by Linda Barnes
Amory Russell. The lawyer’s card in the Bloomie’s bag. The Russell in Russell, Ames, and Huber was Amory Russell. And Jonathan wanted to know if I was up to interviewing the great man.
CHAPTER
thirty-eight
Time expanded and contracted, widening and narrowing, elongating and compressing like an old-time squeezebox accordion. Hours with Garrett, in my bed or his, passed in lightning flashes of sensation. Minutes of close manuscript study stretched into hours as I agonized over an adverb or pondered shifting a sentence, even an entire paragraph from one chapter to the next.
Garrett was so sweet, so considerate and kind. His thoughtfulness threw me off balance, teetering between joy and despair, made me debate my precise location on the unimportant-to-important person scale. Over and over I replayed his comments concerning actresses he’d bedded, parsing exactly what he’d meant when he’d declared sex “another way of getting to know” a person. I wondered whether I’d turn up as a character in one of his movies someday, went so far as to cast my role, choosing among upcoming character actresses, wondering whether I’d turn out secretly beautiful, shedding hair clips and eye-glasses as character actresses so often did at the end. Or if the actress playing my role would perish, walk into the ocean with stones weighting her pockets.
That kind of thinking drove me outdoors earlier than usual the next morning, determined to take a brisk walk as a remedy. I’d discovered a magical alchemy between walks along the seashore and writing, a sort of cross-fertilization. If I didn’t consciously think about work, if I packed it away and exercised legs rather than brain, answers to tangled problems often came scurrying sideways, like crabs scuttling across the sand.
Afraid the muckraker McKenna might catch me in his lens, I scrupulously avoided the shoreline near the beach shack. I indulged in a brief fantasy and imagined the scruffy man behind bars, but even if Garrett had heeded my warning and alerted the police, I doubted he’d gotten the gossipmonger arrested. It wasn’t hard to imagine what McKenna would do if he knew about Brooklyn Pierce, how he’d run with the tale of his drunkenness, destroy the man’s dignity.
I had no wish to compromise Pierce’s dignity. I simply yearned to solve not only the case of the missing microcassette, but the puzzle of the relationship between the movie star and the director. Initially, I’d assumed dislike, an enmity that precluded a fourth Ben Justice film. But if Pierce could take refuge in Garrett’s beach shack whenever he needed it, that bespoke a friendship, a kind of sponsorship.
My feet pounded the sandy turf. Garrett could have tired of the Justice series. The memory of Claire Gregory’s perfection in Red Shot could have rendered thoughts of another sequel unbearable. A red-tailed hawk flew low over a spit of land, veered, and rose into the sun.
I would never jeopardize Garrett’s memories of Claire. When he looked at me he’d see no scrap of resemblance; I was unthreatening, a safe, plain woman: That was my charm, my only charm. But the actresses were coming soon. The girl who played Ophelia had the face of a tombstone angel, a body like Venus rising from the sea. Who did I think I was, who did I imagine I’d become? In which fairy tale does the handsome Prince’s kiss transform a serving drab into a royal beauty?
The scalding tones of yet another stepmother rang in my ears. If I wasn’t good enough for my own mother to keep, who would want me, who could ever want me? Would I never stop whipping myself with that particular scourge? No wonder the power shorted out when I needed it most. No wonder the words wouldn’t flow.
Two TV stars, one rising, one fading, still sparred for the role of Hamlet. Each was book ready, prepared to perform at a finger-snap, and each would cheerfully chew cement for the chance to work with Garrett Malcolm. Just as a multitude of potential Gertrudes and Ophelias would do anything to grace his bed.
I crested a hill. My steps had taken me overland to the beach shack, but I hung back, intimidated by the fear of McKenna’s hidden cameras. From this angle the place was more outline than building, a high peaked roof pierced by a smokestack. Over the wash of waves, I heard the distinct sound of a door opening and my heart lifted. If I happened to see Brooklyn Pierce out for a walk, that would be different. Then, I’d pounce.
Footsteps clattered down the stairs, then ceased, drowned by the pulse of the waves or the sound-deadening sand. I took shelter behind a dune and waited. The red-tailed hawk circled overhead, but no actor ambled along the shore toward the Amphitheater.
