Or She Dies Read online

  ‘Guy,’ she noted. ‘You said “the guy”.’

  ‘Better odds for an intruder. Plus, the gloved hand looked masculine.’

  ‘Just a little big, really. Maybe it’s a woman retaining water.’

  I crouched next to her. ‘He used his right hand to open the door. So I’m guessing he’s left-handed.’

  She paused in her examination of the doorframe, just for a split second, but I knew I’d surprised her. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘because you figure he’d use his dominant hand for the camcorder.’ Another sideways glance at me. ‘Glad to see you’re not obsessing about this.’

  A faint mark in the thin layer of dirt on the rear step caught her attention. The edge of a footprint. She swept me back and leaned over it, fists on her knees.

  My heart quickened. ‘What can you tell?’

  ‘It was made by a Mexican male, six-two, goes about a buck ninety, had a backpack slung over his right shoulder.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No. It’s a fucking footprint.’

  I laughed, and her eyes crinkled a bit at the edges; it seemed she found me as amusing as I did her.

  But there’d be no lingering in our joint fondness. ‘Lemme see your shoe,’ she said. ‘No, take it off.’

  I tugged my sneaker off. She held it over the imprint. A perfect match. ‘Square one.’

  ‘How ’bout that.’

  She stood, arched to crack her back. It didn’t crack, but she got in a good groan. Clicking on her Mag-Lite, she started along the wall, reversing the course the camera had traveled. ‘Any problems with your left-handed wife?’

  Don and Martinique’s bedroom light was still on. ‘All couples have problems,’ I said.

  ‘Any serious disputes with anyone else?’

  ‘Keith Conner. And Summit Pictures. There’s a lawsuit — it was all over the tabloids . . .’

  ‘I don’t read the Enquirer much. Tell me about it.’

  ‘The judge issued a gag order until the matter’s resolved. The studio didn’t want any bad press circulating.’

  She looked mildly disappointed in me, as if I were a dog that messed the carpet. ‘Maybe that’s not so important right about now.’

  ‘It’s so stupid you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I probably would. I had to arrest a director last month for taking a dump in his agent’s pool. I can’t mention any names, but it was Jamie Passal.’ She looked at me flatly, not pushing.

  I drew in a breath of cool air. Then I told her about the confrontation with Keith, how he’d slipped and banged his jaw on the counter, how he’d lied and said I’d hit him, how the studio had joined him in suing what was left of my ass.

  When I finished, she looked unmoved. ‘Money disputes are our bread and butter.’ She looked at me, then added, ‘And stupid domestic disputes.’ She ran her fingers along the wall, as if checking for wet paint. ‘So this thing with Summit and Keith is ongoing.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And expensive.’

  Right.

  ‘Seems like a pretty elaborate and time-consuming method for an actor or a studio to harass you,’ she said.

  I pressed my lips together and nodded. I’d considered the same.

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘what would they hope to gain by this?’

  ‘Maybe they’re wearing me down in preparation for a demand of some sort.’

  It sounded thin, and Sally’s face showed that she thought so, too.

  ‘Let’s get back to Ariana.’ Sally had maneuvered our exchange so we were looking through the window into the family room. ‘She have any enemies?’

  We stood side by side, a big-screen view of the blanket and pillow on the couch. I took a deep breath. ‘Aside from the neighbor’s wife?’

  ‘Okay,’ Sally said. ‘I see.’ A pause. ‘I’m not gonna find out anything about those bruised knuckles that makes me mad, am I?’

  ‘No, no. I hit the dashboard now and again. When I’m alone. Don’t ask.’

  ‘Make you feel better?’

  ‘Not yet. I don’t know of Ariana’s having any real enemies. Her only sin is being overfriendly.’

  ‘Often?’ she hazarded.

  ‘Once.’

  ‘People can surprise you.’

  ‘All the time.’ Following her out across the lawn to the sumac, I stayed on the underlying question. ‘Ariana doesn’t lie well. Her eyes are too expressive.’

  ‘How long until she told you about the neighbor?’

