28

I passed on my planned walk to Clark’s cabin. I was lucky to make it back to the farmhouse parlor. After stashing Atherley’s film in the glass bookcase, I settled into the least uncomfortable chair with my back to a corner and my gun within reach. At dawn I pried myself from the chair and went upstairs to bed. I got up again around eight, dressed, and drove into town to a drugstore on the corner opposite the Roberts Hotel.

The drugstore had a lunch counter, which, a little after nine, was still doubling as a breakfast counter. At a tiny griddle squeezed between a soda fountain and the town’s original refrigerator, a man in an apron and a white overseas cap was frying eggs. The cook found me more interesting than the eggs he dropped onto the hot, brown steel at my request. He kept looking from them to me over his rounded shoulder. I figured he saw a lot of eggs, so I didn’t let the attention go to my head.

When he brought the victims over, he said, “You one of the reporters? ’Cause I didn’t see you with that crowd yesterday.”

“Maybe I just got in,” I said.

“You’re up early, too,” the man said. “The reporters were drinking till all hours in the hotel bar, from what I hear. Don’t expect to see any of them till noon. Sure as you’re born, I’ll be stuck frying eggs and toasting bread until two at least.”

“Could be a story in that,” I said, but he didn’t believe me.

After I’d eaten, I sat drinking coffee and reading real reporters’ stories about the murder. The only out-of-town papers in so far were the state editions of the Indianapolis dailies, the Star Republic and the Times. You could tell which political party got the Traynors’ financial support from the way the Indy papers played the story. The Star Republic gave the few facts everybody already knew without mentioning the Traynor family or speculating very hard about Carson Drury’s business in Indiana. The Times, which was the Democratic paper, managed to mention the Traynors while speculating. It reported a rumor that Drury was in town to do research for a film on the Traynor family. That guess was truer than any of us could have imagined back in safe, quiet Hollywood.

Neither paper mentioned the results of the ballistics tests, but the Times, at least, knew that the tests had been ordered. It identified the owner of the suspect gun as “Thomas S. Elliott of Los Angeles,” without listing any of my film credits. Fame was fleeting after all.

At ten I crossed the street to the hotel and asked at the front desk for Drury. I asked quietly, but the question still caused several of the dozing fedoras in the Roberts’ two-story lobby to tilt backward. Not all the reporters had drunk the night away. The clerk made a phone call on my behalf and then nodded to a man stationed near one of the elevators. That man relayed the message to the elevator operator and then nodded to me as I entered the car. I nodded to the operator to keep the string going, thinking as I did it that Gilbert Traynor must have been handing out sawbucks the way Paddy passed out cigars.

Gilbert had mentioned clearing the top floor of the hotel for Drury, but I’d passed it off as a figure of speech. That it hadn’t been was conveyed to me by the elevator operator, a strawberry blond trainee who held the door open when we arrived and said, “Seventh floor, ladies hose, novelties, and movie stars. Watch your step.”

“Watch yours, kid,” I said, but it didn’t lessen his smile by so much as a tooth.

The kid’s warning came back to me when the door to Drury’s suite opened to my knock. I found myself face-to-face with John Piers Whitehead. Seeing Hank Shepard would have been a little less of a shock. Whitehead had been transformed again. To the new clothes I’d noted yesterday he’d added a new face. That is, he wore an expression that transformed his patrician features: a look of perfect peace and happiness.

“My dear Elliott,” he said, taking me by the hand. “Sorry we didn’t have a chance to speak yesterday. Wasn’t the moment to speak, I’m sure you’ll agree. Carson has made time to see you now, so you and I will have to save our visiting until later.”

He led me into the suite while I wondered in a dazed sort of way how Drury went about making time. With a magic wand, probably. There didn’t seem to be any end to his talents.

Whitehead’s remark turned out to have a much simpler explanation. The sitting room of the suite was being cleared of a small crowd as we entered. Still present were two stenographers, a barber, a manicurist, and a valet who made his exit carrying an armload of Drury’s suits.

The man himself had traded in his wheelchair for a plush Queen Anne number with a matching hassock for his cast. The cast looked as though it had been freshly painted, but it might have been picking up a reflection of Drury’s own glow. His long hair was carefully combed for once, and his lounging pajamas and dressing gown were hot from a presser.

“Scotto,” he said while the extras were still milling about, collecting their props. “How are you?”

I didn’t feel up to answering him. He smiled even more and said, “As you can see, I’ve availed myself of the hotel’s marvelous staff. I haven’t had this kind of attention since I arrived at RKO back in ’40.”

The second stenographer smiled her good-bye, and we were three, Whitehead hovering by the door. Drury was still waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t, he turned his radiance on Whitehead. “Scotty and I will need a few minutes, John.”

“Of course,” Whitehead said without losing his own beatific smile.

Drury tried waiting me out again, but his nerves weren’t as starched as his loungewear. “Damn it, Scotty, say something. Give me one of those deadpan lines you like to use when you’re pretending to be a hard case. I’ll write one for you. How about, ‘Doesn’t the hotel have a masseur?’ Or ‘Wanting to look your best for the funeral?’ Or you could stretch your character a little and paraphrase Milton: ‘Carson Drury would rather rule in Indiana than serve in Hollywood.’”

The last line was Hank Shepard’s kind of material. Drury and I had that insight at the same second. I watched him sag under the weight of it.

Before he caved in completely, I asked, “What is all this?”

