by Susan Kandel
“You don’t need to pretend,” I said briskly. “You’re a smart guy. It’s the police. They think I’ve done something. Something really bad. That’s why they keep showing up here. Don’t tell me you hadn’t figured that out.”
“I don’t like to judge people.”
I dropped my voice to a lower register. “Then you believe I’m innocent?”
“Of course I do.”
“Oh, God.” I pulled him to my accidentally sexy, forty-something bosom and gave him a hug. “You’re amazing. Thank you so much for saying that. It means the world to me.”
“No prob,” he said with his usual eloquence.
“You know, I’m really looking forward to spending more time with you.”
He nodded uncomprehendingly.
“Yes, after today, my life is going to take a whole new turn. I’m going to be able to breathe again. Turn a new page. Build rewarding relationships with deserving people. Get the monkey off my back. I’m really excited.”
He took a step back. “What exactly is happening today?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” I paused. “Let’s just say que sera, sera.”
Connor took my hand, which reminded me I needed a manicure before this afternoon. I wouldn’t want to get caught on camera with chipped polish. “We’re friends,” he said. “Good friends. Maybe even more, right?”
“Right.”
“Which means you can trust me.”
“Well…It’s hard for me.” I looked off into the distance.
“I understand. You’ve been burned.”
“My skin is raw,” I choked out. Yeah, too bad about the backyard. They could’ve done some fancy cutting between the waterfall and the tears welling up in my eyes. Would’ve been great.
“You gotta have some faith,” he said. And then, the clincher: “In us.”
“You’re right. Faith can move mountains.” Please. He wasn’t that dumb. Well, maybe.
“So this afternoon?” he prompted.
I wiped my eye. “We’re having a little family celebration. Around four. Everybody’s going to be there.” I blew my nose. “Which makes it the perfect time to straighten things out. Lay my cards on the table. Confront the enemy. Clean house. Get rid of dead wood.”
“Is everybody coming over to your house?” Connor asked, wide-eyed. “Because if that’s the case, I can make sure the guys park their cars down a couple of blocks so there’s plenty of room. Or are you getting together someplace else? A restaurant, maybe? Somewhere in the area? Somewhere I might’ve been?”
Nice try. I glanced at my watch. “Oh, would you look at the time! I have to run.” I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then dashed down the sidewalk. “See you!” I called out, waving. “Sooner rather than later!”
Connor stood there in his saggy sweatpants looking kind of sick and dizzy.
Perhaps he didn’t know that vertigo was contagious.
When I got back home, I went into the bedroom, yanked open the curtains, and smiled beatifically for the opossumcam.
After that I put on my prettiest apron, which also happens to be my only apron, and skipped through the rest of the house, throwing open the windows and letting in the fresh air. Then I did a load of laundry, collected the wine glasses from last night, cleaned up the remains of this morning’s coffee and English muffins, and dusted. I decided to pay my bills another day.
At 11:00 a.m., I took off the apron and went to pick up my dog and cat from Lois and Marlene, whose front lawn was littered with beer bottles and candy wrappers, which is par for the course on the morning of November 1.
The ladies were beside themselves. It’d been some night. Just after midnight, a pair of chubby teenaged zombies carrying bulging sacks of candy had made the error of relieving themselves in their prizewinning rosebushes. A quick-thinking Lois, concealed behind the living room curtain, managed to snap an incriminating photo with her ancient Polaroid. She called the police, and the zombies were picked up for vandalism. From one to three this morning, the ladies had been at the station house, identifying them in a lineup. At nine, the ladies’ masseur Rodney had arrived to help them manage the stress. They were feeling much better. Rodney had also examined the pets and felt confident that Buster and Mimi had suffered no trauma from being in such close proximity to a crime scene.
At 11:30, I pulled out of my driveway and headed south on Orlando. At Melrose I turned left and drove to Crescent Heights, where I took another left. At Santa Monica Boulevard I took another left, and when I got to Orlando, another left again.
It made a nice square.
I did that three more times, just to make sure nobody was following me, then drove straight to Bridget’s store.
