She gave a bitter laugh. “Tell that to the Montrose family of Boston!” She stood abruptly, startling Bunny. She walked to the refrigerator, opened it, stared into its lighted interior. “Bastards don’t rate with people like that!”
“Meg.” I walked to her, turned her to face me, shook her gently. “Don’t do this to yourself. What happened before you were born is no reflection on you.”
“I was so stupid.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I always knew they hadn’t been married, but I thought it was romantic, that they’d been star-crossed lovers, but it was just fucking. That’s all. Fucking!”
I held her close. “Baby, what your parents did has nothing to do with you.”
Her body convulsed, and she gripped me fiercely. “I couldn’t keep seeing Benjamin after Alisz told me that. I couldn’t tell him. He’d have been so disgusted.”
“I don’t think it would have mattered to him.”
“You don’t know what his family is like. Everything in their lives is perfect.” She ended on a note of anguish.
I rocked her back and forth and stroked her hair.
What had Alisz been thinking? Why had she told her? It was that darn Stoic philosophy of hers—she’d told Jared all the harrowing details of her childhood and of her mother’s madness when he was still young. In my opinion, that’s why he’d grown up fading into the background, afraid of life.
I was sure she hadn’t tried to protect him from the details of Hugh’s death, either, grimly determined he’d know the truth. Well, that was her son, and, I guess, her right to do with him as she saw fit, but how dare Alisz do this to Meg! Wait’ll I got hold of her. She’d never interfere with my family again. I didn’t care how many years of friendship got blown to smithereens!
“Aunt Liz, I want to find my mother.”
“Oh, Meg, maybe that’s not a good idea.”
“I have to. I want you to hire a private detective.”
“We’ll see. But it’ll have to wait, Meg.”
She shook her head, mouth set in a stubborn line.
Hastily I said, “Until Mother’s stronger.” I’d have to put Meg off. Get to her mother first when she was found. Fix it so she couldn’t do Meg any more harm.
After we’d done the dishes, we sat at the kitchen table to play bridge, but we’d only played a few hands when I trumped Gene’s king after the ace had been played.
He said, “If you’re not going to play to win, there’s no sense playing at all.”
I set my cards down. “Sorry, I can’t concentrate. Why don’t you play three-handed?” I wandered to the living room and stared out into the misty night.
Gene had sent Lofty back out on patrol. He was to check The Bird and Fran’s apartment frequently, make sure nobody got in, but somebody would have to be a fool to try because you could see the lot from the gas pumps, and—
Kirk had seen Victor’s station wagon there last night. What had he been doing?
I went upstairs to my office and called Victor’s house. Jennifer answered.
“May I speak to Victor?” I asked without identifying myself.
The phone went dead.
I redialed.
Jennifer shrieked, “He’s not here, leave me alone, you goddamned whore,” and hung up.
Where would he be? It would be stupid to go looking for a possible killer. Was I being melodramatic? Yesterday I would have thought so, but today—I shivered.
I should find out if Kirk had told Gene about Victor and Fran in the parking lot. If he didn’t know, he surely should, just in case it was relevant.
I went into the kitchen where Gene was shuffling the cards.
I said, “Gene, there’s a little thing I forgot to mention earlier.”
He laid the cards down. His eyes were bloodshot and his voice thick from the cold he was fighting as he said, “God, give me patience.”
“Gene—”
“Oh, get it over with, Nancy Drew. What’s so important?”
“Nothing,” I snapped, and continued on through the kitchen and into the bathroom.
Gene had left his wet clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. His holster and gun hung over the shower door. I’d washed my hands and was reaching for the light switch when it hit me: it wouldn’t be stupid to go looking for Victor if I had a gun. I didn’t believe in guns, but I didn’t believe in sticking my head into a tiger’s mouth just for the view, either.
The revolver looked much larger in my hands than it did against Gene’s chest
I wrapped the gun in a towel, tucked it under my arm, and strolled back through the kitchen. In the hall, I slipped the revolver in the pocket of my jacket. It made me feel lopsided. How did Gene manage it? I guessed you just got used to it, like old Mrs. Ferguson with her goiter.
I tiptoed out the front door and closed it softly. The clouds had rolled past and stars shone as I walked to the community theater. It was dark. I walked slowly down the driveway. Across the street, lights shone from a neighbor’s uncurtained front window. I walked past the theater to the parking lot where Victor’s station wagon stood. What now? Maybe this was a stupid idea. I should swallow my pride and go back and talk to Gene.
As I hesitated near the single cedar tree, the back door of the theater crashed open. Laurel erupted, screaming, “You bastard!”
She was barefoot, wearing a coat, and holding something light-colored in her arms. She turned in the wedge of light from the open door, staggered, dropped a shoe and her pink dress, regained her balance, and shouted, “I hope you fry in hell!”
Victor appeared in the doorway wearing nothing but an unbuttoned red shirt. I glimpsed the appeal he held for women as he raised an arm to brace himself against the doorjamb.
She fell to her knees sobbing.
I eased closer to the tree, glad the parking lot was dark and wishing I’d stayed home.
