Sort of Dead

by Rob Rosen

  We drove some more. I recognized the neighborhood, knew where she was headed. “She was in Aspen, last we heard.”

  She shook her head. “She’s back now. The dog is back, so she’s back.”

  My heart picked up steam. “If she’s in on this, she knows what we look like.”

  Clark nodded. “Besides, not like she’ll tell us anything anyway.”

  I’d lost sight of the gun we’d taken from Paula. FYI, I found sight, seeing as it was now in Eve’s hand, the one not holding the steering wheel, the one now holding the gun. “No? You don’t think we can persuade her?”

  “B…but,” I stammered, “she probably has security cameras everywhere.”

  “A good argument,” she said, “except she doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall, and…” We pulled up to the house and then around the block. Clark and I had, of course, been there before—alone, with her rigid and prone husband—but I would’ve bet we would never have returned. Guess I lost that bet.

  “And?” said Clark with well-merited reluctance.

  “And she’ll never recognize you, at least not once I get through with the both of you.”

  Clark and I looked at each other, eyes wide. My mouth went suddenly bone-dry. Which was ironic, considering there were a ton of bones in that van of hers—for the dogs, of course. “I’m thinking this is not a good idea,” Clark said.

  I nodded. I nodded some more. I nodded vigorously. “Good thinking. Or bad. Very bad.”

  Eve sighed. “You were murdered, Nord. In your twenties. For no good reason. And the woman in that house back there might have been responsible.”

  My head stopped nodding. She was right. And they really were on to us now. This, I realized, might be our only chance to find out what was going on. “Claire O’Voyant,” I said.

  She grinned very Cheshire-cat like. “Told you it was a good drag name.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “just never thought it would wind up being mine.”

  Chapter 8

  Eve had a small closet inside the van, a fold-out makeup table, a spare of every spare. She was a drag doggie groomer; these were her work clothes. “I get to write off being a drag queen,” she said as she began work on my face, Clark watching in what looked like terrified dread. “Who knew tucking could be tax deductible?”

  Not me. Nor did I want to know. My balls clenched in anticipation. “Don’t you have a muumuu I can wear? No tucking required.”

  She stood to her full statuesque proportions. Her wig bent as it brushed the ceiling of the van. “Do I look like I own a fucking muumuu?”

  In fact, she looked like Channing Tatum in a bent wig, and I doubted Channing Tatum wore a muumuu, so…“No, ma’am.”

  She smiled and sat back down. Lotions and powders and every manner of brush swiped across my face and eyes and lips, all while she hummed what sounded like a Cher medley. Do you believe in love after life? I paraphrased in my head.

  I locked eyes with Clark. “Well?”

  He shrugged. “You look, um, pretty?”

  I sighed. “Says the man next in line. Care to restate that?”

  A nod replaced the shrug. “Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”

  “Fingers crossed she never gets the opportunity to try,” I replied, suddenly worried about her, my mother, that is. I’d been murdered at work. What if the murderer or ers came for my mom next, worried that I’d told her something before I died? Or what if they were following Voltan and saw them together? Had I led them directly to her?

  Clark clearly saw the worry in my face, behind the pounds and pounds of makeup, rouge and blush and mascara, and enough foundation to build a skyscraper on top of. “She’ll be fine, Nord. There’s no reason for them to put two and two together.” He handed me his cell. “Call her. Tell her to be careful. Tell her to lock her doors.”

  I nodded as I grabbed for the phone. Eve stood up and walked behind me, sliding the blonde, shoulder-length wig over my head as I dialed the number.

  “Who’s this?” she barked after one ring.

  “Lewis,” I replied, suddenly itchy and ten degrees hotter. “Nord had your number at his desk at work. I thought I’d call and check in on you. Things here are a little…” I scratched beneath the wig. “Hairy.”

  “Hairy, huh? Bad hairy? You boys okay?”

  One of us boys was technically now a lady, but far be it from me to share that little tidbit, not with what I did need to share with her. “They’re on to us, ma’am. The bad guys. Or girls. Or both. We’re not sure yet. But, just in case they’re tying up loose ends, we thought maybe you should, you know, be extra careful. Maybe lock your doors and windows. Or come to us and we can all hide out together.”

