Perfect Sax (7 page)

“Why don’t you join me for breakfast,” I suggested, turning to Dexter. “I can use your cell phone to check up on you. And don’t try anything funny. I have friends at the LAPD, you know.”

“Ah,” said Dexter, “that makes you all the more desirable.”

I laughed.

“I’ll go park the car,” he said.

I may have been dumped on the side of the road. And I may have misjudged the Red Line schedule. But my night was beginning to get just a little bit brighter.

A
nd so, eventually, Dexter Wyatt drove me home. But first we’d had a fairly hilarious early-morning breakfast at the Pantry while Dex dialed his family and friends to give me instant character references. “To set Madeline’s mind at ease,” he explained to all on his cell phone. “she’s still squirrelly.” I talked to his sister Zenya who was bursting with apologies. She had managed to get Bill calmed down and they were already at home. I talked to Dex’s college roommate from Penn, who said Dex was a decent-enough guy except for his habit of waking up East Coast friends at 5:30
A.M.
Connecticut time on a Sunday morning. I talked to Dex’s high school girlfriend, Mary Kate, who was now married to a Beverly Hills gastroenterologist, and seemed unworried by the call or the late hour, since she was up with her seven-month-old twins. They all agreed that Dexter was an easygoing guy who had a tendency to avoid conflicts, steady work, and marriage.

Over freshly scrambled eggs and refills of hot coffee, Dexter Wyatt and I had one of those weird, off-center, very personal conversations that can only happen between strangers at 2:30
A.M.
Dexter admitted he was never going to fall in love completely.

“You may not have met the right person yet,” I suggested.

“That’s nice of you to say.” Dex put his coffee cup down and gave me a slow smile. “But you know I probably have. I’ve met lots of right women. I’ve even been involved with a few. But they all figure out I’m not the right person to get involved with.”

“Because…?”

“Because,” he said carefully, “I am a guy whose mother died when he was eleven. A guy who doesn’t have a lot of faith that someone you love will make it until next week. A guy without much trust in life. In a nutshell.”

“How did your mother die?”

“Cancer. I can almost remember when she was healthy. Mostly what I remember was that she was sick and then sicker and then she was gone. But things like that happen. Anyway, that was over twenty years ago. It’s an old, old scar.” Dex took in my concerned expression and began to laugh. “Hey, this is one romantic conversation, isn’t it? So tell me why you believe in love.”

“Who said I believe in love?”

“You don’t?”

“Well, no. I do. But not just because I’m a ‘girl’ and we’re programmed to want to fall in love or anything. I know that’s what you think.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do. You think there is a conspiracy among womankind to find husbands. To this end, you think we go out at night wearing sexy dresses and strappy sandals scouting out men with nice cars and good hair. And pretty soon everyone thinks they’re in love. When they—or I should really say you—are most vulnerable, the woman will demand to be married and have babies and tie you down for the rest of your life, making you work like a dog to pay for private school and braces.”

He looked at me across the table, a smile still on his lips. “Pretty impressive.”

“Now here is the truly sad part. You need to believe women are out there trying to trap you into serious relationships.”

“I do?”

I nodded. “So you avoid finding a steady career. You travel. You knock around. You won’t take life or commitments or relationships seriously. But I’m just suggesting here that after you spend like ten years in therapy, you’ll see it’s all about protecting your heart from another horrible blow, like when your mother left you. In the meantime, these defenses of yours are costing you a real life. They’re killing your chance to find a love that could really, truly heal your soul.”

“More coffee?” asked Porter, our waiter, with perfect timing.

“So how much do you charge for that wisdom?” Dex asked, meeting my eyes.

“You don’t want to know,” I said, laughing.

“And what about you?” Dex asked, teasing. “Have you found love to be all that comforting and healing?”

“Me?” I pulled a handful of my reddish curls off my shoulder and smiled up at him. “Of course not. I was only speaking
theoretically.
”

“Naturally,” Dex said, pouring just the right amount of cream into my cup, stirring in just the right half packet of Sweet’n Low. Clever boy. He had a gift for observation.

“In my own life, Dexter, I haven’t managed the love thing at all well. I was seeing a cop. Honnett. He’s married, apparently, and hadn’t bothered to tell me the finer points. I guess he was separated, but then she wants to start seeing a shrink. You hear about this kind of thing all the time. So all along I thought we were building up some trust and some caring. I
had hoped he and I might be right for each other. I had hoped he would see I made a difference in his life. But I can’t ignore his past. The past is a powerful thing.”

“That it is.”

