No More Birthdays (Carol Ann Baker Crime)

by Pelzer,Lissa

  It was something they had done before. Bobby would know, she knew that.

  ‘So I’ll come by before then and we’ll go out and get the cash.’ And she leaned forward to pick up the bundle.

  But Bobby took it first, snatched it away like a dog with a bone. ‘We’ve got a green Ford parked out by the square.’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘You come to the car.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Three!’

  ‘And we’ll go and get the money?’

  He had no choice. He must know he had no choice. ‘For God’s sake Lilly, you used to be such a nice girl…What happened?’

  She would have slapped him if she was a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t punch her back. Instead, she pulled the door to and from down the corridor heard the sound of a chair going over and some cursing and blinding.

  Let him let off some steam. He had to pay up.

  She went to the stairwell and got out her phone to check the time. It was late, after three and barely worth going to a motel, but it had been two days since she’d had her own bed to lie in. Tomorrow she’d be on the road again, probably hitching to avoid Davis. She needed rest and was willing to pay all the money in her purse to get it.

  But first she needed to get her bag back from under Gary Madison’s bathroom sink.

  Lilly took the stairs to the floor below digging in her purse for the keycard, first finding Moon Face’s ID, cursing that she’d have to get that back to her somehow and imagining the state she’d be in tomorrow when it happened. She put her card into Gary’s door and heard it give. He’d left the lights on as they’d left. He was that kind of person. But there was talking too.

  ‘Here she is!’ Gary got up of the couch. ‘I told you she wouldn’t be too far away.’ He was coming towards her, smiling and bleary-eyed, his arm out, reaching for her shoulder. On the bed, the producer Terence McCoy, sat with his legs crossed like a woman, a cigarette hanging limply from his hand.

  Her bag was in here. Davis was downstairs.

  Gary leaned in, took her up in his arms. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he whispered into her cheek. ‘I know you got my message. The guy at reception…I don’t even have a number for you.’ He was ushering her toward the man. ‘Here, Terence has been waiting for you all night…’

  And Lilly went towards him. She held out her hand.

  ‘I can tell you something. I don’t know many people who would keep Terence McCoy waiting…’ And he was laughing nervously.

  Terence McCoy seemed so small and inconsequential here in the full light of the hotel room. His thick, linen shirt was dull and his trousers looked creased and old, but Lilly reckoned when you’re worth a certain amount of money, clothes must stop mattering. Gary hadn’t reached that point yet and had undone all of his buttons to cover up for the lost ones.

  ‘You still look lovely,’ Terence said to her and he held out his hand too. ‘That’s the test, you know. Anyone can look good in low light and full light, but not many girls can do it under a sixty-watt low energy bulb.’

  Lilly gave him a smile. She let him take her hand and pull her down to sit next to him. She let him keep ahold of her hand just because it was easier than pulling away. It was so late and she was so tired. If she could take an Ambien herself, and just sleep through whatever was coming next, she would.

  ‘Now, Gary tells me you’re not an actress.’

  ‘I’m not an actress,’ she said. She rubbed the back of her neck embarrassed that she had allowed herself to think this was anything other than what it was.

  ‘That’s so good. Actresses are so…ambitious. You can’t trust them. They pretend so much…nothing is real.’

  ‘Is that right?’ She looked over at Gary. He was sitting there on the desk chair, leaning in like he was going to write a report on this later. Terence looked at him. Something passed between them. He got up and started patting down his pockets.

  ‘I have to go make a call. Yeah, I need to see who’s still awake on the west coast… If anyone needs me….’ He made a gun with his finger and aimed it between them. ‘I’ll be in reception, burning the midnight oil.’

  ‘You do that Gary.’

  ‘I will. I will.’ Gary bounced out of the room and the door shut onto silence again.

  Terence was still holding her hand. Lilly looked down at it like it was a dead fish, some alien thing that didn’t belong that close to her body.

  ‘So.’ She tried to break the silence before he made a move. ‘You direct movies?’

  He turned to her, smiling. ‘I do it all.’