  “You’re scaring me, son,” she said.

  The word cut like a knife. Son. It wasn’t technically my heart, but it shattered just the same. “It’s probably nothing to worry about, Sylvia. Just smart to be a little more careful. We’re safe. No one got hurt.” I left out the van, the drag queen with the purloined gun, and our getting temporarily locked in a basement. “Can you meet us in a few hours? Someplace out of the way?”

  “A few hours,” she said. “Right. I should be done by then.”

  To be on that smarter, safer side I’d mentioned, I asked. “Done with what, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  She paused. My heart stopped—the borrowed, shattered one. I knew my mom all too well. Pausing was never a good thing when it came to her. It meant she was thinking of a way out of whatever it was she had gotten herself into or a lie to cover her tracks. “Just lunch with an old friend, Lewis.”

  I knew her old friends. Mom avoided lunch with all of them. Mom liked people in small doses; lunch was a huge chug. There was no way out once you were in. Mom chose drinks instead. Coffee maybe. Booze or caffeine made it tolerable. Her words, not mine. Lunch, I knew, was saved only for emergencies. She, of course, didn’t know that I knew all her tricks, that I’d inherited them, that I’d also tended to avoid people, except when booze or caffeine were involved. I loved my mother, but the apple fell barely an inch from the tree. Is that why I was always single, alone? I also had dozens of old friends, but not one lover in the bunch. Fucking hindsight.

  Clark snapped me out of my reverie. “Just out of curiosity, Sylvia,” I said, “do any of these old friends have anything to do with what Clark and I are up to?”

  There was that pause again. Fuck! “Um,” she ummed, thereby lengthening said pause considerably.

  “Sylvia, please.”

  “Glenn,” she whispered.

  The wig was on tight. It was hot in the van. I’d been killed and nearly killed again. So, yeah, it took me a few moments to realize who she meant. “Wait, Glenn. Glenn as in the Glenn who is the CFO at the company your son used to work at? The Glenn who potentially, uh…you know.” I didn’t have the heart to say it—borrowed or shattered or otherwise.

  She didn’t pause this time. The terror in my chest, however, didn’t abate. “I know his wife. Met her at one of Nord’s office holiday parties, and I stayed in touch. My son used to schlep me to those god-awful shindigs. I think he was trying to be nice. Or sadistic. Hard to tell when it came to Nord. Lord knew where he got it from.” She laughed. I laughed. I schlepped her because I was too lazy to find a date. Plus, I could lay the blame on her for our leaving early. Still, we always had fun, mainly because the booze was top-shelf. “Anyway, she left him for another woman. Times change, huh, Lewis?”

  Yep, times change. Times, in fact, keep rolling along, even when you’re sort of dead. “But why lunch with him? If he…if he…”

  “If he killed my son, Lewis, I want to know. I want him to pay. In fact, I want him to die if he did it. Horribly. Painfully. Hung up by his balls.”

  I laughed again. I had such a great mom. Had. There went that shattered heart again. The laughter petered out. “I get it, Sylvia. But if he’s a murderer, you could be putting yourself in danger. And if he’s in this with the others, he mus
t know by now that there are people, namely us, snooping around. Wouldn’t be too difficult to put two and two together and come up with that you’re in cahoots with us.”

  “It’s just lunch. I’m a grieving mother. He’s a jilted husband. We’re around the same age. I’ll be careful.” Her laugh amped up. “Cahoots. Suddenly, I’m in a Scooby Doo cartoon. Nord loved those. I think he had a crush on Fred.”

  I did. I didn’t know she knew. “Just be careful, Sylvia. And we’ll see you in three hours. How about that bar before the freeway? Honkytonk place. No one would ever think to look for us there.” Myself included.

  “Three hours. See you then. And be safe yourself, Lewis.”

  “Count on it, Sylvia. Count on it.”

  I flicked the phone off, stood up, walked to a mirror hanging on the van’s wall, and stared into it. “Well, I never saw this coming,” said Claire O’Voyant. The irony of it all wasn’t lost on me.

