“Might as well. The situation at your house is under control, and you’re our primary responsibility. I’d like to bring Mick, too; he can help me with any leads we pick up.”
“I can help,” Rae said.
“No. You’re off the investigation as of now. Once that picture is printed you’ll become as much of a target as Ricky and his family.”
“I’m off, but you’ll keep Mick on? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Mick’s expertise is with his computer; he can work in his hotel room. He’s probably left for Pacific Palisades, but I’ll call his cell phone and tell him to get back here.”
“What about that attorney I was going to see?” Rae asked. “Can’t I drive up there and meet—”
“No,” Ricky said. “I don’t want you going to L.A. alone—especially in the Porsche.”
“Jeez, I didn’t drive that badly on the way back from Arizona!”
“It’s got nothing to do with your driving, Red. The Porsche can be recognized by its license plate.”
Rae and I looked at it: COBWEBS.
My brother-in-law grinned sheepishly. “What can I tell you? I was younger, a whole lot more foolish, and my older son talked me into it.”
“What did I do?” Mick came up behind us.
“Hey,” Rae said, “you haven’t left yet.”
“No, I had to make a phone call, so I sat down in a quiet corner of the lobby.” His eyes met his father’s and held there; then he corrected himself. “No, I wanted to make a phone call. To Charlotte. To tell her I miss her.”
Ricky looked back at him for a moment. Mick’s expression defied him to comment. Finally he nodded.
Now Mick picked up on our tension. “What’s wrong here?”
“A photographer greeted us when we came outside,” Ricky told him. “We’ve decided to move up to L.A. tonight. Shar says she can use your help, if you want to come along.”
“… Sure.”
Ricky started to say something else, but hesitated. I sensed he was struggling with the concept that his son was really an adult. Then he shrugged in a way that was characteristic of them both and asked, “Which car’re you using?”
“Chris’s.”
“Also recognizable. Why don’t you let Shar have it and take her rental. That way, you can escort the redhead safely to the hotel in L.A. and keep her out of trouble till I get there.”
Seventeen
The suite Ricky had reserved for Hy and me at the Century Plaza was so opulent that I felt embarrassed. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why some people needed so much luxury while others were starving on the streets. But by the time I was relaxing in silky oiled water in the enormous tub, a glass of excellent Chardonnay to hand, I was getting into it.
Where’s your liberal guilt, McCone?
On hold till tomorrow, thank you.
Adding more hot water, I decided I might as well enjoy myself while I could; given my budget, this state of affairs wasn’t likely to repeat itself in the foreseeable future. Besides, I’d had what Hy would have described as a perfectly hellatious day.
After Mick had collected his things from home and driven away with Rae in my rental car, Ricky packed and checked out of the Sorrento; we then drove in tandem to the estate. Well, in tandem to the freeway, anyway; there he floored the Porsche and left me in its dust. When I got to the house he was leaning on the car in the parking area, a shade anxious, as though he needed my support to enter his own home. And when Charlene greeted us at the door, the San Diego paper in hand, I could feel him bracing for another knock-down-drag-out.
My sister was calm and coolly polite, though. In a low voice she said, “Let’s go to the office,” and led us there. Once inside with the door shut, she handed Ricky the paper and asked, “Have you seen this?”
It was folded open to the entertainment section and the syndicated gossip column, “StarWatch.”
… Has anyone noticed that the title single from Ricky Savage’s upcoming release, Midnight Train to Nowhere, is strangely silent on the nation’s airwaves? What does this mean for the two-time Grammy winner whose albums and singles routinely debut at the top of the charts? In the meantime, Savage has surfaced at an exclusive La Jolla hotel in the company of the mysterious red-head (see yesterday’s column for details), now identified as San Francisco private investigator Rae Kelleher. Additional security? Our sources say Kelleher isn’t there in a professional capacity. Stay tuned for further details as Savage kicks off his Midnight Train tour tomorrow night…
Ricky was tight-lipped as he read the item. “Jesus,” he said. “Charly, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry on my account. It’s the kids we should worry about. So far, neither Chris nor Jamie has seen this. And there’s something else.” She went to the desk, took an envelope from the drawer, and extended it to him.
He opened it and stared down at the single sheet of paper. I crowded next to him for a look.
WHAT H A V E YOU DONE???
Ricky groaned. Using a tissue, I took the note and envelope from him. The writing was the same as on the others, the postmark Los Angeles. “What’s this zip code?” I asked.
He glanced at it. “Substation near the Zenith offices. And Transamerica’s. And any number of other companies and people I know.”
I said to Charlene, “This came in today’s delivery?”
“Yes.”
“Who handled it besides you?”
“The guard who brought the mail up.”
“Dammit! They were told to watch for something like this and bag it so RKI’s lab could go over it. Too late now, I suppose, but I’ll pass it on anyway. Ricky, when’re the band members arriving?”
“Not till two. I need to talk with Charly and spend some time with my girls first.”
“Okay, as far as the band goes, I want to caution you about two things: Do not tell them you’re going up to L.A. tonight, or where you’ll be staying; and under no circumstances are they to come near the house. They’re to be confined to the studio, and I’ll make sure the guards know that.”
