One Foot In The Gravy

by Delia Rosen

  Chapter 10

  My two cats are night creatures. They emerge from their big, plastic cat homes when the sun goes down. They can’t see it from in there; they sense it. They had done the same thing in New York; I wasn’t sure they had ever actually seen the sun.

  Their names are Southpaw and Mr. Wiggles, and they’re both about five years old. They were left behind by a neighbor when she moved, and I couldn’t turn them over to be euthanized. They were spayed, declawed, and generally pretty lethargic. But they were something to care for, and care about. When you live alone, don’t have a lot of close girl friends because most of your college roommates are married, and are usually more sick of male friends than not, cats are acceptable companions.

  They emerged like furry little vampires, their big cat-guts swaying to and fro, their eyes bright with hunger. I spooned out their canned cat food, then took a pair of Hebrew National hot dogs from the fridge, slit them lengthwise, and slapped them in a frying pan for me. While I held them flat with a big metal spatula, I spread Mr. Gold’s paper on the counter and read:

  The Baker Murder Mystery by Gary Gold

  Created for Lolo Baker by Gary Gold.

  (c) 2011 by Gary Gold

  Marley was dead. For just a couple of moments.

  At first it looks like he’s just sleeping in the patio swing but he’s not. He’s dead! Harley Marley, the infamous night time biker (played by Gary Gold) had been intending to crash the party . . . but someone crashed his. This will be announced, during dessert, by the loud breaking of a beer bottle over his head. (I will, myself, strike a bottle against the metal studs of the leather wristband I will be wearing. All of the guests will come to investigate.)

  Lolo (poking the corpse): “Who could have done this to Harley Marley with his own beer?”

  Lolo will look around quickly (so Gary doesn’t have to hold his breath for very long). She will find an unsigned note on the ground (which Gary will leave there). She will read it.

  Lolo: “I don’t love you. I don’t want to see you again. Do not follow me.”

  Everyone will go back inside. Lolo will detect a faint stain on the note. Under examination from her magnifying glass she will discover tomato sauce.

  Lolo: “Whoever did this wrote it while she was eating pasta!”

  The guests will smell each others’ breath. Only one will smell of garlic, but she will explain it is the result of having eaten a canapé before dinner. Then she will die: she is the actual murder victim! Harley Marley is gone. (The dead woman should be Lolo, so that the other guests will have to figure things out on their own.)

  Lolo: (near death): “I knew this would happen! Search me!”

  The dead woman is searched. There are hate letters written in the same hand as hers! That means Harley Marley faked his own death . . . and he’s not really dead. He poisoned the snack in the truck because he knew his lover loved eggplant!

  Now Harley Marley is among them, but in disguise and hiding. Is he the butler? Is he one of the caterers? Is he the electrician who has been working quietly upstairs? Is he the florist who has arrived with a wreath from Harley Marley?

  That is for Gary Gold to know and the guests to discover.

  I was cold with horror. It was the stupidest “mystery” I had ever read, with more holes than the Bunny Ranch. The only good thing was that now I saw where the eggplant canapés fit. I slid my franks onto a plate, grabbed ajar of Gulden’s, and considered that mess as I ate. The only real information it provided is that Gary Gold was there.

  I finished eating, made decaf, and called Grant Daniels. He was in the middle of his happy hour, I’m-off-duty-now vodka martini. Probably with a date, because I could hear the background clatter and he didn’t say my name when he answered.

  “Hey, you,” he said.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I just read the scenario for the murder mystery Lolo’s guests were supposed to solve at the party. Did any of Deputy Chief Whitman’s people interview Gary Gold, the author?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “You sure he was there?”

  “Gold was supposed to be a victim and then not—it’s complicated, but yeah, he was there.”

  “We’ll check it out. I’m assuming you talked to him?”

  “Kind of. Through a door. Strange duck.”

  “Thanks for the tip. I was actually going to call you later.”

  “Oh?”

  “The memorial is tomorrow at 10 a.m. I thought you might like to go.”

  How unbearably romantic. Okay, we hadn’t exchanged vows, just . . . well . . . but still.

  “I’ll see you there,” I said.

  “Great. Thanks for the tip about Gold.”

  “Sure.”

  I hung up and immediately slammed my forehead with the heel of my hand. Not lightly, but enough to cause the cats to jump from their bowls.

  Dumb, dumb, dumb! Not that I was the poster child for fidelity. I came to Nashville a free woman for the first time in a decade, no longer tied to an inattentive, self-absorbed putz. I had some catching up to do and I did—with a pair of sweettalking Southern gentlemen to boot. If a third and fourth hunk had walked in the deli door and stayed, they’d have gotten the special of the day as well. I had no right to be anything stronger than disappointed.

  But I was.

  I forced myself not to think about it anymore. Neither the inside nor the outside of my head could take it. I got myself a pint of Mountain Jim’s hand-packed strawberry-with-strawberry chunks from the freezer, put on the CW—if someone was going to Gossip Girl me, I figured I should at least know what it’s about—and chuckled when I thought about Gary Gold’s scenario. At some point during the ten o’clock news, I dozed off.

