Chuy’s was a little neighborhood place on Sawtelle and National where Chuy’s ancient mother made the soft corn tortillas by hand over an open hearth and served them to you fresh off the griddle—hot, fragrant and golden around the edges. It was a Saturday night but we got there at 5:30 so it wasn’t crowded yet. In another hour people would be lined up outside on the sidewalk, waiting for a table. Chuy’s didn’t take reservations.
Emil Lamp and I both ordered the chiles rellenos, which were the best I’ve ever had anywhere. I sipped a Dos Equis, feeling the comfortable weight of Lulu dozing on my left foot. Lamp had a Coke, sucking on the ice cubes as he sat across the table from me with a small notepad and a ballpoint pen at his elbow. The jacket of his suit was off, his shirtsleeves rolled up. He wore a bracelet of turquoise and silver on his right wrist. On his left a bulky digital watch with a black plastic band.
“It’s good to see you again, Hoagy,” he said brightly.
He was so chirpy that he made me feel tired and old. Mostly old. “Good to see you, too, Lieutenant.”
“How is Miss Nash?”
“Still circling Budapest, to the best of my knowledge.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“Shooting a film with Nick Nolte.”
“Oh, him.”
“And how is life treating you?”
“Super. Mom’s met a real nice fellow named Ron who teaches ceramics in Playa Del Ray. They’re having a blast together.”
“And you? Are you dating girls yet?”
“Hoagy, I’m not the innocent that you make me out to be.”
“So you’ve made it all the way to second base with some lucky girl?”
“I never kiss and tell.”
“So there has been kissing.”
He let out a laugh before his face fell and he said, “I sure wish we’d run into each other under happier circumstances.”
“As do I, Lieutenant.”
Monette Aintree had been arrested for the murder of her husband and taken downtown to be booked, fingerprinted and have her hands swabbed for gunshot residue. It being a Saturday, she couldn’t be arraigned until Monday morning, but in California they allow bail if a suspect’s arraignment appearance will be more than twenty-four hours away. Her criminal defense attorney, a high-priced Century City dick swinger whose name—I kid you not—was Seymour Glass, had secured her release for a $1 million bond. She’d been sprung by the time I left Aintree Manor to meet Lamp at Chuy’s, and she was currently at the Beverly Hills office of her personal physician, who’d met her there to examine her bloodied nose and arms and prescribe any medication she might need.
When I came riding out the front gate on the Roadmaster to meet Lamp, I discovered that the media mob had quadrupled in size. Now there were camera crews from all three network news operations out there, not to mention CNN, Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition. There were newspaper reporters, wire service reporters, radio reporters. There were so many people out there that they filled the entire street, their cars and vans parked up and down Rockingham as far as the eye could see. News helicopters even circled overhead. Several additional cops were on duty to try to contain the madness but no one can do that when a Hollywood star has been murdered.
Elliot had made a brave, futile attempt at media damage control. The pudgy producer ventured outside the gate to read a brief statement, which was carried live on CNN, in which he called the shooting death of Patrick Van Pelt “a horrible family tragedy” but maintained that Monette had acted out of self-defense and that he was confident she would be exonerated. He asked that the media please allow the family to grieve in peace.
Joey and Danielle remained secluded inside the house with Reggie and Maritza. The others who’d been there at the time of the shooting had been questioned and allowed to leave—although we’d all been advised that further questioning would likely take place on Monday, which was the LAPD’s tactful way of saying don’t leave town.
“What do you think Monette will be charged with?” I asked Lamp.
“That’s for the DA to decide, but I’d say manslaughter,” he replied, sucking on an ice cube. “She’ll plead self-defense and I’m guessing she’ll be found innocent. The victim did beat her up pretty badly. But an acquittal’s not a slam dunk. The DA can build something out of her firing that second round of shots into his chest. She could have stopped after she wounded him with the first two. The man was down. A plausible case can be made that he was no longer a physical threat to her.”
“A plausible case can also be made that she was bleeding profusely and terrified for her life.”
“Which is exactly what her lawyer will say. Hoagy, how much time elapsed between those two sets of shots?”
I tugged at my ear, mulling it over. I’d been swimming laps when I heard the first two shots. I had enough time to swim to the edge of the pool, get out, grab a towel and make my way to the patio before I heard the second set of shots. “I’d guess two minutes at least. It could have been three.”
“And have we spoken to everyone?”
“What do you mean by everyone?”
“Is there anybody else who might have been on the grounds at the time of the shooting? Anybody we don’t know about?”
“There’s Hector, the gardener. He’s been spying on the place for Patrick. In return, Patrick gave him the Rolex Submariner that Monette told me Patrick was tossing the bedroom for when she encountered him. Patrick was so heavy into drugs that he forgot he gave it to Hector, apparently.”
“Back up one second, please.” Lamp jotted this down in his small notepad. “Spying on the place as in . . . ?”
“Letting Patrick know if Monette was taking up with another man. Also keeping an eye on Maritza for him. Patrick had the hots for her. So does Hector.”
“She involved with either of them?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Was Hector around the property today?”
“Patrick asked Maritza that very same question. She told him no.”
“Did you believe her? Are we sure he wasn’t there?”
“Lieutenant, I’m not sure of anything.” I sampled some of Chuy’s salsa with a tortilla chip, munching on it. “If Hector entered the property today by the service gate, the paparazzi out front would have seen him, wouldn’t they?”
“Maybe not. People don’t notice what they’re not looking for, in my experience.”
“There’s also a pool man. I saw him come in through the service gate early yesterday morning. I don’t know if he showed up today.”
“He and Hector must know the access code to the security system. I’ll contact the home security company. They can tell me if the service gate keypad was used today.”
“They can do that?”
He nodded. “The newest keypads have a memory. And, believe me, the system at that place is as up-to-date as they come.” He glanced through his notepad for a moment before he sampled some salsa himself. “Tell me about Lou Riggio, the victim’s trainer or assistant or whatever the holy heck he is.”
“Enabler is more like it. Lou totes around a blue nylon ditty bag stocked with Patrick’s coke supply. As soon as he learned that Patrick was dead and your people were en route he disappeared downstairs. I guarantee you he was hiding that bag in his GTO. If you’d searched his car, you would have found it.”
“We had no probable cause to search his car,” Lamp countered with a shake of his head. “That’s why Lou put it there. The man knows the ins and outs. He moves a lot of coke and pot on the Radford lot. Our narcotics people have him in their sights. They’ve just been waiting to land on him hard enough that he’ll be forced to give up his supplier—or spend the rest of the nineties in San Quentin.”
I signaled our waiter for another beer. “Does Lou have priors?”
“A pair of assault and battery charges back when he played at Troy State. He beat up some frat boy in a bar after a game one night and urinated on him. A year later he went off on a clerk at a 7-Eleven and put him in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. Got off with community service both times since he was a great big football hero.” Lamp paused, leafing through his notepad. “Elliot Schein claims he saw Lou and Patrick snorting coke together shortly before Monette encountered Patrick in the master bedroom.”
