Some Like It Hot-Buttered Page 8

  “I’m Joe Dunbar,” he said. “Vince Ansella was my best friend.” That seemed to take a good deal out of him, as if he were addressing his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and had made the startling revelation that he belonged in their ranks. “I met Vince in the third grade, when we were eight years old. The first thing he ever said to me made me laugh.

  “We were waiting outside the school before the first day of class, and a girl I knew told me that Vince was in our class that year. I walked up to him and asked, ‘Are you Vincent Ansella?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, but it’s not my fault.’ I don’t know why, but I was eight, and that cracked me up, and we ended up sitting next to each other in class.

  “I knew Vince for thirty-five years, and he kept making me laugh. He loved comedy, and he made me go with him to every movie that came out that might be funny. He kept me up late nights during high school, not drinking and messing around like other kids, but watching the Marx Brothers on late-night TV, because he had just discovered them. When we went to college, and we were in different states, he used to call me whenever a Peter Sellers movie was going to be on TV, to make sure I was watching.

  “He could never get enough of something that made him laugh. As you know, his favorite movie was Young Frankenstein , and he spent his last few minutes on earth watching that. I’m sure it made him laugh over and over again. He made me see it about eighteen times . . . no, nineteen, now that I think about it, and I think he liked it more when I laughed, because it meant we shared a sense of humor.

  “After we both got married, we only lived ten minutes away from each other, so all four of us used to go out to the movies together. Vince never wanted to see anything serious, and we all went along with him. He kept us all laughing. My heart goes out to his wife, Amy, and to his mom and his sister, Lisa, but I bet they have lots of funny stories about Vince to remember even now.

  “Vince spent his time doing his job dealing with insurance and actuarial tables, but in his heart, he was all about comedy. The job took his time, and he did it right, but it wasn’t what his life was about. His life was about what makes people laugh, about comedy, and seeing as much of it as he could. So I’m glad he was able to do that, because his life was so short, it makes me feel better to know he spent it well.”

  Dunbar had held himself together that long, but it was as much as he could stand. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to will the tears back into their ducts, but it was no use. He stumbled back to his seat next to a blond woman who under other circumstances would have been described as “brassy.” Since everyone now understood that the real eulogy had been delivered, we waited for the pallbearers (who naturally included Dunbar and a man I took to be Lisa Rabinowitz’s husband, since he had been trying to corral the children with as limited a success rate as she) to gather.

  When Ansella had been taken from the room, and his family had followed him out, the rest of us rose and walked from the building.

  It was a lovely day, not a cloud in the sky, and I stood in the sunshine for a long moment, trying to absorb all I’d heard and seen that morning. A voice behind me said, “It really makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  Marcy Resnick was one step above me, so when I turned, I was looking up at her, and squinting into the sun. “Marcy,” I said. “Yeah, it makes you think.”

  “Here I thought Vincent was all about the job, and it turns out he was into comedy movies more than anything else. You don’t know anything about another person.” She stepped down so I was able to look at her without craning my neck.

  “I’m not sure I know all that much about me,” I said. “Another person would be too much to expect.”

  The coffin was rolled into the back of the hearse by the pallbearers, and the driver closed the door on it and walked back to wait by the driver’s side. It was a nice day, and there was no reason for him to sit in a stuffy car with a dead man.

  “Are you going to the cemetery?” Marcy asked.

  “No. I’m still a little surprised I came here. Besides, I don’t have a car, and I have to get back to not run my theatre. How about you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m heading back to the office. It’s still a working day. But I should say something to his wife.” Marcy started down the steps toward Amy, and I followed.

  “Well, I’m glad I got to . . .”

  A loud scream of “No!” cut me off, and we both looked toward the limo, where Amy Ansella, her face contorted with . . . well, that sure looked like rage, was shoving Joe Dunbar away from her. Dunbar, for his part, looked positively stunned, and hadn’t even put up his hands to defend himself. The blond woman standing next to him, presumably his wife, seemed horrified. Dunbar was bent over slightly, had probably been leaning over to embrace his dead friend’s wife, but she had pushed him away, and his arms were still spread, either in shock or from the blow she’d dealt him. Amy might be stronger than she looked.

