Murder on a Hot Tin Roof

by Amanda Matetsky

  I wasn’t two people anymore. Now I was just one-the bad one.

  “I’m sorry, Dan,” I whimpered. “I never would have snatched the list if I had known you’d be taking over the case. Flannagan was in charge at the time, don’t forget, and I couldn’t be sure that he would ever find the list, or follow up on all the names if he did. So I felt I should take it home and study it carefully, and then turn it over to Flannagan later.”

  “But you never got around to enacting the last part of your plan,” Dan growled.

  “No, but I

  told Flannagan about the message pad,” I stressed, “and I gave him all the names that were listed. All except one.”

  “The most important one, it turns out.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time! I kept Binky’s name and number to myself for only one reason: because I didn’t want Flannagan to screw up my visit to the Actors Studio. I thought it was important for me to meet and talk to Gray’s fellow acting students-see if any of them were the homicidal type-and Binky was my passport inside.”

  Dan’s face turned from furious to afflicted. “Yeah, and he was almost a passport to the end of your life.” He sat back down in his chair and released a deafening sigh. “I don’t know what to do with you anymore, Paige. You’re impossible!… You were right not to trust Flannagan-he’s a bigot and a bungler. And I know your motives for getting involved were good. They always are. But you came to within a split second of having your throat slit open!” he cried, throwing his hands in the air. “How am I supposed to live with the knowledge of that? No matter how hard I try to keep you safe, you’re always working your way toward another disaster. And nothing I can say or do will make you stop! You’re addicted to danger.”

  “I prefer to think I’m addicted to the truth,” I stiffly replied, feeling righteous again.

  That did it. Dan’s eyes popped wide as golf balls and his jaw dropped to the floor. “The

  truth?” he howled. “That’s the funniest joke I ever heard in my life! You wouldn’t know the truth if it flew in the window and bit you on the nose.”

  “I would so!” I whined, sounding incredibly childish, even to myself. “And if you had told me the truth about your involvement in the case, I would have told you the truth about mine!” So

  there.

  We sat in silence for a few seconds, each stewing in our own private thoughts.

  And then the most extraordinary thing happened.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, when I least expected it-when I was so bewildered and confused I could barely comprehend it-the miracle I had long been dreaming of and aching for occurred. Dan turned his face toward mine, looked straight into my eyes, gave me the most pleasing of all possible smiles, and pronounced the words I had begun to think I would never, ever, ever-in all the miserable, magical days of my crazy, mixed-up life-hear him say:

  “I love you, Paige.”

  “What?!” (It wasn’t a very romantic response, but it was all I was capable of at the moment.)

  He laughed. “Have you lost your hearing or your interest? I said I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want anything to change. I was happy with our relationship just the way it was. But now I’m not so sure. Now I’m thinking-”

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know that, Dan?” I was so furious I thought my head would melt. “

  Now you say you love me? Now that you’ve ripped my heart out of my chest and kicked it around like a bloody football?” (Okay, so maybe that was a bit livid, but it was exactly how I felt.) I jumped out of my chair and began my own round of pacing. “Well, you can cry me a river,” I went on, feeling very dramatic, quoting the lyrics of the new Julie London song I now identified with so much. “Cry me a river. I cried a river over you.”

  “Julie London,” Dan said. “I like that song a lot, too. But what does it have to do with us?”

  Aaaargh!

  “I saw you last night,” I said, coming to a sudden standstill and propping my hands on my hips. “In Sardi’s. You were wrapped up in the arms and lips of a beautiful redhead. And if you felt even one ounce of love for me at that particular moment, I’ll eat Hedda Hopper’s new hat!”

  Dan didn’t move a muscle. He sat still as a stump in his chair, staring up at me with the eyes of a guilty, but thoroughly unrepentant, adolescent. Then he took a long, slow drink of his coffee, set the cup back down on the table, and started laughing.

  It wasn’t the loud, boisterous, slap-you-on-the-back style of laughter you would hear in a bar or a locker room. It was the deep, personal, private kind… the kind that grabs you in the gut and causes intense but near silent paroxysms of glee.

  “Well, I’m glad you think it’s so funny,” I said, stomping one stiletto-heeled shoe on the floor, then starting to pace again. It was either that or start crying another river.

  “I’m sorry, Paige,” Dan said between spasms, “but if you knew what I was really feeling while I was-as you so eloquently put it-‘wrapped up in the arms and lips’ of that so-called ‘beautiful redhead,’ then you’d be laughing, too.”

  I didn’t say a word. If Dan thought I was going to humiliate myself by asking him to explain his stupid feelings, then he had another think coming!

  After what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than four seconds, Dan’s laughter subsided. He sat up straight, rubbed his face in his hands, and then gave me a dead serious look. “I was disgusted by that woman,” he declared. “She’s coarse, vulgar, demanding, ostentatious… When she was kissing me, the rancid smell and taste of whiskey was so strong I felt sick to my stomach. I went straight into the men’s room afterward and rinsed my face and mouth with cold water.”

  My eyes were downcast, but my heart was soaring. He was telling the truth! I could hear it in his voice. “If she disgusted you so darn much,” I said, “why did you ask her out in the first place?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I just met her at Sardi’s to ask her a few questions about Gray Gordon.”

