The Cutting Room by Laurence Klavan Read Free Book Online Page B

cop, by the way?” I used the time to ask.
    “That I was lost.”
    I saw a crumpled-up map, placed on the floor, for effect.
    “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Jeanine asked, with sudden and surprising self-knowledge.
    Before I could reply, I saw Beth finally leave her Taurus. Gripping her handbag, she entered a small drugstore. Once again, I left Jeanine behind and set after her on foot.
    I followed her through electronic doors into the small, garishly lighted store. Beth walked blithely down aisles, picking up products, then putting them back. Keeping a few paces behind her, I did the same.
    In
Double Indemnity
, Fred MacMurray secretly met Barbara Stanwyck in a grocery store. That film’s original last scene—which took place in the gas chamber—was cut.
    Finally, I saw something that made me stop. Beth had slipped a makeup bottle into her bag.
    She did not approach any cash register. She just kept walking, casually, and completed what had all along been a circle throughout the store. Then Beth—whom Ben Williams must have been paying well, who made a lot more money than I did, anyway—left as calmly as she had come in.
    I left, too.
    In the parking lot, she walked just as easily, did not run, certainly did not open her bag or inspect what she had shoplifted. I’m sure she thought that nobody else knew.
    The bottle in her bag was my ace in the hole. I took a very deep breath.
    “Excuse me?” I said. “Beth?”
    She turned on her heel. Close up, I could see that her face was freckled, her eyes green. She really was pretty. She did not even need makeup, and she wasn’t wearing any.
    When she heard me, Beth must have thought it was the store detective. But when she took one look, she knew that it was impossible. Besides, I had used her name.
    “I called you about Orson Welles?”
    Beth stared, first frightened, then shocked, then relieved, and then incredulous.
    “Oh, my gawd,” she said, with a slight Valley girl accent. “Are you kidding me?”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Well, maybe you didn’t get the message when I called the police on you two minutes ago! That
was
you, wasn’t it, creepo?”
    “Oh, I got the message all right.”
    “Would you like me to call those guys over there?”
    And indeed another cop car was parked in the lot, with two patrolmen drinking coffee in the front seat.
    “You can,” I said. “But I think they’d be very interested in what you’ve got in the bag.”
    “Oh, my gawd.”
    Beth seemed to live quickly or, at least, not to think very much. She immediately shifted from anger and cockiness to confusion and despair.
    “I get nervous sometimes,
okay
?” she said, a choke in her voice. “Like, because I’m starting this new job now? And I just—well, I take things, okay? And you calling me wasn’t helping! Like, already people I don’t know are asking me for things! I mean, like, how did you even get my number?”
    I felt sorry for Beth. But the way she was going, I didn’t think I would have time to show it.
    “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “Let’s just go to that phone booth over there. Make one call, and this will all be over, okay?”
    Immediately, Beth was composed again.
    “Let’s use my cell phone.”
             
    Beth sat calmly in the front seat of her car, the door open, her long legs stuck out, a tiny cell phone in her palm. I stood next to her, dictating.
    “Ben?” she said, pulling down her sunglasses. “There’s a guy here who wants me to give you a message. I had nothing to do with this, okay?”
    “Take it easy,” I said.
    Her hand over the receiver, she mouthed, “Well, I didn’t.” Then, into the phone, “He said to tell you just,
The Magnificent Andersons
.”
    “Ambersons,”
I hissed at her.
    “Andersons,”
she said again, as if correcting herself. “And he wants you to call him at this number, if you’re interested.”
    With my coaching, it took three times before Beth got the number right. After she did,