Wit's End (18 page)

Addison was on the second-floor computer. Rima found her there, her neck thrust forward like a turtle's toward the screen, her shoulders rounded if not downright hunched underneath a gray shawl shot with green threads. Nothing remotely ergonomic about the setup; maybe the studio was arranged better.

“The woman who took Thomas Grand was just outside,” Rima told her. “I can't get Tilda or Martin too interested.” It occurred to Rima that if this were an A. B. Early book, Martin and his mother would be suspects. In a Daphne du Maurier novel, the actual perps. Martin had the motive, Tilda the opportunity. This whole estrangement could be an elaborate performance to cover a nascent operation in the fencing of tiny corpses on the Internet to unsuspecting fans of Maxwell Lane. It would explain their unconcern.

But it would also make the fortuitous forced entry of Pamela Price too contrived to believe. Bad plotting there. “It seems like I'm the only one who wants to solve the case,” Rima said. Me and Maxwell Lane.

“It's not a case.” Addison pushed back from her desk, turned to Rima. She had a shallow scratch on her chin. The people at Wit's End, at least that subset who slept with dachshunds, often awoke with shallow scratches on their faces. Rima had done so herself about five days earlier. You could hardly see her scratches now. “We know who done it. It's just some fan who went off her medication. I still can't believe the Democrats have the Senate.”

“Counting Lieberman,” Rima reminded her. Why be happy? Life was short. And then, just to deliver all the bad news in a single go: “I think Martin may be joining us for dinner.”

G
iven that it was a small group with at least one open hostility and several hidden ones, dinner went about as well as could be expected. The food was good.

Addison wanted to talk about politics. The last two candidates to concede had been Burns and Allen; it tickled her. Time for the Republicans to say good night now, Addison said. Rima got the joke, but had no idea how. How did she know the tagline to a show that ended years before she was born? Martin, she assumed, was mystified, but he gave no sign of it, caught up as he was in the complicated maneuver of asking for seconds without appearing to be enjoying the meal.

Tilda was keeping the conversation light. “This beef is grass-fed,” she said. “Usually everything you eat turns out to be corn-based. We are a corn-made people, in general. I try to include some things that aren't corn in every meal.”

Martin wanted to talk to Rima. “You must be awful glad not to be in Cleveland anymore,” he said. He was the second person this week to tell her this. She felt an unexpected wave of patriotism. What was so great about Santa Cruz? The pirates? The clowns?

“Do you think we don't have miniature golf in Cleveland?” Rima turned to look at him. “We have miniature golf.”

Rima wanted to talk about Pamela Price. “What should I do the next time she shows up?”

“Never talk to a stalker,” Addison said. “It only reinforces the fantasy that you have a relationship.”

“Then how will we get Thomas Grand back?”

No one answered. Rima hadn't realized that Pamela Price would be coming back until she said it. But why stop at two visitations? Of course there would be a third. Rima tried to figure out if she was frightened by the prospect or not. She decided she was. But only slightly, so for a few moments she barely attended to the conversation around her; that's how focused she was on making sure it wasn't some other emotion instead, like exasperation or fatigue.

“We could go play miniature golf this weekend. If that's what you'd like.”

“I remember once when you were about four years old. We went out to eat and you told the waitress you wanted a petite filet mignon. She just about dropped her pencil.”

“I was always saying something cute after you left. Hardly a day went by.”

“This puts the Democrats in very good shape for 2008.”

“There's even corn in toothpaste now. Did I mention that?”

Something wet landed on Rima's ankle. Stanford was drooling; it brought her back to the moment. “How did she know my father's name?” Rima asked, just to make the point that the answer was obvious. The information about the lovely houseguest and her connection to Addison was carelessly strewn about Addison's blog, where anyone, on or off her medication, could read it.

Thinking of the blog reminded Rima that she hadn't told Addison about Wikipedia yet. She did so now, in the form of a question. “Did Maxwell Lane really grow up in Holy City, the way it says on Wikipedia?” (“I knew your father,” Constance Wellington had written to Maxwell. If he had grown up in Holy City, maybe she wasn't as loony as she seemed.)

“That shouldn't be there,” Addison said, in what was clearly not an answer. “Everything on Wikipedia is supposed to have been published and peer-reviewed somewhere else first. It's not the place for grad student theories.” Addison's knife scraped her plate with an irritated sound. “That must have been posted quite recently. I'll take it down after dinner.”

This led to a story about an assistant she'd had a year back, a young man from the UC English Department who, among other duties, kept an eye on the websites for her. His name was Tom Oppenfeld. Tom and Addison parted messily one day after she came home from a movie matinee to find him stretched like a rock climber over the ice plant on the cliff face below the studio window. He was trying to find a gap in the blinds. Or else he was planning to kill himself. Either way, he needed to be sacked.

In retaliation, he e-mailed everyone who'd asked, and said Addison would be happy to: speak, write a blurb, write an introduction, teach a workshop, critique a manuscript, officiate at a poetry slam, auction off the naming rights for a character, do an online interview, host library donors for a literary-progressive dinner, get all dressed up and attend a fund-raiser. Tom Oppenfeld was as much to blame as anyone for the fact that Addison was so far behind on her new book. She'd spent so much time being a writer there was no time left in which to write. “An assistant is always a mistake,” Addison said. “Would anyone know anything about Margo Dumas's sex life if she hadn't hired that assistant?”

This was the second time Margo Dumas's sex life had been mentioned in casual conversation. The repetition was intriguing. Rima made a mental note to google Margo Dumas's sex life and see what was what.

“I can monitor the Web or I can write a book. Can't do both,” Addison said.