The second noise was speech, not distinct words, but chatter. I should have turned smartly and retreated, but I edged closer to the lip of the dune, protected from view by its precipitous rise, and crouched to peer through the woody stems of bayberry bushes.
Two men fought the wind, spreading a striped blanket on the sand. One kicked off his flip-flops. I assumed Pierce’s companion was Garrett at first, and anger flared because Garrett had carefully outlined his agenda, so much work we’d be unable to lunch together and all of it at the Amphitheater.
The men wore low-slung bathing trunks, one bold plaid, the other Hawaiian floral. Brooklyn Pierce, in the floral trunks, seemed to have regained his golden glow. His companion patted him on the shoulder, turning slightly and revealing more of his profile.
Not Garrett, but cousin James Foley, the family resemblance stronger here than in the stuffy realty office. My anger died, replaced by the interviewer’s lust for answered questions. My eyes sought a path down to the beach. I could casually happen on the scene, enter stage right, inquire about the screenplay collaboration James had claimed. And if Pierce asked about the missing tape, I could say it had gotten lost; no, better, destroyed in the car crash.
An outburst of laughter drew my focus to the sand. The men were racing into the icy surf, shedding their trunks as they ran, tossing them aside, and whooping as they plunged naked into the foam. It was a flash, a moment engraved in memory: the twin dimples in the very small of Pierce’s back, the shoulders and pale flanks, the golden hair. I watched, and after that I could no more have appeared on the beach than I could have sprouted pin feathers.
I found myself marching across the hills back to the Big House, pointing straight for the small office with the mechanical shades where I stopped directly in front of the wall of framed pictures and confronted the framed Malcolm genealogy. I ran my index finger over the glass, tracing elaborate curlicues. So many famous actors, but the family had run to daughters in Ralph’s generation. A girl, Jennifer, who had died as a child, that’s where Jenna’s name must come from, then Ella, who bore James Foley. Ralph’s third sister, Lydia, a much-married actress who had enjoyed a Broadway vogue as a grande dame, had died childless.
Harrison Malcolm, Garrett’s grandfather and a renowned actor, had not been a wealthy man. Academically rather than commercially minded, he’d run Cranberry Hill as a sort of run-down theater school on a chunk of land too stony for crops and ill-placed for cranberries. Harrison begat Jennifer, Ella, Ralph, and Lydia, all gone now. I reviewed the chart.
Ralph, the commercially minded one, had enlarged the estate, buying more and more land from his neighbors. He’d taken advantage of the natural rock bowl to create the Amphitheater. Legitimate stage had been his passion, but he’d done movies for money late in life, when his hawk nose and plummy vowels made him a natural villain.
Garrett didn’t want his bloodlines or childhood to dominate the book. His work was the focus, his films and plays. But I couldn’t help speculating about the family in whose house I lived. Had Harrison willed Cranberry Hill exclusively to his son, Ralph, trusting their husbands to provide for his daughters? The tradition of leaving the land to the eldest male might run in the family. Primogeniture as well as love for the Bard of Avon might have figured in Ralph’s will.
Bereft of ornamentation, the family tree tapered rather than widened. James Foley had mentioned an ex-wife. I found her name, Katherine, but either she and Jamie had no children, or the chart had been framed prior to their birth. I reviewed and deconstructed the
scene at the beach, trying to decide whether it was evidence of a homoerotic, a homosexual, relationship. Had I witnessed caresses or high-spirited locker-room play? Had I miscontrued, misunderstood? If I’d viewed the same scene in a movie, unguided by focus, angle, film score, its meaning would have been ambiguous, a matter of interpretation.
Was Brooklyn Pierce one of the reasons Jamie’s marriage had ended? Part of the reason he’d received so little land? I doubted it; actors of all people were tolerant. But Ralph had wanted a troupe of actor-sons.
James Foley had mentioned how close he’d come to inheriting all the land. I wished I could see the exact terms, the precise wording of the Shakespearean will written by Ralph Malcolm.
