The address Gloria Ingram had given me was in the ultra-ritzy Holmby Hills, a gated estate with rolling lawns, fish ponds, tennis courts, a pool complete with cabana, and gardens filled with rainbow-colored buds, all failing to soften or beautify a two-story granite monster of a mansion. I parked the Lexus at the end of a gravel drive, behind two large Carrying the World vans.
Gloria Ingram was standing at the door to the ugly mansion, overseeing movers in white jumpsuits as they toted furniture from the house to the vans. She was a tall, patrician woman in her forties. There was something familiar about her. Roger had said she’d been a model and a starlet before her marriage.
She gave me a cool, professional welcome and explained that her work consisted of preparing foreclosed properties for sale. “The so-called owner of this mausoleum blew the country, sticking the bank with a twenty-nine-million-dollar mortgage he’d barely dented.” She added wearily, “We’ll be lucky if we get twenty-six-five.”
As she led me into the house and a marble reception area, two men were removing a huge painting of voluptuous nude ladies cavorting rather naughtily on black velvet. They were followed by two of their associates carrying a portrait of Elvis with angel wings. A third painting rested against a marble wall, Satan behind the wheel of a speeding Maserati, leaving a trail of hellish flames in its wake. Where, I wondered, was the painting of the dogs playing poker?
“Was the mortgage walkaway a pimp?” I asked.
“A television evangelist,” Gloria replied. “Not to say you were wrong. As you can see, he had lovely taste. Usually we prefer to present a property furnished. But in this instance, I’m quite sure that would not have helped the sale.”
I followed her through rooms that showed the touch of a decorator with either an absolute lack of taste or one hell of a sense of humor. I particularly liked the mink-covered beanbag chairs in the main living room and the red-and-black sitting room with clear-plastic furniture.
“Satan’s Maserati was hanging there,” Gloria said, pointing to a red wall. “The painters are coming in tomorrow to reclaim the room from the eighth circle of hell.”
“What exactly did this evangelist evangel?” I asked.
“The power of the pill,” she said. “I gather his communion wafer was an amphetamine-laced cookie that convinced his followers they’d been miraculously healed. Alas, the district attorney proved to be something of an agnostic, and, fearing a forced relocation to a much rougher congregation, the divinity Dr. Feelgood departed in haste. So here I am.”
Indeed, she was. “I know we’ve never met,” I said. “But I get the feeling I’ve seen you before. In a film? Or on TV?”
“You’re talking about my previous life. That was long ago, Mr. Blessing. And believe me, there was nothing memorable about it. Come. We should have our chat in the kitchen. It’s the only room in this horror that doesn’t cause your eyes to bleed. I’m leaving it as is, so we won’t be disturbed by the movers.”
Apparently, the evangelist’s only evidence of taste was in his palate. The kitchen was elegant and well designed. Gloria Ingram told me he’d hired a promising young chef from Esplanade, one of the Coast’s top restaurants, and given him complete control over the room.
Gloria didn’t remember the chef’s name.
“What happened to him?” I asked, while she poured thick black coffee into two refreshingly plain mugs.
“The chef? He’s working for Roger now. That is, he’s working at La Maison Rouge.”
She placed the silver pot on the countertop and sat on a stool beside mine. “Roger was a little vague about this … What shall I call it? … Interrogation?”
“What did he tell you?”
“That you’d be asking me about that night, and I should tell you the truth. He believes you have some influence over the detective who arrested him.”
“He may be overestimating that influence.”
“I’m a little unclear on why you’re trying to help him.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess it’s because I may have caused him a lot of grief over the past twenty-two years because of a misunderstanding. If that’s the case, I owe him a lot more than spending a few minutes in the company of a beautiful woman.”
The blush made her seem ten years younger. “Well, you’ll have to help me with this. How do I begin?”
“Start with what you remember about the night.”
“I should explain something, otherwise …” She stopped speaking and stared at her coffee cup.
I had a little time.
I sipped. The coffee was good and strong. Starbucks Dark Roast, I was guessing. Sommelier, barista. Very close …
“I’ve never thought of it as being adulterous,” she said. “But I was married at the time. My husband and I … It wasn’t an ideal situation. He’d spent nearly a year making a crappy cops-and-robbers movie in Canada. And he was off again, to Moab, Utah. I was young. And being human, had needs that … were not …”
She blinked, sniffed, and straightened on the stool. “It had only been a few months since Connie … since we lost Connie. Our daughter. Actually, my husband’s daughter from a previous marriage. But her death had taken its toll on both of us, and, eventually, our marriage became part of that loss.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Water waaay under the bridge,” she said. “Anyway, to get to what you need to know, Roger and I spent all that night in a house my husband owned at the Springs. I was pretty sure Stew used to bring his bimbos there, so it seemed appropriate for me to use it to entertain Roger.”
