Deceived

by James Scott Bell

  Scary thought. No. Not that.

  “. . . so I want you to come to Bible study tonight.”

  “Excuse me?” Liz said.

  “Our weekly Bible study at the church. Tonight. Led by Pastor Jon. It’s the only way to grow, dear.”

  “Tonight? I was going to — ”

  Mrs. Axelrod put her hand on Liz’s arm and bore into her with a look. “My dear, I know people. I know when they are running from something. Or to something. Now I’m not going to let you go until you promise to come to Bible study tonight. You’re a babe in the woods, and there are wolves out there, and they carry bottles of whiskey.”

  Liz had to make this stop. Now. Or she would scream.

  “Fine,” Liz said, her insides crying out for the drink she could not have.

  That’s when Mrs. Axelrod finally stood up. Or made a move to stand up. Mr. Dean helped her make it all the way.

  “Come here, dear,” Mrs. Axelrod said, opening her arms. Liz obediently let the woman pull her to her bosom. Mrs. Axelrod’s dress seemed drenched in perfume.

  Which gave Liz a headache that lasted long after they left.

  But what lasted even longer was the thought of lions. Liz kept thinking of devilish-looking lions, wanting to eat her up.

  She even thought, for a brief moment, that the whole day was a dream. A crazy dream, and she was going just a little bit crazy herself.

  No. Just stress.

  She went back to the bourbon. Then she locked the front door with the dead bolt. If anybody came knocking, she’d ignore them this time.

  She’d ignore every bad thought, too. She was going to keep moving now, devil lions or no.

  2:33 p.m.

  Rocky looked at herself in the mirror on Geena’s closet door. She wanted to see Keely Smith looking back at her. At least a mental image of Keely. She wanted that confidence and assurance to melt into her, make her believe in her singing, if just for a moment.

  But it was just Rocky Towne staring back at her from the glass.

  Geena came in. “There you are.”

  “Here I am,” Rocky said.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “Trying to go through the looking glass.”

  “Cool. If you make it, let me know.” Geena went to her nightstand and grabbed a book.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” Rocky said.

  “You can always try a rabbit hole,” Geena said.

  “No, I mean the audition. Tomorrow.”

  Geena stopped and looked at her across the bed.

  “Too many things are happening at once,” Rocky said.

  “But that’s why you should go.” Geena tossed the book on the bed and came to her. “Listen to me, I know. I’m the one who always has to get nine hundred things in my head focused down, am I right?”

  “Geena — ”

  “I’m right, right? So you need to go for this. Even with Arty and your dad and that jerk Boyd who was never good enough for you. You need to because this is what you want, what you really want.”

  “It can wait.”

  “Wait for what? When there’s no trouble in your life? Like when will that be?”

  Geena had a point and had focused her mind very well to make it. It was what Rocky wanted. Had for years.

  After the dog attack, maybe a year after, Rocky started to sing. She found that when she did, she got carried away from her world. When she sang, she couldn’t hear the kids yelling “scar face” at her.

  And her mom’s albums — she had classics like Keely and Louis, Jo Stafford, Doris Day, and The Andrews Sisters — had the same, magical effect.

  As long as Rocky was singing or listening to music, she was not imperfect and unsure. She could soar.

  “Will you go?” Geena said.

  “Behold, the new Keely Smith,” Rocky said.

  7:42 p.m.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Pastor Jon said.

  Liz and Mac and the others at the Bible study sat in folding chairs. They were in what the church called its fellowship hall. Liz thought the walls had eyes. All looking at her to see if she’d give herself away.

  She fought back at the eyes. She would not crack. Stare all you want to.

  “There was a famous preacher named Torrey,” Pastor Jon said, “who was preaching in his Chicago church one night, and he saw a large, flashily dressed man, the kind they used to call a sport. A gambler. Someone used to fast living. That’s what my grandma used to call it. Fast living.”

  He was holding his Bible in one hand and gesturing with the other.

  “So as Torrey was preaching, he kept noticing this man’s eyes just boring into him. He had the look of a man intent on something. Well, they used to have inquiry rooms, rooms where people could come after the preaching to learn the ways of the Lord. Torrey was in the inquiry room when one of his deacons brought this man back.”

  Pastor Jon paused. He looked almost like he’d been there. “This big sport was groaning, and he said to Torrey, ‘I don’t know what’s come over me. I never felt this way in all my life.’ Torrey asked him a question or two, and it turned out this man’s mother ran a gambling house in Omaha. And the man had come to Chicago and was walking down the street, and he happened by a street-corner preacher.”

  Liz had heard a few of those back home. They always freaked her out.

  “Torrey used to train lay people to stand out on the sidewalks and start preaching and teaching the Word of God. It just so happened that the man doing the preaching was someone the sport knew. A man who once lived the high life, just like the sport. After listening awhile, the sport went on his way, heading for a gambling den. But something had taken hold of him. Something that kept dragging him back to the open-air meeting. From there, he was invited to Torrey’s church, and that’s when all this happened.”

  Pastor Jon took a dramatic breath.

