Dim Sum Dead (11 page)

“
T
his is not a good time, Honnett.” I sat myself down next to him on the step, settling my purse on the step below.

“Too late for you? I thought you were the tough girl. Nothing is too late for Madeline Bean. What happened to that?”

“That is a very good question.” I didn’t look at him. Sitting together on the step in the chill air, our sides touching, the warmth of his body felt good.

“Rough night?” he asked, checking me out. “You kinda lost your zip.”

“You have that keen detective talent for observation working, don’t you?” I said. “I have indeed lost my zip. Please don’t let it get out, though. Bad for business.”

“What’s the matter?” Honnett’s voice got husky. He usually sounded more, I don’t know—cynical.

“I’m tired, maybe,” I said, trying to get my voice to sound lighter. “My birthday’s coming, did you know that?”

“You’re feeling old?” He began to laugh. “You’re like a puppy. What are you turning? Thirty? I don’t even own jeans anymore from back when I was thirty.”

“Yeah, it does sort of cheer me up to hang out with an old guy like you,” I said, beginning to smile. I looked up at him. Big mistake. Honnett looked especially good in street lamplight. Wouldn’t you know?

“I’m trying to cheer you up, here. Is it working?” He kind of whispered. My tiny street was deserted, and we were sitting
so close together, I had no problem hearing him. “Look, we can do this another time,” he said. “I’m just going off duty now, anyway. Not a whole lot of progress on your mah-jongg-snatching, but you expected that. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He stood up, but I couldn’t.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I think,” I said.

“Are you crying?”

When I didn’t answer him right away, he sat back down and put his arm around me, rustling it around the shoulder of my bulky black-leather jacket.

“This is not the best time for you to have dropped by, I’m afraid.” I smoothed my face with both hands, wiping away the tears that kept coming.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said. Tears came harder. “Everything.”

Honnett said, “Look, you want to go inside? Maybe I could make you a cup of tea?”

Oh, boy. The first time I had cried in as long as I could remember, and I find myself with a man who doesn’t go running away in a panic. I was in a very dangerous place.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. But I had also discovered I had no tissues in my purse. I had to go upstairs.

He followed me up to the landing at my front door and waited, patiently, as I fumbled in my bag to find my key ring. As we moved through the house, we left the lights off. I went upstairs, and he came along, making small talk.

“I don’t think I’ve been upstairs before. This where you live?”

I use my downstairs for our catering business, but the three bedrooms upstairs had been converted into my private apartment. The former master bedroom was now my living room. I walked in and found the box of Kleenex.

Honnett came into the room, leaving the lights off. I think he realized I didn’t want to be seen like this, falling apart. He walked over to the little fireplace in the corner and knelt, checking it out, moving his hand lightly over the tiles.

“Are these Batchelder?”

My house was built at a time when the famed tile-maker was doing relief tiles in colors popular with the Arts and Crafts movement, like gold and moss green. My fireplace surround was covered in a rare shade of matte blue. I was mildly surprised a guy like Chuck Honnett would know anything about ceramic artists of the early twentieth century.

“Would you like me to make a fire?” he asked.

See, everything he said seemed to make me cry more. I don’t have to explain, do I, that Arlo didn’t know anything about building a fire. That if you couldn’t turn a little metal key in the wall, Arlo was worthless. I thought about that some more as Honnett started arranging a few logs.

“I broke up with Arlo tonight. Remember him?”

“Sure. The rich kid.”

I laughed. I don’t know if it was hearing Arlo called “rich” or a “kid.” So, Honnett thought I dated rich guys. Is that why he’d fought the attraction all these months? And the age thing again. Honnett was forty-three, I guessed, and he had told me once before he thought he was too old for me.

“That all you’re gonna say?” I asked, looking at him as he lit a match and touched it to the crumpled newspaper in the grate.

“Well, from the look of you tonight, I’d have to say you aren’t all that happy about losing him.”

“I didn’t lose him, Honnett. I walked out on him, and I’m glad I did it.”

There are two wonderful wing chairs in my small upstairs living room, but he didn’t choose to sit in either of them. The cushions on the down-filled sofa sank as he joined me there. “So, tell me about it.”

I turned to him, made eye contact, and spoke. “I thought I loved him, Honnett. I think I still do.” Tears. “When I started dating Arlo, I was getting pretty successful. The business was taking off. Wes and I had turned a corner, and I could see it. And Arlo was just as ambitious. We were the same that way.”

“Oh, I think not,” Honnett said, reaching up to touch my hair, pushing it back off of my wet face.

I leaned against him and talked. I told him about how I’d been drawn to Arlo in those days. Arlo liked that I had my own career. He liked that I wasn’t an actress because he was always fighting with actresses at work. As he grew more successful and wealthier, he liked that I was self-supporting and didn’t ask him for money like his family did. He liked that I didn’t object to his long hours. I think, over time, one of the only strengths we had was that we didn’t object to each other’s weirdnesses and hang-ups and obsessions.

