Dexter was still clearing out the club as Isobel, James, Percival, and Delphi settled down at their table again next to Felice, who had passed out on the banquette. Percival held an ice pack to the back of his head, while James massaged the hand he had used to punch Frank.
At the next table, Frank and Stan sat in stony silence with Detectives Harvey and Kozinski. Xavier Barques, the club's owner, sat at a third table nearby with one of the other policemen, guarding the glass of Amaretto.
Detective Harvey pulled his chair around and looked sternly at Isobel. "Suppose you tell us what's going on."
Isobel unfolded her well-worn copy of Doreen's blackmail log. "This piece of paper is a list of people that Doreen Fink was blackmailing."
"You gave that to us," Detective Kozinski reminded her. "We've been examining it, and we've spoken to everyone on the list."
"You've spoken to Stan?" Isobel asked, surprised.
"Yes."
"I know what he told you. That is, if he told you the truth." Isobel turned to Stan. "Doreen wasn't blackmailing you at all. She was taking money from all these other people and giving it to you, so you could get the operation you wanted. Is that what you told the police?"
Stan nodded.
"You and Doreen were married once," Isobel continued. "The marriage was annulled when Doreen realized it would never be consummated. But she loved you. She's always loved you, and you stayed in touch all these years. And stayed friends."
Isobel saw tears begin to leak silently through Stan's long-lashed, heavily made-up eyes and down his face, leaving black streaks of mascara in their wake. In full makeup and dress, but without his wig, he was a pathetic sight. Isobel felt suddenly, deeply sad for Stan. She reached over and touched his hand.
"I said I was sorry for your loss, and I meant it. Oh, and Maybelline makes the best waterproof mascara."
"Why are we here if Stan didn't kill Doreen?" asked Detective Harvey impatiently. "Which, by the way, we never thought he did."
"Because he was trying to kill Frank." Isobel pointed to the glass that Xavier Barques was holding. "It's poisoned."
Xavier recoiled from the glass, then leaned his head closer and sniffed. "Smells like Amaretto."
"Test it for prussic acid," Percival said. "They both smell like almonds."
Isobel shook her head sadly at Stan. "Amaretto is a weird thing to order if you're having bottle service. You could never make it through the entire thing in one night, and they won't let you take it home." She shot Xavier a look. "By the way, we have to talk about this crazy bottle service thing."
"All right, but why did Stan want to kill Frank?" asked Detective Kozinski.
Isobel looked at her like she was crazy. "Oh, come on! There's only one possible reason for that. Because Frank killed the only person who ever loved Stan for who he was."
They all looked at Frank.
"Why would I kill Doreen?" he asked indignantly. "She was a very competent secretary. I relied on her. I've been lost without her." He gave Isobel a dirty look. "You haven't been much help, you know."
"You killed Doreen because she was blackmailing you like she was everybody else."
"No she wasn't." Frank gestured at the paper. "My name isn't anywhere on there."
Isobel shook her head solemnly. "She wasn't blackmailing you for money, she was blackmailing you for sex. Doreen had the hots for you, Frank, and you knew it. She was obsessed with sex, and she wasn't getting any. You weren't interested in her, for all reasons, but she, being the keeper of your secrets, was blackmailing you about being gay."
"It's not a big deal," he said. "My wife knows."
"And she's none too happy about it. But that's not who you were hiding it from. Edmund Jeffards. The man at the top. Archie Conservative, who can't even deal with the idea of women in management. You were afraid that if he knew you were gay, it would be an obstacle to your own promotion."
"Blackmailing me for sex? Where would you get a crazy idea like that?"
Isobel set Doreen's Filofax on the table. Frank's face went pale when he saw it.
"I found this in your new office tonight after you left." She opened it to the date of the murder. "You knew about the emergency drill ahead of time. You told me that Stan and Paula knew in advance because they were fire marshals, but you neglected to mention that Doreen told you also." Isobel flipped to the page with the date of the murder. "You agreed to meet Doreen in the bathroom and have sex with her during the emergency drill."
