In a darkened office with a gun pointed at them and time running out, Dash finally lays it all out: who killed Harold Finch, who killed Glen Valentino, and how a jade mask, a delivery driver, and a garden full of poison flowers all connect to the assistant who booked the caterers and addressed every donor thank-you letter that ever left the Fox Theater. Then the window comes in, the police arrive, and Detective Ramirez plants a knee in the small of someone’s back with the practiced calm of a man who has done this before. It is, by any measure, a lot for one day.
🀙🀚🀛🀜
Violet’s laughter was warm and beautiful against the rush and bustle of Restaurant Overture. So warm that Bunny almost forgot she was recounting one of the most harrowing nights of her life.
“He managed to diss that dry-ass chicken even as he was face to face with a killer?” Violet wiped under her eye with the side of her thumb, “My God, Bunny. You’ve got yourself a keeper.”
Bunny rolled her eyes but couldn’t help the smile that crept to her face. A waitress stopped by their table with their appetizers on a white oval plate, six fried mozzarella balls with a little dish of tomato jam and a sprig of green something that nobody was going to eat. They both thanked the waitress and dove in immediately, holding the savory, gooey treats by their fingertips.
“Heart attack on a plate,” Bunny murmured around a bite of breadcrumbs, butter, and cheese.
“Heart attack on a plate,” Violet agreed, and bit hers in half.
The cheese pulled into a long thread between her teeth and the plate, and she chased it with her other hand, laughing again. A busser passed behind her with a rack of glasses. The dining room was full for a Wednesday. Somebody’s birthday candle went up near the window and the table around it sang badly, quitting early. Bunny looked past Violet to the bar. Two bartenders working, neither of them young. The near one had a towel over his shoulder and was cutting limes without looking at them.
“Hey.”
Bunny looked back.
“You went somewhere,” Violet said.
“I’m here.”
Violet held her gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable, then let it go and reached for the second mozzarella ball.
“So,” she said, “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long have you been sleeping with the private investigator?”
Bunny picked up her wine and took a sip she didn’t need.
“Violet.”
Violet pulled back incredulously, then shrugged her shoulders, reaching for another mozzarella ball.
“What’s the matter? You said ‘we had dinner’ twice tonight. You said ‘he’s got a thing about his Ford.’ You said his first name four times without his last name,” Violet ticked each one off on a greasy finger, “I teach a hundred and twenty undergraduates a year, Bunny. I know when somebody’s cutting around the middle of a story.”
Bunny looked at her friend for a moment, letting the silence stretch, then clicked her teeth.
“Since a little after the gala.”
Violet let out a victory guffaw.
“I knew it.”
“You did not know it.”
“I knew you weren’t doing all of this for someone who wasn’t blowing your back out.”
“Violet!’ Bunny exclaimed, scandalized.
They both laughed then, Violet shaking her head as she took a big swig of her wine. When they settled down, Bunny found that she was smiling into her glass.
“He’s good to me.”
Violet nodded softly, knowingly.
“Then I’ll allow it,” She pointed a finger at Bunny, “Provisionally. I get a veto.”
“You don’t get a veto.”
“I get a veto and you know I get a veto.”
They let the plate sit between them for a while. Violet refilled both their waters from the carafe since the server hadn’t come back.
“Okay,” she said, “Tell me the rest. The part I’ve been reading about in the paper like a common citizen.”
So Bunny told her. Fenelope was arraigned on a Tuesday morning in a grey suit Bunny had seen her wear to a hundred board meetings. Conspiracy. It turned out that the night of her big feud with Glen wasn’t about him being a creep to her, but about her wanting a bigger cut of the money given that she was offering her events to pass off pill-loaded artwork. Mickey turned himself in with his lawyer on one side and his publicist on the other, and made it about eleven feet before somebody from the paper got a photo of him with his mouth open. Two other names came after that, both of them people who had eaten at Bunny’s tables, both of them people whose spouses had chaired committees. Cashler’s side of it went federal, and once that happened the word everyone started using was racketeering, which Bunny had only ever heard in movies with Violet sitting next to her.
“And I think they razed her poison garden, but I can’t be sure,” Bunny finished.
Violet leaned back in her chair, clearly lost for words.
“Shit. RICO. At the Fox.”
“That’s what the attorney on the news said,” Bunny took a sip of water, “The board’s suspended operations through the end of the season. They canceled ‘Trouble in Mind.’ There’s a forensic accountant in Fenelope’s office going through fifteen years of auction records with a fine-toothed comb.”
She turned her glass a quarter turn on the tablecloth, watching the damp condensation soak into the fabric.
“So,” she said, “I’m basically out of a job.”
She said it with a half grin and a twinkle in her eye she didn’t try very hard to hide.
“Thank fucking God!” Violet raised her glass high, ignoring the looks coming from the next table over, “To unemployment!”
“To unemployment.”
