“Duncan, you moron…” Walker screamed.
Marva turned, grinning as she brandished both guns.
“We don’t need guns now, Walker,” said Duncan. “We’ve got the letters. It’s all over. You can let Luci go, too.” He moved toward the house and leafed through the letters under the porch light. “Thank you, Marva. Walker’s been beside himself…. Oh, my God, do you suppose this is true about President Reagan?”
Walker leaned on the car, clutching his wounded arm. “Marvin, you pervert bastard! You had those letters all along? Luci said she was getting them from somebody—it was you?”
Marva dismissed him with a cold look and turned back to Duncan.
“Duncan, baby, don’t let Miss Thing over there give you any more shit. Those are yours. Bought and paid for. You do whatever you want with them. Give me my twenty thou and we’re done. A deal’s a deal.”
“A deal?” Walker exploded. “You’re going to pay this blackmailing drag queen for stuff I already paid for? I told you I’d take care of it.”
“Oh, sure. You took care of it, Walker,” Marva said, keeping both guns on him. “You didn’t even bother to get the letters from Toby after you killed him.”
“I did not kill Toby Roarke!”
Walker’s voice boomed as he supported himself on the car’s hood. “I own over a hundred guns. Why would I kill somebody with a sissy frying pan? Besides, Duncan will tell you—I was here all last night.”
“That’s right,” Duncan said. “We had a little dinner party with some of the network news crew who were here for the grape protest. Walker was here the whole time. Marva, can we go inside and be civilized? I’ll get your money.”
Marva motioned for everybody to go back to the house.
Duncan took Donna’s arm and eyed her ruined dress. “I’m sorry about your dress, honey. Walker can be so awful, can’t he?”
I hated to go back into the house I’d just escaped from. But Marva had the power right now.
“Yes. Walker is awful,” Marva said, menacing the men with the big Colt. “He’s also a liar.” She ushered us into the den. “So Walker—where the hell is Luci? Did you kill her too?”
Walker collapsed in the big chair, clutching his arm.
“Marvin, I did not kill anybody. That bitch Luci said she was in contact with somebody who had the letters. She wanted two hundred thousand. No way was I going to let her extort that after I’d already paid once. For totally bogus shit. I’ve never seen those letters before. They’ve got to be some kind of crazy forgery.”
“And that’s why you killed her?”
“Would anyone like a quick cup of coffee before you go?” said Duncan, putting on an absurd perfect-host smile.
“Totally!” said Donna. “Can I have mine with nonfat milk?”
“No, we wouldn’t,” Marva said, stifling her with a look. “And we wouldn’t like you to go call the cops or get more guns. Just show me the money, Duncan. Sorry, Walker. He wanted to keep it a secret from you. He said you wouldn’t pay one more penny after what you gave Toby.”
She stood by the doorway, wielding a gun in each hand—looking like an old-time, two-gun cowboy, except, of course, for her extraordinary cleavage and the purse in the crook of her elbow.
“I don’t care how many network flunkies you hired to provide an alibi, we all know Walker killed Toby.”
Walker sprang to his feet. “I did not kill anybody!” He took two steps toward Marva. It was hard to believe he wasn’t the murderer, since he looked as if he might kill us all with his bare hands. “They’ve got the real murderer in custody, over at the Rancho.”
Marva snorted.
“Walker’s telling the truth,” I said, in a tea party voice. “Silas Ryder was just on the phone with Alberto. Apparently they have a confession. It was one of those Viboras after all.”
“Oh, right,” Donna said, plopping down on the couch. “Some gang kids walk into a fancy-ass resort, without anybody noticing, and murder Ernesto. And instead of tagging the place, they get all cute and make it look like a suicide. Then they sneak in the next night and bonk some geezer with a frying pan, even though they’ve all got, like, guns up the wazoo. And the third night they break into Luci’s locked hotel room and kidnap her—and don’t ask for ransom! And they don’t touch that bitch’s brand new two-thousand dollar boots or the collectible handbag. But they take the time to go through my manuscript and throw it all over the room. Oh, yeah. Gangbangers do that stuff all the time. They don’t give a shit about money.”
