Who's Kitten Who?

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Are you kidding? The woman makes Marie Antoinette look like Mother Teresa,” he replied, spitting out his words. “I’ve seen her reduce her maid to tears because she used a cleaning product that had the wrong scent. I swear, her gardener, who was an illegal alien, sneaked across the border back into Mexico after working for her for a few weeks.”

  Pointing at the terrier glued to my side, he added, “She even named her dog Bullseye, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I don’t understand the significance,” I admitted. I’d just assumed the Stones had chosen it because it was a cute name.

  Cecil raised his eyebrows. “Bill Sykes also has a bull terrier named Bullseye.”

  “Who’s Bill Sykes?”

  A look of disbelief, no doubt over my appalling ignorance, crossed his face. “Bill Sykes is a truly evil character in the Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, as well as in the musical version, Oliver! He plots to kill Oliver, then kills his own girlfriend, Nancy.”

  In that case, I thought, it really was an interesting choice.

  “What about Sheldon?” I asked. “What’s he like?” Despite his reputation as a real sweetheart, there could be another side to his personality.

  “Sheldon’s great,” Cecil insisted. “If anything, he’s too nice. He’ll do anything to keep his Wicked Wife of the West happy.”

  I wondered if “anything” included finding a way to get Simon out of the picture.

  I was about to solicit his opinion about that possibility when Cecil suddenly muttered, “Uh-oh. Here comes trouble.”

  I followed his gaze to one of the tremendous front windows that overlooked the driveway.

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked nervously.

  “The Gloria Stone kind.”

  He was already dashing over to the door. As he flung it open, he was all smiles. “Glo, what a lovely surprise!” he gushed. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Me either, I thought. I had to remind myself that having the chance to talk to her was a good thing.

  “Cecil, get Harvey Gomberg on the phone,” she commanded, marching into the house like General Patton. “Wait—before you do, go into the files in my study and get the figures for last week’s ticket sales for The Hottest Summer. We’ve got to start promoting the hell out of this new show.”

  “Of course, Gloria,” he said fawningly. He cast me a knowing look, then hurried out of the room.

  She suddenly appeared to notice me. “Who are you?” she asked, looking me up and down as if I was something that had crawled in under the door.

  “Jessica Popper,” I said as evenly as I could. “We met at Simon’s wake.”

  “Really? I don’t remember you.” She frowned. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a veterinarian,” I replied. “You couldn’t have missed my mobile clinic, which is parked in your driveway. I have a lot of clients out here on the East End, and I know that busy people like you can appreciate the convenience of having a vet who makes house calls.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Now I remember you from the wake. I saw you at the Theater One rehearsal last night too. You’re friends with that aging tap dancer. The one who was close to Simon. Betty Vandervoort. Isn’t that her name?”

  I was glad Cecil had left the room, given the way I’d feigned total innocence during our little gossip session about Simon Wainwright and She’s Flying High.

  “Yes. That’s right. Betty and I are good friends. But I stopped by today to tell you about my practice, since it’s something you might consider—”

  “I don’t get involved with those horrid medical things anymore,” she said, waving her hand in the air disgustedly. “Cecil takes care of all that. Talk to him.”

  I thought I was off the hook until she turned back to me and said, “I understand you’re trying to find out who killed Simon Wainwright.”

  I was so startled I didn’t know how to respond. “Who told you that?” I finally gasped.

  “That lovely man Lieutenant Falcone,” she replied. “I invited him to a little dinner party I threw here at the house a few nights ago. My way of thanking him for all the wonderful work he’s doing investigating poor Simon’s murder.”

  Terrific, I thought. Falcone’s decided to get me out of the picture by telling the suspects what I’m up to.

  Or maybe he didn’t consider Gloria Stone a suspect.

  But I certainly did. Especially after I’d learned from her own assistant that she had recently decided she was against having Simon star in the Broadway production of She’s Flying High.

  Dead set against it.

