Cast the First Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  “Can you tell us whose phone number you found in his pocket?” This was Gene Duerson asking the question.

  “We’re not divulging that information yet,” he answered. “When it’s time, we’ll share that with all you boys.” Then his gaze fell on me. He made a show of correcting himself. “Sorry. We’ll share it with all you boys and girl.”

  The group of reporters broke up and, mumbling among themselves, wandered off to scribble their notes or find a phone to call their editors. I smiled at Gene and congratulated him on his question.

  He shrugged it off. “Just making sure we still have our advantage.”

  “Who’s that man over there?” interrupted Andy. “The one with the dog. He’s been staring at you for the last five minutes.”

  I followed Andy’s gaze and located a solitary figure holding a leash. A brownish terrier of some kind was sitting obediently at his heel, waterlogged and quite unhappy to be there. The man was tall and thin, hard to gauge his age under his rain hat, but I figured him to be in his late forties. Even from a distance, I thought I recognized the profile. I excused myself and made my way over to him.

  “I thought it might be you,” he said with a broad smile of protruding teeth a size or two too large for his mouth. “But then I thought it was impossible.”

  Memory is a complex faculty. We remember information that we need, storing it in handy little bins that we can access in an instant. Other, older memories are also within reach. Proust made a name for himself with that stuff. But it’s the rest of the disposable data we process that can prove tricky. I remember our family telephone number from when I was a child, but the license number of my first car in New Holland escapes me. I don’t need it anymore, and its importance doesn’t qualify it for space in my memory. And so the sudden appearance of a man I’d met in the Adirondacks the previous summer should have presented a challenge. But I knew him instantly. It didn’t hurt that he and his beautiful consort, notorious wife-swappers, had wanted to share with me activities that I normally enjoy à deux.

  “Oh, my,” I uttered. “Nelson Blanchard.”

  “What on earth are you doing here, Ellie?”

  I recalled that he and his wife, Lucia, had a home in the Hollywood Hills, but this meeting was a coincidence.

  “I’m in Los Angeles to interview a hometown boy who’s landed a role in a movie.”

  “And you thought you’d look in on Bertram Wallis?”

  “He was the producer of the film,” I told him. “And now my subject’s run off somewhere. No one knows where.”

  “I heard the reports about Wallis on the radio this morning. What a terrible story.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Nelson Blanchard shook his head. “Not well. I saw him from time to time at a party or on a studio lot. And walking his dog, too. His little pug, Leon, and our Pablito are friends.” He tugged on the leash to indicate the dog.

  We chatted for a while under the rain about Wallis, then Blanchard’s wife, Lucia. He told me she was well, prepping to star in his chef-d’œuvre, The Scarlett Lady. Yes, two Ts. And he used the word chef-d’œuvre, too. He’d told me all about it the previous summer. Nelson Blanchard had bragged that Brigitte Bardot wanted the part of Scarlett, but that role was reserved for his beautiful Lucia. I had my doubts that the picture would ever get made, but Nelson assured me it was going to happen.

  “Why don’t you join us for dinner this evening?” he said once we’d hit a lull in the conversation. “We live just over there.” He pointed farther up the canyon to the next road. “Astral Drive. It’s actually quite close. Just a five minutes’ walk from here.”

  I thought about begging off, but, in the end, I didn’t have any other plans for the evening. I didn’t know anyone in Los Angeles besides my new friends Andy and Gene, and I wasn’t quite ready to chum up with them yet. And though the Blanchards and I had locked horns the previous summer—I’d briefly suspected them of pushing two men off a cliff—all had ended well. Shared experiences like murder tend to forge a bond among people.

  Struggling with the wind to hold my umbrella in place over my head, I jotted down the address. The rain nearly washed it away as soon as I’d written it in my pad. We agreed that I’d join them at eight.

  No sooner had I made the date with Nelson, Andy invited me to join him and Gene for supper. I explained the situation and made a date with them for breakfast in the morning instead.

  “Hody’s? Really?” asked Gene.

