The Last Blue Plate Special (11 page)

“Have you been married before?” I asked softly, as if speaking of the dead.

“Thirty-five years. My wife, Crystal … the boys … well, the boys were grown when I left, when I first met Ruby and knew I
loved her. She came to Indianapolis—Indianapolis, Indiana— did a revival. That’s where we lived … I lived. I fell for her.
She’s so beautiful. I’ve been with her for six years now. I wanted to marry her as soon as Crystal gave me the divorce. But
Ruby wouldn’t, and then someone else … I’m sure there’s someone else. She was dumping me. Today was going to be my last day
introducing her, and I thought maybe, you know, I could just die up there onstage. I had this gun and I was going to do it,
kill myself, but I wanted her with me. I couldn’t go without her.”

BB was right. Revivals
are
always about sex. The too-blue eyes were crying again, and I felt like a snake. He crossed his arms on the table and lay
his head on them, sobbing. End-of-the-line despair. I hated seeing it because I have some idea of how it feels. Most people
do.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, walking around the table to put a hand on his shoulder. And that’s when I saw it. A pale, thin scar
running along his hairline in back and vanishing behind his ears. It explained the tight jaw, the absence of jowls.

“You probably even helped her pick out a plastic surgeon, didn’t you?” I asked. “Everybody’s doing it, but it’s so hard to
find somebody top-notch.”

I don’t think I’ve used the term “top-notch” in my entire life, but I had a sense Jones would find it appropriate.

“Oh, yes, she went to my surgeon for that,” he said, half smiling blearily as he lifted his head. “Her base of operations
is right here in San Diego, and so is the surgeon. She loved the way I looked and wouldn’t have gone to anyone else. She just
had it done three weeks ago, too. A whole face-lift. Just in time for this tour.”

Just in time for this fill-in-the-blank. Tour, campaign, election.
I remembered Kate Van Der Elst rubbing at her neck as she talked to me earlier. Remembered her little twitch when I asked
if she and Dixie Ross and Mary Harriet Grossinger went to the same dentist. My bet was it wasn’t a dentist.

“I’ve been thinking of having a mole removed from my neck,” I told J. R. Jones. “I’d love it if you’d give me the name of
your surgeon.”

“Rainer,” he answered. “Dr. Jennings Rainer at the Rainer Clinic. They’re top-notch. Everybody at Rainer is top-notch.”

“Wes,” I said to Rathbone in the hall, “I’m not sure, but I think I know where to find the Sword of Heaven.”

R
athbone and I agreed to meet at Auntie’s, where Rox’s linedance team would be finishing rehearsal by the time we arrived.
At this point, Rathbone said, the opinions of a forensic psychiatrist became critical. Not that my assessments leading to
this point hadn’t been brilliant, he hastened to add. But if I was right, the police would need special guidelines for continuing
the investigation. Because it didn’t look like any serial killer the police had seen before. It didn’t even look like
anything
the police had seen before. He wanted Roxie’s opinion before taking the next step.

When Brontë and I arrived he was already there, and if he felt the slightest discomfort at being in a gay bar, he didn’t show
it.

“Hey,” he said, leaning comfortably on the rail surrounding Auntie’s dance floor, “they’re pretty good!”

Rox and the team were concluding a tricky routine that combined elements of both the tango and traditional square dancing.
The choreography was Rox’s creation, and I knew she had an eye on first prize at a big rodeo line-dance competition in New
Mexico right after Christmas. Her fringed satin blouse was drenched with sweat and all two hundred of her beaded braids flew
out from her head as she executed the stomps and turns of the dance.

I thought she looked like magic out there under a strobing gold light. An image of everything bright and lively and warm.
Her cowboy boots didn’t miss a step when she saw me and smiled. I, on the other hand, managed to trip while standing perfectly
still and wound up sitting on a stool I’d never intended to sit on. Sometimes just looking at Roxie causes me to lose track
of basic things. Like maintaining sufficient muscle tension in my legs to keep from falling over.

Rathbone grinned.

“I get that way around Annie sometimes,” he said. “It’s ridiculous, but it keeps me from getting all wrapped up any more in
the crap at work. I’m lucky.”

“Um,” I answered, embarrassed. “How long have you and Annie been married?”

