The Polka Dot Nude

by Joan Smith

  “They’ve likely cleaned him out too!” Simcoe exclaimed. He was nearly jumping for joy. “I’ve got the key right here. We’ll go have a look.”

  “Would you know what he had in there?” Bucklin asked.

  “Miss Dane can tell you. She spends half her time there,” Simcoe said over his shoulder as he trotted to the door.

  We crossed the wet grass and Simcoe unlocked Brad’s door. “Do you notice anything missing?” Simcoe asked me.

  I walked around the living room. It appeared to be intact. The kitchen, neat as a pin, contained all the unnecessary equipment I could remember. “It looks all right to me.”

  “Don’t forget the bedroom,” Simcoe said slyly.

  I gave him a glacial stare. “I haven’t been in the bedroom. Mr. O’Malley will be able to tell us if anything’s missing when he gets back.”

  “Ask him to give me a call,” Bucklin said.

  “I will. But about the box of documents missing from my place—they’re really very important. Irreplaceable. That’s why I was robbed. Can you do anything to find them for me?”

  Bucklin rubbed his neck and looked out the window. “Those items wouldn’t be pawned, you see. They’ll be kept privately. Who do you think would want them? And who’d know they were here?”

  I explained about the other man, Mason, who was writing a book similar to my own, but was strangely reluctant to tell him Mason was O’Malley. There was enough bad blood between Brad and me without dragging in the police to make it official. Besides, I wasn’t positive, and certainly didn’t have any proof that would satisfy officialdom.

  I gave the name and address of the Belton Publishing Company, and let Bucklin decide what to do about it. But whatever he did, I didn’t expect to see my manuscript and research papers again. And how was I going to tell Eileen I’d lost them? It was a calamity—the end of my book, possibly my career. I’d never finish Queen of Hearts in time to satisfy Eileen, and I couldn’t do a decent job without the precious diaries. The publisher wouldn’t trust me after this fiasco. Oh lord, would I have to pay back the advance, already squandered?

  After Bucklin left, I went back to my own cottage. The living room looked desolate, with the great empty table yawning before me. I’d loved that new typewriter too. It was a creampuff, gliding smoothly along at the lightest touch. Then I looked at the empty wall—my beautiful polka dot nude, another irreplaceable item. Worth even more, now that Rosalie was dead, but it was the sentimental loss that hurt. The hundred bucks spent on the frame pinched a little too. No insurance on it either, of course. I really had to get my life together. I bet Brad O’Malley had insurance on everything, and the serial numbers jotted down in a safety deposit box somewhere.

  It had to be Brad who took the research. I’d cut him off, so the unscrupulous wretch had just plain stolen it. And taken the other things to confuse the issue. The visit to the injured son was an excuse to get away and arrange it all. He’d probably hired a cohort to do the actual theft. He wouldn’t want to sully his own well-groomed fingers. That was why the man had been peeking in my window last night during the power failure, to make sure he had the right cottage, and that the box of papers was there on the table, where Brad had no doubt told him it was.

  Eileen should be notified, but I wasn’t eager to admit my stupidity and failure. I was half-grateful when Simcoe came pestering me about the broken lock. It gave me somebody to shout at. I even threatened to sue him for negligence. He went running home for his screwdriver and screwed the bits of pieces back in precarious place.

  “What you ought to do is get yourself a chain for this door,” he advised. “They’ve got them at Downes’ Hardware Store in town.”

  “The horse has already bolted. Not much point locking the door now.”

  “There’s still a filly in the barn.” He smiled, showing his moist, pink gums, sprinkled with an occasional remnant of tooth. Then he trotted back to confer with his own old gray mare.

  Alone again, I tried to figure seriously how I could go on with the book, since I couldn’t possibly repay the advance. I remembered the broad outlines of Rosalie’s life, and who’d care about exact dates? But to start over from scratch! My contract didn’t say August. October 1 was the date printed. I only said I’d try to do better. Well, dammit, I’d try.