  “Is that not a good place?”

  “It’s fine,” said Andy. “A nice family restaurant.”

  “I hope you reserved weeks in advance,” said Gene.

  “I’ll have the photos by then,” I said, feeling like a rube. “If the picture of the license plate comes out, Gene, you can ask your pal at Motor Vehicles to trace it.”

  I climbed into my car and wrote a list of things I needed to do before dinner with the Blanchards. One, check in with Charlie Reese at the paper; two, call Fadge to see if he’d had any success with Tony Eberle’s father; and three, pick up my prints at Thelan’s Camera Center. I was just considering my options for the headline to my first story when a tap came on the window. I looked up to see Sergeant Millard smiling at me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  What he wanted was a date. It took me a few minutes to figure out that his offer to answer my questions was no more than a ploy to worm his way into my car. With me a captive audience, he turned on the charm. After a fashion. He made me uncomfortable, even as he was trying to be nice. He never quite crossed the limits of propriety, but he toed it, like a bowler flirting with the foul line. It was the predatory look. The smiling crocodile or a tiger. Yes, I might have been wrong about him. Sometimes we misjudge or prejudge people, after all. But more often than not, my first instincts proved correct down the road. I give everyone a fair chance. Character emerges, seeps through the veneers and out from under the closed doors people use to hide their true nature. I don’t ignore the signs.

  “So what do you say about dinner tonight?” he asked. “I’ll pick you up at your hotel.”

  “I’d love to, of course,” I said. “But I have plans this evening with some old friends.”

  Millard frowned. But more than that, he seemed annoyed. As if he’d wasted perfectly good breath on a failed proposition. I’d spurned really nice guys. I’d turned down cads and curs. And most of them took rejection on the chin with magnanimity or, at least, with some dignity. But Sergeant John Millard resented me for having said no. His pique simmered just below the surface. I could sense it, smell it in the close confines of my rented Chevy 150. At length he managed to force a smile onto his lips. I thought he might be able to provide useful information on the investigation, so, despite my better judgment, I told him I’d be free the following evening.

  His wolfish smile returned, along with my regrets. He told me he’d call for me at my hotel around five thirty.

  “I’ll take you to a real nice place,” he said.

  I returned to the McCadden and greeted my pal Marty, who was matching wits with the ancient desk clerk, Mr. Cromartie, in a pitched battle of Chinese checkers. I watched them for a moment.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to get for you, Miss Stone?” asked Marty after a triple jump over his somnolent opponent’s pieces.

  I thanked him and said no, then made my way upstairs to make my long-distance calls. I dictated a story to Norma Geary over the phone, but not before scolding her for being in the office after seven. She insisted that her neighbor was happy to look after her son, Toby, a sweet little boy who suffered from a form of severe mental retardation.

  I wasn’t sure Charlie would publish my story anyway. How would the locals respond to my report that golden boy Tony Eberle had thrown away his big chance at stardom by missing the first day of shooting and getting himself fired from the picture? I left the conclusions vague enough to give the kid the benefit of the doubt, but there was no way to bury the crushing revelation
that, at the eleventh hour, just as success was at hand, Tony Eberle had seen his chance of being a Hollywood heartthrob vanish as quickly and as mysteriously as had he. Norma expressed her disappointment at how the story was playing out. I told her I didn’t make the stuff up. I merely reported it.

  Fadge was next on my list. I gave the operator the number, cringing at the bill I would have to present to Artie Short. If he didn’t accept it, I would be responsible for the transcontinental chitchat with my dear friend.

  “You know I have a business to run,” he said when I asked if he’d managed to pressure Joe Eberle into talking about his son’s childhood friends. “You owe me, El.”

  He wasn’t helping his case. “El” was what my late brother used to call me. I’d grown used to Fadge’s usurping it. But his using that nickname only made him feel more of a brother to me.

  “Just tell me what you’ve got,” I said. “I’ll stand you to a pizza when I get home.”

  “Pizza?” he scoffed. “You owe me a steak dinner at least. That or a ride on the Big Bus of Love.”