“I did, too. Your medical examiner will find coke galore in Patrick’s system. I’m guessing you can also throw in a designer cocktail of anabolic steroids and speed, not to mention a whole lot of Cuervo Gold. He arrived for the party shit-faced. Patrick’s nice-guy image was a sham. The real Patrick Van Pelt was a drugged-out rage monster. Extremely volatile. He was also not my idea of reputable.”
“Can you give me a for instance?”
“I can, but this isn’t for the media. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Patrick informed me that he had a vasectomy three years ago. Your medical examiner will no doubt confirm that.”
Lamp looked across the table at me in surprise. “You’re telling me he isn’t the father of Kat Zachry’s baby?”
“Exactly.”
“Who is the father?”
“He said it could have been any of a dozen guys. He didn’t know and didn’t care. He was just trying to stampede Monette into a more lucrative divorce settlement.”
“I see . . .” Lamp frowned. “And Kat was, what, just playing along for the hell of it?”
“She’s an actress who wants the media’s attention and doesn’t care how she gets it. Out here they call that star quality.”
“That half-brother of hers, Kyle Cook, has a sheet up in Paso Robles.”
“I know.”
“Did you know that Elliot Schein has a sheet, too?”
“That I didn’t know. Do tell.”
“He served eighteen months in Rahway, New Jersey, for aggravated assault in 1965 back when he was a struggling talent manager. It seems he tried to strangle an old-time borscht belt comic named Sam Fingerhut to death over cheesecake and coffee at a diner in Paramus, New Jersey.”
“Things like that are liable to happen if you go to Paramus. That’s why you’ll never find me there. Interesting that you should mention New Jersey.”
Lamp peered at me curiously. “Why is that?”
“Because both of the letters that Monette and Reggie received from their long-lost father, Richard, originated from there. First Edison, then Trenton.”
“I loved his book when I was a kid,” Lamp recalled fondly. “Heck, I must have read it a half-dozen times.”
“As did I, Lieutenant.”
“May I ask how you got involved in Monette Aintree’s project?”
“Richard asked for me, by name.”
“Why would he do that?”
Our waiter brought me my second Dos Equis.
I took a sip. “All sorts of reasons. For starters, I have tremendous literary cachet. That and thirty-five cents will buy you a cup of coffee. Alberta Pryce, his literary agent from way back when, happens to be my literary agent. I also have a preexisting family connection. Reggie and I used to be an item.”
Lamp’s eyes twinkled at me. “Regina Aintree is a very attractive little package.”
“Yes, she is.”
“Was this before you met Miss Nash?”
“Long before.”
He peered at me. “All sorts of reasons, you said. Are there any others?”
“Yes, there’s one more.”
“What is it?”
“It’s personal.”
“To do with Regina?”
“Like I said, it’s personal.”
Lamp’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I understand she’s been living in New Paltz, New York. Did you fly out here together?”
“No. I did visit her up there before I left, but she told me she didn’t want to have anything to do with the project.”
“What changed her mind?”
“She got a letter from him herself. Decided to fly out yesterday.”
“What airline did she fly?”
“I have no idea, sorry.”
“That’s okay. I can check it out.”
“Why would you do that?”
“It’s what I do, Hoagy. I check things out.”
Our chiles rellenos arrived on giant plates surrounded by rice and refried beans and accompanied by a basket of warm, soft corn tortillas. We dove in. The food at Chuy’s was even more delicious than I remembered.
“Reggie and Monette have a complicated, acrimonious history,” I said as I ate. “Hadn’t seen each other for twenty years. Reggie had never even met Joey and Danielle.”
“Joey’s had some problems,” he informed me, reaching for a tortilla. “He set a couple of fires back when he was twelve. One was in the boys’ room at his school. The other in a Dumpster out behind Vicente Foods.”
“Doesn’t surprise me a bit. He’s an angry loner. Guys like us tend to act out at that age.”
Lamp’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me that you . . .”
“I didn’t set fires. Shoplifting was my thing. Candy bars, comic books, magazines. You name it, I stole it.”
“Ever get caught?”
“Never. I was a master thief. To this day part of me still thinks I should have chosen a life of crime. Stealing was a hell of a lot more fun than writing. I take it Joey did get caught.”
Lamp nodded his head. “His parents agreed to put him in counseling, and he hasn’t been in any trouble since then. Talk to me about Boyd Samuels. You’ve crossed paths with him before, haven’t you? I seem to recall reading about it.”
“I have. You did. He’s a major-league scam artist. Don’t believe a single word he tells you.”
“And yet you’re back in business with him.”
“Couldn’t be avoided. You can’t work in publishing anymore without scraping people like Boyd off the bottom of your shoe. Do you mind if we don’t talk about him anymore? I was enjoying my dinner.”
“No problem.” Lamp worked on his own dinner, leafing through his notepad. “Lou Riggio is claiming that he, Kyle Cook and this actress friend of Kat’s, Trish Brainard, were in the billiard room together when the shooting happened.”
I nodded. “Having themselves a real good time on the Eartha Kitt sofa.”
“Sorry, the Eartha Kitt . . . ?”
“The leopard-skin divan. Your crime scene technicians will find semen stains on it. Lulu certainly did.”
Lamp made a note of this, crinkling his nose. “Trish has a SAG card. A couple of bit roles in TV shows here and there including Malibu High, which is how she came to be acquainted with Kat. She’s twenty-two, comes from Yorba Linda. No priors, but no regular source of income either. Shares an apartment on Zelzah Avenue in Northridge with another young actress named Lila Lunt who has a slew of credits in films with titles like Splendor in the Ass and Babette’s Feet. But we couldn’t find any porn credits for Trish. What’s her deal?”
“Nothing very out of the ordinary. Kat and Kyle paid her to be at that party—which is to say Kat paid her since Kyle has no actual job. Trish was Joey’s seventeenth-birthday present. They introduced her to everyone as their cousin from back home. Cute touch, don’t you think? Gave it a quaintly Petticoat Junction feel.”
“You’re telling me they hired Trish to have sex with that kid?”
“I am. As soon as Joey made it clear that he wasn’t interested, Kyle and Lou decided to help themselves. Trish’s time—and body—had been paid for, after all. Don’t expect me to sit here in judgment of her, Lieutenant, because I won’t. Young actresses like Trish are expected to perform sexual favors for powerful men at parties for free. That’s how they get jobs. Or, to put it another way, if they don’t perform favors they don’t get jobs. So if Trish can get paid for it, why not?” I said as Lamp looked across the table at me in total dismay. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I? Granted, you look like someone who climbs into bed at night with a plate of Fig Newtons and a glass of warm milk. But you do know how the business works, don’t you?”
“I know how it works,” he said with quiet disapproval. “I’m the one who has to clean up the wreckage, and if you ask me, it stinks the way men in that business take advantage of vulnerable young girls.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you, Lieutenant.”
Our waiter came and cleared our plates away. The Saturday night crowd had started to arrive. The place was filling up fast. We ordered coffee.
“You went into the master bedroom suite after the shooting, correct?”
