Naked Addiction (5 page)

Chapter 4

Helen

H
elen Marcus was surprised when her doorbell rang at three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. She wasn’t expecting any visitors. Lucky, Tania’s dog, was barking madly, so Helen opened the screen door to the back yard and put him outside first.

“Just a minute!”

She padded across the carpet in her bare feet to the front door. When she opened it, she was surprised to see a Los Angeles police officer rubbing his keys back and forth across his palm. Helen figured he was there to investigate the burglary she’d reported a few days earlier. The CD player and speakers had been ripped out of the BMW in her own Beverly Hills driveway.

Helen hoped the handsome young man would come in and keep her company over a cup of coffee. Feeling sluggish, she ran her hands through her newly colored hair, pulling it away from her face. She’d always wanted to be a blonde and now she was one. Besides, she had to do something to cover the white.

“Mrs. Marcus, I’m Officer Kelley from the LAPD. Can I talk to you and your husband for few minutes?”

“Well, Tony is out playing golf,” she said, smiling and gesturing for him to step into the foyer. “But you can talk to me. Is this about the robbery I reported?”

“No ma’am, ‘fraid not,” he said quietly. “It’s about your daughter.”

A lump sprung up in her throat.
Not again,
she thought.

“Oh,” she said with a forced nonchalance. “She’s not in some kind of trouble is she?”

Yes, of course she is.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” the officer said, dropping his voice. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs. Marcus, but, well, your daughter was found dead this afternoon. Murdered.”

A wave of heat flushed over Helen’s body. She could hear her own blood pulsing. She’d thought he was going to say Tania had gotten into another fender bender or something, maybe stolen a Gucci bag she’d been eyeing. “Whaat?”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Marcus.”

“Are you sure? She was just up here last weekend, telling us about her first month at that beauty school. It can’t be—”

Helen’s mind went white.

“The apartment manager was able to do a preliminary identification, but San Diego police were hoping you would come down there and make it official, ma’am.”

Helen slumped against the refrigerator, covering her mouth and nose with her hands. “Oh, my God,” she said, the Italian floor tiles becoming a blur. She wanted to know more, but she didn’t want to hear it.

“Ma’am? San Diego Homicide wanted me to ask that you call them.  As soon as you can handle it, that is.”

She couldn’t speak for a moment.  “How?” Helen finally asked. “I mean, how did it happen?”

The officer struggled with the words. “I think it would be best if you talked with Detective Goode with San Diego PD, ma’am. He found her while he was off duty and he’ll have all the latest details. We wanted to notify you personally right away, but we don’t want to give you any misinformation.”

Helen shuffled a couple of steps over to the sink and leaned her hip against it, looking out the window. She took a deep breath and then another. A hummingbird, perched on a branch of the bottlebrush tree, fluttered its wings and flew away. Helen was determined not to cry in front of a stranger.

“I’m really sorry, ma’am, but I’ve got to get going. If you want to speak with a crisis counselor this evening, just give us a call. I’ll leave this card with the phone number right here on your table,” he said, setting the card on the cherrywood antique in the foyer.

Helen felt a slight relief as she heard the front door click shut. But now that she was alone, she didn’t know what to do with herself or all the thoughts racing through her brain. Was it one of those young men Tania was always running around with? Had she been in pain? Was she scared? Helen had never even considered this happening—her only child dying before her.

Helen’s hands shook as she sloshed some Johnny Walker Blue into a crystal tumbler of ice. Her father used to call it his “courage in a bottle.” Typically, she drank the cheaper stuff, but not today. Tony could go to hell. He was never there for her. The scotch was. And without an argument. She gulped down a couple fingers worth, then refilled the glass.

Helen grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen counter and carried it to the sofa in the living room. She tried reaching Tony at the country club, but the man at the front desk said he hadn’t seen him in about forty-five minutes, since he’d come in from the green.

“Damn,” she whispered as she punched in the number for the San Diego police.

“Detective Goode is out at the crime scene, ma’am,” said the woman who answered the phone. “I’ll text him with your phone number so he can call you back.”

Helen sipped methodically from the glass, feeling herself start to go to that warm and comforting, familiar place. As the tears came, the fine wood grain of the cabinet became a softer beige blur. The pain of it was too much. Her baby was dead. She grabbed at a chunk of her hair and pulled on it. She wanted to feel numb, have it envelop her like a fuzzy blanket, only it wasn’t coming fast enough.

