Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

The Girl Watcher by Janice Law

“Mister, excuse me, Mister!”

Mister! Me, Troyman, formerly on a first name basis with a cool twenty million living, breathing listeners. Guys on cells and car phones making drive time with The Troy Donnelly Show, make that caps and emphasis, THE TROY DONNELLY SHOW! What’s this kid — twenty, maybe? Old enough but not enough car time. My fans were turnpike jockeys carrying a big load of carbon monoxide, reliables who got a thrill out of ringing up Troyman and saying Hello, keep giving them hell; no-lifers who wanted to vent, to grouse, to grab a bit of my air time.

“Yeah,” I say. “What’s wrong?” Course, I know. Knowledge has always been my strong suit. Who was on the take, who had an affair or an addiction; who was in, who was out, who had the goods, who had a weakness. I had all the dirt, and what I didn’t have, I knew how to get, because I could shake the Tree of Knowledge.

“You’re bothering the woman,” says the guard. Brown hair, dusty green top and pants over the regulation red swim trunks. He’s got a swimmer’s body, slim but well muscled, compact, not big. A lifesaver, not a bouncer.

“I’m looking for someone,” I say. “Someone important, all right? I’m meeting her on the beach and, sure, I stopped to talk to this young lady. She looks very like—”

“You grabbed her arm,” says the guard. “You kept calling her Shelley. You were insisting she knew you.”

“Mistake,” I say. “To err is human.” Kept me in business — the human penchant for error, for erring, for errant behavior, which in the right hands becomes blame, becomes a living, breathing illustration of the rottenness of things as they are, which is just the simple truth — and a damn profitable line, I can tell you.

“She was frightened,” says the guard. “She complained.” He looks like some bionic youth of the future in those reflecting bronze sunglasses. Probably has a drug problem.

“Look,” I say, “you don’t know who I am. I need to find Shelley...” I start to explain market share and distinctive voices and Shelley Phillips, who screwed my life up good, but he’s not listening.

“You gotta stop bothering the women. You bother anyone again, you’re back inside — and you’re in for the whole afternoon.”

That would be fatal, unthinkable, so I turn on the charm. Take out my wallet, ask him to get Carlos, the beach chair fellow, to take over a lounge for the woman who wasn’t Shelley. I can see that now. She wasn’t Shelley at all. “Something for yourself, too,” I say.

“You want to get me fired?” he asks and turns on his heel.

I put away my wallet. I could have about bought this damn beach before Shelley. I still have a very nice waterfront house. I believe I do. Well, I know I do, because thanks to the Florida homestead law, the Phillipses can’t touch the real estate. Nope. And I was smart enough to keep the Sunshine State property out of Linda’s hands, though she went through my northern holdings like a dose of salts. Sure did.

I go back to my place, the chair and umbrella which I rent every day from Carlos, who saves one for me even when he’s busy. Loyalty, right? I switch on my transistor radio — on the earphone in case it “bothers” someone. Two years ago that woman would have been thrilled to meet the Troyman. Troy! I hear you every afternoon! Driving to Jersey! Or Greenwich or Darien, points north and south. Who said women didn’t like me? Maybe the show was a little rough — maybe. I hit the screaming sisterhood pretty hard; no friend of feminism, me. But charm. Everyone said I was charming off-mike.

A bit of static requiring delicate adjustments... There — drive time with my replacement. Why do I listen? Why, why? It’s like a musician hearing someone else on his Strad. Pain, I can tell you. Flat, flat, he’s very flat. Hits even the hot points without flare, without humor. Just another bloviator. I can’t believe they pay him for this rubbish. Me, I could entertain and influence. Could yet. Could.

Can’t. That’s what they said to me. The media honchos in their fine suits, soft earth tones like a lot of Al Gore clones. What the hell were they thinking sartorially? Wish we could, you’re the greatest, a genius of the airwaves. One of them actually called me a genius of the airwaves, like this was going to be news to me, when what was needed was a genius in the boardroom and another helping of guts all around. They lacked intestinal fortitude, friends, unlike my nearest and dearest who possessed a super-abundance of that commodity.

