A Really Cute Corpse

by Joan Hess

  Late in the afternoon Caron and Inez stomped up the stairs and into the apartment, sounding somewhat like the Stevenson twins. I was informed that Julianna had blown her chances via the orange dress and was beyond reason. I pointed out that the girls would not receive an agenting fee in any case. I was informed at great length that it was a matter of principle rather than monetary concerns. Aesthetic, Mother. Color-coordinated aesthetics.

  It was all so amusing that I was actually delighted to see Peter park out front, come up the sidewalk, and disappear beneath the porch. His footsteps on the stairs sounded leaden, but I figured I was safe from all but a terse lecture. After all, we had no investigation beyond the tidying of a poorly faked murder attempt. Cyndi would be found for questioning, unless she was on the road to Hollywood, chatting with a truck driver about how awesome it was to be, like, actually going, you know.

  He greeted me with a brush of his lips and a plea for a beer. Once Caron and Inez had consented to discuss Julianna’s wardrobe elsewhere, I sat down next to Peter.

  “Have the FBI agents stalked into the sunset?” I asked.

  “Yep. Would you like to stalk into another sunset with me? I was thinking we could try Jamaica or some tiny town in Mexico.”

  “I thought you’d be perturbed with me. I realize I promised to stay out of this one, but Eunice insisted on going to the hotel. She presumed that Cyndi was up to something with Warren.” I wound my finger around one of his black curls, which had a gray hair or two. “Why did you say Cyndi was responsible for the episode with the space heater?”

  “How about Tahiti? The two of us in a little grass shack, the stars shining like diamonds, the breeze redolent of orchids and whatever else grows in your basic paradise setting.”

  “Mosquitoes, most likely. Why did you say Cyndi was responsible?”

  “Then we’ll have to take mosquito netting with us,” he said, draping his arm over my shoulder. His head fell back on the top of the sofa and he closed his eyes. “I have this incredibly romantic vision, right down to the aroma of the breeze and the salty taste of your skin. There we are on the deserted beach, shaded by palm trees, our bodies glistening from the sun, our arms locked around each other. Then you sit up, push me away, and demand to know the results of an official police investigation seven years ago.” He opened one eye and gave me a narrow look. “I don’t think I meant that in a metaphorical sense—the pushing away part.”

  “I like my life the way it is. I don’t want to be the Betty Crocker of the bookselling industry. I’m very territorial these days, and I want control, not obligations. I’ve been married. Now I prefer to be a self-centered single person.”

  “So do I. Why can’t we do it together?”

  I wiggled out from under his arm, intensely uncomfortable. I went into the kitchen, put some crackers and cheese on a plate, stared out the window at a weedy yard that was not a beach, and went back into the living room with a bland smile.

  “Shall we watch the news?” I said. “Senator Stevenson’s two beastly children may be sticking out their tongues.”

  After an opening story about a barroom brawl, a followup concerning the antics of a city director and his busted bookie, and the promise of a cheery weather forecast at the end of the thirty-minute show, the children did indeed display little pink tongues. Their father dropped them and got in a few words about the deep pleasure he took from meeting the people, several of whom were standing in the background making faces at the camera.

  Peter and I were behaving in an equally undecorous manner when I heard Cyndi Jay’s voice. We jerked apart to stare at the television set.

  “I just couldn’t bear to miss the pageant tonight,” she said from her hospital bed. “I realize how incredibly dangerous it is for me to go to the theater when a ruthless maniac has tried four times to murder me, but I owe it to the lucky girl who wins the title of Miss Thurberfest for the upcoming year. I feel in my heart that I have to be there, not for myself but for her—whoever she is.” Cyndi blinked back her tears and smiled into the camera. “And I want to wish all seven of the finalists the best of luck. No matter who wins, they’re all really, really cute girls.”

  “What can you tell us about this alleged maniac, Miss Jay?” the interviewer demanded on the viewers’ behalf.

  “The police haven’t made any progress in unmasking him. I guess they’re too busy to worry about me, what with all the politicians in town and crowd control at the Thurberfest and everything.”

