Free Dial H for Hitchcock by Susan Kandel Page A

the warranty.
    The carob and tofu loaf, however, survived intact.
    What a day is right.

Chapter 14
    I t had been only a short rain, but Pacific Coast Highway was still bumper-to-bumper. The forty-five-minute drive home took close to two hours.
    After finally pulling into the driveway, I lurched out of the car, ran across the lawn, whipped open the front door, stripped off my damp things, and made a mad dash for the bedroom. I had half an hour tops to clean myself up and get to my five o’clock appointment.
    Thirteen minutes later, I was buttoning the top button of my suit and feeling pretty good when I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror.
    Never apply red lipstick in a hurry.
    I suppose this was how Pat Hitchcock must’ve felt when she walked into the bathroom first thing in the morning and realized that while she was sleeping her father had smeared her face with Cherries in the Snow. What a hoot. During the filming of Strangers on a Train, Hitch sent her up on the Ferris wheel in the amusement park, then turned off the machine. He planned to leave her hanging overnight, but the joke got cut short when she freaked out and he took pity on her.
    I ran down the hall as fast as a person can in high heels and a pencil skirt, and scrounged around in the bathroom cupboard for some makeup remover. Naturally I couldn’t find any, so I used a few drops of Frizz-Ease. It’s all the same stuff. At least that’s my theory.
    It took exactly seven minutes to toss on Buster’s leash, walk him up and down the block once, and let myself back into the house. Transferring the contents of my blue shoulder bag with fringe into my red-and-plum woven clutch with the Bakelite handle took an additional thirty seconds. After that, I plugged the hot pink cell phone into the charger by my bed and hightailed it out to the eighteen-by-eighteen space in my backyard formerly known as the garage.
    It was now known as the office.
    My office.
    I loved the sound of those words.
    I’d never expected to have an office of my own, much less to be a published author. No one else had expected it either, least of all my ex. He was the one who published books—endlessly footnoted, profoundly dull tomes on James Fenimore Cooper that nobody read voluntarily (like Cooper’s own novels, it might be said)—but books nonetheless. I was the waitress. That was just the way it was.
    I sat down at my Lucite desk.
    For once, you could see straight down to the floor.
    There were no piles of paper stacked vertiginously on top,no index cards, no newspaper clippings, no legal pads, no random jottings. In frustration, I’d shoved those utterly useless things into a shoebox.
    No, there was only one thing on the desk. That was a ten-inch collectible Madame Alexander Rear Window doll clad in a miniature version of the filmy peignoir Lisa (Grace Kelly) pulls out of her Mark Cross overnight bag, much to the consternation of Jeff (Jimmy Stewart), symbolically emasculated in his wheelchair, who compensated by keeping a huge telephoto lens on his lap, even while he was sleeping.
    The doll was supposed to inspire me to think outside the shoebox.
    So far it wasn’t working.
    But that was a problem for another day.
    I turned on the computer. I had thirteen e-mails, most with enticing subject lines like “Save up to 75% in the BIG SALE!” and “casino welcome conditions.” I scrolled down to Vincent’s message, mentally crossed my fingers, and opened the attachment.
    Seven pictures popped up on the screen.
    A dry hillside.
    Scattered leaves.
    An abandoned truck parked on the trail.
    The Hollywood sign.
    The Hollywood sign again.
    More dead leaves.
    Dirt.
    Shit.
    I pressed delete.
    I’d been hoping there’d be at least a shadowy glimpse of aperson I could show to one of my CIA friends next door who’d blow it up with their know-how and expensive equipment and boom, I’d have the identity of the killer.
    Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
    I went back