A Catered Birthday Party Part 11

"No. You're s.e.xy."

Marvin looked down at himself. His shirt was slightly stained, his pants were wrinkled, and he had the beginnings of a potbelly. And then there was his hair. Or rather the beginning loss thereof.

"Hardly," he said.

"Well, you're s.e.xy to me."

Bernie coughed. Marvin and Libby turned and looked at her.

"Folks, this is all very heartwarming," Bernie said. "But let's go over our plan."

"We don't have a plan," Marvin pointed out.

"I have a plan," Bernie said.

"Like what?" Libby demanded.

Bernie remained silent. Nothing was coming to her. Finally, she said, "Well, we'll just have to go in there and see what happens, won't we?"

"We?" Libby said. "What we? You don't have a plan. Let's go home. I'm exhausted."

"Me too," Marvin said plaintively. "We have two funerals tomorrow. Why do we want to talk to this Brick...Rick Crouse guy anyway?"

"Because Kevin O'Malley said we should," Bernie replied.

"He didn't say anything of the kind," Libby reminded her sister. "He just gave us tickets. He could have been talking about anyone."

"Not so. If you remember, he told us to watch Brick. And there's something else as well." And Bernie shared what Sam had whispered in her ear in the green room. "Sam thinks that Rick Crouse was having an affair with Annabel."

"You're kidding," Libby said.

Bernie shook her head.

"That's huge. Why didn't you tell me when you sat down?"

"Hey, I'm not even sure it's true. Sam said she just got the feeling when she saw them together."

"Where did she see them together?" Libby asked.

"At Denny's having breakfast."

"When?"

"Eleven o'clock."

Libby sucked air in through the s.p.a.ce in her front teeth. "That's not really indicative of anything," she said.

"No, it isn't," Bernie agreed. "On the other hand, I don't see Annabel at Denny's eating The Grand Slam without a really good reason."

"Maybe they were conducting some sort of business deal," Libby hypothesized.

"You don't conduct business deals at Denny's," Marvin interjected.

"I was just being the devil's advocate," Libby replied.

"Sam was pretty sure they were holding hands," Bernie said.

"There goes that theory," Marvin said.

"Pretty sure?" Libby asked. "What does that mean?"

Bernie unwrapped her scarf. "Sam thought they were holding hands under the table."

"Excuse me," Marvin said. "This is all very interesting, but what does my being a talent agent have to do with this?"

Libby turned to Bernie. "Well?" she asked in turn.

"Because then maybe-no, make that definitely-Rick Crouse will want to talk to you," Bernie told Marvin.

"He'll want to talk about his acting career," Marvin said. "That's what he's going to want to talk to me about."

Bernie grinned. "Right. And then you can ask him about some personal background. You know, get him talking about himself."

Marvin took a deep breath and let it out. "What if he recognizes me?"

"He won't," Bernie a.s.sured him. "According to the program, he lives in the city. So if he's buried anyone recently, it hasn't been through your place."

Marvin was not persuaded. "Maybe he's come up for a friend's funeral," he said.

Libby patted Marvin's hand. "Don't worry. Sam may not even have told Rick Crouse."

Bernie thought back to Sam's expression when she'd told her about the agent in the audience. "No," she replied. "She told him. I'd bet anything on it."

"Great," Marvin muttered.

"Just think Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire and you'll do fine," Bernie told him.

Marvin barely managed to keep himself from laughing out loud at the absurdity of Bernie's suggestion. He was many things, but Tom Cruise wasn't one of them.

"Okay," he said as he opened his vehicle's door. He was now resigned to his fate. "If we're going to do this let's go."

The sooner he got this done the sooner he could go home. He just really, really hoped that no one in the play had had cause to use the funeral home in the recent past. He should have paid more attention to the cast names. In hindsight, keeping the program wouldn't have been a bad idea either.

But perhaps he was being overly cautious, he reminded himself as he slammed the car door shut. He did have a tendency to do that. After all, most people in times of bereavement didn't notice him standing there. He was like the beige wallpaper: necessary, but un.o.btrusive.

A blast of stale beer and old cigarette smoke hit Bernie as she opened the door to Leon's. The place was as dark as ever. Two televisions, one set to a sports station, the other to the news, were going full blast. It was so loud it was difficult to talk unless you were very close to the person you were talking to, but, Bernie reflected, maybe that was the general idea.

Bernie noticed that the same pool table with a tear in the green felt was shoved up against the back wall. The same matched set of deer antlers hung on either side of the dusty mirror in back of the bar. Crookedly hung pictures of local soccer and baseball teams dotted the walls in no particular order. The outside had looked the same and so did the inside. Nothing seemed to have changed. Except the bartender. When Bernie had come here, he'd been a short, fat, bearded guy called Carl. Now the bartender was a tall, fat, bearded guy whose name Bernie didn't know.

"Didn't you come here back in the day?" Libby shouted at her sister as the three of them walked toward the bar.

"With Dwight," Bernie yelled back.

"Whatever happened to him?"

Bernie shrugged. "Last I heard he was in jail for robbing a convenience store," she told Libby as she looked around.

