Death Was the Other Woman

by Linda L. Richards

  After a while though, I realized that the end of the story wasn’t going to come. At least not today. Dex’s head slumped forward slightly, and his breathing evened out. There were no more painful pulls on the bottle. I wanted the end of the story— so badly, I wanted it, you can’t imagine—but a part of me was glad. For the moment, for Dex, there was no more pain.

  I didn’t have the feeling of falling asleep. I was aware of Dex’s even breathing and the heavy smell of bourbon in the closed car. I thought about the things Dex had told me, and while I did, it felt as though I turned some mental corner and was transported.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I WAS RUNNING THROUGH a vineyard in France. It was beautiful. I was aware of colors—the vivid greens of the vines, the intense brown hues of the earth, the bright blue canopy of the sky—and I even felt the sun on the back of my neck, on my hair.

  I turned a corner and I saw a boy—a beautiful boy—ahead of me on the path. He looked over his shoulder at me, and the light danced in his eyes. He laughed and he ran faster. I laughed then too. That was the sound that woke me: my own real laughter piercing my dream, calling me back.

  When I opened my eyes it was dark. Dex was still on the passenger seat next to me, one hand on his precious bottle— half empty or half full, depending on your perspective. His head was lolling back at an angle I knew would give him hell when he woke up. Or sobered up. I wasn’t ready yet to find out which it would be.

  As I tried to shake some life into my legs, I saw a car leave Harrison Dempsey’s driveway. Fast. I thought maybe the car had awakened me as much as the laugh. The sound of the motor or the lights coming on, or both. It wasn’t the green Packard though. That was still parked willy-nilly, just as it had been before. The car that left was all black, which didn’t exactly make it a rarity. And I couldn’t see the driver and I didn’t think to get the plate.

  I lifted Dex’s arm to get a glimpse of his watch. Half past ten. I tried not to think about how long we’d been sitting there. Hours. Hours and hours. The big house was in darkness. It didn’t look like anyone was around. According to Dex, it was well beyond the time Dempsey would normally have been at the Zebra Room.

  “Dex.” I said his name, softly at first. Then repeated it a little more loudly. “Dex!” I shook him gently. All I heard from him was a muffled “Mrrph.” It didn’t feel like he was going to wake up anytime soon.

  I sat back deeply in the driver’s seat, contemplating our options. Or really my options, because I knew I wasn’t going to get any big ideas from Dex.

  We were supposed to be tailing this Dempsey guy. But in all likelihood, we’d blown our chance on making good on the job by falling asleep—quite literally—at the wheel. I figured Dempsey had probably hooked a ride with some pal, and through all the shut-eye, we’d missed seeing him leave in the car that had just left his place. I figured that the sensible thing to do was go check out the house, make sure it was as empty as it looked, then maybe drive over to Wilshire. By then Dex would be sober enough to put one foot in front of the other into the Zebra Room and make like the big shamus he was supposed to be.

  Like I said, that’s what I figured. And it all seemed like a good idea at the time. But once out of the car, I felt desperately alone. Traffic was light here, but I could hear more of it echoing over from Crenshaw. Los Angeles sometimes snoozes, but it never really sleeps.

  In the car with Dex I’d felt safe, even slightly cozy. The sound of Dex’s light snores and the angel’s share of the bourbon drifting through the interior of the car. And here’s the thing: my boss was currently inebriated. Some would argue that he was flat-out drunk. But he was carrying a gun, and he knew how to use it. In a pinch I figured his instincts would kick right in.

  Outside the car though, I felt exposed, like some small rodent or maybe a bug. I don’t know what I was afraid of exactly. But some secret part of me knew there was something of which to be afraid. Call it a feeling in my bones.

  My bones. As I got closer to the house, I thought I could hear them creak. I don’t know why silence seemed important to me then, but it did. As though I should be creeping up on the house. As though it might see me or feel me and somehow fend me off. Ridiculous imaginings, I know. But it was late, it was dark, and I felt completely alone.

