Bird, Bath, and Beyond

by E. J. Copperman

  “No,” Patty said. “I was sick in bed.” She turned toward me. “You remember, Kay. I asked you to come take Barney because I couldn’t get out of bed that day.”

  Jamie did not look at me for my confirmation of Patty’s statement. He wasn’t interested in things he already knew; he was just getting her ready for the rest of the questions and gauging how honest Patty was going to be. I admired his technique.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now, you said before that the police had a letter you’d written to Dray informing him that you are pregnant with his child. Is that right?”

  Patty nodded and bit her lip. “Yes. That’s what the officer told me, that they’d found the letter in the trailer after Dray was shot.”

  Jamie shook his head. “That’s not the part I was asking about. Sorry if I wasn’t clear.” He was being kind and observant of his client’s state of mind. I’d called Jamie because I remembered him from law school. Now I was finding out just how good he was, and he was good. “I meant, is it true that you are pregnant with Dray Mattone’s baby?”

  Patty closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said. She did not whisper it or say it so quietly we had to strain to hear her. Patty was owning her situation even as she sat there not looking at us. It must have been difficult to do that, but she wanted Jamie to know he would get true answers from his client.

  “Okay. So you had a relationship with Mr. Mattone that wasn’t just about training your parrot to work on his show.” Jamie stated the obvious fact but left it hanging for a response.

  “That’s right. I’ve actually known Dray for a couple of years. We met at an awards dinner. I was there with Barney as part of an act they were doing with the emcee that night, and he was there as a nominee. We just hit it off, and…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Did you know he was married?” I asked. I should have kept my mouth shut and let Jamie conduct the interview, but I also wanted to feel like there was a reason I was there.

  He didn’t seem to mind and nodded in Patty’s direction.

  She opened her eyes again. “Yes, I knew. Of course I knew. I mean, it was in the newspapers when they had the wedding and Dray told me about it. I wasn’t trying to steal her husband, you know. I just … we just … fell in love. Denise was in L.A. and I was here in New York, where he was filming most of the time. I knew it wasn’t right, but it didn’t feel wrong. Does that make sense?”

  Nobody answered her question. Instead Jamie leaned forward. “So you were having a relationship with Dray Mattone. And you found out you were pregnant with his child. Why did you have to write him a letter? Why not just go to him and tell him?”

  “We’d broken off the … we weren’t seeing each other anymore and he stopped taking my phone calls.”

  That rang a bell in my head. “So what you told me about training Barney with Dray last week was a lie?”

  “No. We broke it off last Tuesday, before I knew about the baby. We were working with Barney that day, and that’s when Dray told me he was trying to work things out with his wife and that meant we weren’t going to be a thing anymore. That’s the term he used—a thing. Can you believe it?”

  “When did you find out you were pregnant?” Jamie asked.

  “Saturday. And I tried calling Dray, but like I said, he wouldn’t take the call.” Patty didn’t seem angry so much as puzzled about her ex-lover’s behavior. “He kept having his assistant Tracey send me emails telling me he was unavailable.”

  “So you wrote him a letter?” Jamie asked.

  “I couldn’t email. Tracey would get it; she checks all his incoming email. And I couldn’t talk to him on the phone or go to the trailer anymore. So I thought, Well, a letter would do it because I could send it directly to his house. I had the address and I knew Tracey didn’t read the mail he got at home.”

  “But the letter showed up in his trailer,” I said.

  Patty shrugged. “He must have brought it there. I don’t know.”

  “What was his reaction?” Jamie asked. His pen was poised over the pad; this was an important question.

  Patty’s face hardened a little. “He didn’t react at all,” she said. “I never heard from him again.”

  Something occurred to me. “Did Barney get the job at Dead City because of your relationship with Dray?” Jamie actually gave me a slightly sharp look. The question wasn’t relevant to the case he was building, but it had leapt to my mind and I didn’t curb the impulse because, well, I’m me.

