TCOT Absurd Assumption C8
Della staggered from the island to the refrigerator, putting away the leftover pizza and salad Perry had ordered and paid for to be delivered. She was exhausted and tipsy, but stubbornly refused to allow Perry to clean the kitchen for a second time. He had been gracious and charmingly patient today in his encounters with first Asher and then her friends. She had been grateful for yet a trifle nervous about his presence and what it might appear like to her friends and the press, but after the fifth bottle of wine, she decided her friends and the press could think whatever the hell they wanted. Let them assume and ponder and gossip. As always, what she did within the confines of her own home was her business and her business alone. And while she loved her friends dearly, and appreciated their offers to spend the night and take care of her, the proven expert at taking care of her was in the kitchen, sitting at the island, letting her do absolutely everything herself, watching with tender, concerned eyes. And she liked it.
"Della, you just put a candle in the fridge."
She rested her forehead against the refrigerator door and chuckled. "I thought the power of the mind could conquer all, but maybe exhaustion is the true conqueror."
Perry came up behind her and placed his hands on her upper arms. "Go to bed. I'll finish cleaning the kitchen." Because no matter how tired she was, if she knew there was one dish in the sink, she wouldn't sleep. And he wouldn't sleep knowing that she wouldn't sleep.
"You've done so much already. I need to do this."
"No, you need to go to bed, sleepy girl."
She turned her head and pressed her warm, wine-flushed cheek against the smooth surface of the refrigerator. "This feels heavenly." How many times had he called her sleepy girl when she finally crashed after keeping pace with him for hours on end? A thousand?
Perry snickered. "You are delirious, and I suspect a bit drunk. I should have stopped opening the wine after bottle number three and hidden the corkscrew from you." It had been a long time since he'd seen Della drink so much, another subtle sign of the stress she was under. The other women had sipped at the wine sparingly while regarding their friend with concern, and he calculated that she must have consumed two-and-a-half bottles by herself. If they had intended to get their friend tanked, it had been a rousing success.
Della opened one eye and peered suspiciously at him. "You aren't going to do something silly like carry me upstairs, are you?"
"No. I am never silly."
She laughed delightedly and closed her eye. "I don't get drunk."
"But you've been known to be silly."
The eye opened once again. "And you've been known to get drunk."
He turned her and propelled her toward the stairs for the second time that day. "That cuts me to the quick, young lady."
Della yawned with a remarkable vocal accompaniment. "I put fresh sheets on the guest bed."
Perry stumbled over his own feet and nearly pitched Della head-first into the door jamb. She instinctively reached out an arm to save herself from a concussion. "Maybe I had one too many glasses of wine myself," he lied to cover how much he had not expected her to say something like that.
"You don't think you're going to drive around LA looking for a hotel room in the middle of the night, do you?"
"I have no intention of doing that. The Rochester is holding a reservation for me. I called while you and your lady friends were whispering and giggling and pointing at me."
She twisted from his grasp and faced him, hands on hips. "Reservations expire at midnight." How did he know they were whispering and giggling about him?
"I doubt I'll be turned away."
"You'd really leave me alone tonight knowing that someone broke into this house?" He had told her about the window while she struggled to tidy the kitchen, reassuring her that he had checked the windows in the house and all were locked.
"Della, if you wanted someone to stay with you, why did you send everyone home?"
She wanted to lean against him exactly as she had against the refrigerator. He was so big and strong and made her feel safe. "Because."
"Because why?"
"Because someone I cared a great deal about was murdered and I was arrested today. This hasn't been the best day of my life – hasn't been the best couple of weeks...I didn't want them to know…" her voice trailed off and she bit her lower lip.
"Hey kiddo, it's okay to admit you're scared." He said gently, his voice a rumbling croon. "And it's tomorrow – your bad day is behind you."
She shook her head. "No, I can't…"
"Sometimes the caretaker needs to be cared for, Della. You've always been the one everyone turns to when things go wrong. Let us take care of you for once."