Marva laughed.
“Right. So why don’t you admit it, Walker? You killed all of them. You knew that hotel inside and out. All its weird little secret passages. Because you worked for Hank Boggs way back when. I’m sure you learned how to sneak in and out of that place just like I did. So why don’t you tell us where you dumped Luci’s remains?”
Walker gave a raspy laugh. “You always did live in fantasyland, Marvin.” His grin looked grotesque in the firelight. “And Luci’s fine—sort of. She shouldn’t have lied and told me she had all the damned letters when she only had three. I only wanted to search the room. It would have been slick, since there’s that door from the servant’s wing that leads onto her balcony. I could have just sneaked in and out. But she sat in that room forever, painting her damned fingernails. I only found the three letters and she wouldn’t tell me where the rest were.”
“But she didn’t know, because I had them.” Marva was savoring this. “I promised Duncan I’d get them and I did.”
“Well, the one thing I knew about Luci is she lies a lot. So I brought her here for a little persuasion.” Walker grinned his feral grin. “Then she lied again and told me Donna had the letters and was asking a hundred thousand for them.”
Donna wailed. “Liar is right! She is such a bitch. I asked her for a hundred thousand for my novel advance, not some stupid letters. And it’s totally worth it. It would make such a great movie. It’s totally right for Leo DiCaprio.”
Duncan harrumphed. “But it’s all over now! Everything is fine. It’s time to forgive and forget.” He opened the folder Marva had given him, took out a letter, crumpled it and tossed it into the fire. “The important thing is the Sheriff has somebody in custody for both deaths, and Luci will be fine. This little episode is over.”
Walker clutched his wounded arm. Marva stood in the doorway, her guns trained on him. Nothing seemed fine to those two.
“I couldn’t care less about Luci,” Marva said, “But if she’s still alive, I suggest you keep her that way, because nobody’s going to believe that gangbangers fairy story two times in a row.”
Duncan threw another batch of letters into the fireplace. We all watched the flames in silence.
But I kept wondering: if Walker had done the killings—which Marva obviously believed—what was all that gang nonsense about? Why did Alberto tell Silas a gangster had confessed?
Duncan looked mesmerized by the fire. “What about those other folders you found in that cabin, Walker? Do they have forged nonsense in them, too? Let’s get rid of everything and have done with this whole nasty business.”
Walker opened an ancient roll-top desk and took out two more gold folders.
“You want to burn Under Deadwood by Mitzi Boggs Bailey? Or Blue Rage, a novel by M. J. Zukowski?” He started to toss them in the fire.
“No!” I sprang to save the manuscripts. “Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s play? And Rick’s book! You stole them—why?”
Walker lasered me with an angry glare.
“You know perfectly well, Miss Oh-So-Innocent. You’re the one who had the letters all along. You gave the letters to Mitzi Boggs when she came to Plant Smith’s cabin the night that kid got shot. That’s why they weren’t there. Toby said the letters had to be in that cabin—because Ernie stole them to give to Smith and get back at Toby. But I searched that place from top to bottom the next night after the cops left. All I found was poor old Mitzi’s cowboy play. You must have switched t
hem the night the kid died, because the cops were there the rest of the time. I don’t know why, but I know you did it.”
He tossed the folders to me with a sneer.
Truth dawned as I remembered that night. Plant trying to zip his trousers. Mitzi coming over with her play and then taking it back. I must have given her the wrong folder. There must have been two: one with her play and the other with Ernesto’s forgeries and all the other blackmail stuff he’d stolen from Toby. Maybe he had intended to confess to Plant. It was so tragic.
“I didn’t do it on purpose! All the folders look alike.” I stared helplessly at the yellowed pages of Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s play as I realized what had happened. “Detective Fiscalini kept accusing me of violating his crime scene, but that was you looking for Toby’s folder, wasn’t it? Then you snuck into my cabin, pretending to be headless—still looking for the letters?