  “I guess,” Patty answered. “I mean, he told me the old parrot had died and they needed a new one, so I suggested Barney. Next thing I knew, they were calling you to bring him in for an audition, Kay.” Her eyes flashed. “But if Barney hadn’t been able to do the job, it wouldn’t have mattered that I was with Dray; he wouldn’t have gotten the job.”

  Jamie’s glance at me softened. Maybe there had been some value in what I’d asked after all, although I certainly couldn’t think of what it might be.

  But he wasn’t going to let me get in another question for a while; this was Jamie’s show and he wanted that to be made clear. “Okay, Patty,” he said. I sat back to indicate I would not be a distraction. “You find yourself carrying Dray Mattone’s baby after he breaks off the relationship. You try to contact him to let him know and he won’t answer your letter or take your phone calls. Can you see how the police might think you had motive to want him dead?”

  Patty looked a little surprised and took a moment to think it over. “Not really,” she said. “I can see why they might think I was mad at Dray, but I really wasn’t so much as mad at myself. I was so stupid to think I was going to be different to him. But what’s the advantage to killing him? What do I get from that?”

  I wanted to say revenge, but I restrained myself. Give me points for that.

  “Some people would call it a crime of passion,” Jamie said. “But I don’t think this has the hallmarks of that term at all. Whoever went into Mattone’s trailer was already carrying the gun. That indicates premeditation.”

  I shook my head because Jamie needed to have the facts straight. “The gun was already in Dray’s trailer because Dray was using it to get comfortable with it. He had a scene coming up where he carried a gun and wanted to look like he was used to it. So the gun was there. The real question is where the bullets came from, because the prop man who gave Dray the gun had loaded it with blanks. But the same thing happened with the gun Sergeant Bostwick used in reenacting the crime.”

  Jamie mulled this new information over, but I was looking at Patty to see if she reacted. She seemed to be listening intently but absorbing. The information seemed to be new to her, but she did not seem shocked or worried. One of the pillars of Jamie’s defense had just fallen—albeit not a huge one—and she didn’t seem to be connecting it with her own situation. It was like she was watching Jamie and me on TV.

  “Okay,” Jamie said, processing, “so the gun was there, but we don’t know how the live bullets made it to the trailer, although it’s definitely worth checking if all the guns in the prop shop are loaded with live ammo. That’s something we’ll have to research. I’m going to get an investigator on this case right away.” Then he started talking to Patty about retainers and hourly fees and suddenly she was connecting it to herself.

  “I … I’m not sure I can afford you,” she said. Patty’s house was not lavish, but it was sturdy. Her car was not new. Barney’s new gig at Dead City was bringing in some money, but it had just started. I knew she still had her day job as a tax preparer for a storefront chain of accountants, and while that paid the bills, it didn’t pay for a criminal defense attorney. The truth was that most people in Patty’s position would probably have had to take out a second mortgage on the house or face the music with a public defender if she ended up being charged with Dray’s murder.

  “Don’t worry about that right now,” Jamie assured her. “I’m sure we can work something out.” He wanted this case for the spotlight it would shine on him, not for the fee.
The money would come after the case was over. If it got to court, he would be a nationwide celebrity. Patty could probably get a book deal if she wasn’t convicted. The money would be there for sure. “In the meantime I’m going to get to work.”

  “What will you do first?” I asked. This was practically a tutorial in criminal law for me.

  “First thing is to find out if Patty is actually going to face charges,” he said. “But if the cops drag their feet and don’t give me a definitive answer, we’re going to have to go the other way.”

  “What’s that?” Tell me more, teacher.

  “Find out who we can pin the murder on in a jury’s mind.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I left Patty’s house not much later, actually hoping there would be heavy traffic going home because I desperately needed time to think.

  Jamie and I conferred briefly on Patty’s sidewalk after we left her house. He said finding the real killer wasn’t the lawyer’s job, but giving a jury a plausible alternative would be helpful if the case ever got to trial. This was an esoteric area that I’d never actually confronted in my representation of furry animals who just wanted to be appreciated as artists.

