Doing our best not to receive a suspicious-car-parked-outside-my-house rating from the neighbors, we decided it best not to run the engine. Meaning no AC. So, the Camry’s interior became a steam room. In dire need of oxygen, we opened the windows and were joined by several squadrons of the hungriest mosquitoes east of the Hudson. The ravenous little buggers zinged in and out of our ears and covered our arms and legs with bites. It made focusing our attention on the tiny two and a half inch screen all the more agonizing.
I say more agonizing because staring at the image of a vacant room with its lights out for over an hour gave new meaning to the word torture. However, the Teddy Cam did pick up the lonely sound of a distant toilet flushing somewhere down the hall. By two a.m. things on Mars were still pretty dead. We decided it would be more productive to go back to my aunt’s house and view the DVD Benita had found in Capricia’s office.
Trying not to awaken Lana, we crept quietly into her house and used the DVD player on the first floor. I curled up in one of the deep pink overstuffed chairs, grateful that Benita was manning the controls. She sat on the rug, slipped the disc labeled “meeting with Conrad S” into the player and clicked the play button.
Now for the moment we’d been waiting for. Capricia and Professor Schumacher talking strategies behind closed doors. With all due respect to my aunt’s opinion, I was not convinced of Capricia’s innocence. Especially after Raffy told us the professor had the mysterious tablet among the artifacts he’d stolen from the university dig before Gwen made off with it.
I wanted to close my eyes, shut it all out. Was I ready for this? Could I bear to hear them talk about murdering my cherished friend? I forced myself to watch.
“Whoa,” Benita said. “New release.” The on-screen display told us the shoot took place only three days ago.
An odd beginning. We could barely see anything due to a large pale formation that seemed to blot out almost the entire screen. Was this a meeting or a total eclipse? There was a lot fumbling around.
A man’s voice said, “There, the camera is set. How about we get started.”
Suddenly the object began moving away. Oh no. Could it be? Did I recognize the hairy, sagging buttocks of a man’s bare ass? There he stood, the leading authority on ancient elixirs, naked, with his beard, bald pate, potbelly and enough body hair to make a furrier yearn. Guess this was just one of the fringe benefits of sleuth work.
Benita’s face lit up. “It’s him, all right. It’s Schumacher.”
Next Capricia appeared on the screen, whip in hand. She wore black undies and garter belt. “You’ve been a very, very naughty little boy, Professor. I think you need a spanking. Get over here.”
Benita snorted. “Some ‘meeting.’ Do we really have to watch this?”
“You’re the one who said she’d be talking about Gwen in private. They might say something we could use to implicate them with the police.”
“Can’t argue.” Benita made a face and turned back to the screen. “Man, could he use to do some ab work. And he needs a penis enlargement pump in a hurry.”
“Now, Benita, he might not be fully aroused. Give the man a chance.”
“You give him a chance,” she said. “You’re the one who was flirting with him at the funeral.”
“I was not. I was conducting research. Remember, Gwen dated the guy.”
“Ugh. You think they got into this stuff?”
“How should I know? Don’t be so judgmental, Binnie.” I shifted closer to the screen. “Shhh. They’re talking again.”
Capricia said, “Bend over the bed. Now!”
The newly appointed wizard hired to revamp her dull persona, deficient sex appeal and failed movie career did as he was told. Capricia whacked Schumacher’s behind with her little black whip. Slaps and moans.
“Harder,” the professor cried. “Oooowaaah. Yes!! I’ve been sooo bad.”
Another taste of Capricia’s whip. “Who am I?”
“You’re the nasty big mama,” Schumacher said in a voice that sounded positively pathetic.
Benita sat back on her heels. “This dude has problems. What’s your take, Doc?”
“The usual subservient masochism shit. Pretty mild compared to some I’ve worked with. And not very creative. No wonder Capricia needs a good director.”
