Soap Opera Slaughters (21 page)
Read Soap Opera Slaughters Online
Authors: Marvin Kaye
“It took one more piece of evidence, though, to make me realize what you actually did last night. Once I saw it, the pattern fell into place...how you recorded the few words I thought I heard Flo say this morning.” I was really talking to Flo’s phone message device. Her voice was always easy to imitate. Impressionists had done it time and again on
TV
variety shows. “Of course, I noticed how strange and slow and flat she sounded, but I attributed that to her being drugged.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Lara said.
“I know I can’t It’s all gone now, or at least misinterpreted. If Fat Lou did hear that cassette, he might wonder about it, but I don’t think he’d come up with anything to suggest that Flo didn’t turn on her stove during the night. This morning, when I sent you to her bedroom to call an ambulance, I imagine you used the opportunity to erase the message you recorded last night for my benefit.”
Lara did not reply. The smart thing would’ve been just to stonewall me and maintain her cover, such as it was. But she had to ask it. Otherwise, it’d never allow her any peace of mind.
“Gene...?”
“What?”
“You claim you noticed one more piece of—uh—alleged evidence...?”
My lip curled scornfully. “I wouldn’t trouble your pretty little head over it, Lara, Fat Lou wouldn’t put any stock in it. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s the one thing I saw that positively convinced me that Florence did not commit suicide.”
“Wh-what?”
“If she’d wanted to take her own life, she could’ve simply
OD
’d on booze and pills. She never would’ve gassed Rathbone.”
I left her standing there, went outside and hailed a cab in front of Hilary’s door. When I told the driver where I was headed, he asked if he could follow the West Side Highway part of the way. I said I didn’t care.
It was twilight. I’d reach “the Heights” in time to stop at The Night Owl and buy the book from Bannister. It was Percy MacKaye’s
Hamlet, King of Denmark—
Hilary’s Number One Want—and I planned to send it to her for her upcoming birthday.
The cabbie turned west on Seventy-ninth and the angry red rim of the dying sun stung my eyes. I felt miserable, physically and emotionally drained, and I wasn’t greatly pleased with myself for the tawdry little dream I’d cherished out of loneliness. But that was all done now.
The driver said something to me in a voice as gritty as an oyster bed.
“What?” I asked him to repeat
“I said, see that sunset?”
“Yeah—what about it?”
“They put it out for tourists,” he replied. “It ain’t real.”
D
EEPEST THANKS AND AFFECTION
to the ineffably lovely dedicatees,
LOUISE SHAFFER
(Rae Woodard on
ABC-TVs
“Ryan’s Hope”) and
BEVERLY PENBERTHY
(Pat Randolph on
NBC-TVs
“Another World”), for arranging for me to watch their shows at work. Special thanks to Louise for her witty advice and keen insight into the psychology of daytime drama actors and to Beverly for her marvelous ceiling-to-roof guided tour of the labyrinthine
NBC
Brooklyn studios. Most of all, I thank both
belles dames
for the precious gift of friendship.
I am grateful for the cooperation of the above shows and their executive staffs, including “Ryan’s Hope” producer Ellen Barrett and her assistant Babs dePina (a fellow Wolfe Packer) and “Another World” producer Mary S. Bonner and her associates Holly Evarts and Kathy Chambers.
Special thanks to the guiding lights of Soap Opera Festivals Inc., Joyce Becker—with whose showmanship I am much impressed—and her gracious partner and husband, Allan Sugar-man. Thanks, too, to Audrey Wertheim for making such smooth arrangements for me to attend a Becker-Sugarman festival...) much more civilized than the event herein depicted.
The above persons gave generously of their time and knowledge. Any accidental or intentional errors or perversions of fact or probability are, of course, strictly my own.
Once more I thank my dear friend Dave Goldenberg for technical advice pertaining to pharmaceutical knavery, as well as those indispensable references, the Physicians’ Desk Reference and Dr. James W. Long’s
The Essential Guide to Prescription Drugs
(Harper & Row, 1977).
Lastly, the eternal admiration of a serial buff to Carleton E. Morse’s pioneering “One Man’s Family” and its latter-day spiritual stepchild, “Days of Our Lives,” with its Hilary Quayle lookalikes, Deidre Hall and her charming sister, Andrea Hall Lovell.
• M
A
R
VIN
K
ATEManhattan, 1981
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1982 by Marvin Kaye
cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4532-9446-8
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