Murder in a Hot Flash

by Marlys Millhiser

  He’d spent the day calling contacts to line up a power attorney who would come in from Salt Lake tomorrow. Edwina had refused to see Mitch when he went to the courthouse and refused to see Charlie when she’d returned from Dead Horse Point. If Charlie was reading her mother’s strange moods right, she’d refuse the power attorney as well. And whatever was screwing up the woman’s head, it had been successfully lodged there before Gordon Cabot’s was split down the middle.

  And to top the day off nicely, Sheriff Sumpter had presented Charlie with a search warrant that would allow an expert somebody to examine Howard’s Jeep and the fold-down trailer for samples. Of what Charlie couldn’t imagine. It had been three days since the murder, the obvious weapon had been found nearby, and half the campground had been in and out of both vehicles. Charlie, at least, would be glad when the lawyer turned up.

  The restaurant nestled along the Colorado River some miles out of town. It had once been a spacious ranch house and against its aging brick the candlelight didn’t seem an affectation.

  They sat at a secluded table next to a window with two-foot-thick casements and dim moonlight enhancing a walled garden outside. A central staircase glowed with polished wood in the soft light. Charlie felt underdressed in jeans and sweatshirt, but everyone was staring at Mitch anyway.

  “You folks decided?” Their young waitress wore a starched organdy dress and apron intended to suggest a Middle European peasant. Mitch asked about a wine list. She’d just recognized him and stood glued to the floor. “Are you him? Wine? Oh.”

  The girl returned with a red face and a thin padded booklet. She wrote down his selection, glancing at the wine list every third letter. “And two glasses?”

  “Well … that’d be nice. Yeah.”

  But instead of bringing it to their table she led them up the shadowy staircase to what had been a small bedroom crowded now with a mahogany bar and mirrored backbar so tall it tilted forward into the room to fit under the ceiling. Which may have been why there were no liquor bottles on its shelves.

  “Rhonda,” the waitress announced to her replica behind the bar, “this is Mr. and Mrs. Mitch Hilsten and they would like a bottle of … Che … of Chat … of wine.” She handed over her order pad so Rhonda could read it herself.

  “And two glasses,” Mitch added, grinning at Charlie.

  Rhonda couldn’t seem to find what he’d ordered but allowed him to choose something else out of cardboard boxes at her feet and explained that, although the wine was a bargain, the glasses were three dollars each. And they wouldn’t be allowed to take them home. Imbibing in Mormon country …

  “From what I could see and with the tree-bushes and rock outcroppings and sand hillocks and dips in the terrain, someone as tall as Scrag or Sid or John B. even could have stood there and had a private conversation with Cabot and not been seen from the camping areas of either film crew,” Charlie told her companion when they and the wine and the two glasses were safely ensconced at their table. “Or heard for that matter. Which means anybody could have done it.” Including you.

  Here sat Charlie Greene in an incredibly romantic setting, the diffused light making the rich aged wood and burnished copper and hypnotic ice-blue eyes across the table lustrous. Excellent wine. Roast rack of lamb for two on the way. And what were they talking? Murder.

  “Someone who had the time to drop by your mother’s campsite and pick up her ax, don’t forget.”

  “The last time I saw her use it was to split wood to make a cooking fire to burn our dinner, which we were trying to eat when Cabot came back from the shoot.” Charlie rubbed her forehead and around her eyes. “So that means somebody swiped the ax after Edwina and I left the table.”

  “Here’s to the freeing of Edwina Greene,” he said in that gentle, personal voice he’d used on whichever young-blonde-of-the-year-now-long-forgotten in Spy of Wall Street, right after he’d made love to her and just before he shot her. And raised his rental glass to clink with hers.

  The funny part about all this was, he didn’t know the funny part. That this was all unnecessary—the ambiance thing. He didn’t know guilt was Charlie’s chief aphrodisiac. Mitch didn’t know that simply being within a two-hundred-mile radius of Edwina automatically made Charlie feel guilty.

