Name Dropping

by Jane Heller

  “It had to happen sooner or later, Nance.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Hey, chin up. If it turns out that he’s the murderer, you did yourself a favor by dumping him.”

  “HOW COULD HE BE THE MURDERER IF HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HER, JANICE?”

  “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  “Sorry. I’m not myself.” I laughed ruefully. “Actually, I am myself. And thank goodness I am or I’d be the dead one instead of her.”

  “Then there is a bright side to this after all.”

  “It would be brighter if the police caught the murderer,” I said, “although they might have the person in custody, as we speak.”

  “They might.”

  “But if they don’t, I’ll call them in the morning and offer whatever information I can.”

  “Good girl. Now, are you gonna be okay there by yourself? You sound a little jumpy.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, more hopefully than confidently.

  “You sure? You can sleep at my place if you want to.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Janice, but I’ll stay here.”

  “Then I’d pull the plug on my phone if I were you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there may be media coverage of the murder where they don’t run a photo of your dearly departed neighbor or mention her career. They may just do a quickie bulletin that says, ‘Nancy Stern of 137 East Seventy-first Street has bought the farm,’ and save the rest of the details for later. If it happens, everybody you know is gonna think you’re the Nancy Stern they’re talking about and call you to confirm that you’re dead. Do you really want to put yourself through that tonight?”

  God, what a mess.

  “I’ll make up the sleep sofa in my living room,” Janice offered.

  “I’ll pack a few things and be right over,” I said.

  The next morning, Janice and I scoured the newspapers for coverage of the other Nancy Stern’s murder. They all ran stories, but The Daily News’s was the most lurid, complete with a photo spread of the deceased in happier times (my favorite was the one where she was standing arm in arm with Kevin Costner).

  In fact, there was plenty in the article about Nancy’s associations with celebrities, along with tidbits about her personal background (she’d never been married, it was her mother who identified the body, mourners were asked to make a donation to their favorite charity in lieu of flowers), but what interested me more was that she had been shot and killed in her apartment somewhere between 8:30 and 10:00 p.m., that the doormen on duty did not recall letting any visitors up to her apartment during the day or evening, and that the killer or killers were still at large.

  “So nobody was seen going in or out of her apartment,” I mused as Janice fired up the blender for a couple of orange smoothies with bee pollen. “How do you think the killer got to her?”

  “She lived in the penthouse,” said Janice. “Maybe he climbed in through the terrace.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe my doormen are asleep at the switch. The building doesn’t exactly have the tightest security.”

  “That must be it then. Whoever was supposed to be guarding the door when the killer passed through was probably taking a crap.”

  I smiled. “I’ll be sure to communicate that theory to the detective I’m going to see later.”

  “You called the police?”

  I nodded. “While you were in the shower. I called my answering machine too. You were right, Janice: Everybody wants to know if I’m dead. I’ve never had so many messages, not even when people thought they were calling her.”

  “Want me to help with the call-backs?”

  “That would be great. You call Penelope and I’ll call everyone else.”

  “Penelope. Gee, thanks.”

  “You volunteered.”

  We ate breakfast, made the phone calls, and then I headed for my appointment with the police detective I’d spoken to. I was almost out the door when Janice asked me what I was doing that evening.

  “It’s Christmas Eve,” she pointed out when I’d said I had no plans. “We could deck the halls or something.”

  “I really need a little time to myself,” I said. “The last twenty-four hours have been pretty tumultuous.”

  “But Linda Franzione—you know, the one from my reading group whose ex-husband faked his own death so he wouldn’t have to pay her alimony—is having a party and she told me I could bring a guest.”

  “I think I’ll skip it, Janice. You go and have a good time, okay?”

  “Okay, but I hate to picture you sitting home all by yourself.”

  I hugged her. “I’ll be just fine. Besides, once the party gets going, you won’t be picturing me doing anything. You’ll be deep in conversation with some nice single man Linda invited.”

  “Linda doesn’t know any nice single men. If she did, she wouldn’t be sharing them, believe me.”

  “Merry Christmas, Janice.”

  “Merry Christmas, Nance.”

  I went to the police station and was interviewed by a rather paunchy, middle-aged detective named Burt Reynolds. Yes, that was his name, and because it was his name, he was extremely empathetic when I explained about the mix-ups involving the other Nancy Stern.

  “Having the same name as someone better known than you is a pain in the ass,” he commiserated.

  “Were you ever tempted to pretend you were the other Burt Reynolds?” I inquired, eager to know if I had company in that regard.

  “To get dates, you mean?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “That’s how I met my wife,” he said.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah. One of the guys at the precinct gave me her number and I called her up for a blind date. I told her my name and she said, ‘Are you the Burt Reynolds?’ and I said, ‘You betcha,’ and she said, ‘I’d love to go out with you.’ We got together, she saw I wasn’t the actor, but we hit it off and the rest is history.”

  I smiled. “Then in that case, having a famous person’s name wasn’t a pain in the ass.”

  “Sure it was. My wife and I have been separated for seven years, because she won’t give me a divorce unless I pay through the nose. Not that I’m a cheapskate, but cops aren’t millionaires.”

