Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  “You’re looking well yourself, Marvin,” my mother replied without smiling, narrowing her eyes as she scanned the room for people she knew.

  “And here’s your lovely daughter,” Marvin said.

  “Yes, Marvin,” my mother beamed. My mother rarely beamed.

  “Right this way, ladies,” Marvin said, leading us to a table next to a big picture window which, when it wasn’t dark outside, overlooked the club’s eighteen-hole, Jack Nicklaus–designed golf course and driving range.

  As we walked across the ballroom-size dining room, I was shocked to see so many empty tables. The club was hardly playing to a packed house. “Where is everybody?” I asked my mother. “I thought Maine Lobster Night was the hottest night of the week here.”

  “It’s that recession,” she hissed. “Some of the members couldn’t pay the seventy-five-hundred-dollar yearly dues and had to drop out. Can you imagine?”

  Marvin seated us at our table and placed white linen napkins on our laps. “Would you care for your usual cocktail, Mrs. Waxman? Dubonnet Rouge over one ice cube, twist of lemon?”

  “That would be lovely, Marvin,” my mother answered, lighting up a Winston.

  “And how about your beautiful daughter? Would she like a cocktail?” Marvin said, looking at me.

  “I’ll have a glass of white wine,” I said. Then I flashed back to my first dinner with Cullie on the Marlowe and smiled. “On second thought, Marvin, make that a Mount Gay rum and tonic.”

  “A what?” my mother said, looking startled.

  Marvin did too, but he took the order, bowed at the waist, and left.

  I’d love Cullie to see this place, I chuckled to myself. Maybe when things settled down and we got to know each other better, I’d introduce him to my mother. Then again, maybe not.

  “Now tell me about this murder investigation,” my mother prompted, her eyes fixed not on me but on our fellow diners, some of whom waved at her and blew her kisses.

  I recounted the story of how I came to be employed by Melanie, how I discovered her body in her office, and how I had no alibi for the night she was killed. At first, my mother, like Bethany Downs, seemed particularly interested in whether I had taken a peek at the Alistair Downs manuscript while I worked in Melanie’s house. Then, when I explained that I had no idea what was in the book, she moved on to where I’d been the night of the murder and why I had no alibi.

  “I was out with a man,” I said. “He brought me home at about eleven o’clock and left. I spent the rest of the night alone, at Maplebark Manor.”

  “Who is this man?” she asked.

  “His name is Cullie Harrington, Mom. He’s a photographer.” I knew what was coming and braced myself.

  “What kind of a name is Harrington? Not a Jewish name, I can tell you that.”

  “No, he’s not Jewish, Mom. He’s Episcopalian.”

  My mother grew pale, but she did not faint. “And what does he do for a living? He’s a photographer, you say?”

  “Yup. He shot the photographs for the brochure of Maplebark Manor. That’s how we met.”

  “So it was a business dinner? You discussed the marketing of your house?”

  “No, the house never came up. It was a social evening. Cullie and I are…dating.”

  “Dating? Photographers don’t have money. What’s gotten into you, Alison?”

  Just in the nick of time, before I was forced to explain to my mother that I had changed, that I no longer needed money to be happy, that Cullie was sweet and wonderful and talented, Marvin arrived with our drinks. I stirred mine. My mother took a long swig of hers—so long that she accidentally swallowed the twist of lemon that was wedged between the ice cube and the Dubonnet, and she began to cough violently. Within seconds, the lemon twist was lodged in her windpipe and she was choking. “Help! Help!” she wheezed, her face turning an odd shade of blue.

  I admit it. For one split second, I was paralyzed to help her. I kept trying to think of a joke. Quick! A joke! A joke! I commanded myself, as my poor mother sat slumped over the table gasping for breath. Fortunately for her, my daughterly instinct kicked in and I bolted out of my seat, wrapped my arms around her and applied my fist to her chest. Once, twice, three times.

  To my mother’s and my great relief, the dreaded twist of lemon finally shot out of her mouth and landed on the table next to the sterling silver salt and pepper shakers.