  I trotted up the front walkway cautiously, careful not to step on any crack. A goofy precaution, but you can’t be too careful in situations involving the unknown.

  There was no porch light on, so I couldn’t see a doorbell or even determine if there was one. I reached out, intending to deliver a firm knock, but the door swung open to my touch.

  I stood there for a couple of minutes. At least it felt that long to me. I stood on the front step with the door open, listening to the cicadas call and catching the ripe, sweet scent of honeysuckle and a whiff of the distant sea.

  Right inside the door was a big marble-floored foyer framed by a couple of elegant winding staircases. A half dozen hallways led from the foyer to adjacent rooms. I could see all of this just by the illumination of the streetlights, because there didn’t seem to be a light on in the whole place.

  “Hullo?” I called out. I didn’t think anyone was there, but it seemed like the thing to do. “Hullo?”

  There was no answer, but for the tiniest echo of my own voice off the marble. And then it came to me, maybe it was even the reason I’d engineered this trip from the car to the house: after drinking coffee all day at the office, followed by all those hours of sitting in a car, I really, really needed to find a powder room.

  One more try: “Hullo?” And when there was still no reply, I put a tentative foot onto the marble. And then another. The place was so quiet, I could hear my steps echoing around me. It was as though I was in a museum.

  “Hullo?” My voice was a little weaker now. A little less confident. Standing in the middle of the foyer, I felt more exposed than I had in the open doorway, when everything inside the house was mere possibility.

  Faced with half a dozen openings veering off in different directions, I had a choice to make. I knew I didn’t want to spend all night touring the house while I looked for the powder room. On the other hand, finding it felt like an increasingly good idea.

  I became aware of the scent of a woman’s perfume, lingering but still present. I couldn’t place it, but it struck me as deep and rich and faintly cloying. I ignored it and moved on.

  “Hullo?”

  All six of the hallways leading off the foyer were dark. I could have turned on a light. But somehow scuttling around looking for a place to relieve myself seemed like violation enough without adding the glare of electricity. Also, in the semidark I felt slightly invisible, like a little kid playing hide-and-go-seek who closes her eyes and thinks she can’t be seen.

  I don’t know how it happened that I picked one dark hallway over another, because from where I was standing those hallways all looked pretty much alike. Still, I reasoned, they were all bound to lead to a bathroom eventually. And lacking a sign with an arrow that said, “Ladies Room, 26 Steps to the Right,” I’d just have to take my chances on a shot in the dark.

  I wasn’t quite sure when I became aware of the smell. And unlike the lingering perfume in the foyer, it wasn’t an odor I could put my finger on, not right away. Not on any conscious level. On some other level—from some deep, instinctive place— I knew what it was from the first second.

  It smelled metallic. It smelled dark. And as I put one foot carefully in front of the other on the highly polished wood floor of my chosen hallway, I tried to both identify the smell and block it out. It would have been a neat trick if it had worked. But it didn’t.

  When I found the bathroom, I was too frightened to use the facilities in the continued dark. I snapped the light on pretty much as I headed for the commode, illuminating a large, beautifully appointed bathroom done in delicate shades of rose and champagne.

  The light brought a sliver of comfort, but only a sliver. It was an odd feeling: relief an
d fear seemed to become one emotion, the first spurring the second and back again.

  I washed my hands in the echo of the flush, then went to dry them on a towel that was hanging on a bar. I looked at my hands in confusion as I tried to dry them. Confusion because what I saw there made no sense. Where my hands had been wet with water, they were now the sticky red of drying blood.

  I screamed then. I screamed as I turned and looked for the first time toward the bathtub at the other side of the room. No longer blinded by the needs of my body, I saw what I hadn’t noticed before. The heavy opaque shower curtain was pulled shut. Not odd in itself, but there was an oddness to the way the curtain lay against the inside edge of the tub. As though it were leaning against something. I couldn’t guess what that something might be, but I was pretty sure it was not the edge of the tub.