  I said I was sorry for his troubles, then told him everything I could think of that might be pertinent to the investigation: Jacques, Bo, Henry; the flowers, the coat, the Prozac; the calls from the girl with the southern accent; the drunken orgy with the unknown reveler. It was only when he asked, “Anything else?” that I mentioned Bill.

  “Oh,” I said, as if the subject were an afterthought. “A man named Bill Harris called me one night looking for her.” I explained about his job and his move from Washington to New York and the mutual friend he and Nancy shared in Joan Geisinger and the fact that he and I had dinner a few times.

  “You actually went out with this guy?” said Detective Reynolds, putting down his pen so he could get a good look at me. “Even though he was calling the other one?”

  “Well, yes,” I said, feeling myself flush under his withering gaze. “After all, you went out with your wife, even though she thought you were the other one.”

  “That’s different,” he said. “She figured out I wasn’t the other one the minute she laid eyes on me. You never admitted to the guy that you weren’t the other one. You lied to him.” He was crossing his arms over his chest and arching his eyebrows at me. I hoped he wouldn’t put me in Time-out.

  “I was planning to tell Bill the truth, but I ended up breaking up with him instead. Not that it’s germane to your investigation.” I was defensive, I know, but I wasn’t a murder suspect. I was simply trying to help. “If you have no further questions, Detective, I guess I’ll be going.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks for coming in,” he said, softening towards me—or so I thought. “Give me a shout if you’ve got anything else.”

  “I’m happy to cooperate,�
�� I said. “No idea yet who killed her, I suppose?”

  “Nope. Could have been she had an enemy. Could have been she walked in on a burglary. We’ll see what turns up.”

  “A burglary?” My eyes widened. If they could hit 24A, they could hit 6J, couldn’t they?

  “Her place was pretty torn apart, but nothing was stolen as far as we know.”

  “Nothing?”

  “We’re still checking things out.” He rose from his chair to escort me to the door of his fetid office. “There is one thing I haven’t asked you, Miss Stern.”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you feel about the deceased?”

  “How did I—”

  “Feel about her, right. Other than the fact that you were put out by all the mix-ups.”

  “I didn’t feel one way or another about her, Detective. We weren’t friends. We weren’t even acquaintances. We were just neighbors with the same name.” Why go into some tortured explanation of my psychological conflicts over the other Nancy Stern? It was none of this cop’s business that my self-esteem had recently taken a dip, that her life had seemed more desirable than my own, and that I’d fantasized—well, more than fantasized—about stepping into her shoes every once in a while.

  “You say you didn’t feel one way or another about her,” he repeated. “And yet you were in sort of a tug-of-war with her over this Bill guy.”

  “Tug-of-war?” What on earth was he insinuating? “I merely went out with Bill Harris a few times, as I’ve already told you. Nancy didn’t know a thing about it.”

  “And you wanted to keep it that way, didn’t you, Miss Stern? Keep her in the dark, I mean.”

  “I didn’t actually go out of my way to—”

  “Sure you did. You let him think you were her so she’d never get together with him, so she wouldn’t come between you two lovebirds.”

  “No. No. That puts an entirely inaccurate slant on the situation.”

  “Then what slant would you put on the situation, Miss Stern?”

  “Look, you’re making my motive sound sinister and it was completely harmless. I’m completely harmless. I didn’t do it, Detective. I’m a preschool teacher. A nurturer not a murderer.” Talk about defensive! I was positively paranoid at this point. He seemed to be suggesting that I had reason to bump off the other Nancy Stern when all I was attempting to do was give him some leads. “Besides, I have an airtight alibi for last night.”

  “Good. Why don’t you tell me about it?” he challenged.

  “I will.” I told him about the party at Penelope’s, followed immediately by the dinner at—well, naturally I couldn’t think of the name of the restaurant. “It’s an Italian place that ends in either -luna or -luma.” He looked skeptical. “You can ask my friend, Janice Mason. She was with me.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  “Swell. May I go now?” I said, not bothering to hide my hostility. The meeting hadn’t gone the way I’d expected.

  “Be my guest,” said Detective Reynolds. “And have a merry Christmas.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  I didn’t go straight home. I was still pretty freaked about the murder in the building or the burglary-gone-wrong in the building or whatever it was that had occurred in the building, and didn’t relish the idea of setting foot in the place. Instead, I wandered the streets like a zombie, letting throngs of frantic, last-minute shoppers bang into me, sideswipe me, clobber me with their shopping bags. I was so tired I didn’t have the energy to get out of their way (Janice’s sleep sofa, like most sleep sofas, was about as comfortable as a bed of cacti), but I finally did duck the crowds by escaping into a movie theater. Unfortunately, the movie that was playing was one of those twisty, convoluted thrillers where the heroine isn’t who she claims to be and gets her comeuppance in the end. Not much of an escape after all.

  I stopped at a pay phone to call my parents and wish them a merry Christmas, and told them about the other Nancy Stern’s murder in the event that news of the case made it to Pennsylvania. When they asked me about the crowd noise in the background, I said I was at a party—an outdoor party in the middle of winter. Sure.