  “The man said to Torrey, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’ And Torrey said, ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you. You are under the conviction of sin. The Holy Spirit has got hold of you. Will you take Christ as your Savior right now?’ And the man fell on his knees and started crying. He was led to Christ by Torrey, and when he left that night he was changed forever.”

  That, Liz thought, is about the scariest story I have ever heard.

  Monday

  9:23 a.m.

  Liz found the life insurance policy in the blue vinyl folder in the study, where Arty kept important papers. Passports, birth certificates, a record of accounts.

  The life insurance payout was five hundred thousand dollars.

  Half a million.

  Tax free.

  Her head went light. She’d never been stupid enough to play the lottery, but this felt like winning it.

  Arty’s death benefit, plus those rocks.

  Maybe she should forget about the gems. Too hot to handle. Take the half a mil and —

  No, that wasn’t enough. Not these days. Not to put her into the life she deserved. Those stones would put her over.

  But what if she got caught with them?

  She wasn’t going to get caught. She knew exactly what to do with them. In the world she came from, finding a fence was a no-brainer. It would be like going back to her roots.

  Don’t get jumpy about the life insurance, she told herself. Don’t seem anxious. It’s just sitting there. Grieve a while, then put in the claim.

  It wouldn’t be that hard to grieve. She had really liked Arty at one time. Maybe even loved him. If she was capable of love.

  There was a photo on the desk of the two of them. It was taken on their honeymoon. Arty looked happy.

  She looked, she thought now, like one of those fishermen standing by their record-breaking Marlin.

  She had landed Arty. Skillfully. Hooked him and reeled him in.

  She met him at a party in Hollywood. She was living in a studio apartment in the hills north of Franklin Avenue and working for a themed catering firm. Reel Parties, Inc.,
which specialized in dressing their people up as movie stars by decade.

  On the night she met Arty, she was working a forties film-noir theme. The host of the party had asked specifically for a Burt Lancaster and a Veronica Lake.

  Liz was no Burt. That honor fell to a curly-headed acting student. But Toby Gray, owner and operator of Reel Parties, said she was definitely his Veronica Lake.

  “Who’s Veronica Lake?” she asked Toby in his office, four hours before the party.

  Toby rolled his eyes, pulled out a big book, and plopped it on his desk. He flipped some pages and showed her a page with a glossy lobby card reprint from a movie called This Gun for Hire. He pointed at the blonde. Then he flipped to one called The Blue Dahlia, pointing out the same blonde. On the opposite page was a black-and-white photo with the caption “Veronica Lake.”

  “She had a peek-a-boo bang,” Toby said. “Her hair fell over one eye. Drove men crazy.”

  Liz studied the picture. That drove men crazy? Well then, why not? Her hair was long enough.

  Toby, former hairdresser and makeup artist for the studios, did all the costumes and styles for his crew. He was known to run with some shady LA characters, but Liz did not mind that in the slightest. He seemed, in fact, very much like her in many ways.

  They could make themselves anything they wanted on the outside and hide the inside as they saw fit.

  Toby set to work. A curling iron here and a little tease there, and Liz was Veronica Lake. From his vast store of costumes, Toby selected a dress that might have been last worn in a nightclub in the 1940s.

  “You could have totally gone to Ciro’s in this,” Toby said. “That was the place to be seen. No doubt Veronica did many a night there.”

  As she looked in the mirror, she asked, “Is Veronica Lake still alive?”

  Toby didn’t answer. Liz turned on him. “Well?”

  “Oh no,” he said. “And she was only fifty when she died.”

  “How?”

  “She was an alcoholic, dear. And mentally ill. Paranoid.”

  For some reason that made her skin cold. It lasted only a moment, but it was almost enough to make her want to be Burt Lancaster.

  At the party she served puff pastries and forties-style hors d’oeuvres to the guests, most of whom knew who she was. They’d laugh and say, “Veronica Lake, huh?”

  It was the square-jawed guy in a black fedora who changed it up. “Femme fatale, huh?” he said, nabbing a cheese chunk from her tray.

  “I’m sorry?” Liz said.

  “Classic femme fatale,” he said. “In film noir.”

  She didn’t want to appear stupid, so she nodded and smiled.

  He went on. “Like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Or Ann Savage in Detour. You know, the woman the guy gets involved with and then regrets it?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “See, sometimes the girl kills the guy,” he said. “You didn’t put poison in the cheese now, did you?”

  He smiled.

  Liz felt those cold hands again. She quickly smiled the chill away. She bent her head forward and let her hair fall completely over her right eye. She did a little lip pout and turned. She let her caboose sway rhythmically as she walked away.

  The rest was up to him.

  It was close to eleven when he approached and asked if she’d like to meet for coffee in the morning.

  “I don’t know anything about you,” she said.

  “And I don’t know anything about you,” he said, “which is the whole reason for coffee.”

  “How about a teaser trailer?” she said. Good line.

  “My name is Arty Towne, and I’m VP of marketing for a start-up called RumbleTV. We’re developing video content for cell phones.”

  “Video content?”

  “You know that cell phone you carry around in your purse?”

