Hoodwink

by Rhonda Roberts

  ‘And …’ I said, ‘Obsidian Shield took the throne, united the two kingdoms by marrying Orchid Rain, and everyone flourished.’

  Susan smiled in reminiscence. ‘Audiences would stand up and cheer at the end.’

  Nothing like a good bloodbath to lead to Happy Ever After …

  ‘And the ceiba tree — the one you have throughout the house — does that fit into Obsidian Shield’s story?’ I asked.

  That damned crawly thing was on everything.

  ‘The ceiba’s a huge tree that forms the top of the jungle canopy. It’s the Mayan symbol for renewal, for vigour … for hope. Anyway, the ceiba tree is the symbol for Obsidian Shield too … it always follows his name.’

  Hmm. ‘So Crimson Dawn was a huge success?’ It was a fair guess. You don’t build an edifice to a failure.

  ‘It was the box-office miracle of the decade … until Gone with the Wind, of course,’ she said dismissively. ‘As a result, Louis B. Mayer personally asked Earl to join MGM.’

  ‘Wasn’t Gone with the Wind the film Mr Curtis was directing when he went missing?’

  ‘Yes, Mayer loaned Earl out for that one picture … and now everyone wonders what he could’ve done with it.’ Susan’s bitterness was palpable. ‘My husband spent only six weeks working on it. But even so, film schools still study the tiny fragments of his work that managed to survive David O. Selznick’s purge.’ The last words were spat out.

  Selznick was the head of the studio that made Gone with the Wind. Why would he destroy Earl’s work?

  I frowned. ‘What exactly did Selznick purge?’

  ‘After Earl disappeared Selznick got rid of everything that didn’t fit in with that banal little bijou he hurried out to pay off his creditors.’ Contempt dripped off her words like bile. ‘Earl would’ve made Gone with the Wind say something truly unique, given people a new way of seeing the Civil War!’

  Hmm. I shot her an assessing look. I needed more concrete information than nostalgic ramblings and ‘what ifs’.

  ‘So, Mrs Curtis, what do you know about the day your husband went missing?’

  ‘Earl had spent the day on set at the Selznick studios in Culver City. Shelby took you there this morning, didn’t he? It’s now called Heron Studios, I believe. He never made it home.’

  Now for the punch line. ‘Do you have any idea who may’ve wanted to do this to your husband? Who put him in that cement?’

  A furtive thought skittered behind her faded eyes. ‘I thought I did … before.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I sat up. ‘Do you know who killed your husband? I was told there were no leads …’

  Half the time victims are killed by people they know … and for obvious reasons!

  ‘I thought I did.’

  ‘What!’ Why was this case like pulling teeth? First Shelby Bloom and now my client …

  Susan shook her head, as though to clear it. ‘But no, I was wrong all those years.’ She clutched her brow. ‘It has to be someone else …’

  I leant forward, trying to convince. ‘Mrs Curtis, the LAPD have no suspects at all. If anyone would have a reasonable idea it must be you.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ The thought terrified her. ‘I can’t live with myself. I can’t live with the thought that …’ She was distraught.

  ‘What thought?’ I didn’t want to push but had to.

  ‘I … I really don’t know who killed him or why.’ Susan spoke with the depth of desperation that only long-held grief can give. ‘But I need answers now, while I can still do something about them. The police don’t want to have anything to do with the case. I know they’re stalling. They say it was too long ago … But I have to know what happened to my husband. I demand to know what happened to him!’

  Susan reached out blindly to clasp the bronze foot of the warrior woman above her. ‘That’s why I asked for you, Kannon. That’s why I picked you to go back there for me.’

  ‘Mrs Curtis, I’m sorry but I’m only a private investigator. You do understand that I can’t bring your husband back to you? And I can’t strike back at the person who harmed him? I can only find out what happened …’

  Susan dismissed my words. ‘I know you will do what it takes, Kannon. Not like the police. Not like those other investigators.’

  ‘You mean Melnick and Klaasen?’