“We were willing to leave each other alone.”

“Not the best setup for a couple,” Honnett said, “if the most they have in common is they leave each other alone.”

“True.”

“Didn’t he love how funny you are?” Honnett asked, his hand stroking my hair.

“Arlo was the funny one.”

“Didn’t he love how strong you are?”

I looked at Honnett then. I reached out and touched his face. I kissed him. I needed to be held. I wanted to be touched.

He pushed my hair back and kissed me.

“Arlo was scared I wanted to marry him. He was scared I was turning thirty and I’d force him to marry me and have children. He never wants to have babies,” I said, pushing Honnett back, taking a breath.

“What’s wrong with him?” Honnett asked softly. “What can a man have against children? Is he too cynical to have any human feelings?”

“He works from such a skewed perspective all the time, writing jokes, being smarter and tougher and funnier than everyone all the time, to stay on top. I felt like when I was with him, I got smarter and funnier, too.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that.” Honnett looked at me, waiting as I talked it out.

“I got hard, though, too. I got cynical. I think the worst of people. I suspect the darker motives, not the best.”

“Well, so do I, Madeline. That’s my job,” Honnett said.

“I know. I’m worried that’s why I may be attracted to you
so much.”

“You are?” Honnett cracked a smile. “Finally, we’re talking about me. Hot damn.”

“Don’t distract me, please. I’m thinking it all over. I think being tough and cynical has helped me become better at business.”

“Yes. And seeing things from a distance, it helps you get to the truth.”

“Yes.” I sat back, considering the price I pay for those benefits. I have lost, I realized, that idiotic inner child everyone in L.A. is always rattling on about. I felt tears well up again. What was happening? First I go all weak on the idea of fate, and now I was crying over my inner child.

“I think…” I grabbed another tissue. “…I think I’ve been living in Los Angeles too long.”

Honnett smiled. “Just recognizing that, Madeline, is like your armor against it.”

“I want to be different. I want to be freer.” I wadded up the tissue and threw it into the wastebasket.

“Then do it.”

“It doesn’t just go away. I still think I see everyone’s ulterior motives and moves.”

“For instance…?” He looked over at me, and pushed one of my unruly curls back off my forehead, again.

“For instance. What do you get for being such a decent guy tonight? What is your reward?”

“Well.” He looked at me again. “That fine questioning mind of yours is what would have made you a pretty good cop.” And then he smiled. “I think, if you are okay now, I had better get going.”

And in that moment, I knew I wanted him to stay.

I was in the shower the next morning when I thought I heard the phone ring. I stood under the oversize chrome showerhead, the old-fashioned kind that made me feel like I was rinsing shampoo out of my hair in a steamy hot downpour.

There was a tap at the bathroom door, and then I heard it
open.

“Hey,” Honnett’s voice called from the doorway. “That call was for me,” he said. “I’m afraid I have to go out now. It’s work or I wouldn’t leave like this.”

“Oh.” I turned off the water. “Would you mind handing me a towel?”

I heard Honnett, who must have been up and showered and dressed before six o’clock, enter the foggy room and step across to the tub. He drew back the shower curtain and looked at me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I wanted to see what you looked like wet.”

So, yes, there was more kissing and so on. In fact, there was all that. What is it about tantalizing and distracting a serious, hardworking man, that makes it sexier?

“I had better let you get to work,” I said. But of course, I said it when there was no chance in hell that he would move off of me, not right then, not for a while longer.

At one point he said, “I’ve thought about this.”

“Really? You mean standing in the shower?”

“Not exactly. Just with you.”

I would forever think of my bathtub a little differently after that morning.

Sometime, too soon after that, we heard the phone ringing again, down the hall from my bedroom.

“I’m sorry. I thought it would be best to give the desk your number. I should get it.”

“Go right ahead.”

I rinsed off and then wrapped a big white towel around myself and began the long process of towel-drying my hair. Ten minutes later Honnett returned. His face looked serious. His eyes were steady. “Maddie.”

“I don’t even know what your schedule is,” I said, seeing him there. “Are you—”

“Um, Maddie. Come out here for a minute, okay?”

I let him lead me to my bedroom, which is the smallest of the three upstairs rooms. The bed was neatly made, so I
knew I wasn’t with Arlo anymore.

“What?” I looked at the bed, which just about filled my tiny room, and smiled. “I thought you had to go to work.”

“I do. Please, sit down for a minute. There’s something I have to tell you.”

I sat down, not knowing what to expect. Now, the old Madeline Bean would have become worried, suspicious. That other Maddie would suspect the sorry, I can’t have a relationship with you letdown talk. I’m afraid a lot of that old Maddie was still in charge.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“That last call. It was the watch commander. There’s been a death. I have to go.”