  “I don’t have a cell phone,” she said.

  “You will. Right now, people think all they do is place and receive calls. But there’s going to be little screens on them soon enough, and we are going to be there to put things on those screens.”

  “You mean like little TV shows?”

  “That’s exactly it. And sports highlights. And news. So when you’re standing in line at Starbucks, you can watch a little TV while you wait. Tell me that’s not cool.”

  “I won’t tell you that.”

  “Then tell me about you. I’ve done my teaser.”

  “I’m new in town.”

  “You’ve got a little bit of that charming southern accent.”

  Which she had worked so hard to get rid of. “Just a bit.”

  “Nashville, I’d say.”

  “Pretty good,” she said. “You’ll have to wait till tomorrow for the answer.”

  Now, looking at the insurance policy in her hands, Liz felt that same chill she felt when Toby mentioned the death of Veronica Lake. And when Arty mentioned the femme fatale. The woman the guy got mixed up with in the movies. Then ended up dead.

  This time the cold hands did not release her.

  She dropped the policy to the floor.

  She stepped back and looked at it. Then she sucked in a big gulp of air and said, “I will, I will, I will.”

  Her phone rang.

  “I will, I — ”

  Rang again. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and answered.

  It was that detective. Moss.

  “Have I caught you at a bad time?” Moss said.

  Caught you.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Liz said.

  “Good. Just wanted to let you know there will be an autopsy in the next day or two, and then we can release your husband to you.”

  Autopsy?

  “You’ll want to make arrangements,” Moss said.

  What was she looking for?

  “I’m surprised,” Liz said. “Why an autopsy?”

  “It’s procedure. Nothing to — ”

  “His body is going to be cut open?”

  “Probably not. This is just to determine the exact cause of death — ”

  “He fell off a cliff!”

  “Yes, as I say, just procedure, and an external exam is probably all there’ll be. I just wanted you — ”

  “This is so hard — ”

  “ — to be aware — ”

  “Thank you for calling. I have to be alone now.”

  “Of course.”

  Liz hung up. Moss was after something. Suspected something.

  Autopsy? What would that show other than . . .

  Scratches to Arty’s face. She’d scratched his face. She remembered that now. A little detail she didn’t give to Detective Moss. They’d find out it was fingernail marks. . .

  The thought popped into her mind that she should just stop, stop now, not push this any further, because it could only end up bad. Very bad. Stop now and tell them . . .

  But the money, the money.

  No stopping now. All the way. You can deal with this. You have money now, you can deal with anything.

  Keep moving.

  But where? Where to turn for this problem?

  And then she knew.

  10:25 a.m.

  Mac’s hand was actually shaking. He couldn’t believe it. He never trembled like this, not even in the joint. Not even approaching a desert bunker.

  Butterflies in the stomach maybe, but his hands stayed steady. That’s why they gave him the MICLIC duty. Steady nerves and hands.

  But not now. Sitting in the guest room Pastor Jon rented to him, holding his phone, trying to punch the numbers. He had to do the number three times to get it right.

  “Bedford-Mulrooney,” the woman’s voice answered.

  “May I speak to Athena, please?” Mac said.

  “May I tell her who’s calling?”

  No, because if you do, she might not take the call.

  “Mr. MacDonald,” he said.

  “One moment,” she said.

  Classical music came on. It made h
im think of people in tuxedos sitting in a concert hall, like he’d seen on TV. He had never been to a real concert hall in his life.

  It was some sort of nice melody with strings. He at least knew this was strings. Violins and cellos and . . . whatever else strings were. A pleasant —

  Cut off. Then, “Daniel?”

  “Hey, Athena.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “I . . . what do you mean? I knew you were working there.”

  “You did? I can’t remember.”

  “How are you, anyway?”

  “Busy.”

  “Well, it’s good to be busy, I guess. If you’re working.”

  “Of course I’m working.”

  “I didn’t mean — ”

  “Why are you calling me, Daniel?”

  The shakes got worse. A bead of sweat formed in the middle of the base of his hand, the one holding the phone. The bead rolled downward to his wrist, where it stalled.

  “I wanted to know how you were doing,” Mac said. “And how Aurora is.”

  “She’s just fine,” Athena said with clipped authority. As if cutting off an errant stem in a garden with one crisp snap of the shears.

  “I mean, what’s she into these days?”

  “Daniel, is there any purpose to this?”

  “I just want to know how she’s doing, that’s all. Is that so bad?”

  “It might be.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Long pause. Then Athena said, “I’d rather we not do this anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  “Have contact.”

  The bead of sweat trickled on, tickling his arm, then dissipated. It was there, then it wasn’t.

  “Please don’t say that,” Mac said. “I want to see her again.”

  “I thought we decided — ”

  “You decided — ”

  “ — it was best all around. Listen, Daniel, you need to know something. I’m going to get married, and it’s best to transition out of the past.”

  “Transition out?” Mac said, “Like I’m some account you want to get rid of?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m her father.”

  “Daniel,” Athena said in her parental tone, “you aren’t. Aurora is going to have only one father, and she’s already bonding with Tony.”