I touched Jenna’s name on the chart. Lucky, lucky Jenna, sole fruit of the illustrious tree. With so much at stake, there would be contingencies, in case something happened to lucky Jenna. James Foley must be listed as a fallback, an alternative. If the lawyer who’d set up the generation-skipping trust hadn’t insisted on a change in language, Jenna, not a “Sonne of my Body,” but a daughter, could have been disinherited. I considered the lawyer’s business card in the Bloomie’s bag. Amory Russell’s firm was located in New York. I doubted they concerned themselves with Massachusetts estate law, and Jonathan seemed certain that you’d spoken to Russell about ghosting his biography.
Back in my pink and gold room, I replayed the tape in which Garrett talked about his father. I could almost hear the quotation marks when he spoke of “Ralph’s Shakespearean Will.” I smiled at the portentous quality of the rolled r’s, the invisible caps, the implied italics as he intoned Ralph’s reluctant change from “Sonnes of My Body Lawfully Issuing” to “Heirs of My Body, et cetera,” and then it came to me. Heirs of My Body. Would you have made a note of that, and if you had, would you have used shorthand, so that the note read: HMB?
JFLY: James Foley. 2nd BST BD: Second-Best Bed. HMB: Heirs of My Body. I was following your path, but I wasn’t yet sure where the path led.
CHAPTER
thirty-nine
The more I considered it, the likelier it seemed: There would have come a night when you worked late, sipped wine over dinner, chatted long after the meal. Garrett would have offered a fat Cohiba cigar from the box on the side table, and you’d have downed a snifter of brandy while you smoked. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for Garrett to say the hell with it, don’t drive tonight, there’s plenty of space in the house.
I couldn’t imagine you sleeping in gold and pink splendor, but bedrooms lined the corridors. In any one of them, you might have left behind a tell-tale sign. You might have carelessly mislaid the microcassette Brooklyn Pierce had begged me to return.
I’d wandered the Big House before, enjoying its rambling spaciousness, but I hadn’t searched it. I’d fingered ornaments because their textures seemed to demand a caress, but I’d drawn the line at grubbing in cabinet corners while keeping furtive watch for housekeepers and maintenance staff. Now, successfully avoiding all onlookers, I investigated six different bedrooms before taking a break during which I peered out a low window and took note of the car parked below.
Beige and gold, the cruiser crouched like a waiting lion in the driveway. The shield emblazoned on the hood displayed the palindrome-like initials of the Dennis Port Police Department.
Quickly descending a flight of stairs, I crossed hallways and shot down corridors like a bullet with barely a thought for my trajectory till I arrived in the corner of the tiny room over the Great Room, marveling at my speed and lack of hesitation, thinking that if my heart would stop pounding in my ears, I’d make a better eavesdropper. Detective Snow’s voice was less distinct than Caroline’s. His words slid into one another, eliding into a strange foreign-sounding tongue. I shifted my position, inched slightly to the left, nearer the bookshelf, seeking the sweet spot, straining with concentration until the rumbling noises sorted themselves into words and sentences.
Garrett, calm and bell-like, resonant: “Sorry, I don’t remember. That would be Wednesday night?”
A noise from Snow, a grunt of assent.
“I don’t believe I saw him after our Tuesday session, but my assistant keeps my schedule if you want to check.”
“You didn’t meet with him later, for dinner or drinks? He wasn’t staying here? On the property?”
“No.”
“It’s just his neighbors aren’t sure whether or not his car was parked at the house Tuesday night.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
I missed a sentence or two after that, caught only a word here, a word there. Had the speakers moved to another location? Should I risk moving? Just as I started to take the first of three prospective steps toward the window, a complete sentence rang out.
“Was Blake working on anything else while he was here?”
A murmur from Garrett, no specific words, but a tone of demurral, disavowal. I wouldn’t know, I don’t know, something in that vein.
“He didn’t speak to you about any other project? Some kind of exposé?”
The next thing I heard was a rumbling squawk as though a chair were being pushed back. I imagined Detective Snow lurching unsteadily to his feet, his complexion gray and sickly.
Garrett: “Is it important? Where Teddy was on Wednesday night?”
