Love Sold Separately

by Ellen Meister

“Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Back to the file room,” he said. “I need your help looking for evidence. Do you know how to read a spreadsheet?”

  Dana almost laughed. “In fact I do,” she said, grateful that Ollie had taken the time to teach her.

  Once inside, Beecham steered her to the shelves containing the computer printouts that Sherry had intimidated her with.

  “What we’re looking for,” he said, “are any segments with reported diminution of display merchandise. Then we want to see who the segment producer was for those shows. If my suspicions are correct, we’ll see a pretty strong pattern.”

  Diminution. She remembered that word—a fancy way to say that stuff went missing.

  “I don’t suppose you have access to the computer files?” she asked. “Then we could find it with a few clicks.”

  “The police could probably get it with a summons,” he said. “But I’m afraid we’re stuck following an old-fashioned paper trail.”

  And so they began to pull the binders off the shelves and pile up the ones that showed anything other than a zero in the “dim” column. After an hour, they had found seventeen instances of display merchandise that had disappeared without explanation.

  “I think that’s enough for now,” Beecham said.

  The two of them carried the binders to the table in the back and scanned the pages to see who the segment producer was on those shows. When they were done, the evidence was overwhelming. Adam Weintraub was the producer for fourteen out of the seventeen.

  “I’m amazed Sherry never made the connection before,” she said.

  “Sometimes even the smartest people only see what they want to see. Besides, he was probably pretty clever about covering his tracks.”

  “So what do I do now?” she asked.

  “You do nothing,” he said. “I’m going to gather more evidence—build a really solid case—and then go to management.”

  “What about the police?” she asked. “I mean, if he stole Kitty’s bracelet, they’ll want to know.”

  “One step at a time,” he said.

  Dana tried to be patient. But her tension was off the charts. She had to sit through her briefing with Adam and pretend everything was okay. And then there was the show itself, with his voice whispering in her earpiece.

  Afterward, she had to stay steady while Sherry and Adam went over the sales figures. Every part of her wanted to explode. When at last she was able to leave, she felt like she had pulled a noose off her neck. Again, she was late for rehearsals. Nathan was understanding, but told her that he really needed her to be on time tomorrow. It was their dress rehearsal, and it was critical.

  When she came to work the next day, Dana didn’t know what to expect. It could be the day the shit hit the fan. If Beecham went to management, Adam could already be fired or suspended. But everything was quiet. Normal. Except for the drumbeat in Dana’s chest, which made her feel like she needed to nail shutters to the windows and hunker down in the basement for the impending storm. There was nothing to do but wait.

  When Adam came to see her for her daily briefing, she did everything she could to pretend it was just another normal day. Except that she had to be sure she could get out in time for rehearsal.

  “You okay?” he asked as he wrapped up his briefing. “You seem a little tense today.”

  Despite herself, she had been thinking about the dress rehearsal instead of focusing on acting chipper and relaxed.

  “I’m fine, but I have a doctor’s appointment this evening and have to leave right after the show. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll tell Sherry. Everything all right?”

  She looked at him, feeling her throat tighten as she thought of his wife and children.

  “I hope so,” she said.

  36

  Once she got into costume for dress rehearsal, Dana’s tension about work disappeared, supplanted by preperformance butterflies. It wasn’t stage fright that made her belly feel squirmy, but a kind of nervous excitement. It was her drive. An intense desire to stay focused, to perform from the deepest place in her soul, to connect with her fellow actors, to communicate with the audience. She felt it almost as intensely for dress rehearsal as she did for the real thing, and that was intentional—a way of assuring that she was all in.

  Nathan called for places and they began.

  When they were done he praised them lavishly, though not without some consternation over the mistakes. Sylvia’s nerves seemed to rattle her focus in the first scene. At one point, Raj skipped over a chunk of dialogue and Dana had to ad-lib to get them back on track. The sound guy missed one of his cues for the doorbell. Despite all that, Dana felt confident. She trusted her cast and crew. They were ready for opening night.

  When she went to work on Friday, she was less concerned with Adam than with her Sweat City performance. She just wanted to get through the day and make it to the theater for opening night. In fact, she hoped that Beecham was still gathering evidence to take to management, and that nothing would happen until Monday at the earliest. She needed this to be a mellow day at work.

  But that wasn’t the way it went down.

  First, she saw Ari, his face grim and serious as he walked down the corridor toward the exit. But he wasn’t alone—he was with Detective Lee, and they were leading Adam out of the building. There were no handcuffs, yet Adam’s face was so washed of color it was clear he was in trouble. She tried to be angry with him. After all, he had been stealing for years. And sabotaging Dana to keep himself safe. But she felt only disappointment and pity. Here was someone who didn’t think of himself as a bad guy, but as someone who worked hard, loved his family and did what he had to do.

