Killer Commute

  “Actually, I did it once on the gut and it wasn’t that big a deal. Does that disgust you, Charlie? It did Mrs. McDougal.”

  “Did I tell you my mom’s got a boyfriend?” Charlie wished she hadn’t gotten into this conversation.

  “Edwina? Good for her. She’s been alone too many years. Have you met him?”

  “No, she just called and told me, no details yet. And she’s not alone. She has a job—I mean a profession.”

  “Poor Charlie, you still don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “When Libby leaves home—what if you lose your job? What if no one wants to hire you in your profession? All you’ll have left is Mitch Hilsten, whom you claim not to want, and if that’s true he’ll have wandered off by then. What will you do with yourself?”

  “Ed, I should worry? I’ll be in prison for murdering Jeremy and won’t be able to hear anybody coming up behind me.”

  At Judy & Gym’s Age Buster Club the wind met them at the door. You’d have to step outside to get away from it. Some of it had to be the music and the clapping. If one butterfly spreading its wings can cause a tornado somewhere around the globe, this place must be destroying whole planets in space. People rode bikes that went nowhere so fast their temple vessels bulged. Others kicked and boxed at air and jumped like maniacs bent on destroying evil and the rest of life as we know it. And all in sync with the music. Three incredibly pregnant women, butts elevated, bicycled their legs and breathed in and out with so much sweat you expected an infant to explode through the seams of the Spandex crotches.

  Charlie, who was tone deaf and detested most music, started to cry when it disappeared.

  Edward Esterhazie put an arm around her and she could feel him talking by his chest vibrations to the man who’d come up to them. Probably Gym. Charlie would not know what they discussed until Ed wrote it down for her at home. The walk there was silent and humbling.

  Charlie knew how uncomfortable Ed must be, suddenly unable to communicate with someone he’d been talking to half the day. She would have felt the same had the situations been reversed. And she’d gone just as suddenly from a normal, functional, reasonably good-looking, vital, important, necessary, respected member of society (if you didn’t listen to Detective J. S.) to a dependent, struck dumb and helpless, ugly lost soul of no use to anyone, a burden on friends and society. Someone she, as a busy important professional, would have pitied but shunned, because her patience and sympathy cup had long been drained.

  Charlie’s common uncommon sense was down in the dumps, too. It suggested she could survive by sneaking around LAX with a little written card that, because she was a deaf-mute and had no income, begged a dollar or five from travelers who looked like they came from the Midwest or the South or Texas.

  * * *

  Larry had picked up a whopping salad of greens, mixed sweet peppers, and fresh mushrooms at Salads R Us. And they toasted leftover garlic bread from last night to put the creamed egg and asparagus concoction on. It was a wonderful dinner even for a hearing-impaired, devastated ex-person.

  Charlie’s secretary reached across the table in the breakfast nook and stroked the back of her hand as she reached for her glass of milk. They both had tears in their eyes, which made him look wavy.

  Larry mouthed, How about some tea for dessert?

  She’d nodded before she realized she’d read his lips through tear-film. They’d communicated without even any crickets in her ears. Charlie finished her milk, cleaned the last of the creamed egg off her fork, and used her napkin to blow her nose. Still the tears kept coming. She hated being weak enough to cry.

  Suddenly she was nose-to-nose with Libby’s damned cat, who’d managed to do his top-of-the-refrigerator-to-the-top-of-the-table-fly-through-the-air-and-land act without overturning any plates or glasses. She couldn’t hear him purr but she knew he did—he had all the power now. He sniffed her face, her tears, her mouth, and slid himself between her middle and the tabletop, and then under the table to curl up, warm and vibrating, on her lap.

  Charlie sat stone still. The creature had found her vulnerable and was planning a diabolical attack—which everyone would blame her for, because she reacted inappropriately or was insensitive to the higher intelligence of animals or some such nonsense.

  Larry stuck the cups with the tea bags into the microwave and came over to check out Charlie’s lap. Tuxedo was kneading it through her Dockers. He prefers you helpless.

  He’s planning to bite me.

  Try petting him.

  He’ll bite me.

  Try anyway.

