About Face (15 page)

Everyone nodded as if they did know the details. Rupert folded his hands and put a look of concern on his face. “The poor fellow. Shocking a man could do that to himself.”

I acted surprised. “Oh no, they've ruled out suicide. Someone went in there and murdered him.”

Trisha pursed her lips. “It's a shame. That used to be such a safe area. It's terrible how standards are falling.”

“You know, Connie Plush said exactly the same thing,” I replied.

The only way I knew Trisha's smile was fake was that it was too big. “Connie's a
lovely
woman.”

“So we've heard,” Rupert added hastily.

“You provide Plush with models for their marketing, right?” The guess was based on what Rod had told me about Alissa.

Trish gave a noncommittal smile and sipped her drink. Rupert looked away. The faces of the Sylvain guys showed no puzzlement, only hesitation; they were still waiting for cues.

“We know a lot of people in common,” I went on, shooting in the dark. “I saw Connie today and she said nice things about all of you. She particularly admires your style, Trisha.”

“I'd imagine so. She married that funny man—what was his name?”

No one spoke up. It was as if they were afraid to say the wrong thing.

“Donald, isn't it?” I suggested.

Still the table was silent. No one corrected me. The waiter appeared with a tray of drinks.

“Good-bye, Bill.” Trisha tapped the underside of Rupert's elbow. He stood, and she gave a lift of the eyes to the Sylvain men. They stood and crowded me out of the booth.

The waiter retreated. “Do you have another table, sir?”

“I'll take it myself,” I said, picking up the beer from the tray. I raised the glass. “A toast,” I said, and paused for the waiter to hand out the other drinks. When Trisha lifted her pink cone,
the rest followed suit. “To those who deserve justice. Here's to Rod Glaser.”

Everyone drank tentatively. It was hard to tell whether this was due to guilt or to fear of Trisha. They acted as one, like puppies watching Mom. I turned as if to depart, then swung back to Rupert. “I can save you some trouble with the police. They're awfully interested in your relationship with Rod. There's no reason for me to keep quiet about his connection to you anymore. I'll come by to talk to you about it.”

The threat had nowhere near the effect I wanted. “Don't worry, Bill, the police are taken care of,” he said serenely. He was back in charge. He looked away from me and made a witty remark to his guests as they sat down again.

The busboy arrived and I had to move so he could distribute water. I took my beer back to the bar. A few sips later, a man emerged from behind the bar and informed me that it was time to leave. He was big enough that I had no choice but to agree.

But I had gotten one answer for my trouble tonight. Rupert's comments about the cops confirmed my suspicion that he'd been the one whispering about Rod's instability. Still, I left with a lot more new questions. I hoped Alissa's friend Erika would begin to answer them tomorrow night.

You can't control
when people are going to call you. It's one of the reasons email seems so agreeable, even if it only adds up to written voicemail. Email suggests an ongoing correspondence; delay is built in and therefore acceptable. Voicemail continually makes you feel as if you're missing out on things.

What I missed out on was the chance to speak person-to-person to Wendy. She left the message Saturday morning while I was on the phone with Jenny. Jenny was my ex-girlfriend. We were together for seven months. It had verged on getting serious, but we parted ways two months ago. We were in post-relationship limbo now, talking infrequently, wondering who'd be the first to announce they'd met someone new. I knew I hadn't, so when she'd called last week to set up dinner tonight, I wondered if I was about to receive some news. It would be painful to hear, but I didn't regret the breakup: As bright and sparkling and enterprising as she was, our approaches to life were too divergent.

My hope had been for the dinner to be the first step in becoming friends. Now I hoped that when I explained that my client of the moment had turned up dead, she'd understand
why I had to break tonight's date. I thought she might even be a little amused by the fact that Wes and I were going out with two “associates.”

She wasn't. There was a long silence after I broke the news. “Hello?” I said.

An intake of breath came over the line. “Well, that's just pathetic, Bill, if you have to go to these lengths to avoid seeing me.”