Walker glared at the fire. “Yeah. I broke in and took the folder. I tried to look like a headless ghost for Mitzi’s benefit. I thought it was her asleep in that cabin—it had been hers the night before. But all I got for my trouble was that drivel written by Captain Road Rage. Plus a bump on my head from a flying shoe.” He gingerly touched the bruise on his forehead.
“You thought putting up your collar and slinking around would make me believe you were a dead bandito?” I was not going to let him know his ridiculous ploy almost worked.
“It was Mitzi’s cabin, for God’s sake,” Walker said. “The collar thing had worked on her before. But why the shell game, Dr. Manners?”
He moved closer to me. I could see blood dripping from the sleeve of his wounded arm. He wasn’t clutching it now. In fact, his good hand hung limply at his side. Was something wrong with that one, too?
“Have you and Marvin been working together all along?” He took another step toward my chair.
“Of course not. I only met her when she broke into my room and started rummaging in my luggage…” I turned to Marva. “How did you know I had the folder? Mitzi only gave it to me right before dinner.”
“Don’t I know it! I was hiding under the old lady’s bed the whole damned time. I knew the letters must be in her room, because she had Ernesto’s Oscar Wilde stuff that had been in the same folder. I heard about her giving the Oscar Wilde forgery to Plant Smith. The maids must have packed that folder in with her stuff when they moved her from the cabin up to the Hacienda.”
“So you were Mitzi’s ghost that last time—the one she thought put the folder in her chifforobe?”
Donna sighed. “Can we stop talking about ghosts? I’m tired of the stupid ghosts.”
Marva ignored her. “Yeah. Only I was there to steal it. But she gave it to you. Mitzi moving around from room to room sure did make for one crazy shell game.”
“And you have a Burberry coat? In the fawn plaid?”
“Of course. Just like you wore at that fundraiser when you had that photo in People Magazine.” Marva turned to Duncan. “Hon, you want to get a move-on with my twenty thou? I want to get the hell out of Dodge.”
Walker seemed to be moving closer to me. I wanted to get out of there too. The man terrified me more than any ghost.
Marva waved her gun at him. “Walker, why don’t you help Duncan get my money. After that, you can deal with these two idiots any way you want.”
I felt my throat close. Marva was going to take the money and run.
And leave us here. With a couple of dangerous lunatics.
Chapter 31—DEAD WOMEN TELL NO TALES
I tried to keep my expression calm as I watched Duncan unlock a drawer of the old desk and pull out a fat envelope that looked stuffed with cash. Keeping her guns on Walker, Marva indicated to Duncan that he should drop the money into her faux Fendi spybag.
“You’re just going to fucking leave us here? I don’t think so.” Donna jumped up and exploded in fury at Marva. “Do you know how much I paid for this dress? I deserve a cut of that.” She lunged at Marva, trying to take the envelope from her purse.
Marva elbowed Donna in the stomach, flinging her back toward the couch.
Donna grunted and Marva looked the tiniest bit apologetic. “You do not ever want to come at me like that, girlfriend. Special Forces training.”
That was when Walker made his move. He had a dagger-shaped letter opener in his good hand. He grabbed Marva from behind, with the dagger-point at her throat. Blood dripped from his gunshot wound, but he had the strength to grip her, pinning her arms.
“Drop the weapons, Marvin. Drop them on the floor now.”
The guns made an awful clatter as they dropped on the slate floor.
“Pick them up, Duncan, for God’s sake,” Walker said. “Do something useful for once in your life.”
Duncan picked them up slowly, keeping clear of Marva’s big feet. He hung onto the bigger gun and handed the other to Walker.
Walker let go of Marva, weighing the little silver and black gun in his good hand as he pointed it at Marva.
“A Kimber Eclipse. Nice little weapon, Marvin.” He turned to Duncan with a condescending smile. “Now this is the kind of handgun you should have bought, Duncan. Not a big cannon like that King Cobra.”
“I liked that gun!” Duncan said. “I don’t know why you had to throw it inside Plant Smith’s car. Nobody was going to believe he’d own a gun like that.”
“You threw a gun into Plant’s car?” I said. Just when things started to make sense, they fell apart again. “Why would anybody do that?”