"How can you take care of me from the Rochester?"
"Della, I'm your attorney. There are professional ethics to observe here. Attorneys don't spend the night in their client's houses. " Even if they want to more than anything in the world. "The reporters and the detectives saw you shoo your friends out the door and know that I'm still here. We can't hand Barbara Scott anything she'll use toward impugning your character..."
"Barbara Scott can take a long walk off a short pier. Let her dig up my past." She waved her hand dismissively. "I'm the one with the big problem, remember, and I don't care anymore."
"I remember. It's just not a good idea for me to stay."
"Don't trust yourself?"
"I trust myself. I don't trust you. I believe you are mistaken about never getting drunk."
"If I were truly drunk, our clothes would be scattered around the kitchen and we would be lying on top of the breakfast bar in flagrante delicto. As you can see, I am fully clothed."
Completely, utterly, totally, wholly, and altogether shocked at her bold disregard of their contract, and not knowing whether to blame the wine for such a breach, Della's penchant for cheekiness, or something more tantalizing, Perry felt his jaw sag. "And exactly what crime would we be engaged in, Della Katherine?"
She giggled like a schoolgirl. "The crime of passion, silly!" She hiccupped and clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide and very, very beautiful. "We're repeat offenders, if you recall."
"This is exactly why I'm staying at the Rochester, and why that contract exists. We can't do this, Della." How many times would he have to say that to convince himself, let alone Della? He had to prove what he wasn't here for the purpose of taking advantage of her, and if that meant disobeying every screaming molecule in his body, then so be it.
"If I'm as think as you drunk I am, how would I know if we did anything?" She lifted one perfectly expressive eyebrow, totally oblivious to her garbled words and positive for all the world she'd just made a pithy point.
"You are going to be a mess in the morning, Miss Street. Take an aspirin and drink two glasses of water before you go to bed." He spun her around to face the stairs, resisting the urge to slap her lightly on the behind. She was usually lucid and articulate when drinking, and he found her slip hysterical. "Remember the contract."
She whirled to face him once again. "Damn that contract! Call Art Emmelander right now. He does contracts, right?"
"Art retired last month."
"Then call Jim Brandis."
"Jim retired two months ago."
She stared at him with enormous eyes. "Good grief, when did you get so old? All your friends are retired." Then she hiccupped and shrugged. "Oh well. A bartender wrote it down and a drunk witnessed it. Let's find an open bar." She grabbed his hand and tugged impatiently.
Despite the titillatingly dangerous conversational path they were on, Perry was finding it difficult not to laugh, knowing that if he did, they would most certainly wind up hip-to-hip somewhere, and as magnificent as that sounded, as incredible as it would be, as desperately as he wanted it, it simply couldn't happen. With every ounce of resolve he had, Perry disengaged his hand and nudged Della toward the stairs. "Go to bed, Della. I'll be back bright and early in the morning."
She placed one foot on the bottom step and a hand on the newel post. "If you go, I won't sleep," she mumbled petulantly. His ethical streak pissed her off sometimes. He called it his 'damn conservative disposition'. She called it damn bothersome.
"Yes, you will. Even you aren't that stubborn."
"You know very well I am too that stubborn."
"Perhaps you are. But I'll bet you a dollar you will sleep until nine-fifteen."
Quick as a flash she dropped to the step, drew up her legs, and wrapped her arms around them. "You're on. You will find me in this exact position in these exact clothes no matter how early you come over."
He patted her head. "You'll be okay, Della, otherwise I would have insisted that Janet spend the night. Detectives are keeping an eye on the house as well as some plucky reporters. No less than four cars are parked out there in the street. You have plenty of bodyguards. But if you really don't want to be alone, I'll call Janet and I'm sure she'll gladly come back."
She treated him to a fierce scowl.
And as Perry Mason closed the front door behind him, he realized that despite his earlier capitulation, this was the first time he had not let Della Street have her way.