That was it? So he wasn’t letting me down easy? I felt relief, and then, shocked at myself, guilt.

“Madeline, listen. It’s some bad news. I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, especially this morning. You know the victim.”

“What? No.”

This was my punishment for one night of self-indulgence. This was why we shouldn’t break up with our boyfriends who are pretty decent to us and go instantly to bed with some cop. “Who is it?”

“The woman at the party last night. Quita McBride. She fell down the steps to that big house up on the hill where you

“
M
adeline? You here?”

Holly’s voice echoed down the hall. I had heard the key in the lock. It was just after eleven on Thursday morning, her usual start time. Holly’s desk is set up out in the large entry hall, and I heard her bustling about out there, getting settled for the day.

She wandered into my office a few minutes later. I was sitting behind the double partners desk, the one I share with Wesley. In the original old house, Wes’s and my office had been the dining room. But now, it is filled with a scatter of file cabinets and bookcases. On the walls are framed photos and invitations from some of the more dramatic parties we’ve done.

Yes, there are pictures of Wes and me with Jim Carrey and with Cameron Diaz and with Regis Philbin. In L.A., there’s not a Kinko’s or Petco or an optometrist or proctologist or a preschool or funeral home that doesn’t have a few celeb photos on the wall.

“Oh. You’re here.” Holly’s bright voice sort of cut through the silence.

I looked up.

“What’s going on?” Holly lowered her long, lanky self into the khaki-colored club chair, waiting. “Hey, Mad. Is something wrong?”

I shook my head no. I’d been sitting there all morning. I’d meant to get a start on the billing. I’d even pulled open a file
drawer, I think. I looked at my desk and noticed that my computer wasn’t turned on. Ah, well.

“Maddie, honey, you are scaring me. What happened? Where’s Wesley?”

“I don’t know. I called and left a message for him. He’s probably at the Wetherbee house, and his cell phone must be off.”

“Something is wrong. What happened last night after I left Buster’s party?”

“What happened?” I repeated, trying to think how I could explain. “I told Honnett there was something wrong. I told him I was worried. And he told me to just forget about it, Holly. He didn’t think there was any real threat.”

Holly drummed her long, slender fingers on the section of her baggy white capri pants that covered her knee. “I need to hear the whole thing,” she said. “And then we can freak together, okay?”

I told her about the night before. At some point in the story, between the part where I broke up with Arlo Zar and the part where I saved some stranger’s baby, Wesley joined us. He sat in his desk chair and didn’t say a word.

“So you saved weird Curt Newton from NBC’s baby girl?” Wes said, shaking his head in wonder. Both he and Holly made no comment on the part of the tale where I walked out on Arlo at La Scala Presto. I suppose they were a little gun-shy. They had been through a lot of on again/off again with us over the past six months. I realized I had taken Arlo back several times too many. They just didn’t realize that we were now completely off. Instead they were going over the part with the truck crashing on the sidewalk inches from me. “So you must have been pretty scared.”

“It was weird,” I said, answering Wesley. “What was I doing out there on that street corner? And then that little girl. She shouldn’t have been there either. What can it all mean?”

“Freak coincidence,” Wesley said, thinking about it.

“Or destiny,” Holly suggested.

I rubbed my head, not wanting to admit that I was getting to be more like Holly each day. “So…you two have nothing
to say about me leaving Arlo after all this time?”

“Well, we’ve kinda been expecting it, Mad,” Holly said.

“And you do go up and back,” Wes said.

“Not this time,” I answered. And I told them about Honnett. All of it.

“Holy Moley.” Holly looked over at Wes and then back to me. “What about all that junk you always say to me? You always tell me, don’t jump in. You always say, leave a cooling-off period. You always say, take it slow. Oh, Maddie.”

“I know.” I put my hands up to my forehead. “I know. I was looking for something. I…”

“It’s a different thing, Hol,” Wes said. “
You
always jump into impetuous romantic things. That’s
you.
You’re the one who needs to cool down. But Madeline’s different. She is usually so sensible. She stays in her relationships too long. I mean, look at how long she’s been taking care of Arlo. Maybe she just needed to be spontaneous.”

As they sat there, talking about me, figuring me out, I wondered what I could say. In the light of day, how could I ever explain what happened? How, the night before, I’d succumbed to the moment, seduced by the luxurious idea of fate. I had a glimpse of myself as I was becoming, on the turning point of my next decade. And I was scared, okay.

“Look,” I said. “My birthday’s coming. I can’t waste any more time with Arlo. I mean, if I ever do discover what my needs are, he sure as hell isn’t the guy who can handle them.”

“Amen to that,” Holly said, sounding impressed.

“So, I’ve had enough. And maybe I got a little too crazy with it all. I felt so free. I stopped thinking about doing the right thing.”

