Jaine Austen 1 - This Pen for Hire (2 page)

“But I don’t have an uncle Rupert.”

Howard sat across from me at my dining room table, tapping his foot in a nervous staccato on my hardwood floor. I couldn’t help noticing that his fingernails were bitten to oblivion.

“Look, Howard,” I said as gently as I could. “Let’s face facts. Under ordinary circumstances, Stacy might not go out with you. After all, she’s a very beautiful woman, and like I said in the letter, she’s bound to have all sorts of guys vying for her attention.”

(TRANSLATION: She’d turn you down so fast, your pens would be spinning in your pocket protector.)

“But if she thinks you’re related to Rupert Murdoch, you might stand a chance.”

Howard blinked, puzzled.

“Who’s Rupert Murdoch?”

Good Lord. What planet was this guy from, anyway?

“Only one of the richest men in the world.”

“But Stacy isn’t the kind of girl who’d go out with a guy just because he’s rich.”

Right. And Oreos aren’t fattening.

“Besides, if I say he’s my uncle, isn’t that lying?”

Prozac looked up from where she was napping on the dining table and shot me a look, as if to say, “Is this guy for real?” Or maybe she was saying, “When do we eat?” With cats, it’s hard to tell.

“I prefer to think of it as a means to an end,” I said.

“Won’t she be mad when she finds out I’m not really Rupert Murdoch’s nephew?”

“You can only hope by the time she learns the truth, she will have fallen in love with you.”

“Gee, I don’t know,” said Howard, chewing on his lower lip. “Isn’t there any other way to get her to go out with me?”

“Other than taking her hostage, I don’t think so.”

Poor Howard. He was so damned innocent, with his bulging brown eyes and polyester pants. If he wanted Stacy, he was going to have to lie. After all, we were in a town where lying is a way of life, and the truth is as rare as wrinkles in Malibu.

Howard looked at me with trusting eyes. “If you think it’ll work…”

“I do,” I said.

And much to my surprise, it did.

Three days later, Howard phoned me, barely able to contain his excitement.

“Stacy said yes! We’re going out tonight. Can you believe it?”

Actually, I couldn’t.

“That’s wonderful, Howard.”

“How can I thank you? Do you realize this will be the first time in my life I’ve ever had a date on Valentine’s Day? Usually I just go to the movies with Mom.”

Good Lord. Just when you think no one could possibly be any more pathetic than you, someone comes along and out-pathetics you.

I wished Howard the best of luck with Stacy, and got off the phone.

If I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for my own Valentine’s date. Surprised you, didn’t I? Bet you thought I’d be sitting home alone with Soup for One. Well, you’re wrong.

I gussied myself up and headed out the door for my hot date. With twelve senior citizens at the Shalom Retirement Home.

I volunteer once a week at the Shalom Retirement Home, teaching a memoir-writing class for seniors. It’s just my way of contributing to the community and helping the elderly add a little meaning to their lives. Okay, okay. It’s my way of getting out of my apartment one night a week.

When I first signed up for the gig, I thought I’d be hearing wonderful
Stones for Ibarra
-ish memories—exciting adventures, touching tales of meaningful relationships, and atmosphere-soaked descriptions of life at the beginning of the century. Instead, I got wooden travelogues about “My Trip to Israel” or equally leaden tributes to “My Son, the Orthodontist.”

It’s funny. Women of my generation will bare their souls to perfect strangers at the drop of an hors d’oeuvre. We’ll complain about our parents, our lovers, our vaginal dryness. But the ladies of that generation (and most of my students are ladies) wouldn’t dream of sharing anything negative about their private lives with the outside world. In my class, all the parents are loving, all the children are devoted, and all the dead husbands are up for sainthood.

In spite of their less than stirring memoirs, I’m really quite fond of these ladies. At seventy- and eighty-something—when many of their peers are sitting slack-jawed in front of Jerry Springer—they’re taking out their pens and putting something down on paper each week (not easy at any age). I don’t care if they don’t share their innermost thoughts. I care that they show up at my class each week, still taking a whack at life.

I want to be like them when I grow up.

I got in my Corolla that Valentine’s Day and headed east on Pico Boulevard. Traffic was a nightmare. Pedestrians were making better time than I was. The roads were clogged with gooey-eyed Valentine’s couples on their way to dinner, giggling and flirting and necking at red lights. I hope they all caught gum diseases.

Disgusted with the traffic on Pico, I ducked onto a side street, where I whizzed along, if your definition of “whizzing” is stopping for nineteen stop signs. I finally pulled into the parking lot of the Shalom Retirement Home, a one-time apartment building now chopped up into one- and two-room “retirement suites.”