“Come on, Shar! You can’t suspect—”
“I can,” I said and told him about the rifle being discovered on the grounds. “Somebody close is being used to get at you. From now on, you can’t trust anybody but your family, Hy, and me.”
“You didn’t mention Rae,” Charlene said.
Oh God, I thought, here we go! “And Rae.”
“I wish one or the other of you had told me she was the redhead when we talked yesterday.”
“Why?” Ricky asked bluntly. “Would it have made any difference?”
For the first time since we’d arrived she looked him directly in the eyes. “Yes, it would have. Shar’s spoken highly of her for years, and Mick’s fond of her. At least I’d’ve known you weren’t involved with another crazy woman. Speaking of whom, I believe you have something to tell me.”
“Yeah,” he said heavily. “Yeah, I do.”
I said, “I’ll leave you two alone now.”
I took my briefcase out by the pool, planning to go over Keim’s fax, but when I got there I found Jamie sprawled on her stomach on a lounge chair, staring morosely at the ground.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down beside her.
She grunted.
“What’s with you?”
“I feel like shit, that’s what.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.” I took out the fax and began reading.
Forrest Curtin: Arrested, Austin, TX, 1988, D & D—sentence suspended; Nashville, TN, 1991, DWI—license revoked; Los Angeles, 1991, possession (cocaine)—charges dropped. Credit report spotty, showing several accounts past due. Owes balance of $460,000 on home, late payments for past two months.
Gerald Jackson: One arrest, San Bernardino, 1993, possession (marijuana)—charges dropped. Credit report clean; has extensive real-estate holdings in Palm Springs (condos) and Orange County (offic
e buildings).
Norman O’Dell: No arrests. Credit report—
Jamie said, “You want to know why I feel like shit?”
I looked up from the fax. “Why?”
“Because my father has run off with your friend Rae and nobody, including you and my mother, seems to care.”
“How’d you find out about Rae?”
“Mick told Chris and me. He said the gossip columns have already gotten hold of it, and he thought we should be prepared. He even likes this woman.”
“She’s a nice person.”
“You would say that. You probably introduced them.”
“Jamie—”
She rolled over and sat up, glaring at me. “You, I’m mad at, but the person I hate is Dad! I’d like to smack his face just like Mom did the other day!”
“So why don’t you?” I asked, hoping to joke her out of her mood. “He could probably use a little slapping around.”
And Ricky chose that inopportune moment to come outside.
Jamie was off the lounge before I could stop her—running at him, her fists flailing. Ricky put up his arms to fend her off, but she evaded them and began pummeling him on the chest. “You bastard!” she yelled. “You rotten bastard!”
One blow caught him on the chin. He grabbed her by the shoulders, pinned her arms. She kicked out, clipping him on the shin, then burst into tears.
He folded her against his chest and let her cry. As he looked at me across her head, I saw tears in his eyes, too. “It’s okay, honey,” he said. “I understand.”
She said something between sobs, but it came out muffled.
“What?”
“I said, it’s not okay. You’re leaving, and I won’t have a father anymore.”
“Oh, honey, I’ll always be your daddy. I’ll always be there for you, you know that.”
“No, you won’t. I know how it works, they all say that and after a while they get married to somebody else and forget their kids.”
He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Look, why don’t we go to your room, talk this over?”
“We can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because then you’ll see what I did to that poster of you.”
“The one where you drew the bone through my nose? I’ve seen that a hundred times.”
“No, you’ll see what I did to it last night—something really horrible.”
“Nothing you could do could be horrible.” He turned her and began walking toward the house. “Come on, we’ll talk, and then I’ll go see your sister.” He looked back at me and added, “Chris is the one who reminds me of you. I hope to God she hasn’t taken up kung fu.”
His attempt at humor saddened me even more than the scene I’d just witnessed. I sighed and went back to my reading.
Norman O’Dell: No arrests. Credit report clean. Owns 200-acre parcel in Santa Barbara County, free of encumbrance.
Peter Sherman: No arrests. Credit report clean. Owes $375,000 on home in Santa Monica. Payment record good.
Virgil Rattray: I couldn’t find anything on him. Either we’ve got the wrong SSN, he’s going by an assumed name, or he’s one of these people who don’t believe in property or credit.
There was more, on Nona Davidson, the other employees at the estate, Linda Toole, and Ricky’s secretary. None of it was surprising or particularly enlightening. I was about to start on the more lengthy material about Ethan Amory and Kurt Girdwood when Charlene came out of the house, wearing a red swimsuit. She waved to me, slipped into the pool, and paddled over to the side, where she propped her arms on the edge.
“How’d your talk go?” I asked.
“Okay. That’s pretty grim stuff, but I wish he’d told me back then.”
“Would it have changed anything?”
“Who can say? Is he talking with Chris and Jamie?”
“Jamie, right now. At least, I hope they’re talking. She lit into him before—physically.”
“Oh, no!”
“I’m afraid I unwittingly provoked her. He handled her well, though.”
“He’s good with the kids, better than I am, actually.” Her gaze turned inward.