  “Are you okay now, Mom?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we call a doctor?” I glanced around the room, thinking there might be a doctor in the house.

  Surprisingly, none of the other diners seemed the least bit concerned about my mother’s near-death experience. They just sat there stuffing themselves like a scene out of Tom Jones, their chests draped in white plastic lobster bibs, their fingers busily dissecting their five-pound crustaceans, their mouths sucking meat out of claws, their chins dripping with melted butter. They were so involved with their meal and each other that they wouldn’t have noticed if a space ship landed in the middle of the room. Maine Lobster Night was Maine Lobster Night, and that was all there was to it.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked my mother again. “Would you like some water? Would you like to go home? We could have Marvin ask the parking attendant to bring the car around.”

  “Absolutely not,” my mother said sharply, sounding like her old self. “I’m not going anywhere. We haven’t had our lobsters yet. I paid good money for those lobsters, so we’ll just have to stay and eat them.”

  “I don’t think you should be eating lobster right now. You nearly choked to death. On a lemon.”

  “The lemon had nothing to do with it. When you told me you were seeing a gentile photographer, I nearly died.”

  “Yes, Mom, you did.”

  I suggested that we avoid the subject of my love life and stick to less provocative topics, like whether it would snow over the weekend and whether “As the World Turns” would lose another actor to prime time. She was happy as a clam—or should I say lobster?—by the time Marvin brought our food to the table and dressed us in our plastic bibs, which, by the way, were imprinted with the words: GRASSY GLEN COUNTRY CLUB—#1 CHOICE OF THE CHOSEN PEOPLE.

  “Very sweet and tender,” my mother proclaimed after spearing a large forkful of meat from the tail of the lobster, dipping it in melted butter, and popping it into her mouth.

  “Yes, very sweet and tender,” I agreed.

  The tastiness of the lobster was about all we did agree on. We were miles apart on what we wanted out of life and miles apart on how to get it. The realization saddened me, but it didn’t frighten me. Not anymore. Not after what I’d been through. I no longer needed my mother’s approval. I no longer needed a man’s approval. The only person’s approval I really needed was my own, and I was doing my best to get it.

  Chapter 12

  My plan for Friday was to haul the Alistair Downs manuscript out of my Porsche, bring it into the house, and read the whole damn thing. But nobody would let me. First Janet Claiborne called and asked if I would show the house to a couple from Kansas. The husband’s company, she explained, was relocating to Manhattan. Eager to unload Maplebark Manor before the bank took it, I agreed to interrupt my plans and show the house. The prospective buyers from Kansas turned out to be a couple of producers from “A Current Affair,” as I learned when I found them fishing in my underwear drawer, an act they defended by calling it “good, solid television journalism.” Then Todd Bennett, Melanie’s prodigal research associate, called and asked if he could come over. He had an important matter to dithcuth with me, he said. So much for settling into a comfy chair and reading all about Senator Downs.

  Todd showed up at about noon. It had only been a couple of weeks since I’d last seen him, but the once-pudgy man with the Pillsbury Dough Boy body appeared to have slimmed down considerably. When I asked him if he’d been on a diet, he shook his head. “I’ve been worrying. I can’t eat when I’m worried.”

  “I know you and Melan
ie had some kind of a disagreement before she died, but you must have been terribly upset when you heard she’d been murdered,” I said, trying to comfort Todd, who refused to sit down when I invited him into the house but preferred to pace back and forth in my foyer.

  “You knew about our fight? How?” He seemed alarmed.

  “Melanie told me. Not what it was about, just that you hadn’t come in to work and she didn’t know where you were.”

  “Yeth, we had a fight, all right. The cunt reneged on our deal.”

  “You mean, the deal where she had agreed to give you credit for writing the book with her?”

  “You got it. A couple of weeks ago, our publisher asked us to approve copy for the book jacket. They wanted to start selling the foreign rights, so they did a mock-up of the jacket to take to a book convention. They FedExed a C-print to Melanie and I happened to get a look at it.”

  “Happened to get a look at it?”

