Death in a Funhouse Mirror (31 page)

"There," he said, "all done. Let's have a look at that hand." Then some more gentle probing, their soft voices murmuring, and someone was bandaging my hand. The image I'd been trying to recall came back. I was lying on the floor and not far away I could see a black shoe and then a glimpse of face. I was trying to focus on it, recognize it, when the doctor asked me a question and the image vanished. "Can you sit up, please, Mrs. Kozak, and open your eyes?"

Reluctantly, I abandoned my dozing state and came to attention, trying to cooperate while he put me through the standard repertoire of "does this woman have a concussion" questions. In the end, we agreed that although my head hurt like hell, as did my lungs, throat, hand, and various other parts that must have gotten whacked when I landed, I probably was not badly concussed but only in need of a good night's sleep. Finally, weak, weary and aching, I was given some sheets entitled "Aftercare Instructions— Head Injury" and released to Officer Harris's tender care.

He wasn't at all pleased when I insisted we stop at the all-night grocery store, and followed me around with an insufferable look of disgust on his face while I acquired a toothbrush and toothpaste, some deodorant, some cheap black sweats, socks, sturdy cotton underwear, sneakers, and an extra-large tee shirt to sleep in. Acquiring in a rush all the junk I normally complained about the store carrying. It had never occurred to me before that someone might need to come to the store at midnight and buy an entire wardrobe.

By the time we got back to the motel, I was dead on my feet, far too tired to argue when he insisted he was going to stay there and sleep on the sofa. I hauled my weary carcass into the bathroom, put on my new sleepshirt, washed out my bra and hung it up to dry, and brushed my teeth. I swallowed two painkillers and crawled into bed, said goodnight to another fun day, and threw myself with complete abandon into the arms of Morpheus.

The next thing I knew, someone was pounding on the door, and then there was a babble of voices. I wasn't even curious; whoever it was, friend or foe. Harris could handle it. I slipped back down into sleep. Sometime between four and five I woke in the first gray light of morning with my head and my hand aflame. I staggered into the bathroom, shook out some more painkillers with trembling hands, swallowed them and went back to bed. Relief seemed a long time coming. The next time I woke up, it was because I had the uneasy sensation that I was being watched. When I opened my eyes, I found Harris and Dom Florio bending over me.

"Rise and shine, princess," Dom said, "the insurance investigator and the police are anxiously awaiting your presence."

I bit back my first response, which was a series of most unladylike words. "As they say in the play, Florio, 'I'll rise, but I won't shine.' You guys got any coffee?"

"Better than that. We've got breakfast," Dom said. I noticed that Harris wasn't saying anything. Probably still mad at me. I threw back the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed, moving slowly in case my body decided it wasn't ready for this. I looked up to find them both staring at me and realized my tee shirt was up around my waist. Thank heavens for decent cotton underwear.

"Whazza mattah you guys, eh? You nevah see legs before?"

"Rarely such nice ones," Dom said and went on staring. Harris lowered his eyes.

"You're a jerk, Florio," I said, "I don't know why I like you." But I did know. Part of the reason I liked him was that Dom was the kind of guy who could look at my legs and like them without an overpowering desire to get between them, and I appreciated that.

"Just bad taste, I guess."

I stood up, tugged the tee shirt down, went into the bathroom, taking my bag of grocery store finery with me. The woman in the mirror looked gray, grimy and depressed, and her hair smelled like smoke. I did the best I could with one hand and emerged clean, dressed, and somewhat the worse for my exciting night, to find that they'd been telling the truth about breakfast. Over breakfast sandwiches, OJ and coffee, we went back over the night. I told them that I'd seen a face, but couldn't bring it into focus, and a black shoe. Harris was all for giving me the third degree until I cooperated and remembered, but Dom told him to relax, it would come back to me eventually.

"Have you checked up on Valeria?"

Dom shook his head. "We did but we struck out. Her roommate says she was home all evening and they had a pizza and watched TV."

"She could be lying."

"Yeah, but Valeria could describe the plots of the shows they watched."

"She could be lying. The roommate could have briefed her. They could have time-shifted the whole evening."

"Could have. But her mother also says that she called and spoke to her daughter."

"But my prowler came at 2:00 a.m. Was she talking to her mother then?"

"I was talking about last night."

"What about the night before?"

"Roommate says she is a very light sleeper. She would have heard if Valeria went out. She heard nothing."

I didn't know what to think. As long as I had suspected Valeria, everything made sense. If she wasn't the one, nothing made sense. It hurt my head to think about it, so I pushed the whole thing out of my mind. Dom left after breakfast, apparently satisfied now that he'd seen for himself that I was alive and well. I'd promised to call him if I remembered anything more. I packed my things in my grocery bag, checked out, and then Harris and I drove, in separate cars, back to my condo. There were so many people waiting to talk to me, I felt like a visiting head of state.

I received them on the back deck. Below us, on the lawn, the remains of my sofa, topped with my ruined wardrobe, sat in a soggy, ruined heap, looking like a dejected elephant.

 

 

 

Chapter 20

 

The rest of Saturday went by in a blur. After the insurance adjuster left and the arson investigator left and Officer Harris left, the condo manager and I spent a while working out plans for getting my place back in shape. He suggested a cleaning service that specialized in cleaning up after house fires, and offered to haul my ruined sofa away. It wasn't purely altruism, I knew—he was anxious to restore things to normal and reassure the other tenants— but that was okay with me. I was anxious to restore things to normal, too. To my surprise, the cleaners offered to come right away, and while I waited for them, I opened all the doors and windows to air the place out and stripped the curtains so I could drop them at the laundry. The cleaning service would have to shampoo the rugs and upholstery. The whole place had an irritating chemical smell.

