“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Forget it. I’m just glad I got a chance to talk to the cops today. At least they've listed her as a missing person, so if she's taken to a hospital or something and the police are called, they'll know—” Elaine shakes her head, her eyes welling. “Sorry, I can’t bear to think about it.”
“You shouldn’t, Elaine. After all, there’s no sign anything bad happened. Her house was in good order?” I ask. “No indication of anything out of the ordinary?”
“That’s what the cops asked. I told them everything was fine, as far as I could see. You know, dishes in the sink. Bed unmade. Clothes on the floor, but that’s not unexpected. I cleaned it up. As usual.”
Got it. I now know Elaine’s visit was a surprise and, according to her, there were no signs of, as the police would say, foul play. I also have some insight into at least one aspect of their mother/daughter relationship, which sounds pretty normal. Kids are messy. Mothers clean up. But the tension between them runs deeper than just sloppy housekeeping and Elaine’s interference in her daughter’s career. I’m about to ask why she was so against Chelsea taking on the role of Jinx when Donna stands up and clinks a spoon against her glass.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here tonight, Elaine, and I’m looking forward to having Chelsea at my table, too. I’m glad all of you are here. This is a very impromptu meal, so all I have for dessert tonight is ice cream and cookies.”
“Needless to say, the ice cream and cookies are homemade.” I raise my glass to Donna. “Thanks for everything.”
“Stay where you are, everyone,” Dirck says, picking up his plate. “I’m going to help the little lady with the clearing up.”
“That’s John Wayne! You walk and talk just like him." Donna beams at Dirck. “You’re hired, pardner.”
The two of them, ferrying plates and cutlery to the kitchen, push in and out of the swinging door, Dirck carrying on with his John Wayne impression. He may be the most irritating man on earth, but I did a picture with John Wayne and I could swear the Duke has returned from the dead to clear the table. Doug, who once directed Wayne in a cowboy flick, drums his fingers on the table, possibly having similar thoughts to mine.
Elaine checks her cellphone, a worried look in her eyes. “You know, maybe I should get back to Chelsea’s place. She could be there and just not picking up the phone. I keep texting her, but—” She lays the phone on the table, face up, staring at it.
“If you want to go now, I’ll follow you,” Doug says, his voice tender. “I’d like to make sure you get back safely. We don’t have to stay for ice cream.”
“Thanks, Doug. That’s really kind of you, but I’ll be fine.” She picks up her phone and pushes away from the table. “I’m just going to say goodbye to Donna and be on my way.”
“Of course, but I’m still going to see you home.”
“Hold your hats, folks!” The dining room door swings open and Dirck walks in carrying bowls on a tray, followed by Donna holding a platter of cookies. “We’ve got homemade cinnamon ice cream and snickerdoodles!” He sets the tray down on the table and looks at Elaine, who stands up. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m afraid so. Thanks, Donna. This was really nice of you to do.”
“You’re welcome. But why don’t you just stay for some ice cream?” Donna offers her a bowl, but Elaine shakes her head. “I’ll pack up some cookies for you. It won’t take a minute.”
“Well, thanks to Donna,” Dirck says, “it turns out I’m not leaving here. Not anytime soon, anyway.”
“What? Why not?” I glance at Donna, who frowns and looks away.
“Meg, you didn’t tell me that pool house has a guest room above the spiral stairs. It’s the whole top floor! Just needs new light bulbs and the space heater turned on to clear the damp, right, Donna?”
“Well, I guess so. Nobody’s stayed there in years.”
“But if it’s okay with you, I’d really appreciate it. The hotel I was staying in is too expensive and the studio’s not paying for it. I had to check out this afternoon. My luggage is in the trunk of my car. Would you believe it?”
Yes, I would believe it. I stare at Dirck, feeling numb. He had this all figured out. That’s why he showed up uninvited.
“Well, good for you, Dirck. You sure know how to work it.” Elaine puts on her cowboy hat and reaches unsteadily for her bag. “Anyway, I better be going.” She walks out of the dining room without looking back.