  There was a ringing sound.

  It was still dark, I fumbled with the phone, knocked over the melted ice cream, and mumbled out a hello. The ringing recurred. It wasn’t the phone. It was the door. The cats had already gone to hide—maybe they were still expecting the grim cat reaper—so I was on my own. I got up, stumbled to the door, switched on the outside light. I looked through the frosted glass. A man was waving.

  “Hey, Gwen. It’s Grant.”

  I was now very awake. I leaned back to look at the stove clock. Nearly eleven. I stole a quick look in the small teakwood mirror hanging beside the jamb—my own addition, Uncle Murray didn’t care how he looked—and after fluffing my hair, threw back the bolt and opened the door.

  The man looked tired. His fawn-colored blazer looked tired. The five o’clock shadow was now six hours older than that. I waved him in; after the briefest hesitation, he crossed the threshold, propelled by an upward jerk of his head, like a man who was convincing himself he’d made the right decision.

  “I didn’t like how that call went,” he said with that endearing smirk.

  “Whatcha mean?” My tone was so carefree I made myself sick.

  He shrugged carelessly. “It just seemed kind of cold and abrupt.”

  I shrugged carelessly. “You were busy.”

  “Not really,” he confided. “I guess I thought I was. Old colleague from Kingston, here to collect a prisoner.”

  “Now that’s hot.”

  “It is?”

  “If you’re into handcuffs,” I said. Stop joking, idiot, I warned myself. He’s being serious. “Listen, you don’t have to explain—in fact, you don’t have to do anything.”

  “I had to tell you that,” he said.

  The door was still awkwardly open. I’d forgotten to shut it. If I did now it would seem like he had to stay. If I didn’t, it would seem like I wanted him to go.

  I reached my hand outside and fussed with the empty mailbox. A good detective would notice what I was doing. A good man would pretend not to.

  “Not very popular,” I said, and shut the door.

  I noticed the melted ice cream and picked up the container. I snatched some tissues from the end table and mopped up what little had been left to spill out.

  “You
want to sit down? I’ve got some decaf brewed—”

  “Actually, I only came by to tell you that face-toface.”

  So much for my mailbox improv. “Oh. You could’ve called.”

  It was his move. He hesitated to make it, whatever it was. The smirk returned then blossomed. “Think I will have that decaf if it’s no trouble.”

  “It is not,” I said.

  I walked briskly into the kitchen so he couldn’t see me grinning. There are few things in life so satisfying as being miserable about something that turns out to have been imaginary, like a bad grade or a misread pregnancy test. This was one of those things.

  I tossed the ice cream container, heard Grant follow me into the kitchen. I set sugar and cream on the butcher block table and got him a mug—my vintage Phantom of the Opera mug, one where the mask became visible on the side as you filled it with hot beverage. I handed it to him and refilled my own I Love NY mug.

  “This is cute,” he said, admiring the mug.

  “It was the last show I saw with my mom,” I told him. “She loved it.”

  “Isn’t it a musical about a monster?”

  I nodded. “All the best ones are.” They weren’t. But it made me sound smart and just came out of my mouth. Now that I’d said it I tried to think—Beauty and the Beast, Sweeny Todd, Assassins . . . that was it. “Beauty and the Beast, Sweeny Todd, Assassins. . . .”

  “What did she love about it then?”

  “He was a monster with a good soul.”

  “Like a hooker with a heart of gold?” Grant said.

  “I guess so. He helped a singer realize her potential and died for that. Actually, he died for killing people, but he did it for her.”

  “Grease is my speed.”

  “I like that one too,” I said, putting down my mug and doing a bit of the Hand Jive.

  Grant smiled. I think he was a little embarrassed by my hyperactivity. I know I was. I suggested we go back to the living room. We sat on the sofa.

  “So, this murder,” I said, looking for anything else to discuss.

  “It’s a strange one,” he said. “I gave your writer’s name to Whitman—I have to do this through channels—and he said he knew about him. They haven’t talked to him yet.”

  “Reason?”

  “He didn’t show up on the initial tag run.”

  “Tag run?”

  “One of the officers got the tag numbers of all the cars in the driveway. Cell phone photos. We’ve got an app that IDs them instantly. His didn’t come up.”

  “Hmmm. It was too far to walk. Maybe he thumbed a ride?”

  “They’re checking on it.”

  “I assume someone asked Lolo about it,” I said.

  He nodded as he sipped. “She said he dropped off the scenario the day before, then told her she wouldn’t see him again until she found him—and these are her words, not mine—‘pretending to be pretending to be dead.’”

  “It makes sense,” I assured him. I went and got the scenario from the kitchen.

  Grant took a moment to read it; while he did, I read him.

  He was more relaxed now that he was in the police work groove. Truth be told, so was I. More truth be told, I wish we weren’t there. I wanted to—well, I wanted to not be doing police work.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I wonder what she paid for this,” Grant said.

