“Want a drink? Please say yes. I will not allow myself to drink alone. I have been damnably sober for the three worst days
of my life and I am dying for a martini. I promise to sip it.”
“A martini it is.” Temple set her tote bag on the floor beside her. “Danny, the house is spectacular.”
“So glad you noticed. I suppose if a man must have a memorial, better it be a house than some graveyard sentimentality nobody ever sees. This is Simon’s true headstone. This house and everything in it.”
“Including you,” she pointed out.
Danny came over with two low, footed glasses. “For now. I know that he wouldn’t wish me to languish here. He was an amazingly generous soul. Ah. Bombay Sapphire with just a whisper of vermouth. Now. What business are you here upon, Little Red? And what have you in your basket as you trundle through the woods? I believe that you were hunting wolves, the last I heard.”
Danny sat on an Eames chair-an original ’30s black leather Eames chair with matching ottoman. He regarded Ternple with the inquisitive look of a sparrow begging bread crumbs.
That’s when she understood the role in which fate and Danny had cast her now: part detective, part avenger, and part
therapist.
“That Maylords opening was a … an opportunity and a hope for so many,” she said. “Simon. My friend Matt’s friend
Janice.”
“Friend?” Danny called her on it. “Isn’t that a weasel word? Remember, I met your ‘friend’ Matt some while back. Unfortunately straight, but otherwise delectable. I can’t believe that you haven’t noticed yourself.” Danny sighed. “He was, of course, the same physical type as Simon. Could he have been the intended victim?”
“I looked into that. It’s possible, but Simon’s murderer may have been a woman named Beth Blanchard, and Matt only met her at the opening night, and barely then. She did mistake Matt for an employee, though.”
Danny’s blue eyes focused into lasers. “Beth Blanchard.” The name dripped with disdain. “Who was she?”
“The past tense is right. Beth Blanchard was just found dead at Maylords herself. Stabbed as well-and, as an additional decorative touch-hung by picture wire in Simon’s Art Deco vignette. From the chrome bedpost. I found her.”
Danny took in all that information while sipping rapidly from his petite martini glass.
“Did Simon ever mention her?” Temple asked.
“A woman? Hardly.”
“But this one was mean. She loved to ride roughshod over everybody at Maylords, and apparently management let her.”
“The classic management distraction tactic.”
“They wanted the other employees to hate Beth Blanchard.”
“And thus to ignore their own hateful ways.”
“Simon told you this?”
“No. Simon told me nothing of his problems at Maylords.” Danny sounded self-accusatory.
“Then how did you know?”
“Munchkin mine! I’ve been around the block and, what’s more germane, around major production companies for aeons. Creative temperament is my middle name, and group politics is my master’s degree. It’s the oldest management trick in the book: create an untouchable monster for all the troops to hate. Presto! It’s a diversion while management pulls a lot of nasty strings and no one notices. If Maylords was tolerating a Gorgon, something must have been wrong there.”
He shook his head.
Like Temple, he had been cursed with curls, and seldom was taken seriously because of that. Curls were youthful and
frivolous. Or at least had that frustrating reputation.
“Simon was not one to whine,” Danny said. “He tried to give every situation its most generous interpretation. I suppose you would call him an optimist.”
“I would call him a person of substance in a shallow world.”
“Exactly. I had noticed signs, but I put them down to opening night nerves. God knows I’ve had bouts of that all my life. I should have read between the lines, Temple. I should have seen that all was not calm, all was not bright in Simon’s new position.”
“It looked so benign, Danny. I researched the whole thing: Maylords, Amelia Wong. Both ideals of American entrepreneurship. Wong has had death threats, a lot of them. I wonder how much the events at Maylords had to do with her.”
“Simon would not be mistaken for Amelia Wong.”
“But his death, and Beth Blanchard’s death, spoiled the Wong special appearance. Turned it into front-page news, and made her a footnote.”
“You’re saying Simon was murdered as a distraction? That would be brutal to accept.”
“I don’t know. Not yet. I need expert consultation.”
“Mine? Dear heart, there is no dancing involved. Except to a funeral march.”
“But there is a gay element, and I admit I’m at a loss there.”
“You’ve never been at a loss with me.”
“I’m talking about a whole, semisecret culture, not a person from it.”
“What do you mean?”
Temple sensed a withdrawal in Danny, an Us-versus-Them realization.
She was a PR person. A communicator. Somehow she would have to communicate across the unspoken. She would, like the Murano, have to be a new animal, a crossover vehicle. Did that have something to do with Simon’s death? Was he a “crossover vehicle” somehow? Is that why he had been killed?
She decided, like a trial attorney, to sum up, even if it was premature.
“Here is what I’ve learned about Maylords. It’s a mass of contradictions. It’s supposed to be a classy, artsy operation, but it raids competitors for employees.
“It’s supposed to offer high-end furniture and service and it gives lip service to hiring the best employees in town and spending mucho money on training them for the opening… but on the other hand it tells them that they are all expendable. Management starts culling out employees from the full-pay orientation period on.
“It has,” Temple said nervously, “an all-gay management structure, which looks way enlightened and realistic, given the environment.
“But the management sexually harasses straight men, and some gay employees.” “Simon?”
“I think so, but he was handling it.”
“He never said anything.”
“Women don’t say much either. And when they do, their initial silence is pointed out as a sign of lying. Who wants to admit to that kind of pressure? I wouldn’t. I’d be embarrassed. I’d think that people would believe I’d ‘asked for it’ somehow. I’d decide I had to handle it myself. It’s a male patriarchalworld. Who’s going to believe women … or gays and lesbians? That’s how they cow us, isn’t it?”
Danny stood. Wiped his forehead as if to erase wrinkles. “If it was that bad, Simon would have told me.”
“Why? I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have told anyone. Stiff upper lip. Don’t cave. Running for help is the worst sign of weakness in an environment like that. How do you think I got to be Pepper-Spray Girl? I’m so afraid someone will take me for one-a girl-and take advantage of that vulnerability. Amazing how a whole gender is so worth denying. Not so amazing that gender preferences are worth denying too.”
“But you said the management was gay friendly.”
“I said it was gay dominated. Have you ever heard of a cat-fight? You must know Clare Booth Luce’s ’30s play, The Women, and the film? Being downtrodden doesn’t automatically mean you have empathy. Sometimes it means you have issues. Matt-you know this-used to be a priest. And he once told me, in view of all the instances of pedophile priests and he wasn’t one, believe me-but he once said, trying to explain this utter betrayal of his religion and his profession, that three things contribute to sexual abuse: privilege and secrecy.”
“That’s two.”
“The third was patriarchy. But you could interpret that as merely power. Management. It struck me. Gay life has secrecy, it has privilege among the initiated, and, in the case of Maylords, it has management. Power.”