  “Then you have not been offered police protection? They’ve done nothing to find this alleged person and restrain him?”

  “They say they haven’t made any progress. I have a pretty good idea who it is, though. I can’t say anything now, but I intend to speak to a certain person this afternoon. If we can’t arrive at a satisfactory agreement, I’m afraid I’m going to have to say the name. It’s the only way I have to protect myself.”

  “When will you expose this alleged murderer?”

  She paused long enough for the camera to zoom in for a close-up of her wan, brave, discreetly made-up face. “Tonight at the pageant. I’ll be there, and—” A blurry white figure moved in front of the camera, cutting off our view of Cyndi’s trembling lips. Inaudible dialogue drowned out any further comments.

  The interviewer gave us a recap of who she was, where she was, why she was where she was, and what she’d learned in this startling interview with Miss Thurberfest. She assured us that she would be at the theater to stay on top of the unfolding story of the beauty queen and the maniac who stalks her, then deftly moved on to a story about cattle mutilations in another county.

  “What on earth did that mean?” I murmured, thoroughly bewildered. “I thought you said she was behind the so-called asphyxiation attempt. If she’s behind the entire plot, who the hell is she going to name?”

  “We found her fingerprint on the tape and on the knob of the heater. The blow to her head could have been self-administered.” He let out an irritable sigh. “I’d better call and have her picked up for questioning before the pageant. Maybe I’d better warn the state psychiatric facility to make up an extra bed. The girl is so deluded that she might get herself in real trouble.”

  He went into the kitchen to call the department. I listened to him with a fraction of my mind while I tried to make sense out of Cyndi’s latest ploy for publicity. She’d finally had her minute of glory in front of the camera, only because Steve Stevenson had no excuse to be in her hospital room. But what would she say tonight at the pageant—gee, guys, I forgot to mention that I’m stalking myself for the publicity?

  “Have you figured out who her accomplice is?” I asked Peter when he returned. “She does have one. Being shot at requires a second party to shoot at you.”

  “It had occurred to us, but as soon as we received the ballistics report, the FBI agents were hot to talk to Senator Stevenson. Their only involvement was if someone attempted to affect the outcome of the election through the threat of violence, which is federally frowned upon. When Cyndi disappeared of her own volition, it confirmed our suspicion that she was behind the sniping. The agents murmured something about a case in Las Vegas and evaporated before my eyes. They’ll be back in a few days, poorer but wiser, to finalize the paperwork.”

  “You’re all being rather casual about this.”

  “About a bunch of practical jokes and two murder attempts staged in hopes of a press conference?”

  “You might have put a policeman outside Cyndi’s hospital room.”

  He gave me a wry look. “We have every available man on duty because of the Thurberfest. Several thousand citizens roamed the streets yesterday in a drunken stupor, and many of them are doing so again today. Pickpockets from three states are in town, as are a handful of muggers and rapists. We’ve issued more moving-violation tickets in the last two days than we normally do in a week. The girl was safe in the hospital; the security people there were keeping an eye on the entrances and the hallway.”

&nb
sp; “But they didn’t prevent her from leaving.”

  “No one could have prevented her from leaving.” He gave me a long, enigmatic look, then ran his fingers through his hair, sighed, and told me he was leaving.

  I told him I would not attempt to prevent such a thing, and was in fact going to the theater. He said an undercover officer or two would be there to watch for the errant Miss Thurberfest, should she carry out her threat to appear and expose her pet maniac, and we agreed to meet later to celebrate the conclusion of the pageant. After another strange look, he left.

  I called Luanne, who sounded drowsy as she said she’d be ready to be picked up shortly. Caron and Inez had not returned. Hoping they were already at the theater, I drove to Luanne’s house and helped her hobble down the sidewalk to my car.

  “You certainly unplug your telephone a lot,” I said as we started for the theater.

  “Do I? I assumed nobody ever bothered to call me.”

