At that strategic moment, the waitress arrived with our meals. She deposited the plates, raised the cover on mine, and I got a whiff of shrimp primavera. Shallots, white wine, Romano cheese, and a hint of basil. I hadn’t eaten since the night before. My salivary glands started watering. My stomach growled loudly, my knees seemed to melt, and I sat down again.
“You need another drink,” David said.
I nodded and picked up my fork.
Oddly enough—or maybe not so oddly, because I did have that third drink and then a fourth—it was easier from that moment on. David and I were able to talk about Dicky and even our own past almost like old friends. It probably helped that he was so complimentary. No, not that he was complimentary, because I didn’t trust his compliments, but that he was genuinely bowled over by the change in me. It was funny really. What a difference a good haircut and a few pounds made. Not just to David. To me. Because I was confident in a way I hadn’t been for years.
But then that wasn’t really about new clothes and fancy-schmancy moisturizer. It was about J.X. About the way he made me feel. Valued. Cherished. Loved.
I resolved to call him as soon as I got back to my room. To hell with who was right and who was wrong. I missed him like crazy. And I wanted him to know that.
“They dug up Marple,” I told David.
“What the hell?” he was instantly and satisfyingly appalled, and I realized this was something I shared with him and only him. He had loved those two cats nearly as much as me. “Did they get Dashiell too?”
“Not so far.” I said gloomily, “Apparently it’s illegal in LA County to bury your pets in your backyard.”
“Fascists,” David pronounced, and once more we were perfectly in accord.
We ate in silence for a minute or two.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” David said suddenly, “but you’re the perfect person to find out what happened to Dicky. You’ve already solved four murders that I know of. And this happened in your own backyard.”
“First of all, I didn’t solve four murders.” It was more like six if you counted secondary and appended victims. “And definitely not on my own. Anyway, are you so sure he’s dead?”
“Yes.” David’s eyes were dark and sad. “I think I knew something was wrong almost from that first day when he never came home. I tried to talk myself out of it. Tried to convince myself he changed his mind, but I knew.”
“Okay, maybe you’re right. It’s alarming that he’s never turned up in all these months. But neither of us has any useful information as to where to even start looking for what could have happened to him.”
“You must have his old résumé and his job application somewhere.”
“Maybe in a box. I might have dumped it all, though.”
“Not you,” David said. “You always kept everything in case of a tax audit. Remember all those arguments we had about you hoarding business papers that were more than ten years old?”
Oh yes. We’d always found plenty to argue about. From the real to the manufactured.
“I guess I could have a look,” I said reluctantly. “The police are asking for whatever contact info I had on Dicky, so I have to go through those boxes anyway.”
“Exactly.” David leaned back in his chair, smiling. “And if something brilliant should occur to you while sorting through those papers, well, it can’t hurt to make a couple of phone calls. Right?”
“Hm. I suppose not.”
He grinned. “Elementary, my dear Holmes!”
I felt a twinge as he said it because that was J.X.’s little joke with me. Then, with an uncomfortable flash, I remembered it had been David’s joke first.
Funny I’d forgotten that.
I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see it was nearly ten. We’d been drinking and talking in the dining room for over four hours. The dinner crowd had come and gone, and it was back to just the two of us.
I said, “Wow. Look at the time. I should say good night. I’ve got a long drive home tomorrow.”
David looked surprised and disappointed. “Are you sure?”
“Yep. But thanks for dinner.” I rose, and he rose too.
He said, “My pleasure—and I do mean that.”
“Yeah, it was…good.” Good to confront old ghosts, good to let go of the old anger, the old bitterness anyway. Not an event I was in a hurry to repeat, however. More like a rite of passage.
I started to turn away, and David said quickly, urgently, “Christopher.”
I looked my inquiry.
“I owe you an apology. Not just for Dicky, though for Dicky, yes. That was the worst one, I know. But for…all of it. All the times I hurt you. Whatever I felt, whatever you did, you didn’t deserve that.”
I hadn’t expected an apology—or rather, I’d figured this dinner was his apology—so I didn’t know what to say. Especially since I didn’t miss the whatever-you-did comment.
I finally came up with what I thought was a gracious, “It takes two people to ruin a relationship.” Which actually isn’t true. One determined and resourceful person can do it all by himself.
David offered another of his stock smiles. “True. Well, then…” He came around the table to hug me. I think I stood there about as responsive as one of those blank-faced department-store mannequins they prefer these days.
He whispered into my ear, “What about one last time? For old times’ sake.”
I drew back. “What about—huh?”
His smile grew rueful. “You know. We never got to say goodbye.”
“Yeah, we did. I gave you Dicky as a going-away present.”
He leaned in, still smiling, charming and purposeful. His breath was warm against my face. “No, I mean really say goodbye.”
“I think get-the-hell-out-of-my-life is really saying goodbye.”
I’m not sure he even heard me. “You have to admit, the sex was always good between us. Really good.”