  ‘And Gary, he’s your publicity agent?’

  Terence laughed. ‘One of many. He calls himself whatever he likes. You know how it is.’

  She was getting to know.

  ‘You are very pretty and you’re here all alone. How come you’re here all alone?’

  ‘I like to do my own thing.’

  ‘Hey, you don’t need to move away. I just want to talk to you for a while. Is that okay, if we just talk?’

  Lilly looked him up and down. She wanted to point out that it was late, but maybe that would just move whatever he had in mind forward. ‘We can talk,’ she said and pulled her hand free to move a hair from her face.

  ‘That’s sweet. That’s what I like. I like the way you do that.’

  And her hand dropped into her lap again.

  ‘You see, Gary had arranged a girl for me for this weekend… It sounds harsh…’ He pulled his lips back against his teeth. ‘…When I say it like that, but you’ve got to understand, professional girls, they’re not like you. They’re not like me either.’ He reached for her hand again and before she had time to retract it, he had found it and pressed it between his own. ‘But it didn’t work out. Gary brought her along to the presentation, a redhead, very beautiful. She would have looked great in photos…’ he said wistfully.

  Lilly knew she shouldn’t ask, but she wanted to know. ‘But you didn’t like her?’

  ‘Oh I liked her, but you see she was with a man.’

  ‘You didn’t like the man?’

  Terence’s mouth went up on one side. ‘Not particularly… You see he has a reputation. He used to be the provider of excellent merchandise, but his brand has lost its shine in the last year or so. I’ve known of him sometime and heard excellent things of him in the past, but now…’ He shook his head as if it pained him.

  Lilly bit her lip.

  ‘Besides, when a woman is with me, she’s there of her own free will. She doesn’t need to do a thing. Only be at my parties, smile when I kiss her on the cheek…enjoy the good things that come with it, the security…and I know young ladies have dreams, that one day they want to go off and get married, have babies. I’m not looking for a wife.’ And he laughed. ‘I have one of those already. Do you see what I mean, Lilly? Girls stay with me, and when they decide to go, they go with their dreams and a future intact.’ He let go of her hand. ‘What are your dreams, Lilly?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shifted in place. ‘I never thought about it.’ And it sounded so stupid. How could you not know what you wanted in life? She could have said that she wanted to be a doctor or to travel the world. But she didn’t want those things. Right now she wanted her own bed with a lock on the door, a sandwich and coke. ‘I guess I just want to be happy…and free.’

  He was nodding. ‘How about vacations to beautiful paradise islands, swimming with tropical fish and eating lobster every night?’ The image of shampoo commercials came to mind. ‘Designer clothes and fine food?’

  ‘It sounds very nice.’ she said to be polite.

  ‘It would be very nice.’ He was nodding. ‘I think I like you, Lilly.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I like you for who you are and I can see life hasn’t been easy.’ He reached for her hand again. ‘Would you let me rescue you, make all your problems go away?’

  ‘You probably don’t realize how many I’ve got.’

&nbs
p; ‘Lilly, I have none. My life is blessed. Let me take away some of yours.’ He was smiling. ‘Even out the balance… How about it?’

  She’d heard stories like this. Like the one about the guy on Wilmington Ave who bought girls diamond rings for no apparent reason and girls who lived in condos owned by older guys, who knew they had boyfriends, who even paid for them to go on holiday with their boyfriends. This did happen. But this was the problem when you’d been too long with people like Bobby, they made you skeptical. When a genuine offer came along that might change your life, you were just too cynical to take it. It was something you had to make yourself get over.

  She forced the smile onto her face. ‘I like you too, Terence. You seem nice.’

  ‘You don’t have to decide straight away of course. Stay with me here tonight, of course, and then let me invite you to be with me this week. We fly everywhere by private jet and stay in the most exclusive hotels. Give it a week and see if you want to stay.’

  Lilly flicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth. Suppose she did. Suppose she left here with him now, sneaked out somehow and just disappeared on a private jet. She could just forget about Bobby. She could forget about Davis too. This guy probably had houses all over the world. By next week, she might be in a different country.

