Andrea King

            On Thursday after midnight I put fresh carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had gotten less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few bedbugs from the curtains. I shook my sheet and comforter out on the deck. I turned the heat off before going to bed at 1:30. I didn’t get to sleep right away but when I did I dreamed that the graffiti guys were back. There was a guy at the top of a long ladder across the street serving as a lookout. I asked him how many people were doing it and he said just one but he was helping out. They were tracing graffiti that was being projected from the top of a building up the street and also from another building. After yoga I found a few bedbugs crawling around the baseboards. 

            I tried to sort out the text I had for “Yes Man” by Serge Gainsbourg with the transcript I downloaded from Turboscribe and with the transcript that accompanies the YouTube video for the album Bobino by Zizi Jeanmaire. Sometimes one made more sense than the other and sometimes none of them did. I got through two verses. 

            I weighed 90.95 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since October 19 though not as heavy. 

            I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room and picked up a few bedbugs.

            I weighed 91.65 kilos before lunch. October 19 was the last early afternoon when I pushed the scale so hard. 

            I took a siesta and slept for an extra 45 minutes so it was too late for a bike ride. I still went to Freshco though as I do every Thursday. Most of the grapes were too soft but I found one bag of red ones that were relatively firm. I also bought a bag of oranges, a bag of grapefruits, two packs of blueberries, some bananas, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread, a pork tenderloin, a Coho salmon fillet, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, a jar of salsa, and a lint roller. I did a price match on the grapes with the $4.14 a kilo price at Real Canadian Super Store. 

            I weighed 91.65 kilos at 18:15. That’s the same as the evening of October 19. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 20:15. I had a potato with gravy and a slice of roast beef while watching Prescription Murder, the 1968 Columbo pilot. It wasn’t the first time Columbo had appeared on screen but it was the beginning of Peter Falk defining the role. The series wouldn’t begin until the early 70s but this was the kick-off TV movie. 

            Dr. Ray Flemming and his wife Carol are celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary but in the middle of the party he gets a call. He tells his wife it’s a patient having an anxiety attack and he has to go, but he goes to his lover Joan. It becomes fairly certain as they talk that he plans to murder Carol and Joan is going to help him. 

            He gets home at 1:00 and Carol is waiting for him. She says she knows he’s having an affair but then he reveals the reason for his secretism has been his plan to take her on a trip to Acapulco for their anniversary and they will leave tomorrow night. But just before they are to leave for the airport Ray strangles Carol. Then he smashes the balcony window, makes it look like someone broke in to rob the place, was discovered by Carol, killed her, opened all the drawers, stole her valuables and got away. Ray puts Carol’s jewellery in a suitcase along with a few other expensive things. 

            Joan arrives and Ray gives her Carol’s blue dress and gloves to wear. Joan is an actor working at a major film studio and she has secretly borrowed a wig of the same colour and style as Carol’s hair and brought along a pair of sunglasses. She disguises herself as Carol, they leave for the airport and get on the plane. Before the plane takes off they stage an argument and Joan leaves. She puts the dress in a laundry bag that has been left outside Ray’s penthouse for the cleaners to pick up. 

            Ray spends two weeks fishing in Mexico and dumps Carol’s jewellery into the ocean. When he comes home he walks in and sees the police tape outlining Carol’s body and goes to stand by the window. He’s surprised when police Lieutenant Columbo steps out of the bedroom. Ray learns that his wife is not dead but in a coma in the hospital and they go there. When they arrive outside Carol’s room he is told she’s just become conscious but then the doctor comes out and tells him she has died. The last thing she said was “Ray!”. 

            Columbo wonders why Ray didn’t call out for his wife when he got home from his trip, since that’s what most husbands would do. He also wonders why Ray’s luggage was 4 kilos lighter when he came back from Mexico. Ray explains that he took several medical brochures with him to read and since most were ads he left them behind after reading them. 

            Because Columbo keeps on coming around to ask questions, Ray gets his friend the district attorney Burt Gordon to pull some strings and have Columbo taken off the case. Columbo comes to Ray’s office to inform him that he was removed but says he finds it odd. He says he’d like to become Ray’s patient because his wife says he’s chronically suspicious. They have a drink in Ray’s office and Ray discusses the type of person Columbo is pursuing, concluding that he is too smart to catch.

            Columbo begins to harass Joan and says she is a suspect of being an accessory to a murder. He has her visibly followed and someone is always staked outside her place. 

            The next day Joan misses her psychiatric appointment with Ray and when his secretary calls to inquire she learns the coroner is at her home. Ray goes there and finds them pulling a body from Joan’s pool. Columbo says she took an overdose of barbiturates and he blames himself because he rode her too hard. But he also tells Ray that he’s also to blame as it was because of her that he killed Carol. Ray says if he had killed Carol it would have been for her money and not for Joan. And also if he had killed Carol he would not have had any problem killing Joan if she became an inconvenience. Suddenly Joan reveals that she is alive and she has been listening to what Ray said. She is now willing to make a statement to the police. 

            In the beginning, during the anniversary party we meet Cynthia Gordon, the wife of Burt Gordon. She was played by Andrea King, who began acting professionally at the age of 14. During her late teens and early 20s she worked for the Lillian Gish Stock Company. She made her film debut in The Ramparts We Watch in 1940. In 1945 she was voted the most photogenic actress at Warner Brothers. She co-starred in The Beast With Five Fingers, Shadow of a Woman, The Man I Love, Dial 1119, Southside 1-1000, Red Planet Mars, The World in His Arms, Silent Fear, Hotel Berlin, Navy Nurse, My Wild Irish Rose, She starred in Outlaw Queen, She made her TV debut on Stump the Stars in 1950. She wrote children’s stories and an autobiography. She never cooked a meal or purchased groceries in her entire life, and ate all of her three meals a day in restaurants.