Sabrina Meyer, Hack-Hack-Hackensack native and highly promising young graduate of the Yale School of Drama, was stretched out on top of the bed in her second-floor room of the Sherbourne Inn with her head propped up against a couple of pillows. She was wearing the same linen dress she’d had on when we’d been chatting in the rose garden a couple of hours earlier, though her sandals were off now and she was sporting a fresh accessory in the crease of her left forearm—a disposable syringe that was stuck in a vein there. She’d tied off with a leather belt. The state’s jowly chief M.E. was hovering over her in his scrubs and murmuring instructions at his powerfully built young deaner. Tedone stood there watching them and looking extremely miserable.
“I’m here at Lieutenant Tedone’s request,” I said to the uniformed Connecticut state trooper who was blocking the doorway.
Tedone turned at the sound of my voice. “You squeamish?”
“Not generally.”
“Then come on in.”
The trooper stepped aside and I went on in, my stomach muscles tightening. The smell of vomit was overpowering even though the windows were wide open. A coagulating stream of it ran from the side of Sabrina’s mouth and down her lovely, swan-like neck before it puddled in the indentation above her collarbone, drenching her golden ringlets. Her unseeing dark eyes were wide open, their pupils contracted to tiny pin dots.
Lulu, who does happen to be squeamish, did one lap around the room, her nose to the rug, before she went back out into the hallway to wait for me.
“Reads heroin O.D. all of the way,” Tedone said to me grimly. “Her lips are already starting to develop a bluish tinge, see? Choked on her own vomit.”
“Better her own than someone else’s.”
“Was that supposed to be some kind of a joke?”
“Forgive me, Lieutenant. I’m just trying to hold on to what’s left of my sanity.”
“Damned shame. Such a pretty girl. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this turns out to be some of that ‘Tango and Cash’ that was floating around last year. Nasty, nasty stuff—smack laced with fentanyl, a surgical tranquilizer that’s something like fifty times stronger than heroin. Addicts were dropping like flies from it all over New York City before it made its way out here by way of Bridgeport, where it killed dozens more before we finally got it off of the street. But you never get all of it.”
I said nothing. Just stood there thinking about how beautiful and alive Sabrina had been two hours ago, how full of talent and dreams.
“It got its name from that piece-of-shit Stallone movie,” he added.
“You say that as if there’s any other kind of Stallone movie.”
He looked at me in amazement. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t love Rocky? Everybody loves Rocky.”
“I’m not everybody. And do we really need to have a conversation about Sly Stallone right now?”
Tedone narrowed his eyes at me. “Let’s step out into the hallway. I don’t like the way you look.”
“How do I look?”
“Shook up.”
“Really? I can’t imagine why.”
We went out into the wide, carpeted second-floor hallway with its Victorian urns and potted plants. Tall front windows looked out over the village green and the famous Sherbourne Playhouse.
“Chambermaid found her,” Tedone informed me quietly. “She’d asked for some fresh towels earlier today. When the girl brought them up and knocked there was no answer, so she used her passkey, went in and there she was.” He thumbed his jaw thoughtfully. “There’s no sign of a struggle. No bruising around her upper arms or throat. Bedcovers aren’t rumpled. Room’s neat as a pin. It plays accidental overdose. Unless, that is, it wasn’t accidental.”
“Are you suggesting she committed suicide, Lieutenant?”
“I have to consider all of the possibilities.”
Lulu was busy sniffing the hallway rug outside of the door to Sabrina’s room. She’d gotten a whiff of something. Followed it toward the third-floor stairs, then slowly up the stairs, snuffling and snorting all of the way. At the top of the stairs she made a right turn and I lost sight of her for a while. Then I heard her start barking.
“Good girl, Lulu. You can come back now.”
She came slowly back down the stairs kerplunk-kerplunk on her short legs, returned to me and sat on my foot, gazing up at me adoringly. “You’re right, I owe you another anchovy,” I promised her.
“What was that all about?” Tedone demanded.
“Basset hounds were originally bred to scent rabbits, did you know that? The only scent hound that’s superior to a basset is a bloodhound.”