  Clark closed the small gap and stared into the mirror as well. “The point is that Didi won’t recognize us.”

  I grimaced as I nodded. I looked like a Muppet—if Sesame Street had a drag bar.

  Eve shrugged as she made us a trio. “Not everyone has the bone structure for it, hon.” She then turned to Clark. “Your turn, sweetie.”

  I was trying to think of a word that was a cross between crestfallen and petrified. Mainly because that was what Clark looked like as he had a seat. I stood next to him, my hand on his shoulder for support. “Think of a name yet?”

  He nodded. “Bloody Mary,” came the reply. “Mainly because I need one right about now.”

  “Less Bloody, more Mary,” I said with a squeeze of my hand.

  To which Eve grumbled, “Less talking so we can get this show on the road, please. Or to a bar. Because you two aren’t the only ones in need of a drink.”

  I thought of the honkytonk, of my mom eating lunch with a potential murderer, of Eve missing her brother and me missing Max. I wanted to find my killer, but I needed to save my friends and family, too. My death was turning out to be quite the bitch, and not the kinds that were sprawled out on the van’s floor snoring contentedly away.

  “Whose dogs are these, anyway?” I asked.

  She’d been applying the same foundation treatment to Clark as I had gotten. Meaning, not a pore was currently breathing on my friend’s face. “Some rich housewife who leaves them with me during the week. I drop them at their house just before her husband gets home from work. They were the first wife’s pets. Christina and Britney. Christina is the talented one.” She pointed to the snoozing canines. “Britney’s the crazy one.” She looked up at us. “Duh.” She went back to shellacking Clark. “And they’re part of our plan.”

  I raised my hand. “We have one of those?”

  Clark raised his hand. “Yeah, we do?”

  Her eyes went rolling. I tended to doubt they ever gathered much moss. “Can I finish here, please? It’s enough to make me look pretty; now I have Frick and Frack, to boot.”

  I wondered who was Frack. I also wondered who here was pretty. Maybe Eve was the crazy one. Maybe Christina got all the talent. In any case, Clark was soon enough done, a red wig cut in a bob topping it all off like icing on a cake.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “What?” he said as he stared at himself/herself in the mirror.

  “You’re…you’re beautiful.”

  Eve nodded. “Told you. It’s the bone structure. Mary gives good bone.”

  Clark laughed. “Says so on my résumé.”

  Eve gave a verbal explanation on how to stuff our junk in an up and back. Didn’t seem at all possible. For Clark especially. Seeing as he could open up a junk yard with all he had betwixt him down there. Still, Eve gave us some tape and some privacy. In other words, she turned around as we tucked.

  I grimaced when all was said and done. Mostly done. “Fucking ouch.”

  Clark nodded. “Can balls scream? Mine are screaming.”

  Eve laughed and nodded her own bewigged head, which again rubbed against the van’s ceiling. “That means you did it right. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

  I frowned. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Along with a whole list of things, said list growing by the hour.

  She handed us some dresses. Mine was long because I was short. Clark’s was short because he was long. They fit like gloves, which was great for hands but not so much for chests and waists. My shoes were too big, the heels too tall. Eve stuffed them with newspaper. Clark’s were like the proverbial baby bear’s porridge, meaning just right, though he had to bend down, and bend down some more, to stand in the van.

  He, now she, managed a flaming red smile. “Tallest drag queen in captivity.”

  To which Eve replied, “Then let’s free her.”

  We hopped out of the van. Again, ouch. FYI, hopping and tucking do not mix. FYI, heels and hopping do not mix. Oil and water should mix so well. Eve retrieved the dogs and three pairs of sunglasses with enough rhinestones to choke a cow.

  “Come on,” she said after she locked the van up and leashed the pups.

  I tapped her on the shoulder. I had to reach quite a bit, even in my heels. “The dogs really are part of this plan of yours?”

  She turned and craned her neck my way. Meaning, down. “The dogs are the plan.”

  We turned a corner. The house was up ahead. Clark looked my way. “Returning to the scene of the crime.”