"That's ridiculous! Who would have sex in an office bathroom during an emergency drill?" Frank scoffed.
"She got the idea from your last temp, who used to do it in Starbucks bathrooms with her boyfriend. And you agreed to it. See? The letter 'S' next to the word 'Drill' in her date book. It stands for sex, and you were the one she wanted it with."
"You don't know that. It could stand for anything. Like Stan!"
Isobel nodded. "That's what I thought at first. But look at what she's written the day before. The letter 'P'."
Isobel looked around at the raft of baffled faces.
"Delphi? Detective Kozinski?" she prodded. "Surely, I can't be the only woman who does this! Well, I'm not. Obviously, Doreen did it too. What do you ladies write? A 'P'? A checkmark? A circle around the date...?"
Delphi shook her head, perplexed, but after a moment she caught on. A second later, Detective Kozinski's lip curled in a knowing smile.
"I thought so," Isobel said. "We all keep track of when our periods start." She riffled back through the pages of Doreen's calendar. "Look. There's a 'P' every month. And sometimes you write down the letter 'S' for sex, so if you skip your period, you can see if there's a chance you might be pregnant. Or you might also jot down the letter to represent a noteworthy and exciting encounter coming up, like in this case."
Delphi sat up suddenly. "No jelly!"
Isobel nodded. "That's what did it. When you were talking about breathing from the diaphragm, I remembered Doreen's."
"I still don't get it," Detective Harvey said.
"Doreen wasn't going to let anything as mundane as her period stop her from her own personal porn flick," Isobel explained. "Office bathroom sex? It's like doing it on an airplane, only better. She must have been fantasizing about it for weeks. She wasn't using her diaphragm for birth control—she was using it for flood control."
Isobel watched, amused, as the men squirmed in their chairs. "That's why you didn't find any jelly in her cosmetics bag," she said to Detective Kozinski. "I thought you were wrong, and she must have been taking her diaphragm out."
"No," said Detective Kozinski, "we were pretty sure she was putting it in. There were no traces of semen or jelly." She gave a wan smile. "I just assumed she hadn't read the accompanying literature thoroughly."
"This is bullshit!" Frank finally exploded. "Maybe you're paranoid enough to write down that kind of stuff, but there's no way of knowing that's what Doreen meant except to ask her."
"It's not bullshit."
It was Stan who spoke, in a miserable voice.
Isobel turned to him and asked gently. "How did you know it was Frank?"
Stan looked down at his fingernails, which Isobel noticed for the first time were painted a lovely plum. "The skirt."
Frank opened his mouth and started to say something, but thought better of it.
"The photo of the person in the skirt leaving the building the day Doreen was...the day of the murder," Stan continued, talking to his hands.
"Go on," Detective Kozinski said.
He looked up and met her eye. "It was my skirt. I keep, um, extra clothes at the office. Sometimes it's just easier, because my roommate...well, he knows, but it freaks him out. So sometimes I go out straight from work, like tonight. Anyway, I had a fairly new wrap skirt in my office, and I went to look for it—I wanted to wear it a few nights ago—and it was gone." He glanced at Isobel. "You asked me what I was looking for. It was the skirt."
Stan cleared his throat and faced Frank. "Your wife came in that same day wearing it. I asked her where she got it, and she said she had so many clothes, she couldn't even remember. I'd stepped in the hem once with my heel, and there was a little rip that I'd never bothered to mend, so I knew it was mine. Then I remembered the security photo. At the time, I never thought it was my skirt, because I knew it wasn't me. But then I put it all together. Frank wore my skirt, and then he took it home where Audrey must have found it."
"And why exactly did I need your skirt?" Frank asked.
"It would have been easy enough for you to sneak into the bathroom during the drill without anyone noticing. But you wore the skirt and a big jacket and a scarf for a little extra protection coming out. You knew Paula and I would be checking the floor, including the bathrooms, and you had to get past us without us realizing it was you. It didn't have to be a complicated disguise, just enough so in all the chaos, we wouldn't remember seeing you. And you probably had to...cover up...blood."
