As Thea Zavros climbed the stairs to the little stage where the witnesses and judge were seated, the Gorgon looked as if she might spring from her seat and wring Thea’s neck with her bare, badly manicured hands. She hissed and fanned herself with one of Mr. Bean’s yellow legal pads as he flipped through the papers Thea had given the bailiff.
I wondered how Alistair had mustered the courage to marry someone—even the daughter of a shipping billionaire—without his mother’s permission. In a way, I was kind of proud of him. But I didn’t understand why he’d never said a thing about it to me. Treating me as his “only true friend” and entrusting me with his secrets was one of his major ways of controlling me.
As Thea took her seat, the studio lawyer took the papers back from Mr. Bean and showed them to Mr. Krikorian.
Mr. Krikorian stated this was Mrs. Thea Milbourne’s marriage certificate. It showed Thea Zavros and Alistair Milbourne had been married on December twenty-eighth, 1972, aboard a cruise ship bound from Southampton to the Costa del Sol—only six months ago.
He then turned to Thea, who testified in a charming Greek accent that although she and Alistair had married in a moment of passion, they had been in the process of getting a divorce. It hadn’t worked out, she said, because Alistair’s heart belonged to another. But they had remained good friends.
Alistair had written to her often, she said, but recently his letters had been filled with despair. She pulled from her Gucci bag a pile of letters handwritten on familiar Eaton’s Vellum Bond—much like the letters Alistair had written to me all last year.
She handed her letters to the lawyer, who showed them to Mr. Krikorian.
Then the lawyer asked her to read a passage aloud from the letter on top—dated May thirtieth, a week before Alistair died. The letter was verbose and self-pitying, written in Alistair’s erudite, quote-filled style, but it made one point very clear: Alistair had been in a suicidal state. His anguish was perpetrated by the “cruel” way Delia had been treating him. He had put aside all his own dreams of being a world-famous journalist in order to protect and serve his “goddess” Delia Kent. But Miss Kent responded with nothing but soul-crushing contempt. Alistair saw nothing but pain ahead and had decided to end his wretched life.
I wondered if any of what he’d written was remotely true. Faking suicidal despair was one of Alistair’s favorite methods of courtship. On the other hand, I knew Alistair’s devotion to Delia was very real. In fact, it was sincere to the point of creepiness. He often told me he saw himself as Jay Gatsby and Delia as his unattainable Daisy.
I looked over at Delia and saw her quietly weeping. She’d always fallen for Alistair’s suicide act.
Or…maybe it hadn’t been an act. That letter sure was convincing.
I started to feel a bit choked up myself.
The room rumbled with expressions of shock while Mr. Bean raised a belligerent objection and the Gorgon sputtered accusations of perjury. Mr. Krikorian called a five minute recess and asked for all the lawyers to meet him in “chambers”—an area off the stage I think was the high school band room.
I rushed to the bathroom to compose myself and ran right into Thea, touching up her lipstick in the cracked mirror. She gave me a warm hug.
“Your aunt’s travel agent was a dream. I cannot believe I was swimming at Hyannisport this morning. It all went so smoothly.”
“Aunt Livy? My family got you out here from Massachusetts?” My aunt had apparently been working the promised miracles after all.
Thea nodded as she blotted her lipstick.
“Mrs. Conway said it would be in my best interest. And yours too, of course, which is why she offered to help. I do not know why the police have not contacted me. I did not even know poor Alistair was dead until I heard it from Senator Kennedy. I have been dating a cousin of the Kennedys. Ralphie—do you know him?”
I shook my head and offered a look of sympathy, although Thea was not showing any outward signs of grief. In fact she was beaming as she dropped the magical political name.
I explained about Officer Odom’s alphabetical search through Alistair’s little black book looking for next of kin. If Thea had been listed in the Z’s, Officer Odom wouldn’t have got to her, because he stopped with Wogs in the V’s.
Thea gave a sigh. “I do not know why there is a need to stage all these dramatics. Alistair always said he would kill himself. We all knew this, did we not? It was simply a question of when.”
She dropped her make-up bag in her purse and gave me a sweet smile.
“I hope you are not angry with me? About the marriage? It was only for a lark. Alistair and I were never close the way he was with you. It was a joke. We wanted to stay in a hotel in Spain where they would not accept unmarried couples, so we persuaded a ship’s captain…”
She squeezed me in another hug—probably in response to the relief on my face. “Everything was theater for Alistair. Our wedding was a kind of play.”
I supposed her testimony had been a bit of theater, too.
I told her how grateful I was, but she laughed it off as a whimsical adventure. She gave me an air kiss and said she had to rush back to the airport, where a chartered plane was waiting to take her to LAX.
The theatricals continued after the recess. In what seemed unnecessary overkill, the studio lawyer, who should have been on Delia’s side, recalled her and went to work—accusing her of lying to the police and/or perjuring herself about her sexual relationship with the deceased.
The failed affair, he said, had obviously driven him to suicide.
When the tearful Delia claimed again there was no affair, the lawyer recalled Officer Odom—who was obviously enjoying himself—to testify that Delia had told him, within hearing of the whole investigative team that, “Alistair was [expletive]-ing with me. All he wanted to do was [expletive] with me.”
The gasps must have been heard all the way to Los Angeles.
Delia Kent was well and truly expletived. A lot of people believed—and believe still—that if Alistair did not kill himself over Delia’s rejection, then she murdered him herself. Why else would she have so blatantly perjured herself in a court of law?