As the front door closes behind Elaine, Doug turns to Donna. “I’ll be off, too. I want to make sure she gets home safely. Thanks again. Dinner’s on me next time.”
“Hey, I’ll walk you out, Doug,” Dirck says, heading for the door. “I have to get my stuff from the car.”
Doug hangs back and wraps an arm around my shoulders, whispering in my ear, “I’ll round up a posse and run him out of town, sugar. Hang in there.”
I nod. “If only you could,” I whisper back.
The door closes behind Doug and Dirck. Donna and I remain in the dining room, silence hanging heavy. “I’m really sorry,” she says. “He caught me off guard.”
“Not your fault. He’s good at that. C’mon, I’ll help you clean up. We can have our ice cream in the kitchen.” How can I blame Donna? I snookered her into taking me in as a houseguest, too.
I pick up the tray of ice cream bowls and push through the swinging doors, my mind turning to Dougie. Thanks to him, I know Elaine’s arrival was meant as a surprise, one that Chelsea may not have appreciated. If he’s able to follow Elaine home and walk her to her front door, perhaps he’ll find out even more about the falling out between mother and daughter. Is Elaine the reason behind Chelsea’s disappearance?
I set the tray next to the sink and begin cleaning up. But just as I’m about to close the dishwasher, I hear a sharp sound, rapidly followed by another that sounds like gunfire.
“Meg? Is that fireworks or—?”
I turn to Donna, who looks at me inquiringly, then we both race for the front door.
I run down the slippery steps, past the portico, Donna at my heels. The rain has stopped, but a foggy mist shrouds the grounds below the orchid pavilion. The trunk of Dirck’s car is open, but I catch the dim outline of his body running down the driveway toward the open gate. Fear clutches my throat, hoping nothing’s happened to Dougie.
My cellphone erupts with a noisy buzz, vibrating in my hand. I glance down, see Doug’s name. Donna hurries past me as I pause on the walkway to answer the call.
“Dougie? My God, what’s happened?”
“Down the street. It’s Elaine. I already called nine-one-one.”
I hear the distant sound of a horn blaring, then the scream of sirens approaching from Fire Station 71, located only blocks away on the corner of Sunset Boulevard. “I’m coming!”
I sprint down the driveway, passing Donna, my sandals squishing in the muddy puddles. I almost trip on the embedded metal bar as I run past the gates, then slow up when I turn onto the street. I hear sirens, but can barely make out the fire engine on the other side of a cascade of water shooting into the air. The plume, a silver streak spouting skyward some thirty feet, almost obscures Elaine’s green sedan tipped up against a fire hydrant.
Fearing the worst for Elaine, I raise my cellphone and record a sweeping video, catching glimpses of her car in the pulsing waves of water. I arc the camera up to catch the cascade against the black velvet sky, then dip and pan back across the street. Shooting video at a time like this may seem callous, but some instinct tells me these first moments may be important.
I zoom in, picking up Dirck waving to me. He calls out and I lower my phone, trying to catch his words. I can’t hear him above the noise of shrieking sirens and gushing water. I cross the street to avoid the blowing spray and dash along the sidewalk to a stand of trees. A handful of neighbors have come out, some with umbrellas, to stand under the sheltering branches of a native oak tree. An SUV skids around the wall of wate
r, gains traction, then comes to a stop on the far side of the hydrant, blocked by the fire truck and two squad cars.
I spot Doug standing partly concealed behind a pickup parked across the street from Elaine’s car. He’s soaked to the skin, hanging on to the rim of the truck bed for support. I crouch down and run to join him, sprinting through water lashing the pavement. I shield my eyes from the thick spray, trying to get a closer look at the car.
“Can you see her? Did she get out?” I shout.
Doug shakes his head, his eyes on the car. His arm encircles my shoulders, the sodden sleeve of his safari jacket clinging to my soaked jersey.
“Drunk. She was drunk,” I mutter, staring at the sedan shuddering under the pounding water pressure. “We shouldn’t have let her drive!” I cover my eyes with my hands, the image of Elaine’s tear-stained face haunting me. I picture her reaching unsteadily for her handbag, then heading for the front door. “Why didn’t we stop her?”