Yeeeeaah. About that. The sex with David had been fine. I hadn’t had any complaints. But back then I hadn’t known how incredible sex could really be. J.X. had taught me that. He had taught me a lot of things. A few things I still struggled with. And it was hard for me to ask for what I wanted—really wanted—in bed, but I was learning. J.X. was helping me accept who I really was, face up to what I really needed. People talk about mind-blowing sex, but under J.X.’s—okay, I’ll say it, tutelage—I really had had my mind, or at least all my preconceived notions and biases, blown away.
So yeah. No. Thanks, but no thanks.
And even if sex with J.X. had been the worst ever, I still loved him too much to ever think of hurting him the way I’d been hurt. Not in a million years.
I laughed, but not unkindly, not mockingly. “Man, you really are incorrigible,” I said.
David heard me that time. His shoulders slumped, and he sighed. “Yeah. I am. But I mean, we were married.”
“It was a commitment ceremony.”
“Same thing. To me, anyway.”
Did he really not see the irony? I said, “Uh…yeah. Okay. Your point is?”
“We’re allowed to have goodbye-forever sex.”
“I’m sure we had it, we just didn’t notice it at the time.”
He scrutinized my face. “I can’t tell when you’re laughing. Was that your final no or—?”
I was still laughing. “That was final.”
“Maybe one more drink would help?”
“One more drink and I’ll pass out. Besides, these people want to go home.” I nodded at the waitress and bartender, who were watching us with weary wariness.
David gave another of those heavy sighs. “All right. Have it your way.”
We bade farewell to the relieved-looking staff and walked out to the lobby.
At the elevators, I turned to him and said, “Good night, David. Thanks again for dinner.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to—?”
“I’m sure.”
“Abso
lutely, positively—?”
I said firmly, “’Night, David.”
I stepped into the elevator, punched the button for the third floor. I nodded cordially as the doors closed on David’s glum expression.
I chuckled quietly to myself as I strolled down the brightly lit hall and let myself into my room. I flipped on the lights and moved to pull the drapes across the windows.
I was buzzed but not drunk, and I felt pleasantly…pleasant. I’d have a leisurely hot shower, get in bed, and phone J.X. If all went well, we could maybe even manage a wee bit of phone sex. Phone sex with J.X. was still better than live and in-person sex with anybody else.
These agreeable plans evaporated at the tentative knock on my door.
I stopped smiling.
I admit being propositioned by David—urgently propositioned at that—had been good for my ego, but this was not flattering or amusing. Jesus Christ. He couldn’t be that desperate to get laid.
I yanked open the door, prepared to tell him that very thing.
But it was not David standing in the garishly bright hallway.
Or maybe it wasn’t the hall that was garishly bright. Maybe it was the green-haired guy wearing whiteface and a blue polka-dot clown suit.
Chapter Eight
The clown said nothing.
He gazed at me with his sad clown face, complete with painted downturned mouth and eye drips. His costume was one of those ruffled, old-fashioned things—I forget what they call them—and he was holding a single red heart-shaped balloon.
I stared silently back at him. I was thinking—and at this time the defense wishes to call upon the four G&Ts, two of which had occurred on an empty stomach—that maybe J.X. had sent some kind of weird floral-delivery apology. Except I did not see any flowers and J.X. did not like clowns.
I transferred my gaze from the clown’s black eyes to his red balloon. I said, “Where are the other ninety-eight?”
The clown’s blue-gloved hand released the string of the balloon, which went sailing to the ceiling, bouncing against it with an eerie whispering sound.
Belatedly, I registered his gloves were latex—the kind of thing cops wore at crime scenes—and that he was wearing boots. Durable hiking boots, not funny, oversize, floppy shoes. He thrust one of those well-made hiking boots between the door and the frame as I tried to shove the door shut.
“What do you want?” I gasped, trying to force shut the heavy door. “What the hell?”
He threw his weight against the door, which flew back, taking me with it. I recovered fast, slammed my shoulder against the solid surface, and shoved the door forward a couple of inches. I couldn’t close it completely, though, because his body was now wedged halfway inside the room. It was stalemate as we both struggled for leverage.
He didn’t speak, and after that initial shocked protest, neither did I. I don’t know why I didn’t yell for help. It was the obvious thing to do, but somehow the idea that it was late and people were trying to sleep remained uppermost.
Plus, the bizzarity of the situation overruled customs and norms. My whole day had been weird, and the fact that a clown was trying to force his way into my room seemed to be par for the course.
The clown grunted, swiping at my head with his gloved hand. His fingers latched in my hair and pulled. I yelped and tried to punch him, but he was at a weird angle, so I was only able to knock on the rubber baldpate middle section of his head with the heel of my fist.
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Clown.
Clown who?
Clown for the count!
He winced, trying to duck the blows, but kept squeezing through the doorway.
“Get out,” I panted. “This isn’t your room.”
I’m pretty sure he already knew it wasn’t his room. It’s amazing the dumb things that pop out of your mouth at moments like these. Not that most people have moments like these.
The clown’s rubber scalp slipped forward, and I grabbed at the green tuft of his hair—not his real hair, obviously. He grew desperate and body-slammed the door. It bounced back, and I gave way with it.
The clown leaned against the closed door, breathing hard. He righted his hairpiece—and I jumped into the bathroom and locked the door.
