Dating Dead Men (8 page)

chapter nine

H
e wasn't a customer. This was not a person who went card shopping.

I was backed up against the Birthday rack, Dustbuster pointed at him like a gun.

He had several inches on me, a big man, and not a young one—sixty, at least. His hair was white and the rest of him was tan, and not just a living-in-southern-California-without-sunscreen tan. His tan was like a vocation.

“Can't stand those.” He nodded at the Dustbuster. “Remind me of a former—”

I waited, but he seemed to forget he had a sentence in progress. I lowered the Dustbuster. He raised his hands, big brown paws, and with a flash of metal—massive Rolex, heavy gold chain-link bracelet—reached into the pocket of his suit and withdrew a slip of paper. It was a nice enough suit, but one that had been around awhile, judging from the smells emanating from it. Mothballs, for instance. “Is your name . . . Welleslington Shelley?”

“Wollstonecraft.”

He hacked a pretty serious smoker's hack and stared. “That's a first name?”

“In this case. And you are—?”

He wheezed. “The authorities.”

Dear God, I thought, they've come for me. A vision of Ruta appeared, aproned, hands on hips. “What authorities call themselves the authorities?” she asked. “But you play along with him. That's how you play it safe.”

I said, “What is it you want, Officer—?”

He pondered the piece of paper again, as if waiting for reading glasses to materialize. Then, “Do you drive a Volkswagen vehicle, license 1NJC, uh—”

“Close enough.” If he was a cop, I was the attorney general.

“Could you tell me where your vehicle is now located?”

My heart rate speeded up. “Could you tell me why you want to know?”

“It was involved with an accident, so we're checking the whereabouts.”

Doc
. My throat tightened. “What sort of accident?”

“We're not at liberty to diverge, uh, divert—”

“Divulge?” I asked.

“Yeah. That type of information. Look, just tell me where the goddamn car is.”

“Are cops supposed to swear?” He was clearly not a cop, but I thought he should do a better job of impersonating one.

Before he could respond, a customer came in, distracting us. I said, “Would you excuse me for just one moment?” and went to greet him.

The customer wore a blue crewneck cashmere sweater that matched his eyes. He gave me a long look and said no, he didn't need help finding anything.

Spy?

I went behind the counter, set down the Dustbuster, and took a deep breath. If Mr. Sweater was one of Mr. Bundt's plainclothespeople, all I had to do was act normal and professional. Of course, I'd have a better shot at this minus the wheezing man. Who was the wheezing man, anyway? At the moment, he frowned at one of the birthday card spinners, his eyebrows merging. They were thick and black—

“Girlie! I don't got all day,” he called out.

With a glance at the sweatered man, I hurried to Aisle 2. “Please don't bark—”

“Just tell me where's your car and I'm outta here.”

“I lent my car to a friend.”

“What's the name of this friend?” he asked. Behind him, in the mural-painted wall, the lemon tree opened a crack.

“Well, he's not really a friend,” I said. “I just met him.”

“You gave your car to someone you don't know?”

“Okay, could we not—raise our voices?”

The lemon tree opened all the way. Joey emerged, lowering sunglasses to scrutinize him. The sweatered man was staring at us too.

“Tell me where I can reach you,” I whispered, “and I'll give you a call the second my car's back.”

He took a deep, labored breath and nodded. “I'll write down my numbers.”

He followed me to the counter, accepted a pen and a Kitten Cuddles notepad, and wrote painstakingly. The little hairs on the back of his knuckles were white, like the hair on his head. He said, “That's my cellular, and that's voice mail, I live on a boat, I don't have a real phone. And here's my name: Carmine.” He wrote it in capital letters, then leaned on the counter, sending an odor of old wool and Old Spice my way. “We're looking for a piece of merchandise in connection with this. Your friend mention that?”

“What kind of merchandise?”

“Something he shouldn't mess with, that's what kind. He knows what kind.” Carmine leaned in closer and removed a cigar from his pocket. His eyes, bulbous and bloodshot, bored into mine. “Tell him this: If the merchandise isn't returned, he's in some very big trouble. Very big.” He hacked again, hard enough to rearrange his lungs. Then he stuck the cigar between his teeth and was gone.

I wanted to disinfect the counter.

On Aisle 5, my other customer stared at the front door, watching his exit. Joey joined me at the register. We looked out the window to see Carmine approach his car, a Cadillac Eldorado. It was white, setting off his tan. “Creepy,” she said.

“Joey,” I said, “is there a chance that man could be a cop?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding slowly. “On reruns of
Hawaii Five-O
.”

         

I
T HAD RAINED
raisin bran. My kitchen was covered in it. The empty box lay overturned on the floor.