By the time Dexter Wyatt and I had left the Pantry, our conversation had lightened the heck back up. We were both amused at finding someone who shared a wry sense of humor, underlined as it was by the odd way we’d met. As Dexter transitioned his BMW onto the Hollywood Freeway, I appreciated, as only one who has drunk a few too many cups of coffee can, our strange first encounter, one that only a very jaded and playful fate could concoct.

“I’m glad,” Dex said, as if reading my thoughts, “that if my jerk brother-in-law had to kick some chick out of his Hummer, and if I had to be the one called away from a poker game to fix things, that you were the chick that needed help and I found you.”

“Thank you.”

“Even though I was holding a winning hand at the time.”

“Sainted sacrifice.”

Dex watched the traffic and changed lanes, heading off at Cahuenga, the freeway exit nearest my house.

“And I’m glad that if I had to lend my car to a waitress in order to be abandoned downtown in order to make my way to the Pantry, in order to be sort of picked up by a virtual stranger, that you were the stranger, and that it could be said I tipped my hat to providence.”

“You don’t wear a hat.”

“Figuratively.”

“You are a trouper,” Dex said heartily as he slowed and turned up Whitley.

“I hope it could be said of me,” I added, filled with a hearty breakfast and comfy on Dexter’s leather upholstered
seats, “that Madeline enjoyed the journey, no matter how bumpy.”

“You know, of course, that you have begun speaking about yourself in the third person.”

“Has she?” I smiled at him. “She apologizes.”

And then I noticed the police cars. There were three out in front of my house. There were mobile news vans parked in the street, and yellow tape across the gate to my house that read,
POLICE LINE
—
DO NOT CROSS
.

T
his can’t be good,” Dex commented, his eyes shifting up, following a flight of picturesque steps on the hillside. We had been chatting all the way home, but now were struck silent. He found a spot to park as we both studied the strange activity surrounding the small Mediterranean-style house at the end of Whitley Avenue. My house.

The property, featuring beautiful old palm trees and great pots filled with exotic plants, perches snugly on the upslope at the end of the block. There it dead-ends right smack into the side of the Hollywood Freeway. I might like to think of my neighborhood as quaint and “Old Hollywood-y” but in the fifties this lovely area was cut right through by the construction of the 101. My palm-frondy side of Whitley forms a cul-de-sac now, where above us eight lanes of cars, zooming northbound and southbound, are hidden from view by the thirty-foot retaining wall. As for the late-night traffic beyond the wall, what we couldn’t see we definitely could hear. It’s funny what you can get used to when you don’t have a lot of money and you are facing the insanely high prices of Los Angeles real estate.

All this was the usual thing. What wasn’t usual were all the police types and media types who were presently milling about in the cul-de-sac and up the steps to my house.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, slamming the car door and walking fast, taking in the entire scene, including a familiar black Mustang convertible parked near the curb, “but I think you’re about to meet my cop friend, Honnett.”

“You lead an interesting postmidnight life, Madeline.”

I nodded.

“Think he brought his wife along?” asked Dex.

“Shut up,” I said politely, and pushed past a reporter I recognized from the local news. He didn’t seem to know me, but then why should he? On the other hand, and more important, what was he doing out in the street in front of my house at three-thirty in the morning?

There was a uniformed police officer standing at the bottom of the flight of steps that leads up to my front door. When he noticed Dexter and me approaching, he glanced at us sharply, but quickly covered it with expressionless cop cool. “And you are…?” he asked.

“Madeline Bean and a friend. This is my house. What’s going on? Have I been robbed?”

“You live here?” he asked slowly.

“Brilliant guess,” Dex said.

Oh, terrific. Dex was going to start something, for goodness sake.

“What’s your name?” the officer asked Dex, his voice still even. “Let’s see some ID on both of you.”

Oh, brother.

“Look. This is a friend of mine who is dropping me off.” This morning was definitely not going well. “I don’t have my driver’s license handy right now. In fact, I don’t have my purse. I’ve had a really crappy last few hours and now there is police tape all over my house. What,” I asked, my voice getting more heated, “the hell is going on in there? Why are you here? Can you please, please,
please
just tell me so we can get on with this?”

“I’m not letting—”

But before the officer could finish, I shot past him and ran up the stairs. Dexter, right behind me, tried the same move, but with a half second more to react, the cop grabbed him and slammed his body against the stucco retaining wall.

While my neighborhood is filled with lovely older homes built in Hollywood’s early heyday, and the palm trees and yucca plants are lush, it is a fact of life that there is crime in these hills. Living on this cul-de-sac could fool anyone into thinking they were safe, but the creeps from Ivar Street and Selma were rather too close for comfort. Druggies looking for valuables to hock were a big problem. And for any felon looking for a quiet block or two of nice homes with a quick escape route only an easy freeway exit away, this area was sometimes a little too attractive.