Arms pulled the professor out of the frame. A glimpse of entwined legs on the bed. Then a loud clump. Heavy breathing and moaning. “I think they’re doing it on the floor.”
Benita snickered. “Which one do you think is making that oinking sound?”
“Hard to tell.”
“Think we can fast-forward?”
“What if they say something important?”
We took turns manning the show. I went to the bathroom and came back. Still going. Benita went to the kitchen for some apple juice. I fed Lana’s goldfish. Benita did her yoga stretches.
I yawned. “Come on, already. Do you think Gwen gave him some of the perfume?”
“Nope. Those scrawny ones always have stamina.”
They finally finished. Then came the murmurs from the bed.
“Up the volume, “ I said.
“So, Saturday’s the big day,” Capricia said, lying on her side, outstretched across the bed.
Benita and I looked at each other. Our jaws dropped simultaneously.
The professor propped himself against the bed’s headboard. “That’s right,”
“And?”
“I’m confident,” he replied. “The boys and I have it all under control. We’re meeting up this Friday around seven thirty at our usual place. Talk strategy.”
“At Seventh Ave and 126th Street? You really feel safe up there?”
“You kidding? You should see the place. In fact, I think you should come and join us.”
“Nah, I’ll pass. You just want to show me off to those animals.”
Gasp. “Are you getting this, Binnie?”
“Every word.”
Capricia laughed. “Based on the way you look, I never would picture you as the type of man who’d be into this sort of thing.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at the sort of things I’ve gotten into in my day.”
Just as I got up and grabbed a notepad and pen from Lana’s bookshelf, the professor walked toward the camera and shut it off.
“Want me to run that part again?” Benita asked.
“Nope. I’ve got it down. 126th and Seventh. Friday at seven thirty. Great work, Bin, finding that in her office.”
Benita ejected the DVD. “Except there was no mention of Gwen or anything about the murder.”
“So, we’ve still got nothing concrete on record for the police.”
She stood up and stretched. “Let’s see what we pick up on her tomorrow with my cam receiver. And if we still haven’t got enough for the police by Friday, we have to make it to that meeting at 126th Street.”
“Without ‘the boys’ seeing us there.”
“Meaning we’ll have to resort to more high-tech measures.”
“Such as?”
“You’ll see.”
It was 3:10 and we were both wiped. I tried not to think of what we would face on Saturday if all our efforts turned up nothing. As they had so far. Between my guilt over what happened to Tim and his grim predictions, I was duly rattled.
We headed upstairs to the bedroom where Benita and I always slept when we visited Lana. At night the stars glistened through the row of skylight windows in the ceiling of the upstairs bedroom. Without the city’s glare I had a real view of the heavens. To the east I could see a tiny pulsating glow on the distant horizon. Montauk Lighthouse. The room was simply furnished with two single beds, a cherry wood wardrobe, a night table and a comfy rocker. The walls and dense pile carpet were white. Tranquil.
And right now I needed all the tranquility I could get.
TWENTY
Thursday. Day six. No rest for the hunter or the hunted. And right now we felt like both. Bright and early the next
morning Benita and I were back on the case, dressed in comfy shorts and tees, sitting in our red Camry parked across the street from Capricia’s house. I’d brought along a cherry yogurt and walnuts. Benita had her protein bars. Together we split a thermos of coffee. Such is breakfast when doing surveillance.
After watching a day in the life of Capricia’s office furniture for a couple hours, we finally got some action. Unfortunately it was only the housekeeper. Nothing like the endless drone of a vacuum cleaner.
Benita set down the receiver in disgust. “Is this the best Teddy could come up with?”
“He is a stuffed animal, Binnie. Not to be confused with James Bond.”
She swigged down some coffee from the thermos. “Guess we’ve got the whole day for Teddy Cam surveillance, since we aren’t going to the Circle of the Sacred Yoni retreat until dark. Should we bother going there, after what we heard on the DVD last night?”
“Of course we should go. For one thing, we’re not certain it’s Capricia and Schumacher.”
