Lovers and Lawyers

by Lia Matera

  “The name Juan Gomez never even came up?”

  “Di Palma never let a psychiatrist near Castle. She told us from day one she wasn’t going to argue diminished capacity or insanity, nothing like that. She completely removed it as a trial issue, precluding us from examining him ourselves. And from what you tell me now, I can see why. If the psychiatrists labeled him a multiple, we’d have used it against him. We’d have looked for a violent personality or at least suggested the possibility. But our circumstantial case was weak enough that Di Palma stayed away from all of that. She was smart. She must have known, but she let it hang on whether we had enough proof.”

  I reached out a shaky hand for the coffee Toben had poured me. “When Sandy Arkelett saw Gomez—Castle—I could tell something wasn’t right,” I said. “But I assumed it had to do with Di Palma, with Arkelett trying to find her.”

  “It’s a long drive to look at a postmark,” Toben agreed. “I suppose he just couldn’t imagine Di Palma sending a will to a beneficiary by mistake.”

  Sheesh, nobody would take time to check it out if I messed up. “He knew something was wrong.”

  “Looks like Di Palma didn’t screw up, after all.” Toben didn’t seem very pleased to say so. “I assume Castle had Di Palma write up his will, and that she mailed it to him while she was on the road.”

  I envisioned Castle receiving the will and writing “Juan Gomez c/o” above the address. He certainly knew how to scare his alter ego. By asking “Juan Gomez” to return to Walker’s cabin, Castle was, in essence, making “Juan” assume responsibility, pointing out that he’d been present during the murder, too. Castle was reminding his better half, as it were, that the hand that killed Becky Walker belonged to both of them.

  The real question was, had Castle killed “Juan?” Had he taken revenge on his cringing cohabitant? Or had “Juan” rid the world of Castle, killing Becky’s murderer the only way he could?

  “I should have known something was fishy as soon as I saw Arkelett’s reaction to Castle,” I fretted again. “He knew the score the minute the front door opened. He knew the problem wasn’t with Di Palma, he knew she hadn’t made a mistake with the address.” I took a swallow of weak coffee. “I was so dense. Even when Arkelett told me to look up the arrest report.”

  “You’d have recognized Castle’s booking photo.” Toben tapped a pencil against a file folder.

  “Arkelett could have just told me. The photo’s public record.”

  But I knew Arkelett’s reluctance involved not the photo but the conclusion to be drawn from it: that Sean Castle had multiple personalities, one of whom was willing to incriminate another. This wasn’t an observation to be made by an associate of Castle’s lawyer. Not in an era of civil trials following criminal acquittals.

  I knew all that. But it didn’t take the bitter taste out of my mouth. Maybe I could have done something if I’d figured this out sooner. I wished, not for the first time, that Di Palma and her PI weren’t so damned competent.

  “We talked to Di Palma this morning,” Toben continued. “Her office tracked her down. I told her what happened. She didn’t have a lot to say.” His lips curled with disdain. “What could she say? If she’d have let us do our jobs and put Castle away, he’d be a hell of a lot better off now.”

  And if Toben had presented a stronger case against Castle, Di Palma would have had to settle for an insanity or diminished capacity defense. But however she might feel about this result, Sandy Arkelett was right. She’d done everything she should for her client. She’d won him his freedom.

  Then she’d left it to him to find real justice within himself and with his other selves.

  I tried to remember what else “Juan” had told me about Castle. “Was he really a famous dream researcher?”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Something about prophetic dreams. He had all those gargoyles to protect him while he slept.”

  “Sean Castle was the man you met in that little house. Did he look famous to you?”

  “No. It’s just that … I guess on some level, I figured this out while I was sleeping.” I refused to attribute more than that to my dream. “I woke up in the middle of night worrying about it.”

  “That’s why you went over there?”

  I nodded. The police had obviously considered my nocturnal call bizarre. Toben probably agreed, but he didn’t comment.