There was no other sign of Margaret.

Half the nylon leash dangled from the refrigerator handle, chewed and frayed. I got on my knees and searched, consumed with visions of the ferret drowned in the toilet, ground in the disposal, browned in the toaster oven. Darn it, I'd
told
Doc I was all wrong for this. There was a reason I had no pets: I couldn't even keep houseplants.

I combed the tiny apartment and was back in the kitchen, starting over, when I saw her. A cupboard door, opened a crack, revealed a pair of eyes. Margaret was deep in the recesses of the shelf, amid Tupperware. Her leash fragment had caught on a cast-iron kettle, but she seemed reasonably calm. “I'll give you this,” I said, liberating her. “You're a good sport.”

I tied a string to her and we went outside. We waited for Mrs. Albertini to round the corner on her daily Lenten pilgrimage to Mass, then grabbed a few minutes of grass time. Back inside, I put Margaret in the shower, hoping the sliding door would contain her and that she wouldn't figure out how to turn on the water. I gave her a washcloth for company.

I swept up bran and listened to news of fires in Florida and the condition of the yen, but no local murders. I turned off the radio and noticed my answering machine blinking.

“Margaret, pick up,” said the message. “Margaret? M. Ferret: Are you there?”

Doc. I caught my breath.

“Kidding, Wollie. Ferrets are actually not capable of answering phones. Hey, I'm springing the patient legally. Happy? The problem is, the administrative type who signs off on these things is gone today. I'll call you tonight and we'll talk about it.”

I replayed the message, trying to detect some hidden sentiment, a sign Doc was pining away for me. I didn't find one, but just to be sure, I played it four more times.

         

N
EVER HAVING BEEN
in a pet store before, I couldn't say whether they all smelled like Pet Planet, the air heavy and somehow unhygienic, even with no real animals in the place but fish. Aquariums lined the windows, luring Joey to their blue-green depths.

Only a true friend would come through during a pet emergency without pointing out that I had no pets, but Joey was that kind of friend, letting me borrow her Saab. Since I couldn't drive a stick shift, I had to borrow Joey too.

I made my way through aisles of toys, spinners full of flavored bones, and bins of pig ears—pig ears?—to the small-animal habitats. The best of them was the Pet Palace, a green carpeted split-level with entertainment center and gym. But the price was prohibitive, so I chose a plain metal job, a new leash, and looked around for food.

There was nothing for ferrets in the food aisle, so I took my crate to the counter and asked. I spoke quietly, mindful of Joey's proximity and my vow of secrecy.

“No ferret food,” the clerk whispered. “Did you see the hammocks, though?”

“Ham hocks?” Why was
she
whispering, I wondered.

“Hammocks. For ferrets. They're made of plush, they come in turtles and lobsters, and attach to all the habitats. Fourteen ninety-nine.”

I wasn't clear on why a ferret would want to recline on a swinging lobster, but there was no time to ask. Joey appeared at my side.

“Wollie,” she asked, “is there any reason someone might be following you?”

chapter ten

H
ancock Park was a world away from Pet Planet, aesthetically speaking, and we arrived there after a series of circuitous turns. The houses were ancient by L.A. standards, some stone, some ivy-covered, all with front lawns and real sidewalks where children rode tricycles. It was as if one of the better neighborhoods of Cleveland or Philadelphia had come west for the weather.

I loved these streets. Pieces of my childhood were lived here, as Ruta and her husband had occupied the guest house of an honest-to-goodness mansion, the husband a sort of butler to the family, and Ruta the nanny to the children, all grown by the time we came to her. My brother and I spent long summer days there, afternoons during the school months, and most Saturdays, for three years. I preferred the cramped guest house to the cavernous main house, but it was in the main house that P.B. discovered the Steinway grand piano and everyone else discovered P.B.'s almost frightening ability to reproduce any music he heard, his stubby fingers racing across the keyboard in complicated arrangements that flowed out of him like water from a faucet. In the beginning he was so small, his feet didn't reach the pedals. But as he grew and his talent grew, so did his effect on people. He was an engaging child, funny and introspective and outgoing all at once, right at home in the ballroom-sized living room, not burdened, as I was, by the knowledge that we didn't belong there. I was eleven the summer Ruta died, deemed old enough to look after P.B. and myself from then on. We were watching cartoons the stifling August morning a van pulled up to our Burbank apartment to deliver the old Steinway. The memory of that day made up for a lot of other days in my life, the knowledge that people, even far-off people, people living in the mansions of Hancock Park, were capable of such acts.