  ‘When I look at you…’ he said. ‘I see a lot of myself if I’d been born a woman, I mean.’

  Lilly let her hand sit in his. It really wasn’t a bad sensation. His hands were soft and smooth almost as small as hers.

  ‘Men have so much more liberty, from obligations I mean and from other people’s expectations of them.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘I’ve been so badly behaved in my life Lilly, and no one ever says a thing. I’ve been very successful, my behavior has been written off as ‘artistic’, but if I were a woman…’

  Lilly nodded.

  ‘And now you’ve come along to help guide me in the next stage of my life.’ His grip tightened. ‘We’re going to be very good for each other. I have a very positive feeling about this.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Would you do me a favor, Lilly?’

  ‘What’s that Terence?’

  ‘Would you take off your top and let me suckle from you?’

  Lilly smiled. ‘Like a baby?’

  ‘I want to put my lips around your teat.’ He grinned and ran his tongue against the edge of his teeth.

  ‘Sure Terence,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I go to the bathroom first?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he laughed. ‘Last time you didn’t come back… Don’t be long.’

  ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  She flushed the toilet to disguise the sound of the panel under the counter being prized open and the window going up. On the fire escape, she took off her heels but didn’t need to worry about being seen going past any of the windows. Everyone was asleep and all the curtains were drawn against the inferior, interior view of the courtyard.

  The ladder went down loudly, but there was no way around that. The metal door to the street was bolted from the inside and she slipped it open like a back yard gate. She stopped and looked back up at Gary’s window, thought of Terence sitting there patiently imagining all the things he was going to buy her.

  Lilly wondered if she might be crazy, figured she probably was and carried on anyway.

  Chapter 16

  The woman at The Colorado Palace was wrong. The motels on I-75 did ask for IDs. Perhaps what she meant was, they didn’t check them too closely.

  All the guy said was, ‘Dark hair suits you.’

  ‘Thanks. But I dyed it. I’m a natural blonde.’

  And he looked at Moon Face’s ID again as he typed in her details. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, not caring at all. And he gave her a card for a room at the other end of the building.

  Lilly took it and held it next to her chest. She would like to say, ‘Thank fuck.’ But that might sound suspicious.

  And besides, she had the kind of sleep that felt like it had never happened. Someone rang the room phone to tell her it was time to check out and if it hadn’t been light outside, she would have thought it was a joke. She got in the shower knowing that by now Davis would realize she’d given her the slip. She envisioned her sitting downstairs in the lobby, checking her watch. At what point did she give up, did her heart sink? Did it feel like Lilly imagined it would feel? Davis had trusted her, and Lilly had let her down. Except, she told herself, Davis had never really trusted her. Davis would have a backup plan. Davis might be in this motel reception right now, trying to choose between cheddar cheese or cool ranch Doritos from the snack machine.

  From the bathroom, she could hear the sound of the cleaners talking in the hallway and the TV blaring from across the bed. It was the local news again, the same woman, this time in the studio, saying the same name.

  ‘…The residence rented for the duration of the festival by Terence McCoy’s production company…’

  Lilly turned off the shower and got out.

  She couldn’t help feeling somewhat smug. She knew that guy. That meant something, didn’t it?

  ‘…We’re getting reports…’ The newsreader was saying, ‘…that Terence McCoy was at the Pinewood address at the time of the incident…sometime between two and three a.m. this morning…’

  Three o’clock this morning? ‘Goes to show what you know,’ Lilly said out loud. She bent over and began to blow dry, teasing her hair out, thinking of whether to put it up or leave it down. Up was easier, but once she took it down, she’d have a line going around her head as if she’d been wearing a football helmet. From between her legs, she saw the news footage of a couple of ambulances and police cars, their lights shining off the front of the house in Pinewood. She stopped drying.