  “I’ve bothered to call you a dozen times in the last three days,” I said mildly. “Is there something I don’t know?”

  “I would imagine there are quite a few things you don’t know. For instance do you know the capital of New Zealand? The name of Hoover’s Secretary of State? How to make tofu lasagna? Where have all the flowers gone? Why do fools fall in love?”

  “Could you be serious for one minute?”

  “I don’t want to be serious for one parsec,” she said, laughing coldheartedly at my frustrated tone. “I want to survive the pageant with a smile, then go home and nurse my ankle so that I can again waltz with Mr. Haling, the widower next door who grows fantastic tomatoes and peeps through my window when I undress at night.”

  I considered the wisdom of taking my hands off the steering wheel long enough to wrap them around her throat and choke some sense from her. I told her as much, then said, “I care about you and I want to know what’s wrong. If necessary, I’ll deputize Mr. Haling and we’ll cram tomatoes down you until you barf seeds and agree to confess.”

  She made an odd noise and looked down at her lap. “I’ll tell you in a day or two, Claire. There is a certain complication in my life, and I can’t discuss it until the pageant is over and the girls are gone. You’ll have to settle for that. Mr. Haling only likes dark-haired, sultry women. He wouldn’t give you a vine-ripened tomato if your life depended on it.”

  I let it go and told her everything that had happened since I’d visited that morning. “At ten o’clock Cyndi was a victim. By one she was a perpetrator. By two she had moved into absentia, and by five into delusional megalomania,” I concluded. “I once thought she was a sweet, harmless, vacuous girl.”

  “We must hope she doesn’t float down from the catwalk in the middle of the pageant, her well-manicured finger pointing in accusation. If Mayor Avery saw the news, he’s probably trembling in his boxer shorts.”

  “Peter has all the available uniformed officers out looking for her. I’m sure they’ll find her and stash her away in a nice, safe place until she says something coherent.”

  We parked in the alley and went around to the front door of the theater. Luanne went to the office, and I wandered down the corridor to make sure the stage was lit and the flowers still in place. The stage was lit, but in the spotlight I saw Caron and Inez.

  “Try to put a little feeling into it this time,” Caron snapped.

  “But I don’t feel anything,” Inez said. “I mean, why should I scream at you when you haven’t actually done anything?”

  “Pretend I ran over your cat. Pretend we’re on a desert island and I ate the last cookie. This is acting. You’re supposed to fake it.”

  “You don’t drive, so you couldn’t have run over my cat. And if we’re on a desert island, why do we have cookies? Wouldn’t it make more sense if you ate the last coconut?”

  I slithered into the auditorium and perched on the arm of a seat.

  “Then I ate the last coconut!” Caron said, flapping her hands and scowling like a vulture that had chanced on a chicken.

  The seven finalists entered the auditorium. They were subdued, I supposed from prepageant jitters. I pointed at the stairs that led to the basement. Julianna snorted when she saw the two thespians and marched down the stairs. Dixie shot me a frightened look, then allowed herself to be swept away with the group.

  “You ate the last coconut,” Inez said as loudly as she dared.

  “Yeah, I did.” Caron put her hands on her hips and sauntered away, then looked back over her shoulder with a sneer and said, “And I don’t care. What are you going to do about it, bitch?”

  Trembling, Inez raised her arm and pointed a gun at Caron. “I’ll kill you, you slut.”

  Caron made a face at the low-key avowal, but regained her sneer and took a step toward the back of the stage. “I have no fear of you. You haven’t got the nerve to pull the trigger.” She froze for several seconds, then in an aggrieved voice said, “That’s the cue, Inez. You’re supposed to shoot me now.”

  Abruptly the lights around the two went out, leaving them in stark white puddles. “Go on, shoot her,” yelled a voice from the control booth above my head.

  Inez’s hand shook so wildly I was afraid she’d drop the weapon. She glanced at me for reassurance that it was both appropriate and acceptable to shoot her best friend in the back while being observed by the mother of same.

  “Sure, go ahead,” I called amiably.