  “Are you with that new beau you mentioned?” chuckled my father. “The one who dialed the wrong number?”

  “Yes, Dad,” I said, deciding to surrender utterly to my game of pretend. “And we’re having a wonderful time.”

  “Make sure he takes good care of you,” my mother chimed in. “You’re our special baby, remember?”

  “How could I forget?” I said and signed off.

  I stopped into a deli and had a sandwich and a root beer and lingered long enough so that the waiter got antsy about it.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I sniffed, leaving him the modest tip he deserved. It wasn’t as if Jewish delicatessens were mobbed on Christmas Eve.

  It was dark by the time I got home—about seven. I flipped on the lights, sorted through the mail, and played back the messages on the answering machine. (There were none for the other Nancy Stern, thank God.) And then I got undressed, wrapped myself in my ratty bathrobe, and turned on the TV. There was nothing on except Christmas specials of the type that star Kathie Lee Gifford. I turned on the radio. There was nothing on except Christmas songs of the type that are sung by the Chipmunks.

  I decided to meditate. Janice had tried to teach me how, but I’d never been able to sit there without thinking. Hoping I’d have more success on this particular night, I sat on the floor cross-legged, closed my eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths. I was just on the verge of not thinking when the doorman buzzed.

  I nearly jumped off the floor, let me tell you, so unnerved was I by the sound of that buzzer.

  “What?” I yelled into the house phone. “What is it?”

  “Bill’s on his way up,” said the doorman, the one who’d been on duty the night before, the one who’d probably been taking a crap when the murderer passed through.

  “Bill?” This time I did jump. “Wait! Hello?”

  Too late. The doorman had already hung up.

  Bill? I thought, pacing back and forth in my tiny foyer. What’s he doing here? How does he know my name? And, more pressingly, why am I wearing this hairball of a bathrobe?

  I dashed into the bedroom, stuffed the robe in the closet, and threw my clothes back on.

  Should I act as if I’m on my way out? I wondered. To a celebrity-studded bash or, perhaps, to a quiet evening with my colleagues?

  Of course not. He knows you’re not the other one now, I reminded myself, unless he’s been in a black hole.

  Then what should I do? What should I say? How should I handle this?

  Before I could come to any conclusions, the bell rang.

  “Nancy?” came Bill’s voice through the door. And it wasn’t the kindly Bill’s voice, either. “I know you’re in there. Open up.”

  Yikes.

  “Nancy!” he said again, more insistently this time.

  “Just a second.”

  I gathered myself up, shoulders back, head erect, the picture of self-assurance except for the little muscle in my right cheek that was twitching in a thoroughly irritating manner, and went to let him in.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Why, it’s my friend Bill Harris,” I said, throwing open the door quite theatrically, like some great lady of the stage. “Do come in.”

  He came in with a vengeance, storming past me and planting himself in the middle of my living room, his hands on his hips, his eyes boring in on me. He was a vision in his camel’s hair coat and charcoal gray business suit, his dark wavy hair slightly windblown, a lock of it having fallen across his forehead. He must have come straight from the store, I guessed, straight from hoards of bonus-laden Wall Streeters procuring diamonds as stocking stuffers for loved ones. “I think it’s time you told me what this is all about,” he demanded.

  “By ‘this’ you mean what, exactly?” I asked innocently. Well, I had to be sure which of my lies he was r
eferring to. Maybe he hadn’t read the newspaper or watched TV. Maybe he hadn’t heard that the other Nancy Stern was dead. Maybe he was just stewing about the fact that I’d rejected him. I had to keep my options open.

  “I’ll make it simple,” he said, continuing to glower at me. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Nancy Stern, of course.” I made it sound as if he were the screwy one. “You asked the doorman to buzz me, don’t you remember?”

  “I asked the doorman to buzz the woman in 6J,” he snapped. “I have no idea what your real name is. I only know that it’s not Nancy Stern because she was murdered last night.”

  Ah. So he had heard. Scratch Plan A.

  “But my real name is Nancy Stern,” I insisted. “Nancy Zelda Stern, if the truth be told.”

  “The truth? Ha!”

  “Bill, let me—”

  “Stop it. Just stop it.” He turned his back on me. He was muttering to himself, mulling over how he should proceed. “Okay,” he said, wheeling around to face me again. He was giving me a dirty look. A filthy look. “Who are you? And no games.”

  “Listen, Bill. I’m sure you’re upset with me and you have good reason to be, but I can explain, really I can. How about sitting down first, making yourself comfortable?”

  “No.”

  “Then how about a snack or something?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose a glass of eggnog would be out of the question?”

  “I hate eggnog.”

  “So do a lot of people. I’ve always wondered why it’s even served during the holidays, sort of the way I’ve always wondered about fruitcake. Show me a person who likes fruitcake and I’ll—”

  “Tell me who you are already!”

  “Right.” I plunged in. “The other Nancy Stern, the freelance celebrity journalist Joan Geisinger intended to fix you up with, moved into this building a month ago, and because we had the same name, there was a bit of confusion. We started getting each other’s mail and phone calls. One of those phone calls was you, Bill. You called that fateful November night to ask her out on a blind date.”