I said, “There’s something I need to ask. Has Ethan Amory ever hit on you?”
“Oh, sure. For a while there, it was a weekly occurrence.”
“You never—”
“Of course not. Ethan’s hard to take seriously in the role of seducer.” She began drawing patterns on the poolside tiles with her wet fingers. “Ethan’s not a very sexual person; what he’s into is money and power. For some reason he viewed me as very influential with Ricky, and he wanted to get to me so he could use me to manipulate him.”
“To do what?”
“To go on the road more, to make more and more money. The more Ricky makes, the more legal services he requires, and the bigger Ethan’s fees. And of course with this new label, he’ll get a cut of everything as well. When I refused to play his games, he turned vindictive.”
“How so?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle. Remarks, mainly. Once he deliberately screwed things up so I missed an important industry banquet, then badmouthed me to Ricky because of it. I’ll tell you, Shar, under that southern-gentleman exterior, Ethan’s a nasty piece of work.”
I’d have to look closely at the background Keim had come up with on the attorney—as well as warn Rae to watch out for him. I asked Charlene, “What about Kurt?”
She smiled. “Do you mean, has he come on to me? No way. Kurt’s got a fatherly streak where I’m concerned. Not that he isn’t into the same kind of games as Ethan. He’s a top manager, and certain things go with that territory that aren’t desirable. But Ricky’s been with him for years, and all that time I’ve never felt he was feeding off him like the other parasites.”
“By ‘other parasites’ you mean Ethan and…?”
“Ricky’s booking agent, his producer, his publicist, the people at the label, the concert promoters, the band, Virgil Rattray. They all want their piece of him, and they’re all working in different directions. Sometimes it feels like they’re tearing him apart.”
Her words brought to light yet another facet of my sister’s life. I imagined how lonely she must have felt all those years, how much at the mercy of a huge power- and greed-fueled industry that considered her, her children, and even her talented husband objects to be used and thrown away. And I wished I’d understood long ago, so I could have been there for her.
The melancholy, inward look had returned to her eyes. I asked, “What?”
“Hindsight. At a point like this it’s so easy to see where you went wrong. Remember when I was pregnant with Lisa? You were down here for a convention and I was visiting Ma and Pa. You noticed I wasn’t happy.”
I had a vague recollection of that, but at the time I’d been preoccupied with my brother John’s divorce, to say nothing of a murder that had happened at the convention. “Go on.”
“Well, actually I was miserable. Ricky loves our kids, but after Jamie was born he said maybe we ought to stop at three. I was the one who promoted having more; they were my way of holding onto him. You see, it had worked so well before; he’d go away, but he’d always come back to me. Anyway, after Molly, he really didn’t want another child. When I told him I was pregnant again, he walked out on me. He came back when Lisa was born, and he loves her as much as the others. But I realized he’d come back because of them, not because of me. And that’s when we started drifting apart.”
Their youngest had celebrated her eighth birthday in October. Eight years was a long time to drift.
“It’s ironic,” Charlene added. “For the rest of our lives he’ll be coming back—to the kids, but never to me.” Then she pushed away from the side and began swimming laps in an unhurried crawl.
I watched her for a moment, my sadness deepening. Then I put the fax sheets into my briefcase and went inside.
When I came through the office door I saw that the fax machine ha
d spewed out yet another curl of paper. More information from Keim? No, she would have sent it to the hotel. Probably something for Ricky. I went to check.
WHAT H A V E YOU DONE???
“Oh, Jesus!” I ripped the sheet from the machine, scanned it for the header that would indicate who had sent it. There wasn’t any; all it showed was the number here. Of course—if you didn’t program a name and number into the machine, it couldn’t transmit them.
The fax did convey one bit of information, though: It confirmed that the sender was relying on an insider who knew the machine’s unlisted number.
I put the sheet in my briefcase, took out my address book, and dialed Jenny Gordon’s number in Austin. The private investigator—whom I’d met last year at a meeting of our national association—wasn’t in, but her gravelly smoker’s voice told me to leave a message on the machine. I did, giving both Ricky’s number and that of the Century Plaza in L.A.
Then I sat down at the desk, taking deep breaths in an attempt to reduce my stress level. I’d read about the technique in a magazine—something to do with oxygen putting the brain waves in a relaxation mode and reducing the heart rate. All it did was make me feel lightheaded, powerless, and frustrated. I needed to take action—
Somewhere in my briefcase I had a file where I stored cards and scraps of paper containing phone numbers and addresses. I found it and took out a paper napkin from the Alta Mira Hotel in Sausalito, on which Letta James had scribbled her home number.
Letta answered my call, her vibrant voice unmistakable. “Sharon!” she exclaimed. “How the hell are you? I’ve been following the columns and the grapevine chatter about Ricky. Gawd, what’s going on down there?”
“Too much, but I can’t go into it now. Letta, I called because I need help. Tell me about that syndicated column, ‘StarWatch.’”
“It’s written by three people, all of them assholes. I know folks who would swap their vocal cords for a mention, but not me. And surely not Ricky, poor guy.”
The Broken Promise Land Page 20