Doug’s hand squeezes my arm, kneading the flesh below my shoulder. I know he must be thinking the same thing. We shouldn’t have let her drive.
For long minutes, we watch firefighters in helmets and heavy black gear and paramedics in yellow vinyl coveralls and boots struggle to wrest the car off the curb. Once the hydrant is shut down, the cascade of water quickly diminishes. Through the throng of emergency workers, I catch glimpses of Elaine slumped over the wheel.
Donna and Dirck move in next to us. “Not looking good,” Dirck says, shaking his head slowly.
“She shouldn’t have been driving,” Donna whispers, tears welling. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her leave in that condition.”
“We’re all to blame,” I say, mentally counting the glasses of wine she drank, beginning with happy hour at Gilligan’s. But then the loud cracking sounds we heard reverberate in my mind. “Maybe she struck something and had a flat tire. You know, lost control. What’d you see, Doug?”
“Just the sedan plowing into the fire hydrant, then all hell broke loose with the water. Could’ve been a flat tire, I guess. When I turned onto the street, all I saw was the sedan swerving, then sort of cruising up the street.” He looks down at the ground as though trying to recall something else. “It had to be an accident. A terrible accident.”
“I heard some loud backfire sounds,” Dirck says. “Maybe something was wrong with the car.”
“I’ve got to find out how she is,” Donna says, breaking away from us. She dashes across the street toward paramedics wheeling an empty stretcher to the sedan.
I follow. Before Donna gets within ten feet of the car, a young, ruddy-faced police officer blocks her. “Whoa, there, ma’am.”
“She was my dinner guest,” Donna protests. “I want to know how she is.”
“Elaine was a friend of ours, Officer,” I say, stepping up. “We just spent the evening together. Is she going to be all right?”
“Could you move over there, please,” he says brusquely.
Dirck and Doug join us as we’re all herded to the side of the fire truck. Two other vehicles pull up, both with emergency lights flashing. A short, stocky African-American woman climbs out of the first car and stands for a moment, surveying the activity around the sedan. A tall, wiry man, cameras slung around his neck, jumps out of the second unmarked car, leaving its lights flashing, and joins her. The two exchange a few words before he starts taking pictures of Elaine, still slumped over the wheel. I follow his movements as he photographs her being removed from the car and lifted onto the stretcher. Her face and chest are bloody, her chamois jacket streaming dark red in the headlights of a squad car.
I turn back to the officer. “Please, we’re friends. We know her. If those are detectives over there, could you ask if we could speak to them? We want to know if she’s alive.”
He looks around, then nods. “Wait here, please. Don’t move. We’ll likely want information from you.”
The officer moves a few steps away to speak to the detectives, an older man with a thick chest and steel-gray crew cut who is conferring with the female detective. The male detective listens to the officer, looks over at us and nods, then turns back to watch as EMTs load Elaine’s stretcher into the paramedics’ van. The doors close and the red van speeds off, sirens blaring, in the direction of Sunset Boulevard.
“She’s alive,” Dirck says. “If they’re taking her to the hospital, she’s alive.”
“You’re right. She’s alive,” the older man says, approaching. “I’m Detective McCauley, West Los Angeles Police Department. You know the driver of this vehicle?”
“Yes,” I volunteer. “Elaine Farris Horne. She lives in Indiana and just arrived in town today. She was here to visit her daughter.”
He looks around. “Her daughter is here?”
“No, unfortunately she’s missing. We’ve been trying to locate her.”
“Did any of you witness what happened?”
“I saw her car hit the fire hydrant,” Doug says. “It could’ve been a flat tire that sent the car swerving. The road was slick, too. It just seemed to happen in slow motion.”
“How far away were you?”
“I’d just pulled out of that driveway down there”—he turns to indicate the open gates to Donna’s place—“and saw her car veer to the right. That’s my car parked at the curb.”
“You didn’t see anyone else in the vicinity? No other cars? People on foot?”
Doug shakes his head. “No. Nothing. There was some light up ahead, but it was hard to see in the mist. Where did they take her? UCLA?”