  “What?!” I yelped. The man was full of surprises. And I was panting for more. “How was she connected to Gray?” I begged. “How did you find out about her? Why didn’t

  I know about her? Did you consider her a suspect? What’s her name?” (I’m so cool sometimes, it kills me.)

  “Her name is Loretta Cuppano,” he said, “but everybody calls her Cupcake.”

  Oh!

  “And, no, she wasn’t a suspect,” he went on. “I just wanted to talk to her about Gray, see what I could learn about his personal life. According to Rhonda Blake, Loretta and Gray had a brief fling a couple of years ago, when they were both students at the Actors Studio, so I figured she could tell me whether or not he was a homosexual. Confirmed, or otherwise.”

  “And did she?”

  “She said Gray went both ways, but preferred men to women. That’s why she broke up with him. She wanted a leading, not supporting, role.”

  “I take it she’s an actress.”

  “And how!” he said. “She’s so showy and pretentious she couldn’t possibly be anything else. She’s appearing in

  The Pajama Game now.”

  That figures, I sneered to myself.

  “So that’s why you met her so late at Sardi’s,” I said, thinking aloud. “You went there after the show.”

  “Right.”

  “Did you know that I was there?”

  “Not until later.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me

  why I was there?”

  “Don’t have to. I already know.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Do you know that I love you, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “Smarty-pants.”

  Dan smiled, stood up, and walked over to where I was standing. “Are we okay now, Paige?” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders and piercing me to the core with his hot black gaze. “Our truce is signed?
The cease-fire is in effect?”

  “That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” I vowed.

  Then Dan took me in his arms and we sealed our agreement with a long, slow, soul-scorching kiss (openmouthed, in case you’re wondering). My knees were weak as water but my heart was going strong, leaping in unbounded delight that Dan and I had finally turned to the same page.

  Epilogue

  I NEVER FILED CHARGES AGAINST AUNT Doobie-I mean Christopher Dubin. I knew if I did, the secret of his homosexuality might come out, and I had no desire to expose him to the social persecution-or criminal prosecution-that could result from that sort of disclosure. Yes, he had assaulted me and knocked me out-but I hadn’t really been hurt all that much. No concussion; no hematoma. And, anyway, it wasn’t as if Dubin had

  wanted to hurt me. He had just been trying to keep me from finding out his real name. He had been desperate to protect himself and his family from hatred and oppression. Where’s the crime in that?

  Willy wanted me to keep his real name a secret, too. Although he isn’t totally closeted like Dubin-Willy’s distinctive clothes and flamboyantly girlish ways have made him a gay icon in and around the Village-he still lives in fear that he’ll lose his elderly parents’ love, his extended family’s respect, and his managerial job at Brentano’s bookstore if the truth about his sexuality comes out. So, when I wrote the story about Gray’s murder for

  Daring Detective, I gave Willy a phony name. And then, when I started writing this masterpiece-i. e., the dime-store paperback novel you’re reading right now-I gave him another one. (Two aliases are better than one, I always say.)

  In my story for Daring Detective I avoided the gay issue altogether. After all, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder. And I knew all too well what Brandon Pomeroy would do with the information if he got hold of it. He would turn it into the sex scandal of the century. He would plaster the cover of the magazine with lurid headlines like GAY LOVERBOY ACTOR SLASHED TO DEATH IN JEALOUS RAGE!, or QUEER BROADWAY STAR KILLED IN BLOODBATH OF SICK DESIRES!

  And the sensational, misleading headlines would just multiply from there. All the newspapers and other crime magazines would pick up the story and run with it (I hated to think how Confidential would handle the subject!), and poor Gray Gordon would be remembered as a deranged and depraved pansy pervert instead of a nice, talented young man who’d had a brilliant acting career ahead of him.

  And I couldn’t, in good conscience, allow that to happen. (Sometimes you have to withhold the truth in order to preserve it.) So I wrote the story straight-never using the words gay or homosexual, and using pseudonyms for the people whose lives would be harmed if another reporter ever learned about the sexual inclinations of Gray Gordon and company. And by omitting all homosexual references, I was able to focus all my nouns and adjectives on the true villain of the story-the envious, greedy, vain, brutal, heterosexual murderer, Barnabas (a.k.a. Binky) Kapinsky. He was, after all, the one who deserved the bad publicity.

  Pomeroy still doesn’t know that I soft-pedaled the story. He was so happy to get my exclusive inside scoop for Daring Detective that he never pressed me for a sex angle-which was highly unusual since he always demands that every story have a sex angle, whether it’s a real one or not. I was surprised by Pomeroy’s immediate, no-questions-asked acceptance of my manuscript, until I heard through the grapevine that DD’s owner, wealthy publishing baron Oliver Rice Harrington (Pomeroy’s second cousin and benefactor), had ordered him to publish more exclusive, first-person stories in Daring Detective -or else. Which was the only reason Pomeroy gave me the assignment in the first place, of course. (I should have known it wasn’t his own idea.)

