“Yeah, yeah,” I told him. “It must be hell being perfect.”
“I wouldn’t know that either.” Betty came over for a head scratch, and Chip moved his chair back to make room for her. “So what else is on there?”
“How much she’s paying you.”
“More than you, I trust.”
I flashed him the Kaminsky grin.
“What else?”
“I don’t see anything in the files that would tie it all together. I mean, we could go back to the black widow spider thing. But wouldn’t that mean that three different spiders, so to speak, killed their mates? I can’t buy that. It’s too far-fetched. I could see it happening once, but not three times.”
“So we’re back to the men.”
“If the shoe fits.”
“Men are no good,” he said. “We’re an easily corrupted gender. Take me, for example. I’ve only been helping you out for half a day, and I’ve already stolen, violated a crime scene, broken into someone else’s room and surfed their computer files, and lied to the police.”
“And your point is?”
“No point, Kaminsky. Just hoping for a big raise when my review comes up.” He stopped scratching Betty’s head and leaned toward me. “How much time do we have before the panel?” He looked toward Sam’s bedroom.
“Not long enough.”
“I’m very quick.”
“I don’t want to hear that.”
There must have been something in the air. Betty began teasing Dash, play-bowing, smiling, wiggling her cute behind. Mistaking flirtatiousness for serious intent, he went aft and climbed aboard. A split second later he was pinned against the side of the bed, his eyes looking anywhere but into Betty’s.
It was a tough time for the menfolk. Neither of the bitches in Sam’s room was in the mood for a quickie.
“It’s getting late. We better finish up and get out of here.”
“Leave it,” he told Betty. Then he turned back to me. “Print the stuff. Print everything you think we might need. We can look at it in my room after the panel.” He reached over and turned on the printer.
I began printing the seminar files, lists of who spoke where, lists of who was in the audience, files of all the speakers Sam had booked in the last two years, their phone numbers, addresses, fees, and special requirements.
Dashiell came over and dumped his big head onto my lap, stressed and depressed by his own foolishly high hopes and Betty’s clear refusal.
“Let’s get back,” I said, shutting down everything and stuffing the papers I’d printed into the pocket with the phone records. “It’s nearly show time.”
Walking down the stairs, I watched Dashiell running on ahead with Betty. Like most dogs, given a minute, he could rewrite history. His tail was wagging, and he seemed to be smiling. When I turned to look at Chip, he wasn’t, and neither was I.
“I was just thinking, if you are in danger,” I said, “it’s my fault. It was me who insisted on coming into your room, remember? You didn’t exactly hit me on the head and drag me there. So no matter what happens, for the rest of this week, there’s no way I’m going to let you out of my sight.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Rachel. I know it’s obvious we’ve been together. For one thing, you’re wearing my shirt. But even if you weren’t, Boris, Woody, Bucky, and Sam knew we were alone in my room. And no one would imagine that you would have been able to resist me.”
I opened my mouth, but he put one finger over my lips.
“That actually worked to our advantage with the cops. Since they think we were multiplying like fruit flies last night, they don’t think either of us pushed Martyn off the roof.”
“But—”
He nodded. “Exactly my point. Why would someone want to kill us for spending the night together? We’re both adults. Whose business would it be but ours?”
The dogs waited for us at each landing, bounding on ahead just before we caught up to them.
“Wait a minute,” I said, taking Chip’s arm. It was quiet below. The dogs had stopped too.
“What’s up?”
“What if it’s not business?”
“We’re back to the black widow spider? I still don’t see how that puts me in danger, Rachel. I haven’t been with anyone but you.”
“What if it’s a man, someone who’s not getting lucky, someone who’s so envious he could kill?”
“You mean Boris?”
“Or Bucky?”
“But, Rachel, how could you find out something like that, that one of them was trying to join the party, so to speak, and failing?”
“I don’t know.”
But that wasn’t true. I did know. Because given half a chance, people talk.
But if that was how I was going to find out who had gone over the edge at this symposium, someone had better start talking soon, before another of the men ended up dead.
25
SHE WAS NODDING
Our abbreviated panel sat behind a long table covered with a white cloth on the stage of the auditorium. I was on the left side of the table, with Chip to my right; then there was Cathy, her eyes still red; Tracy, her face strangely hostile; Bucky, who always had to sit in the middle of things; Beryl, in her tweed jacket and plaid woolen hat; Woody, who kept looking at Sam in the front row; Boris, looking red-faced and ready to pop; and on the far end, Audrey, who appeared as small as if she were a child sitting on a grown-up’s chair. Magic, of course, was on her lap. The other dogs were lying in front of the table on down-stays, a visible show of our consummate skills. In fact, Sasha was asleep and snoring, the best testimony on earth to his master’s talent. It meant the dog understood he wasn’t going anywhere without a word from Boris, so there was no compelling reason to stay awake.
