Authors: Delia Rosen

One Foot In The Gravy (23 page)

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy

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I returned with the water and Gary slurped it down. I remained standing. I felt bad for the young man. His lack of social skills was not his fault; Lizzie obviously had done the best she could. But that had been years ago and there had been very little social interaction since then. Gary Gold was effectively a hermit.

Before we left him to his solitude, however, there was one more place I had to go with him.

“Hey, I want to thank you for being so honest and open with me,” I said to him.

“You’re welcome.” He searched for something more to say. “Thanks for the water.”

“My pleasure. I have one more question for you, if you’re up for it.”

He gave me a look that I would describe as borderline wary—not because I thought he had anything to hide but because after he answered he was going to be alone again.

“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”

His chest heaved slightly and his lower lip quivered. But he really didn’t have anything left.

“I don’t,” he said. “I still can’t believe any of it.” He looked into my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I told him. “I didn’t really—”

“No,” he cut me off. “About scaring you at your house. This whole thing has left me in a little bit of a daze.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” I told him. “I understand.”

I thanked him for his time, but most importantly for his trust. He didn’t rise when we left; he continued to sit in his corner of the couch, looking at the spot where I’d been sitting, but probably seeing happier times and people he could only visit in his memory.

Grant followed me out and shut the door.

“Well done,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“So Hoppy canceling his insurance policy—”

“Yeah. To pay print bills. Nice gesture, but they really didn’t help him.”

“How so?”

“The only editors he had were a chocolatier and a woman whose first language wasn’t English,” I said. “Everyone needs a critic.”

“That is a fact,” he said.

There was an uncharacteristic humility in his answer. I think it was a compliment.

“What’s really sad,” I went on, “is that never mind the writing. Between Lizzie and Hoppy, they scared the crap out of that kid. He hasn’t had a chance to experience much of life himself.”

“He’s going to have to now,” Grant said.

That was a fact too. But it wasn’t something I could afford to think about right now. There was still a killer out there, and we were no closer to finding that person than we were an hour ago.

“Someone tried to frame that kid,” Grant said.

“I was just thinking that,” I told him. That was why they had taken the books signed to Lizzie. And the photo albums. And maybe even planted the blue ribbon for us to find and draw the conclusion we did. The killer was no dope.

“What are you going to do now?” Grant asked when we reached the curb.

“Go back home and go through the Lizzie file,” I said. “I want to think about some of the points the Foxes raised. You?”

It was a loaded question. He probably felt like I did the other day when I’d left the door open and didn’t know whether or how to close it. Except that in his case, he probably realized that whatever answer he gave was probably the wrong one.

“What do you think I should do?” he asked.

I hadn’t anticipated that. He was learning to defer.

“I think you should probably get some sleep,” I said. That showed concern, I thought; it was kind of a chickeny bookmark move. I wanted time alone to think.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said. “Maybe I’ll check in later?”

That was a good, oh-so-mildly pushy response.

“Perfect,” I said.

I avoided a kiss but gave his hand a squeeze as I went around to the driver’s side and headed into the night.

I did, however, succumb and snagged a glance in the rearview mirror as I pulled away. The boy
was
standing there watching me go.

Whatever other
tsuris
was poking and driving me, that made me grin.

Chapter 29

I got home feeling beat. Not just physically but emotionally; the visit with Gary had not been the walk to the scaffold I had been expecting.

I flopped into the sofa with a Diet Coke, pushed the cats away—they knew when I meant business—and set my laptop on the coffee table. I had the edited Lizzie folder beside me with the notes I’d taken during the Cozy Foxes dinner.

The Hoppy-Anne-Lizzie-Gary pieces all fit now. They formed a nice little tray puzzle that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the two murders. I was starting over.

I went back through my favorite places hoping something would stand out, trigger a new direction. The only thing new we had was that whoever tried to frame Gary knew more about him than the rest of us had. They knew about Lizzie and probably about Hoppy. That left a lot of gossipy rich people on the table.

But why ? What started this?

I was going through my files and stopped on the old newspaper article. I wished the photographer had taken a reverse angle so I could see Gary’s face. It would have been nice to see him happy—

“Hello !”

I was looking at the fuzzy photo of autograph seekers at Lolo’s house. There was a face in the crowd—

A tumbler clicked into place.

It reminded me of something someone had said.

Another tumbler.

That reminded me of something
that
person had said.