  “Get away! Get away from me, you bastard!” she screamed, as everyone in the funeral party stood as still as statues. “Don’t you ever talk to me again!”

  I don’t know why, but I walked down the steps toward them, even as the rest of those gathered stood still as statues. I haven’t a clue what I was trying to accomplish. It was too fast, and too strange. I guess I was thinking that if a fistfight broke out, I could try to break it up.

  Dunbar sputtered something I couldn’t hear, but Amy was having none of it. “Go away!” she bellowed again, and Dunbar started to back off. The blond woman with him couldn’t decide whether to look astonished or angry. “Get away from us, and stay away!” Amy yelled.

  I looked toward Marcy, who had stayed where I’d been standing, but she was just as astounded as the rest of us. My glance at her may have been the only movement among the twenty-or-so people outside the funeral home, aside from my continuing to inch my way down toward the pavement. I was still operating on autopilot. But even traffic on the street seemed to have stopped in a surreal tableau that suggested time itself had paused for this moment.

  “Maybe I won’t go see her just now,” Marcy muttered.

  The limo driver finally snapped back into real time and realized he had the power to end this astonishing scene. He walked around the car and opened the rear door for Amy, who was still staring at the retreating Dunbar.

  I was close enough now to hear the Widow Ansella, in a slightly less hysterical tone, fire a parting salvo in Dunbar’s direction:

  “Murderer.”

  11

  "She said ‘murderer’?” Sergeant O’Donnell looked surprised. I’d anticipated this would be old news, as I’d assumed he would’ve had a man at the funeral, but apparently I’d either overestimated the county investigator or his department’s budget.

  “Quite clearly,” I told O’Donnell. “To be fair, Dunbar looked awfully shocked when she said it.”

  We were in my office at Comedy Tonight, a former broom closet I had cleaned out, given my belief that brooms can stay in the regular closet with all the other cleaning implements and just get over themselves. There was a small assemble-it-yourself desk (which I had assembled myself, after only three calls to the manufacturer and one to my father), a phone, a watercooler, and a single chair, which O’Donnell was now sitting in, having commandeered the office as his temporary headquarters. Standing next to him, I felt rather like someone had taken over my territory, a feeling I remember having quite often during the divorce proceedings.

  “Well, he might have simply been surprised she said it out loud, or surprised she knew it was him.” O’Donnell chewed on a pencil, which I realized with some revulsion was one of mine. Companies send me free pencils and pens all the time with the business name on them, secure in their odd belief that I will give them as gifts to my “clients.”

  “Yeah, or she might have been putting on a nice public display of accusation to shift the suspicion from herself,” I suggested.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, with great noncommittal flair.

  “You di
d suspect her, didn’t you?” I might as well accuse somebody of something; it seemed all the rage around here these days.

  “I’m sorry, am I required to keep you up-to-date on our investigation, Freed?” O’Donnell leaned back in my chair and eyed me with something that couldn’t be described with any word other than “suspicion.”

  “I thought I’d come by and share information with you, O’Donnell, but if that’s your attitude, I’ll keep it to myself next time.”

  "It’s Sergeant O’Donnell, and what makes you think there’ll be a ‘next time’ you’ll have anything useful to tell me?” he asked. I ignored him, because coming up with a clever retort would have required more effort than I had energy for at the moment.

  “Did you get a report back on that vial my father found here, or are you not allowed to tell me whether I’m under suspicion as a major drug dealer?” At least that had a little zing to it.

  “Oh, we got the report, okay.” O’Donnell smirked. “I’m sorry to say, we don’t think you’re dealing coke in anything but overpriced cups that are mostly filled with ice.”

