Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons (7 page)

When Ragusin appeared, it wasn’t on foot, it was in a zippy little Alfa, out of which she popped in black jeans and black T-shirt, looking a trifle the worse for wear. We introduced ourselves.

“Let’s go have coffee,” she said. “Or you can. I’m going to bed pretty soon— I’m a night worker.”

She had a cozy cottage in which she could brew a mean cup of coffee. We sat on wicker furniture while she yawned and talked about herself and Jason.

She wasn’t wearing makeup, but even so, I could tell she fit the type he was known to date— very beautiful, very sophisticated. She was probably a little older than Jason, about forty maybe, with a good figure, a little on the thin side, black hair cut in layers, and curious hazel eyes that were almost gold sometimes. Her skin was white and fragile looking. She was probably one of the last people in California who still smoked.

She pulled a cigarette out of her mouth and stared at it. “Sorry about this. I’ve got a high pressure job. Can’t seem to stop.”

“What do you do?”

“Disc jockey. All that ad-libbing. Stress city.”

“How’d you meet Jason?”

She shrugged. “Some party, I guess. I was the perfect date for him— available for anything before midnight; and then, instant pumpkin.”

She sucked at her cigarette as if she were angry.

“Why was that perfect?”

She gave Rob a good hard stare. “Well, I’ll tell you because it might be important. But it’s definitely not for the paper.”

Rob nodded. “We’re off the record.”

“He didn’t, uh … he wasn’t interested in sex.” She was a woman who got right down.

“How long did you date?”

“A couple of months, I guess. He was a great date—attentive, courteous, always took me interesting places. But it never came to more than that— I mean, no Saturday hikes, no Sunday brunches, no hanky, and no panky. It was like he needed me for a front or something— maybe he was gay, I don’t know. But there were these good-night kisses, which were getting better and better until we were necking like a couple of teenagers.” She stubbed out her cigarette, again taking out her anger on it. “So when I pressed the point, he dumped me.”

Neither of us knew what to say.

“Dumped you.” I repeated finally.

“He just quit calling. You know how that works.” She brushed hair away from her face, obviously trying to keep her dignity.

“Were you mad?”

“You mean, did I kill him? It’s pretty hard to work up that much excitement over someone you’ve never even slept with.”

“Well, actually, I didn’t mean that. I was just wondering how much you had invested in him at that point.”

She nodded before she answered. Rob looked at us as if we were speaking Albanian.

“A lot, I guess. He was so charming and yet he seemed so sad. I’m a sucker for sad.”

“I know what you mean. You keep wanting to cheer them up.”

She looked at me and smiled. “Ah. A fellow neurotic.”

“Did you meet friends of his? Double-date or anything?”

“He knew everyone in town. You couldn’t go out with him without running into friends of his.”

“But I mean close friends. Intimates.”

“Intimates! I doubt Jason McKendrick knew the meaning of the word.”

Rob said, “You don’t seem that sorry he’s dead.”

She pulled on a cigarette, no longer angry, thinking things over. “Don’t I? I almost cried on the air tonight. I think it only gets to me when I’m alone. Are you going to the wake?”

We nodded.

“I guess I am too. The point of those things is to make it real— that somebody’s really dead.”

When we left, I felt bereft myself and couldn’t figure out why. Rob said, “Creepy, wasn’t she?”

I’d kind of liked her. “Was she?”

“Oh, yeah, like a vampire. Dressed all in black. Anorexic. Killing herself with cigarettes. No wonder he wouldn’t have sex with her— it’d be like humping a corpse.”

“And then there’s the night job.” I was beginning to realize she was probably a very depressed woman— what had looked like a failure to grieve was probably just her accustomed lack of affect. Well, that made two— Adrienne was no Little Miss Sunshine herself. And come to think of it, Rob had said she always wore black to the office. I wondered if they were into tattoos and piercing as well. And if that meant S&M. The culture changed so fast it was hard to know what went with what. For all I knew you wore pink polka dots to signify S&M these days.

“Who’s next on the list?”

“Let’s do another girlfriend. I’m dying to see if we’ve got a pattern here.”

