Double Shot

I put down my fork. Was she looking for someone? “Sit down, Sandee,” I urged, and flashed Marla a warning look. “We just want to talk for a bit.”

Marla, unheeding, plunged onward as soon as Sandee had snuggled her thinly clad rear end onto one of the chairs. “You know John Richard is dead? Shot and killed?”

Sandee’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “I heard,” she whispered. “Two detectives asked me a bunch of questions. They said they’d be coming back today.” Again there was the scared glimpse in all directions.

“Any ideas about who could have killed John Richard?” Marla asked.

“No way,” Sandee croaked. She reached for a paper napkin, then dabbed her eyes. She cried for a minute, making a sound that was halfway between a cat mewing and a human choking. Then she honked into the napkin. “The detectives wanted me to think some more about who John Richard’s enemies were. You know, if anyone argued with him at the lunch? Stuff like that.”

Marla gestured to me with a bejeweled hand. “Speaking of the lunch, Goldy’s making a list of the guests. We know most of the people from Southwest Hospital, but there are some people”—she nodded in Lana’s direction —“who we’re not sure about.”

Although I didn’t put a whole lot of stock in Sandee’s memory, I obligingly reached for the pad I’d stashed in my purse.

“Oh, I totally don’t remember anybody.” Sandee frowned at the empty pad. She made another furtive scan of the club interior. Could Marla not be noticing? Was Sandee not allowed to be talking to us? Was she looking for Ruby, Lana, the bald guy? “The only person I knew at the lunch was John Richard,” Sandee said, her voice halting. “I mean, besides Lana, you know, and Dannyboy. You know, and some other Rainbow people.”

“What did you do after you left the lunch?” I asked gently.

“We went back to his house and, you know, messed around in the car for a while. But not for long, I mean, I had to go back to work.” She raised mournful eyes. “Later, you know? He was taking Arch to the club. The golf club.” Her chin trembled, her eyes filled, and she again began mewing into the napkin. Marla rolled her eyes. I was thankful for the clink of glasses and pound of music around us.

“Sandee,” I said, as calmly as I could over the cacophony, “what are you worried about? Lana told us it was okay to talk to you.”

“She did?” Sandee seemed surprised, but looked around again, as if to confirm that Lana was not hovering.

“We just need to ask you about his money,” I continued. “John Richard’s money.”

At that moment, we were interrupted again. This time it was the bald guy, who leaned his pimply-faced, hunchback-of-Notre-Dame body over the table, nuzzled in next to Sandee’s neck, and whispered more words in her ear. Then he handed her some cash, which she thrust into an unseen pocket of the black dress. She smiled up at him, gently turned his wrist to see what time his watch said, then whispered something back.

Marla raised her voice. “Sandee!” The bald guy jumped, then trundled off. “Remember that day,” Marla continued, “when we came over to John Richard’s house and you asked us if we’d brought money? What was that about?”

“Uh, let’s see.” Sandee dabbed at her smeared mascara. “I asked you for money?”

“Yes, you did,” Marla replied evenly. “And then when Goldy showed up at John Richard’s house yesterday, a tall guy driving a blue sedan was parked out front. He asked Goldy if she had his money. Now, John Richard had no job, but he was living a fancy lifestyle that included a house, an Audi, and a cute…how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Sandee replied, blushing.

“Twenty-eight-year-old,” Marla continued, giving me a raised eyebrow. “He also forked over major bucks to sponsor a golf tournament. We are his ex-wives, Sandee. His expensive ex-wives. We know his money situation coming out of incarceration was not good.”

“Incarceration?”

“Jail,” we ex-wives said in unison.

“You were living there, Sandee,” Marla went on. “How did he have an income? Was he borrowing money? Were people demanding that he repay it? Do you think that’s why he got killed?”

“I don’t know,” Sandee insisted. She crumpled the napkin with fingernails painted a glittery green. “You know, his cash? He just had lots of it. That’s all.” Her tone turned morose. She glanced in the direction of the front door. “Know what? I don’t care what Lana told you. Club policy is, I can only stay at one table for two minutes. Besides, I gotta go fix my makeup.” With that, she took a deep breath, pushed out her chair, and clattered away.

“Let’s get out of here,” Marla said abruptly. She looked down with distaste at our barely touched plates. “We can stop for sandwiches and ice cream on the way home. Think, prosciutto and arugula. Think, butter-roasted pecan ice cream. Think, no one making a declarative statement and posing it as a question. Think, fudge sauce.”

But for once I wasn’t pondering food. I was mentally totting up the lies I was sure Sandee had told: She was closer to twenty-one than twenty-eight, and she had asked Marla for money. Did this prevarication mean that Sandee knew more than she was letting on? Or was she just a flake who lied about her age and couldn’t remember anything? And where had Ruby Drake disappeared to?

The sudden appearance of Lana Della Robbia distracted me from these questions.

“Lana!” I said. I could see now that she, too, was wearing the clingy black signature dress of the women who worked at the Rainbow. “Tell us more about the Kerr-Vikarios conflict.”

“It was a long time ago, after I had my babies. I heard they had some kind of falling-out, right around the time Dr. Kerr and Holly left for England. I don’t know what it was about,” Lana concluded dramatically.

Marla and I exchanged a glance.

“That’s interesting, Lana, really,” Marla said. “Just out of curiosity,” she plowed on, “how did John Richard come to get hooked up with Sandee? He came over to receive your thanks for saving him? Then he picked a nubile filly from your little stable? I mean, she did have a gun-toting boyfriend, right? The singer? Am I wrong?”

“Dr. Korman was a good customer,” replied Lana, her tone diffident. And yet now it was her turn to scan the club, looking nervous. “Anyway, that’s not why I came over to your table.”

A young woman running the cash register called to Lana for help. Lana, who was clearly the boss, turned and beckoned with that formidable-looking, scarlet-painted acrylic nail for us to follow. Did everybody in this place have killer nails?

Marla sighed audibly, but we obliged. Once she was at the front counter, Lana dealt with the crisis—a group of twenty handsomely dressed guys in their forties were arriving for a late lunch. The adding machine had frozen up and Lana needed to count the cash and hand the guys their tickets.

“They look like lawyers,” Marla said in disbelief, eyeing the suits.

“They are lawyers,” Lana muttered under her breath, frantically counting bills.

“So what happened to American Express?” Marla asked. “Visa?”

“We take ’em,” the young woman who’d called Lana over said mournfully. “But the guys don’t want their wives checking the statements. I mean, how would you feel if your husband ate lunch at a strip club?”

“Our ex-husband did,” Marla and I said in unison. The young woman shrugged, as if to say, See?

“Goldy and Marla,” Lana said softly, rubber-banding the bills. “Do you know when Dr. Korman’s funeral will be?”

“Not yet,” Marla replied. “Probably sometime this week. You can call St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Aspen Meadow for more info.” And with that, Marla hustled me out the exit.

“Are you out of your mind?” I shrieked at Marla once we were striding along the gritty sidewalk.

“No, I’m hungry,” she said. “By the way, did you notice that Lana never asked who we thought killed the Jer…Oh Christ,” she said, when she spotted her car. She grabbed my arm.

I thought she must have gotten a parking ticket, or been sideswiped by a garbage truck, maybe retaliating for that morning. At the very least, the Mercedes must have a flat.

But no. The unattractive bald man, Sandee-the-