“Almost a year. Surprised? Thought I was gonna say ‘since high school’ or something, didn’t you?”

He seemed pleased with himself. I sensed a squadron of insights flying my way.

“Well, yeah.”

“This thing with Annie, it changed the inside of my head. Used to be, I thought everything had to be one way. Cops are like
that. But with Annie, well, she just loosened me up.”

“That’s great,” I said, hoping not to hear more. “Looks like the rehearsal’s over. Rox will join us just as soon as she changes
her blouse. Do you two-step?”

I wouldn’t have asked, but somebody had just put Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Down at the Twist and Shout” on the CD player. Impossible
to sit still. There weren’t many people around at dinnertime on a Sunday, but everybody who
was
there was on the floor.

“No, but I’m game to learn.”

So while Roxie changed her sweaty blouse I led Wes Rathbone onto the dance floor and showed him how to do the simple steps
shadow-style, both of us facing the same way. He caught on instantly and before the second chorus was able to lead from the
traditional stance as well. By the song’s end he was trying spins. Rox had changed to a pumpkin-colored sweatshirt and was
watching from a table where she’d ordered iced tea for everybody.

“You’re a natural,” she told Rathbone when we joined her. “You’d be great for the line-dance team.”

I was afraid he was going to say something like,
Aw, shucks, ma’am,
but instead he asked Rox if the invitation included his wife.

“Sure, if she’s got half the moves you do,” Roxie answered.

“More,” he said. “Annie was a professional dancer when she was young, before her first marriage. Ballet. She’s gonna love
this! Let me give her a call, get her down here.”

As he loped off toward Auntie’s pay phone Rox looked at me over her tea and rattled her beads. The sound was questioning.

“So tell me what happened today,” she said.

“You annihilate my equilibrium,” I answered calmly. “And now you want to sit here and talk to a cop about serial killers.
Is it just me, or is there something odd about this picture?”

“There’s a lot odd about this picture, which is why it’s interesting. What happened?”

“The preacher’s boyfriend shot her because he loves her,” I said.

“One way of handling it,” Rox said thoughtfully as Rathbone returned and straddled a chair.

“Annie’s on her way, can’t wait to check this out,” he said happily. Then to me, “This is what I meant, Blue. Annie ’n’ me.
She taught me never to pass up a chance, especially a chance for fun. World’s full of mean people who put fun last, that’s
what she says. And you know, it’s true.”

I was beginning to think of Wes Rathbone as a New Age guru behind a badge. It was confusing.

“You wanted to talk about this case?” Roxie suggested. Down-to-business look.

“Both Jerry Russell Jones, the shooter in today’s incident at the revival, and the victim, Ruby Emerald, have been patients
at the Rainer Clinic, which specializes in cosmetic surgery,” Rathbone replied happily, as if we were still talking about
fun. “Emerald was the subject of one of Sword of Heaven’s communications, an audiotape in which Sword took credit for Emerald’s
death even though in fact she did not die. Nor, by the way, is she dead now. Jones shot her in the left shoulder, smashed
a bone. She’ll be fine. And Jones claims not to know anything about the Sword communications.”

“Wait a minute,” Roxie said. “This Jones has just attempted murder in front of more than ten thousand people, right? This
does not say ‘reliable witness’ to me. This says emotional lability, inflated sense of own importance, irrational need for
attention, and to greater or lesser extents a break with consensual reality. Who here doesn’t know that if you shoot an unarmed
person in the presence of witnesses you’re in deep okra? Get real, Wes. Just because Jones says he’s not Sword doesn’t mean
he’s not Sword.”

Rathbone’s easygoing smile did not diminish. “For the moment let’s assume Jones shot Emerald because she was dumping him,
just like he said. Let’s assume he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, just an old guy who fell head-over-heels for a younger
woman, left his wife of thirty-five years for her, followed her all over the country, and then she told him he was history.”

I was curious. “How old
is
Jones?” I asked.

“Seventy-four.”

“You’re
kidding
! I would have figured early sixties, tops.”

”Hey, he wanted to look good for his lady. Worked out, ate right, even had his face done. Hell, I might just do it myself
one of these days. Why not?”

“Only vampires don’t age,” Rox said cryptically. “So where is this going?”