  “Yeth. She wasn’t planning to show it to me. I had to steal it when she was out of the office. And when I saw it, I knew why she wouldn’t let me see it. I was so mad I could have killed her.”

  “What did the jacket have on it?”

  “It read: ‘CHA CHA CHA: THE ALISTAIR DOWNS STORY—A Biography by Melanie Moloney.’”

  “That’s the name of the book? Cha Cha Cha?” The manuscript stuffed under the seats of my car had no title page.

  “Yeth, on account of how the Senator started out as a dance teacher. But do you believe how Melanie cheated me? She’d promised we’d be co-authors on this book. But whose name was on the jacket? Hers. Not hers and mine.”

  “But couldn’t you have talked to her about it? Reminded her that you had an agreement?”

  “Talk to Melanie? What are you kidding? You worked for her. You know what she was like.”

  “But you had an agreement. Surely an attorney would have been able to—”

  “There was nothing in writing. We had a verbal agreement. A handshake.”

  Todd was even stupider than I thought. But then again, I’d had a written agreement with Sandy—a prenuptial agreement—and where had that gotten me?

  “So you had it out with her? You told her how you felt about what she did?”

  “Of course I did. She laughed in my face and called me a wimp. I hate being called a wimp.”

  “Anybody would.”

  “She said she was a bestselling author and I was a first-class wimp.”

  “She said that?”

  “Yeth. And more.”

  “So you walked out on her? Quit your job?”

  “I didn’t quit, I just took a little sabbatical. I had every intention of coming back to work and helping Melanie with the promotion of the book.”

  “But how could you, after the way she reneged on your deal and called you a wimp?”

  “Because I am a wimp. She’d been treating me like dirt for years. I’d threaten to quit, then I’d always come back. She knew I’d come back this time, too.”

  Did you come back to kill her this time? I wondered. Are you the murderer, mild-mannered, wimpy Todd? Do you have an alibi for the night Melanie was killed, or did your “little sabbatical” take you over to Melanie’s office for a little pushing and shoving match?

  “What did you want to see me about?” I asked Todd.

  “Oh, yeth. I got a call from a Detective Corsini yesterday. He said he’s interviewing people who were close to Melanie. He asked me to come down to police headquarters at my convenience.”

  “So you went down there?”

  “Not yet. It hasn’t been convenient.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “I was watching ‘A Current Affair’ last night, and I saw a piece about you, how you found Melanie’s body, how you were questioned by the police, and all that. I just thought I’d ask your advice about how to handle this detective.”

  Nobody had asked my advice in years, maybe ever, but I was too suspicious to be flattered. “Just tell him the truth,” I said. “Do you have an alibi for the night Melanie was murdered?”

  “Not exactly. I was home reading.”

  “Oh? What were you reading?”

  “Cha Cha Cha. I wanted to go over the finished manuscript one more time before we sent it out to be duplicated.”

  Todd had the original Alistair Downs manuscript? Impossible. I had the manuscript. The original manuscript. I knew it was the original because the boxes it was in were marked ORIGINAL. It had to be the genuine article.

  “You mean, you had a copy of the manuscript at home,” I said breezily, trying to keep panic out of my voice. “I assumed Melanie kept the original at her house, under lock and key.”

  “No, I have the original. She asked me to keep it for a while. She was afraid Alistair Downs’s daughter or one of his other henchmen would find a way to steal it. Somebody from Downs’s camp had been calling Melanie with death threats.”

  Todd had to be lying about the manuscript. I had the original. The question was, why would Todd lie?

  “Did Melanie tell the police about the death threats?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. She was used to them. Everybody hated her. That’s what’s going to make the police’s job so hard. How’s this Detective Corsini going to figure out who murdered her when there are so many of us who wanted her dead?”

  “Hair fibers,” I replied.

  “What are you talking about, Alithun?”

  “Our hair fibers will set us free.”

  That afternoon I received my own call from Detective Corsini, who asked if I’d mind coming down to headquarters to answer a few questions. I’d already told him everything I knew, but said I’d be glad to oblige.