I hurried into the conference room to find my students already seated, talking among themselves, complaining about the chicken at dinner (dry and tasteless—and such small portions). A few of them eschewed food criticism to scribble last-minute changes on their essays.

“Sorry I’m late, folks.”

“That’s okay, sweetie.”

Mr. Goldman, the lone man in my class, winked at me. At least I think it was a wink. Mr. Goldman has a nervous tic, so I can never quite tell when he’s winking or blinking.

As I sprinted over to my seat, I noticed an apple at the head of the conference table.

“For you, doll.”

Mr. Goldman grinned broadly, exposing an impressive set of dentures.

Mrs. Pechter, a soft, powdery lady with bosoms the size of throw pillows, shook her head in disgust.

Of the dozens of women in the Shalom Retirement Home, Mr. Goldman had set his sights on a woman forty-eight years his junior—me. Here he was surrounded by women his own age and background, women he actually had something in common with. But no, he wanted someone young enough to be his granddaughter. A common Los Angeles malady, technically known as “The Michael Douglas Syndrome.”

“I polished it myself,” he boasted, eyeing the apple proudly.

“Yeah,” added Mrs. Pechter, “with his sweater.”

I glanced at Mr. Goldman’s gravy-stained cardigan and smiled weakly.

“Thank you, Mr. Goldman,” I said, then turned to the others. “Okay, who wants to read first this week?”

I glanced at Mrs. Vincenzo, hoping she’d volunteer. A slender woman with a dancer’s body and long silken hair that she wore swept up on the crown of her head in a wobbly bun, Bette Vincenzo was the talent of the class. She was a rabbi’s daughter who’d rebelled against her Orthodox upbringing by marrying a Catholic fireman. She told the stories of her life—if not always grammatically—with refreshing candor. Unlike the other ladies, she never worried about keeping up appearances when writing about her many marriages (four, so far), her offbeat jobs, and her fondness for tequila.

I eyed her hopefully, and sure enough, she whipped out a story, written boldly on looseleaf paper with turquoise marker.

“When I was sixty-four,” she began, “I got a job as a ticket taker in a porno movie house….”

What a dame. I was thirty-six, but compared to her, I felt eighty-six. One of these days, as Mrs. Pechter was fond of saying, I really was going to have to “have a life.”

After Mrs. Vincenzo finished her tale of life in the porno biz, Mrs. Rubin read about her trip to The Orient (paid for by her son, the doctor), and Mrs. Zahler regaled us with tales of the late Mr. Zahler’s charitable activities.

Finally, I could ignore it no longer—Mr. Goldman’s eager hand, waving to be recognized.

“Okay, Mr. Goldman, why don’t you read us what you’ve written.”

He took out a depressingly thick wad of pages from his notebook and began reading the latest installment in his epic saga, “My Life as a Carpet Salesman.”

In the story of his life, Mr. Goldman spared us no details. We heard about the ups. The downs. The good. And the bad. (“Area rugs—feh!”) Like Mrs. Vincenzo, Mr. Goldman had no qualms about sharing the intimate moments of his life. Somewhere in every story, he wrote about what an exciting lover he’d been—always looking up from his pages to wink/blink at me.

Now Mr. Goldman was rambling on about the advent of broadloom. I looked around the table. Mrs. Pechter was nodding off already, not two paragraphs into his tale.

As Mr. G. thrilled us with the pros and cons of Scotch-garding, my mind started to wander. I thought of Mrs. Vincenzo and her life filled with lovers. What was wrong with me, anyway? Why couldn’t I at least
try
to meet men? My last Valentine’s date had been more than four years ago. With The Blob. If you can call it a date. He bought me a five-pound box of chocolates, ate it while I was getting dressed to go out for dinner, and then spent the rest of the night puking in the toilet bowl.

At last, Mr. Goldman ground to a halt. The ladies nudged each other awake, and we adjourned for the evening. Mr. Goldman asked me if I’d like to join him for a moonlight stroll around the parking lot.

“No, thanks,” I said, hurrying out the door.

“Wait,” he cried. “You forgot your apple.”

Gritting my teeth, I walked back into the room.

“You sure you won’t change your mind?” he said. “I’m one heck of a kisser.”

“It’s mighty tempting, but I’ll pass.”

“How about you come back and see me Saturday night? It’s Mambo Mania night.”

“Sorry, but I’m going to be busy.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

“In other words, you’re telling me you’re not interested.”