  He said, “For a living, Castle did a bit of everything. Gardening, roto-rooting, worked at the canneries when they hired extras.”

  “Castle, gargoyles—I suppose it was just the association of ideas. Gargoyles protect castles.”

  “I guess gargoyles aren’t protection enough.”

  “Neither are lawyers, not even the best of them.”

  Performance Crime

  “Performance Crime” was first published in Women on the Case, ed. Sara Paretsky, Doubleday, 1996.

  I was about as stressed out as I could be. In addition to my work year starting at the university, I was trying to help get the Moonjuice Performance Gallery’s new show together. After last year’s fiasco, Moonjuice needed something accessible. And that would never happen unless someone displayed some sense, however tame that might seem to the artists.

  But the artists weren’t the main problem, the main problem was Moonjuice’s board of directors. The “conservative” members were two wannabe-radical university professors. The middle-of-the-roaders were a desktop publisher and an aspiring blues guitarist. On the avant-garde extreme was self- proclaimed bad girl and dabbling artist Georgia Stepp. I, an untenured associate professor, was so far to the right of other board members it was laughable. I was a fiscally responsible Democrat, which practically opened me to charges of fascism.

  I was trying to make my point about being sensible to Georgia.

  “We have to be careful after last year,” I insisted.

  “Last year was fun.” Georgia opened her long arms for emphasis. She wore a satin camisole, emphasizing a fashionable bit of muscle. Her nails were long and black. Her blond hair was cut short and dyed black this year. “We freaked out all the prisses.”

  She meant “prissy” board members who’d resigned in protest, convincing our sponsors to defund us and our program advertisers to boycott us. These were liberal restaurateurs and bookshop owners, hardly Republicans.

  “We have less than a quarter of last year’s budget because of that show. We’ve got artists working for free”—that got her—“and feminist university students volunteering elsewhere.”

  “Art can’t follow money like a dog in heat.”

  “It can’t treat sponsors like fire hydrants, either. There just aren’t that many patrons of the arts around,” I pointed out. “Especially art by lesbians. And we lost their support over what? Way-out, nonpolitical—”

  “Way-out is political.” Georgia looked happy. And there’s no one more beautiful than Georgia when she’s happy. But that doesn’t make her any less wrongheaded.

  “Clothespins with glued-on feathers don’t make a statement, I’m sorry.”

  The “art” that made our advertisers bail included a woman in studded leather pinning feathers on her naked partner.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be a statement.” Georgia leaned closer. “It was a dance. A dance, Serious One.”

  “Clothespins on my nipples always make me want to dance.”

  “But it was about artists, not you.” Georgia certainly hit the nail on the head.

  “Yeah, well it wasn’t about our advertisers, either. Not to mention Viv and Claire.” The two former board members. “We’ve got to get our sponsors and advertising back, Georgia. It doesn’t matter what kind of show we put on this year if no one’s willing to pay for the next one. We’re not Andy Hardy. We’re not putting on shows to pass the summer.”

  She shot me a look. To her, practicality is
somehow demeaning.

  Marlys, legal secretary and blues guitarist, strolled in. Georgia considers her a best friend and ally. Which Marlys proved by changing the subject.

  “You guys see the paper this morning?” She was short and heavy, with the usual layered haircut. The look she gave Georgia made me wonder if she minded Georgia’s going to bed with every dominatrix and poet to cross our stage.

  “What, daaaaarling?” Georgia liked to do Kate Hepburn, imitating gays in drag. I was never sure if I thought it was funny or disrespectful.

  “Somebody broke into Greg Purl’s house and shot all his cereal.” Marlys was flushed, eyes sparkling as she watched Georgia.

  “A cereal killer!” She practically shrieked. “Was that the point? I love it! A pun crime.”

  “Plus, Greg,” Marlys pointed out.

  Purl was a local boy who’d made good. He’d gone to Hollywood to make big-budget lowest-common-denominator movies. His latest was about—you guessed it—the serial killer of teenage girls.

