The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (15 page)

“Probably not.”

“Then I won’t say them.”

I moved closer to the one with the four figures. “What are these guys up to?”

“Pitching pennies.”

“Hard to tell by looking at it.”

“I suppose so. But I knew while I was painting it, and that’s what matters. Anyway … turns out I have less to do here than I thought I did. So we can go somewhere else to talk.”

“No.”

“You want to stay here? That’s fine—”

I shook my head.“Not, no, I want to stay here. I meant no, you didn’t overestimate what you had to do. You wanted me to come here to see your art.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“To see my reaction.”

“That would be awfully devious.”

“Did I pass?”

She laughed, shook her head. “You barely know me, and you have me all figured out. Yeah, that was the plan. And yeah, you passed.”

“Good.”

“But I’ve spent all day here, and I’d just as soon go somewhere else.”

“Fine.”

We made for the door. Samantha stared at the sky.“Where’d all this gray come from?”

“Just rolled in.”

Right on cue, rain pittered down on the sidewalk. Then it turned harder. I said, “Maybe we ought to change our plan.”

“We could, but … Ellen? Would you happen to have an umbrella around?”

“There’s a couple in back,” the blond said. “People leave them, you know? Hang on.” She went in the back room and returned with two of them. “Plain black or gray with ducks. Your choice.”

“Joe?” Samantha said.

“Let’s go with the ducks,” I said. “Because it’s—”

“Nice weather for ducks. I get it.”

She opened the umbrella as we stepped outside. The hard rain had advanced to a downpour. People were running for shelter. I moved under the umbrella. “Where are we going?”

“Back to my place.”

“That’s a bit of a walk.”

“Dumbass. Where’s your truck?”

I told her.

“My car’s on the way. So you’ll drop me there and get the truck and meet me at my place. You remember where it is?”

“Uh-huh.”

We started walking. It was a small umbrella. I was getting wet.“You can come in closer, you know,” she said.“Touching me isn’t going to sully your marriage.”

I didn’t take her suggestion. The one about coming in closer. Instead, I stepped back, involuntarily, out from under the umbrella.

“Jesus,” Samantha said. “You sure are jumpy.”

I mumbled something.

“You’d think I propositioned you or something. I mean, no offense, you’re okay-looking, but you’re a little old for me. Now get your ass back under the umbrella.”

I did as I was told. She gave me a look, then a couple more before I dropped her at her Thing.

Her house was minutes away. Carrie’s Civic was in the driveway and there was only room behind it for Samantha’s wheels. Samantha, waiting by the front door, yelled that Carrie was gone and she didn’t have a key to the Civic. Which meant once again I had to go more than a block away to find parking. I squeezed into a spot, turned off the engine, sat there wondering what to do. Wait until she gave me tea and crumpets and say, “Hey, Samantha, I heard you were a stalker.” Maybe Carrie would come back. I could watch the horrified look grow on her face as she learned she been living with a psychotic.

The rain had slackened, but it was still coming down hard, and a little river ran along the curb near Samantha’s house. It carried leaves and styrofoam packing noodles and a Snickers wrapper down to the sea. The wind was blowing the chimes into a frenzy. I went through the gate and up the walk and up to the door. It opened before me. She’d already changed from the jeans and sweatshirt she’d been wearing into a tank top and a pair of running shorts. Nothing on her feet.“Come on in.” I left the umbrella outside and entered. She pointed me toward the sofa. “Something to drink?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“I’m not having anything.”

“I’ll have that.”

She eased down onto the rug that covered the center of the hardwood floor. She leaned back against an easy chair, looked at me, forced a smile.

“Where’s Carrie?” I said. “I’m not good enough?”

“Its just, her car’s here, she’s not …”

She was looking up at the ceiling. “She went shopping with her mother. Do you have any idea why spiders build their webs up there where there’s nothing to eat?”

A question I’d asked myself many times before. “Instinct, I guess.”

