The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (24 page)

“To which he said?”

“He denied it, of course. They always do. I let that pass. He said he’d like to return.”

“And he did.”

“It was on a Sunday night, about a week later … two days before he died.”

“That explains something.”

“Oh?”

“He got rid of both Trixie and Samantha—you know who she is?” He nodded. “He dumped them both the Saturday before he died. Clearing the way. So what happened Sunday night?”

“Sunday is one of the days when people are most in need of what Ambiance provides. It prepares them for the long work week. Sundays are very crowded. We have our main session in the auditorium, which I myself lead, and other sessions going on in other rooms, other buildings.”

“Excuse me, and I’m not arguing merits here, but I really don’t understand what goes on at these sessions.”

A beneficent smile. “You’re welcome to experience one.”

“Some other time.”

“Of course. Suffice it to say, there is some meditation, some chanting, some sharing, some exercises.”

“No biofeedback?” I grimaced. “Sorry.”

Still smiling, he shook his head. “Dennis chose to sit in on our main session. I suppose he felt that provided the most women for him to pursue.” He poured himself more tea. “Sometimes someone appears whom I develop a particular interest in. Dennis was one such.”

“This had nothing to do with him being disgustingly well-off.”

“You can’t stop yourself, can you?”

“I guess not. Go on, please.”

“Sometimes I develop a feeling about a person. I watched Dennis during the session. We keep the lights dim, but not so dim that I couldn’t keep an eye on him. And something happened to him. It was toward the end. We were meditating. I felt the energy shift.”

He waited for my snide comment. I disappointed him. If I was willing to consider alternate realities, what was a little energy shift?

“It happens occasionally. I can’t take credit for it, and I don’t know what it is. But I knew, when I left the stage, that Dennis was about to make a big change in his life.”

“Did you speak to him afterward?”

“He sought me out. He said that during the meditation he went somewhere and when he came back he was different. I know how mystic that sounds and I don’t pretend to know what it means, but I know it happens. People have breakthroughs in different ways. Some in therapy, some in near-death experiences. Some, I believe, here.”

“What did he say?”

“The details don’t matter. Just know that I spent two hours with him, and when he left here that night he was a changed man.”

“Mr. Sunemori. I’ve learned a lot about Dennis Lennox over the last month. He was a total ass. He had no regard for anyone other than himself, with the possible exceptions of his father and his housekeeper. It wouldn’t be below him to give you a total snow job to give himself access to all the women up here.”

“Understood. But that’s not what happened. I have a doctorate in psychology and one in theology. I may not always be able to see through a single lie, but I can tell if someone is spending two hours giving me a snow job. This was not a snow job.”

“He changed. Just like that, he changed.”

“You don’t have to believe me. It might make things easier if you do. Perhaps this will help you see. He mentioned you by name. And what he’d done to you.”

“Oh?”

“How he propositioned the young woman you’ve mentored, and how he decided to punish her for rejecting him by letting her go from his television program, and how he maneuvered you into a position where you would take the blame for her losing her job.”

Who knew about that? Me, Gina, Ronnie. Eric Stahl. Probably Theta. Could Sunemori have found out about it from any of us? It didn’t seem likely. And if he had, why bother lying to me? Simply to make his operation look better? It didn’t wash. “This would explain why—”

“Why he gathered that particular group of people at his house the night he was killed—merely two nights later? Yes. It would. Unfortunately, between the time he called you all and the time he was going to meet you, the killer struck.”

I wasn’t convinced that Dennis had had a life-changing experience at Ambiance. But was it possible? Sure it was. “Do the police know about this?”

“The police have been here. I told them much the same story. They seemed not to believe it.” He stood.“Now, I have duties to attend to. Ms. Rodman will show you out. I hope I have been of help.”

“You have. I appreciate it.”

He nodded. He bowed. He left. In a few seconds Vikki Rodman reappeared. I still thought I’d seen her somewhere before. I told her so. She said, yes, she was an actress. But she wasn’t putting a lot of effort into her career. She was donating her time to Ambiance. It was a much better use of her energy, she said. I told her I was glad she was happy and walked away.