The scotch was helping, but what she really needed was a hot shower. That would speed things up, take her to the place she wanted to go. She’d grown quite attached to the soothing caress of rushing water. It was certainly more fulfilling than the empty social hugs and air kisses from the women she played tennis with at the club. She and Tony hadn’t had sex for three years. She had no interest in it. Especially after he’d started nagging her about her drinking. All she wanted was an escape from the boredom, the loneliness. The scotch consoled her, comforted her, took away the uncertainty and the fear. Lately, she’d started hiding bottles to keep Tony off her back, but he’d been finding them and yelling at her. He didn’t understand. She could stop whenever she wanted. She just didn’t want to. 

Carrying her scotch into the bathroom, she pulled back the shower curtain and turned the hot water all the way on. She got in, closed her eyes, and let the stream hit her face. The powerful jets hit the tight knots in her upper back and shoulders. It felt good, for a minute anyway. Anything to distract her from the pain she was feeling inside.

In her mind, she saw a much younger version of herself bathing two-year-old Tania at their old house in Encino. Helen remembered how much she’d hated the desperate summer heat of the San Fernando Valley. Yet Tania didn’t seem to mind. She wouldn’t sit still, though, jostling around and giggling as she splashed suds all over the terra-cotta floor. A few years later, her kindergarten teacher called Helen at home several times, saying that Tania was touching herself inappropriately at school. So when Helen saw her doing it at home or in the bath, she would grab Tania’s fingers and scold her.

“No, that’s dirty,” she’d tell Tania as she scrubbed her hands thoroughly with soap and a brush. And eventually, Helen stopped getting those horribly embarrassing reports.

She smiled at the bittersweet memory and turned the water a little colder. She poured too much shampoo into her palm and smeared it over her scalp. Tania had visited just last weekend, and combed Helen’s hair in the living room. They talked about Tania’s new apartment and the treacherous iron stairway she had to climb to bring in the groceries. Tania left in a huff after Helen chided her for wearing such a skimpy outfit, with her breasts hanging out. They hadn’t talked since and now they never would. Helen would regret making that comment for as long as she lived.

Her daughter had always had a tough exterior, but underneath, Tania was sensitive and insecure. Even though she was beautiful, she had some self-esteem issues. Helen blamed Tony, who had always wanted a son. He held her to such a high standard; nothing she did was ever good enough. He thought his attempt at tough love would make her more successful, but Helen had her doubts. Tania wouldn’t let Helen in, though, and it was often so hard to talk to her that Helen had given up trying. She wished now that she’d worked harder at it. If she’d known her daughter was in danger, she could’ve tried to protect her.

Helen squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. The soap was stinging, compounding the hurt. “Why didn’t she take the money we sent her to get a nice apartment in La Jolla?” Helen said, her words garbled as her mouth filled with water. “Because she was stubborn and righteously independent, like her father. That’s why.”

Helen turned off the tap. She couldn’t stop weeping. The mist in the bathroom seemed to coalesce with the fog in her head. Hearing the phone ring in the kitchen, she wrapped the towel loosely around her and moved into the hallway so she could hear the voice on the answering machine better.

“Hello. Mrs. Marcus? This is Detective Goode with the San Diego Police Department calling you back. I’d like to talk to you—”

Helen hobbled into the kitchen and picked up the receiver. Her tongue felt thick and furry. She could hear their conversation playing on the answering machine as they talked, but she couldn’t remember how to turn off the recorder.

“I’m so sorry about your daughter,” the detective said. “I know this must be a very hard time for you right now, and I want you to know we’re doing everything we can to find out what happened.”

“I appreciate that, thank you,” Helen mumbled, slurring her words.

“We’ll need you to identify the body and, of course, we’ll need your help to figure out what happened—who did this to your daughter. Do you think you and your husband can make it down here?”

“Make it down there?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be working on the case all night.” The detective paused, waiting for her answer. “Mrs. Marcus, are you all right?”

“My husband. . . well, I don’t know where he is. It’ll probably have to wait until morning. Is that all right?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

Helen felt paralyzed. She let out a long sigh. Her towel fell off as she reached for the scotch. Taking a gulp, she held the ice cube in her mouth, then let it clink back into the glass.

“Are you up to answering some questions for me in the meantime?” the detective asked gently.

“I’ll try.”

“Did Tania have a boyfriend in LA? Or was she seeing anyone here in San Diego?”

“She’s always had lots of boyfriends. Too many.”

“Okay. What about a girlfriend in San Diego? I understand she’s been here for only a short time.”

“Yes, she did mention someone. Let me think.”

Helen’s eyelids felt heavy, but if she closed her eyes, the room spun. Must’ve been the shower. All that steam. “El. . . Al… Alison,” she sputtered.