  Every instinct instructed me to get out of that big, echoey, empty house. In fact, my feet started doing just that, all on their own heading toward the door. I grabbed the edge of the sink to stop myself, turning on the tap and letting warm water shoot over my hands. If I’d had any doubt before, I didn’t now. The pale pink that swooshed from my hands and down the drain was blood, sure as anything. A woman knows.

  Unwilling to go back to the blood-spattered towel I’d dropped on the floor, I dried my hands on the edge of my skirt, not even bothering to check if any residual blood might stain the pale fabric. Not even caring in that moment, truth be told. I was intent on the shower curtain. On the bulge in the shower curtain. It still hadn’t moved.

  Before I pulled it back, I stood with my hand high up on the curtain, steeling myself. Yet when I pulled it back I was not surprised. Shocked perhaps. Certainly weak in the stomach and in the knees, but at some level I’d known what I would find. It seemed so cliche, I could have laughed. But I did not.

  There was a man in the bathtub. Not old, perhaps in his middle thirties. He was wearing a dark suit of some shiny fabric, a tie with a dull maroon pattern, and a white shirt, though the front of the shirt was streaked with blood. I could see that he’d been shot in the chest. A good shot, I guess, because he was as dead as could be. I didn’t check his pulse; didn’t have to. His mouth was open, as were his eyes. The emptiness there was immense. And he was pale. So pale. I hope never again to see a human so completely lacking in color. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me: this guy had checked out.

  I managed to see all of this, to note all the details, because my feet were, quite simply, rooted to the spot. It was as though I were attached to the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. A part of my brain instructed, “C’mon, get the lead out. The dead guy in the tub means danger isn’t far off.” But my body responded not at all.

  I heard a noise nearby, and at the same time, the invisible roots released their hold. I would have run, but between the bathroom door on one side of me and the grisly inhabitant of the tub on the other, there was no place to go.

  While I considered my options, my heart fluttered in my chest like a frightened bird. As I stood there trying to calm myself, I heard footsteps. And they were getting closer.

  And then I heard a sound I’d never thought would almost make me cry out in relief.

  “Kitty?” And then more insistently and blessedly even closer: “Kitty!”

  “I’m here.” My voice had ceased working and I stopped to clear my throat. “I’m here, Dex, right here.”

  Dexter J. Theroux was miraculously restored when he entered the bathroom. I couldn’t see the day’s hard drinking on him, but for some extra creases around his eyes and a puffiness in his jowls. His step was steady and the hand on his gun looked firm. When he saw me, the relief in his eyes was obvious. I could tell he’d feared the worst.

  “I thought I heard you scream,” he said simply.

  “You did,” I replied, then motioned to the body in the tub.

  Dex let out a clear low whistle. It came out of him as though pulled from deep inside. “What have we here?” he asked, while he holstered his gun.

  “He’s … he’s dead, Dex.”

  “Yes, Kitty. I do believe you’re right. It doesn’t look like he stopped off for a bubble bath.”

  He leaned over the body and pulled out a billfold, drawing out the man’s driver’s license and checking his name.

  “Looks like you were right, kiddo,” Dex said. He settled back on his haunches while he struck a match on the grout between tiles and lit up a cigarette. He looked at the corpse in the tub thoughtfully while he exhaled a tight plume of smoke.

  “I was right? How’s that?” I asked.

  “We won’t need to be tailing Harrison Dempsey,” he said, holstering his gun. “I could have done this job in a Red Car after all.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  DEX FINISHED HIS SMOKE in what looked like a leisurely fashion, but I could see the wheels turning while he puffed. After he was done, he tossed the spent cigarette into the toilet, took out his handkerchief, and started wiping down every surface either of us might feasibly have touched.

  “What are you doing?” Even while I asked, I knew it was a silly question. It was fairly obvious Dex was erasing all signs of our visit.

  Dex just looked at me, cocked one eyebrow, then went back to his wiping. It didn’t take long.

  I stood in a corner of the bathroom—the corner farthest from the place where Dex worked—trying to take in everything that had happened.

  “We didn’t do it,” I pointed out. “Aren’t you afraid that you’re erasing evidence that might help the police find the killer?”