A surprising bit of normalcy in the midst of the mess, my answering machine sat on the counter, grimed with a layer of soot, its little red light blinking energetically. I stared at it, wishing I ran on electricity. There wasn't anything about me that felt even slightly energetic. I got a pad and pencil out of the drawer and pushed the button, listening in despair as the disembodied voices tried to haul me back down into the morass of Helene Streeter's murder.

The first message was from Norah McCarty. I had to listen carefully to understand her. "Hello, Thea Kozak? This is Norah McCarty, Mr. Paris's housekeeper. I've been dying to reach you but you're never home, so I'm leaving you this message. Miss Eve said you were lookin' into things, so I thought you should know that Mrs. Streeter and that Ansel fellow that was a friend of Mr. Paris, they didn't get along at all. In fact, the week before she died, they had a huge fight when he came by to tell her that he thought she ought to give Mr. Paris a divorce. Normally, I'd leave things alone, people's private business being none of mine, but the way they were hollering and shouting and shoving at each other, I was afraid he might hurt her, so I came and stood in the doorway, just in case. He gave me a real mean look and told me to get lost but I didn't. I didn't work for him."

There was a pause and then she said, quickly, "I don't know if it means anything, you understand, I just thought someone ought to know. When they were hollering, he said he wished he had the guts to just kill her and get it over with." A click and then silence. I wondered if she'd told Dom.

A message from Rowan Ansel, this time with a distinct whine in his voice, complaining that I wasn't returning his calls and that he had to speak with me. Then a short message. "How can I talk to you when you're never home? Call me," from Andre. And another message from Lenora Stern. "Hi, this is Lenora Stern again. It's very rude of you not to return my calls. I'll just tell you what I wanted to talk about, and the rest is up to you. Helene was afraid something was going to happen to her. That's why she signed up for an Armed and Dangerous course. Call me and I'll tell you about it."

The last one was a message with no name, but I knew who it was from. "Here's one for you, Thea. Guy goes to the doctor for a checkup. The doc examines him and does some tests and tells him, 'I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, you're going to be dead by morning.' Guy gets in his car, goes to a bar, has a few drinks and broods a while, then goes home to his wife. The wife says, 'So, how'd it go at the doctor?' 'Not too good,' says the husband, 'he says I'll be dead by morning. So I've been sitting around thinking, how would I like to spend my last hours on earth, and I've decided I want to spend the night making passionate love to you.' 'That's fine for you,' the wife says, 'you don't have to get up in the morning.' " One of David's old friends. Maybe four times a year he calls up and leaves a joke on the machine. It's his way of keeping in touch. Of looking after me. He had no way of knowing how welcome his joke was.

The doorbell summoned me to find a small wiry guy with a clipboard, a blond ponytail, and a tee shirt that said burnout. "You Thea Kozak?" he said, holding out his hand. "Hi, I'm Geoff from the cleaners." I shook his hand and led him into the living room. He prowled swiftly through the place, taking notes. Then he stopped in a pool of sunlight by the window, like a cat warming itself, and did some figuring, humming to himself as he worked. "This is what it's going to cost," he said, pointing to an astronomical sum. "Don't worry. Your insurance will take care of it. You go away for a few hours, leave the place to us, and when you come back, it will be just like new. Trust me. I've done this dozens of times. We've gotta repaint this room, though. You realize that, don't you? No way we can make it look right otherwise."

"You want to start right now?"

He shook his head. "Nah. In an hour. I've got to pick up the paint and stuff and get the rest of the crew. That all right by you?"

I felt like I was being run over by a steamroller, but if he could do it quickly, that was great. "Fine with me."

"Well," he said, "see you in an hour, then. You want the same color?" I nodded. He pointed at the mound of curtains on the counter. "You want me to drop those at Sudz? They do a good job on soot."

"Sure. I mean, that would be nice." He gathered up the curtains and headed for the door.

At the threshold he paused. "You ought to take it easy today, you know. Go down to the beach and soak up some sun. A fire can really shake you up." Thank you, Dr. Freud, I thought as he opened the door and was gone. Now all I needed was someone selling sofas and area rugs door-to-door, and a new wardrobe. I forced myself to go into the bedroom and see how bad the situation was. The closet doors were open, but only one part looked empty. All my business clothes. I heaved a sigh of relief. There were only a few things I cared about losing, and none of them had been in that part of the closet. I found the green satin shoes, got out some clean underwear and stockings, and ran myself a bath. I was going to spend the next hour on R & R, and try to get myself in shape for the wedding.

By the time my energetic savior returned an hour later with his cleaning crew, I had done my best to restore myself to vintage Kozak, and it hadn't been easy. For one thing, parts of my hair were sticky with dried blood, but I wasn't supposed to get the stitches wet, and the whole business was complicated by the bandages on my hand, which I also had to keep dry. My bath had been an acrobatic feat worthy of Barnum and Bailey, but I'd emerged with my morale considerably improved, some color in my face, and the confidence that someday soon I'd feel human again.

My morale took another big leap just minutes after the titan of tidiness had deployed his troops, a bizarre crew of three, each with a different tee shirt. There was a tiny blonde with skin so pale she looked liked the sun had never touched it, lugging a vacuum as big as she was. On her tee shirt was a picture of an identical vacuum with the motto ‘soot sucker' on the front and on the back ‘suck your way to success.' Behind her came a mean-faced skinhead with four earrings in his ear, black jeans and motorcycle boots. His shirt had a picture of a guy standing behind a car pouring out clouds of black exhaust, covered head-to-toe with soot. Underneath, it said afterburner. He was followed by the gentle giant, a huge guy with a vacant face and pale blue faraway eyes, his head surrounded by a cloud of curly blond hair. His shirt said mopheads can outhink dirt.