  Here was the sexiest man on earth, and possibly an ax murderer, coming on to her, and he didn’t have a clue to the fact his chances of going to bed alone tonight were right up there with the Pope enforcing birth control. It was even, for Charlie, that particular time of the month she called horny (Edwina would have called it estrus or something) that Charlie so rarely had the chance to satisfy. No man would have been especially safe tonight, but this guy was dead meat.

  The cream of asparagus soup arrived in its own tureen, fragrant with subtle herbs, naughty with real cream, garnished with crisp raw asparagus tips.

  “How well do you know Scrag Dickens?”

  “Well enough to know his real name’s Norman something. Good man with a guitar.” Mitch shrugged. “Sort of a film bum—as in ski bum. Used to teach. When I arrived at John B.’s for dinner the night in question, Scrag was already there.”

  “And who else?”

  “Everybody but you and John B. He was one of the last off the set, came in with the generator truck.”

  “It has to have been one of Cabot’s crew. Dean Goodacre, the helicopter pilot, says they were all out there for the big tour-bus scene.” Even though I saw you act like you wanted to kill him that morning. And Sid too. But you were the most menacing.

  When he had cut a section of lamb ribs, he lifted them over to her plate before she could pass it and then held his arms and the knife toward her in that threatening position. “You make a good detective, you know? You suspect everyone. Even me.” He withdrew finally to serve himself. “You may be complex, Charlie, but you’re not inscrutable.”

  Great, he’d probably read her plans for the rest of his evening on her face too. Not that it would save him.

  “Do you know anything about Mick Sensenbrenner?”

  “I know he was the latest chump they had working that dog. His agent’s Marty Sheldon. He’s divorced, hated Cabot’s guts. But he got fired before Cabot came out on location. He wouldn’t have the guts himself to pick up an ax and kill anybody anyway.”

  “How do you know he didn’t sneak into the campground, grab the ax, and sneak out after he’d killed Cabot? I mean if he hated him that much—”

  “I think that would be stretching it a bit, don’t you?”

  Actually, Charlie did. But it was her mother sitting in a jail cell, not his. “What about the PM, Stan?”

  “Stan Lowenthall. Played poker with him once on the set of Spy of Wall Street. Mean man at cards. Used to have a problem with alcohol. Seems all right now, but that’s probably why he was reduced to working for Cabot. It’s Sid that’s got me confused. This isn’t his kind of pic. Wonder if he’s going to try to pull off a farce, a Mel Brooks or Killer Tomatoes.”

  “He’s halfway there already.” Charlie described the afternoon shoot. “With the right editing it could be campy as hell.” She picked up a rib bone to chew off the last delicate morsel and he did too. “What’s the old scandal on John B. Drake I can remember hearing about but can’t pin down?”

  “Only one I know of was some development scheme years ago. He and Earl Seabaugh and an architect buddy were partners. Earl inherited some prime L.A. property from his dad and they were going to build a bunch of houses on it, make a quick buck. John B. was to be the developer. They lost their shirts. The architect committed suicide.”

  He rubbed the grease off his lips and fingers and sat back to swirl the wine in his glass. “Now it’s your turn to answer some questions. What do you really think is making the creatures go wacko out at the Point? And this time I want an answer.”

  “Probably show biz. You saw what the flyovers did to the rock formations. Why couldn’t they and all the other special effects have upset the rats and bats and what
ever too?”

  “And what do you think that submarine-shaped shadow was over the generator truck? Swamp gas?”

  “Maybe there’s such a thing as desert gas. It was very nebulous. If I hadn’t been looking for something I probably wouldn’t have seen it. Could have been something on the clip itself or on the camera lens.”

  “Do you ever question the company line, Charlie? Question numbers and statistics, supposedly known facts?”

  What, the business I’m in? Are you kidding? But she said, “Like, I don’t believe in flying saucers if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  He hadn’t believed in UFOs either until a few years ago when recurring dreams started reminding him of an incident during childhood. Charlie drew in a deep regretful breath redolent of garlic, rosemary, fresh-ground pepper, and mint sauce. She sighed it out and listened politely, nodded at decent intervals, keeping a stick-straight face. With somebody like this you never know when your leg’s being pulled.