“Rod was murdered, Jenny. This woman Erika was close to Alissa.”

She took another breath, then let it out. “Well, I have to hand it to you, you were right about Sheila and what killed her at my dinner party. But that doesn't automatically turn you into Sherlock Holmes. Don't tell me you're too dumb to realize what these girls really are.”

“There won't be any sex. That's spelled out in the contract. SG is about creating an image, casting a glamour.”

“Glamour is not your area of expertise, Bill.”

“I'm a babe in the woods,” I admitted. “But it's interesting to watch how it works. I have a feeling I have to decipher the code to get to the bottom of Rod's murder.”

“Get to the bottom of it,” she said with a trace of sarcasm. “You never trust what's on the surface, do you? There's always something deeper, and by God you've got to dig it out. But then you find out there's a new layer, a deeper cause, and you get obsessed with that. And then another, and another, until you go all the way to the bone. And it's hollow at the center. Remember how you used to complain when I put on makeup, as if I was some fashion victim? Well, I
like
putting on my face; it's fun, it's creative, it puts me in control. You never understood that. You can keep going deeper and deeper and deeper, to whatever layer you want,
Bill. It's still surface. You're always right back at the top layer, and all the digging in the world won't bring back your friend.”

A sudden abyss yawned in my mind. She'd put our differences in a nutshell. It was clear to me that neither of us had absolute truth on our side. The truly frightening thing was that she might be right in this case. There might be no deeper truth and no rhyme or reason to Rod's bloody death.

“Bill?” she said into the silence. “Aren't you going to tell me how wrong and superficial I am? You always have an answer for everything.”

“I don't have an answer, Jenny. I don't know what else I can do but keep on driving with my eyes closed.”

It was a phrase I'd used when we first met, at a point when my life had been tossed like a salad. Her voice grew softer, concerned. “I know you're doing what seems right, Bill, and that's a good thing. I've always liked that about you. Just please don't crash.”

“Thanks, Jenny. I'll call to reschedule the dinner as soon as there's some kind of conclusion to this Rod business.”

“I wish you all the luck in the world,” she said, and hung up. The message from Wendy had been waiting on my voicemail afterward. She sugared her voice and apologized for being mistaken about Alissa again; she could have sworn her daughter was back in town.

“I've got a line on her in Arizona,” Wendy's message continued. “Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with that girl. She's acting very strangely. I was so shocked by the news about Rod. I'm really, really sorry, I know you were fast friends. People have strange inner demons, don't they? Well, I've got to go. I had really hoped to speak to you in person. I'll be on the road, but I guess you know how to reach me. Of course, I'll do anything I can to help. Ta-ta for now.”

I banged the phone down, then called in for my voicemail again, noted the time of the message, and made sure it was saved. Then I phoned Mike. He wasn't in his office, but I got him on his mobile. He'd received a message from Wendy, too, the same kind of thing. I asked if he had any way to trace it. He said his caller ID indicated it came from a pay phone. I had him give me the number.

“She was just covering herself, don't you think?” I said. “It would look bad if she split town without calling. She made sure neither of us picked up. She figured you wouldn't be in the office on Saturday, and with me she just got lucky. My outgoing voice-mail message gives my mobile number, yet she didn't use it.”

“I guess so, Bill. Hey, I'm sorry but I can't talk. I'm with the Sylvain lawyers.”

“I'm going to the police station. I'll talk to you later.”

I thought about Wendy's call on my way down the Peninsula. The entire reason I had a new cell phone, with film work getting so sparse in the Bay Area, was not to miss calls. I'd thrown away my previous one after my short, unhappy foray into the tech business. The phone broke due to a collision with a wall. Wendy knew that people around here didn't answer their land lines anymore, and took a calculated risk. She would have hung up if she'd gotten me real-time.