“Not in other words, Mr. Goldman. In those words.”

He blinked in amazement. This time it was a blink, not a wink. Clearly he wasn’t expecting such an overt rebuff.

“Okay, you don’t have to hit me over the head with a hammer. I wasn’t born yesterday. I get it. You’re not interested.”

He turned away from me and started gathering his papers with trembling liver-spotted hands.

I felt awful. What on earth had possessed me to speak to him so harshly?

“Look, Mr. Goldman, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He peered at me suspiciously.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay,” he grinned, “so how about Sunday? You want to go to the movies? They’re playing
The Sound of Music
in the rec room. We can neck when they turn the lights down.”

I grabbed my apple and ran.

I drove home and headed straight to where I always go when I’m stressed—the bathtub. With a pit stop at the refrigerator to pour myself a glass of wine. Okay, two glasses of wine.

I plopped some strawberry bath salts in the tub and sniffed with satisfaction as the room filled with berry-scented steam. Then I turned on the radio to a classical music station and sank down into the tub. I lay there, listening to Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
and sipping my bargain chardonnay, imported all the way from Fresno. I could feel the tension oozing out of my body. It was all quite divine, until my neighbor Lance Venable, he of the x-ray hearing, started banging on the wall.

“Keep it down, will you?”

With a sigh, I turned off the radio and plopped back into the tub. I tried humming the
Moonlight Sonata,
but somehow it didn’t sound quite as snazzy as the London Philharmonic. After a while, Prozac wandered in and leaped up onto the toilet tank. She gazed down at me through slitted eyes, as if to say, “What fools these mortals be to get their bodies wet.” Either that or, “Got any tuna?” Like I say, with cats, it’s hard to tell.

I soaked for about forty-five minutes, until my fingertips were raisins and my hair had frizzed to the consistency of Brillo. Finally, when I’d licked the last drop of chardonnay from the glass, I hauled myself out of the tub.

I wrapped myself in a coffee-stained chenille bathrobe that I’d owned since Ally McBeal was in junior high, and got into bed. I flicked on the TV with my remote and zapped around, checking out Today’s Special Value on QVC, Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory, and an infomercial for an instrument of torture appropriately named the Ab Dominator.

Finally, I flipped to the news—just in time to see a skinny guy with a bobbing Adam’s apple being taken into police custody. Wait a minute. I knew that skinny guy. It was Howard Murdoch. I sat up straight in bed. What the heck was Howard doing in police custody?

The TV reporter obligingly filled me in. My mild-mannered client, a guy so timid he was probably afraid of Count Chocula, was being arrested for the grisly murder of Westside aerobics instructor Stacy Lawrence.

“I
swear, I didn’t do it.”

I sat across from Howard in the visitors’ room of the county jail, a stark, fluorescent-lit cavern that smelled like old oatmeal. It was the morning after Howard’s arrest, and I’d driven over to see him. Needless to say, I felt responsible for his incarceration. If I hadn’t written that stupid letter, Howard would never have had a date with Stacy in the first place.

Of course, it was possible he’d actually killed her. But I didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. The TV reporter said Stacy had been bludgeoned to death. I just couldn’t picture Howard in the act of bludgeoning. I mean, he’s the kind of guy who needs help with a twist-top cap.

Howard sat behind a fingerprint-smudged glass partition, his skinny body lost in the voluminous folds of his orange jailhouse jumpsuit. He gnawed at his lower lip, his eyes wide with bewilderment and disbelief.

“What on earth happened?” I said into the prison telephone.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I showed up at her apartment, and she was dead.”

“How did you get in?”

“The door was open; I just walked in.”

“And then?”

He shut his eyes, replaying the scene in his mind.

“The apartment was dark. I called out to Stacy, but she didn’t answer. I thought maybe she was in the shower, but I didn’t hear any water running. I called out to her again. Still no answer. For a minute, I wondered if this was her way of standing me up, but that didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she just come to the door and tell me to get lost? By then I was starting to get worried, so I went down the hall to her bedroom.”

He shuddered at the memory of what happened next.

“I saw her lying there, in the dark. I was so close to her, I could smell her perfume. I remember thinking how nice it smelled. I called her name, but she still didn’t answer. Finally, I got up my courage and turned on the light. And that’s when I saw all the blood.”

Tears welled in his eyes. “Oh, God, it was awful.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No, I tried to give her artificial respiration. I thought maybe I could save her. But I couldn’t. And then the police came and found me, with her blood all over me.”

“Who called the police?”