  We’d established an easy rapport, Sally and I. She seemed trustworthy, genuinely interested in my take on the matter at hand. Or was she just a skilled detective at work, making me feel special so I’d keep flapping my mouth about personal matters? Either way, I heard myself answer again: ‘About six hours.’

  ‘What took so long?’

  ‘I was on a flight. She picked me up at the airport. After I didn’t punch Keith.’

  ‘Six hours is good. I wonder if she’s taking longer to tell you something else.’ She shoved aside the sumac branches. No footprints on the spongy ground beneath. She shot the light through the plastic sheeting of the greenhouse shed. Row after row of flowers poking up from the sagging wooden shelves. ‘Lilies?’

  ‘Yeah. Mostly mariposas.’

  She whistled. ‘Those are hell.’

  ‘Three to five years from seed to grow the bulb up. Everything eats them.’

  ‘Plant ’em a foot deep and pray.’

  ‘Like the dear departed.’

  ‘Progressive the way you take an interest in your wife and her activities.’ She hoisted her considerable frame onto our rear fence, peered across at the quiet street beyond. ‘Could’ve hopped over from here.’

  I nodded at the other fence, the drooping one dividing our backyard from the Millers’. ‘Or there.’

  ‘Or there,’ she conceded. She dropped back down with a huff of breath, and we started along the property line.

  ‘Now what?’ I asked, a bit anxiously.

  ‘Neighbor’s name?’

  ‘Don Miller.’ Saying it made my mouth sour.

  ‘It was shot from his roof. I’ll have to talk to him.’

  I stopped in my tracks, looking across at the Millers’ property. ‘Shouldn’t be hard.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He’s still awake.’ I pointed over the sagging fence at his silhouette in the bedroom window.

  He stepped back from the curtain, but Sally kept her stare on the house. ‘We’ll be back in a jiffy, Patrick. Go be with Ariana. She’s scared. Those expressive eyes.’ She turned her back on me politely, starting for our house to retrieve her partner.

  Ariana and I watched the DVDs again, all three, one after another. The hand in the latex glove did look masculine. The cuff of the black sweatshirt had been tucked into the glove so no skin would show, but I freeze-framed forward just to make sure.

  ‘I’m sorry I called the cops without talking to you. You lied to me, but still. I thought you were out of your head and going to do something stupid that would get you shot.’ Ariana was pacing around the couch, her hands laced on her head. ‘It’s amazing how little it takes to make someone suspicious. A misinterpretation, a white handkerchief, and a few well-placed nudges, right?’

  I watched the scoop of tan skin at her neckline. ‘Is there anyone you can think of . . .?’

  ‘No. Please. I don’t know anyone that interesting.’

  ‘I’m serious. Are there any other men who—’

  ‘Who what?’ Pink crept along her throat into her face. When Ari got flustered, she was usually a half step away from anger.

  ‘Who’ve taken an interest,’ I said evenly. ‘At the showroom, the grocery store, wherever.’

  ‘I don’t have a clue,’ she said. ‘He was prying at me about that.

  Detective Valentine. Who the hell does something like this? It’s gotta be someone from the studio. Or that asshole Conner.’ More pacing. A glance at the clock — it was nearly 2:00 A.M. ‘The
y’re gonna take the DVDs into evidence. We should copy them.’ She held up a hand to stop me. ‘I know, I’ll handle them with an oven mitt.’

  While she picked up the disc carefully by the edges, I went upstairs and searched the internet for Keith Conner. It didn’t take long to find a picture that included his hands. He wore a great old Baume & Mercier on his right wrist, so he was likely left-handed. I pulled an image into Photoshop and enlarged his right hand. Was this how celebrity stalkers whiled away their lonesome evenings? Keith’s hand looked like most men’s, like the hand used to open my back door. But even if he was behind this, he would have outsourced the break-in.

  Ariana’s voice startled me. ‘You’re not gonna believe this.’ She cradled her silver laptop, open. ‘Look at this.’ She tried to play the loaded DVD. Blank. ‘I dragged the icons to my desktop, but when I went to burn them, the disc drive made this sound’ — she demonstrated — ‘and then I double-clicked on the icons, and they all vanished.’

  ‘DVDs don’t erase,’ I said.