“How about Felicity Wainwright, the oncologist? What do you bet she’s just a bundle of giggles?” Felicity lived in San Mateo, which meant quite a little drive, so it was midmorning by the time we got there. Our plan to surprise people in their beds was rapidly falling apart.

Her house was lovely— Spanish-style stucco, the house of someone who’d been well rewarded for fighting cancer. I wondered what the job was like. If most patients lived, it was one thing— if they didn’t, it must be one of the hardest jobs in the world. She was probably away, I realized; anyone who lived that stressful a life probably beat a retreat on weekends.

But there were two teenagers on her porch, a boy and a girl, the girl eating yogurt and granola, the boy practically doing handstands to amuse her. And it looked as if it was working. She kept putting down her bowl and laughing, sometimes touching brow to knees, holding on to her ankles. She had light red hair that hung to the middle of her back in perfect curls, as if she had an expensive perm, but I was willing to bet she was just lucky. Lucky to have that hair, live in that house, be fourteen and in love. She probably didn’t own a single black garment.

“Is this the Wainwright residence?”

“Uh-huh. You want to see my mom?”

I nodded.

“Mo-om!” It was a piercing shriek.

“Yes?”

I’d been expecting a harried parent to rush out the door holding her ears. Instead, a woman rounded the corner of the house, wearing khaki capris and gardening gloves, which she was pulling off delicately, finger by finger.

“Felicity Wainwright?”

She nodded, wary.

Rob said who he was. “And this is Rebecca Schwartz.” No more ID than that, which was fine with me. “I was a friend of Jason McKendrick’s. I wonder if you’d mind talking about him with us?”

“For a newspaper story?” She was petite, almost birdlike— and from the look on her face, she’d fly away if the answer was yes.

“Actually … not yet. We’re very concerned, as you might imagine. And frankly, we’re a little pissed that the police haven’t arrested anyone. So, I guess you could say this is background right now— we’re trying to find out who had a reason to kill Jason.”

The two kids on the porch were riveted. Wainwright glanced at them nervously. “Let’s go in back, shall we?”

We walked behind her, Rob admiring her tiny, perfect butt. I knew that because I knew him so well, but then anybody would have. Felicity Wainwright was one of those perfectly shaped tiny women who made you feel like picking them up like a baby and counting their fingers and toes. Like her daughter, she was a redhead, copper hair cut short and bouncing about her head in unruly curls. Her face was more pink and white than the usual redhead gold, more a blonde’s coloring, and her eyes were a very light blue, azure almost, and they were round, which gave her a look of innocence and youth. She looked almost as much like a teenager as her daughter— and about as likely to wear black. There was something about the curls, or perhaps an Irish shaped face— elflike, with pointy chin— that made her look merry as the month of May.

She took us to a patio paved with flagstones and seated us at a white table under a Cinzano umbrella. She laid her dirty gardening gloves on the table as if they were white-lace ones and this were a formal occasion. “Would you like some iced tea?”

“Sure,” said Rob, though I would have declined, eager to get to the interview. He had told me once that he always accepted beverages, it got people used to the idea that he’d be awhile. So I nodded, going along.

When we were all genteelly sipping, Wainwright said, “I don’t know how I can help, really. I feel like I hardly knew him.”

“We heard you two had been dating.”

“Dating. Yes.” She frowned. “But not so much lately. God, he was fun. He figured out what my favorite foods were and always made sure he let the chef know in advance— things would just magically appear, variations on themes, you know, different things every time but still all my favorites. And then the chef would come out, and Jason would joke around with him— he just had such an easy manner. But— you know— I hadn’t seen him in two weeks, maybe three, when I heard the news. Tell me— there’s no question he was murdered, is that right?”

“The police have a couple of witnesses who say he started running to get out of the way, but the car backed up and went for him again.”

“My God! Who’d want to do that?”

“We were just wondering if you had any thoughts.”

“Not unless it was somebody he skewered in one of those wicked reviews of his. He was a completely hilarious writer, but I was always afraid he’d go too far. Other than that, I wouldn’t have any idea because I don’t know anything about his life— he was one of those guys who only do small talk.” She gave me a wry look, as if to say, You know the type?

“So I take it,” said Rob, “that you weren’t deeply involved with him.”

“You mean was I sleeping with him?”