In the burst of speech that followed, the only words I caught were “wondering why,” “that stretch of road,” “deserted,” and “that’s all.” Then Garrett chimed in with something that sounded vaguely cheerful. Snow’s response included “follow up,” and “routine.”
The clack of footsteps signaled the end of the interview, so I turned to leave the room. Remembering too well the wild panic the enclosed space had engendered when I’d eavesdropped on Garrett and Caroline, I’d left the door ajar. Darren Kalver stood like a pale scarecrow in the shadows and a faint smile played on his lips.
“Quite a view from that window,” he said when he caught my eye.
I had no idea how long he’d been standing there, no idea how he could have approached so silently.
“Yes, it’s lovely.” My face set into a sculpted mask as I waited for him to move aside so I could scuttle past. He planted himself in the doorway, watching me with speculative eyes.
Weeks ago, Teddy, I might have melted into tears at his gaze or run off like a mouse caught eating the cheese. But I was Garrett’s favorite now. A new and steely confidence ran in my veins, and I could stare down the likes of a personal assistant. The deadlock was broken by a burst of classical piano that I didn’t recognize as the ringtone of his cell until he swooped it from a pocket and tucked it to his ear.
“Cranberry Hill Theater. Garrett Malcolm’s office. How may I help you?”
He rolled his pale-lashed eyes when he heard the response. “Wayne, I’m so sorry. Yes, it was a terrible mix-up and I’m so sorry. I know. I know. Yes, you had every reason to expect the meeting as scheduled. I absolutely sympathize, and I know you need to get the documents ready, but he’s rehearsing full time, and you know how he gets.”
Kalver backed out of the doorway and shot me a look that said, Go away and stop listening. When I didn’t, he pivoted and lowered his voice. “Wayne, you know I’m in your corner. No, look, I did not cancel on you. I don’t know what happened and I promise I’ll try to wedge you in, but I think you should be prepared to wait till after we open. I know. I’m really sorry.”
He shoved the phone angrily into his pocket. His tone changed from sugary syrup to steel as he pointed a finger at my face. “You haven’t been playing private secretary, have you?”
“What do you mean?”
“They blame me. And they ought to blame you.”
His pale flap of hair was ridiculous and his accusation so transparently unfair, I decided not to dignify it with a response.
“He’s got important decisions to make, about the future of this theater. They want to cross the t’s on the trust, but Mal postp
ones every damn meeting. All he wants to do is direct and act. Artists!” He uttered the word like a curse.
“Is that the conservation trust?” For a moment I thought anger would overcome his customary discretion, but he recalled his position too quickly. And mine. And sought to reestablish the balance of power.
“What are you doing up here?” he demanded.
I kept to the offensive. “When can I interview you about your boss?”
“I’m a confidential assistant. I think that precludes interviews.”
“And how did you get your job?”
“I applied for it.”
“Does the board have any say in the selection of plays?”
“The Cranberry Hill Board? Are you kidding? If they did, we’d do nonstop musicals. Malcolm keeps all the power. And if you’d let him get out of bed occasionally, he might exercise it.”
I tried to summon a withering response. Failed, edged past him, and walked steadily down the hall to the bedroom, my bedroom. I was still there, hands poised at the keyboard, when Garrett cracked the door to tell me dinner would be late. I smiled and thanked him. And waited, but he didn’t mention Kalver catching me in the act of eavesdropping. Nor did he mention Snow’s visit.
I considered bringing it up during pre-dinner drinks, but Kalver was telling some pointless story about last year’s production of Love’s Labor’s Lost. I thought about it during the soup course, but the stage manager and the lighting designer were reminiscing about Hamlets they’d enjoyed in England and Australia, and Hamlets they’d despised in Spain and Germany, and could even the best translation of Shakepeare ever be said to truly work? I speculated about it during the entire endless meal, about casually announcing that I’d noticed a police cruiser parked in the driveway and had someone neglected to pay a traffic fine? The crème brûleé was tasteless in my mouth, the coffee bitter. Garrett said nothing, I said nothing, and our silence sprouted and grew like ivy creeping up a stout brick wall.
