Melancholy Baby

It was a big office, and nicely furnished, but utilitarian at heart, with cinder-block walls painted yellow, and a thick, coffee-colored rug over the vinyl flooring. On the monitor, Lolly could be seen sitting on a couch behind a coffee table. When the guest was particularly captivating, she leaned over the coffee table toward him. It allowed a dignified show of cleavage.

“Truth is not merely fact,” she was saying, “it is also feeling, honestly expressed, don’t you think?”

The guest, a young actor promoting a new movie, nodded.

“It’s love,” he said, “and honest passion.”

I looked at Corsetti. He smiled at me benevolently.

On screen, Lolly looked at the audience.

“You know my mantra,” she said. “Where secrets exist, love cannot.”

The audience applauded. Corsetti nodded vigorously in agreement.

“She’s really something,” Corsetti said, “isn’t she.”

“Something,” I said.

“It’s what attracted me to the role,” the actor said, “the authentic honesty of the part.”

“You can be proud of that,” Lolly said. “Men are beginning to get it.”

“Well, if we are,” the young actor said, “it’s because you ladies have shown us the value of honest emotion.”

Lolly beamed at him.

“And we’re getting damned tired of it,” she said.

The audience applauded loudly. Lolly reached across and patted the young actor’s hand.

“And the name of the movie again?” she said.

“Timeless.”

“And it’s opening when?” Lolly said.

“January sixth,” the actor said, “in New York and LA. January thirteenth in general release.”

Lolly turned her head toward the studio audience. “I’ve seen a private screening of Timeless,” she said. “And it’s fabulous.”

She looked back at the young actor. “And you’re fabulous in it, Bob.”

She looked into the camera.

“I hope every one of you will see it. Bring the kids. It will do them some good to encounter honest emotion. There’s not enough of it around.”

The young actor looked modest. The audience roared into sustained applause. The credits began to roll. Lolly and the young actor began to chat without sound until the screen went gray.

“She really nailed it,” Corsetti said to her manager. “Not enough honest emotion these days. Is that right on the money, or what?”

The manager was a heavy young man, wearing an oversized double-breasted black suit, a white shirt, and a platinum-colored tie. The suit was probably supposed to conceal his weight. It didn’t. Nothing does.

“Miss Drake has a real grasp on the core values of this country,” the manager said.

The door opened and Lolly Drake came in. She was a little older than she looked on camera, but she was good-looking, and her eyes were everything they seemed to be in her pictures. Her dark green suit was beautifully cut. I paid close attention. My mother had watched Lolly Drake since she had gone national, and worshipped her. It could earn me many points that I’d met her. Lolly stopped inside her office door and looked at us.

“Who are they,” she said to her manager.

“Police, Lolly. You remember, I...”

Lolly nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. What do you want?”

Corsetti smiled at her and took out his badge. “Detective Eugene Corsetti, Miss Drake.”

He nodded at me.

“Sunny Randall,” he said.

“I suppose it’s about Peter,” she said.

“It is,” Corsetti said.

“God,” Lolly said, “just what I need after three shows.”

“It’s a great pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Corsetti said.

“Yeah, sure,” Lolly said. “Let’s get this over with.”

She went to her big semicircular desk and sat behind it.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure that’ll be plenty, Miss Drake,” Corsetti said.

“How about your partner,” Lolly said. “Does she talk?”

“When I have something to say,” I said.

“Is that a remark?” Lolly said.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Just the honest expression of my circumstance.”

Lolly frowned. “Don’t get chippy with me, girlie.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Your ten minutes are ticking,” Lolly said to Corsetti.

“Yes, ma’am,” Corsetti said. “Of course you knew Peter Franklin.”

“Of course.”

“And George Markham.”

“Who?”

“George Markham, ma’am,” Corsetti said.

“I never heard of him.”

“You and he worked together at a radio station in Moline in the early 1980s,” Corsetti said.

Lolly glanced at her manager. Her manager glanced at the lawyer. The lawyer frowned at Corsetti.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Lolly said after a time.

Corsetti looked at me.

“Sunny?” he said.

“You had a call-in radio show at WMOL Moline called Lolly’s Law. During that same time period, George Markham was an announcer at the station.”

“And I’m supposed to remember every loser I worked with at some five-thousand-watt station in East Bumfuck?” Lolly said.

“Never forgot where she came from,” Corsetti said to me.

I smiled. Lolly looked a little startled. What happened to her drooling fan?

“Anything else?” Lolly said.

“You have any idea why somebody would want to kill Markham?”

“Kill him? I told you, I don’t even remember him.”

“Peter Franklin was your lawyer,” Corsetti said.

“I already said he was.”

Corsetti nodded happily.