I nodded. “Monette was still standing there holding the gun.”
“What did she say to you?”
“That she’d come upstairs to powder her nose, which is Miss Porter’s speak for pee, and found Patrick flinging drawers open like a crazy man in search of his Rolex Submariner. She reminded him that he’d given it to Hector. He accused Hector of stealing it. She accused Patrick of being a drunken mess as well as an all-around disgrace of a human being. He attacked her. She grabbed her Beretta from the nightstand and fired off two shots, wounding him. She carries a Beretta in the glove compartment of her Land Cruiser, too, by the way.”
“She has permits for both weapons. An extremely high percentage of the wealthy people in this city are armed. And then . . . ?”
“They exchanged more ugly words. And she shot him again. Fatally this time.”
Our coffee arrived. I sipped mine as Lamp leafed through his notepad.
“You were in the pool when you heard the first shots. Where were the others?”
“Elliot was on the patio tending to the steaks on the grill. When he and I got upstairs we found Reggie and Danielle cowering in the hallway. They said they’d been in their rooms changing out of their wet bathing suits when they heard the shots. Joey was holed up in his room with his headphones on. Didn’t hear a thing, he claims. You already know about Lou, Kyle and Trish.”
“What about the housekeeper, Maritza?”
“She told me she was in the kitchen,” I said, volunteering nothing more, such as that I’d seen no sign of her in the kitchen.
“And how about Kat Zachry and Boyd Samuels?”
“Boyd told me they were busy trying to break into the pool house.”
“Why in the holy heck would they want to do that?”
“They were trying to steal this old leather flight jacket that I’m wearing. Kat saw it on me yesterday and decided I should give it to her. I refused.”
“Kat claims that she and Samuels had taken a stroll to discuss a book project.”
“Which is true, very loosely speaking. She offered Boyd a chance to peddle a tell-all book for her if he agreed to help her steal my jacket.”
“Tell me about your book, Hoagy. Is there any connection between the Richard Aintree project and what happened at the house on Rockingham Avenue today? Or is that a stupid question?”
“It’s not a stupid question. I’ve asked it myself several times. I do know that Patrick was against the idea. He told me so yesterday. He wanted Monette focused on their divorce, period. I also know that someone tried to scare me away the moment I got to town. There was a note from Patrick typed on Malibu High stationery waiting for me when I arrived. He asked me to meet him at a location shoot in Pacoima. When I got there the place was deserted—until someone in a black Trans Am pulled into the parking lot, floored it and tried to run me and my short-legged partner over.”
“Is that how you got that scrape on your cheek?”
“It is.”
“Do you still have the note?”
I pulled the folded note from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. “Patrick swore to me up, down and sideways that he didn’t write it.”
Lamp glanced at it before he tucked it into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Did you believe him?”
“Wait, there’s more. Monette told me that the night before I got here someone tried to run her off Coldwater up near Mulholland. Guess what he was driving? A black Trans Am.”
“Did she report it?”
I shook my head. “She was afraid of the negative publicity.”
“Well, I can sure find out if anyone associated with this case drives a black Trans Am. You never know where a little piece of information like that might lead us.”
“But you’re already there, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
Lamp sipped his coffee. “I don’t know what you mean, Hoagy.”
“Monette has already confessed. I found her with the murder weapon in her hand, blood streaming from her nose and bloody gouges up and down her arms. It seems like an open-and-shut case.”
“Not to me it doesn’t,” Lamp said with a shake of his head. “It’s too organized. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I know an organized homicide when I see one. Domestic violence, in my experience, is always highly disorganized. This isn’t. It’s tied up nice and neat. The whole scene feels staged to me. I’m not buying it. I’m especially not buying that two- or three-minute time lapse between shots. Something happened during those two or three minutes. Something besides her standing there exchanging choice words with the victim. Nope, I’m not buying it. And you aren’t either, Hoagy.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you are the sharpest knife in the drawer. So let’s not kid ourselves. We both know that Monette Aintree’s version of what happened in that bedroom today isn’t what really happened. Do you know what did?”
“No, I genuinely don’t.”
“Okay, then what do you know that you’re not telling me?”
“What makes you think that I know something, Lieutenant?”
His alert blue eyes locked onto mine. “Because I know you.”
I weighed my answer carefully. There was plenty that was bothering me. Maritza bothered me. She’d changed into a different uniform by the time she came upstairs after the shooting and had lied to me about the door to the service stairs being locked. Why? Joey bothered me. He’d changed clothes, too. Yet Lulu had still smelled gunshot residue on the boy’s sneakers. Why? I didn’t know. Until I did, I was keeping my mouth shut. But I couldn’t get up from the table without giving Lamp something. So I said, “Monette’s long-sleeved chambray shirt.”
He studied me curiously. “What about it?”
“She was wearing it when Patrick attacked her. Told me she took it off to soak up the blood that was streaming from her nose. It wasn’t doing a particularly effective job so I grabbed a towel for her from the bathroom. When I put the shirt in the sink I noticed something odd about it.”
“Which was . . . ?”
“The cuffs were buttoned at the wrist. That tells me Monette wasn’t wearing her sleeves rolled up when Patrick attacked her. She had deep, bloody gouge marks up and down both of her forearms, yet there were no corresponding bloody marks on her shirtsleeves. Wouldn’t you think there would be?”
“You said she’d gone upstairs to use the bathroom. Maybe she’d taken the shirt off.”
“Stripped down to her tank top, you mean? Maybe. But if she was going to fetch something to soak up the blood pouring from her nose wouldn’t she have chosen a towel? Why the shirt?”
Lamp stuck out his lower lip thoughtfully. “You were out on the patio with Patrick shortly before the shooting, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Is there any doubt in your mind that he was capable of becoming enraged enough to punch the lady in the nose?”
“No doubt at all. But your medical examiner will be able to tell that for certain, won’t he? The knuckles on one of Patrick’s hands will be bruised or reddened, I would think.”
“Not necessarily. In fact, the preliminary exam showed that neither fist was bruised. The human nose is soft tissue, Hoagy. It’s not like hitting someone on the jaw, which is hard bone. And it doesn’t take much of a blow to produce a lot of blood. The ME did say it looks as if the victim had somebody’s blood and tissue under his fingernails.”
“Which you’ll be able to identify as Monette’s blood and tissue.”
Lamp frowned at me. “Will we?”
“Won’t you? I keep hearing all about this magic DNA wand of yours.”
“This DNA business has been blown totally out of proportion by bad TV cop shows. The reality of PCR—polymerase chain reaction—is that it’ll enable our lab people to identify the blood type that’s present under Patrick’s fingernails. But they can’t individualize it to a specific person. Not yet anyhow. That’s strictly make-believe. Let’s say they find a blood sample under his nails that’s the same blood type as Monette’s, okay? If it’s Type O then that represents 45 percent of the population, which is to say practically half of the people who were there at the time of the shooting. If it’s Type A then that’s another 42 percent. A prosecutor can’t walk into a criminal court with that and call it evidence, understand?”
“I understand.” I drank down the last of my coffee. “How long will it take for them to determine the blood type?”
