Unplugged

by Lois Greiman

  “What did you say your name was?” Her voice didn’t sound quite like I expected. Maybe I’ve seen too many gangster movies, but she was a topless entertainer and I had a Ph.D. and I was pretty sure she should only be marginally smarter than petrified wood.

  “I’m the woman who’s going to kick your ass,” I said, “if you don’t tell me where to find my husband.”

  “When exactly did you lose your beloved?” Her tone suggested minimal interest and slight irritation.

  “Listen, I know you were with him on the twenty-ninth. A friend of mine saw you together after your sleazy show and if you don’t—”

  “Listen, Mrs. Solberg, after my sleazy show I go straight home, study for my O Chem class, sleep five hours, and hope to get to school on time. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I admit to some confusion. I mean, I was expecting her to rise to the bait, defend her chosen profession, and hurl insults mixed liberally with curse words, not tell me about her study regime.

  “You’re lying,” I said. “I know he’s there, and I’ll tell you what, this ain’t the first time he’s done this sort of thing. If I was you I’d get myself on antibiotics straightaway.”

  “Although I very much appreciate the advice,” she said, “you are obviously severely deranged, so I’m sure you’ll understand if I terminate this conversation.”

  “Wait!” I said before she could hang up. “Are you serious? You didn’t sleep with my J.D.?”

  There was a pause. “Listen,” she said. By her tone I guessed she was now profoundly irritated and completely uninterested. “I’m a chemistry major, a flutist, and a lesbian. I wouldn’t sleep with your husband if you paid me in bullion.”

  “A lesbian?” Here was an interesting twist.

  “Yes.”

  “Does the Mystical Menkaura have any other blonde assistants who might, ummmm . . . like men?” I thought about Solberg. “Or something vaguely similar?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t know a guy named J.D.? Or Jeen? He’s short and skinny, with a—”

  “Jeen?” she said.

  My heart stopped. “Yes.”

  She sighed. Maybe thinking. Maybe wondering if she should have taken nursing classes straight out of high school like her mother had recommended. “I met a guy named Jeen a few weeks ago. He was carrying some weird gold pineapple and showed me pictures of his . . .”

  “Of what?” I breathed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft yet firm. “But he showed me pictures of his girlfriend.”

  “His girlfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she look like a brainy Monroe?”

  “She looked like the girl in my fantasies, minus the broadsword.”

  I laughed out loud, maybe with relief. Maybe ’cuz I’d lost my mind.

  Gertrude was silent for a second. “Didn’t you say you were his wife?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “But I try to be understanding. What’d he do after you left him?”

  There was another audible sigh. “I don’t know. Some of the girls went out with his friends, I think. But he . . . I think I might have seen him leave with another guy.”

  “Another guy? What guy? How’d he look?”

  “I only saw him from behind.”

  “What’d his behind look like?”

  “Listen, if they have facial hair, they all look the same to me. You know what I mean?”

  No. “Was he short, hunchbacked, roly-poly? What?”

  “He was taller than your husband, but then, so am I.”

  “What color hair?”

  “Brown, I think. Medium weight? Listen, I’m sorry, but I really don’t know.”

  I hung in there like a bull terrier. “Did you see where they went?”

  “It looked like they were headed for the lounge.”

  “And you didn’t see them afterward?”

  “No.”

  I let the silence drag out, trying to think, but it didn’t go well.

  “Say,” she said finally, “if your husband ever breaks up with his girlfriend, have her give me a call, will you?”

  I spent that evening sitting up on my lofty perch, gazing down at Solberg’s house and trying to think. Maybe Gertrude had been lying to me. But I didn’t think so. She didn’t seem the type to care enough to conjure up such a convincing fabrication.