Failure of information. So ironic. But not forever. I’ve about got it worked out and when I find Shelley, which is only a matter of time, I’ll be back. Back on top, three to six drive time, master of the airwaves with the verbal equivalent of carpet bombing, me, Troyman.

The guards are talking to each other behind the glass. No old-fashioned open chairs for these boys and girls. Lazy bastards. I don’t know what they pay them for except to annoy law-abiding citizens. Forget them. Shelley didn’t swim, so I can cross off the girl guards. No Shelley there.

They’re looking down at me, comparing notes. All right, so I’ve talked to a few people. No harm in that. You come to the beach to catch the rays, relax, talk to your fellow men without the mediation of the mike — important, no? I think so, although maybe I need the mike, need mediation, need to be Troyman. A dangerous line of thought to pursue. Get back in the hunt!

And I will. It’s just the little matter of finding Shelley, who was a bad idea from the start; I see that now. Didn’t then, when I was operating on a high of adrenaline and testosterone, all natural, I might add, derived one hundred percent from success, of which I’ve had a lot: careers made and ruined, legislation pushed or derailed, elections won or lost. Thanks to me.

Shelley didn’t seem such a big indulgence in those terms. What was she like? An able researcher, certainly; everyone I hired was. You don’t screw around with your research if you’re in pontification for the long haul. So smart, sure; a lively, pretty girl with long brown hair. First caution ignored. I should have taken warning from Clinton and Condit and gone for a blonde. A curious cultural moment, friends: the taste of powerful men for brunettes.

What else? Knockout figure, long legs, blue eyes with thick dark lashes. I think it was the eyes that got me, those round, innocent eyes; two little beacons of pleasure on either side of a short, freckled nose. And she was such a nice kid, everybody liked her; Margaret, the crew, even Linda, who met her at the annual office party, thawed out a few degrees. Shelley brought out a maternal side in some surprising ladies.

I should have seen that, but she made me feel young again at the mike, as if I was just starting out with fire in all the right places, instead of in the upper digestive tract, courtesy of too much snack food and soda. Just the same, I didn’t mean for us to be serious; I didn’t intend for Shelley to disrupt my life, no way. Not when I’d figured out how life worked, when I had the knowledge, as London cabbies say. That’s their way of indicating they know the city, the roads and byways, the one-way streets, the cul-de-sacs, the motorways and alleys and traffic regulations: the texture of their world.

I picked up stuff like that when I traveled, how people talked, what their vocabulary was, what the jargon sounded like — because ninety percent of everything today is rhetoric, the promotion of manure as lawn food, and boy, was I good at that. The very best.

So what was my knowledge, you ask? Speaking of the personal realm, of course, because my knowledge in the political and social realms was obvious, encyclopedic, exhaustive. I survived years behind the mike on information and wit. But in the bedroom?

Start with Linda, legitimate wife. Second, to be honest, but the first was so long ago and so obscure, we can forget her; I usually do. Linda Donnelly, a woman of chilly decorum, holder of a royal flush of platinum cards, a silver BMW, a sable coat, a Connecticut farm, a Manhattan apartment — formerly my principal residence — and a condo in Naples, Florida. An acquisitive lady, but, like Caesar’s wife, beyond reproach, patient, dignified, ruthless.

How do I know that? How can I be so sure? Look at this. I’ve got evidence right here in this folder which never leaves my side. Copies of phone records, bills, bank statements. What do I see in this paper trail? I see calls to Margaret, my invaluable producer and mistress.

Of course, they knew each other; that’s not the story. At best, it’s an old story. Margaret’s a wonderful producer, a workhorse, shrewd as they come, and calls were not uncommon, not during working hours, because my Linda always had a sense of entitlement. No time was sacred for her, and calls on any number of trivial subjects could be expected as a way of showing the flag and pulling rank.