  I’ll be getting a lot more assignments from now on, though, since the issue that featured my Gray Gordon story on the cover was a total sellout. (It seems the next best thing to a sex murder is a show business murder.) Pomeroy’s even been giving me more clip stories to write now that my byline has gained some weight. (I write under the abbreviated name of P. Turner, you should know. If I put my full name on my work, I’d be laughed right out of the business.)

  Needless to say, Mike and Mario aren’t too happy about my new (i.e., higher) status on the staff. Knowing they no longer have the power to get me fired, and finding it harder and harder to make me the brunt of all their stupid jokes, they’ve been moping around the office like punished children-kids who’ve been barred from the playground and denied all access to ice cream. It’s a welcome change for Lenny and me, and-as you might expect-we’ve been enjoying their petulant frustration to the hilt.

  But my greatest new source of enjoyment is Willy. He’s become a very dear friend of mine and Abby’s, dropping in on us often, bringing us flowers, fruit, candy, champagne, and the pleasure of his ebullient company. He also brought me a beautiful new set of four crystal champagne glasses, which have-thanks to our mutual fondness for fizz and bubbles-been put to frequent use.

  Now that he’s no longer a murder suspect, the bold, unfearful side of Willy’s personality has emerged, and we’re seeing him at his wise, funny, charitable, insightful, and oh-so-lovable best. Abby is downright crazy about him. And Otto has made his deep affection for Willy known by curling up in his lap-instead of mine!-at every opportunity. At first I was jealous, but I’ve gotten used to it now.

  Even Jimmy likes him. The last time we all got together (for pizza, smoked oysters, and champagne) Jimmy insisted on reciting his new poem, and-though I can’t be one hundred percent sure, of course-I would swear it’s all about Willy:

  When the whistles blow

  And snow falls

  The sun shines still

  As we know.

  Never been rightly teached

  Love’s always up front

  Only way to go!

  Okay, maybe it isn’t about Willy. Who the hell can tell? All I know is that Jimmy laughs a lot when Willy is around, and participates more in the conversation (if you can call it that), and he even lets Willy take Otto out for an occasional walk-which is Jimmy’s way of showing that he trusts you.

  Dan trusts Willy a lot, too. Though he hasn’t spent that much time with him-Dan has to work late most nights, solving one grisly homicide right after another-he’s very glad that I have a new friend to keep me company (and out of trouble) when he’s working on a new case. I suspect Dan’s especially glad that my new friend is a

  man (better protection, don’t you know), but one he never has to worry about or be jealous of. He hasn’t said as much, but he doesn’t have to. I know the way his wary, watchful (and intermittently wicked) mind works.

  As for Dan’s relationship with me-well, that just couldn’t be finer. He introduced me to his daughter a little over a month ago, and he’s been taking us both out to Schrafft’s and to the movies every Sunday since then. And you know what that means, don’t you? It means Dan trusts me now, too. It means he believes our relationship is really going to last.

  Katy is really great, by the way-a petite blonde with a keen mind, a fabulous sense of humor, and a wealth of human understanding far beyond her fifteen years. We like each other as much as Dan predicted we would. We even like the same kind of movies. I got a bang out of her favorite, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and she got a big kick out of mine-Lady and the Tramp. (No lie. I’ve seen it three times.) I look forward to getting to know Katy better, and I know Dan’s really happy about that. I can tell by the way he keeps staring at us when we’re together, with a goofy, mile-wide grin on his face that puts Red Skelton’s cockeyed smile to shame.

  But who am I to talk? I’ve been walking around with a permanent smile on my kisser ever since that day in the police station when Dan first told me that he loved me. I’ve tried to hide it, but I can’t. I’ve done scowling exercises and eaten about a thousand lemons, but nothing works. No matter how hard I try to force my features into a frown, they pop right back into a beaming smile the instant I relax my cheek muscles. Abby says I look like a d
umbstruck fool.

  “I can’t take it anymore,” she said to me this morning over coffee, holding her hand up to shield her face. “Your freaking teeth are shining in my eyes!”

  “I’m sorry, Ab,” I said, laughing. “I just can’t help it. I’m floating on cloud nine.”

  She groaned and gazed up at the ceiling. “Oy gevalt, Paige! How many times do I have to tell you? Cloud nine is for the birds; it’s the mattress that counts!”

  I laughed again. “Thanks for the advice,” I said, “but Dan and I are sticking to the couch for now.”

  “Still waiting for the stupid wedding band?” she scoffed.

  “Well, no, not really… but I saw a pretty nice one in Macy’s the other day.”

  About the Author

  Amanda Matetsky has been an editor of many magazines in the entertainment field and a volunteer tutor and fund-raiser for Literacy Volunteers of America. Her first novel, The Perfect Body, won the NJRW Golden Leaf Award for Best First Book. Amanda lives in Middletown, New Jersey, with her husband, Harry, and their two cats, Homer and Phoebe, in a house full of old movie posters, original comic strip art, and books-lots of books. You can visit the author online at www.amandamatetsky.com.

  ***

  [1] Cheers to my husband, Harry, for writing the odd, incomprehensible poems of Jimmy Birmingham. What can I say? The beat goes on.

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