I was as tired as he was, but unlike Sasha, I had work to do. Having been to panels before and knowing as well as Bucky did that the best-known trainers would be asked most of the questions, I had the printouts from Sam’s computer and the phone records, all tucked inside a copy of Modern Maturity I’d pilfered off the lap of an old geezer who was asleep on one of the chairs in the lobby. I held it on my lap so that I could study the material while the panel went on. I told Chip to poke me if I missed my name or on those occasions where we were all expected to give an opinion on the same topic. Or if I just needed to look up and smile.
I opened the magazine and began to study the lists in earnest, first the list of people in this audience, checking all the other participant lists for the last two years to see if any name popped up in a telling way. But while there were people in attendance here who had been to a Bucky talk or a Martyn weekend symposium, there was no name that appeared in the audience of all three deceased colleagues. This was not to say that perusing the lists wasn’t worthy of my attention. Not at all.
Of note, it seemed to me, was that while Bucky was the most demanding of the speakers—spelling out the publicity he had to have, demanding first-class travel and lodging, requiring limos and escorts instead of taking cabs, even submitting his own introduction, which was three pages long, single-spaced—his draw, and consequently his fee, had gone not up but down over the last two years. Despite all the self-inflation, Bucky’s popularity was slipping. And Bucky, I’d guess, was not a man to take that lightly.
I remembered that quite a few years back Bucky had had a nice gig as a steady guest on some daytime TV show, and Rick Shelbert had wheedled his way in there with some little tap dance about what he could do, causing Bucky to get fired and Rick—Dr. Rick, as they called him on the show—to get the job.
Had he had a bone to pick with Alan and Martyn as well? Where was he when I was sleeping in the bathtub?
But what was I thinking here? Sure, someone could have used a passkey and gotten into Alan’s room, surprised him as he was getting out of the tub and knocked the radio, shelf and all, into the bath with him. But what about Rick? He’d died right in front of us. He’d choked on breakfast. And it was Chip and Martyn who ha
d worked on him and failed to save him, not Bucky. Or Boris.
This was great. The more I learned, the less I knew.
I’d told Chip that things weren’t what they seemed to be. So fine. What were they?
What if Rick hadn’t choked? Was there something that could have made it seem he was choking? Some drug the killer could have slipped into his morning juice? And what a clever scheme that would be. Wouldn’t choking be the obvious thing for us to think, watching a man start to cough, turn pale, and be unable to breathe in the middle of a meal?
Then there was Martyn. Was he competition for Bucky?
I looked up his seminars. He was pulling twice to three times the crowd Bucky pulled in. As Bucky’s popularity went down, Martyn’s had ascended. Sure, Bucky got the media to show up. But when it came to black-and-white figures, he wasn’t doing as hot as he’d like everyone to believe.
I felt a jab in my side and looked up.
Audrey was speaking. “Yes, it was more difficult for a woman to get started in dog training years ago, but I don’t think that’s as true today.”
“She wants you all to answer,” Chip whispered, his hand covering his mike. “The good old macho days of yesteryear versus politically correct today.”
“I may barf,” I whispered.
There was a ripple of movement in the audience, then laughter. Everyone was looking at me. That’s when I realized I hadn’t covered my microphone.
“That’s what I get for eating before a panel discussion,” I told them. “Food’s not a great idea when you’re nervous.” I smiled ingratiatingly at the sea of faces, still intensely focused on me. “Well, as long as I have your attention,” I told them, “I don’t pay attention to the sort of thing you’re talking about.”
The woman who’d asked the question was standing, taking notes at a furious pace. She was tiny, even smaller than Audrey, and dressed in pale violet, including the scarf that held her ponytail.
“I figure out what it is I want to do with my life and then go out and do the absolute best job I can. You can’t ask more of anyone, male or female, can you?” I wondered if I should slow down so that she could record me verbatim, but I’m much too much of a New Yorker. I couldn’t do it. “I think by doing that,” I continued, “you can keep your choices open. Even in male-dominated professions, women have a good chance of succeeding, if they believe in themselves and don’t listen to what other people say.”
“But what about the men?”
“What about them?”
“They don’t take women trainers seriously.”
“So what? Take yourself seriously. No one else can prevent you from doing that. And the way someone else views you can’t hold you back or make you fail. Only you can do that. Or not do that.”
I heard Bucky exhale loudly. He had little patience for anyone else holding the floor.
“What Bucky is probably thinking is that you shouldn’t pay so much attention to what other people are doing. Or thinking.” I smiled down the table at Bucky. “That’s one of the reasons why he’s so successful. He uses his energy productively rather than worrying about what you or I are up to. There’s a wonderful lesson there.”
With Beryl’s voice as a backdrop, I turned my attention back to the papers on my lap. And perhaps since it was Beryl speaking, I turned to the phone records from her room. She’d only made a couple of calls, both to the same number, probably telling her grandchild about Cecilia’s antics. It was a 718 area code. I circled the number to remind me to check it out later.
Tracy was next to speak. I looked up as she began to answer.
“I disagree. Things are no better today.” She looked even angrier now than she had when we all sat down to begin the panel. “This has always been a male-dominated profession, and as far as I can see, it still is. I’m reminded of the Ginger Rogers quote. You know, when she said she did everything that Fred did, but backwards and in high heels.”
