Dead Air: A Talk Radio Mystery (29 page)

Ironic. Maybe Sanjay’s death had given her the visibility she needed. Her book had made both the
USA Today
list and the
New York Times
list, and it looked like she was back in the game.

At one time, she’d been my number-one suspect, but now everything had changed. Sanjay’s death may have revived her flagging career, but I didn’t think that was enough of a motive for murder. It was just a lucky outcome for her.

Lark came in later that evening, looking pale and distracted. She slumped with exhaustion but brightened when she saw us in the living room. “You’re back!” She enveloped each of us in a hug. I could tell she had dropped a few pounds from her already-thin frame.

“How are you?” I pulled back to look at her, taking in the gaunt expression and dark circles under her eyes. “You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

She shook her head. “Not really.” She put on the kettle and reached for a canister of chamomile tea, which she claims has soothing properties. “I’ve been going over and over what happened that night.”

“The night Sanjay—”

“Yes, that night,” she said quickly. She gave a helpless little shrug. I had the feeling she couldn’t even bring herself to say the word “murder.” Or “death.”

“Have the police contacted you again?”

“They’ve tried to. Nick put me in touch with a lawyer, Sebastian Martin. He won’t let me talk to the cops unless he’s there with me.” She carefully measured out the shredded chamomile into a little silver tea ball. It looked like catnip. “I’m a person of interest. But he said the cops are putting together a mountain of evidence, and depending on how they spin the facts, it could get a lot worse for me.” Her eyes filled with tears.

I nodded. “I know. What did he tell you to do? Did he have any suggestions?”

“Just to try to remember everything I could about that night. I told him I’ve gone over it a hundred times, but I think I have a mental block.”

“A mental block?” I immediately thought of suppressed memories—one of Freud’s classic defense mechanisms. Had something happened that night, something so traumatic that Lark had unconsciously pushed it deep into her psyche? Of course, she had been blindsided by Sanjay’s clumsy attempt at seduction, but was there more to the story? Was there some key detail we had all overlooked?

Apparently Mom’s mind was running along the same track. Mom loves pop psychology and buys every self-help book on the market. “A mental block? I know how to fix that.” She arranged some Lorna Doones on a plate to go with the tea.

I stared at her, trying not to smile. “You know how to fix a mental block?”

“Yes, dear, I do. Perhaps you’re forgetting that I played Dr. Ivana Romanoff on
Whispers
. My character was an expert at hypnosis, and she used it quite successfully on her patients.”

I remembered
Whispers
, all right. It was an afternoon soap that ran on a cable channel. It had overwritten dialogue and improbable plots and lasted only fifteen episodes.

“Mom, that was a soap opera character. You’re an actress, not a shrink. You don’t have any training in how to induce a trance.”

“I think you’re forgetting something. My character was a Russian psychoanalyst.” She sat down at the kitchen table, her expression serious. “We had a psychologist as an adviser on the set. She told me how to play the character believably, and she even taught me the art of self-hypnosis.” She looked aggrieved. “I know more about psychoanalysis than you think I do.”

Lark and I exchanged a look. “We could give it a try.” Her voice was tentative.

“You’re kidding. Are you sure you really want to do this?”

“If it will help me remember some important detail about that night, why not?” She turned to Mom. “Where do you want me to sit? Or do I have to lie down?”

“No, sitting up is fine, but we have to get you in a comfortable chair.” Mom was bustling around, pleased to be reprising her role as the intrepid Dr. Romanoff. “How about the Barcalounger? That looks comfy.”

Lark nodded and, taking her mug of tea with her, sat down in the plush lounge chair. Mom pulled up a kitchen chair very close to her. “I want you to close your eyes,” Mom said in a stagey monotone. “I want you to completely relax, and feel all the tension in your body drain away. Take three big breaths and let them out slowly.”

“Okay,” Lark murmured. She set her cup of tea on the end table and closed her eyes. She sank back into the cushion and wriggled until she was comfortable.

“Are you feeling relaxed? Or do we need to do a visualization exercise?”

“No, I’m relaxed,” Lark assured her. I remembered that Lark was into mediation and relaxation techniques.

