2 Double Dip

by Gretchen Archer

  Please.

  The video tour of So Help Me God’s property (straight from their own security feed) made it look like a small oil country. There was a health center, a rehab center, a huge assisted-living and retirement housing complex, an organic-food market, two gift shops (including Holy Smokes Saks), a concert hall, a golf course, a down-home-cooking restaurant, three cafés, podiatrists and hearing specialists on site, and a full-service auto-repair center (for widows and single parents). And no profit in there? Anywhere?

  The number I found that looked the most skewed was the warm-body one; there weren’t enough people there to support all the auto repair. Staff, yes. Congregation, no. In a church that could hold 24,000 (what a fire hazard), average attendance on Sunday morning was 4,200. That’s the whole town of Beehive. Were there 4,200 people in southern Alabama who could give a church $15,000 a year each? Were there 4,200 people in southern Anywhere who had that much extra loot lying around? Let’s check and see.

  While So Help Me God might not belly up and tell all to the federal bean counters, its customer base would surely brag about it. Deduction City. I pulled ten random names off the church directory, plugged them in one-by-one, looking in every cyber nook and cranny the IRS owned, and came up with absolutely nothing. These people didn’t pay taxes. Nor did the next ten, or the next.

  Lord, help.

  The corner of my computer screen said it was nine-thirty in the morning on Tuesday. I was still in my pajamas. All of a sudden my cell phone blew up. Why do you have a pregnancy test? I stared at the phone until the next text came. I’m going to need a credit card. I stared at that until the next text message arrived. Dammit, Davis! Do you know that your movers packed the contents of your REFRIGERATOR into a MOVING BOX? And that it’s been sitting in the sun in your BEDROOM?

  What a relief! She would have killed me if it’d been a dead body.

  Why wouldn’t the movers have just thrown the things in the refrigerator away?

  I texted her back. There’s a big garbage chute behind a door in the butler’s pantry. Don’t fall in.

  I amaze myself.

  I picked up the phone and conferenced myself with Fantasy and No Hair. “I know where Peyton is.”

  NINE

  “You might as well be asking for the blueprints to the vault, Davis,” No Hair said. “Richard is the only person who has access to security schematics.”

  “What’s so secure about garbage?” Fantasy asked.

  “We’ll have to call him,” I said.

  “And tell him what?” No Hair asked. “That you think Peyton Reynolds is in the garbage?”

  “Tell him Bianca lost something,” Fantasy said. “Accidentally threw something out.”

  “One of her dogs,” I suggested.

  He ignored me. “I’ll get him on the phone, and you two get dressed.”

  “I am dressed, thank you!” Fantasy pointed. “She’s the one in yoga pants and a Saints T-shirt.”

  “Get dressed in something appropriate for a visit to Waste Management.” And to me, “You just get dressed.”

  Before I logged off, I saved all the dirt I’d found on So Help Me God, then logged into the Bellissimo system. I dug through my fake credit cards and driver’s licenses, found a quick match, then booked myself into an unoccupied two-bedroom suite a mile over my head. Status: VIP Level Five. Levels below five don’t get fruit baskets, Godiva on the pillows, or spa robes. Next, I produced four room keys: one for me, one for Granny, two to lose. After that, I electronically gave myself unlimited credit to watch pay-per-view movies, eat everything in the mini-fridge, and charge small appliances to the room. I wasn’t going back to my new place until Meredith finished having her way with it. I reached for my phone and tapped out a message. Bring Granny for her gamble. I booked us a suite, and the keycards are in an envelope with your name on it at Shakes.

  She texted back right away. What’s Shakes?

  Me: The ice cream shop

  Her: Can’t you just leave them at the front desk?

  Me: No

  Her: Dammit, Davis

  “Hey!” Fantasy called from the closet. “Are you coming, or what?”

  “On my way!” But my phone went off again, ringing instead of buzzing. It was Bradley Cole. Finally. “Hello, you!” After that, I didn’t say another word. I just listened. Fantasy appeared in the doorway and tapped on her wristwatch. I lowered the phone, pressed it into my leg, and loud-whispered. “Get a paper! Go upstairs and get today’s newspaper!”

  I put the phone back to my ear. “…like a promo for a porn movie!” Bradley Cole was having a hissy fit.

  “Bradley, he was barking instructions at me. Say this, do that, put your nose here, put your chin there.”

  “The picture looks like you’re about to put your head in his lap, Davis!”

  Bradley was still in Las Vegas. I assumed Mary Ha-Ha was still with him. And he was not happy about the Page Six photograph of me and Matthew Thatcher. Kirk Olsen, Grand Palace Casino co-counsel, office next to Bradley’s, had woken up Bradley with the news that he’d better get online and look at page seven of the Biloxi Sun Herald, which was a full-page ad taken out by the ashtray-chasing lawyer Jerry McAllen, announcing that the case was going to trial soon and urging those who hadn’t yet jumped on his gravy train to do so while they still had a chance.

  “I had to see Page Six to get to page seven, Davis.”