“Yes. Did you notice anything else?”
“We heard some loud sounds. Could’ve been backfire,” Dirck says.
“We could hear it up at the house,” Donna says. “Like fireworks or gunfire.”
“Yes, two loud shots,” I say. “It sounded like gunfire.”
He nods to the younger officer. “Officer Ragon is going to take down your names and contact information. You’ll all be available in case we need to talk to you?”
“Wait, why? What’s going on?” Dirck asks. “I’m going to be around, but why do you need to talk to us?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have let her drive,” Donna interrupts, her voice rising. “I mean, she seemed fine, but—”
“Donna, let’s leave it at that, okay?” I turn to the officer. “Elaine was upset about her daughter. She was probably fatigued from traveling, but there was no reason to think she’d have an accident like this.”
“Nothing happened? A few drinks too many? An argument, maybe?”
“What? No! It was a nice dinner,” Donna says. “Why would you think that?”
“This wasn’t an accident.” He looks at each of us in turn. “Your friend was shot.”
Chapter Nine
I wake up to a world that got a whole lot more complicated overnight. Listening to the early morning chorus of chirping birds, I feel no thrill at the start of a new day. My eyes are gritty from lack of sleep, but I’m wide-awake. I sigh and roll onto my back, a heavy weight settling on my chest as I recall the events of last night.
In the stunned silence that followed the news that Elaine had been shot, Detective McCauley departed. While we provided Officer Ragon with our contact information, Detective McCauley walked swiftly toward a newly arrived black van from which a middle-aged woman, heavyset, with cropped gray hair, had emerged.
As Officer Ragon led us back behind a police barrier, I glanced over my shoulder to see curious onlookers gathered in small groups behind a yellow-taped perimeter. I snapped pictures with my cellphone, then took video of Detective McCauley conferring with the middle-aged woman, who appeared to be taking charge. She glanced our way, her eyes on me. I put down my cellphone. She turned back to Detective McCauley and shook her head slowly. A sick feeling settled in my stomach.
Turning to Doug, I whispered, “I don’t think Elaine made it.”
“That’s what I’m guessing,” Doug said. “Seems like we’ve got homicide in
vestigators arriving. This is a crime scene,” he mumbled. “Looks awfully damn familiar, and we’re smack in the middle of it.”
I knew what he meant. The surrounding scene had the look of a night shoot, the sort where the makeup call is in the late afternoon but filming doesn’t begin until after sundown. Holmby Park was the perfect base camp for a production crew shooting in one of the surrounding mansions: It was easy to envision the arc-lit alien encampment of honey wagons that housed dressing rooms parked curbside, their generators churning lustily, next to a string of prop, wardrobe and camera trucks.
How many such scenes, with squad cars, fire trucks and hundreds of extras, had the two of us shot together over the years? Normally Doug would be at the center of the action, calling the shots, not stranded uselessly “smack in the middle of it.” Therein lay a huge difference. This setup was unscripted and he had no control of the action.
Again I had an eerie feeling about what had taken place, that the circumstances behind the shooting were still unfolding. I turned slowly, taking a sweeping panoramic video of the moonlit park and the street where Elaine’s sedan sat crumpled on the pavement. Still recording, I zoomed in on Elaine’s cowboy hat mired in a muddy puddle below the door of the sedan. For once, she wasn’t the stunt double, but the star of the show, and she wasn’t even on set. Alive or not, she was in a hospital three miles west, while the drama was playing out here. Had she known, she would not have been pleased.
It was my turn to give Officer Ragon my name and address. “You can just ditto the address you have for Donna,” I said, and gave him my cellphone number. “We should probably go to the hospital now, okay?”
“Hang on, breaking news,” Dirck said, staring at his own cellphone. He looked up and pointed to a news van, its antenna visible on the other side of one of the fire trucks. “They’re saying an unidentified woman was shot and killed in a drive-by on South Beverly Glen—that’s gotta be Elaine.” He turned to the officer. “They’re saying dead on arrival at UCLA emergency, is that right?”
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