Walker turned on Duncan in fury. “You see what you’ve done, you moron? You just told them. You told them what you did. Now we’ll have to kill them.”
Marva stood by the door, rubbing her throat, her expression unreadable. Donna glared at the door, as if expecting to guilt-trip it into producing a deus ex machina.
Donna turned to Duncan with a bratty whine. “Come on guys, I don’t have a clue what anybody did to anybody, and I don’t know shit about guns. Let me call a cab. That rental car of Marva’s isn’t going anywhere with your damned bullet holes in the tires.”
Duncan gave a sort of whimper. “See. They don’t know anything.”
Walker looked at me and then at Marva. “These two—they’ll figure it out. Why would you try to incriminate Plant Smith if you didn’t do anything, huh?”
Donna was still trying. “So why don’t you take us down to the Saloon?” she said. “We’ve got a car down there, if you’ll give me back those keys you stole. We’ll forget all about this. What happens in gay-cowboy-land stays in gay-cowboy-land, okay? I’m cool with that.”
Walker just growled. It looked as if his arm was giving him a lot of pain.
“About that keychain, Donna,” I couldn’t let this pass. “How could you walk away with it? You knew my cash and cards were in there.” I clutched the manuscripts to my chest, trying to sound calm.
“I didn’t steal your keys on purpose, for God’s sake,” Donna said. “You think I wanted to come up here? Like I’d choose to hook up with a useless geezer when I had a chance to make it with Jonathan Kahn? Do you have any idea what one spot on The Real Story could do for my career? Walker said he had a gun and he’d shoot me if I didn’t go with him.”
“Don’t count on Kahn,” said Marva. “You’d think in all those years, the Doctor would have taught him some manners, but from what I can see, he doesn’t have any.” She gave me a thin smile. “Some men just need discipline.”
“That’s it!” Walker shouted. “Everybody into the kitchen.” He stuck the gun in Marva’s ribs. “Now! Come on, Dr. Manners.” He grabbed my shoulder with his bloody hand.
Duncan whimpered. “Don’t! Walker, please. You know I hate violence.”
“You should have thought about that before you shot that Mexican boy’s head off, Duncan. Nobody would have to die if you’d just keep your road rage under control.” Walker herded us down a hallway hung with gorgeous Navaho weavings.
The room went dead quiet. Marva turned on Duncan.
Duncan looked exasperated.
“I did not mean to kill that boy. I thought he was the guy driving a Ferrari forty miles an hour while he gabbed on the damned cell phone. A goddam kid. Owning a car like that, and not even appreciating it. When I saw him get out of that Ferrari, I just saw red. It’s illegal you know, driving with one of those infernal telephones.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a death penalty offense.” Marva said.
“Especially when the wrong guy got executed.” Walker gave a surreal chuckle as he ushered us down the hall. “Duncan killed the wrong guy. He just told me Plantagenet Smith was the one driving and dialing. Ernie only brought the car down the hill for him.”
“Shut up! Shut up all of you.” Duncan said. “Nobody has to know. The police say a gang killed the Mexican kid and that’s that.” He stopped as he noticed the blood on Walker’s hand. “Walker, your blood is dripping everywhere. Maybe we should get you to a doctor…”
Walker gave him a sneer and shoved Marva with his good arm.
“Get going, you three. Into the kitchen.”
I marched ahead, my head pounding. After the dimly lit den, the kitchen light nearly blinded me. Light gleamed from polished granite and stainless steel.
“Walker, please?” Duncan dabbed at the blood on Walker’s hand with a kitchen rag. “At least let the girls go? They haven’t done anything. Donna’s a little selfish, and Dr. Manners isn’t the sharpest fork in the place setting, but they don’t deserve to die…”
“Everybody deserves to die. It’s the price of being alive,” Walker said. “It’s either their time or ours, Duncan.”
“But it would be such a waste.” Duncan gave a let’s-be-reasonable smile. “If you shoot them, we’d have to throw away another gun. Do you want to lose this fabulous Smith and Wesson 500? They’re back-ordered at least two years…”
Walker gripped the smaller pistol with his good hand.
Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky Page 24