We were meeting there at noon: me; Annie, Vincent, and baby Radha (Alexander was at preschool); Gambino, who’d taken the afternoon off; my long-lost best friend, Lael, who gasped when she saw me (because of the bleached hair), and cried when she saw Gambino (for obvious reasons); Larry the limo driver; Esperanza, not an actress but an actual Cosmoluxe rep who knew Terence, Jilly’s supposed nephew, from Pilates class and for the tidy sum of four hundred dollars had agreed to let her office double as Gersh Investigations whenever I eventually showed up, which I didn’t hold against her as she had a seven-year-old she was putting through parochial school with no help whatsoever from his deadbeat dad; and, of course, Bridget, to whom I returned the five hundred dollars, with my sincerest gratitude.
Annie brought individual Tupperware bowls, each containing a breaded seitan cutlet and a side of chickpea “tuna” (secret ingredient: kelp powder).
Bridget’s assistant, Bernadette, made iced tea.
“I just love mine with mint sprigs,” said Bridget.
Bernadette said she’d be back from the market in fifteen minutes.
I cleared my throat. “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?”
I went over the plan and doled out the props.
Bridget was in charge of the costumes. “You’ve gotten so fat,” she said, holding a pair of tangerine-and-purple-striped raw silk cigarette-leg pants up against my body. They came with a matching bustier and trapeze coat.
“This outfit is a size four.” I showed her the label.
“Excuses, excuses,” she tut-tutted.
“The colors are garish with my hair, anyway,” I muttered.
Bridget pulled a pair of owly blue-tinted sunglasses out of her pocket and slipped them on. “Look! I’m Edith Head! I won eight Oscars! Don’t tell me what looks garish!”
Edith Head wore blue glasses to help her envision what colors would look like on black-and-white film. We were in the age of digital video, not that relevance was something Bridget gave much thought to when making conversation.
“The outfit will look better on Esperanza, anyway,” Bridget said under her breath. “Her skin glows.”
“Esperanza is wearing black, remember?”
“Enough about Esperanza,” Lael said. “What about me? What do you think, Bridget, about a nice housedress? Maybe something floral with big pockets?” Lael had been around the block more than once, but she liked to play it down.
Bridget made a face. “We’ve spoken about your unhealthy obsession with housedresses before. You’re going to wear this.” She walked over to the rack and grabbed a silver crochet metallic jumpsuit from the late sixties, with a low scoop neck and narrow sleeves that flared at the wrist. “It’s from the collection of Joey Heatherton, very Scandinavian ice queen, plus we’ll be able to wash the ketchup out of it. Oh, look, Bernadette is back with the mint leaves!”
When Bernadette pushed open the celadon and gold door, the bell jingled, which woke up the baby, who started screaming.
Bridget threw her hands up to her ears.
“Why don’t they give her a binky?” whispered Lael.
“They don’t believe in pacifiers,” I said as the screams intensified.
“Give them time.”
Gambino lifted Radha out of her stroller and started bouncing her up and down. “Hey, hot rod. You’re going to look good in a sixty-three Buick Riviera one day.”
Larry the limo driver spoke up. “I like muscle cars.”
“Who are you?” Bridget asked, looking at him for the first time.
“I work for Cece,” Larry said, blushing.
Bridget put her hands on her hips. “Don’t we all?”
Annie came over and put her arm around my shoulder. “I hate to bring this up, Mom, after all the effort you’ve put into this thing, but how do we know they’re even showing up?”
Oh, they were showing up. I’d slipped an invitation to Alexander’s fourth birthday party (which had in fact taken place six months ago) into the pile of junk mail I’d given Connor this morning. Jilly and her guys were resourceful. They’d find the invitation. And they’d show up at Bob Baker Marionettes at four o’clock this afternoon. Who can resist a puppet show?
I was rather pleased with myself for that one. The theatrical setting was classic Hitchcock (see Stage Fright, Murder!, The 39 Steps, and The Man Who Knew Too Much). Ditto the botched children’s birthday party. In The Birds, Cathy Brenner’s eleventh birthday celebration is ruined when a swarm of gulls swoops down on her right in the middle of a game of blindman’s bluff. Mitch and Melanie (Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren) are so busy prying the pecking beasts off the hysterical children that nobody gets so much as a bite to eat. But that wasn’t going to happen to us.