Rob had the good grace to look taken aback, but she kept talking. “I belong to this group that my friend Trudy calls JerkEnders. We have this little rule— no sex before the tenth date.” She laughed. “Only two people have ever managed it, I think, but the theory is you should get to know somebody first. Very obvious, huh? And very nineteenth century. Well, it’s this way— either those two people must have dated Jason McKendrick, or maybe he belonged to another branch of it, up in the City.”

“Not exactly Fast Eddie, I take it.”

She spread her hands, not hiding a thing. “It was kind of refreshing at first. After awhile I got to wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“What was going on.” She got Rob in a hammerlock stare. “It isn’t exactly guy behavior.”

“I, uh— I guess not.” It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. It wasn’t every day I got to see Rob Burns get flustered. From the shade of pink he was starting to turn, I gathered his cover had just been blown— that he most assuredly knew guy behavior when he saw it, and he was thinking he’d like to indulge in some with Felicity Wainwright.

I changed the subject, to get him off the spot. “We hear you’re an oncologist.”

She nodded. “Use lots of sunscreen, and maybe we’ll never meet professionally.”

“I was just wondering how you met Jason.”

“At a friend’s house— Toby Hunter. I mean at Toby and her husband’s house. They had us both to dinner one night.” She smiled, a little embarrassed, I thought. “I guess it was a fix-up.”

“Just the four of you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess it was. How did Jason know the Hunters?”

“They have a PR agency— I think with a lot of theatrical clients. I guess it was frustrating because Toby couldn’t fix them up with Jason, whom she adored. She was always telling me how funny and urbane he was— all of which was true. I just don’t know.…”

“What?”

“If there was anything there.” She lifted an eyebrow. “But there had to be. A man who takes you out for two months and doesn’t make a pass must have
some
kind of explanation for it.”

“Maybe a war wound.”

“Insane wife in the attic.”

“Respects you too much.”

We burst out laughing— somehow, we’d managed to bond. Rob stared, amazed. I said, “What does Toby think?”

“She thinks a disgruntled actor killed him and just hopes it wasn’t one of her clients.”

“I mean about the other thing.”

“Oh. Well, she thinks he’s in the closet. What else is there to think? Unless he just doesn’t like redheads.” But of course that couldn’t be it because then he wouldn’t have asked her out in the first place.

“Do the Hunters know him well?”

“Actually, I don’t think so. I think that’s the only time they ever had him to dinner. I guess it was dicey, considering their career and his.”

“And how did you know them?”

“I guess … that’s the sort of thing I’m not supposed to talk about.”

Which told the whole story, of course— that one of them was a patient; Toby, probably. That Toby felt Felicity had saved her life and wanted to pay her back. And so she decided to introduce her to the man of her dreams— and Felicity was a good sport who’d gone along with it.

I liked her. Why, I wondered, wasn’t she McKendrick’s cup of tea? Why weren’t Rob and I each other’s? What was this thing called love?

“So he was gay. I’ll be damned— Jason McKendrick.”

“Well, it
could
have been a war wound,” I said.

“No way. You heard what Felicity said about ‘guy behavior.’”

“But Jason must have been complicated— I’ve been thinking about something.”

Rob was driving on the way back to the city to try to catch couple friends and men friends. We’d decided to go for the men first— the better to check out the gay idea.

He looked at me curiously.

“If you work at the
Chron
, you have to make guild scale, right?”

“At least.”

“And Jason was a pretty big star and an aggressive guy, so it’s reasonable to assume he was paid over scale, right?”

“I got a look at one of his checks once. He was way over scale.”

“And are you?”

“Not much— just a little.”

“But you live in a pretty nice place. How come Jason lived in a hovel with no furniture?”

“I was wondering about that. And his car was an old wreck.”

“Why don’t we ask Adrienne what he spent his money on?”

“Good idea. I already did.”

“Speedy Gonzalez.”

“I phoned to make sure she was okay at her dad’s, and just happened to inquire. She doesn’t know.”

We had three men on our list— Barry Dettman, Cal Perotti, and Bobby Auerbach. Barry was our first stop— we’d been told he was one of Jason’s oldest friends, maybe his closest. He lived on Potrero Hill, apparently with another friend. A woman answered the door. Television sounds came from somewhere.