Face Value

by Lia Matera

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Perhaps without meaning to, Arabella swung the gun toward Margaret. “Don’t get flippy on me, Margaret. You don’t own people, you spend time with them.”

  Margaret, who’d been reaching for a roll of silver cloth tape, stopped. She turned, vexation twisting her lips. “That’s very naive. That’s very self-serving.”

  I struggled to understand their argument, to exploit it. Were they talking about promiscuity? Jealousy?

  “You were there for Arabella on her terms,” I offered. I hoped I’d guessed right. I hoped they were talking about Arabella’s relationship with her coworkers.

  It felt a little sick pandering to Margaret’s resentment. Maybe because I’d spent the last year accepting my lover’s terms.

  “Laura.” Sandy’s voice was vibrant with anger. Tied helplessly to a chair, he was the most vulnerable. He had the most to lose in my gamble.

  But he didn’t know Mike Hover was in the house. He didn’t know that by now—surely—Hover had heard the discussion and realized he must call the police. In the meantime, the more engaged Margaret remained, the less likely she’d tape me and Gretchen to chairs.

  And, my claustrophobia aside, it might become essential to retain my freedom of movement. Who knew what might happen before help arrived?

  “That’s right,” Margaret said. Her words were thick with emotion, almost slurred. “I did it your way because I wanted to grow. I wanted to love you exactly as you are.” She reached a shaky hand toward Arabella.

  Arabella began to weep. “What did you do to my friends?”

  Margaret looked like she’d been slapped. “Friends? They beat you up! Those women had you beaten up!”

  I felt my flesh chill. Arabella’s coworkers had done that to her? Why?

  “Shut up! Shut up!” She tried to keep sobs from racking her bruised body.

  “You told me all the time how they were your buddies, and you fuck your buddies for a living, and that’s so cool and nineties and sex-positive and all that. And I have to pretend there’s this bogus line: sex on one side and emotions on the other. I’ve got to do all this work to feel okay about these supposed buddies of yours—who could be anyone that gets hired off the street, with herpes or AIDS or whatever. And I’m supposed to be turned on by you putting your fingers and your tongue in them, just like one of those wives in the porn movies or the slicks. I’m supposed to buy into not only what turns on the creeps that go to the shows, but all this On Our Backs sex-positive, political-in-quotes stuff that doesn’t look any different from the Playboy mansion bullshit.” Margaret was red-faced, waving pleading hands at Arabella. “You never let me tell you how hard it was for me. You always made me pretend that it wasn’t. But it was.”

  Arabella had swallowed her sobs. She stood rigid, gun closer to her body, wavering a bit in its aim. “It’s my job. And I like it. It’s my life. And you knew that going in.”

  Damn. Had I hallucinated Brother Mike’s crossing the street toward the house? Had I imagined the creak of oiled boards in the hall?

  Where was he? Where were the police he should have called by now?

  In a strangled voice, Margaret concluded, “I knew what? That your fuck buddies, your so-called friends, were going to hire someone to beat you up? And why? Just for giving Brother Mike your home movies.”

  Her home movies? Movies of herself and her “buddies”? Having sex? Practicing their acts?

  I supposed Brother Mike rejoiced to have the footage. He could only reimage film to which he held the copyright. He could only use images he’d captured himself or which had been given to him for his use.

  But the women at The Back Door might not have appreciated having videos of them made available to him. He’d used them for financial gain, to improve his devotees’ bodies by “morphing” them with more commercially acceptable ones. And those women made a living selling their images. Arabella had given away the thing they sold. She’d told them her home videos were for her personal scrapbook, and then she’d turned them over to her guru.

  They must have noticed parts of themselves in his newly released videos.

  “Your coworkers hired the men to beat you up.” I tried to make my tone sympathetic, soothing. “That must have really hurt you.”

  Arabella shook her head. Tight-lipped and tear-streaked, she seemed determined to look tough. “He wasn’t using the films the way they thought. Sure, he was making money, but he wasn’t doing it for himself. He wasn’t doing it to get rich off our bodies. The money was going for something totally outside the industry. He was buying the future.”

