Closely Akin to Murder Page 16

  “I didn’t.”

  “How could she have been there for two years without your knowledge?” I asked.

  “Shall I describe the horror of the daily regime? Up at five in the morning, a breakfast consisting of bread and cold coffee, a fourteen-hour workday, followed by ten hours of listening to water drip and rats scurry across the floor—do you really want the details?”

  I shuddered as the images filled my mind. “No, I get your point. There’s more. After Fran had been back home for five years, she received a letter from you that had such an impact on her that she disappeared.”

  “I told you that I didn’t know Fran’s address in the United States. How could I have mailed a letter to her—care of General Delivery, Phoenix?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “I guess you couldn’t have,” I conceded. “But who could have written it? Who in Acapulco knew Fran’s address in Phoenix? Not Jorge, the limousine driver, and not Santiago, the innkeeper. Both lawyers, possibly, but what was the motive?”

  Ronnie remained silent for a moment, breathing unevenly, then said, “I’d forgotten, but I did write her a letter after I was transferred to a hospital. I asked for her forgiveness, because I never believed I’d make it. All I wrote on the envelope was her name. How or why the letter ended up in Fran’s hands is a mystery to me, too. Perhaps the prison authorities forwarded it to her after I was released and put on a bus to the border.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I had no other theories. “I suppose so.”

  “Fran’s mother has no clue to her current whereabouts?” Ronnie asked with a trace of incredulity. “She didn’t make any effort to find her own daughter?”

  “She may have tried, but she never found her. I can’t think of any way to find her, either. At this point, I’m not even going to suggest you try the private investigator. Fran could be a safari guide in Kenya or a homeroom mother in Dallas.”

  “Her mother has no clues whatsoever?”

  “She claimed she didn’t,” I said, aware that my shrug could not be appreciated in Chicago. “Nor do I. When she left, she had a cashier’s check for four hundred thousand dollars in her purse. That would have gotten her anywhere she wanted to go and allowed her to live however she chose.”

  “Indeed it would,” Ronnie murmured. “If she’s behind this blackmail demand, she’s either very greedy or has decided to destroy me out of malice. You may as well go home, Claire. I’ll find a way to deal with this.”

  I felt a chill similar to that when Caron first told me about Ronnie’s call. “You’re not going to . . . ?”

  “Oh, no, I’ll just comply and see what happens.”

  “A half-million dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Are you suggesting that I ignore the demand?”

  “No,” I said gently, “but you could, you know. The time will come when you’re going to have to face all this, publicly or otherwise. I think people will accept your version and forgive you. Once this dreadful secret is exposed, you can put it behind you.”

  “I killed him, and I can never atone for it. It seems I will pay for my sins in half-million-dollar disbursements. That’s not unjust, is it?” In that I couldn’t pay for my sins in ten-dollar disbursements, I did not respond. “You’ve done everything you can,” she went on. “Go back to Farberville and sell books. I’ll be all right.”

  She hung up. I replaced the receiver and changed into a nightgown, but my newly acquired paperbacks had no allure. Damn it, I thought angrily as I punched pillows with the fury of a demented cartoon character, this was not supposed to be the way it ended. I’d located and interviewed every remaining player in the scenario: Pedro Benavides, Comandante Alvarez, Jorge Farias, and Beatrice Cooper. Others such as Zamora, Santiago, Rogers Cooper, and Ronnie’s parents were unavailable, primarily because they were dead. Chad Warmeyer, Debbie D’Avril, and Fran Pickett had vanished, as had dear old Chico. And now Ronnie had told me to slink home and forget about it.

  “Forget about it” was the hackneyed advice often given to divorcees and grief-stricken widows. It did not sit well in my empty stomach. I rolled around on the bed for a time, then acknowledged at least part of the problem, switched on the lights, and called room service.

  I put on my robe and spread out my notes for the umpteenth time, determined to find some clue lurking within them like one of Ronnie’s viruses: microscopic, but present and still lethal.

  I was eating a hamburger when I found it.

