“What is it?” Mike said. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “That same night, the night the show opened, after you had your talk with Jack and me in the study, Jack took me back to the loft. He stayed awhile and then he left and I got up and went to the window, to watch him walk away … and somebody stepped out of the shadows and began following Jack. That’s it, I thought it was you, Harry, I was sure it was you—and I couldn’t imagine why you’d have been waiting outside for Jack … and then I realized it was Peter. Peter had been waiting.” I shrugged. “I never heard anything about it—”
“But they might have spoken. Even argued—”
“Harry, I simply don’t know. We can ask Jack.”
Mike lit another cigarette. “Well, he certainly seemed to have it in for Peter.”
Harry said, “Tell me, what was this shouting match at the gallery you told Sally about—before Peter left and Jack decided to beat up on you?”
“It didn’t mean much to me. But now, the more I think about it … Look,” I said, “Peter said something funny to me when he was making his pass. He talked about it being his turn, he wanted me because it was his turn.”
Harry looked at Mike and shrugged. “Men talk that way: ‘You’ve had other men in your life and now it’s my turn’—no big deal about that. But what about last night?”
“Well, maybe it was about me. Or partly about me. Peter didn’t say anything that I overheard. It was all Jack. He called Peter a scummy bastard, something like that, kept saying he knew Peter, all about Peter, knew why Peter was there. He said Peter couldn’t fool him the way he’d fooled all the rest of you. Jack called him a thief, said he’d caught him at it and he better not try to steal anything from Jack.” I watched Harry and Mike exchange stares again, blank.
Mike said, “Sounds to me like they were getting into some personal ancient history there. I never heard anything about Peter stealing anything from Jack or anyone else—I mean, let’s face it, that’s pretty farfetched.”
“It’s nonsense,” Harry agreed. “Pure paranoia—”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I interrupted. “You forget that Jack was right on the money about Peter and me. He had Peter figured out and was warning him off. That proves Jack knew what was going on.”
Harry was shaking his head. “It proves that he may have accidentally stumbled across the truth. And that’s all it proves. What we know for a fact is that he acted on his supposition—he attacked Peter physically, threatened later, and … well, who knows what else? I think he’s paranoid, Belle. I think everything has turned against him—or that’s the way he sees it—and he’s backed into a corner. Your life is opening up, his is closing down, he’s afraid … and he’s begun to break things.”
Mike said, “Belinda, we can’t let him break you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m worried,” Harry said, “and apparently Mike is too. Maybe the same thought’s hit us both. If Jack killed Peter, he killed him because of what he believed about Peter and you … and if Jack killed Peter, he’s terribly sick, terribly volatile. Belle, you could be in a hell of a lot of danger while Jack’s running around loose—”
“Harry! You amaze me! It’s all right to stick up for Ruffian Peter … but whatever happened to Ruffian Jack? What’s going on? Jack’s out in the cold, is his name stricken from the records? You say he thinks the world has turned against him—well, I don’t know about that but I’ll guarantee you the last people he thought would turn against him would be you two!” The more I heard myself talk, the more outraged I became. I stood up and headed for the house.
Harry followed. “You’re being unreasonable, Belle. You’re not looking at the situation clearly—we’re not turning against Jack. But things don’t look so good right now …” He took my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Listen, why don’t you stay here at our place for a while? Until things shake out and Jack clears himself with a great alibi or something? I just hate having you alone out there with Jack and the shotgun unaccounted for.”
Mike was watching from the table. “He’s right, Belinda.”
“The hell with both of you!” I shouted, my voice cracking. I stomped back into the house, up the stairs, and outside. I was shaking fit to fall down and I never had gotten to see Sally.
Chapter Twenty-six
I CAME TO REST, FEELING sweaty and disheveled, in a coffee shop on Third Avenue, wondering what in the world had gotten into me. I’ve always tried to control my temper. But the sudden realization that Mike and Harry were thinking along the same lines as Antonelli had set it off. So I’d blown up in frustration and surprise. Now I was feeling more alone than I could ever remember. Sally was sedated and Jack was doubtless undergoing a fairly unpleasant interview with Antonelli or one of his counterparts and Harry and Mike were in my doghouse. I sat drinking ersatz iced tea and regretted my performance in Turtle Bay. It was a stupid time to cut myself off from two of my natural allies. If I’d been thinking straight I’d have heard them out and presented some alternatives to the circumstantial evidence. And I wouldn’t have accused them of selling Jack out.