  Which meant that Solberg very probably hadn’t been cheating on Elaine. But that said nothing about possible criminal activity. Still, why would he take such a risk? It didn’t make any sense. He brought in a hell of a salary at NeoTech, and while it is true that millionaires are hardly exempt from greed, it didn’t seem likely that he would be dumb enough to jeopardize his relationship with Elaine. Then again, the word “Combot” had been encased in dollar signs on his calendar. Maybe he had some gigantic payoff at the end of the month. Maybe he thought it would be big enough to convince Laney to screw morals and run away to live in dual bliss on some deserted island.

  But I didn’t think so. If Solberg was smart enough to refrain from propositioning Elaine, he was probably too smart to underestimate her.

  Sometime after seven o’clock I fell asleep with my neck kinked like a tire iron beside my headrest. I was groggy and drooling when I next glanced down the hill.

  It was almost dark. But there seemed to be movement in the Georges’ backyard. I sat straighter, snatched up my binoculars, and focused. Sure enough, someone was trudging across the lawn.

  My thoughts clunked along like driftwood in my discombobulated brain. This little turn of events was probably nothing important. But as I watched, I became certain the figure was Tiffany and that she was dragging something that looked like a rolled-up carpet.

  My brain cranked faster, gathering momentum. My phone was out of my purse before I knew it.

  “Sheriff’s office—911.”

  I swallowed my liver and found my voice. “Yes, I’d like to report a murder.”

  “A murder, ma’am?” The voice was as calm as Sunday.

  “At 13440 Amsonia Lane in La Canada. She buried him in her backyard,” I said, and shut the phone.

  My heart was pounding as I drove down the curving slope and parked up the street from the Georges’ house.

  It seemed like half a lifetime before the police arrived. And when they did, there were only two officers, cruising along as if they were sipping lattes and playing Parcheesi.

  I watched them as they passed. Their lights were turning on their dashboard, but their siren was silent.

  They got out of their car and converged on the sidewalk. One was tall with a basset-hound expression. The other was squat and balding. They spoke for a moment, then separated, one going around the back and one to the front door.

  I sat in my Saturn, nerves cranked as tight as undies in spin dry.

  Glancing up and down the street, I exited my car, trying to look inconspicuous, just a concerned citizen, wondering what was going down in the old neighborhood.

  The balding officer on the porch shifted his considerable weight and switched from ringing the doorbell to knocking with his fist. He had just begun to descend the steps when the door opened. Tiffany Georges stood in a lavender bathrobe, framed by the light behind.

  Even from my position on the sidewalk I could see her wide-eyed expression.

  “Mrs. Georges?”

  “Yes?” It was something like a question.

  “I’m Officer Crevans. Can I come in?”

  I assume she answered in the affirmative, because a moment later they had disappeared inside.

  I strolled along toward the west, but when I passed the fence that divided the neighbors’ yards, I took a right-hand turn and shot onto Solberg’s property. A moment later I was creeping along the length of the fence line. My binoculars bumped against my boobs beneath my windbreaker and I was huffing like a lapdog in heat, but a moment later I was hidden between a fat-leafed succulent and an oleander. I crouched next to the fence an
d peeped between the unpainted boards.

  Thirty feet in front of the Georges’ deck were the two graves, now completely filled in and mounded. Why? What was there? It looked like the hunched officer was wondering the same thing. He circled them once, then strode toward the deck just as the door slid open.

  “I told you,” Tiffany was saying, “I just planted some bulbs and . . . Who’s that?” she asked. The second officer was already ascending the steps.

  “This is Officer Stillman.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Like I said, we got a call.” Crevans’s voice was low, but I could make out most of his words. “I’m sure it’s a hoax, ma’am, but we’re bound by law to check it out. You don’t mind if we take a look?”

  “At my bulbs?” Her tone was already loud and snippy. Either she was as guilty as sin or she’d spoken to California’s finest before. Certain officers can bring out the pit bull in a poodle.

  “I like horticulture,” Cravens said. “ ’Specially daffodils. Plant any daffodils?”

  Her face looked pinched as she turned toward him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “About your daffodils,” said the tall guy with the deadpan expression.

