Cobalt (22 page)

Valentine rolled his eyes. “All right.”

“Jeff King,” Clarisse said, “went swimming in the bay, and despite what the autopsy said, hit his head on some pilings, lost consciousness, and drowned. Ann Richardson mixed MDA and angel dust, jumped in the pool, and didn't come up the third time. And Terry O'Sullivan, seeing your gorgeousness once more from across a crowded room, gave up the ghost and tumbled dead at your feet. Right?”

Valentine nodded once.

“I still can't get over the feeling they're connected,” said Clarisse.

“Why?” asked Valentine politely.

“Well, if for no other reason than that they all knew one another. When was the last time you heard of three people who knew one another dying within three weeks of one another—and the deaths weren't connected?”

“Ann didn't know Jeff,” protested Valentine, “she said she didn't.”

“All right,” admitted Clarisse, “but there
was
a connection there, through Terry. He knew both of them. Now here's what I'm getting at. Just suppose that all three of these deaths were murders—I'm not saying they were, I'm just saying suppose they were.”

“All right,” said Valentine, “I'll close my eyes and make believe.”

“Thank you,” said Clarisse. “Now, you and I knew all three victims—or at least
I
knew all three victims. Not well, but I knew them.”

“Got it,” said Valentine. “Now what?”

“Doesn't it also make sense that I know the murderer too?”

“I'll accept that,” replied Valentine. “But check your assumptions, Lovelace.”

“What assumptions?”

“You're assuming that only one person killed all three. What if two people got together and killed all three? Or what if one person killed Jeff King and somebody else killed Ann and Terry? Or what if five people killed Jeff King—I think we could find five who would have wanted him dead—and two killed Ann and Terry? Or—”

“You promised to listen!”

“I am listening, and I'm not making fun of your idea. I have to make another apology. I've been coming down on you for all this talk about murder and the ‘person who did it'—but now I think you may be right. I'll certainly admit that Jeff King was murdered, and that it looks very strange that Ann Richardson and Terry O'Sullivan should die within the next three weeks. I'm not sure they were
all
murders, or if they were, that one person did it—but I think that, on the whole, you were right and I was wrong.” He lowered his head on his chest with a jerk, as if the confession had cost him.

“So what do we do now?”

“I don't know,” replied Valentine.

“It's still June,” said Clarisse, “and I've seen three dead bodies. Is this going to continue?”

“You'd think,” said Valentine, “that we could have figured this out by now. Maybe the sun is bleaching our brains,” he said, glancing up into the sky and squinting.

They were silent for several moments.

“Is Matteo on duty today?” Valentine asked. “Desk duty, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Clarisse. “Why?”

“Do you think he would let you look at the autopsy reports again?”

“No, he'll kick and scream and rave.”

“Bribe him.”

Clarisse lifted her glasses and peered at Valentine. “Hey,” she said, “this means you're on my side now, doesn't it?”

The police station was crowded, and Matteo protested in whispers. But he brought out the files—including the one pertaining to Terry O'Sullivan—and slipped them into an issue of
Life
, which Clarisse took into the ladies' room. She brought them out twenty minutes later, having sat in a stall, read each of them through twice, and taken a few notes.

Meanwhile Valentine went by the Plymouth House where Angel Smith was in frantic preparation for Friday evening's pageant. He stood at the back of the Amaretto Room, and she rushed toward him. He braced himself against the doorframe, but she stopped in time.

“You're coming, aren't you!” she cried.

“I want to reserve a table for two,” he said, smiling.

“Sure,” Angel replied, looking about the room. “Which one?”

Valentine pointed to an enormous round table in the back corner that would seat at least eight, and replied, “That one.”

“How many comps is this going to cost me?” she grimaced. “You know how much it takes to put on a show like this? The uppers alone…”

Valentine took out his wallet. “I'm buying eight tickets. Tonight we're paying guests. Just put a reserved sign on the table.”

Angel nodded and sighed. “You would have made a great Du Barry…”

V
ALENTINE AND CLARISSE, with Noah between them, arrived at the entrance of the Amaretto Room just after seven o'clock that Friday evening. Clarisse remarked that she had never before been an hour early for anything in her entire life, and the two men believed her. The evening was balmy—as perfect an evening in fact as Provincetown weather is capable of: warm, but without dampness, with a slightly pungent breeze. The moon was waxing and the night sky was cloudless. A large banner had been suspended over the door of the cabaret announcing:

PROSTITUTION THROUGH THE AGES
SPECTACULAR TABLEAUX D'ART
2 NITES ONLY

Below this, on either side of the garland-festooned doorway, were posted four torchbearers. They wore loincloths—all four costumes stitched together wouldn't have mopped up a glass of spilled milk. Their bodies had been covered toe to head in gold paint and their hair had been dyed a color that matched the glass of their electric torches. They were admirably stony-faced, and refused even to acknowledge their friends in the crowd.

“Angel must have slipped them some incredible downs,” whispered Clarisse, but Valentine did not hear her. He was too busy mumbling the torchbearers' names and bedroom predilections to Noah.

The door would not open until seven-fifteen, but already a sizable crowd had assembled, many with their pink invitations in hand. Everyone, it appeared, had donned his summer finery, the evening being the equivalent of the opening of the opera in Boston. White cottons predominated among the men and pastel silks among the women. Valentine and Noah wore white linen suits with open-collared shirts beneath. Clarisse wore a knee-length white forties-style dress beneath a silver bugle-beaded waist-length jacket. She straightened the padded shoulders and touched her hand to her hair, which was up in a smooth victory roll. She looked over the crowd expectantly.

