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Authors: Delia Rosen

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BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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Chapter 19
The day was not yet through with me.
I got home around just before midnight to find the cats hidden. They were tucked in their kitty rooms, unwilling to come out even for eats. I brought their bowls of tuna to them so they wouldn’t starve. Then I went back to the kitchen, tossed the cans in the metal recycling bin, and flashed the nine-inch kitchen knife I had casually picked up during my first trip. I picked up my cell from the counter, ready to speed-dial 911. I was two-fisted danger and ready to rock-and-roll.
There was only one reason the cats would refuse to come out for their nightly stroll: an intruder. Didn’t necessarily have to be someone inside the house; the cats were known to hide when my neighbor in New York came for the mail I’d picked up or because she’d left her keys in the apartment.
I first gave the house a quick once-over before turning to the backyard. As I went to the door to check, the front bell rang. I went over, flipped on the outside light, and cracked the door slightly. The chain was latched; for New Yorkers, that was as natural an act as flipping a red-light runner the finger.
“Hi,” said a man on the other side.
I had seen him once before and there was no mistaking him for anyone else. He was in his midto-late twenties, five-foot-five, and shaped roughly like a pear. His hair was black and long and hung from a green wool cap. He wore a shabby tweed jacket over a white T-shirt. A Nashville Predators hockey necktie was knotted loosely around his neck. His jeans were bulging; he appeared to have put on about twenty pounds since buying them. At least he didn’t need a belt.
“Gary,” I said.
“I hope I didn’t scare you,” he said; it was a statement, not an apology. “I was sitting on the back porch, waiting for you to come home—I think I scared your cats.”
“How did you know I have cats to scare?”
“I heard them
rowrr
and then patter away when I got here,” he said.
Possibly, I thought. Except that I had carpet all through the house. I’d been meaning to tear it up, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Maybe that was part of my one-foot-out-the-door subconscious at work. More than likely, this odd little fellow had gone around peeping into all the windows.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“May I come in?”
I’m a sucker for good grammar, even when it comes from a bad writer. I shut the door, undid the latch, turned the knob, and sort of concealed the knife along my forearm. I stepped aside and pointed toward an armchair. It was Uncle Murray’s favorite seat, I gathered, given the deep depression in the cushion and its proximity to the TV and coffee table both. Gary wiped his feet on the welcome mat and waddled over. If he was trying to look pathetic, he was succeeding. If this was really him, I felt bad. I reminded myself that he fancied himself a performer of sorts, having been prepared to play a part in his own murder mystery.
I checked him out as he walked, didn’t see the bulge of a gun or knife. I relaxed a little and lay the knife on top of the DVD player. I didn’t do my usual hostess thing and offer him a beverage. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to stay.
He sat carefully, like a balloon settling, lowering himself with his thick hands on both armrests.
“I was wondering if you had time to consider that work you wanted me to do,” he said.
“I don’t know about you, but for most people, the time to inquire about such things isn’t midnight.”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t when I first got here,” he said. “I took a taxi to the deli, but it was closed, so I thumbed a ride here. I’ve been waiting for four hours.”
I felt a twinge of bad about that, though I was more amazed that someone actually picked this man up. Then again, people were friendlier and less suspicious down here than they were up north. A lot of them were also as strange as this guy.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been busy—I haven’t been able to think about it any more.”
“I understand,” he said. “Whatcha been doing?”
The casualness of his question made it sound threatening. It wasn’t curious, it was demanding, softened only slightly by the gentle Southern accent. Maybe that was just his way. I sat on the sofa.
Okay,
I thought
. Gary wants to talk. He was there the night of the murder. Let’s see how this plays out.
“I was the caterer at Lolo Baker’s party the other night,” I said. “Mr. Hopewell’s death traumatized me. I’ve been working through it, I guess, by talking to people.”
“I see.”
There was a big, fat period at the end of that sentence.
“You were there, weren’t you? Didn’t
you
find it disturbing?”
“Disturbing,” he said as though weighing the word. “I don’t think things really
disturb
writers.”
“Oh? What do things do?”
“They nourish us.”
“Do they?”
“Like the offerings at a salad bar,” he said. “Surely that doesn’t come as a surprise.”
The idea that this portly fellow had ever laid eyes on a salad bar was a surprise. The rest was a natural fit with his pompous, inflated self-regard. “I guess that makes sense,” I said charitably.
“What did you think of my scenario?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure what he’d do if I told him the truth. “Fascinating,” I said. “Very layered. Surprising.” I wasn’t trying to make with the double entendres, secretly insulting him. I tried to say things that he’d buy, that would open him up.
“Surprising in what way?” he asked with the trace of a self-satisfied smile. Once again, he wasn’t really curious. He was encouraging me to stroke his ego.
“The twist at the end,” I said. “Harley Marley faking his death.”
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” he said proudly.
“Very. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see it acted out.”
“Could I have a glass of water?” he asked. “Sitting outside dehydrated me.”