  He looked at me as though I were a child, and not a particularly bright one at that.

  “Listen, Kitty,” he said, as he finished up. “Whoever did this doesn’t care about evidence, even if they left any. Which they probably didn’t. Look at him,” he said, forcing my attention back to the corpse. “He didn’t slip in the shower, kiddo. He was chilled, neat and sweet. And it doesn’t look like it was amateur night, any way you slice it.” He popped his hanky back into his pocket and pushed me out the door ahead of him. I noticed that as we left the bathroom he didn’t bother stopping to turn off the lights.

  “You touch anything else?” he asked. I shook my head. “What about the front door?”

  “I touched the door and it opened,” I replied.

  The hanky was out and the door wiped down so quickly, you would have thought Dex did cleanup for a living. Then he ushered me back to the car, popping me, unprotesting, into the passenger seat and taking the wheel himself.

  I didn’t ask where we were going. Frankly, at that moment I didn’t care. “I still don’t think cleaning everything up was the right thing to do,” I insisted as we drove, not liking the petulant note in my voice but beyond caring. “The police would believe us, I think. We didn’t have any reason to kill him.”

  “It’s not so much the cops I’m worried about, Kitty. Like I told you back there: whoever croaked him wasn’t an amateur. This guy’s got friends you don’t want to play with. This just smells like something we shouldn’t get mixed up in.”

  Though my conscience wanted to argue, I could see the sense in his words, and I lapsed into thoughtful silence.

  As we moved deeper into the city, the distant scent of the ocean was replaced with the ever-present odor of Los Angeles: the smell of the oil that the derricks all over the region pumped out of the ground twenty-four hours of every day. It was a hard smell to define. Dark and ancient. The smell of a prehistoric era. And modern wealth, but not a clean wealth somehow. You got used to it after a while.

  “One thing bothers me about all this, Dex,” I said, when we’d traveled a few miles.

  “One thing.”

  “Seriously. What was he doing in the bathtub?”

  “He wasn’t soaking his bunions,” Dex pointed out.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “But did he die there? Did someone get him to step into the tub at gunpoint and then execute him? If so, why?”

  “I see where you’re going,” Dex said. “Becau
se if they didn’t kill him in the tub, why put him there?”

  I nodded. “It’s tidy,” I said thoughtfully.

  “Hmm?”

  “Well, easy to clean up, right? It’s a bathroom. Water and everything.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Well, if you were going to execute someone but you didn’t want to leave a mess, the bathroom would be a good place to do it because it’d be easy to clean up afterward.”

  “That’s true,” Dex agreed. “But they didn’t clean up, did they? Not really. They left the body in the bathtub. That’s pretty much a mess.”

  “But the towel, Dex. The one I used. It was folded up, all tidy like. Someone used it—I guess to clean up some blood— then put it back carefully. If I hadn’t had to dry my hands, I wouldn’t have seen the blood at all.”

  We passed ideas around for the balance of the ride downtown. Dex felt it likely someone had gone to the house with the idea of killing Dempsey and had executed him in his own tub. I suggested there might have been a fracas that ended up with Dempsey killed and the killer stuffing the body into the tub in order to get it out of the way. But that scenario asked more questions than it answered. Why would a hired gun care if the corpse was in a bathtub or sprawled on a divan or … why would some gunsel care where the body ended up?

  We hadn’t reached any conclusions by the time Dex dropped me off on Bunker Hill. We realized it was possible we’d never have answers to the questions we were asking. But when all was said and done, it didn’t matter anymore, not to us. With the subject Dex had been hired to tail now dead, there was no reason to pursue the matter. And Dex groused a bit when I suggested he give back at least part of the retainer, but we both knew he’d do the right thing in the end.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I DIDN’T SLEEP WELL. No big surprise. For one thing, I didn’t need much sleep, having had an extended nap in the car. More than that though, despite what Dex had said, I felt an acute sense of guilt for having played a part—however small— in tampering with the scene of a crime.