Death by Pantyhose (10 page)

And that moment I knew as sure as Reese's
made Pieces that I'd never get a job at Union
National. Not as long as Sam Weinstock was
CFO. I saw those dagger looks she gave me in
the restaurant. She'd never hire anyone who
was a possible rival for Andrew's affections.

"Never mind," I said and hung up.

I speared some bagel crumbs with a wet fingertip and considered my options. I'd called all my
current clients and all my former clients. None
of them had any work for me. There was only
one thing left to do: the thing I dreaded most in
the world, aside from stepping on the scale in
the doctor's office-making cold calls. Yes, I'd
have to call and pitch my services to every ad
agency and PR firm in the city.

It was a grueling job, but it had to be done.

So I squared my shoulders, gathered my courage, and spent the next several hours watching
daytime TV. What can I say? I couldn't face the
prospect of trying to talk my way past secretaries
trained like guard dogs to ward off job hunters
like me.

I was lolling on the sofa, wishing I had some
of Oprah's spunk (not to mention some of her
money), when the local news came on.

The top story was Dorcas's arrest. Her lawyer,
a court-appointed attorney named Dickie Partridge, stood outside police headquarters talking to reporters. Or, I should say, mumbling to
reporters. He had all the confidence of me appearing in public in a bathing suit.

Dickie was just a kid, probably five minutes
out of law school. With a freckled face and red hair dotted with cowlicks, he looked like he
should've been in study hall doing his algebra
homework. He stammered into the mike, feebly
insisting that his client was innocent, about as dynamic as a wet sponge.

With this guy defending her, Dorcas was in
deep doo doo.

For a fleeting instant, I thought about offering to investigate on her behalf. You'd never believe it to look at me in my elastic-waist pants
and Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs T-shirt, but I've actually managed to solve a few murders in my lifetime, murders you can read all about in my
Pulitzer Prize-winning books listed at the front
of this book. (Okay, so I never actually wrote a
Pulitzer Prize-winning book, but I've read a few.
Does that count?)

Yes, I thought about calling Dorcas, but not
for long. I simply couldn't afford to get involved
in the case. I'd been crazy to take her slave-wage
job in the first place. Besides, for all I knew,
maybe she really did kill Vic. After all, she came
thisclose to strangling him at the club.

And maybe I was wrong about her attorney.
Maybe he was a budding Clarence Darrow and
would have her ripping her pantyhose to shreds
in front of booing audiences in no time.

No, I had to forget about Dorcas, and start
making those cold calls.

And so, with the fierce stick-to-it-iveness that
I'm famous for, I picked up the phone and dialed.

"County jail?" I said. "I'd like to make
arrangements to visit one of your prisoners."

"You're a detective?"

Dorcas sat across from me in the visitors room
of the L.A. County Women's jail (better known
to its feminine felons as the Sybil Brand Institute). She looked skinnier than ever, lost in the
folds of an unflattering orange jumpsuit.

"I don't understand." She spoke into a phone
behind the bulletproof divider that separated
us. "I thought you were a writer."

"I do some private detective work on the
side," I said into my phone, wondering what sort
of person had used the phone before me, hoping it wasn't a hepatitis C kind of person.

Dorcas was staring at me, still a bit dubious.

"Isn't it hard to chase down criminals when
you're as out of shape as you are?"

Okay, she didn't really say that, but I could
tell from the look of incredulity in her eyes that
she was thinking something along those lines.

"So you're really a private eye?" were the
words that actually came out of her mouth.

I nodded.

"And you've come here to help me?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"Did you kill Vic?"

"Of course not!"

I figured she was telling the truth. I'd seen
her act. She wasn't that good a performer to lie
so convincingly.

"In that case," I said, "I'm here to help."

"I can't afford to pay you much. In fact, now
that I'm in jail and not working, I can't afford to
pay you anything."

Drat. I was hoping for something. A tiny pittance to at least cover my expenses.

I guess she could see the look of disappointment on my face, because the next thing she
said was: "Of course, I could always cash in my
savings bond."

Go ahead, I told myself. Let her cash in her
savings bond. People cashed in their bonds all
the time. It wouldn't kill her. I couldn't afford
to work on this case for nothing. I wasn't running a charity.

"No," I said, "I can't let you do that."

I know. I've got the backbone of a caterpillar.
But she looked so pathetic sitting there in that
ghastly orange jumpsuit, I couldn't let her cash
in what was probably her life's savings.

"Oh, Jaine!" Her eyes lit up with gratitude.
"How can I ever thank you?"

Money might've been nice, but I'd just talked
myself out of that little treat.

"I need all the help I can get," she said. "The
cops are convinced I killed Vic, and my lawyer's
just a kid. When he came to visit me, I swear I
saw a tube of Clearasil in his attache case. He
told me this was his first murder case."

It was hard to see clearly through the fingerprint smudges on the Plexiglas divider, but I
thought I saw a tear rolling down Dorcas's
cheek.

"Oh, God," she said, "I'm going to spend the
rest of my life in jail for a crime I didn't commit."

Now there was no doubt about it; tears were
streaming down her face.