  I sat down and wrote lists of names, dates, events, films, trips—reams and reams of it, but just bare, fleshless facts. It was hopeless. In a fit of depression, I flipped on the TV to break the deafening silence. Even the crickets and crows were mute. It was the one bright spot in my day that the program was about Rosalie, and they were going to show film of her funeral. It was a half-hour show, beginning with a close-up of her star, embedded in concrete in Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. One point of the star was broken, and I scribbled down this lone detail, which might possibly have eluded Mason. The film segued to cuts from her old films, stills of her various husbands. They didn’t mention the painting that had occupied her last years. I looked sadly at the spot on the wall where the nude had lately hung. By God, I’d get that back from Mason, if I had to hire a detective to find out where he lived, and break in myself.

  The last five minutes were about the death and funeral. Lorraine Taylor, the longtime companion who couldn’t find time to return my call, was available for the cameras. She reenacted the death scene with enough relish to suggest she was a frustrated actress herself. Then the scene switched to the chapel, showing the casket borne by sedate pallbearers, a few young men included for their strong shoulders. The camera panned to the crowds waiting outside, a more than respectable showing, when you took into account that most of Rosalie’s colleagues were already in their graves.

  A few famous actors and actresses were among the mourning party that followed the coffin to the hearse, which would proceed to Forest Lawn Memorial Park for the burial. Lorraine Taylor was there, accompanied by a young woman holding her arm. That’d be Drew Taylor, Rosalie’s daughter. She didn’t look much like Rosalie, but she might take after her father. The camera shifted back to the chapel door as a starlet made her exit. My interest quickened. The man behind the starlet looked very much like Brad O’Malley. I held my breath, hoping the camera would move to him, but it went off to show a young girl sprinkling rose petals on the coffin.

  The announcer said something about “a fitting end to a spectacular career that spanned three decades,” and it was over. Of course it was Brad. He’d been in my cottage the morning of the funeral, but very early in the morning, and California was three hours behind New York. He could have made it to an afternoon funeral. Hume Mason’s fat advance made it easy for him to hop a plane and garner details for his book.

  But did going to California leave him time to plan the robbery of my research? He was out the night before, too, maybe not on a date after all. I pushed the thought away, to jot down, while it was fresh in my mind, a few notes on the funeral: the chapel name, burial site, my impressions of the crowd. I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say they appeared mainly curious. They’d be pensive, forlorn, nostalgic when they got into print. Truth was fine, but there was a time for poetic license too, and giving a book a nice, weepy conclusion.

  To be doing something useful, I started composing the closing chapter, with pen and paper. It was hard, since I was used to a typewriter. I looked up when a car scrunched the gravel on the road beyond the cottage. It pulled in next door, at Brad’s place. I got up, curious to see who it was, not really thinking it was he. The white Mercedes glinted in the sun as Brad unfolded himself from the door, looking frazzled and hot and angry, with a lock of hair hanging over his forehead. He carried his jacket in one hand, and unlocked the trunk to pull out his bag. Before he went to his own cottage, he gave one long scowl at mine, but I was well hidden behind the curtain.

  Some treacherous corner of my heart urged me to run out that door and go to him. It was an irrational, physical, instinctive thing. The anger still burned below, but it was quiescent now, diluted by the joyous l
ifting of my heart. I wondered with disbelief if I had gotten over Garth already. There was some vicious, insidious charm lurking in Brad’s wrinkles. It lit sparks in his eyes, and entranced me, even when I was hating his arrogance and showing off.

  Just my luck to fall in love with a man I hated. I stood immobile, looking, waiting, with my heart revving in my throat, as though the day of judgment were approaching. Through the yellowing curtains made of some material akin to cheesecloth, I saw Brad’s screen door open. He stalked out and came directly to my cottage. It took an act of concentrated will to turn my smile into a sneer of disdain.

  Three imperative knocks sounded, and before I had time to answer, he wrenched the door open and strode in, wearing a scowl. But it was an actor’s scowl, which didn’t quite conceal the wary light in his eyes. “I’m back,” he announced.