“A lousy instinct. Hang on a minute, this is driving me crazy.” She went into the kitchen, came out carrying a glass. She dragged a chair over to the corner, got up on it, stretched to reach the spider. Her shorts rode up, exposing a lovely expanse of firm young buttock.“Come on, get in, you stupid thing,” she said. Then,“Gotcha.” She climbed down, dumped the spider outside the front door, under the roof overhang. Then she resumed her position on the floor.

How many times had I done the same thing with spiders who lodged themselves in a corner? Only now, with my alternate reality kick, a new angle crept in. Every time you saved a spider, how many insects did you doom who otherwise never would have encountered it? And—

And she was saying something. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What was that again?”

“I said, I know what you’re thinking.”

“I doubt it.”

“You’re thinking, here’s a woman who saves spiders that get themselves stuck in the house. Can I really suspect her of murder?”

“What makes you think I do?”

A shrug. “A feeling I get.”

“If I suspected you of something as bad as murder, wouldn’t I also suspect you of saving a spider just to make yourself seem like someone with an overwhelming reverence for life?”

“Do you?”

“No. I think you really were concerned for the spider.”

“Why do you think I killed Dennis?”

“I don’t think that. But I’m not convinced you didn’t.”

“Because?”

“Because I found out what happened in Chicago.”

She kept a straight face. “Who told you?”

“Someone you don’t know.”

She sprang up, paced the room, kept throwing half-assed glares my way.

“It’s a good thing,” I said, “that you’re the spurnee who’s not an actress.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re trying to convince me you’re angry that I know about Chicago. And not doing much of a job of it. So sit down and stop trying to fool me.”

She was still pacing, but next time she passed in front of the easy chair she stopped and dropped down into it.“Every time someone finds out, I think I should feel violated.” She was still acting. But her work was much better now. Underplaying. That’s the key.

“Does Carrie know?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I told her. Before she moved in. I didn’t want her to find out for herself and think I was hiding it from her.” She climbed down so she was leaning back against the chair again. “I don’t go around telling everyone about it, but I don’t hide it either. Look, I was a fucked-up kid. Too many drugs and too much art will do that to you. Didn’t you do stupid things when you were young?”

“Not ones that resulted in restraining orders.”

“I didn’t kill Dennis.”

“Then who did?”

“Any one of dozens of people. Women he’s fucked over, you’ve probably got a dozen suspects there alone.”

“Yet you got involved with him anyway.”

“I didn’t know his reputation when I started seeing him.” She got up again. “You still having what I’m having?”

“Sure.”

She went in the kitchen, came back with a couple of beer bottles. Handed me one, returned to the chair. Took a long pull. I looked at mine. Not beer. Dead Guy Ale.

“Saw it at Trader Joe’s,” she said. “Seemed appropriate. Where was I? On our second date he mentioned a chick named Leslie Shanis. In the context of a story about something that happened on the set of one of his shows, the one with the rocket scientist.”

“
Blast O
ff
.
”

“Yeah. That one. She really was tangential to the story, but he took the time to say something like, ‘She was someone I went out with, but it was only once or twice.’ I thought that was weird at the time, like he was making a point of letting me know about her, but the conversation went on and she didn’t come up again. So I forgot it. I mean, I had other things I was thinking about.”

“Like?”

“Like how much I wanted to fuck him.”

“Oh. That.”

“Shocked?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“Just a little. Somehow I think of people being less likely to jump in the sack with each other these days. What with HIV and all that.”

“He had a health certificate.”

“And he just, what, flashed it and said, don’t worry about me, I’m clean?”

“A little more gracefully than that.”

“And did you have a certificate to show him back?”

She smiled. “Of course not. But I’m pretty careful, and I’ve been checked. Not that he asked. Maybe he slept with so many women because he
wanted
to catch something. Maybe he had a death wish. Anyway … he was good-looking and charming and funny and there was chemistry. And my thought was, even if this goes nowhere, I’m going to get some good nookie out of it. I forgot about this Leslie person. Until I ran into her.”

“Go on.”