  It went on for a while longer, with Bradley conceding that he was stressed (get in line), tired (again, behind me), aggravated about the move going down the way it had (an additional $1,300 for them to physically pack us), and he missed me. (Me too!) (Missed him.)

  I gave him the SparkNotes on most of what I’d been juggling, and eventually we ended up on the same page. Six-and-a-half.

  “Why’d he want them to tow his car? Why didn’t he put gas in it and drive back to Pine Apple?”

  Bradley knew way more than he wanted to about my ex-ex Eddie.

  “So he’d have an excuse to come back.”

  “Does he not understand that Bianca doesn’t even remember him? What makes him think she’d give him the time of day if he did manage to get in the same room with her?”

  “Eddie doesn’t even understand the concept of Tuesday, Bradley, so it’s safe to assume he doesn’t get it about Bianca.”

  “Sit him down and talk to him, Davis. Explain that he’s wasting his time and it’s disruptive for us when he pops in.”

  I could hear Las Vegas in Bradley’s voice. He was never in Vegas for routine matters. Vegas meant Grand Catastrophes, and if my phone were smart enough, I’d use it to dial down the tension that was spilling over from Bradley’s no-smoke lawsuit and into our relationship.

  “And say something to Meredith while you’re at it,” he added. “If she’d stop using him to run her errands, it would help.”

  “I had that chat with her yesterday, Bradley.”

  “Have it with her again, Davis.”

  We had a much larger issue than Eddie to discuss, but something told me this wasn’t the right time. “I will.”

  “I swear, sometimes I think he’s after you, Davis.”

  “Bradley. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not when you’re talking about a guy who doesn’t understand Tuesday.”

  So much for being on the same page.

  I asked him when he’d be home. He said he had no idea, as soon as possible, he’d call again when he could.

  Fantasy dropped Page Six in front of me.

  Don’t ever ever ever ever say “home” instead of “cheese.” Ever.

  “Did you tell him?” Fantasy asked.

  “Tell him what?”

  “Davis.”

  “No, I didn’t tell him.”

  “Did you
take the test?”

  I sniffed.

  “Why didn’t you take the test?”

  “I haven’t had time to study for it.”

  * * *

  We dressed in shades of beige and grabbed insurance-fraud investigator identification. To perk up the beige, we added mint-green latex gloves and surgical facemasks. No Hair burst through the door with the garbage bible. We spread it out, then quickly traced the path from the chute on the thirtieth floor to the waste-treatment unit into which the Sanders’, and everyone else’s, refuse found final rest.

  No Hair made the call and shut down the garbage machine. “Hurry,” he said, “before this place turns into the city dump. Find that girl and find her fast.”

  * * *

  “If you’re right, Davis,” Fantasy hesitated before she pushed the elevator button for the thirtieth floor, “she’s probably not alive. How could someone survive from Friday night until Tuesday morning in a garbage chute?”

  “Haven’t you heard those stories about people being rescued two weeks after an earthquake?”

  “Sure,” she said, “but I think they’re staged. They make up that stuff when donations start slowing down.”

  I turned to her. “Surely you don’t believe that.”

  “And that people on the moon business is all Hollywood, too, Davis.”

  We were taking the scenic route to the Sanders’. I poked the unmarked button to make the elevator go faster. “What about the Loch Ness Monster?”

  “Real,” Fantasy said as the doors parted. “And we’re about to see the Wicked Witch of the Bellissimo. Also real.”

  We found her sunning herself and chain smoking.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Sanders,” I said.

  “Are you here because you’ve found me an assistant?” she greeted us. “A very large, masculine assistant?”

  It occurred to me that No Hair fit that bill. We’d been there long enough (two seconds) to panic Gianna and Ghita, who rushed to the foot of Bianca’s lounger and locked their furry sights on our jugulars. Bianca cooed at them—she uses that tone of voice with the dogs and only with the dogs—after which, they toned it down a little.

  “We’ve been very busy, Mrs. Sanders,” I said. “We still haven’t located Peyton.”

  “Who?”

  Fantasy, not one for wasting time, said, “We need to see your dressing room again, Mrs. Sanders, and we need to know why you think there was something going on between Peyton and Mr. Sanders.”

  We did? We needed to know that? I swear, Fantasy wasn’t afraid of anything. Not even Bianca.

  “I’m weary with the subject of Peyton,” she said on a long sigh. “I’m ready to move on. Put my life back together.” All of Bianca shifted except her injured foot, which was wrapped in an Emilio Pucci scarf today.

  Fantasy folded her arms across her chest and began tapping a foot.

  “She had condoms in her purse,” Bianca said.

  What? Did they have Mr. Sanders’ name on them? Who goes from woman-of-childbearing-age-has-birth-control straight to she’s-doing-my-husband? (Bianca.) Who goes through someone’s purse? (Bianca.)

  “Where’s the purse?” Fantasy asked.

  “I threw it out,” Bianca said. “It was a ten-year old Kate Spade clutch.”

  We were headed to the garbage anyway. Might as well retrieve the condom-filled purse.

  “Show me the bullet,” Fantasy said.

  “Follow me.”

  The seventh bullet was right where I thought it would be, the only place we hadn’t looked, fourteen feet up, imbedded in the base of a strip of crown molding in Bianca’s dressing room.