And they clinked their glasses. The wine was too cold and too cheap and it was, Bunny thought, the best thing she had tasted in a month. The conversation settled after that. Violet finished the last mozzarella ball. Somebody dropped a tray in the back and the whole room paused for it, then went on.
“Thanks for keeping me in your world,” Violet said, “Even with all of this happening. You didn’t have to.”
“Of course I did.”
Violet nodded. She set her glass down and turned it once, like Bunny had been doing all night.
Then she took a pause.
“I also have a confession to make,” she looked up at Bunny through her lashes. Bunny’s heart started to race.
“Okay,” she said slowly, “Say it fast. I’ve had a month.”
Violet laughed and it came out too high, stopped too soon.
“It’s good. It’s a good thing.”
“Violet.”
“It’s… it’s ‘Jeremy Jones, I Will Marry You.’”
Bunny stopped for a moment, then remembered.
“Your screenplay?”
“It got in,” Violet said, “Not the shorts block. The features program. They take eight.”
Bunny put both hands flat on the table.
“Violet.”
“There’s supposed to be this festival. There’s a Q and A. They put your face on a card and hang it in a hotel lobby apparently, which is horrifying and I’ve already asked what size,” Violet was talking with her hands now, transformed into the geeky writer Bunny knew her as and that she never showed in front of her students, “And there’s a production company. Riley’s cousin knows somebody, which I know sounds like nothing, but they fucking read my script. They actually read it. They want to talk about optioning it.”
Bunny’s eyebrows shot up in amazement.
“Optioning it,” she repeated, still in disbelief.
“It’s not money. I mean, it’s some money. They pay you to wait, and then they don’t make it, and you have a nice story for the rest of your life,” Violet picked up her wine and didn’t drink it, “But they read it, Bunny.”
Bunny was out of her chair before she knew she was standing. She got both arms around Violet’s shoulders from the side, upsetting the empty appetizer plate, and Violet made an undignified sound into her elbow, grabbing her wrist and holding on.
“I knew it,” Bunny said into her hair, “I’ve known it since you showed that first draft to me eight years ago. Eight years. I’ve been telling you for eight years!”
“You have. It’s been unbearable.”
“I want that on the record. Whatever they hang in the hotel lobby, I want it to say Bunny Beaudoin was right.”
Two tables over, somebody had turned to watch them. Bunny sat back down and pushed her hair off her face, laughing at nothing. The server came and cleared the plate, then left. Violet shook her own head, like even she could not believe what she had just said.
“But... there’s more,” she finally said.
“More good?”
“More.”
Bunny waited.
“The festival is a few months out,” Violet said, “But the company is in Culver City, and the woman who read it wants to meet about two other things I’ve got, and Riley’s been trying to get into a shop out there since before I met him.”
She looked at the bar, not at Bunny.
“We’re moving. To Los Angeles. I gave the department my notice on Monday.”
The restaurant went on making its noise. A blender ran somewhere. The birthday table was paying.
“Wow—LA. That’s…” Bunny’s voice trailed.
It was all she could say.
“Say something else,” Violet tipped her glass in her hand, “Please.”
“That’s where they make the movies.”
“Bunny.”
Bunny reached across and took her friend’s hand, squeezed it.
“I’m so happy for you,” she said, and it was true, coming out steady. Then she blinked twice and it didn’t matter because Violet was already watching her do it.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m allowed a minute,” Bunny said, dabbing her eyes with a cheap napkin, “I just lost my job, my boss is a racketeer, my assistant tried to shoot me, and now the only person in this town who knows what I’m talking about is moving to a place with no weather.”
“There’s weather.”
“There’s no weather, Vi.”
Violet turned Bunny’s hand over and held it in both of hers, like she was holding a coffee cup in January.
“Listen to me. The festival’s not happening tomorrow- we still have time. Our lease isn’t up yet,” She pressed down on Bunny’s knuckles with her thumb for emphasis, “That’s eons.”
“Okay.”
“And when we do go, I’m throwing the single most unhinged goodbye party Magnolia Heights has ever seen. I want the writing group. I want Margo reading horror out loud on my balcony. I want Riley making something out of dragon fruit that puts a man in the hospital. I want your dog there.”
“Mr. Darcy? At a party?”
“In a bow tie, Bunny.”
Bunny laughed, and it broke something loose in her throat, and she pressed the back of her wrist under her eye.
“I’m not crying in Overture.”
“Neither am I.”
“You are.”
“I’m absolutely not!”
They both stood at the same time, which put them at an angle with the table between them, so Violet came around it. She smelled like the same perfume she’d worn to every bad faculty event for eight years—clean, crisp, and nostalgic. Bunny held on longer than she meant to.
“You’d better answer your phone out there,” Bunny said.
“Every time,” Violet said into her shoulder, “Every single time.”
Neither of them let go first.
🀙🀚🀛🀜
The Bronco was at the curb with the two right tires turned to the grass.