What could they have done, other than what they did? Were Sally and Harry supposed to lie to Antonelli? If he asked the questions, they had to answer and, as they’d formed those answers, I suppose the obvious was made glaring. Jack had been acting violently. Jack had been involved in at least two scenes involving attacks, both physical and verbal, on Peter. Peter was blown to pieces with a shotgun. Harry knew Jack had a shotgun and he had told me at the theater how worried he was about the combination of an unstable Jack and the gun.
Facts are facts.
The chance that Jack had done it—well, that had me by the throat.
Still, once they had the gun and tested it and heard what Jack had to say … then it would all be okay.
I’d forgotten my sunglasses and the blinding glare from the street had given me a headache by the time I gave up on the iced tea and ventured back outside.
Dammit! I needed to talk to Sal.
Two kinds of fear were eating at me. As the day progressed, they got worse.
First, I was afraid that Antonelli was going to pin the murder on Jack before anything else in the way of an explanation might come to light.
Second, I was afraid that maybe Jack had actually done it.
By the time I had bought some flowers to cheer me up and gotten a bag full of cosmetics I didn’t need, ditto, a third worry had taken root, had a life of its own.
I was afraid that if Jack had truly flipped out he might indeed come after me.
I was wandering aimlessly through Bloomingdale’s when I thought I saw him watching me, reflected in one of the mirrors. The man moved like Jack, walked like Jack, moved across the narrow width of the mirror in a flicker, and when I turned I couldn’t figure out exactly where he’d been. Or if he’d been reflected in yet another mirror behind me. I snapped around and bumped into a half-dead tourist laden with sacks and knocked them out of her hands. We both wound up groveling on the floor and feeling like screaming. When I stood up I was dizzy and the man was nowhere to be seen.
I had to get myself under control. Jack wasn’t stalking me. He couldn’t be. No more than he could have killed Peter Venables.
It was idiotic, but suddenly I realized I didn’t want to walk outside, alone, didn’t want to take a subway. Didn’t want to be followed. Like a maniac, panic-stricken, I went out onto Third Avenue and got a cab going in the wrong direction.
Back in the loft I called Sally.
Harry answered and said she was still sleeping. He asked me if I was all right and I said yes.
“Are you still ticked off, Belle?”
“I don’t know. I just think you’re running out on Jack awfully quickly, that’s all.”
“We’re not running out on him. We’re just facing some hard questions. But let’s not go into all that again. The important thing is just to find out what really happened. And I wish y
ou’d consider staying up here until everything gets—”
“No, really, I’m fine. Have you talked to Sally?”
“Just briefly. She was pretty groggy, which is best. She started to cry—it really was a shock. Not just that he was dead, but the way he looked—well, no point in dwelling on that. Call me, Belle, if you need a thing. Or get worried. He cleared his throat, which, in Harry, passed for nervousness. “And please, please, be careful. Don’t take any chances with Jack. Promise me, Belle—”
“All right. I promise.”
“Now see you keep it.”
I had never been angry with Harry before, not in the twenty-two years I’d known him. He wasn’t the kind of person you got mad at. He was too reasonable, too understanding. You had to be looking for a fight. I’d often wondered where he kept his hostilities, all the nasty baggage we drag along behind us. He always seemed to be planning his next three or four moves; he was always willing to listen to your problems. All of which were reasons why his attitude about Jack had thrown me so.
But as I spent the evening alone with a Yankee game dithering away on the television, his observations began to resonate in my head.
He’d always been Jack’s best friend. The Ruffians meant more to Harry than to anyone else. He had no ax to grind in blaming the murder on Jack. No, I had to live with it—he just thought Jack was guilty of murder.