  “Whatever it was, it was too much. Any idea how they met?”

  “Local author, wrote some thrillers—”

  “The Cozies, right,” Grant said. “Like gas on a match.”

  “What was?”

  “Their attention, his vanity.”

  “Probably,” I said. “Though it was pretty strange he wouldn’t see me.”

  “What, a writer? Strange?” Grant said.

  I chuckled.

  “Maybe he’s got a mother fixation, only talks to women over forty or fifty,” Grant went on. He turned and looked at me with those soft but spicy eyes. “You’re too young and hot. You scared him.”

  Talk about gas on a match. I put my mug on the little coffee table where Uncle Murray’s keyboard still sat, a reminder of the nuttier yet dream-driven side of the clan. I took Grant’s mug and set it next to that.

  I kissed him, everything on one role of the dice.

  He grew a tongue and arms, and I had no further thoughts that night of Gary Gold, Lolo Baker, or Hoppy Hopewell.

  Chapter 11

  Remember what I said about the happiest thing in the world being when you were proven wrong about something bad that had its claws in your soul? I’d like to amend that. It’s happy only so long as the bad thing stays away. If it comes back, metamorphosed into something even uglier, the happiness turns to ash.

  Grant didn’t stay the night. He left sometime after—well, just after. I didn’t know he had; I was sleeping. A deep sleep. A grateful sleep. I woke about seven and the bed was empty, the covers crudely straightened on “his” side. I listened for the sounds of water running in the bathroom. Nada. The plip-plub of Mr. Coffee hard at work turning McNulty beans into morning glory. Also no-go. I stretched myself from a fetus position, looked on the floor where I knew we had left his pants. They were gone.

  It felt like my heart had become stone and my brain numb. The first thoughts were a rerun: Dumb, dumb, dumb! What did I expect? A little velvet box with a ring? Crap, I didn’t even want that. Life returned swiftly to my two stupidly impressionable organs.

  Brain: One-night stands crash. Even second one-night stands.

  Heart: That’s usually because the participants are usually too drunk to go. I thought this was more.

  Brain: No, I think. You feel. You felt this was more. I knew what it was.

  Heart: Really, hotshot? What was it? Just a skinny dip? I’ll show you mine if—

  Brain : Something like that.

  Heart: I don’t believe it. You saw how he was acting.

  Brain: He was uncertain—

  Heart : Not during.

  Brain: Of course ‘not during’! Before.

  Heart: He didn’t know how to approach me, how to broach how he felt.

  Brain: Uh-uh. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Probably still isn’t, which is as good as a loss.

  Heart: What are you talking about?

  Brain: He likes you enough to have wanted a return visit, but not enough to want you to think it’s anything more than a visit.

  Heart: You don’t know that. He may have had to get to work.

  Brain: You’re an idiot and you’re blind.

  Eyes: Hey, I saw!

  Brain: What did you see?

  Eyes: How he was behaving. And you’re both wrong.

  Heart and Brain: Oh?

  Eyes: He came here to stop thinking of the chick he was with. Eyes know eyes, and I could see he was looking backward, not ahead.

  Gwen: Shut up, all of you.

  I beat Thom to the restaurant by forty-five minutes. The place smelled of the floor-washing Luke had given it and I left the door open. I turned on the grill, made the coffee, and pulled the chairs from the tables. It felt good to be active, distracted from Grant and Hoppy. I was just about to open the cash register to make sure we had enough change when my manager clunked in the door. It wasn’t that she had a heavy tread; it was that she was always burdened with bags. One for her stuff—mail-order catalogues, water bottle, Bible, breath mints, keys, wallet, pepper spray, brush, and hair clips, which she was always breaking—and one for her clothes, which she changed when she got here. Thom did not like to go home in her work outfit, “Smelling like a sa-lami,” as she put it.

  “You think this is gonna get you extra points with the boss for missin’ mosta yesterday?” she asked.

  “The boss is a jerk. I don’t care what she thinks.”

  “Oooooh. That sounds like—”

  “It is. I don’t want to discuss it.”

  Thom thunked her bags on the counter. “You can’t just drop th
at egg and not expect me to call you butterfingers. What up? And you might as well tell me because I ain’t leavin’ it alone till you do.”

  I caved. I hadn’t wanted to whine, but I had to talk to someone. Now, Thom had her puritan side, but she wasn’t naive or judgmental. She had that side for a reason.

  “Men,” she said and collected her bags. She shook her head. “Oh, man.” She went into the back to change.

  That was it. That was the extent of her advice, her strong shoulder, her compassion. But the effort wasn’t wasted: all the thinking I had done had brought me to the same conclusion. Maybe that was as far as the equation could be reduced. They were what they were and you couldn’t expect them to be more. If they were, then they ceased becoming pronouns. They became Clark or Bruce or Peter. They became a boyfriend or husband. Until then, they were just guys.