Bunny could hear the shower going by the time she got back to her place, and the certain voice of an amateur crooner belting out Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise.” He was flat on the low notes and fully committed on the high ones. She smiled to herself, and kicked off her sneakers by the door. One landed on its side. Mr. Darcy lifted his head from the couch cushion he was not allowed on, saw it was only her, and put it back down.
The hallway light was on. So was the lamp in the bedroom. His jacket hung on the back of her desk chair, the sleeves still bent at the elbows. On the nightstand, her side, one of her Agatha Christies lay face down and open. She stood in the bedroom doorway and took it in. For more years than she’d like to admit, every light she came home to in this house was a light she’d forgotten to turn off. Now there was a light over the stove left on and a coffee mug sitting upside down in the drainboard that hadn’t been there when she left, and she found that she liked it. She liked all of it.
The bathroom door was open a crack. Steam rolled along the top of the frame. Through the gap, she could see the glass shower door propped open a few inches, and his chain coiled on the edge of the sink next to her toothbrush, the one key lying on the porcelain. Bunny considered the chain for a moment. Then she shrugged her cardigan off her shoulders and let it drop on the bed.
Dash slowed down for the bridge, and held the note longer than Elvis did on the record.
Bunny pushed the bathroom door open with her hip and came in on the next line before he could get to it, loud, half a step sharp, snapping on the off beat.
The singing stopped and something plastic hit the shower floor.
“Jesus, Bunny!” His voice reverberated behind the shower door.
Bunny hid a snorting laugh behind her hand.
“Hey, there, big shot— don’t stop on my account.”
He leaned his head out past the glass. His hair, freshly cut with a clean fade, still had shampoo in it. Water ran off his chin and onto the bath mat. He looked at her face, and then at her bare shoulders, and then at her face again.
“You couldn’t knock?”
“It’s my bathroom.”
She worked the buttons on her jeans and stepped in. The water wasn’t as hot as she would have set it, but she quickly forgave him at the sight of his—
“Shit!” They both swore as a shower bottle clambered over the ledge and onto the floor.
Bunny bent over and picked it up, and Dash moved to give her space as the gentle, even spray hit both of them. When she straightened, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her flush against his body.
“You caught me at my most vulnerable,” he mumbled.
“That bridge was criminal. I’d know.”
“Look, Elvis had a band. I’ve got a loofah.”
She laughed then, and he laughed, and the sound went up into the steam, staying in the small room with them. He leaned over to move the shampoo bottle further away from the ledge on its precarious perch. Then he put his hand along her jaw, his thumb resting just under her ear, and kissed her. He took his time with it. When he pulled back, the water had pasted her hair to her neck, and he moved it aside with one finger.
“Hey,” he said with a soft smile.
“Hey.”
He didn’t say anything else right away, keeping his hand where it was. She’d seen him do this in the car, idling in a driveway with his hands on the wheel, getting ready to say something before he said it.
“I never thanked you,” he finally spoke up.
She furrowed her brow.
“For what?”
“Any of it,” He looked past her at the tile for a second, then back, “When I came up to you outside the coroner’s office, Glen had fired me. You know, I was in a tough spot. Paying rent on an office with nobody coming through the door. I’d go in every morning and read the same files. Nobody was paying me.”
The water ran down between them.
“I’d been doing this long enough that it really was just a job. You find out who’d lying, you write it down, you send an invoice. I couldn’t have told you the last time I asked myself why I got the license.”
“Dash—”
“Wait, lemme finish,” his hands moved to her hips, “You didn’t owe me anything. You didn’t owe that theater anything, not after the way Fenelope treated you. But, this is your town. Your people. You helped anyway. You can walk into a room and know who was sitting next to who and why, who used to be married to who, who was going to cry in the coat check. I really haven’t seen anybody work like that.”
His thumbs moved slowly over the skin at her hip.
“You kept the lights on in that office. And somewhere in all of this I remembered why I wanted to do this job in the first place. Because, well,” He paused, pulled her closer, “This is my town too. So. Thank you.”
Bunny didn’t answer immediately. She looked at him for a long moment, at the water collecting in his eyelashes, the line of soap he’d missed behind his ear. She wrapped her arms around his neck, felt him rouse against her.
“Funny,” She said, her voice low, “I can’t think of a single thing you did that helped me.”
He stared at her. Then a short laugh came out of him, mostly through his nose.
“Oh, yeah? Not one thing?”
“Mmm, let me think,” A rueful smile crept onto her face, “Yeah. I got nothing. I carried you this whole case, O’Neill.”
Then, they laughed together, true and big. His mouth went over hers, and she went up on her toes, kissing him back, and she pressed her palm flat to his chest, and his hands moved lower and somewhere behind them the shampoo bottle slid back onto the wet floor. The shower door swung shut on its own.
And they could have stayed there for the rest of the night.
Fin.