  “Well, okay.” Inez pointed the gun at Caron’s back and closed her eyes. She took a breath, then curled her finger around the trigger. The result was a most satisfactory flashing bang. A tendril of smoke curled from the end of the barrel. Caron lurched forward with a screech, staggered around so that she was facing the audience, and fell to her knees with an agonized groan.

  It was not bad for an amateur. The voice from the ceiling made a comment to that effect, and we were both waiting for the death rattle when Julianna came up from the basement.

  She grabbed my hand. “Mrs. Malloy, you’ve got to do something. I smell gas down there. We all do,” she said loudly enough to cut off a particularly gut-wrenching groan from centerstage.

  Mine, I think, was just as loud.

  TEN

  I bellowed at Mac, who bellowed back as I dashed down the stairs to the basement. The remaining finalists were huddled in the dressing room doorway; I hoarsely ordered them upstairs and continued to the star-studded door at the end of the hall. With each step the odor of gas grew stronger. The door was locked. I was pounding on it as Mac loped up behind me.

  “There’s no one in there,” he said, fumbling with his key ring. “The police sealed it yesterday. Maybe they forgot to turn off the goddamn space heater.”

  “The seals are broken. Would you hurry?”

  I went back to the foot of the stairs and yelled for someone to call for an ambulance. Mac unlocked the door, shoved it open, then stepped back and turned to look at me.

  “It’s too late for an ambulance,” he said flatly. “Have them call the police.”

  He went around the corner and threw open the metal doors that led to the alley. I amended my message to the group in the auditorium, then crept down the hallway, choking on gas acrid enough to have physical shape and color, and looked in the room. Cyndi was once again limp in the chair in front of the table, her head bowed so that her chin rested on her chest. But this time her eyes bulged in surprise and her tongue protruded through purplish lips. A cord of some sort cut tightly into her neck. I approached until I was close enough to determine it was the cord of her hair dryer, and that she was dead.

  I took a tissue and gingerly turned off the gas, hoping I wasn’t obliterating fingerprints. Then, my head threatening to explode and my eyes burning like embedded embers, I stumbled out to the alley and kneeled on the gravel. And, yes, lost another meal.

  “At least we know how to go through the motions,” Mac said from a shadow. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. “Rather déjà vu-ish, isn’t it?”

  �
�A girl is dead—murdered,” I croaked.

  “I have to agree this one’s not a suicide,” he said in the same conversational tone. “A logistic impossibility. How the hell did she get into the theater?”

  I sat back on the gravel and watched the red tip of the cigarette fly through the air. “She left the hospital around noon, or perhaps twelve-thirty. I would guess she came in a minute or two before I left this afternoon, right after the rehearsal ended. I heard the door bang, but I thought you were either coming or going, and I didn’t bother to investigate.”

  “You didn’t hear me. I was in the prop room. Someone’s been snooping around in there, and I was trying to determine what’s missing.”

  “A rubber knife, a gun, and a Viking helmet,” I said numbly, trying to grasp what had happened in the last minute or so. Gas, the dressing room door locked, the body in the chair, the alley. The admittedly unnerving sensation of déjà vu, which was getting déjà vieux. I was still sitting on the gravel when the alley filled with flashing blue lights, sirens, scratchy radios, and stern men in white coats. Stern men in blue coats followed, and at last Peter crouched beside me and rubbed my shoulder.

  “Can you tell me what happened, Claire?”

  I told him what I could, which was little beyond the premise that Cyndi had returned to the theater to hide out until the pageant began at eight o’clock. He went through the doors to the basement. I stood up and coerced my knees into behaving well enough to get me around to the front of the building and to the office.

  The seven finalists, in various emotional states ranging from mute shock to copious tears, were there. Caron and Inez hovered in a corner, their expressions leery. As I entered, Luanne pushed herself out of the chair and put her fists on the desktop. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Cyndi’s dead,” I told them. “And it wasn’t an accident or a pseudosuicide attempt that backfired. She was murdered.”