, have we?” I asked Terry.
“He’s not really a chewer,” she confirmed.
“Well, the corner of the bag was gnawed clear through. It’s very peculiar, but there you go. Sidney said I could put in an insurance claim.”
“Interesting,” I said absently, while trying to put something together in my memory—something about Sidney.
“Lenore must have left it on the floor and the dog had his way with it,” Reba said. “You’d think she’d have more respect for a genuine Leiber, but . . . oh, well. Can’t take it with you, as today has amply illustrated.”
She grabbed our hands, dragging us across the room. “Come, dears. I want to show you off to the girls.”
Reba introduced us to a few of her friends and acquaintances, then wandered off, leaving us to our own devices. We made light conversation with two little old ladies, telling them that we’d known Lenore for a number of years and had wanted to pay our respects because we remembered her so fondly. That pleased them immensely, and a ninety-year-old dear named Harriet reached into her black silk purse and extracted a personal card with her name and number in raised gold ink.
“Send me your address and I’ll put you on my invitation list,” she said. “It’s so nice to have young people at one’s funeral, don’t you think, Agatha?”
Her tiny wheelchair-bound friend agreed heartily, giving us a card of her own. I expected a phone number and address, but it was a poem, of sorts:
Here lies Agatha May.
Daughter of Zelda,
Mother of Bertha,
Beloved of Henry McBride.
She outlived them all,
By having a ball,
And keeping a man on the sid
e.
I laughed and handed the card to Terry. “Is this your epitaph?” I asked her.
“You betcha. I carry it in my wallet. I want to make sure there are no typos when the time comes. I’d love it if you’d come to my funeral, too.”
“We wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
“And be sure to talk about sex, real loud!”
Terry smirked at me. “We speak of almost nothing else.”
The ladies tittered giddily, while my attention was drawn to the other side of the room. A group of women was huddled in the corner, deep in conversation. They wore large hats with black netting that covered their faces, which they hadn’t removed for the sake of the indoor reception. I figured they were the post-op girls we had met in the hotel, and became even more certain of that fact when I saw one of them lift her veil to take a sip of punch, revealing bandages on the side of her face.
“Excuse me,” I said to Agatha and Harriet. “We’ll be right back.”
I motioned for Terry to follow me and we made our way over to the sequestered group. Most of the women were older, but there was a youngish blonde with a killer body in a black panama hat.
“Hello, ladies,” I said. “Remember us? We met you at the Dauphine Hotel.”
One by one they nodded their heads. “How are you feeling?” Terry asked them.
They all muttered variations on Fine, thank you.
“So terrible about Mrs. Richling, wasn’t it?” I said.
The women nodded in unison.
“Still, not as terrible as what someone did to Hattrick,” Terry said, waiting for one of them to take the bait.
The Mexican woman finally did. “Hattrick was a putz.” She made it sound like poots.
“Good riddance,” another one of the veiled women said. Then they all lifted their glasses and clinked.
“Did you hear about Alphonse?” I asked breezily.
The drinks stopped in midair.
“What about him?” one of them asked.
I lowered my voice to a whisper, leaning in. “I heard he was picked up by the police for dispensing drugs to his guests in the hotel, using them like common pushers to keep the drugs circulating in Beverly Hills.”
The Mexican woman was first to peel off. “Excuse me, muchachas. I must get to the airport. Please come to visit me in San Miguel. Hasta luego!”
They air-kissed through voile, then another one looked at her watch. “Oh, I’m going to be late for my acrylic fills. Darla gets so cranky when I keep her waiting.” More kisses, then she scurried away.
And so it went, all of them making excuses and ducking out, as if Terry and I had let a bunch of mice loose on the floor that were about to skitter up their skirts.
Only the blonde remained. “Didn’t mean to chase everyone off,” I said to her, apologetically.
She giggled. “You guys don’t recognize me, do you?”
I shook my head, then it came to me. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but I knew that voice. “Barbie, is that you?”
She pulled up her veil. “Peekaboo!” The net dropped back in place.
“How are you?” I said.
She shrugged. “Back on the streets, looking for another job.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Terry said. “Sorry about that.”
“The police want to speak to you,” I told Barbie.
“Moi? How come?” She sounded genuinely surprised, even a little alarmed.
“They want to talk to anyone who worked in Hattrick’s office. It’s standard procedure.”
“I was only there for a little while, a couple of days at the most. I don’t know anything.”
“Even so,” Terry said. “Sometimes little details can be helpful in an investigation, especially since you were there in the days leading up to Hattrick’s murder. You should contact Hank Stedman of LAPD, or John Boatwright of BHPD. Want me to write those names down for you?”
“Don’t bother. I’ll remember. Stedman, Boatwright. See there? No moss growing on me.” She tapped her hat with a long nail, then reached into her purse for a powder compact. “I heard you girls found the doctor all chopped up and everything. How icky.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was horrible. No one deserves to go that way.”