“Looking for someone special?”

“I left an invitation in Axel's mail slot. I was hoping he might show up early.”

“Why didn't you just leave it under Daniel's pillow?—then he'd have been sure to get it.”

The door of the Amaretto Room swung suddenly open and two women in crimson togas emerged carrying long-necked trumpets. They raised them high and blasted a shaky fanfare right in Clarisse's ear. They bowed and disappeared inside again. Valentine, Clarisse, and Noah were the first to enter, and immediately seated themselves at the large round table.

Large paintings of full-bodied women languishing on beds, couches, chaises, grassy banks—and even on kitchen tables—had been hung on the walls. Small cut-glass chandeliers had replaced the usual fixtures. Enormous baskets of red and yellow flowers had been placed at either side of the stage, a raised platform fifteen feet wide at one end of the room. The red velvet curtain had been replaced with a deep purple, gold-fringed one.

The three of them looked about, nodding to acquaintances. “It really is amazing,” said Clarisse.

“What?” asked Noah.

“I work all day long in that shop that is boycotted by anyone with taste. My nights I spend at home in bed reading—”

“Or just in bed,” interjected Valentine.

“And the only people I see are you and Val and Matteo, and yet I think I know half the people in this room. Where did I meet them all?”

“You didn't meet them,” said Noah. “It's just that you see them on the street every day. I suppose that passing somebody twenty times in twenty-four hours on the same sidewalk constitutes a kind of introduction.”

A small orchestra had set up to one side of the stage. The seven musicians tuned their instruments and then struck up a medley of obscure show tunes—but never so obscure that some man in the room didn't know
all
the lyrics and insist on singing along in a cracked voice.

“I thought Matteo was on the door this evening?” said Valentine.

“He doesn't come on duty until…” Clarisse faltered. Valentine and Noah were staring past her with expressions of surprise and alarm. “…eight,” she finished, and turned slowly, following their line of vision. “Oh my,” she whispered.

Margaret stood a dozen feet away. Her hennaed hair glistened in the red spotlight over the door. She wore a black strapless gown that swept the floor. Her eyes wandered over the crowd, and when she saw Clarisse she smiled and headed over to the table.

“Are you saving these places for anyone special,” she asked, “or may I join you?”

Silently, stunned, they motioned for her to sit.

She greeted them each in turn, with an increasingly puzzled glance. With a little smile and a slightly furrowed brow she asked, “What's new?”

Valentine and Noah exchanged uneasy glances.

“What a surprise to see you here, Margaret,” said Clarisse at last. “We didn't expect to see you back in town this summer.”

“Oh, yes, I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to say good-bye, but I knew I'd be back this weekend and I'd probably run into you again. And so I have.”

“You knew you were coming back?” asked Valentine.

“Oh, yes, Ann and I bought tickets for the show as soon as we heard about it. In fact, we didn't know where we'd be staying, so we just planned to meet here. More romantic, I guess. Do you think there'll be room for her at this table too?” She looked round at the four remaining chairs.

No one said anything for several moments. Then Clarisse smiled weakly, laid her hand on Margaret's forearm, and said, “Why don't you come backstage with me for a few minutes and say hello to Angel before the show starts? I know she'd want to speak to you.”

“Oh, I'd love to!” Margaret said, rising.

Valentine and Noah said nothing.

Clarisse led Margaret up to the stage, pulled back the curtain at one end of it, and stepped behind. They made their way through the wings and into a long hallway. In the small dressing rooms on either side of the corridor pandemonium reigned. Men, some in near-full costume and others hardly dressed at all, flung themselves about, screaming for wigs, pancake number five, bras, safety pins, Quaaludes, glue, and glitter. A young man stood peering intently into a mirror and industriously painting his nipples blue. He looked up and smiled. Clarisse leaned into, but did not enter, each room searching for Angel. A thin emotionally frazzled little man of middle-age appeared at the end of the hall and waved a clipboard ineffectually about. “Twenty minutes to curtain!” he shouted. First came a prolonged stereophonic screech, and then a chorus of obscenities was showered upon him from up and down the hallway, many ending with the words, “you wimp!” The man rushed toward the stage. Clarisse caught a glimpse of the Prince racing from one room to the other wearing a blond wig that was only half combed out, a corset, panty hose, and lethally high spiked heels. He pushed past, according Clarisse a brief “Hello” and Margaret a sharp look of surprise. He left a wake of lavender perfume.

Clarisse and Margaret found Angel in the last room. She sat on a little wicker bench, the legs of which had been reinforced with steel straps, at one end of a fifteen-foot-long makeup mirror. Also in front of the mirror sat a line of seven men in towels, jockstraps, women's foundation garments, and G-strings. The air was misty with powder and pungent with hairspray. Angel was frantically searching through a drawer before her. Her blond hair was done up into a cloud of lacquered waves. A full-length dressing gown concealed her costume beneath.

She slammed the drawer shut and wailed, “I've lost my blush! I can't go on! Call off the show!”

There was a flurry of movement among the men, and in another moment half a dozen small containers of rouge flew through the air and clattered on the table before Angel. Without comment she opened them all, chose one and applied the color generously to her cheeks.

Clarisse and Margaret moved about until they stood behind Angel, who flicked her eyes up to see them in the mirror. Her mouth dropped open when she saw Margaret. She turned to face them and looked to Clarisse for an explanation.

“
Why
is everyone looking at me like that tonight?” demanded Margaret.

Angel mustered a smile that faded quickly. Then she looked at Clarisse. “She doesn't know, does she?”