VALENTINO FORCED HIMSELF to be objective, to see an elderly woman and not a figure of glamour created by experts in makeup, lighting, and filters.
True, age had scored and lengthened the face that had seduced half the second string of leading men; yet the features were girlish in repose. Her hair, tinted a lighter shade of yellow now to conceal the gray, was arranged in a demure braid over her left shoulder. She wore a plain flannel nightgown and her slim hands, the veins coarsened by time, were nearly as pale as the cream-colored spread upon which they rested.
“Did she leave a note?”
Georgia Tanner shook her head. She, too, was watching the inert face, as if waiting for the eyes to open and the expression to change: Don’t count me out yet. “She wasn’t much for writing, notes or letters. When a man came from AFI asking if she’d consider donating her papers, she said, “‘What papers? I’m an actress, not a scientist.’”
“I’m still not buying this,” Grant said. “I just saw her last week. She was as chipper as ever.”
“These decisions are often made on the spur of the moment, Dale,” said the attorney. “I don’t think she ever forgave the industry for tossing her on the scrapheap when she turned forty. There’s talk of remaking Carlotta, with Cameron Diaz, of all people. That was Ivy’s signature role. It must have eaten at her, though she wouldn’t show it. I was here last night, and she seemed fine then; but let’s not forget she was an actress.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Well, maybe she’ll have her moment back in the spotlight now. Too bad she can’t enjoy it. She only pretended to be a recluse in order to attract attention.” Grant’s throat worked. “If you’ll excuse me.” He hurried out. His wife remained in her seat for an undecided moment, then got up and followed him.
“He loved his aunt very much,” Georgia Tanner said. “He came here to have brunch with her. He took the news badly. I think he’s only in denial because he’s afraid he’d be furious with her for what she did. You never know what form grief will take.”
“Is he a bitter man usually?”
“Only with himself. I understand there was a row when he dropped out of medical school and went into business. Things were never the same between them after that. Not that they ever spoke of it when I was around. Louise let it slip once. She doesn’t say much, but when she does it’s usually indiscreet.”
“Was his aunt as vain as he said?”
“Not among friends and family, but she enjoyed putting on a show for strangers. She said people who came to see Ivy Lane expected an event, and she wasn’t about to disappoint them. That would explain why she agreed to see you.”
“I wonder what changed her mind.”
From far down the canyon came the sound of a siren. It echoed off the cliffs, which distorted it into a bone-chilling howl. It seemed to go on a long time, then suddenly whooped around the corner and growled to a halt at the base of the steps.
At least ten minutes passed before the doorbell rang. Valentino and Georgia Tanner followed Vivien to the foyer, where the big man opened the door on a pair of uniformed officers and more than six feet of equal opportunity employment in the person of Sergeant Lucille Clifford of Homicide.
She was wearing her sunset-red hair above the shoulders now, but retained the stern towering air of an ambulatory Statue of Liberty. She stood straight as a pike in a powder-blue blazer cut long enough to conceal her service revolver, a black knee-length skirt, black-and-white pumps with modest heels, and her gold shield on a folder clipped to an outside pocket.
If the film archivist had hopes she’d mellowed since their last encounter, her first words dashed them to pieces.
“Glad I’m not with the coroner. I’d hate to be the one to carry a stiff down those stairs.” She spotted Valentino. “You.”
“Sergeant. Isn’t this outside your beat?”
“We don’t pound beats anymore, Boston Blackie. Don’t carry Roscoes or pinch apples neither. In cases of sudden death—suicide, trip and fall, an alien in the belly—it’s any Homicide detective in a storm. But since you brought it up, this one’s a little fresh for you, isn’t it? You usually don’t come in until forty years after the body heat ran out.”
“This time it’s coincidence—maybe. I’m still working on whatever became of Van Oliver. He and Ivy Lane had a history.”
“Of course they did. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since you borrowed the file.”
A paw like a steam shovel landed on Valentino’s shoulder.
“Kind of chummy with L.A.’s finest, ain’t we? What’re you, one of them pervs gets his jollies browsing the morgue?”
“Vivien!” snapped the Tanner woman.
“I don’t trust this bird.” But the hand was withdrawn.
“Pardon my glove, Sasquatch.” Clifford slid in past him. To Tanner: “If I were you, I’d trust your big friend’s instincts. Are you the one who called?”
“Yes.” She made introductions. Dale and Louise Grant had joined them.
“Vivien; seriously?”
The bodyguard clenched his jaw. “My friends call me Bull.”
“Okay, Mr. Broderick.” The sergeant identified herself and the officers. One’s surname was Howard, the other’s Harold. Harold was black, Howard white; or was it the other way around? To Valentino they were as alike as opposite pieces on a chessboard.
Tanner filled them in on the way to the bedroom. There, Clifford glanced at the body with no show of interest, then made a silent signal. She and the officers split up to examine the room. The inlaid ebony dresser was full of extravagant evening gowns, the walk-in closet a riot of rainbow silk and satin negligees on padded hangers. Some still had price tags. Howard and Harold wrote in pads.