Unless Harry had killed him. …
Which brought me back to my Sally-falling-in-love-with-Peter scenario. The scene on the bank in the park, the blowup.
Which made it all too convoluted, and I gave up, went to bed with the fan spraying warm air across me and the night paralyzed and still at the open windows.
Chapter Twenty-seven
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AFTER THE murder the newspapers were already having a field day with the story and TV was closing in. It was just too juicy to slip past unnoticed: the real-life friends who formed the basis of the hit show Scoundrels All! and the murder of one of their number at the producer’s home—you really couldn’t blame them for going to town. And they seemed to get things more or less right. Peter Venables was described as a “London-based money-man” with oil interests, survived by his newlywed daughter who was on a “safari-honeymoon in Africa.” I was even dragged into the story as a wife of “onetime literary sensation Jack Stuart,” and also because Venables was last seen in public at my gallery opening.
It was crazy, as if we’d all become actors in a play of our own that encompassed Scoundrels All! I half-expected to read reviews of our performances. I don’t know how reporters dig up these things, but they had the names of all the Ruffians in the Post the next morning. I called Jack but there was no answer … and, so help me, I sighed with relief. In my mind I saw him sitting in his room staring at the jangling phone … alone, brooding.
I was working on my Central Park sketch, wondering what in the world Harry and Sal had been talking about, when Hacker Welles called. I’d been surprised he hadn’t gotten hold of me and was delighted to hear his voice. I seemed to derive some comfort from knowing that the official chronicler of the Ruffians hadn’t folded his tent and stolen away. He asked me if I knew any more than he did about the Venables thing and I told him I really didn’t know what he knew.
“Not a hell of a lot,” he said. “I was out at my agent’s place in Southampton all day yesterday and heard about it on the radio last night. I called Harry right away. He said Sally was a vegetable and he sounded pretty whacked out himself. I came in to town late last night and first thing this morning somebody from Live at Five called me, told me Harry had referred them to me—this babe wanted to know if I’d come on the show this afternoon. I guess Harry had been scheduled to talk about the show. I called Harry back, he begged me to go on for him, so—Geronimo!—here I go. Watch me, okay? And meet me afterward. Harry said you and he had a bit of a dust-up yesterday. I want to hear all about it. When I finish making a fool of myself, grab a cab and I’ll meet you at Mitchell Place, up on top.”
I got dressed and plopped down in front of the set and of course Hacker handled it very well but there was a little kicker right at the end that came out of nowhere.
The woman interviewing him was chatty and intense, pretending she was getting the inside dope on a murder story. Hacker wore a bemused expression. On television he looked a bit balder, which was, somehow, rather endearing.
No, he knew only what he’d read in the papers; yes, he had spoken with Mr. Granger but he was at as great a loss as any of the rest of us; no, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to kill Peter Venables. Yes, in a broad sense the show was based on the group of college friends a great many years ago; yes, it was a terrible coincidence that Mr. Venables should meet such a fate at just this time; yes, Mr. Venables was an old friend, but Hacker hadn’t seen him in many years.
He was typically rumpled in a seersucker jacket and lavender polo shirt. He looked very tan. His voice was deep and soothing, sort of in the Charles Kuralt mode overall.
“Tell us, Mr. Welles, what is Scoundrels All! really about?”
He looked vaguely puzzled for a moment, as if he could barely remember the show. “Well, it’s about the past, it’s about all those hopeful youthful friendships we’ve all had, but in the end it’s about my own imagination—what I mean is, it’s about a past that never really was, a past that existed only in my mind. That’s a writer’s job, isn’t it? Turning reality—whatever that actually is—into his own fantasy.”
“One last question, Mr. Welles.” She looked very proud of herself, anticipating. “Do you think there might be a clue to the mystery of Peter Venables’ murder somewhere in your play?”
He looked at her in some considerable astonishment. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a smile spread across his face, giving him the look of a gigantic imp. “Why, that’s quite an intriguing—and certainly unexpected—question. I must congratulate you on originality … but don’t you suppose it’s asking a bit much of my little play? I mean, it’s just a piece of fluff popular entertainment …”
She gave the camera a knowing smile and New York heard Hacker chuckling off-camera, muttering, “Well, what next?” But I had the feeling that she’d succeeded in pushing the On button and set him thinking.