  Eve grinned. “History, then, repeats itself.” She looked my way, looked Clark’s way, gave us each an appraising stare. She shrugged, as if to say, it’d have to do, then walked faster toward the house. Faster was, of course, painful. Ouch, ouch, ouch. “You two have been too passive in all this. Nord was brutally murdered. In cold blood. These people don’t respond to passive. We’re in disguise. She’ll be caught unaware.”

  My stomach was clenching. Then again, in that dress of hers, clenching was about all it could do. “Caught unaware by a couple of dogs?” I looked at said dogs. They weren’t exactly of the attack variety. Allergy attack maybe, but that was about all.

  She stopped. She put her hands on my shoulders. “My brother said to help you. He didn’t have a dying wish, but he does have an after-death wish. I plan on honoring it. You don’t have to go any farther than this sidewalk, Nord. It’s your choice, but me, me I’m going in. I have a gun. I have surprise on my side. Plus, I’m a fucking drag queen!” She was squeezing my shoulders as she said all this. They were still the least pained part of my body at the time.

  I looked at Clark. “You stay. At least one of us can be safe then.”

  He grinned. “I know you’re being serious, Nord, but it’s hard to take you seriously in…” He ran his index finger in the air, aiming it from wig to heels. “And I promised to help. I knew what I was getting into. I also plan on honoring that promise. Plus, I’m a fucking drag queen now, too!”

  Yeah, I was one as well, but my bravado was tucked away with my penis. I looked at the dogs, who, in turn, were sniffing each other’s behinds. Seemed like a sign. But a good one? Hard to tell. “Well,” I said, “here goes nothing.” Though, fine, here went everything.

  We approached the front door. My feet were throbbing. My chest was throbbing. My dick, for a change, was not throbbing. I think it had fallen asleep, like a foot does when it’s tucked beneath a leg. Except my foot had never been tucked where my dick currently was. Again, fucking ouch.

  Eve looked from me to Clark. “Ready?”

  I shrugged. Clark shrugged. Our wigs bounced, as did the fake titties that had been shoved down our dresses. Eve then picked Christine, the collie, off the ground. The pug, Britney, snorted and peed on the front stoop.

  Eve flipped Christine over and said, ever so gently, “Play dead, girl.” The collie went limp. My jaw dropped. Eve grinned my way. “Told you she was the smart one.”

  The shrug remained but was joined by a nod and the briefest of smiles. I got it. I knew what he/she/they were up to. The dog
would play dead. Didi, a dog-lover, would be worried, would invite us in. We’d then strong-arm her into telling us what she knew about the death of, well, me. You know, sort of me. The me inside the me who wasn’t me.

  Yeah, it all sounded tenuous at best. Especially the strong-arming stuff. I mean, in the too-tight heels and equally tight wig, I felt less than strong. Wobbly was a better word for it. Wobbly and nervous. Because Eve still had the gun. And Eve had rage on her side. And a raging drag queen with a gun was never a good thing. Fort Knox would cower at the idea.

  Still, this seemed our best shot. No pun intended. Or any sort of pun, really. Plus, we were in disguise. I didn’t even recognize me. Not that I was me, but still. And if Didi really was guilty, or at least somehow complicit, it wasn’t like she could go to the police anyway. Or if her husband was complicit, ditto. So, fine, best shot, no pun, blah, blah, blah.

  Eve knocked. The door immediately opened with a slow, grating squeak. The dog, or make that dogs, both began to whine. Either they didn’t like that sound or perhaps what lay beyond the still-opening and squeaking door.

  “Um, hello?” shouted Eve into the void.

  Christine wriggled out of Eve’s grip and landed on all fours, a yip and then a bark quickly following suit.

  I tapped Eve on her broad, padded shoulder. “You said she’s the smart one. Think she knows something we don’t?” Or something we don’t want to know. Or something better not knowing.

  She locked eyes with me and again turned to the door, which had stopped opening and squeaking. “Hello?” she repeated. “Is, um, anyone home?”

  There was no answer. There was an echo, but no answer. The dogs were still whining, but no answer. Nothing, nada, zip. “We should go,” I whispered. “Let’s go,” I also whispered. “Going would be good right now.” The last part wasn’t whispered.