“Alison Winslow?”

She spoke slowly. “Maybe. That might be right. She went to the beauty school, too.” Helen felt her knees buckling. She needed to sit down. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go now. My husband will have to call you back.”

Helen poured herself another tumbler of scotch and walked naked over to the fireplace. The mantle was lined with photos. There was Tania with Mark the quarterback, with Craig the ASB president, and with Tommy, one of the Bad Boys, as Tania fondly referred to them, on his motorcycle.

Tony didn’t like her dating so many boys. He told Helen he didn’t like the way they looked at Tania or they way they touched her, even if it was just a quick goodbye kiss, because he knew what they wanted. Helen remembered the day after Tania’s prom. Tania had stayed out all night, so she took a nap when she got home after breakfast, then went out again that afternoon. Tony came home from work, reeking of cigars, and headed straight for Tania’s room. He threw one of her china dolls against the wall, then ground the shards into the rug with his boot, which was still muddy from visiting one of his construction sites that day.

Daddy’s little girl had forgotten to make her bed again. Helen had known deep down that it wasn’t the unmade bed that made him angry. He was jealous. But Helen didn’t even want to go there.

Helen was so scared of what Tony might do that she’d never told him about the abortion Tania had when she was sixteen. Helen was angry with her daughter for being so irresponsible, but she dealt with Tania in her own way: She took away her allowance for the summer. Someone had to teach the girl that abortion was not a form of birth control.

Chapter 5

Tony

T
ony Marcus came in from a pretty poor round of golf, a fried chicken dinner and a few beers with his business partner, Jerry, who could talk of nothing but his sexually insatiable mistress. It was almost a relief to be home, even though he found his wife, Helen, passed out on the couch. No surprise there. Lucky was whimpering at the screen door in back, so Tony let him in. The compact disc player was on and the plastic case for the Harry Connick album, which Tania had left for him during her last visit, lay open on the table next to a half-empty bottle of the good scotch. A glass with two inches of yellowish water sat next to the bottle.

Dammit, Helen,
why can’t you keep your hands off the good stuff?

He’d told her time and time again to save it for guests. But she kept going through it as if it were wine in a box.

The fan whirred softly in the corner by the forty-two-inch high-definition television he’d bought Helen for her birthday. The digital clock on the DVD player read 8:30 P.M. Lucky was pushing his dish around on the kitchen floor, which was his call for food. Tony opened a can and dumped its contents into the dish. At least the dog was happy to see him.

He went into the bedroom and turned on the TV so as not to wake Helen, though he figured there was little chance of that happening.

“In other news, a twenty-six-year-old amateur boxer will spend his wedding night in the LA county jail tonight. Patrick Ortega was arrested in his tuxedo on suspicion of assaulting his forty-year-old bride at the Marriott Hotel in Encino this afternoon. Witnesses saw Ortega smack his wife in the head so hard that he drew blood from her ear. Police said Ortega was the best-dressed prisoner in custody.”

“The things people do to each other,” Tony mumbled, clicking it off with the remote.

Heading into the kitchen for a glass of ice water, he saw the red message light flashing on the answering machine. He had a love-hate relationship with the contraption. Impersonal, yes, but it saved him from having to talk to annoying salesmen. If they weren’t real estate agents wanting to show his house (it was the nicest one on the block; he should know, he built it himself), it was someone selling something, or one of Helen’s friends hoping to persuade her to donate his money to yet another charitable cause. Or even worse, it was another machine talking to his. He was considering Tania’s idea of just going with a cell phone and nothing else. She said all her friends were doing it.

Tony hit the Play button. “Hello, Mrs. Marcus? This is Detective Goode with the San Diego Police Department calling you back. I’d like to talk to you. . ..”

Tony leaned closer to the machine as if it were talking to him, and listened to Helen’s conversation with the detective earlier that evening. The impact was immediate: he broke out in a sweat and felt like he was going to throw up.

“My baby,” he whispered. “My little baby.”

As if on cue, the phone rang. It could be anyone, but he didn’t want to answer it. He was likely to say anything. Anything at all. After four rings, the machine clicked on.

“Mrs. Marcus? If you’re there, please pick up the phone. This is Detective Goode again. Sorry to bother you, but I have some more news about your daughter. . . .”

Tony held his hand on the receiver, trying to decide whether he could stand to hear anything more from Detective Goode. “Hello?” Tony said quietly.

“Is this Mr. Marcus?”

“Yes.”

The officer paused. “I’m very sorry about the loss of your daughter, Mr. Marcus. This must be a very difficult time for you. I don’t know if your wife mentioned it, but we’d like you both to come down and talk to us. We need your help, sir.”