  Given what I’d learned about Gloria Stone over the past twenty-four hours, I was convinced she deserved a prominent place on my list of suspects. The timing certainly fit.

  According to Cecil, she had fought with Simon on Thursday night about whether or not he’d be in the Broadway cast of She’s Flying High. He’d been so upset that he called Lacey, wanting to vent. Friday night, Gloria could have come to Theater One—a place she’d made a point of saying she’d never visited before—anticipating that he’d be there. I could picture her pressuring him to cancel their contract—and I could see their conversation erupting into another argument, which Sunny overheard. Later in the evening, Gloria could have come up with the perfect solution to her predicament: grabbing the Buddha and killing poor Simon.

  Thinking about such a horrific series of events was exhausting. I looked forward to going home and putting it out of my mind—at least until I let myself into my cottage and realized I now had to deal with spending a Friday evening alone.

  In the pre-Nick days, Fridays were for unwinding at home or calling a friend and going out for dinner or a movie. After he moved in, weekend evenings became a chance for us to spend some time together, since we were both so busy the rest of the week.

  But I’d seen neither hide nor hair of Nick since our argument in the restaurant parking lot two nights before. And as I wandered around my empty cottage, I suddenly felt very much alone.

  So after letting out the dogs, checking all the water bowls, and doling out dinner to all my pets, I strolled over to the Big House to see if Betty and Winston were willing to let me tag along on whatever the two soon-to-be-wed lovebirds had planned. I found Betty sitting on the couch with Frederick curled up in her lap, studying a catalog with such intensity she appeared to be cramming for a quiz. Various pages had been flagged with Post-its.

  “You’re just in time to give me some advice,” she said. “I’m trying to decide on gifts for my bridesmaids. Do you think I should go with these engraved bangle bracelets or is a silver picture frame more practical?”

  “I’m sorry, Betty,” I replied, “but I’m not really in the mood for anything that’s even remotely related to weddings, engagements, love, or even dating.”

  She frowned. “In that case, would you like to practice your dance steps?”

  “I’m really not in the mood for that,” I replied.

  The ringing of the phone interrupted us.

  “I’d better get that,” Betty said apologetically, dashing off to answer. “It’s probably Winston, calling from the tuxedo shop to get advice on what sort of cummerbund to choose.”

  I fondled Frederick’s ears distractedly, half-listening as she padded down the hall toward the phone.

  “Hello?” I heard her say.

  And then, nothing.

  I expected her to report that it was a wrong number. But when she walked back into the room, her face was ashen.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Who called?”

  “It sounded like a threat,” Betty replied in a tight voice. “From a woman. I think I recognized her voice, but I can’t place it.”

  “What do you mean, a threat?” I demanded. “From a woman? What did she say?”

  “Actually, it sounded like a taped message. And I believe it was a line from a movie.”

  Before I had a chance to fire more questions at her, she added, “The tape simply said, ‘Be afraid.
Be very afraid.’”

  Chapter 13

  “When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.”

  —Nigerian Proverb

  I know that line,” I told Betty. At this point, my voice sounded as strained as hers. “It’s from a horror film called The Fly that was made in the mid-eighties. It was loosely based on a classic movie with the same title that was made in the 1950s.”

  “That explains why the woman’s voice sounded familiar,” Betty commented. “She’s probably someone famous.”

  I concentrated hard for a few seconds, then snapped my fingers. “Geena Davis,” I announced.

  “The actress who played the President on that television series?”

  “That’s the one. She starred in The Fly with Jeff Goldblum. And she said the famous line. I believe it was also used in the promos for the film.”

  “What do you think that phone call means?” Betty’s voice still sounded pinched. “Do you think it was a joke? Or a wrong number?”

  “Probably one or the other,” I replied. “Somebody must have been playing a trick on a friend, except he dialed your number by mistake.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she agreed.