After waving jovially at two bleary-eyed detectives who had spent an uncomfortable night in their car parked across the street from Della's house, Perry Mason inserted his key into the lock and swung open the front door at eight thirty-five the next morning. Good thing he had not given the key back to Della – and trying not to suddenly read too much into the fact she had never asked for it back.
He was mildly surprised yet greatly relieved that Della was not seated on the bottom step anticipating his return. After all, there was pride and a whole dollar at stake, and her stubbornness could have been bolstered enough by the wine to break with common sense.
Perry went straight to the coffeemaker and quickly set it to doing its job. Sleep for him had been fitful and he figured several pots of coffee would be required to keep him alert, and to sober up Della, so he filled three additional filters with grounds, stacked them, and set them aside. He then pulled eggs from the refrigerator so they could warm up before he began preparing breakfast. Della would like that. She didn't eat much for breakfast unless he cooked it for her or ordered it in a restaurant, and she loved breakfast food almost as much as she loved steak.
In the den, he sat down at the beautiful mahogany Georgian Manner partner desk they had stumbled across in the corner of a dusty antique store and pulled the telephone in front of him. Lifting the receiver, he plugged the instrument back into the outlet and dialed a number printed on a gilt-edged business card.
Half-way through the first ring, the call was picked up and a tentative voice came over the wire. "Della?"
"How the hell do you know whose number this is, Tragg?" Perry demanded.
Arthur Tragg chuckled. "Mason? What are you doing calling from Della's house?"
"Answer my question and maybe I'll answer yours."
"Oh, my firm is testing a new caller identification system. Good news: it works. What's up?"
"Do you live in a cave? Have you not read a newspaper or heard from one of your old cronies in the department?"
"Of course I read the newspapers, and for your information, no less than ten cops called me. I've also tried to call Della several times. It's a damned shame. My partner worked with Gordon on a couple of technical projects and said he was a visionary in the computer field. By the way, that was quite a sacrifice you made, Your Former Honor. I didn't know a stuffy old judge could have such savoir faire."
"There was no sacrifice." He paused, ignoring Tragg's dig. "What do you know about the officer leading the investigation? A Lt. Cooper? I've left several messages, but he's ignoring me. Too busy with the Arthur Gordon case, I'm told."
"Cooper's methodical and lacks humor, but he's a decent cop. He's not as affable as I was, so think carefully before pulling any shenanigans on him. And if you thought getting information out of me was tough…your best bet is to get buddy-buddy with the kid on his team. Stratton, I think his name is. He's pretty green, and from what I've been told, likes to make himself out to be a bigger deal than he is, but he doesn't have much common sense. College kid. His dad was a good cop, so of course that automatically makes the kid qualified to be a sergeant at twenty-four after spending a year on the street. I think Steve Drumm took him off the street so he wouldn't hurt anybody."
"Thank you for the information." Perry grinned at the disgusted sarcasm in Tragg's voice.
"Any time. How is Della?"
"Beautiful. Sassy. Scared."
"She didn't do it, of course."
"She did not. But if you saw the evidence they have, I think even you would arrest her."
"I'm not a cop anymore, Perry. I'm a civilian, and as a civilian I rely on faith in my friends and no longer on what evidence tells me. Besides, I never arrested Della unless I had no other choice."
"If you had adopted that philosophy twenty-five years ago you could have saved the taxpayers of Los Angeles County a lot of money in unnecessary court costs, Tragg."
"You kill me, Mason. What can I do for you?"
"You can find Paul Drake's feather-brained son. I have it on good authority that he often hangs out in Las Vegas, 'jamming with the bands'."
"Piece of cake. Want his patties slapped and sent home or do you want a call when he's been located?"
"Don't let him know he's being looked for or that he's been found. I'll call you. Della won't admit this, but she's disappointed in Junior and I don't want her to know I had to sic a detective on our detective to bring him home. He should have been by her side the instant she was arrested. She has a pie-in-the-sky idea that the three of us can work together on her case and…"
"And you never could refuse Della Street what she wants," Tragg finished with keen insight into the relationship of Perry Mason and his former secretary. "By the way, stop calling me a detective or I'll charge you for this favor. I assure you my current rate as owner of a highly respected security consulting firm is far greater than what the senior Drake used to charge as a crack PI."