  “Did the papers get it?” Georgia wondered. “Cereal killer, serial killer; his movie?”

  “They got the pun.” Marlys looked gratified. “They didn’t really go into his movies.”

  Marlys and Georgia were friends with Purl before he “sold out.” It always amazed me how superior they could feel, despite their obscurity and their day jobs. It’s not that easy to sell out, after all. Someone has to want to buy what you’ve got to pander.

  “Purl wasn’t hurt?” Once again, mine was the lone voice of practicality.

  “No, it happened at his house here. He’s down in Hollywood. Someone broke in and shot his cereal boxes,” Marlys explained. “According to the papers.”

  “How funny.” Georgia struck a pose. Give her a cigarette in a long ivory holder and she could be some thirties star. Or RuPaul. “Cereal killer. I’m just surprised the papers got it.”

  “We would have, even if they didn’t.” Marlys smiled.

  “Was his house damaged? Did they just fire into a cupboard or what?” I loathed his last movie’s relentless reliance on “sexy” violence. But that didn’t give anyone the right to shoot up his kitchen. “He must feel so … violated.”

  Georgia laughed till tears sprang to her eyes. “It’s almost like a Hollywood version of karma, isn’t it?”

  Marlys answered my question. “I guess the person took all his cereal outside and dumped it on his lawn before shooting it full of holes.” She was watching Georgia, still grinning. “I knew you’d like it.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s funny,” I put in.

  Georgia cackled. “Ha! ‘That’s not funny’—the PC lesbian mantra.”

  “You’re just too young to remember what it was like when everyone was politically incorrect. It was irritating and demeaning—”

  “Like political correctness,” Georgia countered.

  Moonjuice was going to drive me insane some day. Especially if performance artists kept embracing things we used to fight against, like pornography and the word “dyke.”

  “Fine, Georgia,” I said. “I don’t get it? Yeah, there’s a lot I don’t get—like the idea of a naked choir.” One of the proposed acts for our yearly fund-raiser was a naked twenty-person choir. Georgia and I had been bickering about it all afternoon. “They don’t even say what they’re going to sing. Like we’re prurient twelve-year-olds who’ll like them just because they’re naked.”

  “Well, why not?” Georgia asked. “Haven’t you ever wondered what choirgirls’ breasts look like when they sing loud?”

  “No! And I’m sure our sponsors haven’t either.”

  “Nan’s partly right,” Marlys said generously. “We should judge art by itself. If they can sing, let them sing naked. If they can’t, let them go streak through college campuses.”

  Georgia shot her an et tu look. “All right, all right, we’ll ask them for details. But not in a philistine way.”

  Georgia called me at the university the next day. “Nan, come down.” Down into town, where Moonjuice Gallery is.

  It’s a long ride to the dark little storefront full of folding chairs facing a creaky stage.

  “I have students coming in forty minutes.”

  “Then come right away.” Georgia hung up.

  Georgia wouldn’t be able to get away with acting like that if she looked like me. Or maybe if I had Georgia’s personality, I’d look more like her. I’d be skinny and daring with strange hair and long nails.

  But I didn’t need Georgia’s big clothing and makeup bills. I had car payments to keep up.

  When I got to Moonjuice, I was surprised to see cats fighting in the empty lot across the street. It seemed ominous, somehow. But I teach classics, things tend to look symbolic to me.

  When I walked into Moonjuice, I found Georgia onstage tearing through all the costumes. Feather boas were curled around her feet and spangled dresses were tossed over chairs. Some of the comedy costumes—fast food clerk, a secretary, a hockey player, a number 32 football jersey, a fireman—were strewn across the floor.

  “What are you doing?” I couldn’t keep exasperation out of my voice. Who knew when we’d be able to afford new costumes? She was trashing our assets.

  “I can’t find anything.” She wore a black turtleneck, a tight black mini, and black stockings today. With her black nails, lips, and hair, she looked like a Parisian model for the vampire collection. “Where are the costumes from last year?”