He shook his head at me, bewildered. “They have rabbits in here?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then why are we talking about rabbits?”
“I’m still thinking about it.”
“About what?”
“If Stallone has ever made a movie that I liked. I suppose Nighthawks wasn’t awful.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “No offense, Hoagy, but you’re starting to get on my nerves.”
“What, just now? It usually happens much faster. I have no idea why. I try to be helpful and cooperative. Maybe I should start bringing doughnuts to the crime scene. Do you think that would help?”
Tedone glowered at me in baleful silence.
“No one saw anybody come in or out of her room?”
“Not a soul. Nobody heard any raised voices coming out of there either. Why, do you have reason to believe someone was in the room with her?” On my silence Tedone tried a different approach. “How well did you know her?”
“Well enough to know she had a problem with heroin. She told me she’d been clean for fifteen months, but you and I both know that a drug problem never goes away. Ever.”
“That sounds an awful lot like the voice of experience.”
“Only because it is.”
“You think she brought the stuff with her from New York City?”
“How would I know? Did you search her bags?”
He nodded. “We didn’t find anything. And the M.E. didn’t find any other needle marks on her arms. He can’t do a thorough search of her body until he gets her back to the morgue, but he did check the usual nooks and crannies, like in between her toes. She looks clean.” He thumbed his jaw. “Any chance she was having an affair with Greg Farber?”
“Do you mean was she so despondent over his death that she freaked out and shot up for the first time in more than a year? Is that what you mean?”
“There’s no need to get testy with me,” Tedone fired back.
“You’re right. Forgive me. It’s a plausible scenario, except for two things. One, she wasn’t having an affair with Greg. Two, I had a lengthy chat with her downstairs in the rose garden before I went to Point O’Woods and she wasn’t the least bit upset. Just eager to get home to New York. She was hoping that the two of us could get together there sometime. Even gave me her phone number.”
He raised a thick black eyebrow at me. “You mean she hit on you?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it that, but she was definitely trolling.”
“Trolling? I don’t know what that is.”
“You’ve never heard of trolling?”
“What I’m saying—”
“It’s a bit like hitting on someone but more goal oriented. She thought that I might prove to be a useful contact.”
“Because of your connection to Merilee Nash?”
“Exactly.”
“So it wasn’t about the two of you having sex?”
“No, it was definitely about the two of us having sex. But it’s primarily transactional. That’s show business, Lieutenant. All relationships are transactional in one way or another.”
Tedone tilted his head at me curiously, crossing his arms before him. “Refresh my memory, will you? Where was she when Farber was getting himself murdered in his dressing room?”
“Sabrina didn’t appear in act one. She watched it seated on a folding chair in the wings in full makeup and costume. She did tell me that she started downstairs during the intermission to try out some red lipstick, but that the ladies’ dressing room was such a mob scene that she abandoned the idea and came right back up.” I paused, recalling the way her eyes had flickered at me. “But she seemed evasive when she told me about it. As if she were holding out on me.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she thought it would be smarter to keep her mouth shut. Obviously, she was mistaken.”
“Are you telling me you think she was murdered?”
“No, I don’t think she was murdered. I know she was. Sabrina must have seen Greg’s killer. The killer knew it and had to take care of her. So he, or she, visited Sabrina in her room this afternoon and persuaded her to shoot up.”
“How do you ‘persuade’ someone to shoot up?”
“Easy. By holding a loaded handgun to their head.”
“Yeah, that would work pretty good,” Tedone conceded. He looked down at Lulu, then back up at me. “You sound awful damned sure about this.”
“Like I told you, I was with her in the rose garden before I went out to Point O’Woods. She was focused, together and clean. She wasn’t shooting smack. And while we’re on the subject of smack, is Romero still on ice?”
Tedone nodded. “No way he could have pulled this. Mind you, by tomorrow afternoon he’ll be back out on the street. Those lowlifes always manage to scrounge bail. My sergeant’s convinced that Romero is somehow the key to this whole case. Me, I don’t see it. What do you think?”
“I think that every time I turn around, I run into him—or a headless rooster. By the way, you’ll want to talk to Eugene Inagaki, who was Greg’s personal assistant. He’s out at the beach house with Dini. Drove out today from New York with their dogs.”