  Because she had made her own share of mistakes, Dana felt uniquely qualified to judge his. She thought back to the time she was hostess at a midtown restaurant. She had become friends with one of the waitresses, Londra, whose ex was a deadbeat. Since Londra had a kid and was struggling to keep up, Dana steered the more affluent-looking diners to her tables so she’d take home more in tips. Helping a friend made Dana feel good. Also, she took a bit of perverse pleasure in pissing off one of the other servers—Big Mike—who was always getting in everyone’s way in the kitchen and was an all-around pain in the ass. But he wasn’t the only one who noticed Dana’s behavior, and the management gave Dana a warning. She should have stopped at that point. After all, her interference didn’t make a life-changing difference in Londra’s tips. But Dana kept on, feigning innocence, until she was fired.

  So yes, she understood Adam’s compulsion. But stealing? And trying to cover it up by getting Dana fired...or worse?

  Oh, Adam, she wanted to say. There were so many different decisions you could have made. How could you have been so stupid?

  She looked into his face, trying to see if there was something darker there—the kind of heart that could commit murder. But all she saw was a weak and broken man. It made her feel cold and alone.

  She glanced at Ari, hoping for a connection, but he gave her only the smallest nod, as if they barely knew each other. Beecham stood at the security desk behind Zack, watching as the three men disappeared out the front door.

  “What happened?” Dana asked him, and Beecham nodded toward his office. She followed him there and he shut the door.

  “I found nine more instances he was probably involved in—mostly jewelry. I went to management first thing this morning. They weren’t sure they wanted to press charges without doing an internal investigation first, but due to the murder they agreed that I had to contact the detectives.”

  “Is he under arrest?” Dana asked.

  Beecham shook his head. “They just want to bring him in for questioning.”

  “What will happen?”

  “I don’t know, Dana. He might be involved in the murder, so brace yourself
.”

  She pulled a tissue from her purse and blotted the sweat forming on her upper lip. This was a lot to take in.

  “What about Jason White?” she asked, picturing the neat signature in the visitors’ log. “Did you ever figure out who he was? Does he have any connection to Adam?”

  “That’s for the detectives to figure out. I shared a copy of the security tape with them, so I assume they’ll try to identify him.”

  “There’s a security tape?” Dana asked.

  “Of course.”

  “It shows his face?”

  “Pretty clearly,” Beecham said.

  Dana considered this. She doubted he would look familiar, but she burned with curiosity. This was the mystery man. Their connection to the murderer. “Can I take a look?” she asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Beecham said, and started to tap at the computer keyboard on his desk. After several moments, he told Dana to turn toward monitor five on his wall, which was now playing a video of the front desk with a time stamp showing the date of Kitty’s death. Zack was at the front desk.

  After a few moments a man in a dark coat and baseball cap approached the desk and spoke to Zack. Beecham clicked something on his keyboard, and a different camera angle appeared on the screen, showing the back of Zack’s head, and the front of the man in the baseball cap signing the visitors’ log as Jason White.

  The man looked up just as Dana leaned forward, and she gasped as goose bumps rippled up her arms. She opened her mouth to speak, and couldn’t get anything out.

  “Freeze it!” she finally said, and he did.

  “You know who that man is?” he asked.

  “Oh my God,” she said, gripping the arms of her chair as if she needed to pin herself to earth. “Oh hell. Oh fuck.”

  “What’s wrong?” Beecham asked. He looked from the screen to Dana.

  She stared at the monitor, trying to make sense of the constellation of facts struggling to connect into a coherent picture. There was no doubt who the man was—the square face, the strawberry blond hair peeking out from under his cap. It was Kimmo.

  She didn’t want to believe what it meant. She couldn’t believe what it meant.

  “Are you okay?” Beecham asked.

  She was cold as stone, and understood that her face had probably gone ashen. But she found her voice and looked Beecham in the eye.

  “That’s Ollie’s boyfriend,” she said. “That’s Kimmo. He’s the one pretending to be Jason White.”

  She sat back and hugged herself as the scenario played out. If Ollie’s friend Kimmo was posing as Jason White, who had signed in saying he had an appointment with Honeycutt, it meant Ollie was the one setting up the company president for Kitty’s murder. Now that she thought about it, Dana understood that Ollie had carefully manipulated her to dig for the evidence in the logbook. Even the sex tape was part of the setup. Despite his protestations, Ollie had meant all along for Dana to conclude that Honeycutt was the murderer.

  The one thing Ollie hadn’t counted on was her sudden appearance at Kimmo’s birthday dinner. That was why Ollie had looked so tense when she showed up. It wasn’t because he was self-conscious about his relationship. It was because he didn’t want her to be able to identify Kimmo.

  She couldn’t breathe. Because it all added up to a truth she couldn’t accept: that Ollie had murdered Kitty Todd.

  All the evidence was there and yet Dana felt sure, deep in her gut, that it was impossible. Ollie loved Kitty. He worshipped her. His devotion was pathological. It simply didn’t fit. There was no reason for him to kill her.

  Dana closed her eyes, trying to picture the murder scene again. There was something she was missing.

  Beecham picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked. She wanted to slow him down and listen to her before he took it any further.

  But Beecham held up a hand to quiet her and spoke into the receiver. “Ms. Zidel? It’s Beecham.” He paused. “You’d better get down here.”

