How I Spent My Summer Vacation

by Gillian Roberts

  “Dunstan?”

  “Donald.”

  “Maybe somebody at Ivana’s will recognize you.”

  “Yeah.” She sounded doubtful.

  “Did he charge the dinner?” How many Dunstans could there be? Last name or not, we’d find his charge slip. And while we’re visiting fantasyland, let’s add that the charge slip wouldn’t be the preprinted form, but one of those vertical printouts that list the time of sale. And, of course, that would turn out to be precisely the same moment as Jesse Reese’s time of death. Alibi by Visa.

  Sasha was silent while she thought about this, and when she spoke, her voice was dull. “Cash. Said he’d just won a bundle. I think maybe he gambles a lot.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “About his bets?”

  “No, about—”

  “That I was on a sort of date with a man whose last name and address I don’t know at about the time when they think this man was murdered? Yes. They weren’t too impressed.” She sighed, and I could feel more bad news coming. “They have a witness,” she said.

  “How is that possible? To what?”

  “To my going into the room with Jesse Reese and another man, right before it happened.”

  “Another man? Who?”

  “How would I know? I wasn’t there! The witness is crazy. None of it’s true!”

  This seemed a good time to reassure her that help was on the way, in the form of the Pepper-Mackenzie posse, and to more privately cross fingers and hope that was the truth.

  * * *

  I set out with Mackenzie for Sasha’s jail, but en route I realized that I had to go to Trump’s instead. Mackenzie was not pleased by the idea.

  “Even if just for moral support, shouldn’t you be with Sasha?” he asked. “Ah’m certainly not a real welcome sight to her.” He was ahmimg, a sure sign he was agitated, really didn’t approve of my detour. Or he just didn’t want to be alone with Sasha, his longtime antagonist. But the ahmier he got, the more resolute I became.

  “Explain it to her,” I said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but meantime, somebody’s done a good job of making Sasha look guilty as hell, and this Dunstan is her only alibi.”

  “True,” Mackenzie said. “But even so—”

  “He told her he was coming back here after their date. We don’t have a last name or an address, so the first hurdle is finding him, and I have a better chance of, um, discovering him than you or the police.”

  “You playin’ bar girl or detective?” he grumbled.

  He didn’t particularly like my playing either role, so I stayed with my thesis. “You have a much better chance of speeding up the process with the local force than I do,” I said. “This is an appropriate division of labor. Find out what they know. About that witness, particularly. About what’s going to happen to Sasha.”

  “Still an’ all—”

  “What if Dunstan bolts and disappears when he picks up his morning paper and sees his date in a mug shot? I have to find him tonight, before he knows what’s going on.”

  “Maybe he’s left. Gone to bed.”

  “Easy enough to find out. If so, I’ll nurse a pot of decaf and wait for you. I’ll be safe, indoors, and I’ll feel like I at least tried to do something useful.”

  When he let me out of the car, he leaned over and gave me a brotherly kiss on the forehead. “Can’t tell you how much I didn’t want this kind of adventure,” he said. “Can’t begin to.”

  I took that inarticulate pronouncement to be the best news in a long time on the subject of us.

  * * *

  I tried to become Sasha, to add four inches to my height and geometric increments to my self-confidence. Otherwise, I would have had to admit how creepy I felt about sashaying into a bar in the wee hours of the morning. Particularly this bar, with columns that looked sequined and a loud combo playing “Feelings.” What else, but “Feelings”? How would Sasha do it? Why would Sasha do it?

  I tried a round of Intuitively Spot the Dunstan, and failed. Cary Grant’s image fell between me and the bar like a glowing scrim. Nobody came close. Why hadn’t I asked for a description of her date?

  I sat down. The bar was copper-topped with red leather trim. Above it two TV’s played, their sound off. On the right screen a game of tennis silently proceeded. The left featured men in togas. Quo Vadis, I thought, but it was hard to tell, as they appeared to be lip-synching to the band’s inimitable and interminable rendition of “Feelings.”