“And why will I want to do that?”
“Because Eugene was Greg’s lover. I’m certain he’s the one who gave Greg the AIDs virus, which Greg then passed on to Dini.”
Carmine Tedone stared at me with his mouth open for a long moment before he said, “Did she know that her husband’s lover was another man?”
“Eugene says she didn’t. And she certainly gave no indication that she did. Me, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was my business to ask, what with her being a grieving widow and all. That’s your job.”
“What about Dini’s mother, Glenda?”
“As . . . ?”
“As Farber’s killer. If Farber gave her daughter the AIDS virus because he was two-timing her with his gay assistant, that sure sounds like a motive to me.”
I considered this for a moment. Wondered if Dini had shared the results of her blood test with Glenda before the curtain went up. Wondered if it could have been Glenda who’d killed Greg. She’d been alone in the corridor outside of the ladies’ room when Dini was in there throwing up. Marty was in the men’s room dealing with his own issues. Greg was all by himself in their dressing room. For a precious few seconds no one had eyes on Glenda. She definitely could have rushed in there and bashed him in the head with that brick. A few seconds were all she’d have needed.
“Plus Glenda’s a retired nurse,” Tedone added. “That puts her in play if Sabrina’s overdose was no accident.” His face dropped. “Wait, what am I saying? Glenda was at the beach house when Sabrina’s O.D. went down.”
“Actually, she wasn’t, as a matter of fact. Glenda didn’t get there until a few seconds before I did. Told me she’d been running errands in Guilfoyle.”
“You’re saying she could have murdered Sabrina and beaten you to Point O’Woods from here?”
“Conceivably. I wasn’t in any hurry. And the guard at the kiosk had to call the house before he’d let me in. She’s been living there for two weeks and would have slipped right on through.”
“So the old lady’s unaccounted for and therefore a suspect.”
“Glenda’s also fierce when it comes to protecting her daughter. Fierce, period. If it was she whom Sabrina spotted coming out of the men’s dressing room then I’d totally buy her making sure Sabrina wouldn’t live to tell about it.” I paused, mulling it over. “Mimi Whitfield was down there during intermission, too, don’t forget.”
“Did she have a grudge against Farber?”
“Of a sort. She and Greg had a wild affair back in the Gerald Ford years. She was madly in love with him. Greg, not Gerald Ford—as far as I know.”
“Was it mutual?”
“She told me it wasn’t. That for Greg it was strictly a fling. But he did get Mimi pregnant.”
Tedone’s eyes widened. “Did she have the baby?”
I shook my head.
“Did he pay for the abortion?”
“They went Dutch.”
“How many years ago was this?”
“Fifteen, maybe.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Ancient history.”
“There is no such thing when it comes to love, Lieutenant. Especially if there was a baby involved.”
He stood there scowling at me. “Kindly explain something to me, will you? How are you finding all of this stuff out? I’m starting to feel like you’re the one who’s running the case and I’m the one who’s taking notes and making coffee runs. I guess he wasn’t kidding.”
“Who wasn’t kidding?”
“Friend of mine on the job in New York City. Extremely sharp homicide detective. Very.”
“‘Very’ as in he’s extremely sharp or ‘Very’ as in his name is Romaine Very?”
“That’s his name. Romaine Very.”
“What a small, strange world we inhabit. He happens to be a friend of mine, too. Well, not exactly a friend. But our paths have crossed several times.”
“That’s what Ro said. He phoned me first thing this morning when the story broke. Wanted to be sure to give me some advice about you.”
“Which was . . . ?”
“He said you’re an annoying pain in the keester—to which I said tell me something I don’t already know—but that your mind works in ways that ours don’t. And by ‘ours’ he meant professionally trained investigators who actually know what we’re doing. But he told me to do whatever you suggest, no matter how nutso it sounds, because you have freakish insights into human behavior. He figures you must have been exposed to a massive dose of radiation as a child. Some kind of cold war medical experiment or something.”
“Very said that?”
“He did.”
“Lulu contributes quite a bit, you know.”