  37

  Sherry took it all in so stoically Dana thought the woman’s teeth would crack. When Beecham finally finished explaining the facts, she simply pushed her glasses up on her nose and said, “I see.”

  “What do you see?” Dana asked.

  “It’s obvious,” Sherry said. “Ollie is guilty. He’s the one who murdered Kitty.”

  “I don’t think so,” Dana said.

  Sherry rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. He did everything possible to frame Charles Honeycutt. There’s no other conclusion.”

  “There might be,” Dana said, wondering how to explain the feeling deep in her gut that countered every piece of evidence.

  “Such as?”

  “I’m still working on it,” she admitted.

  Sherry waved away her comment. “Don’t be so naive. Just because he seems innocent doesn’t mean he is.”

  “What will you do now?” Dana asked. “Are you going to call the police? Do we just stay down here waiting for them to come for Ollie? Will we—”

  Sherry held up her hands to slow Dana down. “First of all, no one’s taking Ollie out of here in handcuffs. At least not today. He called in sick this morning.”

  Dana’s eyes went wide. She knew this was yet another piece of damning evidence against Ollie, and it gave her pause. If Ollie had stayed home because he was feeling the heat, it was a troubling sign. “Do you think he knew that we might—”

  “I have no idea,” Sherry said. “I just hope he’s not already on a plane back to Finland. Right now, the most important thing we can do is go through our day and pretend everything is fine. Because people around here gossip. A lot. And if Ollie learns he’s a suspect before the police can find him, he’ll flee for sure.”

  “So you want me to pretend it’s just an ordinary day?” Dana asked her.

  “You’d better.”

  Dana shook her head, wondering what on earth could get this woman to give it a rest. “Don’t forget my segment producer was taken by the police for questioning,” she said. “Not exactly a run-of-the-mill morning for me.”

  Sherry rubbed her head as if massaging a problem. “I have to find a last-minute substitute producer for you,” she said. “And Emily is in a meeting with the buyers.”

  Now Emily was meeting with buyers? Sherry seemed to think the girl was some kind of Shopping Channel prodigy.

  “Guess I’ll have to do it myself,” Sherry said.

  Herself? Shit. Despite everything going on, this felt like the single thing that could push Dana over the edge. She tried to think of anything to say that might convince Sherry it was a terrible idea, but there wasn’t an excuse in sight.

  “Don’t look so excited,” Sherry said.

  Dana exhaled, trying to cover for her miserable expression. “It’s just a lot to take in.”

  “I know you think I’m a witch,” Sherry said with a wave, as if it didn’t matter.

  Dana opened her mouth to protest, groping for a quasi-sincere rebuttal, but Sherry cut her off. “Don’t even bother.”

  Dana offered a weak smile in agreement—not her most convincing performance. Then she and Sherry lingered in Beecham’s office as he called Detective Marks to report what had happened.

  “Yes,” Beecham said after several minutes. “She’s positive about the identification... Uh-huh. She’s right here. Hold on.” He handed the phone to Dana. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Dana didn’t feel prepared to face his icy hostility. Not now, in the middle of all this. She cleared her throat, and hoped for even a hint of kindness in his voice—something to indicate he might be willing to forgive her.

  “Hello?” she said, trying not to sound as needy as she felt. She wanted to come across as strong, smart and in command. The kind of person who would never dream of sending tw
enty-six desperate texts.

  His voice was cold. “I’m going to keep this businesslike, Dana.”

  “Good,” she said, as if it was exactly what she had hoped to hear.

  “Beecham tells me you identified the man on the security tape.”

  “I did,” she said.

  “Tell me,” he said. “In your own words.”

  “It was Kimmo, Ollie’s roommate.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “One hundred percent. I met him on the same day...” She paused and looked from Beecham to Sherry. “I mean, it was only last week. Tuesday.”

  There was a pause, and she could tell he was connecting the dots and recalling that it was the night they had been together. But all he said was, “Okay. Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”

  * * *

  When Dana showed up at the makeup department, Felicia and Jo were twirled in breathless gossip about Adam.

  “Did they really take him out in handcuffs?” Felicia asked as she stroked contour onto the hollows of Dana’s cheeks.

  “I heard he took a swing at the detective,” Jo said, running a buffer across Dana’s fingernails.

  “The handsome one?” Felicia asked.

  “It was nothing like that,” Dana insisted. “There were no handcuffs. No arrest. They just brought him in for questioning.”

  “You sure?” Jo said.

  “Saw it with my own eyes.”

  “I think he might’ve done it,” Felicia said.

  “He was sleeping with Kitty,” Jo observed. “Maybe he got jealous over the whole Honeycutt thing.”

  Dana sighed. She was certain the evidence had already ruled out Adam as a suspect. But she understood that there was no force on earth more powerful than a rumor mill, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop the giant wheel from churning out chaff.

  Even Lorenzo wasn’t immune from participating. When she got to the set and he clipped on her microphone, he leaned in and whispered, “I’m hearing a lot of shit about Adam.”

  “Most of it untrue,” she said.