I was wired on caffeine and weary from a long night and it looked like I had something very wrong going on at the house. I swore out loud as I topped the outside landing and again realized I didn’t have my cell phone on me. I couldn’t call Wesley yet. I had to get in the house.

The front door was ajar and all the lights were on inside. As I stepped into the entry hall that held Holly’s reception desk, I heard the rumble of low voices coming from upstairs, the part of the house where I live, and there were other sounds coming from farther back on the main floor.

I walked quickly through my office and back into the kitchen. Three men and a woman stood around the room working. They were using small brushes to dust black powder over several spots on the white-tiled countertop, and on the wall near my back door, and on the door itself. They had a collection of things in plastic bags. This was too much. I had no time to deal with a break-in. I was too tired.

Near them stood a tall man with his back to me. I could tell from the way his white shirt stretched across his shoulders
and then tucked into the narrow waistband of his faded jeans that it was Honnett, even before I noticed that his dark hair looked a little longer and had more gray mixed in than I remembered.

“Chuck, what the hell is going on?” I asked. Okay, I asked it sharply. Maybe I even yelled it.

Honnett turned and looked at me. His face wore an expression I’d never seen on it before.

“Maddie?”

“No one will tell me what happened. The guy downstairs wouldn’t even let—”

In three fast strides Honnett was over to me and smothering my mouth with kisses. I put my hands on his chest to push him away, to get my bearings, to adjust to this new angle. “What the hell…?” I said, sputtering.

“Maddie. We thought you were…I thought you were dead.”

His words had no meaning to me.

“There’s a body upstairs.”

“A body?” I pulled back from his arms. I simply couldn’t understand what language he was speaking. I had no reaction at all as he kept on explaining.

“In your bedroom. Upstairs. In your bed. I thought it was you.”

My hand flew up to my mouth and muffled my words. “Oh my God.”

“I didn’t go into your room,” Honnett said, still explaining. “I just thought…Can you believe that? I should have gone in, but I couldn’t do it yet. The call came in over two hours ago. Gunshots reported. There was a break-in. A woman was shot. She’s dead. I thought it was—”

“They found a dead woman in my bedroom? How can this be happening?” I turned away, but couldn’t move. I couldn’t sort out my thoughts, so fast did they rush one upon
another. I was numb to the idea there had been a death in my house. It just couldn’t be true. And what was with Honnett? His first reaction was to hold me and kiss me? Hadn’t he just a few months back decided to leave me? What was with men, anyhow?

In my confusion and shock, I found myself more worried about what was going on between Honnett and me now than about the awful crime that had gone on in my house. It was easier to grasp, this anger at a man who had hurt me. This shame at realizing I wanted to pause, just push all this other business aside, so I could recall Honnett’s exact expression, moments before, when he looked up and saw me, and how warm and safe and fierce it felt when he was kissing me. I shuddered.

It was the murder. In my life, there had been some deaths that had hit me extra hard. It seemed I had another one to deal with. I pushed my heavy hair back and took stock. Here I was, wearing my sexiest black dress with a slit up to my thigh, standing in my kitchen in the early-morning hours, while a woman I’d never set eyes on before, a criminalist, picked up what could have been a single strand of hair from my kitchen drain with a long pair of tweezers, and a man I’d never seen before blew black powder on my huge center island, and a guy I had been hung up on—a man who had walked out on me, but who was back now, big as life—apparently wanted just to hold me. And for all of that, I simply couldn’t get myself to concentrate on the big thing. I had yet to experience any reaction to a mystery woman who might be dead in my bed. I mean, it couldn’t have seemed less real to me.

“Oh, Maddie,” Honnett said, putting his arms around me again, unable to resist touching me. I wanted to relax into him. Why not? I could be angry at him tomorrow. Or I could forgive him tomorrow. Or he could go back to his wife tomorrow.
I just wanted to feel better right now. But something in his manner had changed. His voice was tight. “Don’t tell me Holly was staying here tonight.”

Holly.

I stiffened in his arms and he felt it. All of a sudden the problem about a woman’s body upstairs got terribly real. I pushed my way out of the kitchen, heading for the stairs, and began running.

Holly. Oh, that just couldn’t be. She had stayed on at the Woodburn and worked on closing the party with Wes. I realized that had to have been hours ago, but she wouldn’t be here. She couldn’t be. She would have gone off to Wesley’s house. Or gone home to Donald. But Donald was out of town for a couple of weeks. I got to the landing and was met by two detectives, both casually dressed with sport jackets thrown over jeans. This was not Honnett’s case, apparently.