  “How’d you know?” Fantasy asked.

  “I figured it out when I was staring at the ceiling.”

  We looked at the sooty scar in the white wood from several vantage points, trying to determine what Bianca could have possibly been aiming for, and decided she hadn’t been aiming at all.

  “She can’t shoot worth a shit,” Fantasy said.

  * * *

  We started at the top, the litter that hadn’t yet left the Sanders’ residence.

  “I doubt you’ll need the masks.” A tall, thin man with no sense of humor whatsoever, Henry Armor, Head Steward of the S.S. Sanders, met us at the security desk.

  “We’re good,” Fantasy said from behind hers.

  “We like them,” I said from behind mine.

  Henry gave us the garbage speech using his library voice, and only after we followed him far away from civilization. Our journey began in a carpeted hallway between Mr. Sanders’ study and the media room. We entered what should have been a coat closet, but was a narrow hallway instead, our destination a service room behind a service room that was behind a service room. Along the way we passed stainless steel shelves full of small power tools, Christmas decorations, luggage (all Louis Vuitton), golf clubs, a really big oil painting of Bianca Sanders all but in the buff (cover that thing up), and snow skis. Bicycles hung from hooks on the walls. It was your basic thirtieth-floor garage, but no lawn mower. And no car.

  “Waste is collected throughout the residence several times a day,” Captain Henry whispered, “or as needed. It’s brought here and sent down the lift.” He opened one last door. There were five or six swollen garbage bags piled around a metal door. And he said we didn’t need our surgical masks.

  Captain Henry jerked. “There must be a problem!”

  “So there usually isn’t this much garbage in here?” Fantasy asked.

  “Never,” he whispered. “I’ll speak to maintenance right away.” He pointed to the metal door. “All of this should have been sent down the lift.”

  The door looked to be just under three-by-three. Let’s put it this way: I could get in it if I wanted to. (I did not.) I did, however, walk to it and pull it open. It was your basic dumbwaiter with no dumb waiter. Just dark, open space, cables, and pulleys along the back.

  I knew it. Another way to and from the thirtieth floor.

  “Will there be anything else?” He held a starched, white handkerchief over his nose and mouth. “I must speak to maintenance.”

  “We’re good,” Fantasy said. “Give us fifteen minutes.”

  “I will wait for you in the hall.”

  He backed out. Creepy guy.

  “Go ahead,” Fantasy said, eyeing the plastic bags.

  “Oh, no. Ladies first.”

  With a heave and a ho and some sailor language, we tore into the bags.

  There are many, many ways Bianca Casimiro Sanders might become a better citizen (many), and recycling was promoted to the top ten. The woman threw everything, I mean everything, out. We shouldn’t have been doing this anyway—no one should dig through anyone else’s garbage—but in less than five minutes, Fantasy found a very personal crumpled note that our boss, Richard Sanders, had written to his wife before he left for Mow-Mow (would she be interested in tacking on a few Mr. & Mrs. days to their upcoming Parent’s Weekend at Thomas’ school), and we agreed that more than the cold coffee grounds were stuck on everything (gross), it was the voyeurism that bothered us the most. I didn’t want to know what flavor of mood enhancer Bianca ate like M&Ms (Xanax), or why Mr. Sanders always smelled so good (Jack Black—how appropriate—shampoo and Beard Lube Conditioning Shave Cream). What we didn’t find was a Kate Spade clutch full of condoms, or its owner.

  Fantasy stuck her head in the dark shaft. “Peyton? Are you in there? Can you hear me?”

  Nothing but echoes.

  “Let’s throw something down there,” I suggested, “to see where it stops.”

  “Like what?”

  I looked around. “A brick?”

  “If she is in there,” Fantasy said, “and if she’s still alive, you want to kill her with a brick t
hrown from thirty stories?”

  Maybe not. We didn’t have a brick anyway.

  We left a great big mess for Henry’s people to clean up, then traveled silently, changing elevators three times, from 30 to B3. My ears popped.

  Fisher Iboch, Director of Waste Management, was in his early forties, and he didn’t have much on me in the height department. He had two tufts of hair, one front, one back, and a bundle of energy. The man was in an amazingly good mood, considering he was in charge of the trash at the Bellissimo and that his massive work space didn’t have one single ray of natural light. What it did have were twelve employees, a compressor, a coin catcher/counter, and an incinerator, two of those items the size of mini vans.

  Mr. Iboch seemed pleased to have visitors. “After it’s separated, it drops into a bin. From there, it’s disposed of. If you’ll follow me,” he bounced, “I’ll show you.”

  “How is it separated?” Fantasy asked from behind her surgery mask.

  “The easy answer? Recyclable and non.”

  “Who separates it?” I asked from behind mine.

  “There’s no who. It’s more what. Hydraulic arms use sensors, grates, cameras, and lasers to separate it.”

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  Fisher Iboch used both arms to point up. “Right above our heads.”

  Nifty.

  “Paper, glass, plastics, metals, and compost materials never reach this level,” he said. “They’re extracted. I call it the Recovery Program.”