  I knew she didn’t believe my explanation for a minute. Neither did I. I was certain that her initial assumption—that she’d just received a threat—was correct. And I suspected that even though she was the one who’d gotten the call, its message was directed at me. The person behind it had decided the best way to scare me away from the investigation was by threatening someone I cared about.

  The question was, who was that person?

  I thought hard about which of the people on my list of suspects knew that Betty and I were friends. The entire cast and crew of the Port Players, of course. The two of us had arrived together at every single rehearsal, since we drove to the theater in the same car. In addition, we usually gravitated toward each other during breaks, sitting together and chatting. That meant Lacey, Kyle, and everyone else involved in the production, from Derek to Jill to the members of the chorus to the stage manager. Aziza too, since I’d told her myself that Betty was the one who’d gotten me involved in the first place.

  It was possible that Ian Norman knew Betty and I were close, even though he’d never met her. All it would have taken was a casual comment from his roommate, Kyle—something about the new cast member, meaning me, who’d been brought in by one of the regulars, Betty Vandervoort.

  Gloria Stone also knew that Betty and I were friends. She’d mentioned it herself when she’d found me talking to her assistant at her weekend house in the Bromptons. And thanks to my good buddy Anthony Falcone, she knew I was poking my nose around Simon’s murder.

  Any one of them could have tracked down Betty’s telephone number. She was listed in the Norfolk County phone book, for heaven’s sake. And it would have been easy enough for anyone to record the famous line from a DVD.

  Whoever had made this call, however, had specifically chosen a threat.

  A wave of utter despair suddenly swept over me. I wished I could talk to Nick about what was going on. But of course I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk to Nick about anything.

  Forrester? I thought of him next, since he was as interested in who’d killed Simon as I was. However, I certainly didn’t want to make any moves that could be interpreted as encouraging his crush.

  Falcone? Another dead end.

  At the moment, I realized, I was pretty much on my own when it came to this unofficial investigation of Simon Wainwright’s murder.

  Except for Betty, of course. She was in on it too. As of a few minutes ago, this was one point that had been made perfectly clear.

  I tried to push aside the uneasiness Betty’s mysterious telephone call had left behind. Either fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, I had the perfect distraction: my dinner with Forrester Sloan, only twenty-four hours away.

  Merely thinking about going on a date with Forrester practically made me break out in hives. My buddy Suzanne, meanwhile, saw the appearance of someone new in my life as an exciting challenge.

  In fact, she showed up on my doorstep, unannounced and unexpected, early on Saturday afternoon. The minute I opened the door, I felt as if I’d been ensnared by the posse of gay guys from Queer Eye. She was carrying a pile of dresses in her arms, with four different pocketbooks and three pairs of shoes balanced on top.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “Preparing you for the harsh world of dating,” she replied firmly. “Jessie, you have no idea what it’s like out there. Fortunately, help has arrived.”

  “It’s not really a date,” I insisted.

  She didn’t appear to have heard me. Not if the way she came barreling into my living room like a member of a SWAT team was any indication.

  “Okay, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us,” she announced. She draped the dresses across the back of my upholstered chair, then gently placed the shoes and the bags on the seat.

  Predictably, Max thought the idea of turning the living room into a dressing room was great fun. My Westie thrived on anything new and exciting, and he pranced around gleefully like the party animal he was. Tinkerbell also thought all the commotion signaled playtime. When a satin ribbon floated to the floor after coming loose from Suzanne’s fashion treasure trove, she pounced on it and began toying with it as if it was the best invention since catnip. Lou, however, perceived anything out of the ordinary as a potential threat. He treated the mound of accessories and clothing from Suzanne’s closet as the enemy. He began growling at the colorful collection of fabric and leather, meanwhile keeping a safe distance away.

  “Calm down, Lou,” Suzanne instructed matter-offactly. “This is all for a good cause, I assure you.”

  I wasn’t any more convinced than my Dalmatian. In fact, I was tempted to growl at the mountain of alien clothing myself.