“Whatever. All I know is this case seemed pretty straightforward to me twenty minutes ago and now I’m so mixed up that I’m getting my first migraine headache in eleven years. So have you got any advice for me?”
“Take a couple of aspirin and stretch out for a few minutes with a damp washcloth over your eyes. The symptoms should pass pretty quickly.”
“I meant about this case,” he said between gritted teeth.
“Lieutenant, are you asking me what I would do if I were you?”
He sighed irritably. “I guess I am.”
“Well, okay. But you won’t like it.”
“Now there’s a huge surprise. What would you do?”
“You’re serious about this?”
“Totally serious. Lay it on me.”
So I laid it on him.
THE BACKSTAGE TAVERN had been situated directly across the street from the stage door to the Sherbourne Playhouse for as long as the Sherbourne Playhouse had been the Sherbourne Playhouse. It was a hybrid townie/summer theater haunt, which meant that hanging from the wall behind the battered hardwood bar, you could find anything from a vintage Carl Yastrzemski jersey to a yellowing lobby poster from an early-1930s production of Forsaking All Others. The Backstage was popular with local landscaping and tree crews, which explained why the sound system immediately assaulted my ears with Van Halen’s “Jump” when I strolled in the door. Van Halen ranked as the preeminent rock band among local workmen who spent significant hours per day in close proximity to leaf blowers and wood chippers. I’m guessing there’s a connection to be found there, but I don’t really feel like committing a lot of time to thinking about it.
The Backstage’s old plank floorboards smelled like beer. Its illuminated brewery signs advertised lagers that had passed out of existence decades ago. The menu was limited to burgers, chili, fried clams . . . Actually, it was kind of a dump. But it was an authentic dump. Such places are getting harder and harder to find as our world is taken over by the sterile sameness of fast-food franchises. Therefore, I cherish them.
Marty and Mimi were seated together in a booth looking downcast. She was sipping from a mug of coffee. He was scarfing up a basketful of fragrant onion rings and washing it down with a bottle of Rolling Rock. Otherwise, it was empty in the Backstage at 3:00 P.M.
I sat down next to Mimi. Lulu started to curl up at my feet but immediately started sneezing again from Mimi’s Obsession and moved across the aisle, settling under another booth.
Our waitress, a haggard type in her forties with frizzy black hair and a hostile expression on her face, sashayed over to ask me what I wanted. I ordered a Rolling Rock and three anchovies.
She glared at me. “You just say anchovies?”
“I did.”
“How you want them?”
“On a plate. Cold, if possible. They’re for my short-legged friend over there,” I explained, steering her gaze across the aisle at Lulu.
“Theater people,” she muttered under her breath as she headed for the kitchen.
“I don’t think our waitress likes me,” I said.
“Hoagy, I’ve been coming here for seven years,” Mimi said. “She doesn’t like anyone.”
“Sabrina was a talented girl,” Marty said mournfully. “She had a real future. This shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have fucking happened.”
“You’re right, Marty, it shouldn’t have,” Mimi said consolingly, her long, slender fingers stroking his chubby hand.
The cynic in me wondered if Marty was playing the sympathy card to try to maneuver his way into Mimi’s fancy Park Avenue panties. She was way out of his league, society wise, not to mention six inches taller than he was. But nothing deterred Marty.
“Why did it happen?” he demanded, his eyes tearing up. “I know she had a history with drugs, but I can’t believe she’d let this thing with Greg hit her that hard unless . . . was she shtupping him?”
Mimi’s face tightened ever so slightly. “I wouldn’t know.”
Our waitress brought me my Rolling Rock and Lulu’s anchovies on a small plate, which she set before me with great disdain. I thanked her and slid the plate under the table across the aisle in front of Lulu, who promptly wolfed them down. The waitress watched, shaking her head, before she walked away, muttering some more.
“I spoke to Sabrina in the rose garden right after I talked to you,” I said to Marty. “She seemed to be doing fine, but smack never lets go. One minute you’re okay, the next minute you’re not.”