“Okay, Lark, I want you to tune out any distractions and just listen to the sound of my voice. Do you think you can do that?” Mom’s voice was slow and languid, the words dropping softly, like cherry blossoms in the spring.

“I think so.” Lark seemed to be matching Mom’s slow cadence. I pulled up a chair and watched, impressed. I was surprised at Mom’s hidden talent. Maybe she did know something about hypnosis and trance states after all.

“I want to take you back to the night that you visited Sanjay.”

A frown flitted across Lark’s face, and Mom hurried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Lark; nothing bad is going to happen. There’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about. We’re just going to drift back in time to the evening when you visited Sanjay in his hotel room. You are completely safe.” She paused. “Can we go on?”

“Yes,” Lark said softly. “I’m not afraid. I can go back there, if you want me to.”

“Good girl. Now, I want you to see yourself in the Seabreeze, walking up the stairs—did you walk up the stairs or take the elevator?”

“I walked up the stairs. The carpeting is brown and burgundy with a diamond pattern on it, and it’s a little frayed around the edges.”

Mom looked over at me. Lark was getting into this. Some people are very good candidates for hypnosis, and some aren’t. Usually people who are creative and have a vivid imagination can be hypnotized and go into a trance state quite easily.

“You are walking down the hall looking at the doorways until you come to number . . .”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen. Now you are knocking on the door. Can you see yourself doing that?”

“Yes,” Lark said, her voice dreamy and distant. It sounded as though she was drifting away.

I shot Mom a worried look, and she whispered to me, “It’s okay; she’s going into a deep trance state. Look at her hands; they’re completely limp, with the palms up.” I nodded, not wanting to interrupt the process.

“You’re knocking on the door. What’s happening?”

“I’m tapping very lightly. I feel shy. I don’t want to disturb Sanjay. What if he’s meditating or something?”

I roll my eyes and Mom ignores me. “But he’s not meditating, is he? He answers the door.”

“Yes.” Lark’s voice is so low and muffled, it sounds as though she’s underwater. I notice she’s slumped a little farther into the Barcalounger, her arms hanging limply at her sides.

“And then what happens?”

Dead silence.

“Lark, stay with the image,” Mom said. “You are in the hallway, and Sanjay opens the door. He invites you in. You walk in the room . . .”

“I walk in the room.” Lark’s voice was robotic, as if she’d been drugged. “Sanjay shuts the door behind me.”

“Good, good. Now look around the room. What do you see?”

Silence.

“What do you see, Lark?” Mom raised her voice slightly. Lark is slumped in the chair, very still, her breathing light and shallow. “Don’t be afraid, Lark. Take a mental picture of the room and tell me what you see.”

“I see . . . I see . . .”

“Yes? What do you see?” Mom’s voice ratcheted up another notch. She looked at me and shrugged. Lark’s reaction seemed to be unexpected, but since I had no experience in trance states, I decided not to butt in.

A low droning noise. “What’s that?” I looked around the room anxiously.

“She’s snoring,” Mom said. “It seems that our subject has fallen asleep. This has never happened to me before.”

“Well, wake her up, David Copperfield. We need to find out what she saw in that room.”

“Lark,” Mom said, leaning over and touching her lightly on the leg. “I am going to count backward from five, and when I reach one, I will snap my fingers and you will wake up. Okay?” There was no response from Lark, but Mom went on anyway. “Five, four, three, two, one.”

She snapped her fingers in front of Lark’s face, and Lark jerked awake, her body twitching. She immediately wrapped her arms around her chest as if she was cold and reached for her mug of tea.

“What just happened?” She looked dazed and disoriented.

“You were sleeping,” Mom began.

“I know,” Lark said irritably. She reached for a quilt draped over the back of the chair and pulled it over her, nestling in the soft folds. “Why did you wake me up? I was having this amazing dream.”

“You were?” Mom grabbed a notepad and pencil. “An amazing dream? Tell me everything about it.” She leaned close to me and whispered, “It wasn’t a dream; she was in a deep trance state.” I nodded. “Go on, Lark,” she urged.

“Well, I was out in Hollywood . . .”

“Hollywood?” Mom frowned.