The day's string of unsuccesses continued at the police station. I showed the card Mike had given me for Detective Coharie at the front. They said he wasn't working today. Wasn't he supposed to be solving the Rod Glaser murder? I asked. This brought a glare and eventually, after a long wait, an interview with an on-duty detective. He nodded as I spoke, jotted the number of Wendy's pay phone, stared at his pad, and offered a perfunctory thank you. I said I wasn't finished yet. When I
tried to outline the connections between Silicon Glamour, Rod, Sylvain, and Plush, he interrupted to thank me again and tell me the detectives knew how to do their job. I had the feeling he'd been warned not to listen to me—more of Rupert's handiwork.

The next place I swung and missed was the hotel where Rod's mother was staying. She didn't answer her phone and I could do no more than leave a message at the front desk. Strike three. I headed back up to the city to see if I had any clean clothes to wear for our date tonight, wondering how many outs I had left.

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Most of my expectations about our dates proved wrong. They did not call me and Wes “gentlemen.” They did not maintain that either we or they were “high class.” They gave no come-hither looks and let no lace peek out from under seams. They treated us like we were just a couple of guys they knew and we were all out for a pleasant and proper night on the town. I kept reminding myself that this was the result of training, and the training had been good.

Erika had a natural look. Her face was broad, open, and wholesome, her hair the color of freshly cut hay. She came across as the kind of hearty, athletic woman you might get to go skinny-dipping with if you were really lucky. She wore a sheer outer layer over a simple designer T-shirt, with a print skirt. Her friend Noela's pencil-lined eyes glinted with a more impish disposition. She wore a dark silk blouse, silver jewelry, and hip-hugging black pants.

We met them at a dinner club in San Jose, a retro place that had lost some of its charm because it knew retro was hip. The
lounge was festive, with white lights strung across the ceiling and a parquet dance floor. We ate in the dining room, where the food was overpriced and the tablecloths too thick.

Wes and I bumped into each other doing things like pulling out chairs for our dates. I sat across from Erika. When she introduced herself, I'd swallowed a comment about having met before. I knew her voice; it had been the one speaking to Alissa's answering machine when I was inside the apartment.

Wes sat opposite Noela. He ordered a Manhattan and the table was inspired to follow suit. Noela had a healthy gulp of hers, but the level in Erika's glass decreased little in spite of her frequent sips, which she took with a smile.

I'd prepared a few opening lines, but Erika beat me to it with the first rule of dating: Let your date talk about himself. “So,” she said, “tell us about your work!”

The effect on Wes was immediate. He talked about his company, which round of financing they were in, the excellence of their software, and their plans for expansion, as if offering a prospectus for investing in it—or in him as a mate. I was slightly embarrassed, but I knew it came from a nervousness about himself. He was a nerd at heart who felt he had to go out of his way to prove his bona fides in the “real” world.

Erika and Noela offered a picture of perfect fascination. They were also courteous enough not to leave me out. When Wes finally paused for air, Erika asked me what I did.

“I make films,” I said suavely.

“What kind of films?” Noela said with nothing more than polite interest.

“Action-packed Silicon Valley stuff. You know, scheming CEO's, top-secret tech—in fact, you probably could tell me a lot about it. I'll bet you've met some crafty execs in your time.”

Erika gave a giggle that went on a fraction of a second too long. “I really don't know very many CEO's. What happens in your story?”

“Well, maybe you can help me with it. We could use some consultants.”

This brought laughs from both Erika and Noela. “Oh, the movie business is too slick for us,” Noela said.

“Actually, my films are nonfiction. Well, as nonfictional as a corporate show can be. I do industrials and image pieces for companies in the Valley. The last one I did was for a guy named Rod Glaser.”

I saw a brief contraction in Erika's eyes. She covered it quickly. This would be a delicate operation. I pulled back and said, “So, what movies have you seen lately? Anything good?” The question would take a good half hour to answer and would tell me something about the two.

“You know what's cool?” Noela said. “Those old James Bond movies, with Sean Connery. I've been watching them on DVD. He's so sexy.”