But these! Do you see these? Evenings. Evening calls. She was suspicious, you say. She was calling to check up on Margaret, on Margaret’s company. No, no, Linda was not so curious, and, here’s the thing. They were calls made when I was home! On her cell phone.

I think I saw her at it once. I was at the farm for the weekend, in the study done up with old barn boards, leather chairs, and sporting prints by the decorator of the moment, a swishy thug named Javier. I’m working up one of the little monologues I’m so famous for, when I look out onto the terrace. Linda’s standing with her cell phone in the dappled evening shade, half hidden by lilies in porcelain tubs like the serpent in the garden. I think I was suspicious even then.

“Who were you calling?” I asked. Casually, sure. No heavy, jealous husband. “I thought we were going to leave the phone off the hook this weekend.”

“Just Javier,” she said. “I want some new drapes.”

She lied about that. I’ve consulted the phone records and credit card bills, and I’ve seen no new drapes, and neither has any of the staff. I’ve checked with them, every single one. She wasn’t calling Javier, the gold plated decorator; she was calling Margaret.

Margaret Ainsley. Six feet tall if she’s an inch, an Amazon, a golfer, a swimmer, a sailor. Some days I miss her. I do. At the beach in the late afternoon when it’s probably too late for Shelley but too early for meal call, I miss Margaret. She is not as pretty as Shelley, not as elegant as Linda, but smarter than both. Humorous and quick, very quick. The one who loved me. The sky darkens over the water in late afternoon, and I think of sailing on the Sound and remember how she made me laugh.

Twenty years we worked together. She produced the show for the last fifteen, and we were an item for most of that time. Wonderful companion, Margaret, with only one blind spot: She expected me to divorce Linda, which was not on at all. In my job, you can run around, but divorce cuts your credibility, not to mention your bank account.

Besides, Linda was useful to me in her own way, a star on the charity circuit, a dynamite organizer, a stylish consort. She wasn’t interesting but she wasn’t unreasonable. If she spent money, she spent it well, and she didn’t ask for anything else from me. I could live with that.

Margaret wanted both passion and permanence. I declined; there would have been demands. Even when I got her to accept the advantages of the arrangement as it was, she still expected fidelity. I have her letters here. Margaret wasn’t as careful as Linda. E-mails, too, I saved. Did me no good at the time, but I haven’t given up, not even in my present difficult circumstances, because you never know.

When the thing for Shelley developed, I made a big effort with Margaret. Do you suppose she gives me credit for that? Did she take that into her calculations? I sent her flowers, gave her better jewelry, a bigger stake in the company — a fatal error there. But my good intentions came to nought. Shelley was so pretty, so young, a believer, too.

With Margaret, talk radio’s a business; with Linda, a racket. That’s how she referred to my work: The Racket. Shelley believed in what I was doing, saw the glamour in it, loved it, admired me. I couldn’t resist.

Office phone records: I’ve got them in my hand. Calls — pay attention now, here’s the crucial thing, the thing I haven’t been able to get anyone to credit — calls from Margaret to Linda. How do you like that? Brief. Seconds only. Careful, but not careful enough; Troyman can see they were up to something. Here, look back three years, four years of records.

Are there any calls from Margaret’s personal phone to Linda Donnelly? Exactly one a year acknowledging receipt of annual birthday potted orchid and Godiva chocolates. And then — look at this — five calls, six calls, a total of eleven calls in three weeks. When? Just before the catastrophe.

Suggestive, right? Oh, they had excuses. I’d been acting erratically, they said. The two of them, those two Medeas, had been concerned. The obsession — their word, not mine — with Shelley Phillips, so uncharacteristic, so troubling. To Ms. Phillips as well. She was in tears one day right in the studio about Troy’s advances. Et cetera, et cetera. My advances! If I was advancing, Shelley was retreating like Pickett’s charge. The damn hypocrites!