"Please, Dorcas. Don't cry. I'll get you out of
this," I promised rashly. "But first you have to
tell me what happened. What on earth were you
doing at Vic's bungalow last night?"

She wiped her nose on her orange sleeve
and, after a deep, shuddery breath began to
talk.

"I was on a high when I left you at Pinky's. But
by the time I drove home, I was depressed all
over again. All my optimism flew out the window somewhere between the deli and my apartment. I was convinced that Vic was right, and
that I was never going to make it in show business. So I broke open a bottle of Bailey's Irish
Cream left over from Christmas, and the next
thing I knew I was drunk again. I don't know if
you noticed, but I don't handle my liquor very
well."

Yep, I noticed. I would have to be in a coma
not to.

"I got to thinking about Vic and all the rotten
things he ever did to me, and the next thing I
knew I was back in my car driving over to his
bungalow in Venice."

"How did you know where he lived?"

"His address is in the phone book. Anybody
could look it up. But I didn't have to. I already
knew where he lived. It wasn't the first time I'd
made that trip. I'd wanted to tell him off lots of
times."

She took another pass at her nose with the
sleeve of her jumpsuit.

"When I got there, I knocked on the door but
there was no answer. I must've stood outside ten
minutes banging on the door. Then I tried the
knob and discovered that the door was open.

"So I walked in. It was dark inside. I saw a
lump in the middle of the living room. At first I
didn't know what it was, but as I got closer I saw it was Vic. He was sprawled on the floor with a
pair of pantyhose around his neck."

She shuddered at the memory.

"I wasn't sure he was dead, so I bent down to
untie the pantyhose. That's when the cops
showed up. I guess I'd made a racket banging
on the door, and one of the neighbors called
the police.

"And that's how they found me, kneeling over
Vic's dead body, holding the murder weapon.
And it turns out the pantyhose is the exact same
kind I use in my act.

"But I swear, Jaine," she said, her eyes once
more welling with tears, "I didn't do it. Vic was
dead when I got there. You've got to believe
me.

And I did.

There were plenty of people with stronger
motives to kill Vic than Dorcas. There was Allison, his jilted girlfriend. And Manny, his jilted
agent. Not to mention Pebbles, his jilted lover.

Any one of them could've swiped a pair of
pantyhose from Dorcas's tote bag. All eyes were
on Dorcas when she attacked Vic at the club
that night. Nobody was looking at her bag. It
would have been easy for someone to slip over
and lift the pantyhose. Someone who planned
to take advantage of Dorcas's outburst and
frame her for murder.

"I don't understand why the cops are so certain you did it," I said. "Vic had an enemies list
longer than Nixon's."

"I know. But he was killed with my pantyhose.
And a club full of witnesses saw me try to strangle
him earlier that night."

"Yes, but if you were the killer, why would you
incriminate yourself with a pair of your own
pantyhose?"

"I guess the cops must think I'm pretty stupid."

"I still don't see how they can be so sure it's
you. Believe me, if you had a better lawyer, you
wouldn't be sitting in jail right now."

"There's something else," she said. "Something I haven't told you. Remember that ex-wife
Vic made fun of in his act?"

I nodded.

"Well," she sighed, "that ex-wife is me."

was so flabbergasted, I almost dropped the
.phone.

"You were married to Vic?"

She nodded. "Six years ago in New Jersey. I
met him at a comedy club. We were both doing
stand-up. I know it's hard to believe, but he was
really very sweet. He's always sweet in the beginning. It's not until he's through with you that
you see his ugly side."

"Five more minutes!" I looked up and saw a
prison guard the size of a Hummer checking
her watch.

Dorcas sighed, and continued her tale. "I
knew right away Vic was a better performer than
I was. So I gave up my act and started writing
jokes for him."

Dorcas? A joke writer? I found that hard to
believe. The woman was about as funny as toe
fungus.

"I was a lot funnier back then," she said, as if
reading my thoughts. "Anyhow, soon after we were married, we decided to move to L.A. We
weren't here three weeks when I caught Vic
sleeping with another woman, a flight attendant
in our apartment building. He promised he'd
never see her again. And he kept his word. He
dumped her and started dating her roommate."

She laughed bitterly.

"Six months later, the marriage was over. He
left me for a massage therapist and fired me as
his writer. He said the only reason he'd ever
used my jokes in the first place was because they
were free."

"What a prince."

"For weeks, I was crushed. I must've lost at
least twenty pounds."

I eyed Dorcas with envy. True, she was in jail
and about to be tried for murder, but on the
plus side, she was one of those lucky women
who lose weight when they're miserable.

"Then one day I stopped being sad and got
mad. I decided to start doing my act again. I
vowed that someday I'd be famous and Vic
would be sorry. Only somewhere along the line,
I'd lost my confidence. I wasn't funny anymore.
And even though Vic couldn't write a joke to
save his life, he was good onstage. People liked
him. He kept doing well, and I kept bombing."

I knew only too well how badly Dorcas could
bomb.

"You'd think he'd feel sorry for me after the
way he'd treated me, but no. Vic loved to see me
fail. You saw how he kept riding me. He was merciless. With each insult, he chipped away what was
left of my confidence, until it was completely
gone. He ruined me, and I hated him for it.