  When I got to the station, I was told to wait outside Corsini’s office until he was through with the person he was interviewing. Ten minutes later, his door opened. There was the good Detective Corsini, arm in arm with the one and only, larger than life, dance-instructor-turned-actor-turned-Senator-turned-newspaper-publisher Alistair P. Downs.

  A perfect couple, I thought. The celebrity and the celebrity whore.

  “Splendid talking with you,” I heard Alistair tell Corsini.

  “My pleasure, Senator,” Corsini ass-kissed back. “Oh, Mrs. Koff, go on in,” he said when he saw me.

  “Ms. Koff,” I said militantly.

  “Well, well, it’s Miss Koff from the newspaper,” Alistair chimed in, ignoring my stab at feminism. “Splendid to see you again. Ho ho.”

  Alistair looked dashing. He wore a dark blue pin-striped suit under a cashmere camel’s hair topcoat whose lapels and cuffs were lined with Persian lamb. His thick reddish-brown hair was slicked back, little waves framing his face. His complexion was smooth, his green eyes clear. He had aged well, no doubt about it.

  “Hello, Senator Downs,” I said, extending my hand, which he shook with both of his.

  “Don’t be too hard on her now,” Alistair chuckled as he gave Detective Corsini a playful poke in the ribs. “She’s one of mine.”

  One of his what? “I’m happy I ran into you today, Senator,” I pressed on. “I want you to know that I meant you no harm when I took the housekeeper’s job at Melanie Moloney’s. Your daughter Bethany seems to view my work for Ms. Moloney as an act of betrayal. But it was simply a matter of economics.”

  “Ah, yes. Economics. I, myself, am a big fan of Ronnie’s supply-side economics. Good man, Ronnie. We worked together in the movies, and we worked together in the Party. Nancy’s a splendid gal, too.”

  “You’re friends with Ronald and Nancy Reagan?” Detective Corsini gushed.

  “Why, of course. Had them on the Aristocrat many times. Splendid people. Ho ho.”

  “Did you want to talk to me, Detective?” I said, cutting this chitchat short.

  “You can go on into my office,” Corsini said. “I’ll be spending another minute or two with the Senator here.”

  I went into the office and left the door open. I listened to Corsini thank Alistair
profusely for taking the time out of his busy schedule to come down to police headquarters and answer all those nasty questions about where he was on the night of Melanie’s murder and how he felt about the book she had written about him. Then I heard Alistair chuckle several times and tell Corsini that the Layton Police Department was the best local police force in the entire country in his opinion, that he was proud to be a Layton resident and taxpayer, and that he was planning to make a big donation to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association. What a crock.

  “Now, Miss Koff,” said Detective Corsini when he finally managed to tear himself away from Alistair and return to his office to grill me. “I gotta ask you about some of the people who came to see Miss Moloney at her house. What do you know about the names on this list?”

  He handed me a sheet of paper. I recognized a few of the names—Jason Roth, Melanie’s friend at the Star; Arlene Malkan, her occasional gofer; Carmen Cordero, her manicurist; and of course, Todd Bennett, her long-suffering research associate.

  I told Corsini what little I knew about these people. Then he handed me another list. “How about these names?” he asked.

  The second sheet of paper contained what Corsini considered to be Melanie’s Enemies List. On it were, among others, the people quoted in that damning Vanity Fair article. There was Ron Delano, her first husband, an accountant whom she deserted for Scott Whitehurst, a perennially out-of-work actor who became her second husband and then sued her for $50,000 a month in alimony after she dumped him. There was also Mel Suskind, the literary agent whom she dumped for a big-shot agent at ICM, and Roberta Carr, Melanie’s former editor who paid her $3 million a book, then got dumped when Melanie took a rival publisher’s offer of $5.5 million for the Alistair Downs biography. I suggested that Corsini read the Vanity Fair article if he wanted to know more about these people—more than I could tell him anyway. I was just Melanie’s lowly maid. All I knew was that Todd was right: plenty of people hated Melanie. But enough to kill her? I was sure that as disgruntled as her former agent, editor, and husbands undoubtedly were, whoever offed Melanie was a lot more than disgruntled.