  It was strange how slowly you talk when you think someone has to read your lips and how slowly you answer when you can’t hear your own voice, but they were communicating. Albeit at a subhuman level. Charlie couldn’t hear herself speak, but she could feel the vibrations of it in her throat somewhere.

  Go on, Tickle him under the chin, too.

  Charlie dared a hand on the cat’s head and then ran it down his back. She was surprised that he enjoyed it so much he rolled over on his back and raised his chin. She scratched under his chin and was sort of beginning to feel better until she petted the proffered tummy. He curled up in an instant and grabbed her wrist with his front claws, bit her hand savagely, and raked her forearm with his back claws. Then he was off on a scramble around the kitchen and into the living room on one of his demented Grand Prix binges—usually reserved for after a colossal dump in the litter box.

  And the most beautiful man in the world sat on Charlie’s kitchen floor laughing so hard she thought his head would fall off.

  So what’s so goddamned funny? she vibrated.

  Charlie, that means he accepts you. He doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t love you. That’s asking too much of a cat. That’s how he would accept another cat.

  Charlie sucked blood from an injured hand and counted to twenty.

  Ed Esterhazie had written to Charlie, before he left to take Doug to the diner, that he had a physician friend at the Yacht Club and was going to ask him who the best specialist was to consult on Charlie’s problem. Almost as an afterthought he’d added that Judy and Gym Malakevich still had never heard of Jeremy Fiedler, that he’d never worked out at their health club.

  She’d written back that they’d forgotten to ask Joe Manic the mechanic if he’d ever seen the woman in the long coat.

  She and Larry were sipping tea, Libby’s cat once again lording it from his refrigerator throne, when Larry stood suddenly and Tuxedo looked down at the door. Larry opened it to Detective Amuller and Officer Mason. Oh, swell.

  Once was, anybody came to the back door it was one of her condo neighbors. Now that the gate was dead anybody could get personal. Charlie hated it.

  The three of them stood in the middle of Charlie’s kitchen, talking, gesturing, the cops occasionally turning toward Charlie but in the middle of a word or something, talking too fast, not facing her. Amuller directed a few pointed remarks at her—he didn’t believe she’d lost her hearing. Charlie really hated this.

  Then Larry looked up, seemed confused for a moment, and left the room. When he returned he had the cordless and was talking to it but gesturing toward Charlie. Both members of the Long Beach Police Department and the cat on the refrigerator glared down at Charlie through squints of suspicion, Detective J. S. with a satisfied smirk as well. What the hell was going on?

  Larry knelt to mouth words at her with exaggerated lip, teeth, and tongue movements. It’s your mother. She wants to tell you about her new boyfriend. She thinks you’re avoiding her. Doesn’t believe you can’t hear. They (and he tilted his head back at the cops) don’t either.

  Amuller was rolling his eyes by now, Mary Maggie shaking her head sadly as if to say she couldn’t believe Charlie could be so stupid. Tuxedo yawned.

  * * *

  Charlie sat in an interrogation room being interrogated by people she couldn’t hear. Big guys gesturing and leaning threateningly, giving her tough looks. Poundin
g on the table. A weary Mary Maggie Mason sat at a table in the corner.

  Charlie lay in a fringed hammock hung between two coconut palms, a paperback mystery by Marlys Millhiser in one hand and a rum drink with a skewered piece of pineapple and a paper umbrella in the other. The day was hot but the soft caressing breeze off the ocean and the fact that she was nearly naked made the temperature just right. No shoes, no hose, nothing more confining than a coating of beach sand on her feet and a bikini barely covering what she refused to shave and her-hardly-there-anyway breasts.

  She considered a gorgeous young native man to rock the hammock and offer to fetch some grilled morsels of shellfish on toothpicks and maybe a massage later—but J. S. Amuller was suddenly in her face and she thought better of it. He was shouting, she knew, because he’d recently eaten some raw onion and she had to wipe away traces of spittle. But she could tell he was pretending to mouth words like Larry but didn’t have the knack even when pretending. It was possible he thought he was talking about “your mother’s boyfriend.”