I smiled as sweetly as I could and went to the bathroom. I had a glass there. I was afraid that if I went to the kitchen he would follow me and settle in at the table, where I had put the remnants of our doughnut dinner. I filled the glass and turned, then started: he was standing in the hallway, right outside the door. So much for hearing cat paws on the carpet.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
“You mean to Nashville or the bathroom? Because I’ve been wondering one of those—”
“The latter.” Again, the demanding tone of voice. I didn’t like it. I wondered if it would be possible to defend myself with a hairbrush.
“I had something in my teeth,” I told him.
His eyes dropped to the wastebasket. “There’s a piece of dental floss . . . but it’s under a tissue. I didn’t hear you blow your nose.”
“I used the rubber end of my toothbrush,” I said. If he touched it to see if it was wet, I was going to knee him in the groin and run.
“Ah-ha,” he said without any sense of discovery. He was just taking the information in.
His gaze shifted. “My water?”
“Your water.” I handed him the glass. He left with it.
We returned to the living room. He stood in the center of the room as though he was on stage, feet planted squarely, shoulders back as far as his belly and waistband would permit. He drank half the glass.
I stood close to the TV . . . and the DVD player where I’d placed the knife.
“I am naturally interrogative,” he said unapologetically, “probably bordering on the inquisitional. I don’t know. I can’t see myself. I can only be what I am.”
That was some of the most convoluted hash he’d yet put forth. As a writer, he was a terrific meat grinder.
“It’s a constant fueling process,” I said.
“Yes!” There was a glimmer of appreciation in his voice. “That is why I lock myself away for stretches. I’m like a boa constrictor. I need time to process things without additional overstimulation.”
“Perfectly understandable.” It was my turn, now. “So, Gary—applying those qualities to what happened the other night, I have a question. What do
you
think? I assume you’ve given the aborted mystery night a fair amount of thought.”
“I have,” he said. “I think it was someone who wasn’t there.”
“Come again?”
“By that I mean figuratively—someone who wasn’t invited to the party.”
“Why do you think that—and who would that be?”
“Those are two questions,” he said as he drained the glass. I don’t think he was being snarky. He was simply anal. He was correcting my misstatement that I had “a” question. “To answer the first one second, I think it would be a woman.”
“Why?”
“Because the party was mostly women,” he said. “That would help to effectively disguise one. If someone happened to see her they would say, ‘Oh, was she invited?’”
He acted that last part out with a little mince. I said, “I would have guessed that too—”
“Not a
guess,
” he said. “Reasoning.”
“Right. I would have reasoned it to be a woman but for an entirely different reason.”
He gave me a look that asked,
“And that reason is?”
“It would have been easier for a woman to get close enough to a man to push a drill bit up his nostril.”
“By pretense of affection?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“That is a stereotype,” he replied.
“Of what? Human interaction?”
“No, of one of those horridly trashy romance novels that I refuse
ever
to write. ‘Oh darling, I must have you now! Take me here, on this floor that appears to have been cut away, so that if we fall through it we will be together for eternity.’” He shook his head. “Ridiculous!”
That
was snarky. “Has anyone ever asked you to write one of those?”
Gary waved his pudgy hand dismissively. “They know better. I never would.”
I didn’t ask what publishers he was in contact with. Fish in a barrel.
Gary was still standing there in the center of the room, but as we spoke he had become more agitated. Either the juices were flowing, or he was just becoming more relaxed around me, or else there was a full moon and I hadn’t noticed.
“To answer the first question second,” he went on, “I think it was someone who wasn’t invited because then the police would not know to talk to her.”
“But then if it were proven they were there, by evidence—say, a fingerprint or an eyewitness—wouldn’t it make them
more
of a suspect?”
“A calculated risk,” he said. “There is a perception that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot—”
“Where did you hear that?”
“
Detective Comics
number twenty-seven,” he said. “The first Batman story.”
“Not canonical,” I suggested.
“Of course not! The author was only seventeen years of age, so how could he know better? Yet that flawed notion has pervaded criminological circles.”
Of comic book fans,
I thought.
“My point is, some are clever and most are risktakers,” he said. “I believe, based on the fact that there are apparently no viable suspects, that our felon was both.”
“How do you know there are no suspects?” I asked.
“There’s an invention you may have heard of. The Internet?”
“Sounds familiar. Just not getting from here to there—”
“The blogosphere,” he said as though it should have been self-evident. “People post things on sites such as
Nashville Nuggets
and
The Confederate Hill Yell
. No one knows anyone who has been arrested.”
I didn’t mention that the news also would have been on the news. Moreover, none of that meant there weren’t any
suspects,
just that no one had been formally charged. I didn’t explain any of that because there was no winning with this guy. And as it happened, he was accidentally right. Grant and Deputy Chief Whitman were as stymied as I was.
Gary came over. He handed me the glass like I was his mother. He clasped his hands behind his back and regarded my right cheek. He had trouble making eye contact, I’d noticed.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Regarding—?”
“The case. What do you think?”
That nearly knocked me on my doughnutenlarged backside. The sensei, apparently, of all things wanted to know what Grasshopper thought. For a moment, I thought I saw the boy in the man.
“I think you’re right, that whoever killed Hoppy Hopewell brought to bear a little bit of ingenuity and more than a little bit of planning,” I said. “Who and why is something that will probably take some time to uncover.”
“Why do you say that?”
BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy
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