  “How brutal of them. To have you physically hurt.” She might as well have had a mean pimp.

  “They thought it would be like this token thing, this little lesson they’d teach me. Like they were being so alternative: not getting a lawyer or going to the cops or creating a fuss or whatever. Like they were just making a point. They knew I’d find out—all I had to do was pay the guys who beat me up. That’s all I had to do. It took me about one hour to find them and buy the information. Because I was supposed to find out. That was the whole point.” Her voice was flat with fury. “Except everybody knows how easy I bruise. And that means time off work. And they really hurt me. Maybe they got carried away, like the women said. But even so, it wasn’t fair. Because Mike’s not in the industry. The videos were for something else. So I fucking hit them back. They deserved it.”

  Their faces had been taped over. And so I had seen only blank silver masks. I hadn’t seen anything to reveal the women had been hit.

  Except for the trickle of blood on one of their necks. I had noticed that, certainly. But in my horror, I hadn’t considered what it might mean.

  “You took Margaret to the theater so you’d have an assistant, someone to tape the women up for you.”

  I heard Sandy groan. Never upset a person with a gun; that must be what he was thinking. But he hadn’t found the dead women. His dreams wouldn’t be haunted by the tableau, made grislier now that I knew more facts.

  Arabella had held the gun while Margaret taped the women. She’d handed the gun to Margaret while she hit them, while she squared things. Perhaps she and Margaret had arrived in separate cars, and she’d left first, going back to the hospital as her pain increased. Or maybe Margaret had driven Arabella there, returning afterward. One way or the other, Margaret had ended up alone in the theater with the six girded women.

  And, sick with frustration and jealousy, she had covered the lovely faces of her rivals.

  She’d told me some of this on the phone that night. She’d told me Arabella had called her. Why had she called? Margaret had tearfully asked.

  I hadn’t reached the theater soon enough to keep Margaret from acting on her pain. But, unlike her mother, she hadn’t killed herself. She’d killed the other woman. All six of them.

  And the man who’d kicked the door in must have scared her, must have panicked her as she was leaving the theater. In all likelihood, the gun Arabella held now was the one she’d left with Margaret that night.

  In all likelihood, it was the weapon Margaret had used to kill the unlucky boyfriend.

  “I trusted you.” Arabella spoke through clenched teeth. Her face was a study in restraint. “I was so upset. So grateful to you for helping.”

  “My baby,” Margaret said fondly. “You needed to go get looked after. I made you go back to the hospital. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “You told me you were going to undo them. But you taped their faces up.” Arabella’s tone said, please contradict me. “Didn’t you know that would suffocate them?”

  God, I wished Brother Mike would do something. I wished the cops would come soon.

  “When my mother went for her walk, she left me in the car. Did you know that?” Margaret’s face was turned sideways, like a bird’s. “I got heatstroke waiting for her to come
back. I almost died from it.”

  I noticed Gretchen edging closer to Arabella. Arabella didn’t seem to notice, her attention fully on Margaret.

  “But she didn’t mean it,” Margaret continued. “It didn’t have anything to do with me. It was about something else.”

  In taping the faces, Margaret had tried to cover the source of her pain. At least, I hoped that was how her lawyer would paint it to the jury.

  I repeated what I’d said to her earlier. “I can help you, Margaret. We can get you out of this.”

  “You made my life hell with your fucking whimpering jealousy.” The sudden hatred in Arabella’s voice stunned me. “Now you’ve killed my friends.”

  “They beat you up,” Margaret wailed. “My lovey.”

  “I took care of that, Margaret. I got back at them. I’d have been fine with going right back to work with them. And they’d have been fine with it, too. They understood me.”

  Suddenly, as Gretchen surged forward to stop it, the situation spun out of control.

  Gretchen lunged for Arabella’s arm. And Arabella shifted, took aim, and shot Margaret dead.

  Right in front of me. In a way, because of me. In a way I might never come to terms with, because of me.

