The Woman Who Fell From Grace by David Handler Page B

She’s good, you say?”
    “She’s the best.”
    “I’d need references.”
    “She’d have them.”
    “Could she start right away? Time is of the essence. I’m expecting a thousand guests here for my VADD costume ball the night of the golden-anniversary premiere. The Quayles are flying in. Senator and Mrs. Robb. The Kissingers, the Buckleys. Patricia Kluge. Gore Vidal, Bill Blass, King Juan Carlos. Barbara Walters is taping a three-hour special for ABC. … I don’t know what I’ll do if —”
    “Shall I call Pam?”
    “I’d love for you to call her.” She placed her long fingers on my arm and left them there. “And thank you, Hoagy,” she said warmly. Or what was warmly for her.
    “All part of the service,” I assured her, glancing down at her fingers. She removed them, coloring.
    I only hoped Pam wouldn’t mind standing in for someone who had just been murdered.
    It was the Jag that was waiting for me outside the door of my guest cottage, the red 1958 XK150 drophead Merilee and I had bought when we were together, and which was hers now. It is a rare beauty, every inch of it factory original. Seeing it sitting there in the courtyard with its top down, sixty-spoke wire wheels gleaming, almost made me forget I’d been used as a soccer ball that afternoon. There was an engraved Tiffany note card on the tan leather driver’s seat: I wouldn’t want you to forget me , darling .
    I couldn’t forget her if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to.
    A few fat raindrops were starting to fall. Quickly, I put the top up and went inside. Next door, Gordie’s TV was blaring. There was, I was pleased to note, no sign of his goddamned cat.
    Lulu growled at me.
    Sat there in her chair and growled at me as if I were a stranger who’d barged into the wrong room.
    “Excuse me, miss,” I said. “I don’t mean to intrude, but I happen to live here. At least I did the last time I looked.”
    She stopped growling. Now she was just glowering at me.
    I went over and sat on the arm of the chair and patted her. Or tried to. She pulled away from me, as if I’d sprayed my hand with some kind of doggy repellent.
    “For your information,” I pointed out, “Hoagy could use a little sympathy. Possibly a lick on the face.”
    No response.
    “Lassie would have been right there by my side,” I said. “Chased those two off. Or at the very least raced over to Polk’s office and barked. ‘Hoagy’s in trouble! Hoagy’s in trouble!’ ”
    She continued to glower at me from under her beret.
    “Are you feeling all right?” I grabbed her nose. Cold and wet. “Want to go back to New York or something?”
    She hopped down and waddled over to her bowl. She wanted her dinner or something.
    I gave it to her. She ate mechanically, like a middle-aged husband chewing on his wife’s pot roast for the thousandth time. I watched her, concerned. She wasn’t herself. She seemed very far away to me. I couldn’t imagine why.
    I made a fire in the small fireplace and put some ice in a towel and laid it against the throbbing welt on the side of my head. I was pouring myself a Macallan when I heard it. Softly at first. Then louder.
    Meowing.
    I ignored it. I sat and enjoyed the fire and my single malt and ignored it. It got louder. And then she began to yowl, loud enough to be heard across the valley. Certainly loud enough for Roy to hear her. Roy and his shotgun.
    Disgusted, I went to the front door and opened it. Sadie sat there in the doorway in the rain, all bright-eyed and perky and wet. She’d brought me a token of her affection. A dead mouse. At least, I think it was dead. I didn’t look too close. I told her to go away and take her friend with her. I closed the door. She promptly started yowling again. I threw it open. Now she was hanging from the screen door by all fours, eye to eye with me. I went out there and yanked her from the screen and set her down on the ground. She immediately leapt up onto my right shoulder, scampered