  “O-kay,” she announced, rubbing her hands together. “The clock is ticking, so let’s not waste any time.”

  “Actually,” I told her, doing my best to remain calm, “I thought I’d spend the afternoon catching up on my reading. I’ve got a stack of veterinary journals that—”

  “Not today,” she replied firmly. “We have to get your hair cut, find a decent manicurist, buy you some makeup…”

  That last word made me cringe. I’ve never been big on makeup. Whenever I put on lipstick, I get this smudgy line around my mouth that makes me look as if I’ve been eating tomato sauce. As for eye makeup, I usually rub most of it off before I’ve even left the house. It’s not until I glance in a mirror and see a raccoon staring back at me that I realize what I’ve done.

  Suzanne leaned forward and scrutinized my face in a manner that made me extremely uncomfortable. “When’s the last time you had your eyebrows done?”

  “It’s been a while,” I admitted. “Like never.”

  She shook her head sadly, as if she was too disappointed in me to speak. “Maybe we should start by trying on the dresses. That will give us a solid base to start from.”

  Why someone needed “a solid base” to go out and eat a cheeseburger with a guy who’d coerced that particular someone into doing so was beyond me. But I could tell by the determined gleam in Suzanne’s eye that she wasn’t about to take no for an answer.

  Still, I couldn’t resist gasping in horror when she held up the first dress she’d brought.

  “You actually expect me to wear that?” I cried.

  “It’s Donna Karan,” she replied. I got the feeling there was a “Don’t you know anything?” hiding somewhere in that sentence.

  The fact that it had a designer label sewn into it didn’t make it any less weird. And it wasn’t even the big, bright flowers splashed all over it that troubled me. What I really had a problem with was the huge fake flower that was glommed onto the shoulder, a floppy pink thing the size of a cabbage.

  The dress was also short. So short that I couldn’t imagine wearing it while sitt
ing at a table unless the restaurant happened to have extremely large napkins.

  “Don’t you have anything with a little more fabric?” I hated the pleading tone I heard in my voice.

  “There’s nothing wrong with showing some flesh,” she insisted.

  “It’s dinner, not an orgy,” I pointed out.

  I don’t know why I even bothered. I could see how fixated Suzanne was on her task for the day: making me presentable—at least, in her eyes. Frankly, I found her doggedness a bit intimidating.

  Even so, I nixed the next two without even trying them on. One looked like a large blue rubber band. The other had ruffles. I happen to have a very strict policy about ruffles.

  I was about to make the outrageous suggestion that I wear something from my own closet when she held up the last dress. I had to admit, it wasn’t bad. It was plain black, for one thing, without any ruffles or flounces or other geegaws that were likely to make me want to spend the entire evening hiding in the ladies’ room. It also looked as if it would cover enough of my person to allow me to move like my real self instead of a robot.

  “I guess I could try on that one,” I said.

  I slipped it on, surprised by how good the silky lining felt. It was almost as sensuous as flannel.

  “What do you think?” I asked Suzanne, planting myself in front of her with my arms held out.

  She smiled. “You look like Audrey Hepburn. Go find yourself a mirror.”

  Frankly, I’d always identified much more with Katharine Hepburn. And it wasn’t only because she happened to have graduated from the same institution of higher learning Suzanne and I had both attended, Bryn Mawr College. Still, when I checked the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom closet door, I had to admit that I looked like someone who was about to go on a real date, if not an actual Roman Holiday.

  Not that I fell into either category, of course.

  “So?” Suzanne demanded when I returned to the living room.

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “I’m the new Audrey.”

  “We’ve got our dress!” she proclaimed triumphantly. “Which means we’ll go with these shoes and this purse…” She glanced at her watch and frowned. “Goodness, I didn’t realize it was so late! We’d better go. Jaimee hates it if his clients are late. He’s always saying his time is much too precious to waste. And, believe me, you want to stay on his good side. When it comes to tress distress, he’s the absolute master.”