Oh, you can say what you like, but my ladies were smooth and cool; top quality Dairy Queens. They claimed they had to keep in touch for my sake. Everything, always, for my sake. Even now. I tremble to think how much they’ve done for my sake. I have the records, I know about the calls, I can almost hear them. What are they saying? Any day now I’ll know. I’ll hear them clearly.

Details, that’s the thing. Recover the details. Troyman on the hunt! Think, think back to that halcyon, innocent time. Everything’s perfect. Linda’s decorating the houses, Margaret’s producing the show, Shelley’s meeting me for breakfast and opening her apartment door to me for a drink after work. Everything in its place and everything great.

When did it begin to go wrong? I know. It was the day Shelley says to me, “You know I want to get married before I’m twenty-six or seven,” as if she’s sure I’ll take the hint. I feel cold. Time for facts of life: Linda, the show, my reputation for gravitas. I omit her mentor and good buddy, Margaret, perhaps a mistake, but I’m concentrating on the essentials. Shelley snivels in her handkerchief and her darling eyes fill up. I pat her hand. I’m thinking of a very nice bracelet at Tiffany’s. Classy, but young. There were matching earrings, too, which I decide will be necessary. I call from the office and order a set.

Mistake. Expensive presents leave records; Tiffany kept the delivery address. I should have taken the package myself. I should have. Should I be condemned for one mistake? Just one mistake, my friends.

There’s something else, another piece of the puzzle, which I’ve almost got worked out. What was it? Scan the surf, don’t neglect the passing parade of the bronzed and burning. There’s a blonde, something in her walk. There’s nothing to say Shelley couldn’t have dyed her hair, changed her style — probably would have — but no. Be careful today. I have to be sure, be certain.

Yes, now I remember. Day of the tears. I’m just walking into the studio and I hear sobbing. Something tells me it’s Shelley. I’m concerned, sure, we’re nearing air time. I’m thinking I don’t need this complication, when I hear my producer’s voice.

A case of knowledge ignored — not my ordinary failing. I should have remembered that Margaret was fond of young people, good with interns and new hires. She wanted children and even thought about adopting at one point. You can bet I discouraged that. I could see myself being maneuvered into back door stepdad, not a role for Troyman. I tried paternity with Wife Number One of Blessed Oblivion and I’ve been paying for it ever since.

I walk by Margaret’s office, fearing the worst and set to employ my noted finesse, when she closes the door on a tearful Shelley, who’s standing with a wad of tissues in one hand. A significant tableau, but who’s a mind reader? At the time, what I saw was hysteria and inconvenience, tension in the studio, and a major screwup on some campaign funding data, courtesy of Ms. Phillips’s little crisis.

Just the same, that day was the start of something. I know it was. The start of phone calls, mysterious bank withdrawals, obscure payments. To Javier, the decorator, Linda claimed, and Javier, smooth as Valvoline and with enough names for a Spanish grandee, lied through his teeth for her.

I’ve wanted to see Margaret’s bank records, too. Every chance I get, I tell my lawyers, go after her. They say I should stop worrying the case and relax. They say phone calls, a weeping girl, a dubious decorator, and the absence of drapes prove nothing. Maybe not, but Shelley disappeared within three weeks. She abandoned her apartment with everything she owned except for the fluffy silver fox coat I’d bought her, the one that made her look like a deluxe chorus girl. I’ve tried to get my lawyers to see the significance of the coat. They say it was November; they say she had to wear something. They even hint that she was likely to have worn it to meet me. And these are my lawyers!

The police were no more imaginative, except in their interest in the Troyman. When they finally got involved they found Shelley’s apartment untouched. I’d made sure of that. No sign of violence, no blood, and no fingerprints except hers and yours truly, who, admittedly, used to stop by for a drink after the drive time show and who, yes, kept certain personal items in her bathroom. Is this a federal offense? Consenting adults, et cetera.