“Hoagy’s right,” Mimi said. “Back when I was modeling I knew three different girls who used heroin to keep their weight down. They thought they could just dabble at it. Chipping, they called it. They were fooling themselves, but they couldn’t fool the camera. Their looks went just like that,” she said with a snap of her fingers. “And then all three of them ended up hopelessly addicted.”
I sipped my beer. “Do you think she brought it with her from New York or scored it out here?”
Marty looked at me in disbelief. “In Sherbourne?”
“There’s heroin in all of these little towns out here.”
“What’s with this bullshit, Hoagy?” Marty demanded with a sudden burst of anger.
Lulu let out a low growl from across the aisle.
I told her to let me handle it. “Bullshit as in . . . ?”
“You and I both know that R. J. Romero has been circling around us for days. So do the police. Why are they even bothering to talk to anyone else? It’s R.J. who killed Greg. That smug son of a bitch always had it in for him. Thought Greg was a total stiff. Yet it was Greg who got the career, the fame, the Oscar—everything that R.J. thought he deserved. I guarantee you he did it. And I’ll bet you he shot up Sabrina, too. She must have seen him slipping out of our dressing room. So he snuck into the inn and shot her up. Or held a knife to her throat and made her shoot herself up. Whatever it took. He wouldn’t care. The bastard has no conscience. Why aren’t the police going after him, huh?”
“He has an alibi for last evening when Greg was murdered. He was getting loaded at a shooting gallery in an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Three different people saw him there.”
“You mean three different junkies saw him there. That’s no alibi.”
“He’s also on ice.”
“What does that mean?” Mimi asked me.
“It means that the state police arrested him late last night for stealing a truckload of Marvin windows and he’s currently in their custody. He couldn’t have killed Sabrina.”
Marty looked across the table at me in surprise. “I didn’t know that.”
“Lieutenant Tedone is trying to keep it under wraps.”
“Why?”
“For a reason that has nothing to do with Greg, Sabrina or any of this.”
“Yet you know about it. How come?”
“See above, re: for a reason that has nothing to do with Greg, Sabrina or any of this.”
“In other words you’re not going to tell us. Whatever.” Marty popped the last of the onion rings in his mouth and took a swallow of Rolling Rock, belching loudly. “All I know is that this whole thing sucks. We cleared our schedules and came out here to give a little something back. Everyone in the theater world was behind us. They all showed up. Mimi, you did an amazing job of putting it together. And look what happens. We end up with two cast members dead.”
“You know what I feel like doing?” Mimi fumed. “Telling the town of Sherbourne to just go ahead and tear the damned playhouse down. I don’t care anymore. For me, that dear, sweet little place will never be the same. I’m quitting as director, that’s for damned sure.”
“You can’t quit,” I said. “You just staged a major fund-raiser. What will happen to all of the money you raked in last night?”
“Someone else can take over,” she said brusquely. “I’m done.”
Marty lit a Lucky Strike, dragging on it deeply. “I’m done, too. I want to go home. When will they let us leave?”
“As soon as they figure out what happened.”
“But that could take weeks,” he protested.
“Nope, don’t think so. Mimi, you got Dini a room at the Sherbourne Inn yesterday afternoon so that she could take a nap before the performance. Would you happen to remember what floor it was on?”
“The third floor, I think. I’m not positive.”
“I am,” Marty said. “She was right across the hall from me on the third floor. So what?”
“Does she still have her room key?”
“I have no idea,” Mimi said. “They’d know at the front desk.”
The tavern’s door opened now and in walked Merilee with Dini, who looked ashen-faced and devastated.
Marty’s face immediately crumpled at the sight of her, his eyes moistening. He went to Dini and gave her a bear hug. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m hanging in,” she answered softly.
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the beach with the kids?”
“Lieutenant Tedone asked me to come. He wants to see me at the theater.”
“All of us,” Merilee said. “Cast, crew, everyone.”
“What for?”
“He wants to conduct a reenactment of the intermission,” she explained. “Nail down exactly where everyone was when Greg was murdered, what they were doing and who they were doing it with.”
“Whose dumb-ass idea is this?” Marty wondered.
“Probably some crazy fool who was exposed to too much radiation as a child,” I said.