  Her stare hardened. ‘Well, these ones do.’

  I looked at the two other DVDs, in a Ziploc bag. ‘And you dragged them all to the desktop before burning. So you’re saying they’re all blank now.’

  She nodded. ‘I guess they were designed to erase as soon as someone tried to copy them.’

  I gritted my teeth, shoved the heels of my hands into my eyes. The doorbell rang.

  I swallowed, trying to moisten my throat. ‘Ari, let me handle the detectives. Pretend you went to bed.’ She started to say something, but I cut her off. ‘Just please trust me on this.’

  She ejected the last disc, carefully put it in the Ziploc with the others, and handed it to me without a word. Tense, I jogged down the stairs and opened the front door.

  Sally said, ‘Come in?’

  ‘Of course. How ’bout Valentine?’

  He was sitting in the passenger seat of the Crown Vic, jotting notes. Sally shrugged. ‘As I said, he’s less social.’

  We went inside. I said, ‘Make you a cup of tea or something?’ ‘You have that chai stuff?’

  I zapped two mugs in the microwave and brought them over. She shook a packet of Sweet’N Low into hers, and then another. She curled her hands around the mug. ‘You’re lonely, Patrick.’

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  She shrugged — it was something of a tic. ‘Sure. Single parent. Female detective. It’s a lot of time with people who don’t talk back. Or do. You know?’ She pulled off her plastic-frame glasses, buffed a lens on her shirt. ‘Don was out of town last night and this morning, when — according to you — the second and third DVDs were shot. He was attending a due-diligence meeting for a mutual fund in Des Moines. Sounds too soul-destroying to make up.’

  ‘He doesn’t have the imagination to do this.’

  That same shrug. ‘I’m not a child psychologist. So I asked him to show me the boarding passes. Plus, he’s right-handed.’ She took a sip. ‘Maybe the wife was in on it.’

  ‘No, she’s a sweetheart. Harmless.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t see her tottering up on your roof in spikes.’

  I laid the Ziploc full of discs on the table between us. ‘I just tried to copy these. They deleted themselves.’

  ‘Did they, now?’

  ‘I know what it looks like. Don’t start.’

  Through the steam of her tea, her eyes held steady on me. Yellowish brown, dull, not particularly keen. As deceiving as the rest of her.

  ‘And guess what else?’ I asked.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I’m thinking the only fingerprints on those DVDs will be mine and my wife’s. And?’ I waved her on.

  ‘And now, all of a sudden, the footage no longer exists.’ Her fingertips tapped the jewel cases. ‘Because these are magical erasing DVDs.’

  ‘Like I said, I know what this looks like. But someone broke into my house, took my camcorder, my DVDs, videoed me sleeping in my own family room. You and your partner both saw the videos.’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t have the opportunity to analyze them, did we?’ She offered an affable frown, as if we were two scientists puzzling over the same theorem. ‘I’ll add that it didn’t look like the intruder broke in. Looked like he turned a knob that was unlocked and came into your and your wife’s house. But okay. So let’s think about the next question: why?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Aren’t you a screenwriter or something? Why would someone do this in a movie?’

  ‘To show that they can.’

  ‘Or to show you and your wife that they can.’ She matched my frustrated expression. ‘I don’t have the answers. Valentine and I read signs. The signs here all say the same thing: domestic. Now, I don’t mean that makes it simple, but we know not to waste a lot of time once a couple closes ranks.’

  ‘Here’s the part where you tell me there’s not much you can do.’

  ‘There’s not much we can do.’

  ‘That I should contact you if anything else out of the ordinary happens.’

  ‘You should contact us if anything else out of the ordinary happens.’

  ‘I like you, Sally.’

  ‘Hey, I like you, too. How ’bout that.’ She stood, gulped the last of the chai, and shook her head. ‘Needs real sugar.’

  She set her mug gently on the counter. Outside, she stopped on the walk, Valentine waiting in the car. ‘Here’s what I’m saying, Patrick. If you wanna dig, we’re ready to come back here with a backhoe, compliments of the county. But you gotta make up your mind if you wanna know what we might turn up.’