  ‘Yes, them,’ she scoffed. ‘Shelby gave me their profiles too … Cold, hard, ambitious men … Ordinary men. It had to be you. There was never any question who to send. The other investigators would do their job, but you …’

  Susan’s eyes glinted. ‘You’ll go beyond that, Kannon. You will find the whole truth for me. You’ve already proven you have the guts to do whatever it takes.’

  Susan was raving about what happened last year, before I started the training program …

  Like my client, my personal life had been spread across the media. My mother, Victoria Dupree, was a National Time Administration Marshal. She’d been abducted while on a mission in ancient Rome and I went back to get her.

  People had died in that search. I nearly had too.

  ‘Mrs Curtis, you mustn’t confuse our situations. I can’t …’

  ‘But you will do it,’ said Susan with total conviction. ‘You’ll go that extra mile. No matter who it leads you to. No matter who is hurt by it.’

  I had last year.

  My search for Victoria had revealed a high level conspiracy in the NTA itself. And I’d charged in, not counting any cost.

  ‘Kannon, I lost my husband a lifetime ago. A lifetime of hope and waiting. You’ve been through this too … You know what this means.’

  I did. I certainly did.

  ‘I know your story, Kannon. You were kidnapped when you were two years old to stall a case your mother was working on. You were taken to Australia and left to die. It took you twenty years to find your way back here. When you turned up again, the same man who kidnapped you tried to dispose of you and your mother one last time.’

  Susan smiled wolfishly. ‘But you still saved your mother and now that man is dead. Isn’t he?’

  ‘I’m not an assassin, Mrs Curtis. I won’t go back and kill your husband’s murderer for you.’

  ‘You never know what you’re capable of, my dear, until life backs you into a corner.’

  She was wrong. Unfortunately I knew exactly what I was capable of … I’d taken two lives on that rescue mission. I had my mother back, but some dark nights I still saw their faces.

  Susan stared into my eyes, hard. ‘I have motor neurone disease, Kannon. Do you know what that means?’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘My nervous system is breaking down. First my muscles will go and then I’ll be unable to even sit up. I will lie in my bed and wait for the rest to come. Eventually I will be unable to breathe by myself and I’ll be on a respirator.’

  Claustrophobia rolled over me.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Curtis …’ I wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how.

  ‘I’ll be a prisoner in my own body, Kannon, slowly slipping into a coma. With any luck I will die sooner rather than later.’

  She was describing my worst nightmare. Trapped, unable to move or breathe.

  ‘Kannon, you know how that feels already, don’t you?’ Susan implored me. ‘When you’d served your purpose the kidnappers left you in a cave to die. You were two years old and they tied your hands and feet to a noose around your neck. But that hiker found you and you were resuscitated.’

  Oh God …

  Susan clutched my hands. ‘Kannon, I will go into that same darkness choking on the plastic tube down my throat, knowing that I will never come out alive.’ She collapsed forward, sobbing. ‘But I can’t face it without knowing why Earl never came home to me.’

  I shifted over to hold her.

  Susan started to rock. ‘I can’t. I just can’t …’

  I held her tight.

  ‘But you see … I know you were sent to me.’ Her eyes had glazed over.

  ‘Wha
t are you talking about?’

  ‘Kannon.’ This time she said my name in the traditional Japanese way. ‘The Goddess of Compassion … she who hears all cries for help. The Goddess has sent you to save me.’

  ‘Mrs Curtis, I can’t save anyone … Susan, are you all right?’

  Susan had gone way beyond any words of explanation. She’d started to hyperventilate … sucking in great whooping breaths, but to no avail.

  I ran for the door. ‘Mrs Hutch!’

  The housekeeper arrived and, after taking one look at Mrs Curtis, hammered the buzzer on the armrest of the wheelchair.

  A uniformed nurse raced into the room and took control. I stood back and let them do their stuff. They stabilised Susan then wheeled her out of the room.

  I stood in the hall and watched them take her away, helpless …

  6

  TROY

  Troy was outside in the Mayan sculpture garden.