  I didn’t even turn on the radio during the drive home. There was way too much to process after this marathon day. But the fact was, I really didn’t feel like thinking about any of this stuff.

  There was no avoiding it: Patty had put herself in a very tough position because she was the only person thus far that the police could attach to a strong motive for killing Dray. This, coupled with the fact that she had been in his trailer before—even if there was no evidence she was there the day he was shot—could produce fingerprints and physical proof. That wasn’t good.

  Jamie wanted to find a viable alternative to present to jurors. I suddenly wanted to find out who had actually killed Dray Mattone because I needed to help my friend and her parrot. That sounded weird even to me.

  If the police truly believed Patty had shot Dray, they would not be concentrating on finding another suspect, but on gathering evidence against the one they had. That meant Patty was essentially in this on her own except for Jamie and me.

  Suddenly I very much wanted to talk to my father. He’s great at making plans, and I felt like I needed one.

  It took more than an hour and a half to get home and I’ll confess that after about an hour I finally put on a CD. The strategizing and the struggle to think of all possible contingencies had finally filled up my brain and threatened to leak out my ears, which I felt would be unfortunate. Maybe a little distraction wasn’t the worst thing.

  Darkness had fallen with a loud thump when I got home and remembered my parents wouldn’t be there. The serenity I’d hoped for before I saw Patty carted away was no longer tops on my agenda; now I wanted to have people around, and for once there were none here.

  Except there were, of course, news vans in front of the house. No doubt the word of Patty’s arrest had spread in nanoseconds and the parrot angle was back in the Dray Mattone story. I very loudly proclaimed, making sure to fill my speech with profanity I knew they couldn’t possibly air, that I would not be answering questions and that Barney was not here. I was especially colorful in my proclamation that there was no #$@&ing way I would tell the reporters where he was, and felt good about myself as I walked into my house.

  But after getting the requisite ecstatic greetings from the dogs, I leashed them up and decided to take them on one of our longer walks just to get my blood moving around and kill some time until Mom and Dad got home from their dinner. Maybe we’d go see how Sam was doing and be friendly without flirting, which seemed to be the new normal.

  It wasn’t long into the walk, with Eydie trying to yank my arm out of its socket every now and again because she’d been cooped up too long, that we ran into Lorraine Toscadero, the prototype of a Jersey girl who works at L’Chaim!, a kosher bar and grill on West Roosevelt Avenue.

  I’m told many women named Lorraine prefer to be called Rainey or something of that ilk. Since moving to Scarborough and meeting her, I’ve always called her Lo, which seems to befit the woman: “Lo! Here comes Lorraine!”

  Perhaps I do have a streak of the vaudevillian in me after all.

  “Hey, Lo,” I said after the dogs finished greeting her with sniffs, hand-licks, and in Steve’s case, a vehement attempt to climb Lo from the knee up (which failed).

  “What’s up with this Dray Mattone thing, Kay?” Lo doesn’t waste time with the niceties; she jumps right in, which is perfectly fine with me. She’d earned it with some late-night glasses of wine, support during rough times, and the occasional free kosher drink after the doors have been closed. “You were on the news yesterday. You looked like you were being hunted by zombies.”

  “I was. The newspeople have their job, but it’s no fun being part of the story. They swarm after you and ask some really stupid questions.”

  “Did you actually know Dray Mattone?” We started to walk again because Bruno had stopped doing what walks are for and was now moving on with his life. I was moving on with a plastic bag because I am a good citizen who owns dogs.

  “Not really, no. I met him the day he died and we talked for about five minutes. He seemed like a nice enough guy, though.” I felt there was no need to mention his unborn child and the fact that a woman who wasn’t his wife was carrying it, particularly since she’d been on television being arrested earlier today.

  “Who do you think killed him?” Lo asked.