  CHAPTER 12

  The rain had eased up as I drove down Old Madrid Road, but the air was sullen (and frankly, so was I). I pulled in next to Maisie’s convertible. To my surprise, she and Beatrice were sitting in the front seat as if the trailer were a drive-in movie screen. A few beer cans were lined up on the dashboard, and a small cooler was on the seat between them.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked.

  Beatrice shook her head. “No, we’re just sitting, enjoyin’ the cool until the storm hits. We used to bring out folding chairs, but then we realized leather upholstery’s kinder to the butt. Want a beer?”

  I got into the backseat. “No thanks.”

  “Pretzel?” said Maisie, holding up a cellophane bag.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I would have thought you preferred champagne and caviar.”

  Maisie giggled. “I do, but we’re living on Trixie’s Social Security checks and she rules the budget. I’d just as soon kiss a wild pig as have to explain that I’d spent grocery money for champagne. As soon as we’re back on our feet, I’m gonna spend a week in a spa, letting the staff pamper me. Gawd, I can’t remember when I last had a decent massage.”

  Beatrice wiggled around until her back was against the car door and she could see me without twisting her neck. “Around here the massage parlors prefer a male clientele, and you can still find a tavern that refuses to serve wine coolers. It’s getting harder, though. Maisie doesn’t care, but I hanker for the days when BMWs were an oddity on the street and the mountains weren’t hidden by smog.”

  “How long have you been partners?” I asked her.

  “I went into the real estate business not too long after Rogers died. The hardware store was barely breaking even, and I had to keep up the fight to get Frannie out of prison. I married Oliver right out of high school, so I needed a job that didn’t require a college degree or a long training period. I got my license and went to work for a friend of Rogers’s. After Oliver’s estate went through probate, I was able to open my own office. I could have quit working, I guess, but I didn’t want to live off Frannie’s inheritance—and I was having too much fun wheelin’ and dealin’. Maisie came along about the time I decided to open a second office in Tucson. I sent her to a week-long crash course, and after she got her broker’s license, she went down there. That would’ve been . . . oh, twenty-five years ago.”

  “Something like that,” said Maisie. “The Tucson office didn’t do well, so I moved up here after three years. I’m too softhearted to boss people around. Trixie sure as heck isn’t.”

  I eased in for the kill. “That would have been about the time Fran emptied the savings account and left Phoenix, wouldn’t it?”

  Beatrice stiffened. “What does that have to do with it, Claire?”

  “Well,” I drawled, “Fran might not have reacted well if she’d known her most bitter rival for her father’s affection had become best friends with her mother. Freud could have written an entire book about it.”

  “Have you been eating peyote buttons?” Maisie said as she turned around to glare at me as if I were an ill-mannered hitchhiker. “I don’t know who this guy Freud is, but I can assure you I never met Oliver Pickett and nobody’d better be writing any books about me. Trixie got drunk one night and told me what happened in Mexico. That’s all I know about it. Why don’t you pack up your hallucinations and get the hell out of my car!”

  I politely ignored the insinuation that I was unbalanced. “January, February, March, April—and then May. I can take a
stab at doing it in French, but it’s been twenty years since college. Let’s see . . . janvier, fevrier, mars, avril That’s avril as in D’Avril, followed by mai as in Maisie. You two sure are cute when it comes to nicknames. Is ‘Junebug’ next on the list?”

  Maisie grabbed for the door handle, but Beatrice caught her arm and stopped her. “Let’s hear out the rest of Claire’s crazy story. That way she won’t have to keep popping up like a prairie dog. In case you didn’t know, a prairie dog’s no kin to a poodle or a Pekingese. It’s a rat.”

  “Shall I tell you what I know about Debbie D’Avril?” I asked.

  Beatrice opened a beer. “You’re gonna do it anyway, so go ahead before the storm lets rip and the car fills up like a rain barrel.”

  I licked my lips, sorry I’d turned down her earlier offer of a beer. “After Oliver’s death, Debbie returned to Hollywood and made low-budget porn movies until she was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1973. She scraped together enough money to make bail, then disappeared.”

