Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  “Whew! I’m exhausted,” I said after Cullie and I had given ourselves the tour. The owners of the house were a very intense, expensively dressed, two-career couple who explained that they had to run off to a meeting but said they’d be back to check on things during their lunch break. “How come they’re selling this little shack?” I asked. “Too small for them?”

  “They bought it in the freewheeling eighties. Now they’re hurting for money, same as you are.”

  “They both have careers. Didn’t they say they were stock brokers?”

  “Used to be. They got laid off.”

  “Then what about that meeting they said they had to run off to?”

  “It’s a meeting of Layton’s walking wounded—axed white-collar workers. You know, one of those support groups for executives who lost their jobs.”

  “Wow. How do you know all this?”

  “The listing agent told me. Real estate agents know everybody’s personal business and don’t mind sharing it.”

  “So I’ve learned.” I shuddered to think how much mileage Janet Claiborne was getting out of my recent notoriety.

  Cullie’s assignment for the morning was to photograph Colossus’s colossal living room—a room that contained, no joke, at least seventy-five pieces of furniture of every style and period. Chairs, tables, sofas, you name it. It also contained numerous and very large stone statues of naked women, all of whose breasts were so protuberant it was difficult not to bump into them. But the greatest challenge in photographing the room was the mirrors. They were everywhere, including a ten-foot job over the fireplace.

  “How am I supposed to shoot this room when no matter where I put a light, there’s a reflection,” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Cullie spent the next two hours moving furniture, fiddling with the light, and trying everything he knew to get a shot without a reflection. I could tell he was exasperated when he plopped down on one of the dozen sofas in the room and said, “If it weren’t February, I’d say, ‘Let’s blow this pop stand and go sailing.’”

  I kissed him. “It’s noon. The sun’s at the back of the house now. Will that make the shot easier?”

  “Not really, but I’ll keep trying. At least I don’t have the homeowners breathing down my neck.”

  Wrong. No sooner did Cullie utter those words than Mr. and Mrs. Ex-Stockbroker showed up.

  “We’ve been thinking,” said Mr. Ex-Stockbroker as he paced back and forth in front of Cullie. His support group meeting hadn’t rendered him any less hyper. “We’d like you to come back and shoot the living room later in the day.”

  “How much later? I’ve got other jobs to do,” said Cullie, clearly not in the mood for interference.

  “About three A.M.,” said Mr. Ex-Stockbroker.

  “Three o’clock in the morning? Are you people nuts?” Cullie snapped.

  “We’ve checked the almanac,” explained Mrs. Ex-Stockbroker, ignoring Cullie’s outburst. “There’s going to be a full moon tonight. At three A.M. it should be coming through the living room windows and cast a particularly dramatic glow all over the room, which would make an absolutely stunning photograph.”

  Cullie and I looked at each other with disbelief and tried our best not to laugh. I flashed back to my own, absurdly pretentious treatment of Cullie and shook my head. No wonder he has such a chip on his shoulder, I thought. A lot of people with money are nuts.

  “Look, folks,” he said hotly. “I’m going to shoot your living room now. Not at three A.M. Not at three P.M. Now. The photograph will be fine, with or without the full moon, and it’ll make everybody want to buy your house. Okay?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Ex-Stockbroker grimaced. “Photographers,” I heard the husband mutter to his wife. “They’re all a bunch of prima donnas.”

  Seconds later the doorbell rang. I peered out a living room window and saw a huge moving van parked directly in front of the house.

  Mr. and Mrs. Ex-Stockbroker went to answer the door. Within minutes Cullie and I heard shouting, then weeping. Minutes after that, four men entered the living room and began moving all seventy-five pieces of furniture out of the house and into the truck outside. We were mystified.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Cullie asked. “I’ve got a shot to do. How am I supposed to shoot a room with no furniture in it?”

  “It can’t be helped,” Mr. Ex-Stockbroker replied, his lower lip quivering. “The bank has chosen the day of your shoot to repossess all our furniture.”