“For a super high-profile case like this one, the whole lab will be called in tonight. They’ll have results by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll be on the job.”
“And so will you, I imagine.”
“Count on it.” He gestured to the waiter for our check before he studied me carefully from across the table. “It’s good to see you again, Hoagy. I enjoy your company. I sure do hope I don’t have to land on you hard this time.”
“Why would you need to do that?”
“For holding out on me,” he said quietly. “Possibly even lying to me.”
“We’re both interested in the same thing, Lieutenant.”
“No, we’re not.”
“You’re right, we’re not. But you have my word that Lulu and I will do everything we can to point you in the right direction. Besides, no matter what happens, you’ll still come out ahead.”
“How so?” he asked me as the waiter brought us our check.
I grabbed it. “Because I’m paying for dinner.”
Back at Aintree Manor, Monette was seated in the library with Elliot watching the live cable news coverage of Patrick’s murder, which had officially crossed over into surreal, as in what they were watching as I stood there with them was me pulling up at the front gate on the Roadmaster a few seconds earlier. Me not responding to any of the questions that were being shouted at me by the mob of reporters out there. Me.
Monette and Elliot were sipping Sancerre as Monette held an ice pack to her nose. She wore a pale blue silk kimono with wide sleeves, the better to allow those bloody fingernail gouges on her forearms to breathe. The gouges were shiny with ointment. There were two prescription pill bottles on the end table next to her.
Monette lowered the ice pack from her face and hit the mute button on the TV remote. “I’m glad you’re back, Hoagy,” she said, continuing to strike me as eerily calm considering that she’d pumped four shots into her husband that afternoon. “I feel better with you here.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” I responded as Elliot glared at me resentfully. “How is your nose?”
“Not broken, happily. It’s just a quote-unquote contusion, although I swear I sound as if I’m wearing a clothespin on it.” She sounded slightly nasal, though not that bad considering how swollen it was. “My doctor gave me an antibiotic ointment for my arms and warned me that I’ll probably end up with visible scarring, which will mean plastic surgery if I ever want to wear short sleeves on air again. Assuming, that is, that I still have an on-air career after this mess is over,” she added offhandedly. “You’ve missed dinner. Maritza can rustle something up for you if you’re hungry.”
“I’m all set, thanks. How is the rest of the family doing?”
“Joey’s in his room being Joey. When I suggested that he might want to talk this out with his therapist he told me to kindly leave him the fuck alone. So I am. Danielle and Reggie are in Danielle’s bedroom, watching a videocassette of Dirty Dancing together and pigging out on ice cream. Reggie’s idea. She is being so wonderful.” Monette arched an eyebrow at me. “Do you mind if I ask where you’ve been?”
“I was having dinner with Lieutenant Lamp. We’re old pals.”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Elliot grumbled.
“Be nice, Elliot,” she scolded him. To me she said, “Did he talk to you about the case?”
“No, he’s very tight-lipped.”
“I trust that you were also . . .”
“Tight-lipped? Of course. Besides, I don’t actually know anything.”
“You know everything there is to know,” Elliot said, stabbing at the air with a chubby index finger. “You know that Patrick tried to kill this brave lady and that she fought back. End of story.”
“I wish it were that simple,” Monette said, staring at the muted image of the dozens of TV cameramen who were mobbed outside of Kat Zachry’s Laurel Canyon bungalow where, according to the crawl at the bottom of the screen, the pregnant young star was “in seclusion with her closest advisers.”
“You ought to turn that off, Monette. It’ll just make you crazy.”
I got no argument from her. She reached for the remote and flicked the TV off.
“So you and the detective who’s in charge of this case are friends,” Elliot said to me accusingly.
“Exactly where are you going with this?” I asked him.
“Please don’t take offense, Hoagy,” Monette said. “Elliot just wants to make sure that we can rely on your discretion. Isn’t that right, Elliot?”
Elliot didn’t say yes or no. Just glowered at me. He didn’t like having me around. He especially didn’t like the ease with which Monette spoke to me.
“I’m a celebrity ghost. Keeping my mouth shut is what I do for a living. I don’t blab to the police. I don’t blab to the press. However, if you don’t trust me, I’ll collect my things and check in to a hotel.”
Monette’s pale blue eyes widened with alarm. “Please don’t do that. You’re absolutely right. I apologize. We apologize. Isn’t that right, Elliot?”
Again, Elliot didn’t say yes or no. Just kept on glowering at me.
Maritza entered the library, looking very uneasy. She and Monette couldn’t quite manage to make direct eye contact, I noticed. “Would you like for me to make up your bed for you now, Senora?”
“My own bedroom is an official crime scene,” Monette explained to me. “I’m now in the room next door to Reggie’s. Yes, please, Maritza. The powder blue sheets and pillowcases, please.”
“Si, Senora.”
“In fact, why don’t I give you a hand? It’ll give me something to do.”
“And I’ll be taking off,” Elliot said, wheezing as he hoisted his magenta marshmallow self up off the sofa. “Sleep tight, hon. Call me anytime for any reason. Nobody on this earth matters to me as much as you do. I’ll be back first thing in the morning, okay?”
Monette smiled at him wearily. “Thank you, Elliot. You’re a rock.” Then she went up the grand, curving stairway with Maritza.
“Walk me out, would you?” he asked me gruffly.
Lulu and I went out the front door with him onto the porch. From where we stood, I could see the lights of the TV cameras that were clustered outside the wall on Rockingham. Reporters were still filing stories for late news broadcasts. Elliot’s Range Rover was parked in the pea gravel turnaround next to Monette’s Land Cruiser. I found it exceedingly strange that so many wealthy people in L.A. had taken to driving four-wheel-drive off-road vehicles instead of luxury cars. Considering that they lived in a place where there was no such thing as an unpaved road, I mean. Or snow. Joey’s rugged new no-top Jeep Wrangler remained parked there, too, waiting for the birthday boy to take it boulder climbing somewhere. I had a feeling it would be waiting there for a long, long time.
Elliot pulled the front door shut behind us and immediately poked me in the chest with his finger. “Listen, schmuck, I care about that lady in there.”
I looked down at his finger. “Care to remove that?”
“I’ll remove it when I feel like it.”
Lulu let out a low growl. She didn’t particularly care for the tone of his voice.
Elliot immediately backed away from me. But he wasn’t done talking. No chance. “I’ve known guys like you my whole life. You’re a charmer. Charmed your way right into the bed of an A-list movie star, didn’t you? A class act like Merilee Nash wouldn’t spread those legs of hers unless you had some pretty slick moves. You think I didn’t notice the way Monette lit up when you walked in? That lady’s frightened, vulnerable and very alone right now. You stay away from her, hear me? You want to shtup the crazy sister, go right ahead. You can shtup the hell out of her for all I care. But keep your hands off Monette.”
“I don’t work for you, Elliot, so don’t tell me what I can or cannot do with my hands. Speaking of hands, I understand you spent some quality time in Rahway for wrapping yours around a client’s throat back in the sixties.”