“One of the neighbors. The lady next door. I told the cops I didn’t do it, but I could tell they didn’t believe me.” He was chewing on his lower lip so hard, I was surprised it wasn’t bleeding. “My mom’s so upset, I’m afraid she’s going to have a heart attack.”

“Don’t worry, Howard. You can’t go to jail for something you didn’t do.”

“But I am in jail.”

He had a point there.

“Have you called an attorney?”

“Yeah, I found one in the Yellow Pages.”

Oh, great. I could see it now. The judge asks Howard,
“How do you plead?”
And Howard, thanks to the crackerjack advice he gets from his Yellow Pages attorney, answers,
“On my knees, Your Honor.”

“Don’t you know any other attorney?”

“Just my cousin Bruce, but he’s been disbarred.”

I smiled what I hope was an encouraging smile. “I’m sure everything’s going to be okay,” I lied.

I waved good-bye through the fingerprints in the glass partition and left him sitting there, still holding the phone to his ear, a geek caught in the headlights.

I was walking down the corridor, trying to get the smell of oatmeal out of my nostrils, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Ms. Austen?”

I turned around and saw a cop who couldn’t have been more than twelve, trying to look stern.

“Detective Rea would like to see you.”

Minutes later, I was being ushered into the office of Detective Timothy Rea. Luckily, it didn’t smell of oatmeal. It did, however, smell of cigarettes and gym socks.

Detective Rea was a tall, good-looking guy with reddish blond hair and ears just a little too big for his head. He reminded me of Joey Ross, a kid I went to elementary school with. Joey was a world-class wiseass, always challenging the teachers and acting like he knew all the answers. And the irritating thing about Joey was that he really
did
know all the answers. He was a smart guy, and he never let you forget it.

Detective Rea looked just like Joey during a pop quiz.

“Have a seat, Ms. Austen.”

He gestured to a chair that had clearly been around since Los Angeles belonged to the Spaniards.

“Howard tells me you helped him write this letter.”

He held up the dratted letter.

I nodded weakly.

“Did you know he was lying about being Rupert Murdoch’s nephew? We checked with Mr. Murdoch, and he says he has no nephew named Howard.”

“Actually, that was my idea,” I said, shame bubbling to my cheeks. “Howard didn’t want to lie. I talked him into it. It’s all my fault.”

“Then maybe we should book you as an accessory,” Rea joked. At least, I hoped he was joking.

“Look,” I said, “I know I don’t have any training in this sort of thing, but I’m a very good judge of character, and I just can’t believe Howard is capable of murder. I mean, if he wanted to kill Stacy, why would he leave a paper trail? Why wouldn’t he have just followed her home from the gym and killed her in an alley or something?”

Detective Rea looked at me with appraising eyes.

“You’re right.”

I sighed with relief. Obviously Howard’s arrest was all a terrible mistake. I could go home and soak in the tub and forget the whole thing ever happened.

“You don’t have any training whatsoever in police matters. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, you don’t know what you’re talking about. We found Howard covered in his victim’s blood, holding the ThighMaster.”

“The ThighMaster?”

“The murder weapon.”

“Stacy was bludgeoned to death with a ThighMaster?”

He nodded somberly. “The woman in Apartment Seven heard Howard screaming and called the police.”

“But that doesn’t mean he killed her. Maybe somebody else was in the apartment before him. Maybe that person ran off when he heard Howard coming. Did you look for footprints outside Stacy’s patio?”

“Yes, we looked for footprints. We often do technical stuff like that here at the police department.”

“And? Did you find any?”

“As a matter of fact, we did. The gardener’s. One Chuy Sandoval, who at the time of the murder was home having dinner with his wife and four kids.”

“What about the other neighbors? Did any of them hear anything unusual?”

“Aside from Howard screaming, no.”

Rea picked up a file from his desk.

“Did you know your client has a history of mental illness?”

Uh-oh.

“He does?”

He nodded, the same sure-of-himself grin on his face that Joey Ross had in the final round of our fifth grade spelling bee.

“He’s been hospitalized twice.”

“For what?”

“Depression and anorexia.”

“Anorexia?” I snorted. “Sounds like the mental history of a killer, all right.”

“Well, I think he did it.” Rea lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke in my direction. “Unfortunately for Howard, I’m the cop on the case. And you’re not.”

He smiled smugly. And suddenly I remembered the final round of the fifth grade spelling bee. It was Joey Ross’s turn. The word was “euphemistic.” And Joey spelled it with an “f.”

For once in his life, Joey was wrong. Just as wrong, I was certain, as Detective Timothy Rea.