  I couldn’t make myself leave without checking on him. He’d looked as though he’d been cut adrift and was sinking fast.

  Descending the stone stairs I got a good view of the garden. Sure, it was spectacular, but it wasn’t my personal choice for a place to relax in the sun.

  Giant snarling heads ground tiny humans into lunchmeat, stone priests sacrificed screaming victims, reptilian gods clothed in writhing serpents bellowed at the sky …

  In the middle of all that stone gore, Troy was sprawled on a cheap plastic and aluminium lounge chair next to a matching folding table. A battered blue-and-white foam esky, full of beer and ice, stood next to the chair and a pile of crushed beer cans was next to that. Mismatching sandals sat under the table and a blaring mini TV sat on top of it.

  An episode of some 1960s sci-fi series flickered across the screen. A stocky blond man in a futuristic space uniform was blasting a reptile-like alien with a laser as they played chasings around a Hollywood backlot mocked up to look like a rocky desert.

  Troy gave me a strangely vulnerable welcome and flicked the TV off. It was as though he was glad of company … any company. He grabbed a fresh beer to cover the awkward moment, offering me one as he did. I refused.

  A house full of treasures inside and Susan’s great-grandson was making himself comfortable outside … right in the middle of his own little trash heap.

  What had happened to this boy?

  ‘Did you speak to Suzie?’ His voice was tentative, his eyes unsure.

  ‘Yes.’

  Troy played with his beer, now too shy to demand answers.

  He offered me the lounge chair but I declined. We ended up sitting together on the low wall running next to the sculpture garden.

  Unlike the genuine artefacts inside, these stone sculptures seemed more like Frank Lloyd Wright’s version of what Mayan statuary would’ve looked like if they’d had the good taste to be guided by him. Okay, there were still the compulsory snarling gods with a grudge against humanity, but on the whole it wasn’t really going to figure in my nightmares.

  That was except for the ancient stone altar that sat in the middle of the arrangement …

  Now that looked real.

  A Mayan priest in full ceremonial headdress knelt on his hands and knees and howled at the sky. In the middle of his back was a cup shaped to receive sacrifice. It was old, not like the other pieces, and from the chips and the stains looked like it’d been used … a lot.

  Why on earth had Earl wanted to live in the middle of all this? And why did Susan still do so?

  My aching feet took my mind off that thought. I glanced at Troy but he was too busy staring into his beer can searching for answers so I kicked my shoes off. I love my job, but I’d been in heels for far too many hours.

  I watched him suck back the rest of his can with professional ease. ‘Troy, why are you sitting out here?’

  He shot an uneasy look over at the house. ‘I don’t like that place. It smells funny and …’ He stopped.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘There’s something wrong with it.’

  Yeah, I certainly agreed with that. It felt like a tomb. But I wasn’t going to share that thought.

  ‘Troy, how are you related to Susan?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a Curtis all right,’ he said, sulky again. ‘My mother was the daughter of Justine Curtis, Earl and Suzie’s only child.’

  That didn’t make sense. With the way Susan was still grieving surely all Earl’s children and grandchildren should’ve been treasured.

  ‘What happened?’

  Troy knew exactly what I meant. ‘Suzie never had time for anything … or anyone … after Earl disappeared.’

  Troy took another swig then realised he’d finished the can. He crushed it and dropped it straight on the ground.

  ‘Not even Justine, Earl’s only child?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said, morose. ‘Mom said Justine killed herself in a car crash when she was twenty. Drunk, I guess. My mom survived, she was in the back seat … she was three years old.’

  He reached for another beer and ripped it open.

  The drinking age in Australia was eighteen but it wasn’t here. Didn’t anyone care what Troy was doing to himself?

  I grabbed the fresh beer out of his hand and stuck it on the ground between my bare feet.

  He didn’t protest, just gave me that same vulnerable look again.

  ‘What happened then, Troy?’