  “Whoopee! You should have notified me; I’d have had a brass band waiting.”

  “I see you haven’t gotten over your snit yet.”

  “I was not in a snit. Snit doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  The adrenaline started pumping at the memory of my problems, all of them caused by this man, who walked in as if he owned the place.

  “I’d like to know what you’re so fired up about,” he said. His voice was rising toward a shout. There were traces of weariness about him in the wrinkled brow beaded with perspiration, the tie pulled down six inches from the collar. His trousers had lost their knife crease. These sartorial lapses appealed to my mothering instinct. My fingers wanted to soothe away the furrows in his brow.

  “Use that hyperactive imagination!” I challenged. “It’s your breaking into my cottage and stealing my manuscript and research for your book that I’m fired up about, Mr. Mason.”

  “Are you saying I’m that illiterate hack, Mason, again?”

  “If the Gucci fits! And furthermore, I want my polka dot nude back, and my typewriter.” Forgetful of the open windows and the proximity to Simcoe, my voice rose too.

  His eyes widened and his mouth fell open at the same time, giving him an imbecilic expression. His glance flew to the empty table, the unadorned wall, then around the room to look for other losses. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “Just what you think. You’d better hand them over, before I call the police.”

  “You mean you’ve been burgled and didn’t call the cops?” He was dumbfounded.

  “Of course I called them. They’re looking for you right now. I might as well give them a buzz and tell them you’re here. Unless you care to hand over my belongings?” I took a step toward the phone.

  “I haven’t got them. I haven’t seen them. I’m not Mason,” he said. His eyes glittered with a mixture of emotions, of which I suspect ill-natured joy made up some part.

  I continued my march to the phone. “We’ll let the police decide that.”

  He paced quickly after me and grabbed my hand as it reached for the phone. “Don’t make a complete fool of yourself, Audrey. I don’t know what happened here, but I was nowhere in the vicinity, and I can prove it if necessary.”

  “I already figured out you used an accomplice.”

  “I wonder if it was Mason?” he murmured, mostly to himself.

  I shook off his hand and turned on him. “It was Mason all right. Who else would bother to steal my research?”

  “From the glimpse I had of it, I could name half a dozen people. Supreme Court judges, presidential candidates, to name a few.”

  “They wouldn’t steal my polka dot nude.”

  “Neither would Mason. Use your head, woman,” he said impatiently. My blood started to simmer at this arrogant speech. “Why would Mason bother nicking a typewriter and a picture? Mason’s loaded.”

  “That was to make it look like an ordinary robbery. Presidential candidates and Supreme Court judges wouldn’t steal them either.”

  “What did the cops say?”

  “They’re looking into it.”

  “They might pick up the typewriter from the serial number. It’ll turn up in a pawnshop somewhere eventually,” Brad said.

  “I can’t wait that long. I need my things now, today.”

  “What’s the serial number? I’ll check out the secondhand dealers in the Yellow Pages and phone them to keep an eye out for it. It probably wouldn’t be pawned right in town, but within a radius of fifty miles or so. They’d dump it early on, since it’s bulky to tote around,” he said, thinking aloud.

  “I don’t have the number,” I mumbled.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I don’t have the serial number,” I repeated, loud and clear. “I already told the police that.”

  Brad rolled his eyes. “That’s a big help.”

  Frustration lent a rough edge to my voice. “Yeah, so are you," I said, and turned away to hide the moistening of my eyes.

  After a little pause, Brad came up behind me. “Are you all right?” he asked doubtfully.

  I ground my teeth and assured him I’d never been better. Encouraged by this irony, he put an arm around me and patted my head. What he really wanted to see was whether I was crying, so I blinked away the tear.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have ripped up at you. You must be very upset. I know how much this book means to you.”