  “What costumes? You mean the whips? The clothespins?”

  “The overalls, the ginghams. They’ve been stolen!”

  She couldn’t say this over the phone?

  “Of course they weren’t stolen,” I said. “Who’d want to steal gingham dresses?” Overalls maybe. “They’re probably at someone’s house or in the attic where they’re supposed to be.”

  “Will you go up there and look?”

  “Now?”

  She nodded. “These were already down here, backstage. I can’t go up to the attic—it’s so dusty. My allergies.”

  “I’m supposed to be meeting students.”

  “They’ll wait.”

  Georgia worked nights as a cocktail waitress but not that steadily. She always contrived to have a guest room to crash in if she couldn’t make rent. To her, jobs were trifles.

  She clattered down the stage steps. “Nan, please?” She linked her arm through mine. I loved the way her body felt. I know I’m not supposed to, but I get turned on by skinniness. And there just isn’t that much of it in our community.

  “Why do you need them?” If I relented and did this for her, I’d beat myself up over it all week. It wasn’t right to put myself out for someone gorgeous if I knew I wouldn’t do the same for a frumpy friend.

  “I was thinking the naked choir could start out wearing them and then strip them off.”

  “Why?”

  “I found out what they sing. They sing gospel.” To her that made sense.

  Don’t ask me how she talked me into it. I’d be embarrassed to analyze it.

  I dragged out attic boxes and searched through them. I never did find the overalls and ginghams. But I found the boxes the costumes on stage had come out of. Their paper wrappings were still scattered all around.

  By the time I got back downstairs, I was late for my appointment. I tore out of there with hardly a word for Georgia. Just as well. It wouldn’t have been a kind word.

  On the way out, I noticed cats were still fighting across the street. The funny thing was, they were different cats this time.

  When I got home from work, I showered first thing, still feeling grimy from my visit to the Moonjuice attic.

  Then I ate dinner in front of the TV. I always feel guilty when I see “Kill Your Television” bumper stickers in Moonjuice’s parking lot. But I work long days, deconstructing
and analogizing, and dealing with students’ problems. Channel surfing is my big vice.

  Local news was on. “The pun-loving bandit has seemingly struck again!” The female anchor was a fluffy bit of a thing. She was my secret lust object.

  I shoveled pasta into my face while she explained: “A ransom note was sent to Ygdrasil Herbs today! To ransom its president, you ask? No, to ransom its … catnip. That’s right, catnip—that fragrantly psychedelic herb … psychedelic to cats, that is. Last night, someone broke into the Ygdrasil plant on Tenmore Avenue and stole their entire stock of catnip. Ygdrasil supplies over seventy percent of the catnip sold in this country, according to its spokesman. So better keep on kitty’s good side for a while!”

  The Ygdrasil spokesman came on the screen, explaining that the ransom note was signed “Catnip Kidnap.”

  The newscasters could hardly keep a straight face. “Catnip Kidnap,” the airhead newswoman giggled in closing.

  I thought about the cats fighting across the street from Moonjuice. It was a cat synchronicity, I guessed.

  But the next day, I wasn’t so sure it was a coincidence.

  The media had fallen in love with their Pun-loving Bandit, reporting every conceivable connection between the Cereal Killer and the Catnip Kidnap. But that was nothing. By evening, news people were delirious with soft-news joy. Someone had stolen every meat patty from the town’s most popular fast-food joint.

  The first words out of the newscaster’s mouth were “Burger Burglar!”

  I could hardly contain my agitation as the newscaster described the burglary. The meat had been stolen during the busiest part of the lunch rush. No one had noticed anything odd. But when they went to the freezer to replenish, the patties were gone. One manager thought he’d spotted a new employee, but turnover was such that he hadn’t been sure, and he’d been too busy to check.

  The fast-food place had once donated a costume to Moonjuice. I’d seen it just yesterday strewn with the rest of Georgia’s mess.