  “I didn’t say they were daffodils.”

  “Then what did you bury there?” asked Crevans. His shoes rapped across the hardwood deck and down the steps. Tiffany followed, her bare feet seeming to stutter along behind.

  “So,” he said. His tone was casual, but his hand was on the butt of the gun at his hip. “You said you don’t know where your husband is?”

  “I told you.” She didn’t turn toward him as she spoke. “He went to work, like he always does.”

  They had reached the upturned soil. The two policemen exchanged a glance. Stillman shook his head in silent disagreement, as if the lie cut him to the quick.

  “At Everest and Everest?” Crevans turned his gaze toward Tiffany.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice clipped.

  The two exchanged another glance. Maybe it was meaningful. As for me, I was about to shimmy over the fence and scream for them to dig up the damn graves and quit yakking like a couple old ladies over tea. “We checked into that before we came here, ma’am. Secretary was working late. He said he hasn’t seen Mr. Georges at work for more than a week. We’d like your permission to excavate this area.”

  “Excavate.” She laughed. The sound was short and breathy, as if she’d been running uphill. She shifted her gaze toward the street and back. “That’s ridiculous. My husband would have a fit. He’s very particular about his yard.”

  The officers glanced toward the trampled space in tandem.

  “Well . . .” She sounded panicky now and a little breathless. “That’s just . . . like I said, I was doing some planting. There’s no law against that.”

  “Depends what you’re planting,” mourned the tall cop. “Do you have a shovel handy, Mrs. Georges?”

  “You’ve got no right to do this,” she said, but Hangdog was already shuffling off to the shed. He was back with the appropriate tools in less than a lifetime. Two more officers appeared around the corner of the house.

  The first one was young and fresh-faced. He nodded eagerly at Crevans.

  “Got the warrant,” he said. “Dig it up.”

  It was silent for a while except for the sound of the spade and an occasional grunt from the tall officer.

  Tiffany Georges clutched the edges of her robe together near her throat.

  The shoveling stopped abruptly. The gangly fellow glanced up. “I hit something, Lou.”

  The balding fellow nodded, pragmatic to the end.

  “Looks like clothing.”

  Tiffany’s face was pale, her hands like claws against the santiny fabric of her robe.

  Crevans rested his hand on his gun, his gaze on Tiffany as he spoke quietly into a Nextel. In a minute he replaced the communicator on his hip and turned his attention back to Georges. “Want to tell us who it is?”

  The newly arrived officers were shuffling eagerly from foot to foot.

  “I told you.” She was on the edge of hysteria. “I was just planting bulbs.”

  The gangly fellow squatted, scooped some soil aside, and pulled a shoe from the dirt with dramatic slowness. “Name brand,” he said. “Real leather.”

  “Looks like the tulips will be well dressed this spring.”

  Tiffany dropped to her knees and pressed her fists to her mouth.

  Stillman started digging with his hands. “Got something else.” He tugged carefully. I held my breath, my ear pressed to the fence.

  “He shouldn’t have left me.” Tiffany’s voice was low, a soft keening moan.

  “Who?” asked Crevans, immediately at attention. “Who shouldn’t have?”

  “Damn slut.”

  The original officers glanced at each other again, then at her.

  “Your husband?” Crevans guessed.

  “Lights up his soul, my ass.” She snorted and dropped onto her butt, spreading her legs out in front of her like a downed toddler. “Probably just a damned coincidence that she has tits up to her eyeballs.”

  “He left you for another woman,” said Crevans, and nodded with understanding while motioning silence from his partner. “So you killed him.”

  “Woman!” She laughed. The sound was brittle. “She’s not a woman. She’s a snot-nosed army brat. Twenty-two! She’s twenty-two.”

  “Bastard,” Crevans agreed. “Did you kill her, too?”

  “Found something else, Lou.”

  The bald head nodded distractedly. “What was her name?”