  “Big Bus of Love?” I asked. “Steak dinner it is. Now what did Tony’s dad say?”

  Fadge sighed. “I tracked him down at the Bigelow-Shaw Weavers Club. He was drinking at two in the afternoon.”

  “So what did he have to say?”

  “I made friendly with him for a while then asked him the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Did his son have any friends when he was in New Holland.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “I can’t repeat it. But I don’t give up so easily. I poked him in the chest a couple of times and breathed raw onions into his face. I had a burger for lunch. Suddenly he was happy to tell me what I wanted to know.”

  “And that is?”

  “Tony didn’t have a lot of friends in school. His father said the drama club and band didn’t exactly make his boy Mr. Popularity.”

  “So does Tony still have friends or not?” I asked.

  “Seems like no. His dad said Tony was kind of a loner. Only had one close friend in school. From kindergarten through senior year. Some kid who moved away after high school. Said his name was Harper. Mickey Harper.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Nelson Blanchard met me at the door with a toothy kiss on the cheek and a warm hug that nibbled at, but didn’t quite surpass, the edge of acceptable behavior. He took my wet coat and fractured umbrella, stashed them in a closet, and escorted me inside. A large sunken living room opened before us, with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows providing spectacular views of the canyon below, the ridges on the other side to the west, and the twinkling lights of the city to the south. The floor was smooth hardwood painted black. A giant pastel-pink-and-blue Chinese rug anchored the center of the room, where a cream-colored leather sofa and matching chairs had been positioned to afford maximum advantage of the views.

  Lucia Blanchard lounged recumbent on the sofa, back to us, facing the windows, her lithe, tanned arms draped across the cushions like two foulards. Across the room, a fire burned in a modern, clean-lined, sandstone hearth. A lazy terrier—Pablito—lay flat in front of the fire. His eyes shifted to see me, but he never moved his head. Then he went back to soaking in all the heat he could manage.

  Nelson squired me around the furniture to present me to his bride. Eyes shut and decked out in a white silk cheongsam dress with red embroidery, Lucia leaned back against the cushions, motionless, as if in a trance or experiencing some kind of rapture. Or, I suppose, even dead. Her dress was slit up both legs, baring three quarters of each thigh and drawing the attention of whosoever beheld her. In this case, me. Lucia Blanchard understood sexy, that much was obvious. Nelson emitted a feathery cough to rouse her, and she opened her eyes.

  “Ellie,” she purred in her soft Spanish accent. “Qué hermosa que eres. I’m so happy you wandered into Nelson’s web this afternoon. You look lovely.”

  I knew I wasn’t as lovely as she. Not only because the rain had worked its magic on my unruly hair but—let’s face it—mostly because Nature had outdone herself on Lucia in the first place.

  Once Nelson had fixed us all drinks—sake—we sat admiring the stormy evening through the bank of windows.

  “If the rain keeps up like this, Ellie will have to spend the night, isn’t that right, querida?” said Nelson with an eager grin.

  Lucia sighed. “Don’t beg, mi amor. Too desperate. You’ll scare her away.”

  “Is that Bertram Wallis’s house over there?” I asked, rising and crossing to the window to indicate the next hill. Anything to get the subject off Nelson Blanchard’s designs on me.

  He joined me, sipping his glass of sake, and nodded. That was when I noticed for the first time a telescope on a tripod outside on the terrace.

  “Are you two stargazers?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The telescope. Are you an amateur astronomer?”

  Nelson chuckled, exchanged a knowing glance with his wife, and told me that, yes, he did enjoy viewing heavenly bodies.

  “I see. And your neighbors don’t mind having an audience?”

  “Some of them invite it,” said Nelson. “At least they leave their curtains open at the most inopportune times.”

  “And have you ever aimed your telescope at Bertram Wallis’s place?”

  Neither Nelson nor Lucia answered my question. Then I asked them if Wallis had been in the habit of closing his blinds. Nelson just smiled and looked away.