Rathbone leaned into the table and looked at me. “Blue has a notion that Kate Van Der Elst may also have had cosmetic surgery,”
he went on. “We don’t know that yet, but for the moment let’s consider the possibility. We do know that a threat was left
at her campaign headquarters last night. Suppose Van Der Elst had a face-lift at this Rainer Clinic. Same place Jones and
Emerald did. What have we got?”

“Three people who can’t stop smiling?” Roxie offered.

“We have the first connection between two threats,” I told her. “A common denominator.”

“And you want me to do what?” she asked Rathbone. “Provide a typical psychiatric profile for serial killer cosmetic surgeons?
Come
on.
”

There are times when hard science and social science clash. This was one of them.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. Then I walked toward the ladies’ room and detoured to the pay phone as soon as I was out of
sight. After finding thirty-five cents I dialed the Van Der Elsts’ home number and heard Pieter’s voice answer. I’d correctly
assumed they’d be at home on Sunday night, and I didn’t mince words.

“It’s Blue McCarron,” I began. “I need to know if Kate has had any contact with a surgeon named Jennings Rainer.”

His sharp intake of breath was a dead giveaway. “Why?” he said.

“Pieter, don’t play games with me. This morning you wanted Kate to withdraw from the race because you were so afraid for her.
You wanted to hire a bodyguard. A threat to her life was pushed under the door of her campaign headquarters. And now you’re
being coy about a face-lift? What’s the matter with you?”

“I’d better get Kate,” was all he said.

“Level with me,” I told her as soon as she picked up the phone. “Ruby Emerald was targeted by the same person who named Dixie
and Mary Harriet as victims before they died. Emerald had surgery at the Rainer Clinic three weeks ago. Did you?”

“Yes,” Kate Van Der Elst said, her voice tremulous. “So did Dixie and Mary Harriet. Mary Harriet had gone to this place first,
years ago. She told Dixie about it when she went back recently for an eye tuck, then Dixie and I talked it over for a long
time and decided to do it together, have this … procedure done before the campaign crunch. It was a couple of weeks ago.”

I felt a little dizzy, leaning against the wall by Auntie’s pay phone. Also a little sick. Medical contexts—hospitals, ambulances,
dentists’ offices, even veterinary clinics—must engender trust. In these places we allow strangers a license unthinkable anywhere
else in our lives. Medical personnel make mistakes, but rarely does any medical practitioner deliberately inflict harm. It
just doesn’t happen. And when it does, the perpetrator invariably reveals a darkness in the human soul best left unseen.

“Oh, Kate, why didn’t you tell me this morning when I asked about places the three of you had been?”

“It isn’t something you talk about, Blue. It’s embarrassing, some people would even say shameful, to care so much about superficial
appearance that you’ll let someone cut your face off your skull and then sew it back on. But I was going to tell you if this
… this
creature
sending all these threats wasn’t found. Pieter and I talked it over. I was going to phone you Monday, tomorrow. But Blue,
tell me …”

“What, Kate?”

“This Ruby Emerald, is she all right?”

I didn’t want to confuse the issue by discussing Emerald’s drama involving an aging lover and a gun.

“She’s going to be fine,” I hedged. “I’ll want to talk with you tomorrow, and so will the police. We still know very little,
but you’ve been helpful. Thank you.”

Roxie and Rathbone were dancing when I got back to the table, where Brontë was wagging her stub of a tail and smiling at people
as they returned from the bar with bowls of popcorn. My dog’s priorities are clear.

And so were Kate Van Der Elst’s, I thought. Southern California isn’t the Hollywood hypeland everyone thinks it is. But neither
are its cultural leanings characterized by stoic acceptance. Of anything. If there is a cultural mantra here, it’s “Why hasn’t
that been fixed?”

Floods, earthquakes, fires, and mudslides regularly disrupt landscapes which within a year are rebuilt, replanted, and redefined.
The Southern California mind accepts the inevitability of disaster and death with a complacency almost Zen in its tone. The
companion to such acceptance, however, is a fondness for beauty while we’re still around to enjoy it. Freeway medians are
planted with pink and white oleander. Streets are swept, houses painted, art purchased. An unattractive receptacle wheeled
to the curb on trash day is a blight and must be replaced. The same goes for unattractive bags under the eyes or those drooping
folds of skin at the neck. Why not have it all fixed? And who would vote for somebody who didn’t?