“Okay, if this guy's still following, we'll see him now,” Joey said, interrupting my reverie. She turned north onto Arden Boulevard. “I first noticed him turn down La Brea behind us, and then from the pet store window I could see him circling the block.”

“You're sure it was the same car?” I said.

“How many blue Humvees do you know?”

Joey was right; everything behind us was visible. The streets were flat, straight, and empty. Speed bumps and four-way stop signs slowed our pace. My nerves were shredded. Joey's were not.

“Back to last night,” she said. “P.B. was safe, and you left the body in the road and drove off. I'm still not clear what happened to your car.”

I'd been filling Joey in on the previous night's proceedings all the way from Pet Planet. It was a highly edited version, leaving out all mention of Margaret and her enigmatic owner, Gomez Gomez.

“That's what I can't talk about,” I said. “I shouldn't have mentioned the murder either, but since they're following you too now, it's the least I can do.” I turned to look out the back window. Joey turned too, hair flowing behind her like a Clairol Nice 'n Easy commercial. Joey had enough hair for a family of four, in dramatic contrast to her stick-figure body. It was a combination prized by fashion photographers and coveted by women across America, and would have made her the object of envy, were it not for the scar on her cheek and her habit of dressing, as Fredreeq put it, like she raided yard sales.

“I know you're worried about P.B.,” she said, “but any cop smarter than Barney Fife will see he doesn't have a mean bone in his body. And without evidence, nobody's going to—” She honked her horn at a weimaraner napping in the street.

“But what if there is evidence?” I asked. “We don't know what happened on that road, and anyway, P.B. has a thing about cops. It's like an allergy; he gets very worked up. If they even just question him, he's going to act suspiciously.”

“He's in a mental hospital. It's appropriate for him to act suspiciously.”

“But if they find out he was arrested, that he used to hear directives from the Symbionese Liberation Army—”

“But what's his motive to go limping down the road picking off people? That's what a cop's looking for.” Joey glanced in the rearview mirror. “Does he have enemies?”

“Marie Osmond,” I said. “George Bush, senior. Mary Baker Eddy. Those are the ones I know about. They're not enemies, precisely—he believes they're walk-ins, who monitor his activities and transmit their findings to the Milky Way.”

“What's a walk-in?”

“An extraterrestrial who walks in and takes up residence in someone's body for the duration of their life. Look, even if P.B.'s innocent, the cops will bring up his record. That's the problem. Dr. Charlie had to ‘misplace' that part of his file to qualify him for the ziprasidone studies. They won't use even nonviolent offenders in the drug trials, and if he gets kicked out of the program, Dr. Charlie won't be able to keep him at the hospital. And he likes the hospital. He feels safe there.”

Joey glanced at me. “Could he try living with you again, or Uncle Theo? Or even—your mother?”

I stared at her. “Live with my mother? At the ashram? It's not the kind of place to send someone who's mentally ill. At least, not that kind of mentally ill.”

“Yeah, but if this new medication is working—”

“Oh, they all work, to some extent, until he starts to feel better and decides he doesn't need pills, and stops taking them, at which point the delusions start again, and the wanderlust, and it's a nightmare for Uncle Theo and me, losing him for months—”

“Yeah, okay. Don't think about it now, not until you talk to him and see what the story is. Tell me more about these walk-ins.”

         

W
ITHIN THE HOUR
, I was talking to P.B. Which was not the same as P.B. talking to me.

“Incoming information only,” he said. “No outgoing. You speak.”

“Why can't you speak?” I spoke softly, mindful of the family of customers walking into the shop. “Didn't you get the aluminum foil?”

“I did my ears, not my teeth. We're going to lunch.” Applying foil to teeth was a tedious process, not worth doing before meals.

“Okay. Remember what you said last night, about what was in the driveway there? The body,” I whispered. “How did you know about the body? Is it something you witnessed, or—” I paused, hesitant to ask my brother if he'd murdered someone yesterday.

“What's that?” he said sharply, in response to a short beep.

“Call-waiting. Hold on.” I tried to click in to the other call, but kept returning to P.B. Call-waiting was annoying when it worked, and worse when it didn't; either way, it upset him.

“Okay, they must've hung up,” I said, clicking back to him a third time. The family of customers trooped out of the shop. I raised my voice to a normal level. “I need to know everything you know about this murder, not that I think you had a hand in it, but if you did, I'm sure you had your reasons and I'm sorry I was so distracted yesterday when you tried to tell me about it, and—” I stopped, getting a funny feeling in my stomach. “P.B.?” I asked.

Silence. Then a voice nothing like my brother's said, “And who is P.B.?” I hung up and backed away from the phone. What had I just said?

And who had I said it to?