  Now Charlie really, really hated this. She even considered going ahead with the massage on the beach.

  Edwina had begun to date a man twenty years her junior, which wasn’t all that young. He’d come to her house to repair the kitchen and bathroom tile and stayed to visit a while. Jesus.

  The tough-guy flailing of arms and pointing of fingers and condescending sneers and gestures that came just short of striking her finally came to an end.

  Just as Officer Mary Maggie Mason led Charlie out of the room, Charlie flinched when somebody said behind her, “… lawyer.”

  And good old J. S. Amuller answered, “Don’t worry. A little jail time and she’ll break. We’ll have a confession by breakfast.”

  CHAPTER 29

  CHARLIE STOOD BENT with her hands out against the coldest concrete wall in creation while Mary Maggie did a cursory search. “You might as well give it up, Charlie. We checked with a specialist, Dr. Rasmasen. Hearing loss from an explosion doesn’t come and go. Hearing loss from an explosion is gone. Period.”

  Of course, now Charlie couldn’t admit she could hear. The cop sighed when there was no answer. “Suit yourself. But he’s willing to testify in court.”

  Moments later, Charlie sat on a hard cot, her back against another cold concrete wall. Two other detained females watched her as suspiciously as she watched them. One finally approached her with a confident hello-sister-let-me-tell-you-what-it’s-like-in-the-real-world look. Charlie gave her a Hollywood-agent look and the woman backed off.

  If her hearing went out again, she’d be vulnerable again and at the woman’s mercy. She would have to hide her terror—wasn’t sure she could. Larry had vowed to get her a lawyer. He was going to ask Maggie Stutzman and Ed Esterhazie for help.

  Charlie could not continue in her work as a Hollywood literary agent and have this handicap happening to her and the sudden vulnerability it caused—it would be like swimming with sharks when you’re menstruating. If they didn’t put her away forever for a murder she didn’t commit, what else could she do for a living? She’d had her fill of the dole while getting an education and raising a kid. Once off the Edwina dole, she sure didn’t want to get on the public dole, lose power over her own life and happiness.

  Charlie was determined to stay awake all night and not use the commode in full view in the corner. Her cell mates looked just as determined, sort of a three-way distrust mode. They’d seemed ready to gang up on Charlie until her dead silence and literary-agent tough had quelled that idea. One was black, the other white—a few down-and-dirty curse words that registered no effect on her left them silent, too. After raising Libby Abigail Greene, any shock value in their obscene renditions were more familiar than threatening. She knew these women could be suspected of murder, too—might even be guilty. One or both could also be shills.

  Actually, Charlie wasn’t as afraid of them as she knew she should be. She was angry enough to want to hurt them if she could, to take her anger out on anybody. How dare Amuller assume her guilt in the murder of Jeremy Fiedler because she was the most likely or available candidate for the hangman? His problem was really that he knew nothing about the victim, only the circumstances of his death—much of which Charlie didn’t know so she couldn’t fight back until forced into court as the one charged with the deed.

  She would have loved to return to the soft, balmy air of the beach and shell out for a massage, but knew she’d better concentrate on staying awake against her cell mates and plan a strategy for her defense. She’d simply overlook her more immediate problems—PMS, her contact lenses, and her ulcer.

  * * *

  When a strange woman cop awakened Charlie, her mouth was dry and her eyes even more so. She could taste blood, and there was some on the pillow she’d vowed not to touch with her head. Her stomach screamed for something soothing that antibiotics couldn’t deliver. She could hear, though—crickets in her ears and the disgusted and weary breaths of the uniformed woman leading her down the hall.

  And the stench of a human zoo. Charlie vowed to fight Amuller to the death to not spend her life in it, hearing-impaired or no. She thought she was being led back to the interrogation room to be given another chance to confess, but instead was presented with her watch (it was four A.M.) and what had been in her pockets—two Kleenex, a key to the back door, and a twenty. Amuller had given her no time to grab her purse and then was totally perturbed when she couldn’t remember her Social Security number or produce her driver’s license. She could see that even when deaf as a doorknob.

