Part 16 (2/2)
”Hot boots, Carla,” she yelled admiringly, wis.h.i.+ng for a moment that she were decked out too. Carla preened happily.
”Have you got the night off?”
Carla stood on tiptoe to yell back. ”No, the bar's closed tonight! Because of the murders!” She sounded just as pleased as if she'd unexpectedly gotten an extra snow day. It probably hadn't occurred to her the financial beating Margie would take because of it. It did, however, partly explain why there was such a crowd.
”Hey, you haven't been telling anybody about the stuff we talked about, have you? About the case?”
Carla looked hurt. ”Me?” she said, touching her chest as if she simply couldn't believe the accusation. Stacy caught Alison's eye and they nodded. She had told every detail to everyone she'd met.
”Come on up,” Alison urged Stacy. ”I want to find a place where we...” She almost said ...can look at the papers, but, catching Carla's eager, 'what's-going-to-happen-next?' look changed it to, ”...can talk.”
Stacy glanced over at the exit which was still clogged. It looked as if a fight between a woman in a confederate army s.h.i.+rt and another in a gingham dress was going to break out on the steps at any moment. Stacy reached up and grabbed the bra.s.s railing and hauled herself over the bars, very nearly knocking over a pitcher of beer on a nearby table with her boots in the process. Carla, not the least upset about being left without a partner, danced happily away from the rail. Alison wondered for a moment if packing etiquette permitted carrying a d.i.l.d.o beneath a skirt. But fascinating as the information might be, it was not the time to pursue it. Alison reminded herself of this reluctantly, admiring the way that the fringe on Stacy's s.h.i.+rt swung as she walked. This was time for business, not for thinking of how the green satin would slide beneath her fingers, her mouth; how the pearl snaps down the front would all burst open with one good tug....
”Come on,” yelled Stacy, ”I want to see what you think of this.” Stacy took Alison's hand to lead her through the crowd. Alison was painfully aware of more than one set of eyebrows raised in their direction. Stacy shoved through the h.o.a.rds of women in front of the bar to an unlit corner. She pushed open a door Alison had never seen before.
They found themselves in a tiny office. ”Well, ate we one of the elite?' Alison asked with a lifted eyebrow.
”Oh, I've had a drink here with Jenny a time or two.”
Which means exactly what? And am I going to do this every time she says anything, wonder if she means what the words say or something else? Am I going to be jealous of tricks? Alison opened her mouth and then closed it again. This was not the time for heartfelt confessions, particularly since they had decided that they were only dating. On the other hand, why not start out the way she intended to continue?
”So,” she said briskly to Stacy, as if they were at a c.o.c.ktail parry with several hours to kill on chitchat, ”are you monogamous?”
Stacy, who had taken a folded leaflet from her pocket, looked startled. ”Aren't we playing detective right now?” she asked.
”Well, yes, but we want to show the audience that we're people, too. Kind of the Cagney and Lacey approach-you know, where Mary Beth talks about her son joining the Marines and Christine talks about her drinking problem.”
”Are you sure that our audience wouldn't prefer to hear about my new kitten and the trouble he's having hitting the kitty box?”
”Positive. We're playing after eight to an adult audience. It's dying to know if we're compatible at all, just for dating, of course, or if I should go back to my lonely existence as third wheel to Mich.e.l.le and Janka.”
”Well, if you mean do I date more than one woman at a time, yes I do. Not that I am now, but I fiercely reserve the option. If you mean do I have more than one relations.h.i.+p-a relations.h.i.+p being when you've decided it's true love and it's going to last forever, not like all those false alarms with those other s.l.u.ts, and people invite you places together and you've made at least one joint purchase-at a time no, I don't. I don't have f.u.c.k buddies, either. I find that I can't maintain emotionally. However, I don't count my work as anything but work, so if you're asking, am I going to forsake my job and become a saved woman the minute I fall in love and start thinking of joint mortgages, no, I'm not. Incidentally, I don't date or see any of my customers socially or take on anybody in those categories. So, hypothetically speaking, my main squeeze would not need to eye the soccer team or my neighbors questioningly.”
”Oh. So what's with the leaflet?”
”We end like this?”
”The audience is tired of our personal problems. It wants to move on with the plot.”
Stacy shook her head. ”Fine, but it may have to sit through a long boring personal scene later in which the d.y.k.e detectives bicker over the fact that one is supposed to spill her guts while the other puts out nothing.”
”Oh, that's scheduled much, much later in the season. Now the scene is the exciting clue of the leaflet.”
”Okay. Did you bring yours? You are going to be so amazed when you see what a good job of detecting I did on my own.”
