Page 108 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Soaked to the Bone

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Whatever fantasies of consumer bliss had been dancing in my
head—like tutu-clad sugarplums—to the tune of soothing upscale
FM radio commercials on my BMW’s five-speaker Gremble audio
system, dropped to the pit of my stomach when I saw the vehicles
parked in front of Fish’s house. Police cars. Fire trucks and rescue
units. And a van clearly marked Coroner. All this at nine-thirty in the
morning; quite a shock!
It was too late for me to turn around, pretending I had wandered
into Empyrean Heights in error or in search of yet another mansion
on the pilgrimage map to ‘the homes of the stars.’ A uniformed
officer waved me to a halt behind a sawhorse anchoring one end of a
length of that well-known ominous yellow tape and approached my
car. I had seen enough footage—real, dramatized and memory’s mix
of both—to know I had to keep my hands visible. This wasn’t a
studio guard or one of those rent-a-cops who stand around movie
shoots drinking coffee, amateur screenplay in hip pocket. He
beckoned me to lower my window and I did so carefully, grateful the
power button was on top of the armrest in plain view.
“Do you have business here, lady?”
I tried batting my eyelashes nonchalantly at the man in blue.
“Why, yes, I do. I am Cora Sliner, Mr. G. Felton Fish’s personal
assistant. Is anything wrong?”
He peered into the passenger compartment. I became conscious
of my skirt length and resisted the impulse to start babbling out my
life history as justification for anything anyone might possibly
consider less than exemplary in my present circumstances. It looked,
at first glance, as if the cetacean Fish had, like Fatty Arbuckle, been
cavorting with a starlet turned suddenly and embarrassingly
inanimate. I hoped it wasn’t Fern Grotteau; she really was a sweet
kid, trying to get a break in this tough, tough town.
“Park it over there. Lieutenant Gramercy will need to see you.”

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