Lament for a Lounge Lizard. Mary Jane Maffini
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that woman really gets up my nose.”
“This is too much for you.”
“Oh, no. I love all these people. Except her, of course. And that Finestone creature. The rest were Benedict’s special friends.” If her nails dug any deeper, I was going to need stitches.
I scanned the room full of gentle, laughing, crying people. One of the O’Mafia tuned a fiddle. A smaller balding man beside him sported an accordion.
“Benedict had a lot of good friends.” The better friends had been expatriate Irish, like Benedict always pretended to be himself, only with class and morals.
The room hummed with music. Even people with tears in their eyes tapped their toes.
“He had hundreds of friends,” Bridget said. “Everyone loved him. He had no enemies.”
He’d had at least one. “No one you can think of who would have...?”
“Poor Benedict. It’s so unfair. Things were finally going so well for him.”
“You mean with the Flambeau and all? All that money.”
“Mmmm. Too bad he never got it, he would have been in hog heaven. Think of that party.” Bridget couldn’t stop herself from grinning. The grin became a chuckle and grew to a laugh.
I found myself joining her. A quarter of a million dollars. That would have been a party all right. I pictured champagne corks popping and streamers floating over St. Aubaine and giggling, naked girls being chased into the bushes.
“He didn’t get the money?”
Bridget’s grin slipped off her face. “The announcement was made, but the official presentation of the cheque and the award was scheduled for October 1st in Montreal.”
“So what happens to the money?”
“Back to the Flambeau fund, they tell me.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Sure is. By the way, did I ever tell you how Benedict always called you the lost love of his life? The one that got away,” Bridget whispered with a strange smile.
I hadn’t known. And I didn’t want to know. I was amazed she could smile, even strangely, if she believed this bit of Benedict’s foolishness.
I didn’t smile back. “It sounds like the kind of thing Benedict said about a dozen different women. Not meaning a thing.”
“But he only said it about you. ‘The lost love of his life.’ You were someone special to him. And now he’s dead, and it’s driving me crazy not knowing what happened to him.”
It was driving me crazy too. Benedict had been cunningly, artfully, decoratively laid out in my bed. Playfully. No one wanted to know who the killer was more than I did. “We’ll know soon. The police are working on it.”
“The St. Aubaine police? Those clowns? They can’t even track down shoplifters. I know that the hard way. They always get the wrong person.”
People started to clap and cheer for the musicians. One of the poets, still wearing his raincoat, sang “The Wild Colonial Boy”, backed by the fiddle, the accordion and the clapping of guests. Bridget and I were the only two not singing along.
It made a heart-warming picture, except for one small problem. The killer knew that Benedict and I had a history. And except for my best buddy Liz, the only people in the world who had known anything about that history were right there in Bridget’s beautiful home, singing.
Seven
“I can’t believe you took her to Bridget’s place. What were you thinking of?” Liz tipped my virgin bottle of Courvoisier over her snifter. “ I didn’t even get an invitation.”
“Don’t pucker your face that way. You’ll get more wrinkles.” While Liz was gasping, I added, “You couldn’t stand him.”
“So what? I know Bridget. I like her.”
“But it was only close, close friends of Benedict.”
“Perfect. Such as Josey Thring, who never even laid eyes on Benedict. You let that girl wrap you around her little finger.”
“Do not.”
“Do so,” Liz said.
Josey’s life is a struggle to survive despite her criminal, alcoholic and demented relatives. Why shouldn’t I help her out when I can?
“Anyway, she prodded all the guests for gossip about Benedict.” I didn’t mention the ten dollars or the fact that she didn’t come up with any useful tidbits.
“I don’t want to talk about it any more. I want to give you a bit of advice about your novel.”
“What advice?”
“Yes, well, I think your problems can be explained by sex.”
“What sex?”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There’s no sex in your life and never has been, so that’s why...”
“No sex in my life? Never? May I point out I was married for twenty-three, count ’em, twenty-three years to you-knowwho.”
“I rest my case. Get that look off your face. I’m only trying to help you out. That’s what friends are for. Get some sex in your life. Change your attitude. Fix yourself up a bit. Work from your strengths.”
“I have strengths?”
“Sure. Your hair colour. Men like that ashy blonde. And it doesn’t show the grey. I’m sure if you made any kind of an effort at all, you could keep the curl under control.”
“Wait a minute...”
“Let me finish. You know what your best feature is?”
“Dewlaps?”
“Very funny. Eyes. Your eyes are your best feature. People pay good money to get that blue-violet colour in contact lenses. Try makeup. Play them up a bit.”
“I don’t think...”
“That’s right. You don’t think. Now the main thing is to lop off a few pounds. Get from a size fourteen back to a size eight.”
“Are you crazy? It’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is to get from a size fourteen to an eight.”
“This is a serious business, Fiona. Give it some thought. Anyway, I can’t sit around talking forever. I have a life.” She flung herself out of the beanbag chair and slipped her skinny little feet into her open-toed shoes. “Remember. Sex. That’s the secret.”
Like I was in the mood.
* * *
If the door-answering system had existed, I might not have had to face Papa Bear Sarrazin looking like someone had eaten all his porridge. I was a bit long in the tooth for Goldilocks, but I had that weak-kneed feeling of being caught on the spot.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, was tickled by the visit.
Sarrazin seemed to feel quite at home. Why wouldn’t he? The man had actually seen the contents of my underwear drawer. He casually wedged himself in the kitchen chair and narrowed his eyes. To add insult to injury, Tolstoy snuggled up to him and dropped the Frisbee at his feet.
Sarrazin wanted to talk about my relationship with Benedict. In case I had it wrong about not being involved for nearly eight years. He also wanted details of my activities for the past week.
“Are you sure you hadn’t seen him recently?”
I was.
“And you haven’t been in touch with him, madame?”
“Right.”
“Do