  “So what?” snapped Maisie. “Plenty of people disappear. Go look at milk cartons in the grocery store. That doesn’t mean I’m this missing person. I go by Maisie because my parents named me Maybelline and I got tired of jokes about mascara. The reason I ended up working for Trixie is that I was looking for a job as a secretary. She thought I was bright enough to get my license.”

  “Then you wouldn’t object to having your finger-prints sent to the LAPD? There’s no statute of limitations when someone jumps bail.”

  “What the hell difference does it make?” said Beatrice. “Even if Claire turns you in, the Los Angeles cops aren’t going to bother to have you extradited over an old drug charge. These days they’re too busy with driveby shootings and riots to get all excited about a couple of grams of cocaine.”

  “I won’t turn you in,” I said quickly. “All I want are some answers about what really happened in Acapulco on New Year’s Eve. You were there.”

  “I was there,” Maisie muttered, “but all I know is what I was told. Oliver went to the bungalow and that other girl killed him. Fran helped her throw the body off the balcony. They got caught and confessed.”

  “Let’s back up,” I said. “You knew about the party beforehand, didn’t you? You and Fran had an argument, but for some reason you didn’t tip off Oliver. Why not?”

  “Because I wanted him to see how wild she was. I’d tried to tell him, but he insisted she was just going through a stage. She was smart enough to fool him, but she didn’t fool me.” She looked at Beatrice, who was slumped against the door as if each word had been delivered with a slap. “Come on, Trixie, you and I agreed she shouldn’t visit Oliver and me in Beverly Hills. Sure, he’d order her to sit at home and watch television, but then he’d completely forget she was there and stay out all night, drinking with his celebrity friends at whichever club was the hot spot. When he’d stagger in at dawn, she’d be snuggled in bed with her teddy bear under her arm. I’m the one who found the empty vodka bottles and marijuana seeds in the trash.”

  “You two agreed?” I said. Ex-wives and girlfriends were usually contentious, if not combative. “When was this?”

  Beatrice turned her head toward the trailer. I couldn’t see her face, but her voice was pained. “Oliver initiated the divorce, but I was grateful for the excuse to get out from under his domination. I didn’t care that I got screwed out of a fair settlement; I had my sanity and custody of my daughter. We moved back here because I’d grown up in the area and I had a few friends. One of them introduced me to Rogers. He was a hard worker and a practicing Catholic, and I figured Frannie would warm up to him as time passed. She was eight when the divorce took place, and ten when I married Rogers. Over the next six years, she never stopped begging to visit Oliver. She’d telephone him when I wasn’t home and set it up, and I had to let her go because of the court order. She was always quarrelsome when she had to come home, and hell to live with for weeks afterward.”

  “So Trixie and I would talk on the phone,” Maisie added, “and come up with ways to sabotage the visits. A couple of times I persuaded one of Oliver’s high-powered friends to invite him on a deep-sea fishing trip in Baja or a weekend in Vegas to talk about a project. He was too wrapped up in himself to worry about hurting his daughter’s feelings.”

  Beatrice sighed. “Once I lied to her and said he’d called me at the office to cancel her visit. She cried for three days. Maybe it was cruel, but I did it for her own good.”

  So Beatrice and Maisie had conspired just as Ronnie and Fran had, I thought as I gazed at their profiles in the dim light from the interior of the trailer. I’d been aware that my late husband had dallied with female students, but I’d never called one of them to volunteer his favorite recipes.

  “How did you find out about the party?” I asked Maisie.

  “I slipped the limo driver five bucks every few days. He wasn’t real proud of himself, but he’d tell me what the girls had been doing. They hardly ever made their plans in advance. The New Year’s Eve party was the first chance I had to arrange for Oliver to see for himself what he’d refused to accept.”

  “Did you push him into the swimming pool?”

  She laughed unpleasantly. “I may have nudged him, but it was late in the evening and he was wobbly.”

  “He was terribly vain,” said Beatrice. “He never would have stood around in wet clothes while people snickered at him. We once left a dinner party because I accidentally spilled my drink on his crotch. A very dreary dinner party, I seem to recall.”