Returning to the bed, the sergeant slid a gold pencil from an inside pocket, inserted it in the empty prescription bottle lying on its side on the nightstand, and lifted it to eye level. She read aloud the physician’s name printed on the label. Harold and Howard recorded it. She put it back in the original position.
“Mr. Grant,” she said, “were you her only living relative?”
Georgia Tanner spoke. “Yes. There was a son by her first marriage, but he was killed in Iraq.”
This met with a stony look. “Impressive. His lips didn’t even move.”
The attorney flushed. “Force of habit, sorry. I represent the family.”
“This is an informal interview, Counselor. Nice house. Does it go with the inheritance?”
Grant answered this time. “I’ve no idea. I haven’t seen a will. I don’t even know there is one.”
“Ms. Tanner?”
She nodded. “There is. At the behest of my client, I can’t disclose the details until the reading.”
“Uh-huh. I suppose you come in for a commission.”
Vivien stepped in front of Clifford. He had two inches on her and at least sixty pounds. “That ain’t no way to talk.”
She didn’t twitch a muscle. “What’s a bodyguard’s devotion worth in dollars and cents?”
It might have been Valentino’s imagination, but it seemed to him the man had begun to swell and turn green. Officers Harold and Howard took a step in Vivien’s direction; but Clifford remained immobile, her smoky blue eyes fixed on Vivien’s face as if she were looking at a sample on a microscope slide.
Ms. Tanner crossed her arms. “For your information, Lieutenant—”
“Sergeant. I work for a living.”
“Noted. Ivy’s third husband went through what was left of her fortune thirty years ago. Aside from this house and property, her Social Security pension was all she had, and most of that went into taxes and upkeep. I charged her a minimal fee to manage her affairs. As an officer of the court, I understand it’s your job to eliminate all the possibilities, but—”
“I’m glad you understand. Where’s a good room where I can conduct interviews?”
To his surprise, Valentino was her first subject. They sat on a pair of floral-print chairs in a small sun room, rattan blinds shielding them from the strong light coming through the west-facing windows. She crossed her legs and rested her hands in her lap. “Give me all of it.”
He took that literally; always a sound policy when dealing with her. He began with Ignacio Bozal’s bargain, Greed in return for Bleak Street, Valentino’s interest in the Van Oliver case, the near-miss outside Starbuck’s, and the morsel of information he’d gotten from Roy Fitzhugh that had brought him to Ivy Lane’s house. He withheld nothing, not even the detail he’d kept from Kyle Broadhead to avoid ridicule. Finally he recapped his conversation with the others in the bedroom. She listened without changing expression and took no notes.
“People step off curbs into traffic every day,” she said. “Sometimes they don’t get run over. I think your friend the professor’s right. It’s probably nothing.”
“He argued the other side, too.”
“He should run for governor. So you think the guy looked like Oliver. Even if he’s still around, he wouldn’t look like himself. This state’s rotten with bad drivers. We’ve cornered the market on sunny-ots.”
“What’s a sunny-ot?”
“An idiot that follows the sun till it sets in California.”
“But what are the odds Ivy Lane would wind up dead the very day I was to ask her about her fight with Oliver?”
“This isn’t Vegas. There are no odds.”
“But—”
She uncrossed her legs, leaned forward, and patted his hand. She couldn’t have astonished him more if she’d asked him out on a date. “Listen and learn.”
At her instruction, the two men in uniform conducted the others into the room one at a time. Valentino stood in a corner trying to be unobtrusive as each took his old seat and answered questions. He couldn’t tell which were significant and which were just to establish a pattern, like the innocuous queries posed during a lie-detector test. Clifford’s was a highly specialized art. The sessions were brief and took place only minutes apart.
She saved the bodyguard for last. When he sat, his platter-sized hands resting on his thighs, the chair disappeared. Throughout the interview he kept casting suspicious glances Valentino’s way.
“Was Grant here last night?” Clifford asked.
“No. This is the first time him and Mrs. Grant have been in all week.”
“Does he have a key?”
“Sure. He’s her nephew. But nobody comes in or goes out without me knowing.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“Other end of the hall from Ms. Lane.”
“Did she know about your record?”
He turned his face, black with rage, toward Valentino, who met it with blank shock.
“I’m clean,” he said, turning back. His hands closed on his thighs, the knuckles white. “I paid my debt.”
“I know. I’m the one who booked you. I might forget a face, but not sitting on that body, and with the name Vivien. I was on road patrol then. You blew four-point-oh on the Breathalyzer. You’d had your license yanked what, three times?”
“Twice. I ain’t had a drop in ten years.”
“That’d be just about the time you came to work for Ivy Lane.”
“Yeah. I told her all about it. She said it was nothing to her so long as I kept my nose clean, and that I done. I might not of done it for anybody else, but I done it for her.”
“Okay.”
He kneaded his thighs. Valentino doubted those wrinkles would come out. “Okay?”
“Do I need to spell it? You’re off the hook, Bull. Send Grant back in, will you?”
The nephew came in, but he didn’t sit. “Did you forget something?” he said.
“One question, Grant. How’d you do it?”