“It was two weeks later, and Dennis was taking me to a movie premiere. We ran into a guy he knew, an actor, and the actor’s date was this Leslie. Dennis did introductions, and again he mentioned that he went out with Leslie, and I thought that was kind of off, because it made all the rest of us uncomfortable. And he didn’t have to do it. He could have just introduced us all and we would have shook hands and that would have been the end of it. But he went out of his way to do it the way he did. Then later I ran into her in the ladies’ room.”

“What a coincidence.”

“It wasn’t. She saw me go in there and followed me. And she gave me her card and said I should call her. She put her hand on my forearm, like this—” Samantha demonstrated on herself. “And she said, ‘It’s for your own good.’ Well, my first reaction was, whacko.” She smiled. “I mean, I know something about girls getting spurned and going weird. But something in her eyes stuck with me. They were all about concern. So I called her. We got together for a drink. At a nice public place, just in case.”

She downed some of her Dead Guy Ale, reminding me mine was untouched. I tried it. I liked it. I took another slug.

“She wasn’t a whack job,” Samantha said. “Not at all. She told me Dennis had led her on, told her she was the only one, how he hadn’t met anyone like her for a long time, blah, blah, blah, you probably know the routine—”

“I’ve been on the receiving end a few times.”

“And all the while he was seeing someone else behind her back.”

“You believed her?”

“Enough to ask Dennis.”

“And he said …”

“That yes, he was seeing someone else when he was dating her, but he’d never given her the impression it was exclusive. The way he said it seemed too polished, I guess. But when you’re overcome by the general wonderfulness of the person, you let things like that slide. Since you know about Trixie, you know what an idiot letting it slide made me.”

“I wouldn’t use that term.”

“Maybe you will after I tell you something else.”

“What’s that?”

“There was more to what Leslie told me. She knew of two other women he’d done similar things to. One of them, practically the exact same thing he did to her. The other he publicly humiliated. Took her to a dinner party, she spilled soup on her dress, he started telling her she was a whore and had no class and sent her home in tears.”

“In front of the whole dinner party?”

“Yes.”

“He got away with an awful lot.”

“He was so charming.”

“Charm can only go so far.”

“And powerful.”

“Still. Sounds like he got away with an awful lot.”

“But he didn’t,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Somebody killed him, didn’t they?”

We exhausted all things Dennis and moved on to other topics. Her opening, for instance. It was a week away, and I was invited. We went off on a discussion of her art career. She had several patrons who she could count on to buy something anytime she did an exhibition or participated in one of the street art fairs. The two most reliable ones were older collectors, one male and one female, both hopeful of getting into her pants. With her art and her trust fund, she avoided a day job.

Carrie came home partway through, carrying several Nordstrom bags. She changed, then made a pot of some new blend they’d gotten in at DL and brought it out with a plateful of shortbread cookies. The tea sat pleasantly atop the Dead Guy Ale in my stomach.

I enjoyed the way they complemented each other, acerbic Samantha and sweet Carrie. I left them chatting away, having finished the cookies and tea and moved on to a bag of Chips Ahoy and more ale. The rain had tailed off to the occasional shower, leaving the air smelling of ozone.

I was a couple of houses down the block when I heard light quick footsteps behind me. It was Samantha. She was still in her scanty clothes, still barefoot. When she stopped she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I just wanted to know if you still thought I did it.”

“I never thought you did it.”

“But you thought I could have.”

“Yeah, I did. I don’t think that very much anymore.”

“But still, a little.”

“A little,” I said. “A very little. I can’t discount anyone entirely. You shouldn’t take it personally.”

“I don’t,” she said. “And just for the record, I’m not totally convinced you didn’t do it. On behalf of Ronnie.” She stepped up, gave me a quick hug, released me, departed. I watched her run down the sidewalk. She stopped at her gate, looked back at me. “Don’t tell Carrie about the hug, okay?” She ran up the walk and the door slammed and I was alone on the sidewalk.

Half a block from the car the sky opened up again. I’d left the umbrella on the porch. I didn’t bother running. It wasn’t as if I’d get any less soaked if I did.

When I got home, there was a Volvo in the driveway. Someone was sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the porch.