  I felt sick—sick for these people and sick for myself. For all I knew, four men in a moving van were parked outside Maplebark Manor right this very minute, sent by the Layton Bank & Trust Company to repossess all my furniture. It was only a matter of time.

  “Tell you what,” Cullie told the bereft homeowner in a much gentler tone than he’d used minutes before. “I’ll come back at three A.M. and shoot your living room—furniture or no furniture. We’ll make it an artsy kind of shot, show off the room for the architectural masterpiece it is. It’ll be great, okay?”

  Mr. Ex-Stockbroker was so touched by Cullie’s offer that he wept. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” he said. “If your photograph helps sell Colossus, you’ll be saving our lives.”

  The two men shook hands. Then Cullie and I packed up his equipment and left. When we were back in his Jeep, on our way home to Maplebark Manor, I leaned over and kissed him on his bearded right cheek.

  “You’re a nice man to go back there at three o’clock in the morning and shoot that poor bastard’s house—turrets and all,” I said.

  “I’m a stupid man,” he corrected me. “I’ll be standing in that mirrored monstrosity, hunched over a camera at three o’clock in the morning, when I could be lying in a warm, cozy bed with you.”

  Cullie had errands to run, clients to appease, and a friend to meet for dinner before heading over to Colossus for his three A.M. shot, so he kissed me goodbye, promised to see me the next day, and dropped me at Maplebark Manor.

  I went inside, checked my answering machine, and found six messages on the tape: three from “A Current Affair,” begging me to talk on camera about the “truth behind Melanie Moloney’s murder”; one from Todd Bennett, asking if I’d told the police about his argument with Melanie; one from the Layton Bank & Trust Company, notifying me that foreclosure proceedings would begin within the month if I failed to make the mortgage payments on the house; and one from Detective Corsini, requesting that I come down to headquarters to answer a few more questions.

  You’ll all have to wait, I said out loud as I dialed my mother’s number.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “Hi, Mom. It’s me.”

  “No, dear. I.”

  “Were you at Alistair Downs’s house this morning?” I thought it best to come straight to the point, but braced myself for a denial.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I saw you coming out of his driveway. You nearly crashed into the car I was in.”

  “This isn’t an inquisition, is it, dear?”

  “Answer the question. Were you at his house this morning or not?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was.”

  “But why? You don’t even know the man.”

  “I did it for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About what am I talking? About the fact that when we had dinner at the club the other night, you told me that Bethany Downs had fired you from the newspaper. I thought it was high time I interceded on your behalf.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I went to see the Senator about hiring you back.”

  “You never seemed to care about my professional life before.”

  “You never had to take a job as a maid before. A maid! How could I stand by and allow my daughter to throw her life away? I had to do something, Alison dear. I decided it was time to become more involved in your work as a journalist. That’s why I went to see Alistair Downs.”<
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  “Give me a break, Mom. You expect me to believe that you picked up the phone, called Alistair, introduced yourself as the mother of one of his reporters—a reporter he barely acknowledges—and invited yourself over to his estate for a little chat?”

  “That’s exactly how it happened. A mother’s got to do what a mother’s got to do.”

  “And he said, ‘Why, of course, Mrs. Waxman. Come right over?’”

  “Yes, indeed he did. The Senator is a kind, compassionate man, dear.”

  Ho ho. “What did you say to Alistair? What did he say to you?”

  “I told him that you were the most talented writer on his staff; that everyone at the club reads your interviews word for word; that the whole town would suffer if he denied us your articles.”

  “You really said that, Mom?” I was overwhelmed. My mother had never—I mean never—taken an interest in my work, let alone praise it. “How did Alistair react?” I asked.

  “He was charming, really charming. But he didn’t promise anything, dear,” she said, drawing on a Winston. “He was awfully busy. He’s a Senator, you know.”