The bar took up the whole of the top of the building and gave the most ravishing views of the city I knew. In the heat of high summer you have to sit on the east side with the East River far below and the UN Plaza and Brooklyn and Queens stretching away apparently into infinity. A Circle Line cruise ship moved slowly up the river. The windows beside us were wide open and we were high enough to catch a breeze. Hacker said he wanted a drink that looked like a prize and ordered a gin rickey with some bright red cherries bobbing in it. He gave me a dark grin and asked what I’d thought of his performance.
“All New York is asking the same question,” I said. “Is there a clue in the play?”
“That really came out of left field—what a terrible mind that woman has! But I wonder … maybe she was onto something. But what?” He plucked a cherry from the drink and ate it slowly. “Tell me about your shoot-out with Harry—he was actually quite upset, said it was all his fault, but I don’t think he meant it. I got the idea you were being unreasonable.”
“Maybe I was. I thought he and Sally and Mike were stabbing Jack in the back.”
He winced at my choice of metaphor. “Do continue.”
I slogged through the whole day-old confrontation, including both my interview with Detective Antonelli and the yelling at Harry. He sat listening, chomping on cherries, and getting another drink. Mine sat untouched while I talked. Every time I started to get worked up, my voice sliding up into the higher registers, I’d see him looking calmly at me, nodding, and I’d calm down.
“The point is,” I said, “they really planted the Jack-as-killer seed in Antonelli’s mind, and I can see the whole thing getting out of hand right away.”
“They’ve still got to build a case,” he
said. “It’s bound to take some time. And maybe Jack can give them satisfactory answers. No, that’s not what’s really bothering you, Belinda.”
“I suppose you know what is?”
“Don’t get all bristly. Just think a minute. What’s bothering you is that they—all of them, Antonelli and Harry and Mike and the absent Sally—they all have convinced you that Jack probably did it. And that has really pissed you off. You fly off the handle accusing them of running out on the old Ruffian and now you’re seeing yourself do the same thing.”
“Well, it makes me so mad—”
“It also makes you scared. You think Jack’s following you and, ‘Gee whiz, if he killed Peter over me, then he might just let go a volley at me’—look, I don’t blame you. I’d probably feel the same way. You think they’ve got any peanuts in this joint? That guy’s eating peanuts.” He succeeded in acquiring a bowl of peanuts, looked up at me guiltily. “So I’m hungry, okay?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Anyway, you’re scared of Jack and feeling as if you’re letting him down. Frankly, that’s the healthiest view you can have. After all, maybe Jack did kill him. Maybe …”
“But?” I sensed a ray of hope and took a big drink of tonic water.
“But maybe he didn’t. If he didn’t know about your unhappy encounter with Venables at the loft—well, that might be the kind of thing that a chap would want to avenge … No, no, that’s crazy too. No, the only thing that makes sense is Jack having to be nuts. Either he is nuts and might have done it. Or he’s not nuts and didn’t do it. Tell me what you overheard from the privacy of Leverett’s powder room—there’s something funny about that.”
I ran through it again as best I could. His eyebrows drew together in a parody of deep thought. When he drank, his glass dripped onto his shirt. Things like that just happened to him.
He shook his head and yawned. “Nope, I just don’t know. I’ll have to think on’t. We gotta get some real food, the inner man cries out.” He got the check. The sun was still glaring on the towers of the city, the Chrysler Building like a graceful spaceship from another civilization. “Thief,” he mused as the elevator descended, “so Peter was a thief …” He whistled tunelessly, his mind a million miles away. “And now he figured it was his turn. That son of a gun.” He smiled at me quickly. “Mexican. Let’s eat Mexican. That’s what happens to you living in Los Angeles. You get in the habit of eating Mexican. Place called Ports, the chicken mole—and there’s nothing in the world like a Pink’s chili dog. I’ve had them air-expressed to me when I’ve been on location. My wife used to do that for me, bless her heart. Eased her conscience, I think.” He winked at me.
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