I put on my nice-dad audition outfit and sat in the living room while Gina decided what to wear. She came out wearing a slinky green dress I hadn’t seen in years. I got up and came close. She’d put on a new scent. It was like orange blossoms smoldering. We nearly didn’t make it out of the house.

But I had a job to do. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it, and from all indications the police weren’t very interested. So we extracted ourselves, she touched up her lipstick, and we went out to her Volvo.

We parked a couple of blocks from the gallery and got out of the car. She smoothed her dress. “How do I look?” she said.

“Didn’t I make that perfectly clear back there?”

“A girl can’t hear it too many times.”

“You look like heaven. I’ll be the envy of every man there.”

“Sly devil,” she said, and took my arm.

We went a few steps. I stopped and swung her around to face me. “Are we all right?”

“As all right as we’re ever going to be.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Can’t this wait?”

“No.”

“You pick the strangest times—”

“Just tell me.”

She looked over at the traffic on Washington, back to me. “I’ve realized something.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Shut up, idiot. It’s not a bad thing. Not unless you want it to be.”

“What have you realized?”

“That this thing we have—this relationship, this marriage— is never going to be one of those exploding fireworks kind of things. And don’t make a stupid joke about what happens in bed.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You were.” She grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the way of pedestrian traffic. “What we have is a case of an old married couple who got to be totally comfortable with each other long before they became romantically involved. I mean, not counting that fling we had however many years ago.”

“Twenty-two.”

“You keep track?”

“I just know.”

She nodded. “You also know how much I put on a big show of being a cynic about romance. How I didn’t want a fancy wedding and all that. How I used to make fun of my cousins when they got all girly about the guys they were seeing. But deep down, some part of me wanted that. I wanted to meet the man—or woman—of my dreams and feel fireworks in my heart and get sweaty palms and all that.”

“I don’t give you sweaty palms?”

“Not very often. Shut up and let me finish.”

“Sorry.”

“So after we were married a few months, I started to feel cheated. Here I was, nearly fifty, finally married, and nothing had really changed from the last few years. More than a few. Since we starting hanging out together, and please don’t tell me the year. Except a few years ago we started having sex, and then I moved in with you, and we got married, and it was all kind of ho-hum, because you were still good old Joe.”

“I had no idea you were unhappy.”

“I wasn’t unhappy. I was unsettled. So then there I was, with this vague dissatisfaction, and I found out about what happened or didn’t happen with Ronnie—and given the circumstances, it doesn’t really matter if it did or not—but what did matter was, you hadn’t felt secure enough to tell me. And when you’ve seen a guy almost every day for years and he’s told you everything and now you have what’s supposed to be the ultimate relationship and he starts hiding stuff … and when this coincides with you coming to grips with the fact that, okay, this is how the knight in shining armor happened to you, girl, get used to it … and when you’re realizing that menopause is on the way—”

“What?”

“—you get upset. You maybe say things that are the farthest from the truth you could ever imagine. So I made that dumb comment about wondering if maybe we shouldn’t be married. Of course we should be married. What we have is what we were meant to have. Especially now that you’re not sitting on your ass letting life go by anymore.”

She stood on her toes, kissed me, kept looking into my eyes.

“Your whole manner’s different,” she said. “I haven’t seen you like this since way back—twenty-two years back—when you were running the Altair. I mean, I can’t say I’m one hundred percent convinced I want my husband to spend the rest of his life tracking down evildoers, not after how much death we’ve been exposed to even from your half-assed mucking around, but I’ll just have to get used to it, won’t I? Now let’s get going. All the horse’s ovaries are going to be gone.”

“Speaking of ovaries … what was that about menopause?”

“It’s coming, babe. Now let’s go party down.”

There was a lot of black outside Gallery Gaga. Black shirts, black pants, black dresses and skirts and scarves. A couple of dozen trendoids stood around with plastic champagne glasses full of sparkly liquid. Plus professorial types with full beards and corduroy jackets, women with sculptured coifs, a couple wearing matching maroon jumpsuits with coordinated berets. The room was too hip for me, and I wasn’t even in it yet.

