Lone star

“Seems unnecessary to me.”

“I mean-it was a bizarre lunch. I felt I was in the middle of a novel.”

The Woman in the Gray Flannel Life.

“Did Lydia talk about the murder?” I interrupted.

“Of course, we all did. But Nell said very little. You know how she told everyone she thought Lydia killed Carisa.”

“And yet you had a delightful lunch?”

“Well, she didn’t accuse her at the table. I know Nell was afraid Lydia might have heard what she’d told people, but Lydia never mentioned it.” Tansi quipped, “That would be hard for the digestive system.”

“Truly,” I agreed. “Murder while the ketchup oozes onto the table.”

“Lydia changed at the end, though. Strange. She drank too many cocktails, which I paid for, by the way. Nell and I each had a couple of their famous Manhattans. Lydia kept drinking, and the lunch ended in shambles. I mean, she was the one who brought up the murder, and then she started to sob. But then it was all about Jimmy. And it had nothing to do with Carisa. Once Jimmy entered the conversation, everything was about him. Lydia said she was afraid of Detective Cotton.”

“Why?”

“The way he interrogated her, I guess.”

“Well, is she hiding something?”

“I don’t know. But Nell, I learned, seems to have a crush on Jimmy. It’s charming.”

“So do you.”

Tansi laughed. “Of course, we all do, Edna. But I have more of a professional obligation to him. He can be very nice and…” On and on she went. Call it what you will, Tansi Rowland, I thought, but you’re as smitten as a love-starved spinster dreaming of Clark Gable sans undershirt in It Happened One Night. Which, admittedly, is not hard to do. I’d been there myself, unexpectedly, sitting in a dark movie theater in New York on a chilly fall afternoon. But that was years back. Now, ancient as dust, I could only recollect, albeit faintly. I was the lifetime spinster, by choice.

“So how did it end?” I wanted to hang up the phone.

“Lydia said she was going home to nap. She was weeping at the end but, well, that was because of Jimmy, not us.”

I considered that the only ones viewing the lunch as salutary were Nell and Tansi. Lydia, perhaps, had a different slant; a woman driven to despair by their words and their presence.

“But I think she’s getting over Jimmy,” Tansi said. Over the phone lines I heard Tansi laugh. “The last thing she said was that he’s as good an ending as any other man.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I took it to mean she was going to forget him.”

Yet the Lydia who phoned me later that night was hardly the woman Tansi described. I heard hysteria, sputtering, inarticulate words. At first I had no idea who was calling me, until Lydia, in a moment of lucidity, mentioned that lunch with Tansi and Nell. “We talked of you,” Lydia said, “and Tansi said you were a good friend and I thought of you because I had to call someone.”

“Tansi told you to call me?”

Slurred speech, rambling. “No, she said she calls you. You’re always a comfort. Jimmy says he calls you, stops in. He told me. Everybody talks to you. You are the lady novelist.” The epithet made me wince. What was going on here? “And I just dialed the Ambassador, and now you’re on the phone with me.”

My lucky day, I thought. But maybe a good thing. I hadn’t really talked to Lydia Plummer, who seemed somehow to figure in the murder. Friend of Carisa, ex-roommate, inheritor of Carisa’s two boyfriends, Jimmy and Max Kohl. And, more importantly, famously accused of the murder itself-by Nell, charming luncheon companion. Schemes of revenge (maybe with Josh) against Jimmy.

But Lydia made little sense. I waited, hoping for something lucid to emerge, though, as the minutes went by, I despaired of that random morsel. “Would you believe…a part for me…the…only time…Jimmy said he’ll take care of it…and someone…well…just that it was…I don’t care…perhaps you know…do you know…” On and on, drunk, most likely; in a narcotic stupor, maybe. “You know…Carisa was my enemy but…but what really gets me…just think about it…Jimmy leaving me. Me. Leaving me.” She started to scramble the words, then dissolved into sobbing. “Carisa, yes, doomed…a witch you know…but me?”

I got tired of the sloppy emotion. “Lydia, perhaps you need rest. Go away. Go back home.”

“Home? I burned those bridges…bridge…Tansi told me to stop blaming Jimmy. But Jimmy is to blame…you know…you…behind every bad story in Hollywood sits Jimmy. Carisa told me…”

“What?”

Lydia suddenly seemed to focus. “You know, I thought nobody knew about the letter I wrote to her. All those threats.”

“Jimmy’s letter?”

“I said mean things about her and Jimmy. Nasty. Those lies Carisa spread. I told her to stop it. About Jimmy and his biker friends. Even Max. All the rumors about Jimmy at strange parties in the Valley. Jimmy is not like that. I wanted her to leave me and Jimmy alone.”

“You sent a letter to Carisa?”

“Max Kohl told me things, and I wanted to hurt…”

“You sent a letter?”

“Carisa kept Jimmy from me. I hated her.”

“Lydia, slow down, please. What letter are you talking about?” I was frantic.

“Nobody knew I sent that letter, and now it makes me look like a killer.”

“What did Detective Cotton say to you?” Another bit Cotton kept from me. So he’d unearthed another missive. What was with this young crowd, firing off letters like verbose Edwardian correspondents? Jimmy’s letter, threatening Carisa; now Lydia’s, threatening. They bed one another down, I thought cynically, and then spend hours writing angry letters to one another.

“How was I supposed to know he found that letter? It was my secret. I told no one. Carisa called me and said…” Her voice trailed off.

“What exactly did you say in that letter?”

“I told you…everything.” She was fading, drowsy, out of steam.

“How was it a threat?”

“I said I’d hurt her…you know…it’s just something you say to scare…”

“What did Cotton tell you?” Obviously more than he told me.

“What?” Out of focus.

“Lydia!”

Silence. A hum. I was listening to a dial tone.

The phone woke me up, and I glanced at the clock. One in the morning. Good grief, what was wrong with these people out here? Back East I got my solid eight hours a night, faithfully; a walk in the morning, maybe one at night, rain or shine. And so to bed. I was not myself without the requisite hours.

But at one a.m. the phone needed to be answered. Groggily, “Yes?”

I heard Tansi’s teary voice. “Oh, Edna,” she said, “I know it’s late but I had to tell someone.”

I tried to focus in the dim room. “Tansi, what is it?”

“It’s Lydia. She killed herself this evening. Jake Geyser just woke me up and then I told Nell and she got hysterical and…”

“What happened?”

“It seems Max Kohl found her. He was supposed to meet her in the lobby, but she didn’t answer, so he