Bob Baker Marionettes was providing ice cream.
Lael was making her famous butterscotch toffee angel food cake.
And I was bringing corn chips—bags and bags of them. I hoped Jilly would have a chance to kick back and have some. But you never know. She might be superbusy.
Tearing her hair out.
Ruing the day.
Stuff like that.
Yeah, payback’s a—well, let’s just say it rhymes with Hitch.
Chapter 46
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is located in a white concrete box of a building just under the First Street Bridge, in a nondescript neighborhood somewhere between Silverlake and Bunker Hill. Founded in 1963, Bob Baker’s is one of those venerated L.A. institutions, like the Venice boardwalk or Pink’s hot dogs. I’d taken Annie for the first time when she was twelve, which turned out to be too late. She’d already seen the first two Chucky movies, and puppets gave her the creeps.
We drove over in a caravan.
Annie, Vincent, and the children led in their Prius. Lael was at the wheel of her brand-new, fully loaded Honda Odyssey. Bridget came next in her two-seater convertible, which seated one plus her caramel-colored Hermès Birkin bag. I brought up the rear, with Larry the limo guy and Esperanza in tow. Seemed like there might be some chemistry there.
After convening in the parking lot to go over last-minute details, we filed into the theater and found seats on the folding chairs circling the horseshoe-shaped rug. Lael’s son August and baby Radha slept in their car seats.
“Fancy,” said Alexander, wide-eyed.
Indeed. There were crystal chandeliers dangling from the corrugated tin ceiling. Also disco balls, silver garlands, and a red velvet curtain, with two four-foot tin soldier marionettes standing sentry.
The room quickly filled to capacity. When the lights went down, a chubby-cheeked young woman dressed in black came bounding out. She looked like a cross between a kindergarten teacher and a cat burglar.
“Welcome!” she said. “I am your master of ceremonies, Jolene, like the bleach. I have a couple of announcements before we begin. Parents, please turn off your cell phones and pagers, and children, please stay on the red portion of the carpet. The blue at the center is our stage and must be kept clear for the marionettes at all times.”
“Did you hear that, Auden?” the woman sitting behind us whispered to her son. “The blue carpet is hot lava. You’ll burn up if you touch it.” She made a sound like bacon sizzling on a pan.
“Looks like we have a couple of birthdays today.” Jolene clapped her hands. “Let’s see—where is Millie?”
A tiny girl wearing a beautiful polka-dotted dress started to cry.
“Millie,” Jolene coaxed, “I have this wonderful gold birthday crown and you get to wear it for the whole entire show!”
“Nooo!” Millie wailed, making a break for the door.
“Okay, then, how about Alexander, the birthday boy? Where are you?”
Alexander turned to Annie, confused. “But—”
I reached across Lael and wrapped him in a bear hug. “It’s your half-birthday. Go with it.”
He nodded solemnly to Jolene, who placed the crown on his head.
Now the lights came all the way up and the bouncy rhythms of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” filled the room. Teddy bears on roller skates and in mini-Model Ts emerged from behind the curtain, maneuvered by unsmiling, black-clad puppeteers. They were all boy bears. Then a girl bear with pretty long eyelashes came out and started making sandwiches.
“That’s called sexism, dear,” said Auden’s mother. “In our family, Daddy cooks and Mommy earns all the money.”
Auden nodded before turning his attention back to the show, where a trail of ant marionettes was making off with the food.
I kept my eye on the side exits. After the teddy bears took their leave and the glow-in-the-dark skeletons began their manic Day of the Dead dance, Jilly’s guys showed up.
Terence the smart-ass and Ellroy the dropout. Dressed in camouflage, for God’s sake. They slunk against the wall and took seats in the way back.
I whispered to Vincent, who was sitting on the red carpet in front of me with Alexander on his lap, “The eagle has landed.”