“Eugene’s walking the dogs on the green,” Dini said. “My mother and the girls are there, too. Do we have time for a cup of tea?”
“Of course,” Merilee said.
“Have a seat right here,” Mimi said, sliding out of the booth. “I have to go back to my office.”
“And I have to head back to the inn to take a humongous dump,” Marty said. “Those onion rings went right through me.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us, Marty,” I said.
“Yes, thank you, Marty,” Merilee said. “You’re a dear.”
He took Dini’s hands in his and squeezed them, gazing at her with deep concern. “Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Dini assured him. “See you in a little while.”
Marty and Mimi paid their checks at the cash register and took off. Merilee and Dini sat in the booth with me. Lulu joined us now that Mimi and her Obsession were gone, curling up at Merilee’s feet.
The frizzy-haired waitress bustled over, her sour face filling with sorrow. “What can I get you, hon?” she asked Dini in a kindly voice. “On the house.”
Dini smiled faintly. “Could I have a cup of hot tea, please?”
“You got it. How about you, Miss Nash?”
“An iced tea, please.”
“Another Rolling Rock?” she asked, glaring at me.
“You talked me into it.”
“And how about your little friend? Three more anchovies?”
Lulu let out a whimper from under the table.
“That would be a yes. And also a bowl of water, please.”
“The anchovies aren’t on the menu. I don’t know what to charge you.”
“Why don’t you just charge me for two extra Rolling Rocks?”
She mulled this over before she said, “I can live with that.” Then she went off to fill our orders.
“I still say she doesn’t like me.”
“What have they found out about Sabrina?” Merilee asked me.
“Lieutenant Tedone is trying to convince himself that she was so distraught over Greg’s death that she injected herself with a fatal dose of ‘Tango and Cash.’”
“I take it you’re not buying that.”
“Sabrina was clean and together. She had everything to live for.”
“Everything,” Merilee acknowledged. “What do you think happened?”
“I think she accidentally saw what happened and that Greg’s murderer wasn’t taking any chances. So he—or she—visited Sabrina in her room at the inn and took care of her. That’s how I see it, and Lulu’s backing me up.”
Dini frowned at me. “How is she doing that?”
“We have our methods.”
Merilee smiled. “Hence the anchovies?”
“Hence the anchovies.”
The waitress brought us our orders, plopping Lulu’s plate and water bowl in front of me. I slid them under the table.
“You want anything else just say so, hon,” she told Dini in a kindly voice before she walked away.
I watched Dini sip her tea. “Seriously, how are you?”
She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Busy. There’s a lot to take care of. I spoke to our lawyer about Greg’s financial affairs, his estate, all those sorts of things, cold as it sounds. And I’ve asked Eugene to look for another job. The girls will miss him. They adore Eugene. Hell, even I like the two-timing gay bastard.”
I exchanged a look with Merilee before I said, “You knew about the two of them?”
Dini nodded glumly. “But only after being completely in the dark for months. God, I’m such a clueless idiot. And now . . . now I’ve got a great big HIV-positive stamp on my forehead. No one will ever hire me again.”
“That’s not true,” Merilee said.
“And no man will ever want to make love to me.”
“Also not true.”
“Get real, Merilee,” she said heatedly. “I’m about to become America’s most famous leper. I may as well go home to Siler City with Mom and raise the girls there, assuming they don’t set up a roadblock at the Chatham County line to keep us out.”
“I can’t even imagine how devastated you must be feeling right now,” Merilee conceded gently. “But it’s not 1983 anymore. They’ve made amazing strides in treating HIV patients. And everything’s changed since Magic Johnson went public two years ago. What he did was huge. People are so much more educated and aware now.”
“Did your mom know about Greg and Eugene?” I asked Dini.
Dini’s pale blue eyes studied me. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because she shot some pretty chilly looks at Eugene when he showed up with the dogs today. She’s also no fool, I’ve noticed.”
Dini didn’t give me an answer. Just sat there in tight-lipped silence.
I tried a different approach. “There was tension between you and Greg during rehearsals. Was that because you’d found out about Eugene?”
