The Next to Die

meet me there?”

“Yes, your office would be great. Thanks.”

“Are you okay? You sound tense.”

“I just need a friend right now.”

“If it’s any help, Nick, this woman spent some time in Mexico years ago. My guess is that she’s back in California now.” Dayle fought the inclination to whisper into the limousine phone. She stared at the back of Hank’s head. The glass partition was up, but she wondered if he could still hear her.

They weren’t far from Sean’s office. Dayle had been with Hank for the last four hours. He’d arrived while the police were still searching her apartment. They didn’t find anything, and nothing was missing. In fact, there was no evidence of a break-in. Todd, at the front desk, said he couldn’t understand how somebody might have slipped past him. The cops probably had her pegged as a total paranoid.

Dayle didn’t show them the note. Once she’d remembered Cindy and their one-night stand on the boat, she didn’t want to explain the message to anyone. She lied to the police and said she’d discovered the front door open after emerging from her shower. Actually, she hadn’t dead-bolted the door—in case Hank came early to pick her up for the interview. He had his own key to the apartment. He was the only one with a key—besides her.

She’d been a half hour late for her interview—and terribly distracted through the whole ordeal. She kept thinking about the “positively revolting” shoot down in Mexico so many years ago, Cindy something with the Winnie the Pooh tattoo, and that sailboat. Dayle barely touched her Cobb salad, and twice she had to ask the interviewer to repeat a question. Nevertheless, by the time it was all over, she’d still managed to charm the guy.

Hank had waited out by the limo during her lunch. Dayle couldn’t help wondering about old reliable Hank. Had he been forced into letting someone duplicate his key to her apartment? Or had he left that note himself? He’d been with her for seven years, but how well did she really knew him? He was just this simple, sweet—almost neuter— hump of a guy who liked mystery novels and The Beatles trivia. In all the miles they’d driven together, she’d barely scratched the surface with Hank. Yet her trust in him was unwavering—until now.

She’d raised the limo’s glass partition for her call to Nick. She needed him to track down the whereabouts of Cindy Zellerback: Caucasian, red hair or possibly blond, late thirties. It was a rush job.

Dayle wasn’t sure how much damage this Cindy affair could cause. After all, it was an isolated incident from fifteen years ago. Was this the only ammunition these people had to use on her? If so, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. At least, that was what she kept telling herself.

She wanted Sean to tell her the same thing. Cradling the limo’s phone against her ear, Dayle dug into her purse. “Listen, Nick, if you find something in the next hour or so, here’s where I’ll be…” She read Sean’s office phone and fax numbers from her business card.

“I’m on top of it,” Nick replied. “And I should have that license plate and credit card trace for you by tomorrow.”

“Good boy,” Dayle said.

“Ciao, Ms. Sutton.” Nick hung up.

Dayle listened to the dead air. She was still looking at Hank in the front seat. “Hank, can you hear me?” she said, into the phone.

He didn’t flinch at all. Dayle hung up the telephone. She continued to stare at him on the other side of the glass divider. “Hank?” she said. “Hank, you can hear me, can’t you?”

He didn’t flinch. He seemed totally focused on the road ahead.

Dayle pressed the button on the armrest, and the divider window descended with a low mechanical him. “Hank?” she said.

His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “Yes, ma’am?”

Those eyes were so guileless. He patiently waited for her to say something. Good old Hank. What was she thinking?

With a tired smile, Dayle sat back again. “Never mind. For a moment there, I thought you’d made a wrong turn, but I was mistaken.”

“It happened so long ago,” Dayle said, handing Sean a book from the packing box. “I vaguely recall someone taking my picture with Cindy while we were on the beach. God help me, I think we were topless at the time.”

Sean stood on a ladder, filing law volumes on the top shelf of her bookcase. Her office was taking shape: sea-foam green walls with white trim. No more drop cloths.

“Well, Dayle,” she said. “I don’t think your career will suffer. Like you say, it happened too long ago—and with some nobody, It’s old news.” She held her hand out. “Volume seventeen, please.”

Frowning, Dayle gave the law book to her. “You’re probably right. But I want to be prepared when this thing goes public. I mean, maybe it’s out there already. Right now, this Cindy could be talking to Jane Pauley.”

Climbing down from the ladder, Sean chuckled. “If it’ll make you feel better, have a look.” She found the remote, and switched on her TV. “But I think all the show business news is about your future costar, Avery Cooper.”

The TV came on: “I’m Mrs. Russell Marshall. But you can call me Elsie.”

“Hi, Elsie!”

“Oh, shit,” Dayle muttered, plopping down on the sofa.

“Maybe I’m just a housewife,” Elsie said. “But as a mother and a good Christian, I think my opinion counts for something….”

“She kind of makes you wish they’d start feeding ‘good Christians’ to the lions again,” Sean remarked, ready to switch channels.

“Wait a minute,” Dayle said. She heard Elsie mention Maggie McGuire.

“…and I’m sorry she’s dead. But if you’ll excuse me, I wouldn’t exactly say she was a shining example of motherhood—as some people maintain. She claimed to be proud of her homosexual son who now has AIDS. Well, I’m sorry, but ‘proud’? Come on! How exactly did he get AIDS? Was she proud of that?”

“My God,” Sean said. “How does she get away with it?”

On TV, Elsie was now meandering toward her desk. “Quite frankly, I hope people have sense enough to see the truth behind the tragedy here. We’ve all seen her hard-core porn movie. I have a difficult time respecting a woman who would make a movie like that….”

“What’s she talking about?” Dayle asked. “What porn movie?”

Sean stared at her. “You don’t know?” She turned down the volume. “Maggie McGuire did a stag film back in the late forties. Now it’s suddenly resurfaced. Her body’s barely cold, and last night they were showing Maggie’s old skin flick on First Edition.”

Dayle glanced back at the TV. Elsie was still talking, but with the volume so low, Dayle could only make out her saccharine tone, and the audience laughing. She’d missed the joke. That was what Maggie McGuire had now become: a joke. The accomplishments of her forty-year career suddenly took second place to this scandal. “My God,” Dayle murmured, gazing at Elsie on the screen. She looked so superior and smug. This humiliation of the late Maggie McGuire was a victory for Elsie Marshall and the radical right.

Maggie’s personal crusades and causes suddenly seemed wrong, and Elsie’s logic rang true. Maggie McGuire had stood by her gay son, but this was a woman who had appeared in pornographic movies. Her opinions couldn’t count for much. She was a bad example of motherhood.

The same thing had happened to Tony Katz and Leigh Simone after their untimely deaths. “They all died in shame,” Dayle murmured, staring at the TV.

Sean squinted at her. “What?”

Dayle got to her feet. “There was a scandal when each one was killed—Tony, Leigh, now Maggie. Their reputations were ruined. Tony—caught with his pants down, and Leigh—a drug addict. Now, Maggie, a porn star.”

Sean was shaking her head. “I don’t understand. Slow down—”

“It wasn’t enough that they killed them. They had to ruin their reputations too, disgrace them, take away their credibility. Tony, Leigh, and Maggie, they were outspoken liberals, and they all got killed—”

The telephone rang.