Alison laid her own leaflet on the desk.
”Okay, the difference is that this second flier has different contact numbers on it. See? Now I thought, maybe it's no big deal....”
Alison felt rather let down. ”You're right, maybe it's no big deal.”
”But then I thought, well, it if funny, at any rate. Look at this.” Stacy held her leaflet up to the light. ”See here? Look at the numbers really close. You can see where they've been changed. Somebody typed the new numbers on a piece of paper and then cut the little piece out and glued it over the old ones. Then they copied the whole thing. But you can see the shadow where they did it right here at the edge.”
”Yeah, I've done that myself on term papers. So what's the excitement? They decided to add optional numbers on the later leaflets so the first two phones wouldn't be overloaded.”
”It just seemed funny to me,” Stacy repeated. ”See, the reason that I even noticed was that, when I glanced at the leaflet at your house, I recognized both of the phone numbers. The first one is Trudy's, and I recognized it because it's on our soccer phone tree and it's real easy to remember. See, the last digits are 1234. The second one is the Gay Community Center's line. I worked there last year.”
”Well, I think that was very Delafield-like, but I still don't see the point.”
”There's no reason to change either of those numbers. They both have call forwarding. If Trudy, say, wanted to go out to a bar she could have her phone forwarded there, or she could have it forwarded to someone else's number and that person could take the calls. Same with the GCC. It's not like these calls are going to one person, anyway, because if they were, and she left to give a ride or something, then there'd be no one home for the next caller. They're going to somebody who's acting like a dispatcher I'll bet that tonight anybody calling from that first flier is being bounced right to this bar.”
”So you think someone put out a set of bogus fliers with different numbers,” Alison said slowly. ”What's the point in that?”
”Well, what if there was another reason that you wanted to get d.y.k.es in your car? What if, instead of helping, you wanted to do something else? Like maybe rough them up a little or....”
Alison's mouth dropped open. ”No,” she whispered.
”Yeah. Here would be this woman all trusting and ready to chat. h.e.l.l, she might even ask you to come in while she checked her house out.”
”But surely no one would get in a car with a strange man,” Alison protested.
”If he said he was from the Gay Community Center? That the Men's Chorus or the study group was helping their sisters out? Or it wouldn't even have to be a man. What if you were a woman, an ex-d.y.k.e maybe even, who really believed that your sisters were going to h.e.l.l and that the best thing for them would be a little reprogramming, even if it had to be forced? You'd be willing to run your station wagon into enemy territory to make a pickup and then join the guys later, wouldn't you?”
”The Crusaders,” Alison breathed.
”And this number just happens to have the same prefix as their hotline.”
”Did you call it?”
Stacy shuddered. ”No. I know it's stupid, I know they don't know where I am and where I live, but I just couldn't bring myself to call. It was like-I don't know, inviting a vampire in your window. You know, they can be out there flapping against it, but you're safe as long as you don't ask them in. I felt like if I connected with them over the wire this voice would come on saying, ”Ha, ha, ha, you s.l.u.t, we've got you now!” She shrugged apologetically. ”What can I say? I guess the audience gets a glimpse at my paranoia.”
”Hey, I don't blame you. You've been through enough with those people. But do me a favor. Is your little lawyer friend here tonight?”
”She was earlier.”
”See if you can get her in here.”
Stacy saluted. ”I take it your rank is higher than mine?”
”Always. Every time you get a promotion I get a better one.”
As the door opened a wave of music swelled into the small room, shaking Alison as if by a heavy wind. She put both hands on the desk to brace herself and shouted, ”And grab Trudy!” h.e.l.l, everybody in the world was out there. She didn't see why Trudy wouldn't be. She had little hope, though, that Stacy heard her. She would have to send her out again, for they needed to make sure that the WAV AW women hadn't changed the number themselves as she had first supposed. Stacy might be gone as long as ten or fifteen minutes fighting her way through the crowd. That gave her enough time to look at the photos.
There were two sheets, covered with strips of photos no bigger than the negatives, but less than half were of the Rubyfruit the night of the Ms. Leather contest. The others were of other current events: The Lesbian Follies and what appeared to be a square dancing group. They were tempting, but she focused resolutely on the former. Not that it did much good. They were so small that she could see what was happening only generally; she could not pick out faces and detail. There was another, bigger shot of the bikers, with the Crusaders in the background. That must have tickled the fancy of the photographer, because the next shot showed six women dressed in leather tight in front of the protesters. There were a couple of shots of the contestants inside the bar. One looked as if the flash had misfired.
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