The Last Cheerleader. Meg O'Brien
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the time I’d been married to him, Arnold Wescott seemed largely comatose. The most energy I ever saw him put out was the time he asked me to wear a metal bra so he could see if it really would deflect bullets.
Arnold was sweet, if morose, and at the time I was still struggling to build my stable of authors from an old thirties-era storefront office in the wrong end of Hollywood. Nights, however, I was into any adventure that came my way. So I stupidly let Arnold put the bra on me, his nervous little fingers shaking as he made sure my breasts were evenly cupped. Then, sweat pouring down his forehead, he stepped back six paces and let fly with the bullets.
Arnold was a toy designer, and how a man who spent thirty-two years in a clinical depression could possibly design a toy that a child would like is beyond me. Well, come to think of it, he never did manage that. After scaring half the world’s children to death with GORP, a seven-headed beast that spewed forth murderous threats when his biceps were flexed, he’d turned to designing adult toys. The little rubber bullets were part of a mock-up for GOTCHA, his latest invention. Designed to be pointed at little models of ex-girlfriends wearing metal bras, he had a male doll, too, wearing a metal jockstrap.
That day, the bullets came zooming toward my chest, and I couldn’t help it—I flinched, bent over, and one bullet went straight for my eye.
Arnold had to get me to the hospital, where an unbelieving intern was sure that my husband had deliberately popped me one. That only made me laugh so hard that tears stung the abrasion on my cornea. Arnold, violent? No way. Arnold was meek and mild, and he never once had deliberately lifted a finger in my direction—or any other appendage, for that matter.
So it was a bit of a shock when the cops called last night and said they’d found Arnold dead. Not only that, but he was found next to another man’s body, in that man’s bedroom. Further, the other man was Tony Price, my best-selling author and long-hungered-after love.
Even more of a shock was that both men lay side by side on the floor, and next to them was what the police were sure was the murder weapon—a rare ivory Chinese dildo, a favorite of the gay crowd in West Hollywood.
As I’ve said, the fact that Tony was dead, too, was something that stunned me for several moments. Once I managed to collect my thoughts, however, I realized that my opportunity to get off those train tracks had come at last. Oh, it might be a while before I got my whole body off, grief being what it is. I might leave behind a leg or a foot at first, but I wouldn’t be trussed to the tracks any longer, and I’d have a chance to roll free.
If that sounds cold, it’s only because I’d learned to restrain my feelings for Tony over a long period of time—a matter of self-preservation, having been given so little encouragement from that side. He loved going to dinner with me, taking walks with me, even traveling with me. He even said often that he loved me. “Just not that way,” he would add. I’d begun to feel like one of those poor women who go on Montel Williams to reveal, at long last, their love for a male friend. Hoping, of course, that he’ll bubble over with passion and cry, “I’ve always loved you, too!” Inevitably, the friend does end up saying that, but adding the same as Tony: “Just not that way.”
Having lived through a brief and sexless marriage with Arnold, and then a “relationship” with Tony, whatever the hell kind that was, I’d begun to feel as if I had more heads than GORP, not to mention biceps in all the wrong places. Or maybe I was a Ms. Potato Head, with my eyes, ears and nose all screwed up, ugly as sin. The fact that my mirror didn’t support any of that paranoia helped—well-cared-for masses of reddish-blond hair like mine being “in” now, as they are. But there were days…
Now, given the scene before me in Tony’s apartment, I had to wonder—and not for the first time—were Tony and Arnold gay? I never was the kind of woman who immediately labeled a man gay if he wasn’t interested in my womanly charms. But why else would the two of them be here in Tony’s penthouse, and what else could the ornately carved Chinese sex toy be about?
The police, of course, wouldn’t tell me a thing except that there would be autopsies, and that forensics could take a few days. A Detective Dan Rucker was in charge. He looked to be thirtysomething and I guessed that by some standards—not mine—he might be considered cute. He had bright blue eyes and sandy hair that curled below his ears, and he wore an Anaheim Angels baseball cap that he kept putting on and taking off. Every time he took it off, he ran his fingers through his hair as if to make sure it was straight, but it never was. He sported at least a two-day growth of beard, and overall the look was a bit too scruffy for me. He smelled nice, though. Like oranges warming under a noonday sun.
If this were a crime novel, of course, I would have been drawn to the good detective immediately, scruffy or not. We’d have fallen into each other’s arms by sunset, and then we’d have gone off on a crime-busting romp together, to avenge the killing of my ex-husband and my…whatever.
This wasn’t a crime novel, though, and Detective Rucker might have smelled like an orange, but he acted like a sour lemon.
“We’ll need you to come down to the station in the morning to answer more questions,” he had said abruptly, not even looking at me as he paced off the room. He didn’t seem overly suspicious of me, even though I was so close to the deceased. The truth was, I got the distinct impression that the police were thinking of this as a “gay murder.” There had been several, beginning this past spring, and then two more since summer had arrived. Most were in West Hollywood, but one or two were in other areas. The sheriff’s department in West Hollywood had waged a campaign to catch the killers, and while they’d found some of the murders to be gay-bashings by gangs, other cases were still open.
I had gone to the police station this morning, as ordered, for further questioning. But afterward I wondered: Would justice be done for Tony and Arnold? What if it wasn’t a gay-oriented crime? What if it was something entirely different? And why had this happened to two men who were close to me?
I was staring out my office windows around ten-thirty and musing upon this when my phone rang, and a few seconds later my intercom buzzed. I’d asked Nia, my assistant, not to disturb me except for something important, so I knew I’d have to take the call, though it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I’d spent over an hour at the police station saying, “Yes, no, yes, no, I don’t know,” and “maybe.” Detective Rucker still hadn’t looked as if he’d had a shower or shaved, and I still wasn’t impressed by his attitude. He was short-tempered with me and talked as if I was taking up his valuable time, whereas he’d been the one to tell me to be there. He seemed to find it hard to sit still, and was up and down, up and down, as we talked. I’d left there on edge, as if I’d taken his ragged energy in and brought it to the office with me. I definitely didn’t feel like talking on the phone now, even though I knew I should, and why.
Paul Whitmore.
After a few minutes Nia stuck her head around the door. Her short black cut looked frazzled, and I knew she’d been running her pencil’s eraser through it in irritation.
“That’s Paul Whitmore on the phone,” she said, confirming my every fear. “You want me to tell him you’re tied up? He’s called a half-dozen times since I came in this morning.”
Nia came in at seven every morning because of the time difference between L.A. and New York. A lot of our business is done when editors are getting geared up back there, around ten o’clock or so. Nia fielded calls and returned ones that were important but didn’t need my personal touch.
“Don’t I wish I were tied up somewhere,” I replied with a sigh. “Like on a warm desert island with a delightful man tickling my naked body with palm leaves. Anything but dealing with an editor right now.”
Returning Nia’s smile, I added, “But no. I’ll talk to him.”
Sliding my feet off the desk and setting them squarely in my shoes, I stiffened my spine, reached for the phone and held the receiver to my ear. At the same time my eyes scanned my beloved, newish office, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the high-rises of Century City. My desk was a Louis XV, and facing it were the antique chairs on which my authors sat. On a small