  It seems that when Mitch was about twelve he went missing from the family summer cabin in northern Michigan and his parents feared he’d drowned in the lake. By the time he was discovered the next morning wandering beside it the sheriff, divers, and dogs were on the scene.

  “To this day, my dad doesn’t believe my story that I was fishing off a dock as it was getting dark and the next I knew I was standing in the woods without my fishing pole and dog and it was morning. Never saw that dog again.”

  Years later the dreams began about the dog. And about a pillar of green light that cast no shadow and didn’t illuminate anything around it. And in subsequent dreams about being handled by someone he couldn’t see, being prodded and poked, answering questions he couldn’t remember being asked.

  “Those dreams nearly fried me, Charlie. I was in the middle of a shooting schedule and a divorce.”

  Why me, Lord? “So what did you do?”

  “Spilled the whole stupid business to a friend on the set—we were in northern Africa—and he started talking nonsense about aliens and even gave me a reading list. I laughed it off but the dreams grew worse and when I got home I took the list to a few bookstores and libraries.” From his reading, Mitch Hilsten learned he was not alone in his misery and confusion.

  “So you think creatures from billions of light-years away come to earth to steal dogs and fishing poles and terrorize children?”

  “No, Charlie, I think they’re here and always have been. I think they live here too. And I’m not sure they know or care what they’re doing to people like me. That’s the frightening thing about all this.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on the table, expressive hands trying to convey what a controlled face seemed reluctant to mirror. Several times people approached tentatively with pens and notepads or napkins but turned away when he ignored them.

  “What I’m saying, Charlie, is that all these stories of strange sightings and happenings that have been going on since recorded history and probably before that and all over the planet—all of them can’t be wrong. All those people can’t be deluded kooks.”

  I don’t know why not. Charlie still held out hope there was a punchline coming here.

  “And how many more are there like me who once had something traumatic happen to them they don’t remember?”

  “You think these beings come from another dimension and just happen to cross over into ours now and then?” Charlie signaled their waitress for a refill of coffee. Hey, you oughta see the stuff that crosses my desk. It’s a lot better than this.

  What he was pitching here was tired science fiction you couldn’t give away these days.

  “Look, there’s a lot of garbage out there I don’t believe,” Mitch said. “But mixed up in all that, there’s some fact too. You have to separate them.”

  “Okay, separate them. Tell me some of the things you don’t believe in.”

  “I don’t believe in little green men. In fact I don’t think they’re men, maybe not even solid. Maybe merely energy of some kind. That’s why they don’t have to follow our laws of physics.” Sun and smile creases, a mole, a few shaving errors looked just fine on this man. “And giant rats looking for waste-disposal planets … women taken on board flying saucers and raped on examining tables … you know. That’s fantasy stuff.” He placed a credit card on the tray without glancing at the check.

  “I give up. I can’t tell when you’re serious or not,” Charlie admitted in the parking lot. “You do realize it doesn’t really matter?”

  The moon was fully up now, its light cold and blue and sullen. Across the road the river rolled massive and bloated, moon sparkles outlining eddies along its sides, young cottonwood leaves clattering and whispering above.

  Mitch Hilsten turned up his chin and the collar of his sheepskin, his eyes locked on hers. He sighed long and stoically. “Guess a woman’s gotta do … what a woman’s gotta do.”

  Chapter 15

  Charlie lay in the smelly room in the too-small bed, needing a shower again, and blinked smears off stuck contacts to watch the dirty curtains brighten with daylight.

  Edwina was right. After all the years of fighting to reject it, it was agonizing to have to admit it but there must be something wrong with Charlie’s genes. Maybe she should try to look up her birth mother.

  Oh really? What if she’s working the streets? Wouldn’t that just make your day? Even worse, what if she’s psychic?

  She’d be too old to work the streets and there are no such things as psychics.