“What the hell happened?”

“We think she was killed sometime last night. She was found in the alley behind her apartment building this afternoon.”

“But what happened? I mean, how?”

“We’re not exactly sure, but it looks like someone strangled her. The medical examiner will do an autopsy tomorrow to determine the official cause of death.”

The image of some man squeezing the life out of his daughter’s neck flashed across his brain. The breath went out of him, as if someone had just punched him in the gut.

“Sir? Are you all right?” Goode asked.

“I’m okay. Go on,” Tony said, his voice barely audible.

“So far, we don’t have any eyewitnesses. We’ve talked to her neighbors, but most say they didn’t know her because she’d only just moved in to the complex. We’re going to try her classmates next.”

“You’d better find her killer or I’ll do it myself,” Tony muttered.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Nothing,” Tony replied.

“We would have liked for you to come down tonight, but given how late it is, we hope to see you first thing in the morning. You’ll want to ask for Sergeant Stone. He’s my supervisor.”

Tony hung up and pushed the answering machine off the kitchen counter, sending it crashing to the tile floor. Helen stirred on the couch in the next room, but didn’t wake up. She snored like that only when she’d drunk herself into oblivion.

He still loved her, but since she’d stopped wanting to have sex, they’d lived together like roommates. She kept saying she didn’t feel sexy anymore, but he knew it was the alcohol. She was having an affair with the damn bottle and he couldn’t compete with that. When he tried to talk to her about it she blew up, say she didn’t have a problem. And when he gave her
The Big Book
from Alcoholics Anonymous she refused to read it.

“Maybe I’ll feel more like having sex later,” she told him. “Just give me some time. In the meantime, do whatever you need to do. Just don’t flaunt it in my face.”

He knew some men might enjoy the chance to explore other women, but he wasn’t a player, really. Nothing like his daughter. He’d tried to date a girl recently, and it had helped a little, but then she disappeared on him, which only exacerbated his loneliness. What he really wanted was for Helen to stop drinking so he could have his wife back. He missed her. And now Tania was gone as well.

Tony poured his ice water into the sink and went back to the fridge for some fresh ice so he could have some of the good scotch before it was all gone. The cubes clinked into the glass as he pressed it into the dispenser in the door. The thing kept getting clogged lately. He fought back the urge to pick up the phone and call Tania’s voice mail to listen to her voice. Maybe if he called, she would pick up and say there’d been some bizarre mix-up, a case of mistaken identity. 

He walked into the living room and grabbed the neck of the scotch bottle, pouring until the glass was dangerously close to overflowing. He sucked in some of the liquid so as not to spill it. Then he picked up the glass, put the bottle under his arm and started for the back door to the pool. He needed some air.

“Tony?” came Helen’s croaking voice from the sofa.

“You awake?” he said.

“Yeah. C’mere,” she said, her words slurring together. In the dim light from the moon, he saw she was lying naked on the couch. She held a hand out to him and he took it.  

“Our baby is gone,” she moaned.

Tony set down the bottle and glass on the table and lay with her on the couch. It was the first real physical or emotional contact they’d had in a long time. He’d missed her even more than he’d realized.

“I know, Helen. I heard all about it on the machine when I got home. Then the police called again. Why didn’t you call me at the club this afternoon?”

Helen rubbed her nose against his chest. “I tried, but you’d already gone. The police called and—” She disintegrated into tears.

“Shhhh,” Tony said.

“What are we going to do?” Helen whispered.

“I’m going down there tonight,” he said, starting to get up.

Helen pulled on his shirt. “No, it’s too late. Let’s get some sleep and go down in the morning.”

“I guess you’re right.” 

Tony settled back into her arms. It felt strange at first; it had been so long. Helen pressed her wet face into his neck. He felt her tears creep down his skin, seeking refuge in the deep wrinkles the sun had carved into him during the long hours he spent outside. Although he was touched that she’d turned to him for comfort, it was a bittersweet embrace. He knew it would be a fleeting moment.

The banter of crickets echoed throughout the room. The sound was so loud he thought there must be one under the sofa. He remembered sitting with Tania by the pool the previous Saturday night. Serenaded by the chirping, they discussed her plans to open a designer salon after she graduated from the high-end beauty school he was paying for in La Jolla. He’d promised to loan her all the start-up money she needed as long as she promised to work hard. She would have been a rich woman someday.

He turned his head away from Helen so she wouldn’t feel his tears. Then, he decided, to hell with it, and let them roll where they may.