“I guess your cop friend isn’t so tight-lipped after all.” He raised his chin at me. “I used to have trouble controlling my temper. So what?”
“Does Monette know about it?”
“Of course she knows. I have no secrets from her.”
“How about the tabloids? Because that would make for a mighty juicy sidebar right about now.”
Elliot began to breathe more rapidly, his chest heaving. I wondered if he was about to have a heart attack right there on the porch, and if he did whether I’d attempt to perform CPR. His breath smelled like aged muenster cheese. “You . . . going to feed that to somebody?” he gasped. “That what you’re saying?”
“No, I’m not. Not if you stop crowding me.”
“I’m not somebody who you want to mess with,” he warned me. “I know people. Powerful people who owe me favors. Understand?” Then he waddled toward his Range Rover and got in, started it up and sped his way toward the front gate.
Monette was waiting for me at the top of the stairs when I went back inside. “What were you and Elliot talking about?”
“He just wants to make sure you’re okay.”
“Dear Elliot. Sometimes I think that he’s my Jewish mother from a former life. After Maritza and I make the bed, I’m going to stretch out and try to relax. It’s early. Why don’t you join me for a few minutes? You can bring the Sancerre up with you. It’s in the fridge.”
“I’ll be right up.”
First, I headed toward the kitchen with Lulu. If Maritza was upstairs with Monette, that meant now was our chance. The kitchen lights had been dimmed. There was a faint smell of garlic and chili powder in the air. We went through the doorway off the kitchen that led to the laundry room, service stairs and Maritza’s room. The door to Maritza’s room was open. Her nightstand lamp was on. It was a small bedroom, very tidy. The door to the laundry room was closed. I opened it and we slipped inside. I flicked on the overhead light, closing the door softly behind us.
The washer and dryer were huge top loaders. Biggest I’d ever seen in a private home. I opened them. Both were empty.
There was a white wicker basket next to the washer that had a full nylon laundry bag stuffed inside of it. Lulu made straight for the bag and started sniffing at it. I dumped its contents out onto the floor. The crime scene investigators hadn’t searched through it yet, as far as I knew. Why would they? Monette had already confessed to shooting Patrick. They had Monette. They had the murder weapon. They had everything they needed. True, Emil Lamp had voiced his doubts to me about Monette’s version of what happened. But he hadn’t ordered a top-to-bottom search of the entire mansion. Not yet anyhow.
Lulu sniffed and snorted her way through a heap of soiled kitchen towels and linen napkins, bath towels, hand towels. She found the salmon-colored dental hygienist’s uniform that Maritza had been wearing yesterday. But not the pale pink one she had on earlier today—the one she’d changed out of after Patrick got shot. There was no sign of the clothing that Joey had been wearing prior to the shooting either. Lulu didn’t get so much as a whiff of gunshot residue on anything in the bag. She would have let me know if she had. Instead, she simply backed away from it and gazed up at me in silence.
Damn.
I crammed everything back in the laundry bag, returned it to the wicker basket and got the hell out of there. Next I headed for the kitchen trash bin, which was built in under the sink and disguised as a pullout drawer. I was moving fast but not fast enough—I’d only made it as far as the refrigerator when Maritza strode into the kitchen from the main hallway, silent in her white Nikes.
“I can help you with something, Senor Hoagy?” she asked, flicking on the overhead lights.
“I don’t suppose you have any licorice ice cream tucked away in the freezer, do you?”
She frowned at me. “Did you say licorice ice cream? There is such a thing?”
“There is, and it’s hard to find, let me tell you. Actually, I was looking for the bottle of Sancerre Monette and Elliot were drinking. She suggested I bring it upstairs.”
“It is in the refrigerator in the billiard room. There are clean glasses behind the bar. I will get it for you if you wish.”
“No need, I’ll get it,” I said, noticing how much strain was etched on her pretty young face. Her dark brown eyes shone at me like wet stones. “Is everything okay with you, Maritza?”
“It has been a hard day.”
“Yes, it has. Is there anything you wish to tell me?”
She peered up at me uncertainly. “Tell you?”
“The bedroom door at the top of the service stairs wasn’t locked at the time of the shooting. You weren’t honest with me about that, Maritza. You also changed into a different uniform.”
“The police . . . they know this?” she whispered, trembling with fright.
“Not yet. And they don’t have to. Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“I see . . .” Her face went totally blank. “You want sex from me, is that it?”
“No, I don’t want sex from you, Maritza. I want the truth. If you help me, I can help you.”
“I am concerned only for the senora.”
“I admire your loyalty, but you have to look out for yourself. If you don’t you’ll get sent back to Guatemala.”
“You cannot help me, Senor Hoagy,” she said with quiet resignation in her voice. “No one can. I have nothing more to say. I am sorry.”
“So am I, Maritza.”
She stayed put in the kitchen. Fetched canisters of flour and sugar from a cupboard over the counter, eggs and butter out of the refrigerator. She intended to bake something, it appeared, meaning I’d have zero chance to search that kitchen garbage bin any time soon. So I went into the billiard room, grabbed the open bottle of Sancerre out of the fridge, found two glasses and made my way upstairs with Lulu.
Yellow police tape was stretched across the double doors to the master suite. Joey’s door was closed. So was Danielle’s, though I could hear the sounds of Dirty Dancing, the movie that she and Reggie were watching on TV together.
Monette had chosen a modest room for herself, one that was no more than three times the size of my apartment. It had a four-poster king-sized bed with a huge old steamer trunk parked at the foot of it that was covered with stickers from long-gone cruise ship lines and European luxury hotels. It had an early twentieth-century walnut desk with a high-back leather swivel chair. The matching wardrobe cupboard and chest of drawers were at least a century older than the desk and appeared to be made of cherry. The shutters over the windows were closed. The nightstand lamp was on, casting the room in a warm, soft glow. Monette lay propped up on the bed in her kimono with a blanket thrown over her legs. She was still holding an ice pack to her nose.
Lulu climbed from the steamer trunk up onto the foot of the bed, pausing for permission before she proceeded any farther.
“Would you like a four-footed nursemaid?”
“A four-footed . . . ?” Monette frowned at me before she noticed Lulu there. “Oh, certainly. By all means.”
Lulu settled herself on Monette’s hip and plopped her head down on Monette’s stomach.
Monette petted her. “You’re a very sweet girl, aren’t you?”
I poured each of us some wine, handed her one glass and sat down with the other in a chintz-covered armchair that was positioned next to the bed. It amazed me how quickly I was getting tired of chintz. After a mere two days in Aintree Manor I felt quite certain that I never wanted to see it again for as long as I lived. “How are you really, Monette?”
“How am I really?” she repeated wearily. “They hustled me out of here like a criminal. Drove me downtown, dragged me into police headquarters, fingerprinted me, questioned me. Everyone was incredibly polite. And yet I still felt as if I’d suddenly become someone else. I’ve worked terribly hard to build a life for myself. Today, I realized it can all be taken away from you in an instant.” She set the ice pack aside and sipped her wine. “Joey didn’t say one word to me when I got home. Danielle couldn’t stop crying. Reggie has been incredibly supportive and strong. She’s really come through for me.”