Someone she knew, said the police. Who did she know in the big bad city? Troyman. Old enough to be her father.

Just the same, no evidence of wrongdoing. No evidence of disaster. Let me repeat, no evidence at all, not one iota, just innuendo, just the rhetoric of suggestion. I knew all the tricks in that department. What I hadn’t realized was that Linda and Margaret knew them, too.

Linda stood by me and wept on camera. Of course, it’s not the first time, she said. A man of his charm, his charisma. And she was so pretty and ambitious. And young, not the sort of girl who’s going to be content with an office romance.

I couldn’t have done better myself. She stood by me, all right, gently lowering the noose over my head and, when she’d gotten the tension just right, filed for divorce.

Margaret took a slightly different tack; she said she was protecting the program, enhancing our drive time concept with some serious human interest. She set herself up as Shelley’s advocate and kept the focus relentlessly on our missing employee with a regular segment called “The Shelley Watch.” Margaret offered a huge reward for information and talked up our missing researcher’s sweetness and intelligence.

I fell in with this, particularly in the early days when I was sick and afraid every morning with the newspapers and every afternoon with the Internet and every evening with the news. Always expecting the worst, a body, some horror, that perky chorus girl coat soaked in blood. It was easy to say my only thoughts were for her safe return. Simple truth!

But was it that simple for Margaret, who was already cultivating my replacement? I know she was for a fact. No wonder I became, well, intemperate. And then Linda, what about my Linda, with her cash withdrawals and her permanent malice? Who was she paying off? Some hitman, possibly?

I voiced the idea, though I’d have been better to keep my mouth shut. I see that now; this was one situation talking couldn’t improve. My martyred spouse, a connoisseur of the moral highlands, murmured “mid-life crisis,” while Margaret, more legalistic, suggested libel. Not appreciating the subtlety of my two Medeas, I wasted time on Javier, the decorator, who had Brooklyn connections and could get good stuff cheap.

I hired a detective, sicced lawyers on the slippery bastard — nothing. I concluded I’d been mistaken. Maybe, after all, Shelley had offended the wrong person, trusted the wrong guy in a bar, ventured to a rendezvous with urban crime. Not impossible, eh? Plausible, even. Much more plausible than the idea that Troyman had risked everything to throttle her. I stuck to logic and tried to claw my way out of the mud, but the Medeas had done too good a job.

The day I met with the suits, I changed my mind again. That was the day I was out: No more drive time with Troyman, the work of a generation destroyed. I stopped by Margaret’s office to break the news, although I’m sure now she already knew. She was on the phone when I stepped inside. “...just for the three of us,” I heard her say, then she saw me and she hung up fast.

“If only they’d found Shelley, I’d have been cleared,” I told her.

“Would you?” asked Margaret. I look back and try to read her expression. Between makeup and Botox, who knows what women are thinking anymore.

“Don’t you believe me?” I asked. Even with all that had happened, I still thought she’d believe me. After all those years.

“I don’t know who you can believe any more.”

“I’m not even sure she’s dead.”

“You think everyone’s lying?”

“Suppose she had a breakdown, suppose she just chucked the whole thing and went to Aruba?”

Margaret’s eyes were cool, and she didn’t seem nervous. “Might as well suppose you got away with it,” she said.

That’s when I noticed a champagne bottle, a magnum of Moet with fancy gold ribbons bowed like a chrysanthemum at the neck.

“Kind of early to be toasting my replacement.” I was strongly tempted to sweep the bottle off her desk.

“Successful completion of a project,” Margaret said. “Everything’s not always about you.”

How do you like that! In my hour of need, Troyman in extremis, that was the last conversation we had. After twenty years, she had nothing more to say to me.

I went home to the apartment, packed my bags. I figured a couple weeks in the South, playing golf, hitting the beach, letting them try drive time without the Troyman, and preparing for my return. Linda had been staying in Connecticut, putting distance between herself and her errant spouse. More or less to annoy her, I drove up the day before I left.

