Wendy Hornsby - Telling Lies

“So?” Flint asked.

My voice sounded shaky and thick, but it served. “I don’t know who the caller is, but he knows me. Or knew me a long time ago.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The way he reacted when I told him who I was. He called me Maggot.”

“That’s significant?”

“Very,” I said. “There’s something about his voice that’s familiar, and at the same time, it isn’t. I wish I could place him. Maybe it was just the tone of the conversation that was familiar. He seemed very nervous. He wouldn’t say anything that would identify him, as if maybe he thought the conversation was being overheard. I used to take a lot of nonmessage messages for Emily, from people who wouldn’t leave their names.”

“Married men who take lovers don’t leave their names, either.”

“A lover?” I thought about the bottle of wine, Em’s beautiful new breasts. “That’s a possibility.”

“Anything else about him?”

“Just impressions. He’s not especially young, not especially old. No strong regional accent. He sounds educated, but not academic, not like the stiffs on the faculty with my father. The rest you know: He had a date with Emily at four, and she missed it. About that, he seemed worried, maybe frightened, rather than angry. One other thing,” I said. “He asked awfully quickly whether she was all right. When I said she wasn’t, he cried.”

“He cried?”

“What, you never cried?”

“Never.” He picked up an eggroll and bit into it. “Almost never, anyway.”

“You’re some tough guy, Flint.”

“Comes with the territory.” He smiled. “You know, you’re perceptive. You’d make a pretty good detective.”

“I was a reporter for a long time.”

“If you ever decide to convert to the good guys, give me a call.”

“I’m tired, Flint,” I said. “Will you go away?”

“Let’s call Uncle Max.”

“After you leave. It’s a personal call. I might cry again.”

“Go ahead.” He tossed me the napkin. “There’s still a dry corner.

I laughed. “You a married man, detective?”

“Twenty years,” he said.

“Amazing,” I said.

“Not really. Twelve with Leslie, eight with Charlene. I don’t count the year between them, or the two after.”

“So you’re not married.”

He shook his head. “Go on, call Uncle Max.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten-fifteen.”

I went to the telephone, but dialed my parents’ number instead of the Bonaventure.

Nine o’clock is the beginning of the evening for my parents. Over the last few years, they seem to have given up on sleep except as a way to fill the hours before dawn. I believe my father is afraid to sleep. It reminds him that one day fairly soon he won’t wake up at all. And when he does sleep, he dreams of Marc in his coffin.

My mother answered on the first ring. “Emily?” she said, without bothering with hello.

“Mother, it’s Maggie,” I said.

“Are you with Emily?”

“I just left her.”

“Tell her the guest room is all ready for her mystery guest.” She sounded artificially cheerful, fueled by an extra martini after dinner, I thought. Maybe two.

“Mom, is Dad with you?”

“He’s at the faculty club playing trio sonatas with the Helms. Margot, they ran your new promos after MacNeil & Lehrer tonight. You looked lovely. Your hair seemed lighter. Have you done something to it?”

“No. It was probably the lighting.” I took a breath. “Who is Em’s mystery guest?”

“If I knew it would hardly be a mystery, would it? All she said was, that it’s someone we have all been waiting for. Think it’s a romance?”

“Mom,” I said, getting a toehold before she took off on another tangent. “Emily is in the hospital.”

A pause. “Working late?”

“I don’t know how to say this. She was injured this afternoon. She’s in intensive care.”

“Intensive care?”

“Yes. Mom, Em was shot.”

I waited until she clued me she was ready to hear more, expecting either sobs or a flood of questions to bridge denial. When she finally spoke, I was nonplussed by the calm in her voice. And by what she asked first.

“Did Emily shoot herself?”

“No,” I said quickly.

As she asked about the details of Em’s condition, the hospital, the people taking care of her, I began to understand that Mother had been expecting something dire. I don’t mean to suggest that she was not upset about Emily. Certainly she was. There was also a quality of relief about her, as if the monster that had been lurking in her closet had finally shown his face. He was fearsome, but apparently not as horrible as she had imagined. At least, his name wasn’t suicide.

“Dad and I will get the first plane down,” she said. “We’ll look after Emily. The rest, Margot, my darling, we’ll leave to you.

“The rest?” I asked.

“Find the truth.”

She said good-bye and hung up and left me dumbfounded. “Everything okay?” Flint asked.

I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s go see my Uncle Max.”

One nice thing about Los Angeles,you can never look too strange. It was very late. I walked through the lobby of the Bonaventure Hotel wearing Em’s too-big sweats, her black Burberry raincoat slapping around my ankles, a Dodgers cap over my wet hair, and red spike-heeled pumps.

Flint, who walked beside me, looked like a straight john in his suit and trenchcoat. I think the contrast should have elicited at least a leer, and would have in a hotel of this caliber almost anywhere else in the world. The desk clerk who took care of us was nothing but obsequious. He rang Uncle Max’s room, announced Miss MacGowen and a gentleman, and sent us up to the eighth floor.

“Tell me about Max,” Flint said on the way.

“You’ll meet him for yourself. Don’t be surprised by how young he is. Max is my father’s baby brother. I think he’s only four years older than Emily and Marc.”

When the elevator doors opened, Max was there waiting, pacing the hall in his stocking feet. He did a double take when I stepped out.

“Where’s Emily?” he asked, looking past me and into the empty elevator. Disappointed I think, and puzzled, his eyes came to rest on Flint. “Who’s he?”

I said, “Can we go inside?”

He looked again at Flint. “I’m not sure.”

Ordinarily, Uncle Max is a gorgeous man with dark, polished good looks. But even on camping trips, I had never seen him as bedraggled as he appeared in that hallway. He wore the re-mains of business attire, a rumpled dress shirt and suit pants with red suspenders hanging loose. But it wasn’t his clothes that made him seem such a mess. Something about his posture, his expression, his aura, if you will, was disordered. His face was pale and blotchy – stress, I thought, or too much booze. When he got around to hugging me, I could smell him, the acrid sweat of a man with something eating at him.

“Is Emily following you here?” Max asked.

“No,” I said. “Max, we have to talk. But inside, okay?”

“Without Em?” He was still bothered by Flint. He gave him another long visual going over, from the top of his short haircut to the tips of his well-waxed shoes. He asked, “FBI?”

“LAPD.” Flint showed his ID. “Detective Michael Flint.”

“Damn, Maggie.” Max pulled me aside. “Does Em know you’re bringing him?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s her party. No one gets in without an invitation.”

I invited him,” I said. We were the only people in the hall, but there were a lot of doors to listen behind. “You have a room here, Max? Or are you working the halls?”