“And who are
you
?” asked one of the men, the shorter one with the least hair but the best cheekbones. He was soft-spoken and polite and more easygoing than I would have expected.

“I’m Madeline Bean. This is my house.”

For a minute, all I received were silent stares.

“Madeline Bean?” the soft-spoken one repeated, looking at the other fellow. They were taking a second or two to digest the news. If
I
was Madeline Bean, who the hell was the body in the bedroom? It’s not hard to figure out what detectives are thinking.

“So you came home to a real nightmare, Miss Bean. Sorry about that,” said the detective, his eyes watching me thoughtfully. “This is my partner, Detective Hilts. I’m Detective Ed Baronowski.”

I nodded. By then, Honnett had joined us on the landing
and shook his head. “Ed, I should have looked at the body. I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Hilts, the taller, musclebound guy with the tight, curly brown hair, cut short.

Baronowski kept his eyes on me. “So who’s gonna answer the million-dollar question? Who is it in the bed?”

My house is not large. The short hallway upstairs holds just three small bedrooms and a decent-size bathroom. The largest bedroom is actually decorated as a living room, with a sofa in front of the fireplace. The middle room is used as a library/dining room. And the smallest bedroom contains my bed.

They all stared at me, waiting.

“I have no idea. No one is staying with me.”

“You married, Madeline?” Baronowski asked softly.

“No.”

“What about a boyfriend? You know, maybe he might have brought a friend to the house when you were out?”

I flushed as I realized Honnett was waiting to hear if I had a new boyfriend. “Nothing like that,” I said.

The men looked at me.

“How long have you been away from the house? And where have you been?”

“I left about three-thirty this afternoon. My company organizes parties. We were doing a big charity benefit for the Woodburn School last night.”

“And you are telling us that you haven’t been home in the last twelve hours?”

I shook my head no. But it was a confusing way to phrase a question. Should I have answered yes?

“As you probably noticed, Madeline, there was no sign of forced entry downstairs and the place looks pretty undisturbed. Any girlfriend, then, who might have your key—”

“Look. This body. It’s
not
my friend Holly.” I was completely
firm on this point. Adamant. Why were these cops always thinking the absolute worst thing? “Look, I’m sure it isn’t. It can’t be. I’m sure—” And that’s when I was struck by a totally new and horrible thought.

“Oh no,” I said, my voice coming out much lower now, so low I didn’t think I’d said it out loud.

“What?” Honnett and Baronowski asked almost in unison.

I walked the five steps to the bedroom door and noticed more black powder on the doorknob, on the wall. “May I…?”

“You ever see a gunshot wound before?” Baronowski asked, in his low-key way.

I turned back to him. “No.”

“You gonna faint or something?” he asked, studying me.

I couldn’t stand to be coddled and insulted in my own damn house. I opened the door and stepped into my bedroom. My electricity bill was not a concern to the police employees of the City of Angels. The lights were all on in there as well.

At first, I didn’t even see the woman’s body. I was dazzled by the sight of all the blood. The red-soaked sheets. The red-stained quilts. The red-blotched rug. The red-splattered walls. The smell of fresh blood, that slightly ironlike smell of a butcher shop, was everywhere. But then I saw her. And it was just as I’d feared.

The young woman who was lying in all that blood was half on her side, half on her stomach, one arm stretched up over her head, like she had been swimming and was caught midstroke. She was wearing slim black slacks and what had once been a pure-white lace camisole. The red of the rosebud pinned to one strap was drowned in the red of three open wounds.

I could see the side of her face clearly. Sara Jackson’s green eyes were half open. Her skin seemed sickly white beneath
the disheveled strands of her long red hair. Her freckles stood out in relief.

“You know her?” Baronowski was at the doorway, looking at my face, gauging my reaction. His voice was still soft. Maybe he was trying to be sensitive. My house. A huge blood-soaked mess. Maybe he was trying to soothe me into confessing something. He suspected me of being involved in this. He was watching to see if I was faking, lying, deceiving.

“She worked for me.” For some reason, I was startled to hear my own voice. It sounded almost normal. How could anything about me be normal after seeing this? I knew the police were wondering why I was pausing. Every one of my actions and reactions was being measured. If I hesitated, would they think I was reacting to the traumatic sight of my bedroom awash in blood and murder, or would they suppose I was taking some time to come up with a plausible lie? I rushed on. “Her name is Sara Jackson. She sometimes works as a server at the parties we cater. She was working on the Woodburn School dinner downtown. I just saw her. I mean, the last time I saw her it was around midnight. She asked to borrow my car, which I lent her. She said she’d bring it back here before morning.”