  An instant after the shot was fired, Gretchen was on top of Arabella.

  Arabella, bruised and crazy with her sudden knowledge, was no match for Gretchen. She let go of the gun. She lay there without fighting, without squirming.

  Sandy bounced his chair closer and kicked the gun across the room.

  I just stood there, looking at Margaret, collapsed at my feet, half her face a pulp of shattered tissue and bone, her eyes open and cold as marbles, pieces of blown-back tissue stuck to the pupils.

  I stood there, listening to Sandy shout, “You motherfucker. You stupid heartless egotistical motherfucker.”

  It took me a few seconds to make sense of the words. And then they lanced me. Because they were—and they weren’t—true.

  I had caused this. I couldn’t deny it.

  But I hadn’t meant to. I’d been stalling. I hadn’t wanted to end up bound like those women. I’d been buying time. That’s all. Never meaning to cause this.

  I looked at him. My pain was all the more acute because I knew, after years of putting the knowledge aside because it didn’t fit my life and the pattern of my mistakes, that I loved him. Sandy was my one real friend.

  He’d called me an egotistical motherfucker. And he was right. And wrong, too.

  I looked at him, and found he wasn’t looking at me.

  I looked at him, his nostrils flared with fury, madly bouncing his chair toward the door, and found him staring into the corridor, staring at a spot he could see but I couldn’t.

  When he bounced close enough to the door, he repeated, “You motherfucker!” and he kicked it.

  It swung open. Brother Mike stood there, a video camera in his hand.

  I had stalled, waiting for Mike Hover to call the police. Waiting for him to come in and soothe his devotees. To change the situation. To fix things somehow.

  Instead, he’d heard my words and seen an opportunity. He’d gone to his room and gotten his video camera.

  He’d collected more images for his computer experiments. Exciting images, certainly.

  He’d be able to reimage a murder now. He could splice in naked women, color in auras, make holographic history, perhaps. Without fear of copyright infringement.

  He stood in the corridor, camera hanging from his limp arm. He stared at Sandy and shook his head, backing away from the bucking chair and the flood of enraged curses.

  “I’d have come in in a minute,” he swore. “I’d have come in and helped in just a minute.”

  I looked again at Margaret, at the horrible pulp she’d become. I looked at Gretchen, cradling Arabella to comfort her. Arabella was keening, curled into a fetal position.

  She’d tried to get revenge on her “friends,” and things had gone hideously and fatally awry. In great stress—stress I’d fueled—she’d killed her lover. And I supposed she was realizing now that eight people were dead. That her life was changed forever.

  Perhaps Brother Mike, psychically tuned to our “energies,” had felt it coming.

  But he’d chosen to delay, to let us play chicken. He’d chosen his goal—his light show of technological progress—over the immediate, perilous reality of the situation.

  He’d used his devotees again. Their images—their contribution to technology’s future—had been more important to him than anything else. Again.

  Arabella had been right about that.

  In a time of painful need, she’d come here to find her guru. To do to him what she’d done to her coworkers? Or to receive comfort and absolution from him?

  Sandy shouted at me to cut him free. His chair cracked fiercely against the doorframe. But his frenzy was too ungoverned to get him through, to get him into the corridor to do whatever it was he wanted to do to Brother Mike.

  I knelt beside Margaret, looking up at Michael Hover. His eyes met mine.

  He said, “I almost had enough. It can make you blind, going for that last little bit.”

  I knew, without flattering myself that it was a premonition, that no jury would understand. No jury would fathom his lust to own images, his belief that changing them would catapult us into an epoch of brilliant knowledge.

  A jury would see a man who’d allowed his own devotees—people he could easily sway, easily save—to smolder into explosion.

  A jury would see other gurus, men who’d cavalierly stripped the wealth and sense and “natural” sexual modesty from their followers. They would see Jim Jones and Rajneesh.

  And, in a way, they’d be right.