“I’ve done everything, Victor, everything.” She braced herself with one hand against the sidewalk and looked up at him. “Why isn’t it enough?”
“Second verse, worse than the first,” he said in a singsong.
She folded her arms around herself and rocked on her knees, sobbing harder.
I pressed my hand against my mouth.
Victor sighed loudly. “You’re so boring,” he said, drawing out the r’s. “How do you stand yourself?” He closed the door.
Laurel writhed on the pavement crying so hard she was choking, gasping for air.
If I were Laurel, I’d die if someone saw me. But what if I left and she did something rash?
In the end, we were saved by a couple who’d been out for a stroll and who were drawn by the noise. They gathered up Laurel and her clothes, and took her away with them while I hid behind the cedar tree.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A drop of water fell off a cedar bough and hit my forehead. I swiped it away with the back of my wrist.
Why wasn’t I in bed with the blankets pulled over my head? Because. Mother never had any patience with that answer, but sometimes it was all a person could say.
I went up the steps and through the back door of the theater. Entering the backstage area, brightly lit by work lights, felt like stepping into a play.
Victor, still clad only in his red shirt, sat on a purple velvet throne. The open shirt framed the narrow line of dark hair that ran down his thin chest. His disheveled hair fell forward from its widow’s peak onto his pale forehead.
He looked like a dwarf king under the 30-foot ceiling.
Victor’s slender hand rose to push back his hair. His intense, dark eyes ranged over me. “Ah, most excellent, most sober Liz, come in and let me give you reasons to throw things at me,” he said, waving a vodka bottle.
“How could you treat Laurel that way?”
“Laurel enjoys it. Her problems aren’t my fault, only my burden.” He took a swig from his bottle. “But no more.”
“How can someone as shallow as you arouse such depth of feeling in someone else?”
> He leaned forward, eyebrows raised, speaking in a stage whisper, “Someone with depths can’t believe in my shallows, so they do it to themselves.”
I felt the gun in my pocket. After all the deception of the last few days, his honest words cheered somehow me, and my tone was light when I said, “You are despicable, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
We stared at each other.
“I’ve wondered if you were icy clear through, Liz,” he said. He leaned back, draping his arms over his throne, displaying his rising interest.
Thinking his simple trick of biology would suffer from lack of response, I looked around the cluttered area. Besides Victor’s throne, there were several knee-high toadstools with white stems and bright red and white-spotted tops, a picnic table, and a tree stump with a hinged top. A two-dimensional forest leaned against the walls. Laurel’s pastel scarf lay among their roots.
Undiminished, he watched me wander to a large, free-standing mirror. Black leather pants drooped over the mirror’s frame. As I grasped them, I saw my white face, tousled hair, the dark circles under my eyes. How had he managed to get excited about that?
I tossed his pants into his lap.
Slowly he rose, stepped into them, and zipped up before sitting again. “So the rumors are true. You don’t like men.”
I laughed. “If you feel more comfortable believing that, go ahead.” I dragged one of the toadstools closer to his throne and sat on it.
He offered me the vodka bottle.
I shook my head. “Were you in love with Fran?”
He gulped vodka from the bottle until it jumped from his mouth with a pop of air. “I don’t know how she did it,” he said, pushing the bottle between his knees. “Fran … ” he sighed. He lifted the bottle and drank until it was empty. “I’ve always had a weakness for nasty women.”
He walked over to the tree stump, lifted its latched top, and extracted a half-empty bottle of Chivas. He twisted off the top and drank. “Ugh! Horrid stuff.”
“Why drink it?”
He took another long swallow and offered the bottle to me. “Loosen up.”
I pushed it away. “You and your wife are generous with your substances.”
He laughed. “Bet you’d never had grass before.”
“You’re right.”
“Stupid Jennifer, to give you those brownies. She could have given you the ones she’d made for the kids, instead, but oh, no, impulsive little Jen—”
He swallowed more Scotch and winced. “Is that the reason for this visit? You’re going to press charges against Jennifer? Won’t do you any good. I can just see you in court.”
He took several mincing steps toward the throne and spoke in a high, prissy voice, “Now, Judge, you’ve got to throw the book at this woman because she forced me to eat the devil weed.”
He whirled, his body becoming willowy, fingers raking through his hair, and in an uncanny imitation of Jennifer’s voice he said, “But, your honor, I’m the beleaguered mother of three small boys, spawned by a devious, infernal father, and I can’t be responsible for the fantasies of uptight middle-aged women.” Victor dropped his arm. “You don’t want to go up against Jen.”
“I wasn’t going to, though I’m curious about whether the two of you are dealing drugs.”
He snorted with laughter. “She’s got a little patch in the woods, that’s all.” He glared at me. “What are you thinking? If we deal drugs we must be capable of murder?” He shook his head, his mouth a thin line. “Is your world that black-and-white?”
“Not any more.”
He slumped onto the tree stump. “If you’re not here to complain about Jennifer, what is it you want?”
“I want to know what happened to Fran. You were seen in the parking lot of The Bird last night—”
“This damn town! I’ve gotta get out.”