There was an early snow that fall, just a dusting, and the old farmhouse looked very Currier & Ives. Because of the weather, I pulled around to put the car in the garage, and went in by the kitchen: Currier & Ives meets Martha Stewart with six figures worth of cabinetry, granite counters, limestone floor, and a big furniture-type island. A magnum of Moet champagne tied with a gold ribbon was sitting in plain sight. Same paper, same store, same ribbon decoration. Completion of a successful project. They’d both been in on it, and probably Shelley, too. I started yelling for Linda.

She wasn’t pleased to see me. She mentioned our separation agreement and, when I asked about the champagne, told me to save my conspiracy theories for The Racket. She was doing a divorce renovation, she said, and the bottle of champagne was for Javier, who was bringing some kitchen designs.

The Moet broke with a satisfying crash. Satisfying, just like the look of terror on Linda’s face as she reached for the phone, set to threaten me with 911 and lawyers and the rural constabulary, calls destined never to be completed. Later, I drove to JFK, I’m sure I did. I know I did. How else would I be here? I drove to JFK, caught a flight, and voila! Troyman on the beach.

Why here? Remember my facts. Remember the Medeas. I think, I know, that Shelley disappeared with cash in hand. She liked the sun, hated the cold — and is still fond of me, I know she is. How long can she be loyal to the Medeas? How long? How long would be needed? And then where else but here?

I turn off the radio and sit up. Three o’clock. People are starting to fold their chairs and blankets, close their umbrellas. They’ll pass me smelling of salt and sun oil and certain powerful meds. I see a few late arrivals straggling in, students coming for a swim after school, workers who have blown off that last hour of work. Troyman alert, feeling lucky.

And yes! I see her down the beach, right at the water’s edge. I see her! Someone new. She’s walking along in a bright yellow bikini, her dark hair under a straw hat. I’ve got her. I run after her, but I’m smart. I don’t speak until I’m fairly close to her. “Shelley,” I say, “Shelley?”

She glances around, her eyes shadowed by her glasses, but continues walking, kicking up the purling, shallow water. Shelley liked childish games.

“Shelley, Shelley Phillips!” I’m so sure, I catch her arm.

She flinches away. “Let me go! You know contact isn’t allowed.”

I ask if the champagne was good, if the money’s still coming through regularly. Because I’m standing between her and the guard kiosk, she tries to back away into the surf.

“Look,” she says, “you’re getting seriously out of line.”

I explain I’m Troyman, Troy Donnelly, twenty million listeners and a dominant market share, though, of course, she already knows that, having helped prepare the stats.

“Shelley, sweetie, I understand your point of view, but I can’t get back to drive time unless and until you come clean and sink the two Medeas. We’re talking my career, my whole life,” I say, and though I’m talking pretty loudly, I still hear the guard’s warning shouts.

Two of them this time in their green scrub suits, hiding the red trunks I know they’re wearing.

Should have warned you. He’s fine inside, but outside... Come on, Mr. Donnelly.

He had his hands around my neck!

Yeah, but he’s fine inside. Get him inside and he’s a pussycat, aren’t you, Mr. Donnelly?

They’re talking about Troyman. I’m not listening. Another little mistaken ID, but tomorrow I’ll find Shelley and get back where I belong.

Always worse after his wife’s visited. Almost killed her. We really should keep her from coming, but she’s so devoted. Sad, really.

“My evidence? Where’s my evidence? My legal folders?”

Hand me those papers. See he has them at all times. Otherwise major agitation. “Here they are, Mr. Donnelly.”

The Medeas will try anything to get that folder from me. Bribe the guards, sneak up on me at the beach. I have to watch them. But they haven’t succeeded yet, and they won’t. Troyman is too smart for them. Tomorrow when I find Shelley, when I spot Shelley, they’ll be toast. You’ll see.