“She’s your sister. That’s what sisters do.”
“I know, but I wasn’t expecting it. Not after all of these years. I’m glad she’s here. And I’m glad you’re here,” she added, coloring slightly.
“I won’t be for long if we don’t hear from your father again.”
“I’ve been lying here wondering if this dreadful mess will scare him off.”
“It might.”
“I hope and pray it doesn’t. If Dad disappears back into the fog, then all I have to look forward to is this—the agony of an endless, horrible trial in which they’ll paint me as a bitter old hag who murdered her famously likeable husband for taking up with a younger woman. How pathetic and humiliating is that?”
“Plenty pathetic and humiliating. But your attorney won’t let them get away with spinning it like that. He’ll retaliate.”
Monette furrowed her brow at me. “How?”
“By leaking to the news media just exactly what kind of a man your famously likeable husband really was—especially while he was using illegal drugs. And the medical examiner will find illegal drugs in his system.”
“He came at me like a madman,” she said, her pale blue eyes gleaming at me in the lamplight. “I had to stop him. I’m not sorry. But I am sorry that Joey and Danielle no longer have a father. And I did love him once, before I saw the ugliness that was inside him.” She took another sip of her wine, glancing at me nervously. “Would you do me a small favor?”
“If I can.”
“Would you sit here on the edge of the bed and hold my hand?”
I moved to the edge of the bed and took her hand, which was cold from the ice pack. Also strong. Monette had one hell of a grip.
“Hoagy, do you think they’ll send me to jail?”
“No. Your attorney will plead self-defense and you’ll get off.”
“What about afterward? Assuming I get off, that is. Will I still have any kind of a career? And what about Danielle and Joey? Will they ever be able to lead normal lives again?”
“You’d know that better than I would. You went through the page-one wringer yourself when you were young.”
“And I barely survived,” she recalled, her hand still squeezing mine tightly. “I felt so alone. I feel the same way now. Alone.”
“You’re not alone. You have Reggie.”
“That’s true, I do, thanks to those letters from Dad.” She fell silent for a moment. “Assuming they really are from Dad.”
“You think they’re not?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m so tired. I just . . .” She gazed at me searchingly. “Can I trust you, Hoagy? Really trust you?”
“Of course you can. Why don’t you just go ahead and do it?”
“Do what?”
“Tell me what really happened in that bedroom today.”
She let go of my hand. “I told you what really happened.”
“And I didn’t believe a single word that you said. If you confide in me I may be able to help you. But if you don’t then I can’t.”
Her eyes avoided mine, examining the ceiling and the closed shutters before they settled on Lulu, who lay there staring up at her.
“Lulu has my complete confidence. Anything that you want to say to me you can say in front of her.”
Monette’s eyes met mine again, staring at me long and hard before she said, “You know what happened.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do. Please tell me that you believe me.”
“What I believe,” I said, “is that you did what you had to do.”
She sorted through that in silence for a moment before she said, “I think I’ll get some sleep now. Or at least try to.”
“Good idea.” I bent over and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night.”
She reacted in surprise. “How did you know I wanted you to do that?”
“I just did.”
“Will you still be around in the morning?”
“I’ll still be around.”
“I haven’t driven you away?”
“You haven’t driven me away.”
“You’re a dear. Good night. And good night to you, too, Lulu,” she said as Lulu made her way down off the bed by way of the steamer trunk.
It was just after 9:30, according to Grandfather’s Benrus. Danielle and Reggie were still in Danielle’s room together watching Dirty Dancing. Joey’s room was still silent. Downstairs in the kitchen, Maritza was shoving pans of blueberry muffins into the oven for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. She didn’t say good-night to me as I passed by her on my way out the French doors to the patio. Wouldn’t so much as look at me.
Lulu and I strolled the grounds in the cool night air before we retired to the pool house, where I headed straight for the telephone in the bedroom to call my phone machine in New York City. I had a slew of new phone messages from reporters and gossip columnists, not to mention cash offers from three, count ’em three, different tabloid editors for the inside dope on Patrick’s killing. The highest offer was for more money than I’d been guaranteed for the Richard Aintree project, which in the supremely glam world of ghostwriting is what passes for upward mobility. I didn’t return any of the calls.
There was still no message from Merilee in Budapest.
By now it was after 1:00 am in New York City, but I happened to know that the Silver Fox was partial to reading manuscripts deep into the wee hours, propped up in bed chain-smoking Newports and drinking snifters of Courvoisier.
“I was just thinking about you, dear boy,” she said when she heard my voice on the phone. “Tell me, how are you?”
“How do you think I am, Alberta? I came out here to help Monette Aintree make literary history. Instead, I’m smack dab in the middle of Hollywood tabloid hell.”
“I do apologize, but it’s not as if I saw this coming. No one did.”
“Boyd Samuels did—I guarantee it.”
“How on earth could he do that? I realize Boyd’s a tad oleaginous, but even he couldn’t have known that Monette would shoot Patrick to death in the middle of their son’s birthday party.”
“I’m telling you, somehow, some way, he’s mixed up in this. It was awfully damned strange the way he suddenly showed up out here yesterday. Monette was certainly surprised to see him. And he and Kat Zachry were oh-so chummy today. Went off by themselves, huddled, schemed, tried to steal my flight jacket.”
“Tried to steal your what?”
“I wonder how long he and Kat have been cooking up scams together. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he put her up to seducing Patrick and destroying his marriage. It made for one hell of a career move on her part. That girl’s hotter than hot right now. And Monette didn’t, by the way.”
“Monette didn’t what?”
“Shoot Patrick to death.”
“Of course she did. She was found standing over his body with the murder weapon in her hand. By you.”
“I know.”
“And she’s confessed to doing it.”
“I know. But she didn’t kill him.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know yet. But the detective who’s been assigned to the case is no idiot. Neither am I, which is why I want out. I want to come home, Alberta. This isn’t what I signed up for.”
“I know it isn’t, dear boy, but it’s huge. Why, there isn’t a writer in New York who wouldn’t jump at the chance to be in your shoes right now.”
“Glad to hear it. Anyone who wears a size 11B is welcome to them. I know exactly what you’re going to say now. You’re going to say that all of this publicity will turn our book into pure gold. But here’s the problem, Alberta. No one gives a damn about Richard Aintree’s return from oblivion anymore. All they care about is Monette’s arraignment on Monday morning. CNN will probably carry the whole damned arraignment proceeding like it’s a live courtroom drama. Besides, you and I both know that Richard will never show up here now. Not in the middle of this zoo. It’s never going to happen. The project’s dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes, we do. Seriously, can you get me out?”
“Seriously? I can give you some advice. Get some sleep.”
“Does that mean no?”
“It means that this will look a lot better in the morning. Really.”
“No, it won’t. Really.”
“Good night, dear boy.”