"Braggart. Why a fine woman like Mildreth Faulkner* would marry a good-for-nothing lout like you is beyond me. I hope you're treating her well."
"She's stuck with me this long, so I must be doing something right. Geez, Perry, I didn't mean that the way it sounded…"
"No offense taken, Arthur. Della and I had a lot of good years together before she walked away."
"Della walked away?"
"Now I take offense."
"Seriously, you overgrown miscreant, if you need anything else to help with Della's defense, you call me right away. This case is too important to rely on a dusty bag of legal tricks."
"They restrained her and put her in a detention cell," Perry said, his voice low and tormented.
"That's just like Cooper to go in with Army boots when bedroom slippers would be more appropriate. It's a scare tactic the police use on the more, uh, genteel suspects. You'd be surprised how many confessions and agreements to cooperate come out of spending a few hours in a detention cell. She was taken out and put in a semi-private cell, wasn't she?"
"Yes, but that doesn't…" the import of Tragg's words finally arrived at Perry's thought center. "Tragg, did you –"
"Don't say anything, Perry. Just give Della my love."
Perry swallowed with difficulty, trying to regain his composure. "I will not. That ship sailed when you promised to love, honor and cherish another woman."
"Glad to know you're still the same horse's behind you always were, Mason. I mean it, if you need anything else, you call me. This is one case I'd be more than happy to help you win. I speak for Mildreth as well."
Perry hoped his voice didn't sound as choked up as he was. "On second thought, I will tell Della you send her love. And Tragg…"
"Yessss?"
"Della and I both thank you for being a friend."
Arthur Tragg was quiet for several seconds. "Son-of-a-bitch. I hate it when you get humble, Mason."
At nine-fifteen, after making several additional telephone calls, Perry returned to the kitchen and poured himself another cup of coffee. The welcoming aroma of brewing coffee hadn't roused Della, and he feared maybe she wasn't actually in the house, that maybe after he'd left she had taken a cab to Janet's or Evelyn's to spend the night, but the presence of the detectives outside disproved that, and he relaxed again. In retrospect, maybe he had been harsh and unfeeling about leaving her alone following the shock of the previous thirty-six hours. At nine-twenty-five he stood at the bottom of the stairs, his third cup of coffee in hand, contemplating whether or not he should run up and check on her when he heard the toilet flush. He smiled smugly to himself about being a dollar richer and walked slowly back to the kitchen. He could wait. Oh yes, he could wait. Once he had waited two whole years.
Della shuffled into the kitchen wearing one of those long, soft brushed cotton gowns she (he) loved so much, a terry cloth robe, and ridiculous fluffy slippers. She hadn't secured the robe and the tie had pulled out of a loop, which left one end dragging on the floor behind her. Wordlessly she pulled a stool out from the island, climbed slowly up onto it, and laid her head down on crossed arms. Silently Perry poured a cup of coffee and placed it in front of her. He moved away back to the stove, but the sound of knuckles rapping on the countertop made him turn to look at her again.
She was holding a dollar bill in the air between two fingers.
With a smirk, he took the bill, removed his wallet from his suit coat pocket and spent an inordinate amount of time smoothing out the bill and placing it in the wallet.
"Nobody likes a winner who gloats," she grumbled, inhaling the steam that rose from the cup of coffee like oxygen.
"Au contraire, mon ami. Everyone loves a winner, no matter what kind."
"Why are you cooking breakfast all dressed up like that?"
"Why don't you let that coffee take effect before you speak again, hmmm?"
"You never change," she muttered under her breath.
"Come again?"
"I said, you never change. You still answer questions with questions."
"Don't you find continuity comforting?"
"Don't you find predictability boring?" She shot back, yawning to emphasize her point.