  “Help you?” The bartender had bright red hair and an air of competent no-nonsense. I ordered a Virgin Mary. She nodded brusquely. It was too early in my truncated day for alcohol. Anyway, at long last, I was high on life. Or at least high on the small thrill of being awake and in a bar at this hour, an experience completely off my bell-shaped curve. I had inverted time and entered a night world I generally missed.

  The bartender put down my spicy tomato concoction. “Delicious,” I said after sipping. I wondered what she was doing here, past midnight, what kind of a job this was and how it worked for her life. My speculations must have shown.

  She chuckled. “Husband can be home with the kids this way,” she said. “Until he finishes grad school. That’s what brings me here. How about you?”

  “I’m…my friend…I’m looking for a guy named Dunstan.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Wouldn’t have expected that,” she said, with a quick, sad shake of her head. “He’s a fixture around these parts. Stays, off and on, till three or four a.m. most nights.” She turned around and busied herself polishing the pour spout of a scotch bottle. Then she turned back. “Look, whether you want it or not, here’s some unsolicited advice. In the spirit of sisterhood, right? Forget Dunstan. He’s all packaging. There’s no future there. Not much of a present, either.”

  “I’m not planning to be involved with him,” I said, but of course, that’s female code for just the opposite, which is how the bartender took it. “But what are you trying to say? Is he married?”

  She looked amused. “I doubt it, although he says so to stay clear of entanglements. Saw it in an old Cary Grant movie.”

  “Were you here all evening? Did you see him tonight? Was he with a woman?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t come on until midnight, and when I saw him, he was alone. I hope that doesn’t encourage you.” Then she did a minor double take, and cocked her head to the right. “But speak of the devil.”

  So there he was, the devil or Cary Grant. Take your pick. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as I’d expected, and much shorter than anticipated. Not a midget, but average. Sasha must have towered over him in her high-button boots. She might be accused of homicide, but of heightism, never. I took a deep breath, lifted my glass in a toast, and smiled.

  If this didn’t work, I was going to be profoundly humiliated and my best friend was going to spend the rest of her life in a dungeon. I sidled off my bar stool. “You must be Dunstan,” I murmured.

  I felt like a fool. Going on two A.M., running on adrenaline and anxiety and borrowing lines from a B movie. But that was all I could think of except for the infinitely tackier “Hi, stranger.”

  Dunstan didn’t faint with joy at my approach, but neither did he hold up a cross and say begone. He waited for more data. I hadn’t expected him to be this cautious. “Sasha wanted me to look you up,” I said.

  He moved his head to the left and looked at me from a side view, eyes narrowed, judgment suspended.

  How bad of a date had they had? “Sasha Berg,” I said. “You remember her, don’t you?”

  He laughed, showing teeth that did, indeed, rival Cary’s. “You mean do I have short-term memory loss?” he asked. “Remember her after what, a few hours?” He waved me to a booth. “Join me,” he said. “But what is this? Some sort of tag team? A relay?”

  His accent was semi-Cary, like someone from a mid-Atlantic island, if only there were such a place. But unidentifiable didn’t mean uncharming.

  In hi
s engaging voice he asked standard opening questions. The how-long-are-you-down-for and where-are-you-from and what-do-you-do preliminaries.

  Then I remembered that I was the one who was supposed to be doing the interviewing. “What about you?” I asked when there was a lull. “Your accent isn’t quite English or American.”

  He laughed. “Doesn’t it sound like Trueheart, Wisconsin?”

  “Not really.”

  “Thought I’d pass for a native by now. We moved there when I was fairly young.” He smiled with the ease of someone who takes it for granted that his audience is smitten.

  And in truth, it wouldn’t be difficult to be smit. There was something elegant, continental about him. I suddenly remembered a personals ad I’d seen. I window-shop that section. In case of emergencies. This particular ad promised “great looks and manors, too.” I, of course, never found out whether the ad-placer had country mansions or simply bad spelling. But Dunstan had that “great looks and manors, too” attitude.

  “I’m a Trueheart boy. ‘Trueheart, Trueheart,’” he sang. “‘Through all our days, we who love you sing your praise.’ Brilliant lyrics, don’t you think?”