  And if she is or was a hooker? How do you tell Libby?

  “There’s nothing casual about sex,” she’d warned Libby again and again. “Not for the woman.”

  “You oughta know, UM,” was Libby’s standard reply.

  “You always give away something of yourself that you can never get back.”

  And here Charlie had slipped between the sheets as casually as a bimbo on a daytime soap, given something of herself, something irretrievable.

  Oh, get a grip, you knew exactly what was going to happen the minute you saw him frying your eggs at Dead Horse Point.

  Edwina probably knew it too.

  Careful with that, you’re going to get yourself worked up again. The guy needs his rest.

  Mitch Hilsten didn’t snore, he whistled.

  The whistle turned to a snort when the phone rang. He reached across Charlie’s chest for it before his eyes were open but she already had it in one hand and the other clamped over his mouth.

  “Richard?” Charlie sat up, losing the sheet but still muzzling Mitch. “What are you doing up this early? How’d you know where to find me?”

  “Called Larry the Kid, he’d talked to your lawyer-neighbor-lady. Listen, babe, I’m real sorry about your mother, but don’t forget you also got a daughter and a mortgage and a normal load of shit. And you need your job. And your agency is having major trouble here.” Richard Morse had a way of verbally transferring ownership of the agency to his employees when he deemed the prospect of unemployment could save it from some threat and then taking it back when all was safe. This time, Charlie feared even “downsizing” couldn’t save Congdon and Morse Representation, Inc.

  “Eric Ashton’s dropping Phantom of the Alpine Tunnel.”

  “Like a hot bagel,” her boss said. “And we both know what that means.”

  The rumors had been rife. Ashton was not a Congdon and Morse client, but his costar, Cyndi Seagal, was. Cyndi Seagal was also about the last major talent the agency could boast. If this project sank, Cyndi would abandon ship for another agency. And Congdon and Morse and Charlie’s investment in a condo in Long Beach and the career that fed her and her illegitimate ungrateful offspring could be history. Fortunes change quickly anywhere, but in the quicksand of Hollywood, you can’t afford to take time to blink.

  “But listen to me, doll, we can still pull the lox out of the fire.”

  Charlie noticed Mitch’s startled eyes and mouthed, “My boss.” He relaxed under her hand. No problem. But yo
u mess with somebody’s wife, lover, sister, mother, automobile, you can find yourself facing the bore of a gun in this country.

  “I’m a literary agent. I delivered on the book and the screenwriter. I’ve done my part.”

  “We’re in the trades again and for all the wrong reasons again. Right? And all because of you again. You got debts building up to astronomical around here, babe, you don’t want to forget that. I been up all night working this out.”

  “Richard, will you get to the point?”

  “I’m also reading that Mitch Hilsten is working the documentary your mother was playing expert on. You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I didn’t know that. Not till I got here.”

  “Charlie, you’re always telling me he’s your matinee idol.” Richard used dated expressions because most of their clients worked for things like false-teeth-glue commercials.

  “So?”

  “So, if you can talk to him … or … get him off in a cozy corner … you know. He’d be great for the train engineer’s part. Hilsten in the picture, Seagal stays. And, Charlie, with the two of them Jack Nicholson is going to take another look at the villain role. Think about it. I know you’re over thirty. But you don’t look it. And there’s a lot at stake here.”

  “Richard, are you suggesting—”

  “Hey, times are tough all round, you know? I mean you don’t have to … but you could … well … use your imagination … Charlie, if you’ve already got the hots for him—what’s it gonna hurt? Congdon and Morse is counting on you. What can I say?”

  “You can say good-bye.”

  Charlie was in the shower trying to cool off when the phone rang again. She yelled at Mitch not to answer it. What if it was Libby and a man answered this early in the day? Or Edwina calling from jail? Or good old Sheriff Sumpter—Jesus.

  But it stopped after one ring and she figured the damage was already done. She’d managed to finish rinsing the shampoo out of her hair when he pulled the curtain aside to join her and steal the hot water. “You answered it, didn’t you?”