“Stew? Stew Gentry?”
“Sorry, that was indiscreet of me. Do you know him? Oh, God, of course you do. It was at his party that you and Roger …”
“Yeah,” I said. “I like Stew.”
“He is likable,” she said, “just not terribly faithful.”
I suddenly realized why she’d seemed so familiar. “You’re Dani’s mother,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Your daughter is a knockout.”
“And bright. And athletic. Oh, God, aren’t I the doting mom?”
“Not without cause,” I said. “Mr. Blessing—”
“Make it Billy. Please.”
“Billy, I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I’m suddenly feeling very uncomfortable about all this. I’d appreciate it if we could just wrap it up.”
“Of course. Only a question or two more. Are you absolutely certain Roger couldn’t have left while you were sleeping, driven to L.A. and back before you woke?”
“Not possible. We … stayed up through the night. We made love. We talked. We laughed. Dawn was breaking before we fell asleep. At around two the next day, we finally left the house in search of food. We were in the car when we heard about the murder. Roger went off his head. Almost drove us into a streetlamp. I thought he was going to rip the steering wheel from its post. It took all my strength to pry his fingers from it.
“Later, when he finally calmed down, he realized he’d be needing an alibi. And that was a problem. Stew is a sweetheart in normal circumstances. But if the affair had gone public, he would have assumed I’d seduced Roger to spite him. I was afraid of the consequences. You don’t want to get on Stew’s bad side.”
I’d seen that myself, close up.
“So Victor Anisette was asked to fill in for you in the alibi department,” I said.
“Victor volunteered eagerly,” she said. “You understand, we had the advantage of knowing that Roger was innocent.”
“How close are you and Roger these days?”
“I’m not lying for him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No. I just wondered if you still had much contact with him.”
“We’re old friends,” she said. “We still meet for the occasional lunch or dinner, and, if I desperately need an escort, he’s on my list. But that weekend at the Springs was the end of our … affair. There’s nothing kicks the pins out from under a romance quicker than almost getting drawn into a murder investigation.”
“Did Stew ever find out about you and Roger?” I asked.
“God, no. The fact that both Roger and I are still alive is proof of that,” she said.
“You mean that literally?”
“Of course not. Stew’s not capable of murder, though he’d probably like people to think he is. That macho thing. He does hold grudges, however, in case you planned to tell him about that night.”
“Why would I?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know you or what kind of friend you are to Stew. You might think he should be told. But it wouldn’t be good for him or me, or Dani. And it wouldn’t do much for your friendship, either. He’d never forgive you.”
“I wasn’t planning on mentioning it,” I said. “Did you know he had a background check done on Roger?”
She froze. “When was this?”
“When Roger started going out with Dani,” I said.
She laughed. “ ‘Going out’? That’s priceless. But it’s so Stew. Always worried about the wrong things.”
“Roger strike you as Mr. Right?”
“Hardly. But why wouldn’t Stew ask Dani about their relationship instead of …? Well, he is what he is.”
I wondered if it wasn’t she who should have that talk with Dani. But it was none of my business.
She slipped gracefully from the stool. “Will that about do it?”
I stood. “Thanks for seeing me. I hope it wasn’t too …”
I stopped talking because I’d lost her. She was staring at something behind me, hugging herself, as if caught by a sudden draft of frigid air.
I turned to see an amazingly old man, his frail, twisted body seated on a wheelchair so streamlined and full of bells and whistles it might have come from the latest Michael Bay movie. He was even more interesting than the chair. Bald, except for a few long strands of yellow-tinged white hairs pasted to his scalp. His left eye was closed in what appeared to be a permanent wink, and his nose and chin were just an inch or so from an embrace.
He was wearing a bowling shirt of pale blue and white stripes with the team name “Frush Strike Kings” on the right pocket. Spindly bare arms were crossed over his sunken chest. Matching bare legs dangled from white baggy shorts. The toes of his bare feet were constricted and pawlike. His flesh was bottle-tanned. Too even and with a hint of green in the mix. He looked like a Southern California surfer dude version of Ebenezer Scrooge.
