Putting on the Dog (12 page)

“Yet he made his living publicizing the comings and goings of other people.”

I was simply thinking out loud. But Chess set his lips firmly in a straight line.

“And look at the thanks he got.” His tone was icier than the pitcher of frosty mint tea he held in his hands. “You’d think all those celebrities had never heard the saying, ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’—which I happen to believe is true ninety-nine percent of the time. You’d think they would have been
thrilled
with the coverage he got them. They should have kissed his feet. Instead, they treated him like something you’d find under a rock.”

He sniffed indignantly. “Everybody complains about the paparazzi, but nobody acknowledges how popular their work is. I mean, look at the tabloids like the
Stargazer
and the
Gossip Gazette.
Why do you think they even exist in the first place? Because the public— you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average—can’t get enough of the movie stars and the TV personalities and the other celebrities we all treat like gods!

“Those papers sell millions of copies every single week. And do you think they’d fly off the newsstands if they were full of factual tidbits about what Brad Pitt eats for breakfast? Of course not! People want drama! They want sensation! Most of all, they want reassurance that, when you come right down to it, the celebrities we’ve all put on a pedestal aren’t any better—or happier—than the rest of us.”

Chess kept talking as he poured us each a tall glass of iced tea. “Take Kara Liebling. We’ve all seen a million pictures of her looking like a fashion model. And we all know somebody spent two hours on her hair, giving it that flyaway look, and somebody else spent two hours on her makeup, making her look like she’s not wearing any, and somebody else took some five-thousand-dollar designer gown and fit it to her like it was her own skin. But we don’t think about that. We just think about her perfection. We yearn for it for ourselves, but we know that never in a million years will we come even
close
to tasting it in our lives.

“So isn’t it reassuring to see a picture of her screaming at some autograph hound who’s been hassling her, with her hair sticking out all over the place and a big stain on her shirt, and maybe, if we’re really lucky, a big zit in the middle of her forehead? I love Kara like a sister, and I’m the first to admit that she can be made to look like an absolute princess. But the reality is that sometimes, she’s just as tired and frustrated and miserable as the rest of us!”

Chess’s passion startled me.

“It’s not as if Nettie didn’t work his butt off,” he went on in the same bitter tone. “And it wasn’t just standing out in the rain and the snow or sleeping in people’s backyards. A lot of times he had to be extraordinarily creative. Nobody ever gave him credit for that.

“Like he came up with this really clever way of getting a person’s address. He’d call up somebody who knew them and tell them that, by mistake, he’d gotten a piece of mail delivered to his house that was in their name. He’d ask for the correct address, saying he wanted to send it to them. And if they wouldn’t give it out, he’d give them a little nudge by saying it looked like it was a check. At that point, they always changed their tune.”

“Clever,” I said.
Devious,
I thought.

Chess glanced at the pitcher of iced tea in his hands, as if he had just remembered he was holding it. He turned and put it back in the refrigerator. “Sorry if I got a little carried away. This happens to be a subject I feel very strongly about.”

“Of course you do,” I said soothingly. “Devon Barnett was someone who really mattered to you.”

“I loved him,” he said simply. “I still do. And I always will.”

He bent over and scooped up Zsa Zsa. “Come here, my precious little princess. Daddy needs a great big hug.”

Suddenly, he stiffened. Noticing that his eyes were fixed on something behind me, I turned to look.

Standing in the doorway was a woman the size and shape of a telephone booth. Even though she was carrying a plastic bucket overflowing with every cleaning product ever invented, she was wearing a dress. The fabric was a solemn shade of blue, and it was completely unadorned. Its high neck was surprisingly modest, especially given the warmth of the June day. The same went for the sleeves that hung below her elbows. She also wore a flowered apron, its bright oranges and yellows a jarring contrast to the rest of her outfit. Thick, dark beige pantyhose were stretched over her barrel-shaped calves, bunching up at her ankles like the skin on a shar-pei. On her feet, she wore a pair of padded black Nikes.

Her graying hair was pulled back into a tight bun. The expression on her face matched its severity. Small, light-colored eyes peered out at me from narrowed slits. Her mouth was also a narrow slit, thin lips drawn into a tight straight line.