  “I met him once a couple of years ago,” said Lucia from the sofa.

  “What was he like?”

  She shrugged and pouted. “He was a pervert. But there are so many perverts in this town. Nothing unusual about that. I remember he liked to take pictures. And movies sometimes. Especially of the beautiful young boys.”

  “What kind of photos?” I asked.

  “Nudes, pairs, trios. Everything.”

  “Blue movies?” I asked.

  “Pornography. Why not call it what it is?”

  “At night sometimes we would see flashbulbs going off through his window,” added Nelson. “That’s when we knew he was taking pictures. Too dark to see anything from here, though.”

  Not even with your telescope? I thought, throwing Nelson a naughty grin. He actually had the nerve to blush.

  “Have you seen anything going on over there recently?” I asked. “Say, in the past few days?”

  “There was that party he threw the other night. Monday, I think,” said Nelson.

  “Who throws parties on a Monday night?”

  Nelson gave me a knowing look. “Every day was a holiday for Bertram Wallis.”

  “You know,” said Lucia, finally pushing herself off the sofa to join us at the window, “the canyon is intimate enough that we can often hear what’s going on, even from the other side. Sounds bounce off the hills if the wind is right. Not when it’s raining, of course.”

  “What kind of sounds have you heard?”

  “You can imagine,” said Nelson. “Laughter, music, shouting, and the occasional achievement of ecstasy. . . .”

  “You know there was angry shouting the other night,” added Lucia. “You were fast asleep, mi amor. But there was a loud argument.”

  “Was that Monday? The night of the party?” I asked.

  Lucia nodded. “More like Tuesday morning. Probably around three.”

  I put some thoughts in order. The police believed Wallis died sometime between two and ten Tuesday morning. Now Lucia was telling me she’d heard an argument of some kind from across the canyon at about 3:00 a.m. And what did all that mean in light of the late-night trip up Nichols Canyon taken by Mickey and—I assumed—Tony and April? That had occurred Wednesday night after ten, at least forty hours after the loud argument Lucia had heard coming from Wallis’s house. Did that bode well for Tony’s innocence? Not necessarily, I thought. The three friends might have been heading back to Wallis’s place to retrieve or cover up some bit of damning evidence. Perhaps even t
o throw his already dead body over the terrace. Such a theory was premature. I had to remind myself to take things slowly. Still, the Rambler’s presence so close to Wallis’s house troubled me. I could think of no reason for the three to be in that neighborhood at that hour if not to visit Bertram Wallis’s house.

  “If you really want to know what goes on over there, you should talk to our neighbor Trudy Hirshland,” said Nelson, rousing me from my thoughts. “I’m merely a hobbyist. She’s a true voyeur. A pro. Watches day and night, old pervert.”

  Pot calling the kettle black, I thought. And inside a glass house, to boot.

  “She’s a widow of about sixty. You can see her place over there,” he said, pointing to the north. “Just below us on Nichols Canyon Road.”

  The road descended the ridge, twisting and turning around curves on its journey down the hill. I had to squeeze against the window to see the house, given the angles and orientation of the Blanchard place. Wallis’s house was in between, and the three houses formed a crooked triangle on the side of the hill.

  “Do you think she might have seen or heard something that night?” I asked. “Or some other night?”

  “I don’t know about that. But she’s your best bet. She spends her nights watching. An insomniac. Or she’s nocturnal and sleeps during the day. A vampire.”

  “Why don’t you pay her a visit and find out for yourself?” said Lucia. “She loves to gossip. She’ll tell you everything she knows. About us, too.”

  Lucia gazed at her husband, grinning like a coquette, as she informed me that they didn’t have any blinds on their windows.

  She turned back to face me. “I’m afraid of the dark, you see. And Nelson is a very naughty boy.”

  The evening continued without too much discomfort on my part. The subject turned to the events of the previous August, to the deaths of two men who’d fallen from a cliff above a dangerous diving pool. And we reminisced about other friends from that eventful week in the Adirondack Mountains.