Rima put “That must have been posted quite recently” together with “Can't do both” together with Addison's minute-by-minute information concerning political matters. She thought she knew which of the two Addison was doing.

“Did you want to go play miniature golf?” Martin asked.

“I don't like miniature golf,” Rima said. This wasn't true. There were few things Rima liked better than miniature golf. But you had to be in the mood. You had to be with Oliver.

“Oh!” said Tilda. “Holy City! I completely forgot. Maxwell Lane got a letter from Holy City today.”

And then Addison said that seeing as how Rima was the one so interested in Maxwell's mail, Rima should be the one to go and get that letter.

She should bring it back to the table.

She should open it right there.

She should read it out loud so that everyone could hear.

Wouldn't that be fun, is what Addison said.

“And you got a letter from Animal Control,” Tilda told Rima. Her voice was carefully uninterested. “That's on the table too.”

This would have been a good time for a diversion. Where was Pamela Price when you needed her?

Or Scorch. A few days before, Scorch had burst into the kitchen with the dogs, all three of them in a state. These dogs, Scorch was saying, so angry there was spit, these dogs are the worst dogs ever. The worst dogs ever! Stanford and Berkeley made themselves busy, chewing their own rumps and paws, and not meeting anyone's eyes.

Scorch said that she'd been taking them to the beach, where they would have all had a lovely time if everyone had behaved in a civilized manner. Except there were two women on stilts, wearing bustiers and tricorne hats, sword-fighting on the stairs while someone took their picture. Before Scorch knew what was happening, the dachshunds had pounced. They harried the women, nipping and snarling at their stilts and ignoring Scorch, who was shouting herself hoarse. It was just God's mercy, Scorch said, that no one had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. The women stumbled about on the uneven steps, and one of them screamed. Plus the man with the camera shouted at Scorch for not having leashes on her two nasty little dogs.

“I'm sorry,” Scorch said angrily to Rima, “but don't you think the stairs are probably private property? And not part of the state beach?” And to the dogs, “What is wrong with you?!”

This would have been a good time for something like that to happen.

In fact, Rima had never seen a place to beat Santa Cruz for the sheer number of people determined to provide you with free entertainment. There were always drummers at the beach, drumming the sun up and then drumming it down. There were buskers who played the guitar or the flute or sang. There was that man, or else it was a woman, dressed like a donkey outside the Bad Ass coffee shop. And the body piercings! Don't tell Rima a person would go through all that for only selfish reasons if it weren't also so very crowd-pleasing.

Addison had told Rima once about being in a bookstore in Malaysian Borneo and how two kids from Santa Cruz, with their earlobes stretched and their teeth filed, had walked in. The Dayaks, Addison had said, were very entertained.

There were clowns on the streets! And now stilt-walkers in push-up bras. It was wonderful. Suddenly Rima was all about Santa Cruz. Cleveland had nothing.

“Am I the only one who sees that clown downtown?” Rima asked. “With the pink umbrella?”

She could tell that she had startled them all with this wild segue, but not so much that they forgot Maxwell's letter. They blinked at her obstinately. There was nothing for it, then, but for Rima to rise, letting her food go cold, and walk through the kitchen and down the hallway to the entry table by the door, where the mail had been stacked in the front yard of the
Missing Pieces
dollhouse.

Rima took a moment to notice the workmanship of the
Missing Pieces
murder scene. She felt she'd not sufficiently appreciated how meticulously the dollhouses were assembled. There were teacups painted in the same poppy pattern as Addison's dishes. A half-smoked cigarette stubbed out in the ashtray under the lamp. Rima suspected that if she gathered up the tiny, tiny puzzle pieces, some would actually fit together. She felt the impulse to do this. Right now. Even if it took all evening.

Addison was very good with her hands. If the writing hadn't worked out for her, there were lots of other things she could have done. Hairdresser. Brain surgeon. She wondered whether Addison had made the entire jigsaw puzzle or just the corner of it she needed.

The letter to Maxwell Lane was on top of the stack of mail. The envelope was business-size, the address in blue pen. The words were printed in capital letters. The return address was for Holy City Art Glass. This was not the letter Rima had written. And someone had already opened it.

Rima took it to the table. “ ‘Dear Maxwell Lane,' ” she read aloud.

There was a flyer enclosed. On December 1 the factory was having an open house, at which a collection of glass Christmas ornaments would go on sale.

“How very mysterious,” Addison said. “Maybe Pamela Price has struck again?”

 

 

O
ne of two things had just happened. Either: Everyone knew that Rima had written a letter to Constance and signed Maxwell's name, but they were too polite to say so. They were using Pamela Price as a convenient fiction. It was possible they didn't even believe Pamela Price existed. Why should they? No one but Rima had seen her, and Rima was already seeing clowns and such wherever she went. The only real evidence was the missing doll, and Rima could simply have lost that. This would explain why everyone was so casual on the subject of Pamela Price.

Or: Rima had gotten off scot-free. Of course, it wasn't right, letting an innocent thief take the blame like this. Rima should confess. Now was the moment to do so. If she let this moment pass and had to confess later, how much worse that would look.

Addison held out her hand for the letter and Rima gave it over. “People are really interested in Maxwell Lane,” Martin said, which could have been the perfect opening to talk to Addison about his bar, but he took it no further.

“Does anyone want dessert?” Tilda asked.

And just like that, it was done, the blame settled on Pamela Price, who, Rima suspected, Tilda at the very least thought she'd made up. She vowed not to use Ms. Price again this way. She could see how it might get to be a habit. “Okay, then. I'll just put this letter in the box with the others, shall I?” she said.