Lou immediately retreated under the table. Max, meanwhile, let out a low growl. I scooped him up and held his tense body in my arms.

“Hello,” I said cheerfully.

“I am Hilda,” she barked. “I clean.”

Her accent struck me as Eastern European. “Nice to meet you, Hilda.”

She appeared to have finished with the pleasantries. Turning to Chess and scowling, she said, “Dogs bring dirt in house.”

“That’s just silly.” He clasped the mass of white fur even more tightly to his chest. “Especially Zsa Zsa. She’s immaculate. Besides, she’s so light on her feet that her paws barely touch the ground.”

“Dog carry germs,” she insisted. “I clean kitchen now.”

“Hilda, we’re talking in here. Do you think you could work somewhere else?” Covering his mouth so only I could hear, he muttered, “Like Iceland?”

Hilda didn’t budge. “I clean living room. I clean dining room. Now I clean kitchen.”

“Oh, just go do the bathrooms or something. Surely you can find some of those
germs
you’re always chasing after in some
other
part of the house!”

She cast him a look capable of taking the varnish off a table. Then, still clutching her plastic bucket, she stomped out of the room.

“I
hate
her,” Chess hissed the moment she was gone. “Nettie insisted that we keep the house absolutely immaculate. And once he found that battle-ax, no one else would do.” He shuddered. “He had a thing about dirt.”

Ironic, I thought, considering he made his living reveling in it.

“I’m getting rid of her,” Chess continued petulantly. “As soon as I get my bearings, I’m going to fire that monster. But for now, I’ll just do what I’ve always done: disappear the minute she gets here. Go hang out at some restaurant like the Sand Bar or the beach or something.”

The Sand Bar. I made a mental note to scope it out the first chance I got.

“If she does a good job of keeping this place clean, she’s probably worth holding on to,” I commented. “It’s a big house.”

“It’s a
huge
house,” Chess corrected me. “Speaking of which, would you like to see the rest of it?”

“I’d love to.”

I left Max and Lou in the kitchen with Zsa Zsa, not wanting any stray dog hairs to incur Hilda’s wrath. Chess placated the three of them with a few gourmet brand Milk-Bones, doled out from one of Andy Warhol’s cookie jars. Then he took me on the grand tour, pointing out the highlights along the way.

“And this is the guest room. The silk wall coverings are from France; the chandelier is Venetian glass—”

“Did you decorate it yourself?”

He looked pleased. “How did you know?”

“Just a hunch. Are you a professional?”

“Oh, Jessie, you are pulling me right out of the doldrums. You’re better than an illegal substance. No, honey, I’m not a professional. Not that I didn’t train for it. That, and about a thousand other occupations.”

He sighed. “When I moved to New York from that
pit
of a hometown of mine, I didn’t have a single marketable skill. I skipped around from job to job, each one drearier than the last. But when I met Nettie, he insisted on helping me improve myself. He paid tuition at all kinds of different schools while I tried to ‘find myself.’ I started out in hairdressing school, but it turned out I was allergic to hair spray. Then I tried cosmetology. I thought I was a natural, but the teacher said I made everybody look like a drag queen. Then came cooking school, but we won’t even go there. Decorating was next, but most people didn’t share my taste.” He grimaced. “The instructor told me I should get a job designing brothels. How’s that for encouraging America’s youth?

“Still,” he went on wistfully, “it was such a happy time in my life. I was so glad to have gotten myself out of Crabapple. Still am. Every day of my life, I thank
God
for Greyhound buses. I’ll never forget how ecstatic I was when I first moved to New York. I was like a kid on Christmas morning. I couldn’t believe I was really there. Ever since I’d first seen it, back when I was sixteen, I just knew I had to find a way to get myself there.” He sighed. “I felt like Dorothy, finally getting to the Emerald City.”

“You came to New York when you were sixteen?”

He nodded. “School trip. Something I’ll never forget. And once I saw the Big City, I couldn’t
wait
to move there. So that’s exactly what I did, the day after my high school graduation.”