“I am. Too many things line up. But what do we have on Lady Viv? Raffy’s paranoia.”
“You’re just biased because Raffy scored a takedown on you.”
“She caught me off guard.”
“Look,” I said. “Lady Viv got extremely chummy with Gwen while she was developing the perfume. Add to the equation her compulsive need to possess rare goddess artifacts. That tends to get those little red lights flashing inside my head. As if an ancient tablet with the goddess Inanna’s special aphrodisiac perfume isn’t something Lady Viv would go nuts for. It’s small wonder she’s been playing up to Raffy, picking Raffy’s brain on the subject of Gwen’s most cherished archeological finds.” I shrugged. “Plus, she’s chubby and rich. And you know how upper class people like horrible nicknames. Like Chub Dubs.”
“Yeah, well, maybe,” she begrudgingly agreed.
“You also have to go because I need you to get through the gate wearing the yoni bracelet, so that I can sneak out of the car in the dark and into the garden.”
“You’re actually going to try finding Gwen’s tablet in their garden?”
“I think it’s worth a shot.” I folded my arm across my chest. “I mean, it’s only our lives that are on the line. And I really think it’s there. I have a distinct memory of Gwen talking about the garden she made for the retreat, saying she planted pink coralbells because the hummingbirds love them.” I quoted her poem. “ ‘Garden of bells amid beech and oak, my heart sleeps here.’ What else could that possibly mean?”
“So, you’re going to look for the coralbells and dig in that spot?”
“Right. And since you’ve got to get me in there and wait for me, you might as well take the recorder in your bag and see what you can get on Lady Viv.”
“Will do.”
Benita and I sat for three tedious hours in a parked car with a temperature humidity index mean enough to dehydrate SpongeBob. We didn’t dare run the motor for the AC, and the open windows only let in more hot air. Time to break into our water supply. I went for the liter bottle of Evian in the backseat. We passed it back and forth.
“After all this coffee and now the water,” I said, taking a drink, “we won’t last here much longer before we have to go find a bathroom. Maybe we should—”
Suddenly Capricia’s voice came on, sounding far away. Judging by her words she was barking out the usual do this, do that crap to her housekeeper. Benita and I zeroed in on the little screen. We watched her walk into the room and step directly in front of the camera. “Oh, yeah. One more thing. Get rid of this chintzy piece of shit.”
Was she talking about our fruit basket?
Next came a string of blurred images. Walls. Glimpses of furniture. And what looked like it might be the housekeeper’s arm. The Teddy Cam was in motion.
“That ungrateful bitch,” Benita said.
The picture bounced about twelve times. “Teddy’s headed downstairs.”
Lots of white and green surfaces. “That’s the kitchen.”
The sound of a door, dark shadows, feet scraping on cement. Topsy-turvy shot of walls, ceiling, a thunk, a loud clank and a black screen.
Benita gritted her teeth. “She threw Teddy in the garbage can!”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I said. “We are not going trash picking. Just consider Teddy died in the line of duty.”
Benita handed me the receiver, turned the ignition and burned rubber down the road. “Some people got no respect.”
***
When we returned to Lana’s house my aunt was out back doing nude yoga on the deck. Which meant she’d finished her nude meditation, and would follow with some nude laps in the pool. Oh, for a swim. It must have been ninety-plus inside that car. The water was very inviting, and we felt like we’d stepped out of a roaster.
Great minds thinking alike, Benita trotted upstairs and returned in her cobalt blue bikini. “Come on, sweetie. We need some serious chilling.”
Minutes later, I was climbing down the ladder to the deep end in my leopard print string bikini. (Yes, leopard print; don’t ask me why I ever bought it.)
After the three of us splashed and floated and talked a while, Lana and Binnie went inside for lunch. Tonight’s covert venture in the garden had my stomach queasy, so I sat in a lounge chair and made my daily check-up call to my mother.