Tumbler number three. I reached for my cell phone and remembered I left it in my coat, which was on the coat rack by the door. I had to call Grant, tell him—

The doorbell rang as I reached into my pocket. I opened it. “You saved me a call—”

It wasn’t Grant.

Poodle Baldwin stood at the threshold. “Can I come in?” she asked.

I tasted the egg salad I’d had for dinner. “Sure,” I smiled and stepped aside, the phone in my palm.

Poodle entered. She shut the door behind her. She was wearing a duster. Her other hand was in her pocket. We stood two feet apart staring at each other.

“Hi,” she said belatedly.

“Hi,” I replied awkwardly.

“You were at Lizzie’s tonight.”

“I was,” I said. “How did you know?”

“I dated that cop,” she said, then frowned. “Not yours,” she added quickly. “The one in the car. The one who was on his cell when you left.”

“Nice guy?” I asked.

“A peach,” she replied.

“So he just happened to mention—”

“No. I asked.” She looked down at her feet. I couldn’t tell if she was ashamed or marshaling her energies or thinking or all of that. I had my eye on the hallway to my right, beside the sofa. If I needed to make a run for the bathroom or bedroom—

“You were at Lizzie’s too, weren’t you?” I asked boldly. No sense dragging this out. “Not today, but—”

“I killed her,” Poodle said without a hint of remorse. “Also that shit Hoppy. I tried to tell you the other day, before I went to Lizzie’s. But you weren’t hearing me. I thought you would. I thought you would understand.”

“I did!” I insisted. “My God, you think I don’t know what a man like Hoppy could do?”

“He wasn’t a man,” Poodle said. “He was a creature. An it. A dog who used young girls the way a stud uses bitches. Him and that sick beast he procured for. The thing that made Hoppy worse is that he made you think he cared.”

“He may have,” I said.

“Only for
one
woman!” Poodle said with anguish. “The German girl. I was just a substitute for her. He took my heart and my body and he broke them all up because he had fallen for his little tart girlfriend and couldn’t have her! We all became little Annes. You know why?”

“No,” I said.

“I think because it was right before the fall,” she said. She was starting to lose it now. She began to approach me. I backed away, toward the hall. “When he met her, he was still a poor little rich kid, free to roam the world and pluck whatever young petals he wished. Then he found out he was broke. It was the last time he was happy Hoppy!”

I didn’t know how on-target her pop psychology was, but there was probably some truth there. That, plus the fact that he struck me as an arrested adolescent who couldn’t relate to any woman over fifteen.

“I hated him and I promised myself he wouldn’t get away with what he’d done,” Poodle said. “I vowed to stop him from damaging other girls.”

“Yet you waited all this time—”

“For a plan!” she said. “Oh, and to get through years of therapy
because of what he’d done to me
!”

“But why Lizzie?”

“I went to her because—Jesus.”

“What?”

“You know, I didn’t plan to kill Hoppy.”

“Excuse me?”

She started to weep. “I didn’t plan to kill him! I phoned him. I told him I had to talk to him. He said he thought that was a bad idea. I said I’d be at the party and would meet him there, that I only wanted to see him for a few minutes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I wanted an apology,” Poodle said. “That’s all. Just—you know, a ‘Sorry for what I did. It was wrong.
I
was wrong.’”

“I didn’t see you there that night. The police didn’t know—”

“I told my mother I’d meet her inside. I said I wanted to have a walk around. I knew the grounds. I’ve been there. I even went with my mom to one of their stupid meetings so I could check the place out.”

“So you went up the back where you’d arranged to meet Hoppy.”

She nodded.

“And he didn’t apologize.”

Poodle laughed through her tears. “Apologize? That twisted shit tried to
kiss
me! He said he still had feelings! I mean, Christ! He backed me against the cabinet and the table with the tool chest and—”

She removed her hand from her pocket. She was holding . . . her car keys. I relaxed slightly as, almost trance-like, she reenacted what she’d done.

“The box was open,” she said. “My hand was on the drill. I had nowhere to go and started to push him back with one hand while I happened to press the trigger with the other. It came on. I remember thinking,
‘Batteries!’
A silly thought at a time like that, right?”

I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her tortured little mind.

“The next thing I remember was Hoppy sort of—gurgling, I guess. There was blood in his mouth. He fell backward. I looked at the drill as he disappeared. I tried to wipe the blood away with my shirt, I just scrubbed the whole thing. Then I ran.”

“Out the back again?”

“Out the back and into the night and back to the car. I drove home and called my mom and told her I hadn’t felt so good. She had someone bring her home.”