She waited for her laugh, but it didn’t come. No one wanted to hear that even today women weren’t getting an even break in the profession they practiced or, in most cases, longed to practice. I saw a few of the women looking back toward me, perhaps thinking that I would argue Tracy’s point. But that wasn’t the way the panel worked. Each of us, even Tracy, was entitled to her own opinion, and the fact that I disagreed not only with the content of it but with her negative attitude was beside the point.
A young man in the audience got up to ask a question. It was the brittle young man with the flat-coat that Beryl had worked with. He stood silently for a while, holding our attention without making good use of it.
“In my area,” he said, spacing his words carefully, the way some children separate the food on their plates so that nothing touches anything else, “there are two women trainers. And as far as I can see, they’re getting more business than I am. Which is why I came here,” he added. “To improve my skills in the hope that it would improve my business. Nevertheless, I don’t see evidence of what Ms. Nevins is saying. If I recall correctly, at least half the books and tapes in my home library are by women. Of course my favorite,” he said, turning toward Beryl, “is Ms. Potter’s series, from the TV show she did in Britain. It’s just brilliant.”
Tracy’s dark look became even darker, her eyes hooded, her fingers tearing nervously at her cuticles. I turned to the phone bill from her room; nothing was logged there, but of course, room-to-room calls wouldn’t be. So all I could do was wonder what Tracy Nevins was doing while nearly everyone else was playing musical beds. Had she seen what was going on? Had she tried to cozy up to Alan or Rick or Martyn and been rejected? Maybe it wasn’t an unlucky man but a woman scorned.
I pulled out the seminar lists and looked for Tracy’s name, first as a speaker. Sam had booked her only twice before, and she’d had a modest draw both times. She’d never done a video or a book. It was usually the people who did who pulled the biggest crowds. I wondered if she’d tried. There were several local trainers I knew of who, upon failing to get their method published, had self-published pamphlets. I wondered if there was a Gospel According to Tracy, and if the bitterness written across her face had to do with the words she’d just spoken and the envy she felt toward the successful men in the field. Again the same question: business or pleasure?
I began to flip through the names of attendees at the seminars given by the three speakers who had died this week. And there Tracy’s name showed up more often. She’d attended three of Martyn’s talks, all on the East Coast, four of Rick’s, and two of Alan’s, which, since she was a foodie, should have surprised me. But it didn’t. I would never understand it, but for years I’d seen people embracing disparate methods as if they could take a little of this and a little of that and make something new and wonderful, something that made sense and would work, when if they had given the least little bit of thought, it should have been clear that it was an impossible combination. Still, there was Tracy’s name, and for one talk, one of Rick’s, she had traveled all the way to Phoenix. Fancy that.
“Being successful requires determination, good scholarship, and lots and lots of hard work, no matter your gender. There are no shortcuts, my dears, no magic answers. Even if your mum’s in the business, you still have to make it on your own, don’t you?”
Something was bothering me, one of those things you almost remember but not quite, but I had to let it go. Cathy was talking, and I wanted to hear what she had to say.
“Beryl’s right,” Cathy said. “Personally, I’ve found nothing but acceptance in this profession. I’m a bit surprised by what I’m hearing today. From the very first, I’ve met people who were generous, helpful, and willing to share information.”
If Cathy had wanted our attention, she’d just earned it. Panelists and audience alike, we were all staring, wondering on which planet Cathy had started out as a dog trainer, because wherever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t Earth.
“I think women have not only found a comfortable niche in dog trainin
g, we’ve had a beneficial effect on methodology. We’re not as rough as the men. Well, as the men used to be,” she said, showing off the contrast between her California tan and her pearly white smile.
As Cathy elaborated, once again her voice growing stronger as she concentrated on work, I looked past her, back at Tracy. She didn’t seem to be paying attention to Cathy. Still, she was nodding, her eyes checking out the molding in one of the far corners of the room as her head bobbed up and down, up and down, as if she might be approving not of what the rest of us were hearing but of some private thought or plan, something, perhaps, of her own making.
Maybe I’d made a mistake with the poker game. Maybe in order to keep the men safe, I should have organized a quilting bee.
26
MY MOTHER WOULD HAVE BEEN PROUD
“There’s got to be a connection we’re missing between the killer and the victims,” I whispered to Chip after the panel, this time remembering to shut off my microphone. “There must be something that would tie all this together, that would explain it.”
“But how do you get to it, from the victims’ lives? We can’t get to it from the killer’s life. We don’t know who the killer is.”
I got up to go.
“Where to now?”
“I have to go upstairs for a minute. I want to put on something of my own. This was careless of me,” I said, pulling on the front of the shirt he’d given me to put on after my bath. “I feel as if I’m waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
We walked up to three, heading down the hall toward my room. But I stopped before I got there, staring at the door to 303.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Speak up, Rachel, don’t be shy. What do you need from me this time? A felony? Grand theft auto? B and E?”
“Oh, no way. I have a passkey. But that’s not it. I’m just trying to recall something from a long time ago. But I need help. How much time is there before dinner?”
He looked at his watch. “An hour and a half.”
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