  I wasn’t interested in her past social life. “I still want to hear about New Year’s Eve. After Oliver took a taxi to Las Floritas, what did the rest of you do?”

  “Let me think,” Maisie said, purring like a cat with a baby bird between its paws. “Margaret Landonwood lured the boy wonder, Chad Warmeyer, out to the beach and they took what turned out to be a very long moonlight stroll. She was a real knockout, which is the only reason Oliver invited her husband to come to Acapulco.”

  “Arthur didn’t mind?”

  “They had what was called an open marriage back then. As soon as his wife and Chad left, he tried to get me to go upstairs. When I refused, he put the make on a Mexican movie star who was staying at Las Floritas. I suspect he would have preferred her maid; he’d been trying for two weeks to get her to flirt with him. I stayed at the party in case Oliver came back. He didn’t, for obvious reasons, and we took a taxi to the hotel after a couple of hours.”

  “You told the police all of you were together the rest of the night.”

  Maisie moved the rearview mirror and, after squinting at her reflection, realigned an errant curl. “So what? None of us had anything to do with Oliver’s murder.”

  “Weren’t you worried what might happen when Oliver arrived at the bungalow?” I asked. “You and Beatrice both knew he could be violent.”

  “I wasn’t worried because I knew—” She took a beer out of the cooler on the seat and tried to open it. “Ow, I broke a nail.”

  I was too intrigued to sympathize. “Knew what?”

  Beatrice took the beer from her, deftly opened it, and handed it back. “She knew there were other people at the hotel that night,” she said. “The restaurant was booked solid, and not everybody in the bungalows was going out. Oliver might have yelled and stomped around, but Maisie assumed the kids were agile enough to get away from a middle-aged drunk.”

  “That’s right,” Maisie said, nibbling at her broken fingernail. “Besides, I didn’t want to be there and catch a stray fist. We were scheduled to go home in three days, and I had an audition lined up. The last thing I needed was a black eye or swollen lip.”

  I wondered why neither of them seemed to feel that Maisie was responsible for the ensuing chain of events. I would never have forgiven her if Caron had been one of the girls, but Beatrice had sent her to a real estate course, given her an office, and eventually taken her into a partnership. Clearly, she was more charitable than
I.

  Resolving to examine at a later time my otherwise flawless character, I said, “What happened after Oliver’s body was found on the rocks?”

  Maisie grimaced. “Fran got so hysterical she had to be sedated. After Trixie arrived, I was ready to fly home, but then the truth came out and I stayed on for another month to help her deal with the authorities.”

  “What about the other members of the group?” I asked.

  “The girl’s parents couldn’t afford to stay at Las Floritas, so they moved into some crummy hotel down the hill. Chad figured out real quick that he was unemployed and moved to the same place. As far as I know, he was still there when I went back to Los Angeles.”

  “Did you ever see Chad again?”

  “No,” she said without hesitation, “but he was smarter than me. He must have realized he’d never get any decent work in the future. Oliver Pickett was like a god in Hollywood. People in the industry weren’t about to hobnob with anyone linked to his death.”

  Beatrice held out her palm. “It’s starting to rain. We’d better put the top up and go inside, if, of course, Claire’s finished asking questions.”

  In that I could think of no more to ask, I got out of the convertible. “Yes, I’m finished,” I said, then climbed into the rental car and sat for a moment, watching them struggle with the canvas top. They worked well together, perhaps from years of practice or perhaps because they were more like peas in a pod than Beatrice realized.

  I was mulling over what they’d told me as I wound through the labyrinth of streets. Beatrice had been premature in her prediction of imminent rain, but she might have ended the conversation because she’d found it distressing. I certainly had, and puzzling as well.

  As I drove by the model home, I saw a faint glow. It was rather late to be dusting, especially by what appeared to be candlelight. I pulled into the driveway and cut off the engine. I did not, however, go racing into the house to challenge the intruder. A nail file would not protect me from an armed escapee from maximum security.