In any less bizarre company, his “assistant” would have commanded my attention first. She could have been in her early twenties, a cap of gamine-cut red hair surrounding a pretty face with the standard Irish green eyes and full lips and freckles. The freckles extended at least as far as the deep V-neck of a thin, starched white short-sleeve shirt that came within a few threads of transparency. Her white slacks were so form-fitting that it was not until the white soft-sole shoes that I realized she was wearing a nurse’s uniform, albeit a fetishist’s version.
“Hello, Billy,” the old man said. Only his lips didn’t move and it sounded more like “Her-row, illy.”
I stared at him and saw, hidden in that aged, Punchlike, semiparalyzed face, a hint of the arrogant, energetic man I’d known twenty-two years ago.
“Hi, Victor,” I said. “How’s tricks?”
His reply was wet and slurry.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t get that.”
The nurse wrinkled her nose in annoyance. “He said he hoped he wasn’t intruding.”
I turned to Gloria. She was staring at a corner of the room.
Victor Anisette lifted a withered arm off his chest. His fingers were like a spider’s legs wiggling in the air until they came in contact with the nurse’s thigh and began to rub it in a circular motion. The fact that she was not repulsed suggested she’d grown used to the familiarity.
He issued another comment, indecipherable to me but not to the nurse. “He says Roger asked him to stop by, to make sure you got everything you needed.”
“Roger’s a very thoughtful guy,” I said.
“I’d better get back to work,” Gloria said.
“ ’Onc go. I lih looking ah ya lo’e tes.”
“He says, ‘Don’t go.’ He likes looking at your lovely tits,” the nurse translated.
Gloria did not bother to reply. She gave them both a wide berth as she left the room.
“So haugh’y … for a slu.”
“He says she’s so—”
“I got it,” I said. “Nice seeing you, Victor. Kinda made my day.”
I started to go.
“Wai’!”
I stopped, stared at him.
“Yah gnna hel’ Haya?”
“ ‘You going to help Roger?’ ”
“I doubt I can,” I said. “I don’t think he killed Tiffany. But I don’t know if what I think will matter to the police.”
“Onna her.”
“ ‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ ” the nurse translated.
“No hah elly a hah ah he yee?”
I looked at the nurse for assistance.
“ ‘No hard feelings after all these years?’ ”
I smiled at the old man. “You tried to destroy my reputation and end my career before it started,” I said. “It probably shows a weakness of character, but I still hate your guts, Victor.”
The half-frown on his partially mobile face might have seemed more sincere if he weren’t caressing his nurse’s buttocks. “Uh a aye you uh han hu ake huhan ah ha hel.”
“He says he gave you the chance to make something of yourself.”
I laughed. “That’s very good spin, Victor. Stay healthy, now.”
He burbled something else as I left the room, but I wasn’t curious enough about it to spend another minute with them. I collared one of the movers and asked where I might find Ms. Ingram. He gestured upstairs with his thumb.
She was in the master bedroom, supervising the removal of a mirror from the ceiling over the huge, round bed. “Are they gone?” she asked.
“Maybe leaving,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
She moved to the window. I joined her and saw that it looked out over the front of the house, including the drive. The nurse was pushing Victor in his wheelchair toward an immaculate vintage silver Rolls-Royce Wraith parked behind my rental. It was a glistening machine with cream side panels and gangster whitewall tires.
“I had nothing to do with him coming here,” she said.
“I picked up on that,” I said.
We watched the nurse open a rear door. As she lifted Victor from his chair, he pressed his face between her breasts. The nurse didn’t skip a beat. She swung him onto the backseat of the Rolls as if he were made of straw, buckled him in, and slammed the door on him.
She got behind the wheel and, with little effort, made a U-turn and drove away.
“What a loathsome creature that man is,” Gloria said.
“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said.
She asked me the same question the old man had: Was I going to help Roger? I gave her the same answer, then asked, “Why would Roger send Victor here, knowing how you feel about him?”
“I’ve never given Roger reason to think I feel any way about Victor, pro or con. They’re partners and friends, though I can’t imagine how Roger puts up with him. They’re so different in every way.”
I thought they were as alike as cuff links, psychologically and philosophically, but I kept that to myself, preferring to part on, if not exactly a friendly note, at least a polite one.
Before driving off, I phoned Detective Brueghel and was directed to his voice mail. I left a request for a callback, pocketed the phone, and put the car in drive. As I departed, I glanced back and saw Gloria still at the window, looking off into the distance, as if trying to convince herself that Victor was truly gone.