There were four guys at the bar drinking, none of them cast members. She looked at her watch. They were early. If Sam was right, the cast members of Cat would start trickling in in another twenty minutes or so.

"Mom hated him," Libby said.

Bernie switched her shoulder bag from her left to her right side. "For once, she was right," she mouthed.

"Of course," Libby reflected, "she hated pretty much everyone you went out with."

"The same could be said of you," Bernie commented. "I mean, Mom wasn't exactly fond of Orion."

"No, she wasn't," Libby allowed. "She was right about that too."

"She was right about most things," Bernie conceded, not that she had thought so when she was younger. This, she thought, must be a sign of her age.

Bernie pointed with her chin to the line of booths over by the far wall. You could see everyone at the bar from there and the people at the bar couldn't see you, she told her sister. And it was quieter there because it was away from the televisions. No small thing, considering.

The noise had never bothered Bernie before. That it did now was just another indication of her advancing age. Well, she was getting old. Everyone got old. But old, old. In a few months she was going to be thirty-three. That was only two years away from thirty-five, and after that-well, she didn't want to think about forty. It was too scary. She really did have to start thinking about Botox. And soon.

"How about we get some beers and sit over there," she suggested, forcing herself to think about something other than the crow's feet she was developing.

"I think I'll have a soda," Libby replied as they walked over and put their order in at the bar.

Ten minutes later the three of them were seated in a booth debating the merits of using Splenda in baking when Richard's a.s.sistant, Joanna, walked through the door.

Libby tugged on Bernie's sleeve. "Is that who I think it is?" she whispered.

"Looks like it to me," Bernie whispered back as she slouched down in her seat before she remembered there was no need to.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if Joanna saw them, Bernie reflected. But it would be better if she didn't. More educational. For them. When Bernie turned her head she noticed that Libby and Marvin had followed her lead and were slouched down in their seats as well.

Joanna turned and looked in their direction. Bernie held her breath. For a moment, she could have sworn there was an awareness in Joanna's eyes that she was being watched. But then that vanished and she turned back to the bar. Bernie, Libby, and Marvin let out a sigh of relief. Obviously she hadn't seen them. As long as they didn't do anything that attracted attention to themselves she wouldn't.

"Guess you were right about the seeing-but-not-being-seen thing," Libby told her sister.

"Of course I'm right," Bernie said indignantly.

She knew this from experience. She'd been here with one of her friends and watched Dwight making out with one of his new chickies, as he had liked to call them. To her infinite satisfaction she'd gotten both of them with the beer she'd thrown in their faces. Sometimes the old moves are still the best.

Libby turned to Marvin. "What do you think?" she asked.

But Marvin didn't answer. Libby didn't think he even heard her. He was too busy staring at Joanna.

"Quite a set of b.o.o.bs she has on her," Libby observed dryly.

Marvin startled. Then he blushed and turned his head away.

"It's okay," Libby rea.s.sured him. "It's hard to stop looking at them."

"They're not real, are they?"

Bernie laughed. "Not unless women are born with the potential to grow rocket cones."

"That's what I thought," Marvin said as he ran a finger around the collar band of his shirt. "I wonder why someone would do something like that to themselves?"

Libby smiled sweetly. "So people like you can stare at them."

Marvin looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible.

"Do you think I should get a pair like that?" Libby continued. "I mean, I could if I saved up enough money."

Marvin hemmed and hawed.

"Listen," Bernie went on. "The h.e.l.l with her b.o.o.bs. The bigger question is: What is Joanna doing here? I mean, this isn't exactly her type of place. The Four Seasons, yes. Leon's, no."

Libby took a sip of her soda. "It's another fish-out-of-water deal. Like Denny's."

"That's certainly so," Bernie commented. "And what is it Dad always says about broken patterns?"

"That they're significant," Libby said. "A change is a signifier. Whether it's a signifier of something large or small is what a detective has to find out," she said, paraphrasing her dad as she fiddled with her straw. "If I had to guess, I'd say that Joanna is here to see Rick Crouse."

"Why Crouse?" Marvin asked. "I don't get the connection."

"It's a little tenuous," Libby admitted.

"Yeah," Bernie chimed in. "And I have a feeling that the relationship you're referring to in this case isn't the incorporeal kind, if you get my meaning."

"You mean you think they're sleeping with each other?" Marvin asked Bernie. He wished that she'd stick to five-cent words instead of the dollar ones.

"It wouldn't surprise me," Libby replied for her sister. "Of course, I thought Richard and Joanna were an item."

"They probably are. One thing doesn't negate the other," Bernie observed.

"True," Libby said. She was slightly ashamed to admit she hadn't even thought of that possibility.

Marvin looked from sister to sister. "Well, if Rick Crouse and Annabel had something going on, that would give Joanna a good reason to kill Annabel, wouldn't it?" he asked.

"One of the oldest reasons in the book," Bernie said. She ticked them off on her fingers as she said, "There's money, s.e.x, and revenge. Take your choice."

"So which one do you think is operating here?" Marvin asked.

"Good question," Bernie replied. "Don't know. Could be any of the three."