  “I’ve got to make money somewhere,” I told him. “The studios take all the receipts on the movie. Anyway, what is it I am dealing? I’ve been out of the business for so long, I can’t remember which felony I was committing on a regular basis.”

  O’Donnell picked up a paper from my desk and held it out far from his face so he could read it. I felt like telling him that real men like Chief Barry Dutton aren’t too insecure to use reading glasses.

  “It’s a substance called clonidine,” he said, reading from the paper. “It’s an alpha 2-adrenergic blocker” (it took him a couple of tries to say “adrenergic”) “used to treat high blood pressure, and sometimes attention deficit disorder. Crushed up into a powder and given in a large enough dose to someone who doesn’t need it, clonidine makes a healthy person’s blood pressure drop until his heart stops.”

  “So it was this clonidine that killed Vincent Ansella,” I said.

  O’Donnell nodded. “Sprinkled on his popcorn. He probably never even noticed it. And anyone with high blood pressure might have a prescription for it.”

  “Do any of the suspects have high blood pressure?” I asked.

  “Strangely, Sherlock, I haven’t had time to check on everyone yet, because I haven’t ruled out anyone as a suspect except Ansella himself. Besides, anyone who wanted to kill him could have known someone with high blood pressure, and stolen enough to do the job.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve checked whether Ansella himself had a prescription?”

  “Well, then you suppose wrong.” O’Donnell didn’t have enough room in the small office to pat himself on the back, but I’m sure he made a mental note to do so once he got back out into the real world. “Ansella didn’t have high blood pressure. In fact, aside from being dead, he was in excellent health.”

  “Not to mention, he probably wouldn’t take his prescription medication sprinkled over a large buttered,” I noted, mostly to myself.

  “Probably not.”

  “Any prints on the vial?”

  He grinned. “Besides your father’s? No. But I’m letting him go because he’s only got one reason to be in the theatre.”

  “Speaking of which, when can I have my theatre back?” I asked. “I saw a bunch of your storm troopers retreating from the place. I assume you haven’t found anything else on the premises I need to know about.”

  O’Donnell’s eyelids fluttered at the term “storm troopers, ” but he kept it to himself. “As a matter of fact, we didn’t,” he said. “We’re pulling out of here. You can have your theatre back tonight.”

  He stood up to leave, and a thought occurred to me. “What about his wife? Did Amy Ansella have a prescription for clonidine?”

  Sergeant O’Donnell’s face closed, and he said what cops always say when you’ve hit on something they wanted to take credit for themselves. “This is an ongoing investigation, ” he said. “No comment.”

  12

  FRIDAY

  Horse Feathers (1932)

  and Bootylicious (today)

  "You think I just have extra wheels for this thing lying around the store waiting for you?” Bobo Kaminsky, the largest bicycle store owner in Central New Jersey (and no, that doesn’t mean he owns the largest bicycle shop), stared down on me with what was supposed to look like disdain but instead resembled bemusement.

  “Come on, Bobo, it’s a twenty-six-inch wheel and you’ve got hundreds of them. Who’s a better customer for you than I am? I need the wheel by tonight so I can ride home from the theatre after the show.”

  “You could take a cab.” But he was already looking through his stock in the back room where we were arguing, trying to match the right width to the frame I’d dragged in from Sharon’s car. Sharon, cursing slightly under her breath, had demurred at the idea of seeing Bobo, and driven away almost before I’d managed to get both feet and one wheel onto the sidewalk.

  “A cab. Very nice, the owner of Midland Cyclery telling me to take a cab.” I was sure he’d find what I needed. Bobo was annoyed because his solution to every problem I’ve ever brought into his place is that I should upgrade to a four-thousand-dollar bicycle. Bobo is among those who believe that I made millions off of Hollywood and am being obstinate about spending my fortune.

  He scanned a rack of wheels, then turned and walked to the other side of the room to scan another. “So what’s with this guy who croaked at your place?” he asked in his usual delicate tone. “I hear you can’t trust the popcorn.”