  ‘Suzie shuffled Mom around boarding schools until she was my age, then Mom ran away with my dad. He left us a few years later …’ Troy gazed at the beer can longingly. ‘I grew up in Tampa and stayed there with Mom until she died three years ago.’

  Dear God … Troy was well on the way to sloppy drunk before lunchtime … and with that kind of background what hope did he have?

  ‘What about Susan? Didn’t you know about her?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know she was still alive. Mom never told me much. I think something happened between her and Suzie before she ran away … but I don’t know what.’

  ‘So how did you end up back here?’

  Troy looked away. His voice thick with anger, he said, ‘The lawyers arrived the week after Mom died.’ He swung back to me, his grey eyes blazing. ‘Why couldn’t they’ve come before … when they could’ve put her in a proper hospital?’

  For a brief moment you could see the bitter man Troy would become … a drunken casualty of his family’s miserable past.

  ‘Is that why you warned me that people die around Susan?’

  He nodded.

  Hmm. This really didn’t fit with Susan’s quest for Earl. Or did it?

  Leonard Brewster said Susan had kept Ceiba House exactly the same as the day Earl disappeared. Was Susan so obsessively hanging onto the past that she couldn’t tolerate any change … even if that change was a growing child?

  ‘Do you think you’ll find out who killed Earl?’ asked Troy. ‘Can you do that for sure?’

  I checked his face; he really wanted to know.

  ‘Why do you care about that, Troy? It sounds like you have plenty of reason to not give a damn.’

  ‘If Suzie finally knows what happened, maybe she can let him go … maybe Suzie can start living again.’ He ducked his head and studied his filthy toes. ‘I want to get to know her … she’s all I have left.’

  Poor Troy. He was sitting out here alone in this horrible garden waiting for his closest surviving relative to wake up and notice him.

  ‘You really think it’s going to make that much difference?’

  ‘If that doesn’t work, there’s nothing else …’ His voice held no hope. ‘I don’t know how else to get through to her …’

  Oh God, what was going to happen to Troy if Susan died before she opened up?

  This kid needed my help … more than even Susan! She’d chosen to waste her life and others had paid. This boy had been born into the mess that her obsession had caused.

  My flight was due so I had to leave Troy sitting there … alone with his TV and the stone heads. But
I was going to have a talk with Shelby Bloom … Troy getting help with his drinking was going to be a precondition for me taking the case.

  Troy had to be alive for my findings to do him any good.

  I slid my shoes back on and then took all his beer.

  Mrs Hutch was waiting for me inside; she must’ve been watching us. She sniffed at the esky I was carrying, but I didn’t trust her enough to give it to her. I’d dispose of it myself.

  ‘Miss Dupree, I found out about the painting as you asked. I rang Mr Bloom’s secretary, Ursula. She knows everything about the artwork in this house. She has to deal with the insurance company.’

  ‘When did the painting arrive?’

  ‘The August after Mr Curtis went missing.’

  ‘Okay. Do you know when it was commissioned?’

  ‘March 1939 … two months before Mr Curtis died.’

  ‘And you say Mr Curtis knew Alphonse Dada?’

  ‘Mr Curtis met him the same week he commissioned the painting … on the trip he made to Paris in March 1939. I’ve heard Mrs Curtis say that Dada kept in touch with Mr Curtis after that … that they were going to work together on a film project.’

  Hmm …

  ‘Thank you for that. But I want another look at the painting.’

  I followed her back up the hall and into the red alcove.

  The Dada stared back at me. The mountain melting into a mirror reflecting a man with a chest of drawers in his face …

  I leant in to focus on the feminine eyes staring out of the open drawer.

  The woman had strange irises. There was something painted inside them.

  ‘Do you have a magnifying glass?’

  Mrs Hutch gave me a blank look, then said, ‘Oh yes, Mr Curtis had one he used for his collection.’

  The magnifying glass showed they weren’t irises. They were silver mirrors and a face was reflected back out at me …

  I knew that twin image. It was Earl Curtis.

  But here he wore a Mayan priest’s feathered headdress.