Frank waved his hand dismissively. "As evidence goes, that's pretty flimsy."
Stan's face hardened. "I also knew how Doreen felt about you. She told me what she wanted to do, although I didn't know she'd gone as far as to plan it," Stan said. "I tried to convince her to go after your money, like everybody else. I mean, that's what I really needed. But she thought if you slept with her, you'd give up Audrey—and men—for her. Just like Conchita is always trying to change me. I tried to explain to Doreen that it didn't work that way with you any more than it did with me. And I knew from—"
"Stan," Frank warned.
But Stan went on, undeterred. "I knew from the one night you and I spent together that you were curious about my dressing up. I told you that I kept clothes in my office. Even Doreen didn't know that."
Detective Harvey was fuming. "Why didn't you come to us?"
Tears welled up in Stan's eyes. "Because I wanted to ..." He swallowed hard and tried again. "Frank killed the only person who ever loved me for who I am. And he killed my best—my only chance at happiness. Those things Doreen did were all to help me. I didn't know how to help myself." Stan gave a hollow laugh. "I wanted to settle the score for her, even if she would never know I did it. Because if hadn't been for me, none of this would have happened."
Isobel hesitated. Part of her wanted to let Stan's story end there, but she knew there was more to it.
"There's another reason you resolved to poison Frank tonight, isn't there?" she prompted.
Stan gave a weary sigh. Isobel continued.
"When Frank called Mr. Jeffards to push for Paula, he told Jeffards about you. That's why Paula got the promotion."
Stan nodded, and as he spoke, his voice caught. "Given the choice, Jeffards would rather have a real woman in the job than...than someone like me."
The click of Detective Harvey's handcuffs fell into the silence as he locked them around Frank's wrists.
"Frank Lusardi, you are under arrest for the murder of Doreen Fink. You have the right to remain silent..."
Detective Kozinski cuffed Stan, and her reading of the Miranda rights echoed in counterpoint with Detective Harvey's. Stan's tears gave way to sobs of grief, which he was unable to choke back.
At that moment, Felice stirred from her alcoholic stupor and sat up against the banquette.
"Whaz goin' on?"
James, seated next to her, answered quietly, "Frank and Stan are being placed under arrest."
"Oh, yeah?" Felice straightened up for a moment and squinted at the two men, who were being helped to their feet by the police officers. "Well, you're both fired!" She collapsed back onto the bench.
Detective Harvey turned to Xavier Barques. "Can you decant that into a clean empty bottle with a top?" He indicated the glass of Amaretto. "I'll take the glass as well."
"Of course."
"Thank you, Mr. Barques. We're extremely sorry this had to happen here."
"Not at all! But don't be surprised if some of the plot elements in my next movie seem familiar," he said with a wink.
Detective Kozinski picked up the Filofax with a napkin and slipped it into an evidence bag. She looked appraisingly at Isobel. "Maybe your next temp job should be with us."
Isobel turned to James. "Is the NYPD a Temp Zone client?" He shook his head. Isobel smiled at Detective Kozinski. "Sorry. But thanks anyway."
"Too bad," Detective Kozinski said, sounding like she meant it. She followed Detective Harvey toward the front door, where Dexter and the other two police officers were waiting with Stan and Frank.
Xavier Barques stood up. "Your bottle service tonight is on the house," he said grandly, in his mellifluous, accented voice.
For the first time all evening, the knot in Isobel's stomach relaxed. "Thank you. I know we weren't exactly good for business tonight."
Xavier dipped his head graciously. "On the contrary. You know what they say: there's no such thing as bad publicity."
"You know, I didn't realize you were Xavier Barques," Isobel said.
"I am, indeed."
"I love your movies! Particularly your last one." Isobel reached into her shoulder bag. "Can I give you my picture and résumé?"