By that point, we’d walked the entire house, except for the master bedroom. We found Hilda there, oblivious to us as she attacked the carpet with the vacuum cleaner. Chess just rolled his eyes, then walked right by.

On our way back to the kitchen, I noticed a closed door.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“That leads to the basement. It’s always kept locked.”

“Ghosts?” I suggested. “Or just dust bunnies?”

“That is—
was
—Dev’s photo studio.” He stopped, his eyes filling with tears again. Then he shook his head hard, as if forcing himself to go on. “He—he developed his own negatives down there. He used a digital camera some of the time, but he still preferred the old-fashioned way. I think he loved the process of working with the film and the chemicals, seeing the pictures appear right before his eyes. Having
control
over the whole process. Besides, you can’t alter real photographs the way you can play around with digital photos, so there’s no doubt that whatever you see in the picture is real.”

“Could I see his studio?”

“Heavens
no
!” Chess looked horrified. “Absolutely
nobody
was allowed in there! Nettie’s studio was his sacred place. We need to respect that, even now. He practically had a
phobia
about anybody ever going into his workroom!”

His vehemence piqued my interest. A locked room that Barnett didn’t allow anyone to enter—not even his lover?

I was still studying the door, scoping out the lock to see how formidable it looked, as Chess prattled on. “He was crazed about so many things. I used to call him ‘Nervous Nettie.’ Of course, that about drove him up the wall.”

The tour led us back to the kitchen. The dogs, still chomping on their high-priced doggie treats, barely noticed our return.

“Chess,” I asked, choosing my words carefully, “do you think any of his phobias might have been justified?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“There were a lot of people who didn’t like what he did. Taking pictures of people—celebrities—at their worst moments, publishing them with the intention of making them look bad.... From what I understand, he wasn’t very popular.”

“What’s your point, Jessie?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s occurred to me that maybe Devon’s death wasn’t accidental.”

Chess looked stricken. “You think he was
murdered
?”

“It’s possible.”

I told him about the conversation I’d had with Gary Frye earlier that day. When I finished, he remained silent. But the frown lines in his forehead had thickened considerably.

“Chess, has anything unusual happened lately?” I asked him. “Was Devon acting different? Did he mention anything—or anyone—that might not have struck you as odd at the time, but that, looking back, could have indicated that something was wrong?”

“Well...” He glanced from side to side, as if to make sure no one was listening. As far as I knew, the only person within hearing distance was Hilda, and she seemed completely focused on sucking dust and germs out of the carpet.

“Now that you mention it, there was something....”

“Yes?”

Chess sighed. “Lately, like for the past couple of weeks, Nettie kept talking about buying another vacation home. Only this time, in the South of France.”

“You didn’t think that was a good idea?”

“Believe me, no one would have loved a
petite maison
in Provence more than me. But I didn’t know how he thought we were going to afford it.” He opened both arms, gesturing at the house around us. “You see how he liked to live. He acted as if there was an unlimited supply of money. But even
I
knew there had to be
some
limit to how much we had to spend.”

“Is that the only thing you’ve noticed that’s been out of the ordinary?”

“Well...” He hesitated, as if trying to sort out what he was going to say next. “A few nights ago he went out for a meeting. Someplace local, since he wasn’t gone that long.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“He wouldn’t say. And even at the time, it struck me as odd. Most of the people out here don’t want to meet with the paparazzi. They’re too busy running away from them.”

“Did he tell you anything more about it?”

“He wouldn’t say a word. But I noticed that when he came home, he was Mr. Cranky. You couldn’t get near him. Not that I tried very hard. Nettie could be sweet, but when he was in one of his black moods...well, I can tell you it wasn’t a very pretty sight.”

“So you have no idea who he met with? Or whether it was related to his work?”

Chess shook his head. “Nettie and I were really close. In fact, we were getting ready to celebrate our three-year anniversary. But even with me, there was a side of him that was very secretive. I always figured it was the nature of his business to be guarded, since a lot of what he did involved tricking people. You know, sneaking up on them when they least expected, so he could get just the right shot. The one that showed their vulnerability.”