Footprints in the Butter (16 page)

“What virgin clue?”

I told Woody about Doris and Rock. “Who did we know before she was a virgin?”

“You. Patty.”

“Who else?”

“Alice Cooper.”

“How long has Wylie been sleeping with Alice?”

Woody looked startled again. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Long story. Answer my question. Please?”

“It started when he learned about Patty’s affair.”

“Why Alice?”

“I think Wylie thought Alice would tell the world, or at least print it in one of her chatty newsletters. Guess what, folks? I boffed Wylie Jamestone.”

“Buffed.”

“Excuse me?”

“Alice says buffed for boffed.”

“For the first time in her life,” Woody murmured, “Alice kept her mouth shut.”

“An ironic twist of fate!”

“Wylie wanted Patty to feel embarrassed, maybe even mortified. Revenge.”

“Damn, Wylie was courting death like a moth drawn to a flame.” I had a sudden thought. “How recent is the painting you’ve hidden away upstairs?”

“Very. It was on the front seat of my birthday car.”

“Could I see it?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Woody led the way up a short flight of shag-carpeted steps, entered a standard guest room, and flicked a light switch—unnecessary, since the sun was now spreading across the sky like soft butter. Opening the closet door, reaching inside, she pulled out the painting. It was unframed, gathering dust.

I scrutinized the portrait.

Long black hair, lots of makeup, and a nose the size of Texas. Well, maybe New Mexico. Alice Cooper! His blurb read: THE FUN THING ABOUT BEING SOBER IS MEETING ALL THE FRIENDS I’VE HAD FOR YEARS—ESPECIALLY THE ONE’S I’VE NEVER MET.

Was Woody’s painting another clue? Could Wylie have meant that Alice was planning to murder him? No. Much too obvious!

Or was it? Wylie had been sleeping with Alice before the reunion, which explained why he had arrived a few days early. That way he could secretly meet and “buff” Alice.

Meeting all the friends I’ve had for years
.

Woody had celebrated her birthday last summer. But Alice had touted our fun reunion months ahead of time.

The fun thing about being sober
.

I drank. Wylie drank. So did Ben. And Tad. And Junior. Dwight didn’t drink, not since the senior prom. Patty didn’t drink either, for the same reason. Yes, she did. The bloody Bloody Marys. Bingo drank. Excessively. Stoli neat. Stoli not so neat, especially after he’d downed a few doubles.

Especially the ones I’ve never met
.

Had Wylie ever met Bingo? Not that I could recall.

I glanced toward Woody’s open closet. Was Alice a closet alcoholic? She was definitely a closet nymphomaniac. She had been our friend for years, but we’d never really met her.

Refocusing on Woody, I saw something I had never seen before. Though mussed, her hair looked as soft as a duck’s downy butt. Her eyes, no longer red-rimmed, were very blue, fringed by thick, dark lashes. She was beautiful, and I had a sudden gut-wrench, ashamed of the nickname we had bestowed upon her. Woody wasn’t a Woody. She was a Diane. No, Diana. Goddess of the forest.

My gaze darted back to Wylie’s painting. It had to mean something. Our reunion was too coincidental.

Although I hadn’t mused out loud, Woody nodded. “Ingrid,” she said, “I think you should pay your friend Alice Shaw Cooper a visit.”

Chapter Seventeen

My return flight encountered turbulence. I was so scared my spit just about dried up, but saliva deprivation wasn’t caused by my fear that we might crash. It was caused by the mirror message, Wylie’s cruel rejection of Junior, Wylie’s prom duplicity, and Woody’s Alice Cooper painting.

The plot sickened.

Mesmerized by my fasten-your-seatbelt sign, I thought about trivialities. Like how I would have to call the credit card companies, apply for a new driver’s license, and—damn!

If the thief wasn’t a Clover, she now knew my address!

I had discovered the loss of my license early this morning. Worming my way toward Houston, spying a police cruiser, I had instinctively opened my purse and groped for my license. Habit.

Last night Butler had accepted Buddy’s introduction and my subsequent correction without proof, probably because I wasn’t chained to some recruitment center gate.

Had the thief appropriated my house and car keys?