She nodded her head ever so slightly. “A few days before we came out here to start rehearsals a friend of ours called me one afternoon and mentioned that she’d just seen Greg and Eugene coming out of Eugene’s apartment on Bank Street in the West Village, which I thought was kind of strange because Greg was supposed to be at his dermatologist on Madison Avenue in midtown. I called the dermatologist’s office. The receptionist said that Greg had called that morning to reschedule the appointment. When he got home later that afternoon I asked him how his appointment had gone. He said it went fine. He flat out lied to me, Hoagy. That was something he’d never, ever done before,” Dini recalled, her eyes flashing with anger. “And I didn’t let him get away with it. I told him that he and Eugene had been seen together coming out of Eugene’s apartment. I demanded to know what was going on.”
I leaned forward slightly. “And . . . ?”
“He came clean. Said that he’d never loved a man before but that he loved Eugene ‘body, mind and soul’ and that Eugene loved him, too. I was so-so flattened that I seriously considered pulling us out of Private Lives. But we’d made a commitment to Merilee. We couldn’t bail on her at the last minute. Who would she get to replace us, Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal?” Dini paused to sip her tea. “And my mother did know, in answer to your question. She caught them hugging in the den one morning a couple of months ago. They weren’t aware that she saw them, and she didn’t tell me about it. Not until today.”
Merilee frowned at Dini. “Why didn’t she tell you at the time?”
“She didn’t think I could handle it emotionally. That I’d shatter into a million pieces.” Dini’s voice was weary with resignation. “She thinks I’m a delicate porcelain child, as you may have noticed.” She looked across the table at me. “Eugene told me that you and he had a serious talk on the beach. Tell me what you honestly think. Was he aware that he was carrying the virus?”
“I don’t think so. He fell to his knees in genuine shock when I told him about the M.E.’s findings. And swore to me up, down and sideways that he’d never have had unprotected sex with Greg if he’d known.”
“And do you believe him?”
“I do.”
“I feel the same way about Greg. He wouldn’t have had unprotected sex with me if he’d known he was carrying it. He wasn’t capable of doing something that evil. He wasn’t a bad person. He was just . . .” She broke off into hopeless silence for a moment. “Greg was a mess. He thought of himself as a good husband, which he wasn’t. He was a cheat, and all torn up inside about it. He also knew perfectly well that he and Eugene could never come out as a couple. So, for the sake of his career, and for the twins, he told me he thought we should stay together. And he actually expected me to go along with the idea. He even said that I could see someone else if I wanted to. ‘How big of you, you piece of shit!’ I screamed at him. I told him I wanted a divorce right away. I promised him I’d keep quiet about why we were splitting up. And I would have, too. As far as I was concerned it was nobody else’s business that I’d lost him to Eugene.”
“You couldn’t have kept a lid on it,” I told her. “The instant you filed for a divorce the tabloids would have dug and dug until they found Eugene’s ex-lover, Marc, down in Miami and dumped a pile of cash in his lap.”
“I know,” Dini acknowledged bitterly.
“And now every dirty detail is guaranteed to come out. Face it, Dini, this is going to be even bigger than Magic Johnson. After all, no one on the Lakers ever drowned in the basement of the Fabulous Forum. Or at least not that we’re aware of.”
“I know that, too. Same as I know that being HIV-positive isn’t a death sentence. I can continue to work. I can even be in a loving relationship with another man. My life isn’t over.”
“That’s all true,” Merilee said to her encouragingly.
“So why does it feel like it is?” Dini wondered, choking back tears.
Merilee took her hand and gripped it, her own eyes brimming with tears.
The tavern door opened now and Glenda came bustling in with Durango and Cheyenne.
“Ah, here’s Mommy,” she exclaimed with forced gaiety. “I told you we’d find her.”
The girls ran to her. Dini put her arms around them and hugged them tightly.
“Eugene has driven back to the beach house with the dogs to wait for us,” Glenda informed Dini in a cool voice.
“Thank you, Mother. Would you like to sit down?”
Glenda didn’t budge. Just stood there staring at me with an extremely guarded expression on her jowly face. “Lieutenant Tedone asked me to deliver a message to you.”
“He did? What is it?”
“I’m supposed to tell you that it’s showtime.”