“A play, Scotty. A farce I’m improvising to get me through today. All those hirelings you chased out of here were intended to take the place of one man, my friend Hank Shepard.”

“Including John Piers Whitehead?”

“Most especially John. Why not?”

“Because you’re supposed to hate Whitehead’s guts. He’s Judas, remember? The man who ruined your career. Or has anything you’ve told me been on the level?”

Drury had spent enough time in a wheelchair to react instinctively when he wanted to move. He reached for the wheels and came up with two handfuls of air. I was left to guess whether he’d have run me down or run away.

“Seems I’m staying put,” he said, his anger sliding into sheepishness so smoothly that I wanted to shake him by his silk lapels. “And I suppose I owe you an explanation. After you hear it, you’ll owe me an apology.”

“After I hear it,” I said.

“John came by to see me last night. Called up from the front desk as though there’d never been a falling out between us. As though we were back in New York in the old days and he’d stopped by to discuss our next project.”

“And you let him up?”

“Yes. I was pretty low last night, Scotty. Low and lonely. Hank gone. You off somewhere.” He looked up to see how guilty I felt over that and let it drop. “I remembered Hank urging me to talk to John, to reconcile with him. I thought I owed it to Hank to try.

“I was shocked to see how John had aged, and flattered to realize how much my small gesture meant to him. I understood for the first time that his misjudgments at RKO had hurt him more than they’d hurt me, in part because I’d been too self-obsessed to forgive him.”

“Luckily for Whitehead you’ve grown out of that.”

Drury’s professionally shaved cheeks flushed a little. “Luckily for John I haven’t. I still need people around me to affirm my vision through their dedication, as Hank did, and to take me down a peg from time to time when I threaten to become bigger than the vision. Hank did that, too.”

“Whitehead’s a lush. He’s past providing witty byplay.”

“I’m aware of John’s condition. It’s what brought my whole inspiration into focus. I saw that any scheme for redeeming myself and my reputation was doomed to fail if it didn’t include John. We were cast into the wilderness together. We have to come out together. We have to be together to recreate our brief time of success.”

We stared at each other for a while, Drury fidgety and expectant. I was remembering what Drury had called the morning: a play, a farce. That explained his impatience. He was anxious for his reviews.

“What are you thinking?” he finally asked.

“That your dialogue is better than your story.”

Drury pulled the open neck of his pajamas closed against a draft. “Did you stay at the farm last night as you planned?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you take that risk? Why did you wait alone in the dark for the killer to come back and try again? Don’t say it was your job. It was no part of your job. And it wasn’t out of fondness for Hank. You didn’t even like him. His weakness was womanizing, and you couldn’t forgive him for that. So why did you hold your vigil?”

“I promised him I’d watch his back. I let him down.”

“In other words, you did it because you felt you owed Hank and you wanted to make good your debt. There’s no rational way to repay a dead man, so you did something irrational. I’m trying to resolve the same dilemma.”

There was a delicate little nothing of a table within reach of Drury’s throne. It was just big enough to hold a box of his cigars. He helped himself to one while I worked out what he’d tried to tell me.

“You can’t save Hank Shepard,” I said, “so you’re saving Whitehead instead.”

“It’s a way of repaying a small part of my debt to Hank.”

I wondered if we’d finally arrived at the truth. I was tempted to say no sale, to see if Drury would produce yet another, more ingenious explanation, but I’d run out of time. There was a sound on the other side of the sitting room door like a dead branch tapping at a windowpane at midnight. It was Whitehead’s knock.

“Your eleven o’clock appointment has arrived early, Carson,” he said. “Should I ask him to wait?”

“No, John. Send him in. I’ve learned the folly of keeping secrets from Mr. Elliott.”

Eric Faris entered, looking so much like a man being chased that I checked the doorway behind him for a pursuer. No one else came through it, not even the obsequious Whitehead.

“Eric,” Drury said in his familiar way. “What’s the matter? Has the IRS caught up with Mr. Lockard?”

“I’ve come to ask for your help, Mr. Drury.” Faris glanced at me to indicate that he’d take my help, too, and the maid’s, if one was handy. He had the same cornered look I’d seen in Casey Atherley the night before when Gustin had been towering over him. It turned out that the same man was towering over Faris, in a manner of speaking.

“You know Sheriff Gustin,” Faris said to Drury. “You could talk to him for me. He’s asked me to stay in Indiana for the time being. I’d rather not stay. I mean, I can’t stay. I haven’t slept since I heard of the murder–or eaten. I never should have agreed to come out here in the first place. Mr. Lockard insisted that I look after your loan personally, but I’m not the man for the job. I’m an accountant by training, not a …”

He left us wondering what he wasn’t. An enforcer? A spy? An agent provocateur?

“A field man?” Drury suggested helpfully. Faris’s panic had brought back his high spirits. “What would Mr. Lockard say if you were to desert your post?”

“I intend to resign as soon as I can get back to Los Angeles. If you would just speak to the sheriff.”

“I’m afraid you’re overestimating my influence with Sheriff Gustin,” Drury said. “I doubt I could get myself or Mr. Elliott or Mr. Whitehead out of Indiana right now. A chair for our guest, Scotty.”

I managed to get one under Faris before he collapsed. Drury was close to collapsing himself, into laughter.

“You’re not the first man to lament a bargain he struck with the devil,” he said. “The only thing I can offer you is some advice that’s helped me over the years: Sit back and enjoy the ride.”