“To Hollywood?”
“That make you laugh?”
“No.”
He watched me carefully.
I rubbed my left thumbnail. “I understand how restrictive Warfield is.”
He looked around the cavernous space. “This is the only place that’s big enough,” he said, indicating the stage beyond the framing curtains. He laughed, almost a sob, “But look how far from anywhere that matters. Fran understood. She was going to give me a guaranteed boost, a rocket to the stars.” He drank some more.
“What was she going to do?” I whispered.
“She said she could influence that supercilious bastard Andre so he’d give me the introductions I needed.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” He took another swallow.
“Had she already given … had she already used this influence?”
“She kept saying it had to wait till after your play. She wanted to make sure Andre and I were doing our best for you. That stupid play of yours—she treated it like Ibsen.” He shook his head, and his hair flopped over his forehead again. “But she must have started the deal because at the dress rehearsal Andre was friendly for the first time, kidding about me packing my bags.
“And now—” he surged to his feet and glared around him. “God damn it,” he yelled, throwing the bottle at the cardboard trees. The bottle hit them with a dull thud.
“Last night, what did you two—”
“It was nothing. We went down to Portland, had some margaritas, some salsa, danced.” He went up on his toes for a moment, then stomped his feet in a flamenco beat.
“And when you got back?”
“She wouldn’t let me come in, said she had something to do.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Said it was magic.” He hugged himself and swayed back and forth, like Laurel in her agony.
I walked onto the stage and faced the dim rows of seats. Victor had needed Andre and Fran alive. They’d been his ticket out of town. If Jennifer had known, however, and had wanted to hold onto Victor—
I paced back and forth while Victor walked past me and sat on the edge of the stage.
I rubbed my forehead. “Why did Fran try to influence Andre for you? Were you planning to leave town together?”
“She had no interest in Hollywood. It was too big for her, I think. She called it an investment.”
I shook my head. An investment. God, I was tired.
Victor patted the stage next to him.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
“But you haven’t seen the couch in my office.” He twisted to look up at me.
He looked so sad, so diminished.
“Victor, you’ve done a wonderful job with this theater. Why don’t you accept it and enjoy it?”
He hopped down into the area in front of the first row of seats and turned to look at me. “It’s not what I want.”
“But it’s what you’ve got.”
He put his hands up to his face and pressed hard. His voice was tight as he said, “I can’t stand it.”
Silence closed around us until he said softly, “Come into my office, Liz.”
I shook my head, but he wasn’t looking at me. “I can’t, Victor.” I left him in the darkened theater.
I walked home, Gene’s gun banging against my thigh, saw the light was still on in the kitchen and heard the murmur of voices. I circled to the front and sat on the top step of the porch.
Victor was the only person in town I was certain was not guilty of murder.
I had second thoughts about Gene. What if there’d been other, more damning photographs of Gene and Sibyl together? How many had there been in the packet? Maybe seven or eight, but film came in rolls of 12 or more exposures, didn’t it? Or were they prints from a digital camera? No, because there’d been negatives. What would have kept Max from sneaking closer, taking pictures through an open window? So maybe Fran had given Andre just a sampler with the promise of more damaging evidence to come?
Maybe Gene hadn’t harmed me because he needed to get his hands on the pictures and his “oh, shucks” attitud
e toward running for office was all show to disarm me?
I’d sleep with his gun under my pillow tonight, and kick him out bright and early tomorrow.
Kirk came out, his coat over one arm. He cast a huge shadow down the steps as he stood between the porch light and me. “I’m sorry for all you’ve been through,” he said, moving to stand beside me.
I reached up and patted his arm. “Thanks for your help. I’m so glad you were here for Mother and Meg.”
“Is there anything you need?”
I sighed. “If you could turn the clock back—”
He startled me by sitting next to me and putting his arm across my shoulders. It lay heavily.
He pulled some foil folded into a tiny square out of his pocket and held it out to me. “Here’s something that’ll help you sleep if you have trouble tonight.”
“What is it?”
“A couple of sleeping pills.”
“Thanks, but I’ve always relied on chamomile tea.”
“Keep these just in case.” He continued to hold the little square of foil toward me.
I shook my head and stared at his earnest young face. “Kirk, you could get into serious trouble giving out prescribed medication.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes words of comfort aren’t enough. It’s just realistic to have a practical measure for people in terrible pain.”
“I can’t believe a doctor would let you do this.”
He stared at the porch steps.
I spoke sharply, “Kirk, who’s supplying you with these?”
His brows drew down over his eyes. “Lots of people say the first night after a death is the worst, that being unable to sleep is torture. I’m trying to spare you that.”
Weariness swept over me. It had been such a long, awful day, and I couldn’t bear to further estrange Kirk. Later on I’d decide what to do about him dispensing medicinal comfort along with the spiritual, but tonight—I held my hand out, and Kirk dropped the light packet into my palm.
He smiled, and his shoulders settled, his relief apparent. “I hope it helps, Liz, I’ll remember you in my prayers.”
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