Yes. Fortunately, I kept a spare car key in one of those miniature magnetized boxes that stick to your fender. Fortunately, I knew how to pry open my kitchen window from the outside.

I didn’t have to pry.

Scrunching Jeep’s tires close to my curb, I glimpsed a tall shadowy figure pacing up and down my family room.

The mirror message kleptomaniac?

If yes, why wasn’t Hitchcock barking? Because it was probably Barry Isaac Nicholas Gregory Oates, that’s why. And he had probably crept inside my house, just like Kim O’Connor crept inside Patty’s borrowed house. By butt-crawling through Hitchcock’s humongous doggie door.

Walking toward the front porch, I heard music. Martha and the Vandellas. “My Baby Won’t Come Back.”

Bingo!

It had to be Bingo, trespassing bastard!

It wasn’t. It was Ben. And he hadn’t butt-squirmed through the doggie door because he still had his key.

“There’s stew simmering in your crock pot,” he said, turning off the stereo, “and some freshly brewed coffee. Or, considering your disheveled appearance, would you prefer a shot of vodka?”

“No, thanks. The fun thing about being sober is meeting old friends,” I paraphrased.

“What?”

“Everybody keeps telling me I look like shit.”

“I didn’t say you looked like shit.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Parked up the block, across the street.”

“Why?”

“When I arrived, there was some sort of party next door. My guess would be a baby shower.”

“Good guess. My neighbor’s daughter got pregnant around the same time as her Collie. Oh, God! I keep forgetting that normal things happen while I play hide and seek.”

“Kick the can, not hide and seek.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can kick
my
can, babe.”

“I don’t understand.” Wearily, I ran my fingers through my bangs and rubbed my eyes. “Ben, what are you doing here?”

“Waiting.”

“Right,” I said patiently, my tone the same one I employed when a producer insisted that he wanted his slasher flick to plagiarize the theme from another movie,
Jaws
for instance. “May I ask why you’re waiting?”

Ben sat on the couch and absently patted Hitchcock’s rump, which still rotated counter-clockwise from excitement at my return.
It’s a miracle
, Hitchcock’s tail seemed to semaphore. On the other hand, Hitchcock sensed that I was in a baddog mood, so he didn’t jump, knead or cleanse my face.

Finally Ben said, “I was worried about you.”

“Not to worry. They say flying is safer than driving, and after Houston I really believe that.”

“Come on, Ingrid, don’t play dumb. I’m bothered by your obsessive need to solve Wylie’s murder.”

“It’s not obsessive. It’s compulsive.”

“What’s the difference?”

“An obsession is an unreasonable preoccupation. A compulsion is an irresistible impulse.”

“An impulse to perform an irrational act.”

“I couldn’t be more rational, Ben.”

“Ingrid, the last thing you said to me on the phone was something about an elephant stealing your credit cards. That’s rational?”

I fumed silently as I brushed the travel dust from my jeans and sweatshirt, then said, “I’m not your responsibility.”

“Yes, you are. Remember that Chinese bit about saving somebody’s life?”

“You’re Irish and Cherokee, Ben. I don’t think there’s one Chinese leaf on your family tree.”

“I was making a point!”

“I assume your point is Patty’s poison. Look, I’ve seen
Notorious
at least a dozen times and I’ve always tried to imagine what happened afterwards. I mean, after Cary Grant rescued Ingrid Bergman, did he hug and kiss her? Or screw her brains out? Realistically, he probably stuck his finger down her throat and watched her gastric lavage all over her slippers. Or, if you want to get even more pragmatic, Cary probably said ‘Tally-ho, Miss Bergman’ and left the set.”

“What’s
your
point?”

“Once the ambulance toted me to the hospital and the doctors pumped out baneberries, your responsibility ended.”

“Oh, I see. Ingrid Beaumont doesn’t want hugs and kisses. It’s not in the script, right?”

“There
is
no script!”

“Then what are we arguing about?”

I felt as though I had something wedged inside my throat, Cary Grant’s finger maybe. Cary Grant’s
bony
finger, since, sadly, Cary had tally-hoed to that vast Hollywood set in the sky.