I turned out the lights, stripped and got under the covers. Lay there in the dark with Lulu sprawled across my chest and watched the lights in the big house go out one by one. First the upstairs lights, then all of the downstairs lights except for the ones in the kitchen and Maritza’s room. Then those went out, too, and there was only the moonlight and the faint blue glow of the swimming pool’s nightlights. I lay there, my wheels spinning.
The French door to the kitchen clicked open and shut so softly that I almost didn’t hear it. But I heard it. I also heard the quiet footsteps on the bluestone path that were heading directly toward the pool house. Lulu let out a low growl of warning. I shushed her, got out of bed in the dark and went to the bedroom window for a look.
It wasn’t Monette paying me another late-night visit.
It was Maritza who I spotted out there in the dim lights of the pool. And she hadn’t come sneaking out of the darkened house to pay me a social call. She was toting a black plastic trash bag over toward that fenced enclosure by the service gate where the trash barrels were kept. When she got there, she eased open the gate to the enclosure, deposited the trash bag soundlessly in a barrel, closed the gate and hurried back to the house, closing the kitchen door softly behind her.
Silence.
I waited several minutes before I put on my silk target-dot dressing gown, opened the pool house door and made my way in barefoot silence to the trash enclosure. I retrieved the trash bag and carried it back to the pool house. Closed the living room shutters, flicked on a light and got busy. The trash bag had been closed with a twist tie. I untwisted it and dumped the contents of the bag out on the kitchen floor. Monette had a garbage disposal for food scraps so I wasn’t too concerned about anything wet or disgusting being stuffed in there. What came tumbling out was junk mail, plastic food wrappers, used paper towels . . .
And a wadded-up pale blue bath towel.
I spread the bath towel open on the floor. Lulu immediately busied herself snuffling and snorting at the things that were balled up inside of it. There was a rumpled white T-shirt that even my human nose could tell smelled of something oily and metallic. There was the pale pink dental hygienist’s uniform that Maritza had been wearing before the shooting—which had smears of blood all over it. When Lulu was done sniffing at it she moved on to the flannel shirt, Nirvana T-shirt and jeans that Joey had been wearing before the shooting. The boy’s clothes were smeared with blood just like Maritza’s were. Unlike Maritza’s, Joey’s carried the scent of gunshot residue on them. Lulu let me know this with a low whoop.
I sat back on my heels, my mind racing. After the shooting, Lulu had followed the residue scent to Joey’s room and found it on his sneakers. Joey had neglected to change out of those, although he had bothered to wash his hands and face. The collar and cuffs of his shirt had been damp. Why had he done that? To wash off more blood? Did this clothing prove that he’d been in the master suite at the time of the shooting? He sure as hell hadn’t been in his room with his headphones on. What did it mean that there was blood on Maritza’s uniform but no gunshot residue? Why had she lied to me about the door to the service stairs being locked? What had really happened in that master bedroom suite today? A staged homicide, Lamp had called it. Staged how? What was I missing?
As I sat there, wondering, I reached for the black trash bag and discovered that I hadn’t completely emptied it. There was still one more item in the bottom of the bag—a rolled-up pale blue hand towel. I unrolled it and found two more bloodied articles of clothing that I hadn’t been expecting to find. I stared at them for a long moment, my pulse quickening, before I gathered up both towels full of clothing and stashed them in my empty suitcase in the bedroom closet. Then I stuffed the trash back into the bag, tiptoed out into the darkness and returned it to the trash barrel.
I was starting my way back to the pool house when a voice whispered, “What in the heck are you doing?”
Reggie. She was standing outside my door in a T-shirt and shorts, barefoot.
“Tossing the dried mackerel remains from Lulu’s bowl. It isn’t a pleasant smell. What’s going on, Stinker?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Too much strange shit happened today. Thought I’d bum a nightcap off you. You alone?”
“Why, you think I’ve got Monette sprawled languorously across my bed?”
“It’s polite to ask. I do try to be polite.”
“Do shut up and come in.”
She shut up and came in, glancing around at the furnishings while I poured each of us a shot of single malt. “Monette’s accustomed to getting what she wants,” she warned me. “And she wants you. Big sis has a major crush on you.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Yes, she does. She got all fluttery while you were gone for dinner. Kept wondering where you were and when you were coming back. And you should have seen her fuss over which color kimono to wear.”
“We’re not getting involved,” I said, handing Reggie her Scotch.
“Why not? She’s a widow now.” Her huge eyes twinkled at me wickedly. “As in available.”
I drank down my Scotch in one gulp. “Well, I’m not. I never get involved with a celebrity employer. It’s unprofessional.”
She drank down her Scotch in one gulp, studying me curiously. “You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“In that case can I snuggle with you for a while? My bed seemed awfully big and lonely. Not to mention cold. My feet are like ice.”
“I seem to recall your feet are always like ice.”
“Will you warm them up for me for old time’s sake? I won’t get frisky, I promise. I really just . . .” Reggie lowered her gaze uncomfortably. “I don’t feel like being alone right now.”
I stood there looking at those thin white scars on the insides of her wrists. “For old time’s sake? Sure.”
I turned out the living room light before we went into the darkened bedroom, where Lulu had already claimed more than half of the bed.
“Shove over, Your Earness,” Reggie commanded Lulu as she dove under the covers in her T-shirt and shorts. “You’ve got company.”
Lulu didn’t budge. Not until I told her to. Even then she moved a grand total of six inches, grunting at me with supreme disapproval.
I took off my dressing gown and slid under the covers. Reggie’s feet found mine right away.
“Good God, they feel like two blocks of frozen hamburger.”
“They’ll warm up soon.” She turned onto her side so that she faced me in the moonlight. “Hold me, will you?”
I put my arm around her and she settled against me with her head resting on my chest. I stroked her long, beautiful hair, recalling the scent and feel of her like it was yesterday. “How was Dirty Dancing?”
“Corny and old-fashioned, like out of the not-so-fabulous fifties. I thought we’d outgrown such silly fables.”
“Never. Silly fables make people happy. How is Danielle doing?”
“How do you think? The poor kid’s whole world is falling apart around her.” Reggie fell silent for a moment before she said, “Monette’s amazing. She’s so strong, not like me. I feel incredibly shaky right now.”
“Monette thinks you’re the one who’s being strong, actually.”
Reggie lifted her head up and gazed at me. Our faces were very close. Close enough that I could feel her breath on mine. “Well, she’s wrong,” she said softly before she lowered her head back down onto my chest, snuggling closer.
“What about Joey? How is he doing?”
“Stewie, why are you asking me so many questions?”
“A lot of strange shit happened today, like you said.”
“No, that’s not why. The gerbil wheel between your ears is going around and around. You’ve got something on your mind. What is it?”
“If I ask you something, will you give me an honest answer?”
“Of course I will, silly wabbit.”
“What happened in that bedroom today?”
She raised her head again, gazing at me. “You know what happened. You saw it for yourself.”
“Did I?”
“Just leave it alone, Stewie. As a favor to me. Will you do that for me?”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
“Yes, you do,” she said insistently. “You do.”
“Okay, I do.”
“Say it like you mean it. Say it or I’ll tickle you.”