  “Listen,” I said. “I need your help. So does Sasha. Not in any big way, just by establishing that she was with you.” I told the incredible story of her arrest, skipping the more tawdry details, such as her bloody slip. “Obviously, somebody’s done a very good job of framing her, but they couldn’t have known that she was with somebody, out in public. Probably other people saw you both, too. Waiters. The bartender on that shift. Other people in the restaurant. Sasha’s kind of…she’s generally noticeable.”

  “Murder?” He sounded stuck on that, horrified in a refined sort of way.

  I nodded. “Isn’t it awful? How about we take a cab to the station and you make your statement and clear this up now?”

  He looked at me for a long while before speaking. His eyes were pale brown, almost caramel. For the first time, I noticed how little light there was in them. “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood,” he said. “I have nothing to tell the police. I barely know your friend.” Each word was clipped with precision. Trueheart’s English teachers must be great.

  “But you were with her. You said so yourself, didn’t you? Didn’t you just say that to me? That’s all I’m asking you to tell the police. You two had a date. You’re her alibi.”

  “You misheard. I saw her. Right here, at some point in the evening. Briefly, and I can’t say when. I remember her. That’s all I was agreeing to.”

  Is that what he’d really said? Meant? Why? Unless Sasha was lying. All the deferred exhaustion flooded me. “You’re saying you were not with her tonight?”

  “Yes,” he answered quite calmly. “That is precisely what I am saying.”

  “But that isn’t true, and it would be easy to help her out.”

  He shrugged, and then he bolted. He stood and walked away double time, out of the bar, across a small open space, and into the casino.

  He had left me—and the bill—without a backward glance. Once I realized he had gone AWOL, I leaped up and followed after him, but I couldn’t see over the tops of the one-armed bandits. I searched each avenue peopled by solemn folk who pulled levers as if it were an obligation to be completed as quickly as possible. Even when their efforts were rewarded by a cascade of coins, they seemed only dimly interested.

  I felt like a lost child. The heavy chandeliers and the gilded mirror ceiling that refracted and reflected the scene below further disoriented me. There was light everywhere, its source nowhere, and obscure music as well, a barely audible up-tempo like a subliminal racing pulse.

  “Dunstan?” I called, even though I knew it was both futile and annoying. Everyone’s eyes stayed glued on the machines. I ran toward where I thought I’d seen him. “Dunstan?” The craps players nodded, pointed, pushed chips across the table, watched with rapt attention as a woman threw the dice. Not a one of them reacted to my voice. I moved aside to make way for a cocktail waitress in a tiny gold-thread tutu. She handed a man a drink, and he plunked a tip of chips onto her tray.

  “Dunstan,” I said, no longer bothering to call it out. I just barely controlled the urge to have either a tantrum or a crying fit.

  What the devil was going on?

  Four

  I WENT BACK TO THE bar, hoping for inspiration. It never arrived, but Mackenzie did. He looked as weary as I felt. He also looked grim as I told him my bad news and he told me his. Sasha was still being held. She’d be arraigned in the morning, if we were all lucky. And bail would be set if we were luckier still.

  “They’re reluctant to let a killer awaiting trial loose,” he said.

  “Sasha? A killer? That’s the most ridiculous…” I shook my head. “She can’t hold a grudge more than five minutes, particularly against a man. That’s part of her problem. And this man—she didn’t even know him.”

  I brushed away the memory of her hesitation on that point. “Can I see her?”

  “Now? At nearly three a.m.?” He sighed and changed the topic. “I saw the witness. He was there, makin’ his statement.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Feeble old guy. Looks caved-in, curled up. But he can see pretty well with his glasses on. Came up to his room to take his pill at nine o’clock, he says. Waitin’ for the elevator to go back down when he saw them at the door of the room. Thought some hanky-panky—that’s what he called it—was goin’ on. Somethin’ kinky with one big woman and two men. I’m not sure if he wanted to be the morality Nazi—or the third man in the hanky-pank. Anyway, he ID’d a picture of Jesse Reese. That’s who he saw. Then he ID’d Sasha in a lineup, too. Says the other guy had dark hair and was shorter than Sasha, but that’s all he remembers. Unfortunately, it was ‘the big woman’—actually, he said girl, the ‘big girl with all the hair’ who caught his eye.”