Amazingly, Mom found something to cheer herself up for a change. In her search for a new stool softener, she discovered the joys of raisin bran cereal. She described it as being “very effective.” Considering my fear that she’d be calling to say a seedy lumberjack was stalking her, this was great news.
Last night I never got around to checking the voicemail on my business phone. No biggie. My clients all knew they could call my cell for an emergency. I punched in the numbers for my phone in DUMBO hoping Curtis hadn’t left any happy little memos for me. I’d actually gotten through a whole day without a call from him.
The first message was from the little man with the big stompers, Walsh Plunkett. I expected he’d try again. His encore came in last night at 7:15, not long after he hung up on me.
Dr. Oz, please forgive my rude comment regarding my penis. Let’s start anew. Why don’t you and I get together tonight at my apartment? I’ve got a lovely view of Central Park. Please call me. You’ve got my number.
I certainly do. At least he took the hint not to use the phone I reserve for my clients.
The second message came in at eleven p.m. Also from Walsh.
Dr. Oz, please call me back. I do want an appointment. I need to talk with you.
Now I felt bad. The poor man was crying out for help. He had no way of knowing I wasn’t at home, and after that scolding I gave him about using my cell he had no way to reach me. Guilt city. I scrolled call history and returned his call immediately.
“Walsh Plunkett here.”
“Mr. Plunkett, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to get your message last night. I’m out in East Hampton. If you—”
“I could come out and meet you there tonight.”
What? Oh, geez. “No, I can’t do that. Something very important has come up, and
I can’t make myself available to meet with you or anyone until next week. However, I could do a phone session with you right this moment if it’s urgent.”
“No, I don’t think that will suffice. I’ll just have to wait until your hands are free before scheduling an appointment. Good Day.”
An odd little man.
I went into the kitchen and nibbled on Lana’s bean salad. Benita had gone upstairs to change. The doorbell rang.
“Will you get that, Saylor?” my aunt said. “I’m heading to the den for a little siesta.”
I scampered to the front door and opened it.
“Alan. What a pleasant surprise.” And it was. His handsome face smiled back at me on the other side of the screen door. Then I realized I was wearing very little, and he was getting a thorough look at my body. Those old munchkin fears surfac
ed. I fidgeted, trying to remember how the girl mags advise you to stand to make your thighs appear thinner.
“Can I come in?”
“Oh, of course.” I pushed open the screen door.
“I just had to see you. There are some things I need to say.” He handed me a bouquet of multicolored gerbera daisies.
“Thank-you. They’re beautiful. Would you like some iced tea?”
He nodded and brushed a curl away from his eyes, looking adorably shy and sexy in his white tennis shorts, pale green collared polo and loafers. Too bad I couldn’t fully enjoy it. Between my forty-eight hour deadline and his possible connection with Capricia, this was hardly the time for fooling around with him.
Alan followed me to the kitchen. I put the flowers in water, but before I poured the iced tea he touched my arm. “Let’s go grab some salt air.”
We stepped out the back door and ambled down a narrow boardwalk path to a pair of Lana’s beach chairs that faced the ocean. We each took a seat and watched the distant surf for a moment. I wondered how much of yesterday’s perfume induced antics he remembered.
Alan reached for my hand. “I don’t know what came over me last night. All I had was two drinks. But it was like this amazing dream. And seeing you now…it’s as if I’m waking up from it, and there you are.”
“Yup. Here I am.” From princess back to frog. The way it is. Thanks to Gwen, I at least had a taste of what it’s like to be a Super Vixen. For a big forty minutes.
He leaned back in his chair and gazed at me. “I’ll be candid. With all my years in the film business I’ve had one tumultuous affair after the next with the most gorgeous women in the world. When I met you last Friday it seemed a refreshing change.”
Gee, thanks.
He continued with a touch of strain in his voice. “The spotlight has its shackles. I’m tired of hearing egocentric actresses talk about themselves. With you I’ve finally met a person who lets me do most of the talking.”
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