  Without sound, the dire threats about her never driving again or whatever seemed like the dentist demanding she brush and floss morning, noon, and night and after snacks. In other words, totally out of the reality frame.

  A small television over in one corner was playing a Rudy Ferris show. What was going on here?

  But the real news was Charlie had a lawyer—Ernesto Seligman. A sleepy, grumpy, totally bald man in a knit sport shirt and sweater over rumpled chinos and tennis shoes. He was a well-known Long Beach attorney who had a reputation for tackling the tough cases. Great—although innocent, Charlie was now a tough case. Old Detective J. S. would make hay with that. She waited until they were in the lawyer’s car to speak. “I have to get home right away, then I’ll talk to you.”

  “Charlie, why?” Maggie Stutzman said from the backseat. Larry had gone on in Ed Esterhazie’s Porsche. “You’re in real trouble here.”

  “Because I wouldn’t use the stool sitting out in the open in that cell, and I’m in really real trouble. Here.” Ernesto Seligman and his brand-new Lincoln Town Car had Charlie home in record time.

  “I made no statements, confessions, nor did I answer any questions,” Charlie told her new tough-case attorney. She, Ed, Larry, and Maggie gathered in the kitchen because Libby and Doug and Tuxedo were sacked out in the living room—Libby on the couch, Doug on the floor with his feet on the ottoman, and the cat on his chest. “Simply because I couldn’t hear what they were asking until just as I was leaving the interrogation room. And then Detective Amuller was saying that with a little jail time, I’d confess before morning.”

  It was curious that both kids snored. Tuxedo wandered in, stretched, had some breath-enhancing food, and slipped out the cat door to kill birds, bugs, other cats, whatever. How could he sneak up on his prey with breath like a vulture?

  “Well, he obviously didn’t know you have friends.” Seligman had the rasp of a sick crocodile. Medication? She didn’t remember the total baldness from his pictures, either. Chemotherapy?

  “Oh, he knows—that’s the black mark on my character. He thinks I’m sleeping with Ed here, Larry, and Mitch Hilsten all at the same time.”

  “And are you?”

  “Of course not,” Charlie told her attorney. Jeesh.

  “Mitch is in Spain,” Maggie told Charlie’s attorney.

  “I haven’t had the pleasure,” Ed added. He didn’t shrug, but you could almost hear
one in his voice.

  Larry clinched it. “I’m gay.”

  Attorney Seligman got on his cell phone while everyone but Charlie ate the McDonald’s takeout breakfast, the civilian MREs that Ed and Larry had run out for. Charlie had a poached egg on milk toast with a glass of milk.

  She’d taken out her contacts, put drops in her eyes, brushed her teeth, but she couldn’t wait to hit that shower. The kids were chowing down on McMuffins and potato whatevers with Cokes, taking turns in the shower and getting ready for school. Charlie didn’t know Libby ate breakfast, but then Charlie’s commute took her out of town ever earlier. And now she could hear Rudy Ferris on the TV in the living room.

  “What’s happening? Is some network doing old Rudy Ferris shows back-to-back or something?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Your agency handles him,” Maggie said on her way out to get ready for work herself. “He’s doing a two-day marathon for ED.”

  “Next month he’s doing one for breast cancer,” Larry said, following her. “I’ll be back tonight. You behave yourself.”

  “During the week? That’s when people want to watch their soaps and the tabloid talk shows, like his. What’s ED?”

  “Erectile dysfunction,” her lawyer told her solemnly. “Where you been, on Jupiter?”

  “Oh, the Bob Dole thing—we have Jerry’s Kids and now it’ll be Rudy’s Geezers.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking of going back to Edward,” Ed Esterhazie said. “I’ll leave you to talk to Ernie here. You can trust him, Charlie, tell him everything. I’ll be at the office if either of you need me.” And Edward was gone, too.

  The kids passed through the kitchen all clean and shampooed and fresh. Charlie felt like the queen of grit. “It’ll be okay, Mom, now you got a lawyer—the LBPD will have to stop harassing you.”

  Charlie was so relieved to be home. Still, she resented everybody going off to work or school but her and her attorney. It’s godawfulnotfun to be unimportant. “Ernie?”