  ‘…Emergency services were called shortly before three thirty a.m., arriving to find the party still in full swing, the majority of guests completely unaware of the tragedy that had already occurred. It is assumed that McCoy fled the property when the full scale of the tragedy became apparent…’

  Lilly looked up in time to see a man, his eyes red and swollen, talking too fast into the camera. ‘Yeah, no, something happened. I don’t know. It was up in the bedrooms and McCoy was up there for sure. ’ His lips were sticking together like he’d eaten too much candy. ‘It was kind of a wild party. I mean, he’s meant to be into some strange stuff, but this is just… I don’t know… not cool…’

  And it was the reporter again.

  ‘…That the Flickerama Film Festival has been marred by this tragic incident will come as no surprise to some local residences who have repeatedly petitioned against the event… Some are already speculating that this will seriously undermine the likelihood of the district choosing to host this event in the future…’

  The channel broke for commercials and Lilly turned over. There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Five minutes,’ she called out and no one replied.

  On the next channel, they had the same images, but a different guy was talking.

  ‘…While the cause of death is still yet unconfirmed, it is difficult to believe that a verdict of ‘natural causes’ will be delivered…’

  Lilly leaned in towards the screen. Images flashed up of guests arriving at the movie the night before and Terence McCoy was on stage again, all smiles. The reporter went on and on, just a bunch of stuff about him and what it would mean to him, and his career and his reputation.

  ‘…The deceased has been described as a young woman…’ His voice dropped. ‘…Possibly a minor… Police are struggling to make an identification and appealing for witnesses to come forward if they can be of any assistance. She is not believed to be a local resident… Police were called to the residence at around three thirty….’

  Lilly was shaking.

  The story started repeating itself and Lilly flicked to a different channel, but now she only got commercials for pizza places and used cars and she stood there with the
remote in her hand, squeezing it like a knife she might stab someone with.

  It was stupid to think it was Moon Face. She wasn’t the only young woman there and she certainly wasn’t the only non-local. But the part about her being unknown rattled her cage. She had taken her ID and it was there, lying on the counter next to the room phone.

  Heavy Eyes.

  Bleach Job.

  Her hands strained with the force blood pumping around them. What had they done to her?

  She had to call the police. She knew who did it. Was she crazy? She had to tell someone. She had to tell Davis. The adrenalin inside her fought against her stillness, she stood up and sat down, pushed and shunted like a rusted train that couldn’t go anywhere. Did it matter? If she’d been killed, did anything matter to her anymore?

  Someone banged at the door.

  ‘Five minutes!’ she shouted again.

  ‘Ma’am. It’s twelve already.’ A man’s voice now. ‘I have to ask you to vacate this room.’

  ‘Let me put some clothes on at least,’ she shouted back. ‘Jeez.’

  ‘Make it quick. I’ll be here waiting.’

  And she opened her big bag up. Pulled the zipper aside like she was a cop looking for drugs and took out the pug. When she breathed in, it was like she’d just done a line. Her chest seemed to rattle. Her hand felt a little unsteady, felt too big around the tiny gun. She stashed it in the inside pocket of her purse, pulled on her jeans, went out without makeup and with her hair still half wet. The guy who had been shouting was stood there next to a cleaning lady, both eyeing her like she was some sort of criminal.

  Maybe she was, but they didn’t know that.

  ‘Can someone at least call me a cab?’

  The guy hooked his thumb in the direction of the reception. ‘Number’s on the wall.’

  She wasn’t going to think about it.

  Really, it could be anyone, any girl. It was just psychology. You always thought everything was about you. If she went up to the tracks now, she’d find Moon Face there. Maybe she’d passed out and they’d got bored of her and she’d woken up with nothing except a hangover and a new diary entry. ’The time I was somewhere when somebody died who could have been me if X,Y,Z had happened.’ It was the staple of every high school, self-important tall tale. And if she wasn’t at the tracks, it didn’t mean anything. She might be at one of those guys’ hotels. Maybe she was at The Colorado Palace right now, having breakfast off a linen covered trolley instead of waiting outside a corn oil factory on the edge of town for a cab that might never come.