  His touch was gentle, his voice sympathetic. At his touch, I felt a wave of self-pity rise up to engulf me. “I’ll get over it.” Unfortunately my voice broke, and I emitted a hiccoughing sound. He peered down at me. “I’m not crying!”

  “Why don’t you sit down and tell me all about it— everything, just the way it happened.” He urged me toward the sofa. “You can start with ransacking my cottage, or better, what made you decide to do it.”

  We sat down, holding hands, and I went over the doings of the past few days, starting with the call from Eileen about Hume Mason, and going on to my suspicions of his borrowing my diaries, and typing busily when he was supposed to be out jogging, and of course my discovery in his cottage. It felt good to get it off my chest. When I was done, I waited for his apology.

  “You should have told me! It’s all so simple really,” he assured me with a rueful smile. “You knew I was a fan of Rosalie’s. I found the picture in an antique shop. It was the frame that first caught my attention. It’s lovely—you must have noticed. Antique French. It seemed like fate that Rosalie’s picture was in it, so I left it in. It got packed and sent here by accident when the movers brought my things from the apartment. Since I was reading Rosalie’s diary in bed, I put the picture on the table, to visualize her more vividly. That’s all.” He smiled innocently and looked to see if I swallowed this claptrap.

  “What were you typing that day, that stuff about the creamy bosoms flowing out of the red dress? You had Rosalie’s diary there on your desk.”

  A hint of embarrassment flushed his cheeks. “I was asked to do an article for one of the men’s magazines.”

  “Which one? Playboy?”

  “The other one,” he admitted sheepishly. “They asked me to do an article on Rosalie. I got a phone call the very night she died.”

  “When did you have your phone installed? I didn’t see the Bell truck there.”

  “I had Simcoe arrange it before I came here. It’s just an article I’m doing. It won’t be competition for your book.”

  “But there was nothing like that in her diaries.”

  He gave a little betraying lurch, but soon recovered. “I was describing her in The Girl From Lovesick Lake. Remember that one?”

  “I don’t remember a red dress. Her movies were all black and white.”

  “Artistic license. It’s easier to visualize if you throw in an appeal to the senses. And since Freud, we all know that red symbolizes.”

  “She wouldn’t wear a red dress with her orange hair. So you really did go to see your son yesterday? How is he?” I felt the stirring of compunction that I hadn’t asked this earlier.

  “He’s okay. It wa
s just a green fracture. My wife— ex-wife—is excitable. I pictured an amputation or something awful.”

  “You never mentioned your son before,” I said leadingly, though it was tacitly understood that it was the mother who was of more interest.

  “What is there to mention?” I waited while my demanding eyes urged him to continue. “We got married nine years ago,” he said reluctantly. “Within six months we both knew it was a mistake, but by then Sean was on the way, so we stayed married till he was born. Sean’s the only tie between us now.”

  “So Sean’s eight years old?”

  “Yeah, a cute little guy. I wish I knew him better.” His handsome wrinkles lent a vulnerable air to his plight.

  “Does he live far away?”

  “In Pittsburgh, with his mother and stepfather. My wife got custody.”

  “What’s her name?” What I really wanted to know was what she was like in appearance and personality, but he seemed loathe to discuss her.

  “What difference does all this make, Audrey?”

  “Humor me.

  “Her name’s Helen Schaeffer now, but we have more important things to talk about,” he said, with an air of finality.

  The single word Helen imbued his ex with every possible attraction. “Yes, I’d like to talk about that article you’re writing. What do those magazines pay, Brad?”

  He mentioned an exorbitant figure. Other things bothered me too. Like the letter from Belton Publishing Company, asking him to hurry up his manuscript. And as I thought about the pages on his desk, they didn’t sound like an article on Rosalie, but like parts of a sensational-style book. Brad was making noises about finding my material, but what better way to make sure I didn’t find it than to lead me off on a wild goose chase? I didn’t think he’d been to Pittsburgh either. The man in the crowd at Rosalie’s funeral looked exactly like him. While he researched the funeral and gave himself an alibi, he could have hired men to break into my cottage.