  “Was a Senator.” His current titles were Publisher of The Layton Community Times and Commodore of the Sachem Point Yacht Club. “So he didn’t say he’d hire me back at the paper, right?”

  “He didn’t say he wouldn’t.”

  “Was Bethany around?”

  “I left when she arrived.”

  “Is that why you drove out of his estate in such a hurry? If it is, I understand completely. Take it from me—she’s no picnic to be around.”

  “Around which to be. No, she isn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say.” I paused. Should I yell at my mother for meddling or thank her for trying to help me? I was still suspicious of her real motive for paying Alistair a call, but I had to concede that if her meeting with him got me my job back, thanks were what she deserved.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “I just want you to know that your mother is there for you always.”

  Perhaps she truly had my best interests at heart. Perhaps she and I were embarking on a new mother-daughter relationship built on trust, on shared responsibility, on mutual respect.

  “Of course, I won’t be there for you always in the literal sense,” she added. “I am getting on, and my time on this earth is dwindling.” She drew on her cigarette, then exhaled. “Which is why it’s so important that you get that little job back at the newspaper.”

  That little job. My heart sank.

  “You see, dear,” she continued, “having a byline on the Community Times gives one a certain prominence in town. It’s an excellent way for you to attract others of prominence—people who can support you when I’m gone.”

  “People? You mean, men?” I was beginning to get my mother’s drift. It wasn’t my career she cared about. It was the rich men my career would help me hook.

  “Yes. Men of means. Men like Sandy. Let’s not forget, it was he whom you met through your work at the newspaper.”

  “Let’s not forget.”

  “And let’s not forget what I’ve been telling you since you were a little girl. Money is security. Money is a buffer against all the hurts of the world. Money is…well, you know my philosophy of life: it’s not who you are, it’s what you have.”

  What do you do when your mother tells you her philosophy of life is: it’s not who you are, it’s what you have? You hang up on her, try to knock some sense into her, or come to the sad conclusion that no matter what you do, she just won’t get it.

  “Someone’s at the door, Mom. I’ve got to go,” was what I opted for.

  After returning the messages on my answering machine (excluding the one from Detective Corsini), making myself a late lunch, and straightening up the house, I realized that the coast was finally clear to read Melanie’s manuscript. I raced down to the garage, retrieved all thousand or so pages from the car, and lugged the boxes upstairs to my bedroom. I grabbed the first fifty pages, lay down on the bed, and licked my lips in anticipation. Okay, Melanie, I thought. Let’s see what goodies you’ve got on Alistair and who might have killed you to keep them quiet.

  According to the table of contents, the biography was divided into three main sections, each dealing with a significant aspect of Alistair P. Downs’s life. There was a section covering his career in the movies, one focusing on his career in politics, and a final section entitled simply, “The Personal Life.”

  I read slowly, hungrily digesting every word, careful not to miss a single revelation or even the inference of one. By five o’clock, I had read only a quarter of the section dealing with Alistair’s Hollywood years, but I was stunned by the sleaziness of the material—and its subject.

  The biggest shocker, and the revelation that was certain to be discussed on talk shows across the nation, was that when Al Downey first went out to Hollywood, he forged a close friendship with a thug named Frankie Fuccato, a man who would later become one of the country’s most legendary Mafia dons. According to Melanie, the friendship between Alistair and this Fuccato fellow continued to this day. It was Alistair’s ties to the Mob that got him into the movies in the first place and, later, into the Senate as well.

  Alistair a member of the Mafia? The Commodore of the Sachem Point Yacht Club and Layton’s most beloved citizen a gangster? Could the Mafia have put a hit on Melanie to shut her up and protect their boy?

  I was about to read on when the doorbell rang. Damn! I couldn’t let anyone find out I had the manuscript.

  I gathered it up and carried it downstairs to my exercise room, where I deposited it in the corner of the sauna. Then I closed the sauna door and ran to see who my visitor was.

  “Your mail, Miss Koff,” said the man who stood at my door holding assorted letters, newspapers, and magazines and looking every bit the U.S. postal worker.