  I listened to Sandy’s stream of invective, his demands that I unbind him so that he could act out his rage. I listened to Gretchen, whimpering as she held Arabella; Gretchen, so miserable with her deadening career she’d reached out for spiritual stimulation.

  Brother Mike had used her, yes. But that had been her decision; she’d wanted to believe. Like the women at The Back Door, she’d selected her perspective. And I, with my history of bad choices, who was I to judge?

  “I wanted to help you, Margaret,” I heard myself whisper. “Truly.”

  Still looking at Michael Hover, I commanded, “Don’t say anything else. You need a criminal lawyer.” Over Sandy’s infuriated cry, I added, “You, too, Arabella, please. Don’t say anything. Wait for your lawyer.”

  Perhaps Sandy could justify his wrath: he’d embraced unequivocal values his whole life. He’d been able to dislike Hal, to dismiss Ted McGuin, as if reality weren’t layered, as if people weren’t complicated. But in a way, I’d killed Margaret, and in a way I hadn’t.

  Who the hell was I to judge anybody?

  I’d call the police. I’d keep warning Mike Hover and Arabella de Janeiro to remain silent. Just as I’d remain silent about having discovered those seven dead—and still, to my shame, anonymous—people.

  And I would wait a little longer to unbind Sandy.

  Maybe in a while he’d understand. Maybe in a while he’d forgive me. For not untying him sooner, and for my complicity.

  I spoke again to Margaret’s lifeless half a face. “I’m so sorry. I thought it would go differently. I thought someone would intervene.” But we were alone in life, hadn’t I been telling myself that all month?

  Sandy shouted at me to untape him. Threatened to push Hover’s head through a wall.

  Blaming him totally so he wouldn’t have to blame me?

  I rose and walked to the door. I’d call 911 before undoing Sandy. I’d wait until he calmed down.

  As I threaded past his chair, I turned and touched his face. I watched his anger fade to concern, to a beseeching, searching sympathy. It was like ice on a burning wound.
r />   I was lucky to have a friend, not a master, not a guru, not a needy, crazy lover insisting I ignore my own wishes.

  I was lucky to have Sandy. Life had been arid without his friendship.

  “You can untie me now,” he said. “I hear you.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Laura Di Palma Mysteries

  1

  I hated Steve Sayres the way you’d hate an ex-husband. And I’d spent almost as much as time with him. For six and a half years, we’d been two doors in a hallway, two stars in a too-small firmament.

  And if I’d been the bigger star, well, he should have been glad. It was his partnership share of the law firm that I’d swollen. He’d taken home the extra money—bought the sailboat, the wine cellar, the lathed mahogany wainscot—not me. He’d been able to leave at seven because I, a hungry associate determined to “make partner,” could be trusted to toil fiercely till ten.

  But his prosperity came at a price: I stood beside him in the mirror. And he was a pampered doctor’s son, star of the corny-movie football team. If he shared the sunshine, it was supposed to be with other golden boys on a happy shortcut. Not with a slap-in-the-face woman who wouldn’t cheerlead and wouldn’t pass the ball if she could run with it herself.

  Even now, with me out of the firm and out of Sayres’ (expensive) neighborhood, even now, he could only begrudge me.

  Worse, he couldn’t let it go, he couldn’t leave me alone. I’d tried to tell him: Yes, you won the pissing contest, Sayres. You can put it back in your pants now.

  But I’d heard his slanderous spewings from a half dozen sources. And now my only cash-cow client was firing me because of him.

  I tried not to leap from my chair with an angry, “Fine! Lose your case the good-old-boy way.” I tried to remember it might not be too late to pull this chestnut out of the fire.

  “I think you’d be making a mistake to go elsewhere, Perry. There’s an enormous learning curve in a case like this.” Though the intricacies of custom robotics had justified my retainer, it hadn’t been a fun study. “Why pay for someone else to become acquainted with the details of your operation. Plus,”—I spoke hastily, seeing he wanted to put an end to an embarrassing situation—“you won’t find a better-suited attorney. I have years of experience in corporate litigation.”