“Poodle, I understand all of that—but Lizzie? And why try to frame Gary?”

“When I realized what I had done . . . I’m sorry, I really did try to tell you. But when that didn’t work, I went to Lizzie. I figured if anyone would understand, it would be her.”

“You knew about her and Hoppy and also Gary because he tutored you and told you about himself.”

“Tutored me?” She laughed. “He knows as much about writing as he does about pedigreed dogs, which is minus-nothing! I went there to find out all I could about Father Shit. I thought about blackmailing him, and—”

She stopped. Now
she
was crying. Hoppy’s legacy: tears all around.

“I told Lizzie what I had done and that I wanted to turn myself in,” Poodle said. “I said I’d do that
if
she would tell the court or the police or whoever that Hoppy was a cradle robber. She refused. She was going to call the police. I—I. . . .”

Hit her,
I thought. And then got scared. And felt okay framing Gary, not because he was a bad writer and worse tutor, but because of the unfinished business with Hoppy.
The sins of the father . . .

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

Poodle looked at me with her big eyes. She returned the keys to her pocket with a kind of snake-charmery move. She was gliding forward again. I resumed my own retreat just in case she had something else in there, like a knife or a gun.

The hand came out empty. I stopped. So did she.

Beside the DVD player. Where I’d left the nine-inch kitchen knife when Gary came calling. She picked it up and held it in front of her.

“Everyone deserved what they got,” she said. “You see that, don’t you?”

This was another Grant situation where there was no good answer. Except that the payoff was death, not sex or abstinence.

“I think we need to have some tea,” I said.

“You’re going to turn me in to that cop,” she said.

“I won’t have to,” I said. “He’s going to be here any moment—he’ll figure it out when he sees you with the knife.”

She scowled. “You and my mother—you both think I’ve got my head up my ass. I called my cop friend again before I came in. Said I’d come and visit if he was alone. He said he was. Your loverboy went back to Lizzie’s to look around, then said he was going home.”

“He’s not. He’s coming here.”

“He’s not. At least, not until they find you dead.”

“Poodle, think about this—”

“Why!?”

I was almost at a point where I could make a break for the bathroom and hope to beat her. But then I’d be trapped with nothing to defend myself except a toothbrush and a Lady Schick.

“I am not going to spend my life in prison because of something a corrupt and evil man
did to me
!”

“There are other options,” I said.

“Oh, you mean like
insanity
? A straightjacket and padded room?
This is self-defense!
You people all want to punish me for something I had every right to do, that I had an
obligation
to do! No! I’m not going to suffer anymore!”

She ran at me then and I had no choice but to meet her. The knife cut diagonally across the back of my forearm. It hurt, but not that fine intense pain of a paper cut; it burned like hell. I fell back over the coffee table, which probably saved my life, since I had grabbed my cut arm and my chest was exposed and her return upward slash would have slit me from waist to shoulder. I screamed as I fell and kicked back with my feet to get away, then kicked at her as she threw the table aside, tossing my laptop and Uncle Murray’s keyboard across the room.

They landed at Grant’s feet as he crashed through the door.

“Hold it, Poodle!” he shouted from behind his beautiful blackened alloy compact police-issue handgun.

She turned on him, snarling.

“Drop the knife and raise your hands!” he said, both hands tight around the weapon. “I will shoot you!”

I hugged the carpet thinking, ridiculously, how much I really hated it. It’s strange where a brain goes in times of danger.

Poodle hesitated.

“Do it!” he yelled.

The knife clattered to the ground. Poodle followed it, falling to her knees and then her side. Grant sidled over and kicked the blade away.

“How bad?” he asked me, nodding to my arm with his chin.

“I think I’m gonna need some sewing up,” I said.

He approached Poodle cautiously but quickly. He told her to put her hands behind her back. She was alternately screaming and crying into the floor and didn’t seem to hear him. Holding the gun in his right hand, he took the little plasticuffs from a belt loop with his left and managed to get them around her wrists. He put the gun in his shoulder holster, called for backup and an ambulance, and went to the kitchen to get a dish cloth.

“I am really, really glad to see you,” I said, choking. The whole thing was catching up to me now.

“I’m glad I’m here,” he said as he put a makeshift tourniquet around my arm, just above the elbow. “I’m glad about something else, too.”

I looked at him inquiringly.

“That you didn’t say
where
I should get some sleep.”

BOOK: One Foot In The Gravy

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