  “What’s wrong with the mailbox?” I asked. “Why the door-to-door service?”

  “Just trying to be helpful,” he said. “How about letting me come inside so I can put these things down for you?”

  As he started to move uninvited into my foyer, I spotted the mini-tape recorder he was wearing in the pocket of his “uniform.”

  “Take one more step and I’ll call the police,” I said, lifting the recorder out of his jacket and waving it in his face.

  “Hey. Give that back,” he shouted, his cheery postman demeanor giving way to the desperate manner of a tabloid TV producer who’s just had his cover blown.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll trade you. You give me my mail and get the hell out of here, and I’ll give you your tape recorder and forget about calling the police.”

  He dropped the mail on my flagstone landing and waited for me to hand over his recorder. I didn’t. Instead, I bent down and picked up my mail, then threw the recorder into a bush of snow-covered rhododendron.

  “Why you…you,” he sputtered, shaking his fist at me. “You said you’d give it back!”

  “I lied,” I said, and slammed the door in his face.

  I carried the mail into the house and set it down on the kitchen counter. Instinctively, forgetting I was no longer writing for the Community Times, I reached for the latest edition of the paper first. The headline on the front page read: NEW INFORMATION REVEALED IN MOLONEY MURDER CASE.

  The article reported that the police investigation into Melanie’s murder, which was being spearheaded by Detective Joseph Corsini of the Layton Police Department, was continuing at full speed. According to the article, the cause of death was now being listed as a CVA (cerebral vascular accident), also known as a brain aneurysm. The police were speculating that Melanie had suffered a blow to the back of the head while seated at her desk, a blow forceful enough to cause her to smack her forehead on the desk and fracture the front of her skull, which, in turn, produced the aneurysm. The police were currently searching for the blunt object which they believed the murderer used.

  The article went o
n to say that nearly everyone who figured prominently in Melanie’s life had been or was soon to be interviewed by the detective. “Among the Layton residents already questioned by Detective Corsini,” said the article, “are Alison Koff, Ms. Moloney’s housekeeper; Todd Bennett, her research associate; and Community Times publisher Alistair P. Downs, the subject of her forthcoming book. Of the three, only Senator Downs can provide proof of his whereabouts the night of the murder. Ms. Koff and Mr. Bennett maintain that they were alone in their respective homes on the night in question, but have no one to corroborate their alibis. Senator Downs, on the other hand, asserts that he spent the evening at the home of a ‘lady friend,’ and the woman has come forward to confirm that the Senator was her companion that night. As a result, Senator Downs is free of suspicion in the case.”

  Okay, so he was with a lady friend the night Melanie was murdered. Maybe he had someone else bop his evil biographer on the noggin—like a Mafia hit man? Anything was possible, I was fast discovering. Even in the suburbs.

  And who was this “lady friend”? Why wasn’t her name divulged? Probably because Alistair told Corsini not to divulge it. What Alistair wants, Alistair gets.

  What really pissed me off was the tone of the article. How dare the newspaper suggest that either Todd or I had something to do with the murder? Talk about biased reporting. Talk about a libel suit!

  Naturally, there was no byline for the article. Bethany was too chicken to put her own name on this filth, but I knew she was responsible for it. It had her sticky donut fingers all over it.

  I put the newspaper down and went to the phone to return Detective Corsini’s call. The direction his investigation was taking was making me nervous. I knew I should get a lawyer—a very good lawyer—but how was I supposed to pay for one? A murder case was way too demanding for the ambulance chasers at Jacoby & Meyers. And I wasn’t about to settle for those court-appointed attorneys who work for free but aren’t exactly top of the line. Besides, after being snookered into signing that bogus prenuptial agreement by Sandy’s high-priced lawyer, lawyers weren’t exactly high on my list of reputable characters. Come to think of it, I didn’t know which were lower on the food chain—lawyers or the media vultures camped outside my house.