Mr. Phantly Roy Bean jumped up, demanding the recall of the forensics guy—probably to remind people Alistair hadn’t taken enough drugs to kill himself—but Mr. Krikorian would have none of it.
What he did was call it a day, and I—having let loose the secret weapons of Kennebunkport—seemed to be off the hook.
Or at least the waters of suspicion had been sufficiently muddied that I was going to have a chance to wriggle away. As Delia and Sam rushed to their limousine, reporters swarming them, I escaped out the fire door into the staff parking lot—only a few blocks from the hotel.
Back in my room, I found all of Pandora’s things gone. I’d been right about that.
I phoned Wogs, but got no answer. I thought of calling Aunt Livy, but knew she’d gloat, and I didn’t feel like gloating. The events she’d set in motion had resulted in scapegoating Delia—the same way Delia had tried to scapegoat me. The studio had simply substituted Delia for me in their rush to save Sam the superstar from further scandal.
I felt nothing but hollow self-loathing until room service arrived—and there was Vernelle, bearing a hunk of gooey chocolate cake along with my dinner. She said the cake was left over from a staff birthday party. They were all rooting for me, she said. She apologized for not coming by the night before.
“I always liked Hank Odom, so I kinda believed his story about how you were some jealous killer girlfriend. I’m so sorry. It looks like Alistair offed himself after all, doesn’t it? That Gideon Bible was a clue after all.”
All I could do was shrug as I dove into the chocolate cake. The truth was, I didn’t have the slightest idea how Alistair died. It did look more like suicide than before. But there was the small problem that he didn’t have enough pills in his system to kill him.
Vernelle tried to be kind. “I’m sorry. It must be so awful. First your boyfriend kills himself, then people try to blame you. You poor thing.” She enveloped me in a tearful hug. “Fancy folks always try to blame the help, don’t they, hon?”
The cake was delicious. The chocolate—and Vernelle’s sweet, if misplaced working-class solidarity—helped me get through the painful night.
I still had no idea what would happen. Aunt Livy’s plan could backfire now that Delia had been “proved” to be Alistair’s lover, and Officer Odom might start casting killer-nanny aspersions again. Or the Gorgon and Mr. Bean might get wildly creative and try to make it look as if Delia and I were murderous co-conspirators or that we both had conspired with Sam in some kind of murder à trois.
In the morning, after we all assembled—me in the lime green shift again; I still have the photos—Mr. Krikorian surprised us all with the announcement that he had heard enough. More than enough. He said he thought he spoke for the citizens of Taft in saying they had heard enough as well—as had the TV viewing audiences across this great land.
He then pronounced that his verdict as Coroner of the City of Taft in the county of Kern, was that Alistair Milbourne had met his death due to a fall, probably caused by a non-lethal overdose of a prescription drug which listed dizziness as a side effect.
The Gorgon howled. The crowd roared. Our little celebrity enclave burst into an abundance of smiles. It was over. And most of us had survived with our reputation and careers intact.
Except Delia. She would forever be known as the actress with the filthy mouth—who lied under oath.
She edged away from me, unable to meet my eyes.
I didn’t want to look at her either.
It had all been so pointless. Mr. Krikorian’s dislike of the Gorgon and the media circus she had conjured up had finally won the day. He was obviously willing to ignore a few loose ends so he could return to filling the normal bereavement needs of the citizens of Taft, and return the media jackals and Hollywood scum to whence they came.
The scum—as well as the jackals, I presume—were only too happy to go.
Guido bundled us onto a chartered plane in Taft’s little airport—all of us except Pandora, who was to stay with the mayor’s wife until the film wrapped.
Delia didn’t say a word during the flight and stared out the window as if the clouds held magical meaning for her.
Sam, on the other hand, talked for all of us, filling the tense air with hilarious stories about his days playing villains on shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza, while Guido poured quantities of champagne. Sam was so full of fake cheer, I couldn’t help wonder if he hadn’t got away with something after all.
When we got to LAX, I ran to the Pan Am desk, hoping I could get on a standby list for a flight to Boston that day. I was so desperate to get out of there, I didn’t even pause to wave goodbye. I never saw any of them again.
Miraculously, I was offered a first class spot on flight about to take off, and within an hour of leaving Taft, I was flying home. As I watched L.A. shrink away into the smog, I was overcome with tears. It all flowed out of me—the grief at losing Alistair and the pain of his sad, pointless death.
I flashed on the moment I first met him, when he appeared at one of Punch Albright’s summer parties at the shore—looking like a young Leslie Howard in his Savile Row suit—a beacon of individuality amidst the love beads and Nehru jackets.
My tears kept gushing as I remembered how I’d loved him from the moment our eyes met. It had been that intense, gut-twisting passion that only happens a few times in one’s life—usually before the age of twenty—thank goodness.
But now I couldn’t stop the tears. Not even to tell the stewardess I didn’t need any more complimentary champagne and I’d rather have the vol au vent than the Beef Wellington. The stewardess gave me a smile that showed she knew who I was—a kind smile; she was “the help” too—and she put two glasses of champagne on my tray along with extra smoked almonds and pile of paper napkins to cry in.
That was the moment it came to me—as I looked down into the bubbles in the two glasses of Mumm’s.
I knew exactly how it had happened.
The complete scenario of Alistair’s death rolled through my brain like a movie.
I blew my nose on one Pan Am napkin after the other as I realized I was the only person on earth who knew how Alistair Milbourne died—and that nobody would ever believe me.