Dating Is Murder

40

I ran up the spiral staircase. At the top, waiting for me, was the yellow cat, wanting out.

I wanted out too.

There was no handle, though, or door knob, so I pressed and pushed and banged the side of my fist against the trapdoor. It wouldn’t open. There was a keypad but I couldn’t begin to guess a code, so I punched numbers. The cat meowed at me. I thought about panicking and then remembered I had a cell phone. In my pocket. My other pocket.

I got reception. I called Simon. I didn’t think twice. When his voice mail answered, I said, “It’s Wollie, I’m in her house, the studio behind the house, underground, in an underground-and I can’t get out and I’ve maybe-killed her. And she said A

I dialed 911. They asked me questions. I answered them. I hung up.

I sneezed. Then I waited.

Life is short. That’s one of those things that occurs to you when you glimpse death, yours or anybody’s. You think, “I’ll remember this, this will remind me not to waste time,” but you forget. You carry on like you have several hundred years to live and like it matters if some guy now living in Taiwan who once loved you still does, or if you pass a math test or win a reality TV show or finish the frogs or get your car washed before the end of the year.

When all that really matters is that you’re not dead. The rest of it, like what that means in the long run or what I was feeling right at the moment, I couldn’t sort out. I didn’t know if Maizie Qui

I don’t know how long it was just the yellow cat and me, but after a time there were voices, so muffled I might have been hallucinating. I screamed and pounded and then the door opened upward and people moved past me down the spiral staircase. Someone-he told me he was FBI, they were all FBI-helped me up, took from me the meat mallet, with blood drying on its silver surface, and, after I directed his attention to it, the gun. He led me to a chair near the fireplace and gestured to a woman, who came and stayed close to me. At some point someone from below called up, “She’s alive,” and for a moment I thought they were talking about me. And then I slid out of the chair onto the floor, I’m not sure why, except that I wanted something more solid underneath me. I stayed there across the room from the reindeer pieces with their primer drying until paramedic types brought Maizie up from below on a stretcher. I didn’t see her face, only her healthy-looking blond hair, matted with the darkness of drying blood. I began to shake all over again. That’s when Simon walked in.

When I saw his face, grim and tense and pale, I had to work not to cry. He sca

Came toward me with long strides. Stopped when someone grabbed his arm to whisper something in his ear. Nodded to him, spoke a few words, came over and looked down. Then he knelt on the floor next to me, very close.

“You all right?” he said.

I nodded, not able to speak.

“Hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t move.” He gestured to the woman with me, then stood and walked away.

A minute later another medical type with a first-aid kit came over and checked out my vital signs and asked me some questions. My answers seemed to satisfy him. I started to tell him to check on the cat, but the words came out fu

Simon seemed to be the Bing Wooster of this operation. I wondered why the area wasn’t being roped off as a crime scene, then thought that maybe no one but me knew a crime had been committed here, except the crime of me hitting Maizie with a meat mallet. I turned to the woman at my side. “There’s an earlobe here,” I said.

“A what?”

“An earlobe.” I stood. She touched my arm and started to ask me something, but I wrapped my blanket around myself and walked over to Simon, standing in the kitchen. He must’ve had eyes on the side of his head. He turned immediately.

“Yes? What is it?”

“There’s an earlobe around here somewhere. On the floor.”

“A what?”

“An earlobe. It belonged to Rico Rodriguez. The cat was playing with it. The rest of Rico is in Antelope Valley.”

Simon took a long look at me, then nodded. The news didn’t seem to surprise him, but I figured they train them not to look surprised. He put a hand around my upper arm, gently, but his hand was so big it surrounded my bicep like a bandage. “Wollie,” he said. “You need to-”

“Where’s A

“Not now.” As if to reinforce this, his cell phone rang. He listened, frowning, then addressed the room at large. “All right, we’ve got company. They’re early. Exiting the 405 at Valley Vista, taking surface streets. Let’s move.” He addressed the woman who’d been hovering and asked where her car was. Base camp, she told him. “Put her in mine,” he said, and fished keys out of his jacket. “Windows up.”

“We’ve got a problem.” It was a new agent, coming in from outside, leaving the door open. He came over to Simon, the urgency in his voice unrestrained. His ma

Simon nodded. “That’s more than one problem. Hazel?”

“Nothing. Knows company’s coming. Betty Crocker’s been cooking all day.”

Simon nodded. “Female agents?”

“Dahl, San Diego, stuck on the 405 and she’s short. We’re working on a wig for Ellis.”

“Won’t make it in time. Passwords?”

“Husband doesn’t know. Surveillance says no, but we’re reviewing transcripts. It’s not something we were listening for. Right now I need you to look at the geography out front. If we can get him onto the block, Potemkin may have a shot from across the street.”

Simon looked toward the door, shaking his head. “Not unless we get them to roll down a window. Even then, it’s going to be a bad night in the neighborhood.”

“I don’t need a wig,” I said.

Both men turned to me. The room went quiet.

“No.” Simon didn’t even think about it.

But the agent with him thought about it. He looked at me with interest, then turned to Simon and said something I didn’t catch.

“I can do this,” I said to them. “I can. I’m like her.”

Simon shook his head. “Not enough. They’ve met her.”

“Tcheiko hasn’t.”

“No.”

“What are you going to do?” I said. “I knocked out Little Fish. There’s nobody else. I can get them to roll down the car window. I can be Betty Crocker for ten goddamn minutes.”

Simon looked at his watch. “You didn’t sign on for this.”