  “You can trust the popcorn,” I bristled. “Whoever did it brought the poison with them. Come on, Bobo, move it. It’s already one o’clock, and I’ve got to get the place ready to open by seven.”

  “You come in here asking a favor and now it’s ‘move it, Bobo’? Why don’t you go out to Sports Authority or Sears and ask them to move it with the wheel on this twenty-year-old bike?” Bobo’s glasses, hung on a chain around his neck, were making a clicking sound as he moved from rack to rack.

  “Because they wouldn’t have it,” I recited.

  “You’re damn right they wouldn’t have it,” he agreed, then looked at the rack and checked a stock number. “Ah! Here we go!”

  He pulled out a wheel, tire already on, and beckoned to me. “Give me the frame,” Bobo said. I handed it over, and he carefully maneuvered the wheel into the fork and locked it in. “Perfect. Am I good or am I good?”

  “It’s a bicycle wheel, Bobo. You didn’t cure erectile dysfunction.”

  He waved a large hand. “Been done,” he said.

  Once again mobile, my next stop was 91 Guilden Street, where Anthony shared an apartment with three other Rutgers students. It was about as typical as college apartments get: not much in the way of cleanliness, furnished in early garage sale, and plastered with posters, in this case Hitch-cock’s Vertigo (a highly overrated movie in which Kim Novak is scared to death by a nun), Scorsese’s Raging Bull (what the heck was he raging about?), and, for a welcome change of pace, Jessica Simpson in a very small bikini. Probably a shot from The Dukes of Hazzard (no comment).

  The kid who’d answered my knock was about six foot three and weighed almost as much as a box of Cocoa Puffs. He had a mountain of curly brown hair, frizzier than mine, and looked very much like a used Q-tip. He introduced himself as Danton, and I introduced myself as me. I had no idea whether Danton was a first or last name, but figured that was his business.

  We sat at the kitchen table, and from where I sat I could see a ceiling fan in the living room. From each blade was what I thought at first might have been mosquito strips or fly paper, but which turned out to be pieces of yellow crime-scene tape. College hasn’t changed much.

  “Anthony hasn’t been here since Wednesday, Mr. Freed,” he said. “I told the police. Of course, we’re in and out to classes and whatever, but I haven’t seen him, and the other guys said they haven’t, either.”

  “There are two o
ther roommates?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Me, Anthony, Lyle, and Dolores.”

  I must have looked surprised. “Dolores?”

  Danton grinned. “She’s just a friend.”

  “Any sign that he’s been here? Extra laundry piling up, cereal bowls in the sink, that sort of thing?”

  He looked around the room at the debris that cluttered every square inch and the dishes piled up on every flat surface. Danton smiled, and looked me square in the eye. “Not that I’ve noticed,” he said.

  “How about his classes? Would anybody notice if he didn’t show up for class for two days?”

  “His profs, maybe. Some of them are big lectures, two, three hundred people, and they wouldn’t know if one kid was there or not. But he’s got a thesis advisor who also teaches his directing course. If he checked in with anybody, it’d be Dr. Bender.”

  I made a note of Bender’s name, and asked if I could see Anthony’s room.

  Danton gestured toward a door with paint peeling off. “Be his guest.”

  Suffice it to say that Anthony’s bedroom was everything you’d think it would be if you’d ever held a sixty-second conversation with Anthony. The bookshelves were lined with tomes such as The Films of Quentin Tarantino, M. Night Shyamalan: The Man and the Myth, Martin Scorsese’s Cinema, and, unexpectedly, John Ford’s West. The walls had more movie posters, including ones for Taxi Driver and Mean Streets, but the bed, thankfully, was not done up with a John Woo comforter.

  The contents of the drawers and closets had been deposited on the floor, but it was hard to say whether the work had been done by the police or was simply a product of the typical college student’s high regard for housekeeping. Clothing, mostly jeans and T-shirts, was available for the grabbing from pretty much any area of the room. I chose not to think about Anthony’s underwear, which is a policy of mine.