  Chapter 9

  In the family room, I plugged in my camcorder to recharge. A creak on the stairs startled me, but it was Ariana, descending.

  ‘Well, that went just like you predicted,’ she said. ‘So there’s nothing we can do but wait for the next installment?’

  ‘I don’t want to wait,’ I said, ‘because we don’t know what’s coming next.’

  Ariana tugged at her hair in the back, then realized she was doing it and stopped. Her hands tapped her hips nervously. ‘They questioned Don. So now he’s officially pulled into it. If he tries to talk to me about this, what do I say?’

  ‘I don’t like setting rules.’

  ‘Implication: you should just be able to trust me.’

  ‘Ariana. Someone is menacing us. Do you think I give a shit whether you talk to Don?’

  She made an exasperated noise and went into the kitchen. As she filled a glass with slow-filtering water from the fridge, I watched her back. The smooth skin of her shoulders, framed by the tank top she slept in.

  For a brief stretch there, Ariana and I had been a team again. The familiar closeness, forced to the forefront by crisis. But now the detectives had gone, and there was just us with all the old problems and a handful of new ones.

  Ariana sat at the dining table, fingers around her glass, facing away. Her shoulders, hunched, looked frail and bony. Without turning, she said, ‘In the movies the guy cheats. Before a wedding, whatever. He feels awful, sleeps outside her door, humiliates himself in romantic fashion, and is forgiven. But never the woman. Never the woman.’

  I said, ‘Ulysses.’

  ‘Yeah, but it didn’t do box office.’ She sipped her water, set it down on the table. I walked over, sat across from her. She didn’t look up at me. Her lips were trembling. ‘Why didn’t you ever yell?’

  ‘At who?’

  ‘Anyone. Me, him.’

  ‘He’s not worth it,’ I said.

  ‘I thought maybe I was.’

  ‘You want me to yell?’

  ‘No, but maybe you could figure out some other way to show you give a fuck.’ She laughed. One bitter note, and then she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Look, I make overpriced furniture and sell it to people who mostly don’t appreciate it. They gonna carve that on my gravestone? I’m thirty-five. Most of my friends are busy with car pools and play dates, and the ones who aren’t have develope
d exercise disorders or stay on vacation. It’s a weird age, and I’m not handling it so well. The world closed in on me in a hurry, and my life doesn’t have a lot of what I hoped it would. The one thing I have that feels special is you.’ Her voice cracked. She chewed her lip, trying to recapture the thread of her thoughts. ‘Is it the end of the world you don’t feel that way about me? No. But it still sucks. So when I talked to Keith, and he told me you were with Sasha . . .’ She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew into it heartily. ‘And then Don came over, and maybe I thought I could still surprise myself, surprise you. To jar us out of whatever shitty place we’d gotten ourselves into. I don’t know.’

  She shook her head. ‘The sex was miserable, if it’s any consolation.’

  ‘Some.’ I’d fought every instinct in my body not to ask about what happened, not to torture through the beads one by one, who wore what, who put whose hand where. I was at least smart enough to know that the more I knew, the more I’d want to know, and the worse it would get.

  I reached a hand awkwardly toward her on the table. ‘I neglected you. I get that. Keith hit you when you were vulnerable. When you were primed to believe it. But what I can’t get past is that you didn’t talk to me first.’

  ‘I’d been trying to talk to you for days, Patrick.’

  ‘I was barely holding it together. I couldn’t cut it. Keith was just my excuse to bail out.’ I couldn’t manage to meet her eye. ‘The notes — the stupid rewrite notes morning after night.’ I stopped myself. ‘I know, you’ve heard it all already. But I was . . .’

  She sensed the change in my tone. ‘What?’

  I looked at my hands. ‘I made so many compromises and still wound up a failure.’

  She looked at me silently, her dark eyes mournful.

  ‘I never knew that,’ she said. ‘That you felt that way.’

  I said, ‘So I wasn’t there for you. Fine. A marriage should grant you the right to be uselessly self-absorbed for a period, like, say, nine days before your spouse goes jumping in the sack with someone. It’s not as if I didn’t have opportunities. I was on a movie set, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Yeah, as the writer.’