God, I really missed Cary Grant. Which was probably why tears blurred my vision and I began to heave great gulping sobs.

Hitchcock and Ben reacted simultaneously. Hitchcock whined and wriggled his body toward my boots while Ben rushed to my side and pressed my face against his shoulder.

“Cary was so charismatic,” I gasped. “Even his stupid movies, like that one set in Spain, awful dialogue, but nobody cared, because Cary was Cinemascoped larger than life, and a woman could come just by watching his lips move. God, I miss him.”

“Poor baby,” Ben soothed, maneuvering me toward the couch.

My whole body shook. No doubt I looked as though I belonged in one of those end-of-coitus Madonna videos.

“He will live forever in his films,” Ben said, sitting and pulling me into his lap.

Did Ben honestly believe I was crying over Cary Grant? It didn’t matter. Ben was petting me like a lover, not an animal doctor, and that led to fresh tears. You might even say it opened the floodgates.

“It
was
rape,” I sobbed, trying to make myself a small blob in the middle of Ben’s lap. “And I’m happy he’s dead. Happy, happy, happy.”

“Okay, baby, it’s gonna be okay.”

“Woody said Wylie told her things about us, intimate details, so he knew…”

Fresh sobs overwhelmed me as I pictured my Manhattan hotel room. One humongous bed. Lamps. A mirrored dresser. An escritoire decorated with liquor bottles, including a bottle of vodka, which is half empty or half full, depending, I suppose, on your point of view.

* * *

Wylie wants to get me uninhibited, but I’ve detoured down the road toward Maudlin City. Hiding his impatience, he listens to my marital woes and hands me a few tissues along with quite a few vodka refills
.

“Ingrid,” he says, “have you ever heard that old joke about the elephant and the circus parade?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Eb says, ‘I’m in the circus parade, but I don’t know how to lead the elephant.’ Flo says, ‘It’s simple. Just tie a rope around her neck, take hold of the other end, then ask her where she wants to go.’ Where do you want to go, my love?”

“Back,” I say, “before the prom.”

“Though I dance at a ball,” says Wylie, “I am nothing at all. What am I?”

“That’s too easy. You’re a shadow.”

“Very good. Come sit on the bed. A red dancer dances in a red room with white chairs set all around. What am I?”

“The tongue, mouth and teeth.”

“Fantastic! Give me one.”

Give me one sounds like you show me yours and I’ll show you mine, but I’m intrigued. “Okay, Wylie, here’s a hard one. I’m a bottomless barrel, shaped like a hive, filled with flesh, and the flesh is alive. What am I?”

“You’re right, darling, that’s a hard one.” He places my hand across the bulge between his thighs. “You want to feel hard? Feel this.”

“I’m a thimble!” I yell, delighted to have fooled him
.

Wylie’s flesh is alive. Swiftly, he removes my hand and unzips his fly so I can see his flesh. Substantial. His hand captures the nape of my neck and he begins to push my face toward his energetic flesh
.

“Stop it!” I shout
.

But he doesn’t stop. “Red and blue and purple and green,” he says, “and no one can reach it, not even a queen. What am I?”

“Damn it, Wylie!” I wrench my head free. “Patty!”

“Wrong, Ingrid, rainbow. I’m a rainbow.”

“I meant—”

“Come to think of it, Patty’s not such a bad answer.”

Then he lunges
.

* * *

Sobbing my story into Ben’s shoulder, I repeated my first sentence, even finished it. “He knew how to manipulate me.”

“Okay. Now I understand.” Ben stroked the tangled hair away from my hot brow and blotchy cheeks. “Hush, baby, I’m here, and I won’t let anyone ever hurt you again.”

I couldn’t hush. The snagged pantyhose spilled from my drawer like slithering snakes, their reinforced toes and heels hissing. “You have that stuff for dogs, Ace Promazine,” I said. “Wylie tried to tranquilize me with vodka and true riddles. That’s what they’re called, Ben, true riddles, invented thousands of years ago by some unknown person who enjoyed working with words. Just like me. Just like Wylie. True bastard!”

Ben didn’t need a whole lot of words. Three sufficed. “I love you,” he said.

My shoulders relaxed and I heaved a deep sigh.