“Yeah, it was Hollywood all right,” Lark said, nestling back under the quilt. She gave an enormous yawn. “I know it was Hollywood because I was on Rodeo Drive—”

“Rodeo Drive?” Now I was getting interested. Where was this leading? Three thousand miles away from the Seabreeze Inn, it seemed.

“I was shopping on Rodeo Drive and decided to stop for a coffee at Café Rodeo.” She gave a happy smile and her eyelids fluttered as if she was about to doze off again. “So I bought a latte—you know, the nonfat, no-foam ones I like, with just a hint of vanilla.”

“Yes, we know what you like,” Mom said. There was a touch of irritation in her voice. This was clearly not part of the plan, and I wondered what had gone wrong with the “induction.”

“What happened next?” I prodded.

“This is the best part.” Lark reached out her arms in a languorous stretch. “I was sitting at one of those cute little patio tables outside the restaurant. This incredibly good-looking guy in aviator sunglasses came up to me. It was very bright out and he was sort of silhouetted against the sun. I couldn’t figure out who it was. He said, ‘May I join you?’”

I noticed Mom had stopped taking notes and was staring at Lark, spellbound.

“So I said, sure. And, here’s the amazing part of the dream.” Lark opened her eyes wide. “He sat down and took off his sunglasses, and guess who it was?”

“I give up.” I shrugged and waited.

“It was Brad Pitt! I was having coffee in Hollywood with Brad Pitt! How incredible is that? And then he reached across the table and took my hand. He said, ‘Lark Merriweather? I’ve always wanted to meet you. You’re the woman of my dreams. I’ve waited my whole life for you.’ ”

“You were having coffee with Brad Pitt?” Mom looked stunned.

“But what about Angelina?” I said. Not the world’s most intelligent comment, but I was caught up in the story.

“Oh, he said that Angie was just a phase. Can you imagine? Just a passing phase. I was the one he really wanted.” Lark stood up, giving a secret little smile as she gathered the quilt around her. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a little nap. Maybe I can find my way back to that incredible dream.” She walked into the bedroom, leaving the door open a crack.

“What was all that about?” I said the moment she was out of earshot. “She didn’t say a word about that night at the Seabreeze Inn. All she talked about was having a latte with Brad Pitt! Where did that come from, anyway?”

“Probably from the depths of her unconscious,” Mom said. She was clearly embarrassed by the hypnosis fiasco. “Maggie, you know these trance inductions are unpredictable. They don’t work every single time. As Dr. Romanoff said, ‘Hypnosis is an art, not a science.’ I’m afraid this hypnosis was a failure.”

I watched as Pugsley jumped down from the sofa and waddled into Lark’s room, all set for a nice long nap. He would be dreaming doggie dreams and Lark would be dreaming about Brad Pitt.

“I’ll say.”

As Irina would say, we were back to “square zero.”

Chapter 28

It was nearly one a.m. when Lark staggered into the kitchen, eyes bleary with sleep. I was sitting at the table, eating a dish of maple walnut ice cream and going over my notes.

“Something just came to me about the case,” she said, slipping into a chair across from me. “Something I had missed before. I don’t know how I missed it, but I did.”

“You remembered something about Sanjay and that night at the Seabreeze?”

She pulled her robe tightly around her and nodded. “I do. I guess Lola’s hypnosis session really worked.” She widened her eyes. “I woke up a few minutes ago, and it was amazing, but I could see his room at the Seabreeze. I could see every single detail, just like I was standing there or watching a movie.”

My heart kicked into high gear. “What did you see?”

“The sushi dinner. It was sitting right on the bed.”

“A sushi dinner?” I shot her a sideways glance. “You never mentioned this before.”

“I know. It’s silly, isn’t it? I completely forgot about it. I think that hypnosis session must have nudged something in my brain. Now I realize that Sanjay must have ordered some takeout, because there was one of those white take-out containers sitting on the bed.”

“How do you know it was sushi?” My detective instincts were on red alert.

Lark wrinkled her nose. “I’m a vegetarian, remember? I’m very sensitive to smells. If someone eats meat or poultry or fish, I pick up on it right away. I can’t stand the smell of sushi. And there’s another thing.”

“Yes?” I pushed Pugsley away. He was trying to leap into my lap to get at the ice cream, and the vet had already said he was overweight.