I was bathed in cold sweat. My arms and legs were shaking. I felt like we’d been fighting for hours, and yet I knew it couldn’t have been much more than a minute since he’d knocked on my door. I tried to catch my breath.
He would have to give up now, right? Give up and go away?
No. He began to kick at the thin wooden barrier between us.
For some reason that frightened me the way nothing else had. I think it was the realization that he didn’t care if anyone heard or not. He had one goal, and that was to get to me, whatever the consequences.
I looked desperately around my gleaming white cell. A wall phone hung next to the shower. I’d always thought of phones in the bathroom as an abomination, but I fell on this one gratefully and punched the numbers for the front desk with shaking fingers.
The phone seemed to ring for an eternity.
Bam.
One ringie dingie.
Bam.
Two ringie dingies.
Bam.
Three ringie dingies.
Slow, steady blows landed on the door, punctuating the pauses between each leisurely ring.
“Front desk,” replied a vague-sounding voice at last. She sounded about a million miles away, like she had been peacefully napping on another planet.
“Send someone up here right now,” I cried. “There’s a clown in my room!”
“What?”
“There’s a—” Sanity reasserted itself. I could not afford for her to decide this was a prank and hang up. I tried to steady my voice. “Someone is breaking into my room! Send security!”
“Sir, we don’t have security,” she replied patiently. “They probably just have the wrong room—”
“No. No. He’s already in my room. He’s after me. Send someone up here!” I took the handset and held it in front of the door so she could hear the heavy, rhythmic blows of boots on flimsy plywood.
“Sir? Sir? There’s no one to send!” She sounded wide-awake now and nearly as alarmed as me.
“Call the police!” I yelled.
“I could send Hector!”
“Huh? What? Who the hell’s Hec—?” I dropped the phone to the tiles as the door splintered and a booted foot crashed through.
Wildly, I looked around for some kind of weapon and spotted the guest-use iron, which I’d left sitting on the sink counter after pressing the wrinkles out of my shirt that morning.
I snatched up the iron, prepared to make my last stand—and realized my intruder’s foot had caught in the door.
I lunged forward, unlocked the door, and shouldered it open, using the iron to swipe at the struggling clown. He hopped back a couple of steps, somehow managing to keep his balance. He blocked my blow with his raised arm.
I heard him gasp in pain as the iron connected. He grabbed for the cord and tried to yank the iron out of my hand. I hung on and tried to hit him again while scrabbling with my free hand for the entrance-door handle.
I pulled the handle—but he’d slipped the security bar into place, and the door caught and sank back into the frame. Still clumsily swinging the iron, I let go of the handle and flipped the security bar.
Finally, I managed to throw the door open—except you don’t really throw hotel doors open. They’re too slow and too heavy. I did get the damned thing open, but by then the clown had managed to free himself from the bathroom door.
He tackled me, knocking me to the floor. I fell halfway into the hall and kicked at his head. I swung the iron like a club, but hit the door. It took out a chunk of wood.
Bada book, bada boom, as they say in the hotel biz.
“What the hell?” David’s astonished voice spoke from overhead.
Unbelievably, the cavalry ha
d arrived in the form of my lecherous ex.
“Help,” I gulped. “Help!”
My assailant planted his knee in my midsection and shot out of my hotel room, crashing into David, who had bent to help me up. They grappled awkwardly.
David made an ooof! sound.
“Hey, stop!” he staggered back, and the clown burst through the crowd of people gathering in the hallway.
“What happened? What’s going on? Who is that? Has anyone called the front desk?”
Everyone seemed to be talking at once.
“Don’t let that clown get away!” I called feebly. I tried to roll onto my side, but at the ominous twinge in my back, fell back. “Goddamn it. Somebody grab that clown!”
A simple enough directive, and yet it seemed to only raise more questions in the minds of the onlookers.
“What’s he talking about? What did he say? Was that a clown? Why is he laying there on the floor?”
“Lying,” I protested. “There’s no direct object.”
I could hear the clown’s footsteps pounding down the hallway as he escaped. The distant ding of an elevator followed.
“Christopher, are you okay?” David bent over me. “Did you hit your head?”
“Probably. I think I hit everything else.”
“What in God’s name was that?”
I blinked up at his worried upside-down face. Over his shoulder I could see a red heart-shaped balloon bobbing against the low ceiling.
“A clown,” I said. “An evil clown. Look, he left his calling card.”
David and the crowd of onlookers obligingly looked upward, gazing at the balloon as it began to bob its way farther down the hall.
“An evil clown… Did he say evil clown? He must be on something. Did you call the front desk?”
“But how?” David protested. “Why?”
I didn’t bother to answer. Mostly because I didn’t have an answer. I reached my hand out and let him pull me up, getting painfully to my feet just as a newcomer joined the throng of astonished and alarmed guests. A tall, lean, weary, but well-dressed newcomer.
J.X.’s wide, dark eyes stared into mine.
“It was a clown,” I said to him. “An evil clown.” I reeled across the few feet separating us. The crowd parted instinctively, and J.X., equally on instinct, I’m guessing, opened his arms to me. I collapsed against him, and his arms locked around me, strong and supportive—also surprised.
In Other Words...Murder Page 7