“That won’t work anymore. I used to be ticklish years and years ago, but I’m not anymore.”
“Oh, really? We’ll just see about that . . .” Her nimble fingers went probing for the sensitive flesh beneath my ribs.
“Okay, okay . . .” I grabbed her hands and held them. “I do.”
“Thank you.” She lowered her head back down on my chest once again and put her arm around me, hugging me tight.
I lay there, stroking her hair. The Aintree sisters had circled the wagons. Whatever had happened in that bedroom was strictly a family affair. I was an outsider, and a potentially dangerous one at that—a friend of the homicide lieutenant who was in charge of the case. Was Reggie visiting me to find out what I knew? Had Monette put her up to this?
“Stinker, about your dad . . .”
“What about him?”
“I’m thinking he’ll be scared off by all of this. That he won’t show up now. How about you?”
The coyotes began to howl. Lulu shifted around uneasily on the bed.
“I heard them last night.” Reggie’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I thought I was dreaming.” She breathed in and out for a moment before she said, “I don’t believe those letters are real. I think he’s dead.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Just a feeling I have.”
“So who’s been writing them?”
“Monette, who else?”
The same Monette who’d suggested to me last night by the pool that it was Reggie who was writing them—in cahoots with Boyd Samuels. “Why would Monette do that?”
“That’s obvious.”
“Trust me, nothing is obvious to me right now.”
“Monette’s an inventor of stories. It’s what she does when she’s in crisis mode. She made up that story about Dad sexually abusing her to deal with the pain of losing Mom. And she’s made up this story about Dad magically reappearing after twenty-plus years in the wilderness to cope with the pain of losing Patrick to Kat. It’s about her. It’s always about her.”
“And yet you flew out here. Why?”
“I told you why. Because I thought I’d be needed. And I was right. Not that I had the slightest idea Monette was going to shoot the cheating bastard. I can guarantee you she wasn’t planning to. If she had been then she wouldn’t have bothered with those fake letters, would she? She doesn’t need them now. She’s got her story.” Reggie fell silent, exhaling slowly. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“Such as . . . ?”
“Why did you dump me?”
“You really want to talk about that?”
“Yeah, I really do.”
“Okay,” I said, stroking her hair. “I had to.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I was having so much fun with you that I could barely even remember what my novel was supposed to be about. And then, poof, off you’d go to Havana or Senegal, and instead of writing I’d just pine away for you, wondering when I’d get to see you again. I knew I’d never write my book if we stayed together. I had to end it.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that? Why did you shut me out? You wouldn’t see me. You wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone.”
“That was my size-huge ego. You were Regina Aintree. The Regina Aintree. I was just an angry young nobody who’d published a couple of short stories. I was so desperate to prove to you that I was a serious writer. It was the single most important thing in the world to me. Nothing else mattered.”
“I hated you.”
“I know.”
She lay there in silence for a moment. “You really wrote it because of me?”
“Of course. That’s why I dedicated it to you.”
“I did it for you, too. Getting involved in all of those political causes, I mean. I wanted you to think I was incredibly daring and independent and fascinating. But do you know what I really wanted? I wanted my family back. My mother had killed herself. My father had disappeared. My big sister had sold out and written that horrible book about him. My whole life had been torn away from me. A few months before you broke up with me, I was sitting on stage at a women’s poetry symposium in Gabon, waiting to read one of my poems, and it hit me right between the eyes that where I really, truly wanted to be was settled down with you at some nice little college in New England raising kids in a sweet old cottage, puttering in my garden and making my own jam the way Mom used to.”
“You never told me that.”
“I couldn’t. I was afraid you’d be disappointed if you found out how conventional the Regina Aintree truly was. I wanted you to think I was gutsy. I’m not. Monette’s the gutsy one. Look at what she’s accomplished. Her own TV show, a retail empire, two kids. I could never have had kids. I’d have forgotten them somewhere or dropped them on their heads. I’m the fraidy cat of the century. I wake up scared every morning and I stay scared all day long. The only time in my whole life when I ever felt truly calm inside was when I was with you. Want to know something? This feels nice, Stewie. Like old times,” she murmured as Lulu lay there next to us, mouth-breathing. “Although it smelled a whole lot less like low tide at Rockaway Beach in those days.”
“If I kick her out of the room, she’ll start barking.”
Reggie rolled a bit more over onto her side, her inner thigh resting on top of my legs. Slowly, I became more and more aware that she was no longer an old friend with frozen feet who’d come in out of the night to snuggle. She was a soft, pliant, very alive woman who was stretching and arching herself against me.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’ve been desperate to jump you ever since I got here. I tried to visit you last night but Monette had already claimed you.”
“We had a drink by the pool and talked. That’s all.”
“I know. I watched you from my window.”
“I’m not going to get caught in between the two of you, am I?”
“You are so clueless. You’re already caught and you don’t even know it. But you’re mine. You belong to me. And I’m going to make this as easy as possible. You don’t have to tell me you still love me. You don’t even have to move. All you have to do is let me ravage you.”
“You’ve become an awfully canny little negotiator, Stinker.”
“Besides, if you’re going to write a novel about us—and I’m positive that you are—then you’re going to need this scene. It’ll be wonderfully poignant. The two of us together in your bed like this after all of these years. Unless you’d rather do it the other way around.”
“With me on top instead of you?”
Her lips broke into a smile. “No, with us in my bed instead of yours. I can go back to my room if you’d like. You can tiptoe inside and tell me how desperate you’ve been to jump me. It would be more traditional that way.”
“We’re not traditional and never have been. Besides, you’ve got neighbors—Danielle on one side, Monette on the other. There’s liable to be some moaning.”
“I can keep quiet.”
“But I can’t. And I’m perfectly content to stay right here.”
She touched my face with her fingers before her lips gently brushed mine. “Good, so am I.”
“It’s never going to happen, you know.”
“What isn’t?”
“The sweet old cottage. The garden. The jam. Especially the jam.”
“I know.”
“I’m still in love with Merilee.”
“I know.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Why don’t you just kiss me and find out for yourself?”
So I did. Gently at first, and then not so gently.
By then Lulu had decided to get a drink of water from her bowl in the kitchen. She’s always been very discreet.
It wasn’t 1977 anymore. We weren’t two wild kids crazy with passion for each other in her third-floor room of the Chelsea Hotel. We were a pair of battle-scarred middle-aged people who were ensconced in the pool house of her sister’s multimillion-dollar Brentwood estate. Steamy it wasn’t. It was affectionate, tender and just a tiny bit wistful. A warm embrace between two old friends that just happened to include reentry. It was also a profound acknowledgment that we were breaking the spell we’d held over each other for so many years. I was letting go. She was letting go. We both knew it and so we both took our time, savoring it.
And when, at long last, she collapsed on top of me, her kaleidoscope eyes twirling and glittering in the moonlight just like they had on that warm summer night in Yellow Springs a million years ago, she whispered, “Hello, Stewie.”
And I whispered, “Hello, Stinker.”
Even though we both knew it wasn’t hello. It was goodbye.