  “Three years younger than me.” She was nodding rhythmically and swaying a little. “Fucker. I should have let his wife keep him. Money wasn’t worth it. You know he slept with his eyes open?” She glanced up, looking lost. “Gave me the willies.”

  Crevans glanced toward the grave. “Yeah, that’s creepy.”

  The two new officers had joined Stillman and were dragging out something large and cylindrical. It looked like the rolled-up carpet.

  “Got him.” Basset Hound’s tone almost sounded excited.

  “How’d you kill him?” Crevans asked her.

  She frowned and looked up suddenly as if her mind had just clicked on. “Kill him?” she snarled. “I did worse than kill him.”

  They carefully unrolled the carpet. I was holding my breath and gripping the fence with fingers numb with anticipation. Blue fabric appeared first. The back of a suit coat. A head of hair lolled to the side, then tumbled slowly away.

  It took me a moment to realize it was no head at all, but a brown sweater, unrolling on the trampled lawn.

  Stillman leaned forward, drawing two dress shirts and a pair of pants from the pile. There was not a dismembered body part to be seen.

  Tiffany was rocking back and forth. “See how she likes him without his fancy wardrobe.”

  The area went absolutely silent.

  “And his job.” She laughed. “I called his boss, told him Jakey was screwing his wife.”

  The basset-hound officer had gone back to digging rather frantically. Crevans was watching him. Stillman came up with another shoe and a tie. He shook his head.

  “Where is your husband, Mrs. Georges?”

  She snorted. “Acapulco. Having his soul lit,” she said, then cried like a spanked two-year-old.

  21

  Sometimes the difference between fear and wisdom is all but indiscernible.

  —Dr. David Hawkins,

  who was a murderer, but a pretty smart guy

  B Y THE TIME I reached home Monday night I felt like I’d been run down by a trolley.

  It was already dark and I hadn’t eaten anything but a Butterfinger since noon. Snickers are my favorite, but I was trying to maintain a well-rounded diet. Toward that end, I had called in an order to Chin Yung’s. My cell phone was acting weird again, but I had managed to convey my message. Maybe it was the desperation in my voic
e, but they’d had my meal ready when I arrived. Kung pao chicken steamed dreamily from its little wire-handled box. I carried it and its mate carefully, juggling them and my purse as I schlepped up my tilted walkway. My security light had gone out again. Some kind of electrical problem, which I couldn’t afford to fix. But maybe—

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said a voice from the bushes.

  I screamed. The kung pao chicken soared through the air like a startled warbler, followed by the rice and mimicked by my purse. But I didn’t care. A shadow loomed over me. I cowered away.

  “Jesus, McMullen. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  It was Rivera. I was shaking like a fig leaf and my bladder felt queasy.

  “You don’t even have a decent security light.” He grabbed my arm. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  My meal had burst open on the broken concrete and was seeping between the cracks. I blinked at all that gooey goodness and promptly burst into tears.

  Honest to God. I can’t tell you why. I just know I was boo-hooing like a soap opera queen.

  “McMullen.” Rivera gave me a little shake, but if he was trying to buck me up, it didn’t work. My shoulders were heaving and my nose was running wild. “Quit that.”

  I didn’t. He shuffled his feet.

  I was vaguely aware of a jogger passing by, reflective tape bright in the Al-Sadrs’ lights.

  “Damn it,” Rivera said. “You’re going to get me written up. Pull yourself together.”

  I sniffled spasmodically.

  “Okay. All right.” He spoke cautiously, as if he were addressing a stray mutt of uncertain temperament. “Let’s just go inside.”

  “But m-my . . .” I dropped to my knees by the mess on the sidewalk.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll make you something.” He dragged me to my feet.

  I tugged my purse under my arm. “But I wanted . . . I wanted . . . kung pao. . . .”

  “Everything all right there?” The jogger had stopped. I swiped the back of my hand across my cheek and gave him a blurry stare.