“Well,” she said, buffing her chin, “maybe he should have been more careful about who he took on as patients.” She snapped the compact shut and tucked it back in her purse.
“Are you talking about anyone in particular?” I said.
“Well, no. But it’s obvious he was killed by a patient, isn’t it?”
Terry gave her a piercing look. “I don’t know. Were you one of his patients?”
“Uh, nooo . . .” Barbie flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, you know, but quack quack!”
“Yeah,” I said. “That seems to be the consensus.”
“Well, I just wanted to pay my respects,” Barbie said. “And now I’m off to a hot date. See ya!”
She tottered away on her four-inch stilettos, her calf muscles bulging from the strain of balancing on her toes.
Reba came rushing up to us. “What did you say to the girls? They all left in such a hurry!”
“We just gave them a little heads up,” Terry said. “They’re going home to flush their goodie baskets.”
Reba frowned, but decided to leave it alone. “Well, I’ve got to go strike the set. We’ll get together tomorrow for brunch, shall we? We can discuss our next case. Ta!” She blew us kisses, and then she, too, scurried off.
Terry turned to me. “Our next case?”
“Don’t look at me. You’re the one who pronounced her a member of the team.”
“I thought she’d get bored.”
“She was bored and she didn’t even know it. I guess getting her legs waxed and her brows tweezed and her feet sanded all day isn’t doing it for her anymore. Now she wants to spend her golden years blinding evildoers with her manicure set.”
“Well, we’ll worry about it tomorrow,” Terry said. “Let’s go get something to eat. I can’t deal with that finger food. I need something substantial. A manwich.”
“It’s been a long time since we went to Canter’s.”
“What a scathingly brilliant idea.”
I hiked up my skirt and got on the bike behind Terry, and then we headed for Canter’s Deli, which had been in the heart of the Fairfax district for God only knew how many years. Mr. Canter himself was featured on the front of the building, looking like a grinning Sephardic band leader limned in neon, welcoming one and all to sample his matzo balls.
The twenty-four-hour restaurant appealed to people of all ages, proclivities, and ethnic backgrounds. There were the elderly Jewish people who came for the wholesome chicken soup; the spiky-haired, tattooed types who went there to replenish their drug-depleted systems; the foreign tourists, because the deli was a perennial stop on guided tours; and everything in between.
Terry and I were led to a booth right in the center of all the bustling activity and ordered pastramis on rye. Coleslaw and dill pickles were de rigueur, and didn’t even need to be mentioned.
The sandwiches arrived and we each took a bite of pickle, lodging it under our tongues, then took a bite of sandwich to be combined with the pickle, then we forked in coleslaw and chewed. We washed it all down with iced tea.
“You ever wonder why we don’t just put everything on the sandwich if we want to mix it up?” I asked Terry.
She shook her head. As I’ve already indicated, Terry is not much given to introspection.
Nor, apparently, was she given to talking at the moment. That was good, because I needed time to concentrate on Sidney. There was something about him I felt I was missing, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I chewed and stewed, masticated and ruminated, gnawed and mulled, digested and reflected—
“What are you thinking about?” Terry finally asked.
“Nothing.” Best not to tell her I was spendin
g valuable case time on word games. But sometimes you had to come at things sideways. Terry never understood that. She was too straightforward, too dead-on, too head-in, too clear-cut, too on-the-nose—
“Are you playing word games in your head?”
“No.”
“Are you doing synonyms or rhymes?”
“Synonyms,” I confessed. “I was doing rhymes before.”
“Well, cut it out!” she yelled at me. “I’m picking up your thoughts and it’s making me crazy!”
The waitress turned to look at us, then rolled her eyes and kept going. She was used to chemically altered patrons here at Canter’s, though not usually this early in the evening.
Before long, the greasy sandwiches had been converted into lead stomach weights and no epiphanies were forthcoming.
Then without warning, one arrived.
“I know!” I said.
“What?”
“Sidney Lefler went with Reba to check out Lenore’s house, right? That’s when she got the Jackie Kennedy portrait.”
“Right.”
“Well, when we went to see Binion, he said that a man from the insurance company had been to the house and reported that the rugs were trashed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So the man had to be our friend Sid! Sidney told us he’d been at another inspection when the call came in about Suzie’s death, and then it turned out the other house was Lenore’s.”
She bit on another pickle. “Yeah . . .”
“So if Sidney went through the house after the break-in, he would have seen that the rugs were in good condition. And he’d be duty bound to turn them over to Reba after the will was probated.”
“You’re right.”
“He acts like he can’t stand Binion, and maybe he can’t. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be in league with him.”
“So what are you saying, that Sidney has the Bacon?”
I opened my mouth to say By George, we’ve got it! but on second thought, it clamped shut. “No, I guess not. The timing’s not right.”
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 24