Shifting me onto a couch cushion, Ben walked toward Doris Day, turned and said, “I’m sorry, Ingrid. After we talked on the phone last night, I began to ponder your Lieutenant Miller reaction. Ordinarily you’d never suspect that I had anything to do with Wylie’s murder. But circumstantial became circumspect, cagey, and I can’t really blame you.”

At the word “cagey,” I had a blurry thought, a memory prod, but intuition told me to let Ben keep talking.

“I guess manipulation is contagious, like the measles,” he continued. “Patty pulled strings, too. She used the oldest ploy of all. Helplessness. Patty’s not exactly emancipated.”

“A butterfly trapped inside a rainbow,” I murmured. “Is that what you meant before when you said I could kick your can?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s such a nice can. Why would I want to kick it?”

“Because I was way off base. For instance, I kept wondering why Patty lied about my jacket. Fear? Jealousy?”

“Jealousy?”

Ben’s neck turned ruddy. “Ingrid, I’m not Robert Redford, but I’m not Casper Milquetoast either. When Patty instigated her seduction, I was flattered.”

“Don’t you mean tempted?”

“No. Flattered. I tried to explain that my love for you was a stumbling block. A roadblock, actually.”

“So she puked.”

“She was drunk.”

“She was frustrated. That scene did come from a movie script, Ben. Patty was playing Scarlett. As God is my witness, I’ll never be rejected again. Weren’t you tempted to play Rhett?”

“On my word of honor, Ingrid, nothing happened.”

“Wylie happened.”

“And you thought Patty and I planned his murder.”

I opened my mouth to deny, but snapped it shut. Because Ben was on target, on the nose, on the dot.

Crossing the room, he knelt, targeted my nose, and dotted it with kisses. “I couldn’t really blame you for coming to that conclusion,” he said.

Blame! What had Ben said three nights ago? Something about the smart guilties. I had toted guilt for years, like a backpack filled with heavy bricks. If I had insisted that Ben drive Dwight’s convertible. If I had kept Stewie from enlisting in the Marines, written one post-prom song to make him cringe. If I had married Ben, rather than screwing up, screwing around, screwing every demonstrator who displayed lively flesh. If I had responded to Bingo’s cry for love, or at least security. If I hadn’t let Wylie inside my hotel room—no!

I couldn’t blame myself for Wylie. In fact, I couldn’t blame myself for all those other ifs. It was fate, astral influences, whatever.

Then why did I still have the guilties? Because Wylie had entrusted me with a mission, the bastard, and I hadn’t fulfilled his trust.

I felt like crying again. Instead, I sang, “Ain’t no river wide enough to keep me away from you.”

“Ain’t no mountain high enough.” Rising, Ben stretched his cramped leg muscles.

“Mountain. We’re supposed to toss Wylie’s ashes and watch him pollute Cripple Creek. But first—”

“You want to solve his murder.”

“Yes. I have to.”

“You don’t have to. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

I leaned forward and gave Hitchcock a few ear scratches. He lay with his muzzle across one drool-soaked boot. “Listen, Ben, I don’t need another ghost inside my head. If I don’t solve his murder, Wylie will haunt me.”

“Bullshit!”

“It’s not bullshit. I can’t allow Wylie’s death to become another pair of snagged pantyhose.”

“Pantyhose?”

“For example, I might be scoring a movie and hear Wylie’s voice. Why do girl elephants wear angora sweaters? How do you talk to an el—damn! I’m so stupid.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“How do you talk to an elephant? Use big words. Kim O’Connor!” I told Ben about Kim. “Before, when you used the word cagey, I had a memory nudge. Kim said she felt caged. Honestly, honey, Kim sounds very young and very old at the same time. I mean, she’s extremely perceptive, but she’s definitely a kid.”

“So?”

“So a kid would be tuned into the latest wisecracks, but she’d also remember nonsense stuff, like knock-knock jokes and elephant jokes.”

“That’s true. I played knock-knock with my daughter until she reached puberty. What’s your point?”

Ignoring Ben’s question and my own cramped muscles, I raced toward the gate-legged table and reached for my trusty U.S. West directory. Let your fingers do the talking.