“You are always putting everyone else’s needs before your own,” Wes said.

“I know you both will laugh at me, but I finally thought I could put my cynical old soul to sleep, for a minute there.” I looked from Wesley to Holly. “I mean, I cried last night. Now when have either of you seen me cry?”

“You must have been a wreck after the Arlo thing, and then that car accident thing,” Holly said.

“Yes, but it was okay, Hol. I needed to cry. I felt like I awoke something inside of me that I’ve been missing.”

“Like you awoke your
inner child
, Madeline.” Holly pro-claimed.

“Yes. Well.” I felt suddenly squirmy. “I was hoping to avoid mentioning that disgusting concept, but maybe so.”

Wesley fought back a smile. He was such a thoughtful soul.

Holly said, matter of fact, “You got in touch with your inner child and let her out. Amazing. But then Honnett was around, and who knew your inner child was starving for affection and had such amazingly poor impulse control?”

“Please. Don’t remind me.” I shivered.

“Well, so what’s everyone so glum about?” Wes asked. “Honnett’s not a terrible guy. I hope.”

I smiled at Wes. “It’s not that, Wesley. There’s more.”

They both looked at me.

“I should have been paying better attention to everyone else’s needs after all. I picked a hell of a night to start getting selfish.”

“Why?”

“Because Quita McBride was asking for help last night. Remember, Wes? At the Wetherbee house? She was going on about being scared, and she asked me to help her. And I said no. I thought she was nuts, which she may have been, but I said no, here’s some money.”

“Everyone asks you to help them, Maddie,” Holly said, dismissing it. “You can’t help everyone.”

“Well, she seemed fine at the party later,” Wes said, looking at me, worried. “Don’t you think she may have been overly dramatic, Mad?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. Because even though I warned Honnett that Quita was scared and I warned him something might be going on with her, he did nothing to help. He said there was nothing the police could do.”

“So?” Holly looked worried too.

“So she fell down the stairs outside Buster Dubin’s house sometime in the middle of the night.”

“Oh no,” Holly said.

“She’s hurt?” Wes asked, upset.

“She’s dead, actually. She died. Quita McBride, who was begging me to let her stay here at my house. But I didn’t want her here. I thought she was nuts. I gave her a few dollars, and now she’s dead.”

“Maddie, this isn’t your fault. You can’t think that.” Holly reached for a Kleenex and blew her nose. I noticed a tear was wiped as well. “So this is what you were obsessing about when I came in. Oh no.”

I couldn’t get my head around it. I couldn’t. I had been sitting here most of the time since Honnett had left, trying to imagine that Quita McBride was no longer living.

“What happened?” Wes asked.

“Sometime, in the middle of the night, outside of Buster’s house, Quita McBride fell or was pushed down the front steps. No one knows which. Isn’t that horrible?”

“Bizarre and horrible,” Wes said.

“Honnett told me about it this morning, when they called him to go to the scene. There were no witnesses. The only one home at the time seems to have been Buster.”

I thought of Buster with the glint of fun in his eye. Whatever had happened, his life was going to be hell now. Everyone knew he and Quita had not been getting along well.

“You know she might have slipped,” Holly said. “She was drinking a lot. Maybe she slipped.”

“Maybe.” I shook my head. “But I really wish I had listened to her earlier, instead of telling her to go to the party and not to worry. I really wish I had listened.”

“Do they know what time it happened?”

I shook my head. “But I can pretty well guess where I was when she fell. I was pretty much involved with my inner child all last night and on into this morning.”

“Madeline.” Wesley called my name sharply. “Do you think this is somehow your fault, sweetie? Because it isn’t. She was a troubled woman, no doubt, but you tried to help Quita. You gave her good advice. You gave her money. You
can’t take care of everyone. Don’t do this to yourself. And anyway, it could have been an accident.”

“It could, Maddie,” Holly said.

“It seems like an obscene coincidence, I know,” Wes said. “But coincidences happen.”

I looked at him sadly.

I knew in my heart that my dear friends meant well. I knew they were worried about me. Anyone could see that I’d had quite an emotional day and night. But I was sure there was more I could do. I had to do it really. Because I was convinced that the death of Quita McBride was tied to the mah-jongg set that had been found and then stolen. Or tied to the missing red book she had wanted so badly.

I was sure whatever had frightened her there at the Wetherbee house was tied to it. Maybe, even, the death of old Dickey McBride was part of what happened to Quita. Perhaps, I was afraid even to think it, Buster Dubin was involved as well.

I knew I would have to find out. I couldn’t help myself. I always needed to know. I needed to know a lot more before I could begin to forgive myself for casually writing off a woman I hadn’t liked very much.

One night of inner child indulgence, and now I was overwhelmed by the sting of consequences. I guess I didn’t feel that hot about what I had been doing with Honnett on the night Quita McBride fell to her death.