Perry shrugged out of his suit coat and hung it over the back of the stool next to Della. He then unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled them up to his elbows. "Better?"
He looked positively wonderful, the decorative element that completed her kitchen. "Marginally."
"Tough audience."
"I'm mad at you. Do you happen to remember why?"
Perry burst out laughing and Della winced. He turned off the gas and removed the iron skillet full of what he called a 'deconstructed omelet', which was merely scrambled eggs with cheese, onions, mushrooms, and cubes of ham stirred in. Della called it a 'lazy old man's omelet'. He plated the eggs, added buttered wheat toast and a slice of honeydew melon, draped a towel over his forearm, and placed the meal in front of Della with a deep bow. He then repeated the process for himself and took a seat on the stool next to her.
"Bon appetit," he said cheerfully, raising a glass of orange juice.
"Speak English," she groused.
"But bon appetit loses so much in translation. 'Good appetite' sounds Puritan, and 'enjoy your meal' is banal."
"You forgot forks, garçon," Della deadpanned.
Perry sighed and stood to retrieve the forks he had left on the counter next to the stove. After handing Della her fork and refilling their coffee cups, he took his seat once again.
They ate, making only occasional comments, and Perry ached with the comfortable intimacy of this unremarkable event. Despite Della's understandable grouchiness, he hadn't enjoyed cooking and eating a meal as much as this in a long, long time. There was a lot to be said about a challenging give and take compared to a conversation that contained replies such as 'whatever you want', or 'I don't care' to every other question.
He shook himself, literally and figuratively. He couldn't compare Robin to Della, not again. They were very different women and his relationships with them were equally as different.
"Someone just walk over your grave?"
"There's a distinct possibility."
"Have you spoken with Robin?"
Perry stared at Della. "How do you do that?" And why did you do that? Article I specifically covers the confidentiality of subsequent relationships – oh damn that preposterous contract to hell!
She lifted the corners of her mouth in a shrugging smile. "Lightning fast powers of deduction, Counselor. The front runners of those who would wish you ill at this particular time are Barbara Scott and Robin Calhoun. I don't see you being fearful of an encounter with Barbara Scott, but I imagine things with Robin aren't exactly going smoothly right now."
"Smooth might not be a word I would use at the moment." The comment could be considered a breach of Article I, but the words just fell out of his mouth. Besides, she had told him about Asher Langlois' ill-fated proposal, which made it all right for him to say something in regard to Robin.
Della dropped her gaze to the empty plate in front of her. "I'm sorry, Perry. The last thing I wanted was to cause problems between you and Robin."
She slid off the stool and when she would have bolted from the room, he grabbed her wrist. "Della, I shouldn't have said that. You are not to worry about what may or may not be going on between me and Robin."
"But –"
"But nothing. Do what your attorney says."
Della refused to meet his gaze. Considering the gesture Perry had made on her behalf, his former inamorata, she imagined Robin Calhoun must be furious, but after all, they had agreed not to discuss any and all independent romances with each other. She wasn't sure if the dissension hinted at between Perry and Robin made her happy or sad. Her old friend, sass, surfaced to protect her. "Yes, Mr. Mason. Thank you for breakfast, Mr. Mason. May I get dressed now, Mr. Mason?"
"Take your time, brat. I have to run out. While I'm gone, you should make calls to your sister-in-law, my sister-in-law, and Mae. I'm sure they've all tried to call. Then why don't you order steno pads and pencils and all those other do-dads you'll need to play secretary. We have a lot of work to do."
Note: In the novels, Tragg was a contemporary of Perry Mason's. Ray Collins was a fine actor, but ever since I read my first PM novel at eleven, I couldn't accept him in the part. Lt. Tragg is my favorite supporting player, and although I might technically be stepping into dangerous 'alternate universe' territory, I am exercising creative license for the sake of story-telling because I adore writing the relationship between him and Perry. ~ D
*Refer to the novel TCOT Silent Partner for Della's observation of Tragg's interest in Perry's client Mildreth Faulkner.