He coughed once, which was the signal for Larry the limo guy to confirm that he’d spotted Jilly’s cameras. Part of his P.I. training involved learning to locate concealed surveillance devices. Larry, however, was flirting with Esperanza and didn’t hear him. Vincent coughed again, louder this time.
“What’s wrong with that man?” Auden whispered to his mother.
“Probably a smoker,” she said with distaste. “Like Daddy.”
When Vincent doubled over choking, Larry finally got the message, at which point he pulled a hankie out of his pocket and sneezed into it.
“Gesundheit!” said Esperanza.
Larry blew his nose enthusiastically, then shot a quick glance up to the crown molding on the far wall, where the multicolored spotlights were lined up. Sure enough, right in the middle was the tiny blinking red light.
It was showtime.
“Look, Grandma!” said Alexander. “The lady has hair like yours!” He was referring to a three-foot-tall, bleached-blond Phyllis Diller marionette singing, “Send In the Clowns.”
I held up my finger to my lips. When Phyllis got to the line “You in midair,” I elbowed Lael off her chair.
“Ow!” she cried, falling to the floor in a heap. “What do you think you’re doing, Cece?” She tucked an errant bosom into her low-cut jumpsuit and climbed back onto the chair.
“Nothing,” I said, leaning forward so the camera could catch my expression, which was one of pure, unadulterated hatred. “Not a damn thing.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You’ve got it in for me, don’t you?” She glanced over at Vincent, who mouthed, “Louder.” The smart-ass and the dropout had earpieces on, obviously, but we wanted to be sure they caught every nuance of our carefully crafted dialogue.
“What goes around, comes around,” Lael said, raising her voice. “Karma’ll get you in the end.”
“Shut up, you hussy,” said Bridget at the top of her lungs.
Pure improvisation, but I liked it.
“Keep it down,” hissed the flame-haired woman behind us, who had come without a child, not that I’d hold that against a person.
“Yes,” echoed Bridget. “You’re always making such a scene. You’re not the star of
the show, Missy. We’re here for the puppets.”
And who could blame her? “Send In the Clowns” was over. Now it was “Turn the Beat Around,” the original version as opposed to the pallid Gloria Estefan remake, with boogieing marionettes straight out of a blaxploitation film, done up in cornrows, white leather suits with fringe, and gold platforms. Bridget was galvanized by the footwear, I could tell. But I was amazed by the puppeteers. Their movements were so economical. A series of tiny lifts of the elbow, and the puppets were doing the moonwalk. A twist of the wrist, and they were rolling their hips suggestively.
Had it been this effortless for Jilly to manipulate me?
Now the tables were turned.
The puppet would have her revenge.
Vincent started tapping his watch. Right. We had a schedule.
“I’m stepping outside for a minute,” I said to Annie, opening my eyes as wide as I could. I wasn’t going to blink for at least two minutes. It’s the best way to make tears come, especially when you are wearing contacts.
I stumbled out of the room, pausing in the foyer long enough to adjust my sleeveless dove gray shirtwaist with the full skirt and thick white leather belt, inspired by the one Doris Day wears in The Man Who Knew Too Much, in the scene in which husband Jimmy Stewart drugs her so she won’t flip out when she finds out that their son has been kidnapped. Doris goes to hell and back in that movie, but she triumphs by using her wits. She was a fine role model.
On cue, I lurched into the cheerful Bob Baker party room. The walls were painted in rainbow colors and festooned with sparkly ribbons and bows. There were three white picnic tables decorated with bunches of balloons. In the center of one of them, pyramids of juice boxes and individually sized paper cups of ice cream (chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry, each imprinted with the slogan SAY NO TO DRUGS on the lid) had been assembled for after the show. After putting down my white rattan bucket purse, I swept the snacks to the floor in a single blow, then hurled myself across the table, weeping.
When I’d sobbed for the designated amount of time, I turned my head in the direction of the oversized cellophane-wrapped Styrofoam lollipops in the corner of the room, where Larry the limo guy had spotted the second hidden camera, and said, out loud, “One final thing I have to do and I’ll be free of the past.”