  “He probably didn’t have his glasses on, or he was confused. Maybe he was watching an entirely different room. Did they think of that?”

  “They tried to find other witnesses to corroborate his story. Woke up the couple in the next room. They knew nothing. Hearing aids were off. The woman on the other side was down at the tables all night.”

  “Or so she says. She picks up two guys and frames—”

  He shook his head as if it were heavy. “She’s maybe three hundred pounds and short. Not easily mistaken for Sasha or either of those men.”

  “Who? Who is—was—the dead man?”

  “Jesse Reese.”

  “I know that part, but who was he?” I wanted to hear that he was scum and that the world was well rid of him.

  “Your basic man-of-the-year type. Had a multimillion-dollar investment firm plus did a lot of teachin’, ’specially for senior citizens. Courses in Financial Survival. No charge. His way of paying back society, he said. Called it his pro bono work. Safeguardin’ little old ladies’ purses.”

  I hated it. He sounded like the hero of a Frank Capra movie, which made the whole situation worse for Sasha. “What was he doing in a casino hotel?” I demanded, as if being in such a room—my room, in fact—constituted guilt.

  Mackenzie raised one eyebrow. “He was dyin’, although I suspect he had other hopes for the evenin’. He was a familiar face there, a regular. Generally given that very suite, in fact. Wasn’t expected last night, however.”

  “So he’s a gambler.” I folded my hands. “The mob did it, then. I rest my case.”

  Mackenzie sighed. “It is really not their style to buy champagne first. Or to sprinkle undies around. This is—forgive me, but this verges on the baroque. It’s overorganized crime, almost cute, an’ that is not the mob’s style. Assumin’ there’s a reason for them to be miffed with him in the first place.”

  “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Mandy, I think you’ll have to accept the idea that nothin’ makes sense to you right now. An’ worse, it may never make sense. But to the police, it makes sense already, and wh
at makes sense to them is that Sasha killed him.”

  “Simply because somebody chose her hotel room to break into.” Our hotel room, a solemn voice in me corrected. Ours. What if Mackenzie hadn’t shown up? I had planned on room service, an evening of luxurious solo vacationing. Did the real killer know I was also checked in there? Care? Would I have been a second corpse?

  Mackenzie tilted back on his chair. I think men feel compelled to balance chairs on their rear legs just so women can warn them that they’ll topple over—and be proved wrong. What macho test is it, anyway? I managed not to say a word and almost to pay attention to what he was saying—although, of course, the whole time, I waited for him to fall over backward.

  He had the ability to balance on two chair legs and read my mind at the same time. “’Course,” he said, “th’other most likely suspect would be you, darlin’. You are also tall—”

  “Not as tall as—”

  “—an’ dark-haired.”

  “Sasha has black hair. Mine’s brown, a lot of red and no curls.”

  “The thing is, you need not worry. You have the perfect alibi. Me. An officer of the law. Who could doubt me? Hope you’re properly grateful.” He brought his chair back to normal position. “Or, when the time is more appropriate, improperly grateful.”

  “Everything,” I said, “is so obviously a setup. Every bit of what they think is evidence could have been planted and arranged—and in a matter of minutes. His business card in her slacks. The slip and the underwear. The champagne. I mean it adds up to nothing when you think about it.”

  “Had a reputation as a ladies’ man. Married, but been there before with various and sundry.”

  “So he was a scumbag.”

  “What’s your point? That it’s okay to kill people who are morally deficient?” he asked mildly.

  “No, but—”

  “If we base character evaluations on whether or not somebody’s sexually adventuresome, then your friend Sasha is likely to be put in the same cubbyhole as the late Mr. Reese. An’ aside from that failure of the flesh, Jesse Reese was considered a paragon of virtue.”