We squeezed our way through and inside. The moment we’d cleared the entrance a photographer said, “Stop right there,” and blinded us with his flash. We stood there while the effects wore off. Someone said, “Excuse me, coming through,” slipped by me, stopped. “You came.”

“I—”

Samantha grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the doorway. I was holding Gina’s hand, so she got dragged along. “You’re in the way,” Samantha said.

“Old and in the way, that’s us.”

“Funny man. Is he this funny at home? I’m assuming you’re his wife. Gina, was it? If you’re not her, I’m in trouble. I’m Samantha Szydlo. I’m why you’re here, aren’t you? Or do you know another artist? Joe said you were in design, maybe you do know another artist.”

“Amphetamines?” Gina said.

“Huh? Oh, because I’m talking so fast? No, there’s just so much going on. A mile a minute. I’m glad you came. Huh?” A woman in a red and white polka dot miniskirt was whispering in her ear. “Really?” The woman nodded. “I’ve got to go. One of my so-called patrons wants to buy one of my pieces.” She followed Polka Dottie around a pillar toward the back.

“That was Samantha,” I said.

“So she said,” Gina said.

“I don’t think she does drugs anymore.”

“Neither do I, but I might need some soon. Let’s get something to eat.”

We barged our way to a long buffet table. Some scattered vegetables, a few pulpy strawberries, a basket of tortilla chips that someone had spilled a soda on. Also several empty trays. “You were right about the horse’s ovaries,” I said.

“We’ll eat after. I’m going to go get some drinks. You start detecting.” She slipped off. I watched her go. So did several other men. With all the young babes, with all the money that had been spent on beauty, she was still the most gorgeous woman in the room. My humble opinion.

“That your wife?”

I turned. It was Carrie. She done something swirly with her hair and wore a dress cut low in front and looked nearly her age.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Thanks. I think so too. Mike here?”

“Uh-uh. He’s home watching TV.”

“Doesn’t like this kind of thing.”

“Nope.”

“Speaking of being home watching TV…”

She was nodding. “He told me he let it slip.”

“Samantha asked you to cover for her.”

“Yes.”

“What was she really up to?”

“No idea.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Samantha’s a good roommate and a great friend.”

“That’s a funny answer.”

“I let her have her secrets. That’s all I meant.”

Gina was coming our way. She saw me detecting and detoured. “What about you?” I said. “Any deep dark secrets?”

“You don’t like me, do you?”

“Where’d you get that idea?”

“Because you think I’m too young for Mike, and because you think I shouldn’t be trying to fill the space in his heart Donna left.”

“Second one first. How Mike chooses to fill holes in his heart is up to him. If you guys are happy, what difference does it make to me?”

“What about the other?”

“The age thing? It’s just a little weird, that’s all. Hey, if I hadn’t gotten together with Gina, I might be hanging out with a young babe like you too.”

“Then you don’t dislike me?”

“I don’t dislike you. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you. Though maybe I’d want her to cover her chest a little better.”

She grimaced and placed a hand in a strategic position. “That’s why I never wear this dress.”

“Wear it for Mike,” I said. “He’ll like it. I’m going to look around, okay?”

I left her standing there and tracked Gina down. She was staring at one of the abstracts I’d seen the first time I was at the gallery. “What do you think of this?” she said.

“It has a certain insouciance, with aftertones of oak and peach.”

“You hate it.”

“I don’t think it would look good over the fireplace, if that’s what you’re thinking. Assuming the fireplace ever gets built.”

“Who was that?”

“Carrie. Mike’s girlfriend.”

“What’d you find out?”

“That I’m going to have to pin Samantha down. What’d you get us?”

“Cheap champagne. Here.”

I took the flimsy glass, held it up, watched the bubbles. Then I tossed it down.

“
Très gauche
,” Gina said. “You’re supposed to sip it.”

“I needed fortification. I’m going to track her down.”