  Walking with dogs is not a great form of exercise because the dogs are not aware that you want to raise your heart rate. They are aware that the grass smells like another dog has been here recently, or that someone dropped a chicken leg in this spot two weeks ago, or that it might rain and make the grass smell interesting later. So you have to stop periodically and stand while the dog investigates. When you have three dogs on their leashes, multiply that stop-and-start action accordingly.

  Lo instinctively took Bruno’s leash and walked alongside us, decreasing the tension on my right arm, which was welcome.

  “I honestly have no idea,” I told her. “There are rumors he had relapsed after getting out of rehab, but I didn’t see any evidence of that, so I don’t know if it’s true.” Normally I would not have even mentioned such a thing, but I know Lo is trustworthy, and besides, Jamie wanted to deflect suspicion from Patty. How did I know Lo wouldn’t be a potential juror (despite her living in another state)?

  “I think it was his wife,” she volunteered. “I’ve been watching the news shows. She doesn’t seem that upset.”

  “She was three thousand miles away,” I reminded Lo.

  “Yeah, I don’t care. It’s always the wife. I’ll bet he was hooking up with someone else and she paid somebody to whack him.” Lo was staring straight ahead as she walked Bruno, always looking for the next interesting tidbit of life. I tend to walk the dogs looking down at the dogs. Bruno is big enough, though, that you can do both at the same time.

  “Don’t believe what you see on TV,” I told her.

  Lo gave me a “meaningful” glance. “What do you know?” Her voice was low like Natasha Fatale’s, assuming I had dirty secrets I was about to share.

  Instead I chuckled in what I supposed would be a convincing manner to a civilian. “I don’t know anything,” I answered. “I’m just the parrot’s agent.”

  And of course that’s when my phone rang. Jamie, so I had to take it.

  “She isn’t charged yet,” he said in lieu of greeting. “Part of it is that their forensics people are saying the killer was five-eleven and Patty is nowhere near that. But I’m calling about this guy Les Mannix. How well do you know him?”

  Lo could see the look on my face, but I had the phone in one hand and two leashes in the other and didn’t have the wherewithal to consider my expression at the same time. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean, I heard someone called him out at the memorial service and said he was the one who killed Ma
ttone. Think that’s true?” Jamie said.

  “Honestly, I’ve had maybe forty-five seconds of conversation with the man in my life,” I said. “I couldn’t tell you whether he was likely to get a parking ticket.” I didn’t mention Barney yelling, “Kill Les Mannix!” That seemed a little too on the nose, and I was positive Barney hadn’t shot Dray.

  I could practically hear Jamie thinking through the phone while Lo looked at me with an expression that indicated we had a lot to talk about when the phone call was over. Which I should have seen coming. After a moment Jamie asked, “Do you think you could find a way to get back on the set to ask around tomorrow?”

  My first impulse was to say I couldn’t. I’d so been looking forward to not dealing with this and letting Jamie handle it. “Wouldn’t your investigator be a better choice?” I asked.

  “With cop stuff and official things, yeah,” he answered. “On the set he’s going to sound like an idiot because he doesn’t know the business. I’ll send him after you’ve laid the groundwork, but come on. We’re splitting the fee on this one.” That was news to me. “I’m not asking for much. Talk to two or three people. An hour at the most.”

  Well, if we were splitting the fee … “I have to take a dog to an audition at another production company on the lot tomorrow,” I said, which was true. “I’ll spend the hour, but no more than that. Fair?”

  “Perfect!” Jamie is really good at getting what he wants, and there’s no reason for me to tell you how I know that. “Just give me a call when you’re done and tell me what you’ve found out.”

  “Wait. What am I asking? I can’t just walk up to people and start with, ‘Did you shoot Dray Mattone?’”

  Lo raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” Jamie admitted, “but you can see if anybody knew of a grudge, particularly one this guy Mannix might have had. I mean, he was, like, the executive producer on this show, right?”

  “One of the executive producers, but he was the showrunner, which means most of the decisions were his. He was the guy who probably set the salaries and negotiated the contracts, so he would have had most of his dealings with Dray’s agent, not the actor himself.”