“Think, Miss Hill. We know that Waingrove and Erwin talked. Immediately after that conversation Erwin goes to Renicke’s house. I can only assume that Brian Waingrove told him to go there.”
“Waingrove knows The Smoker?”
“Maybe he just knows where she lives.”
“Did Erwin go into the house?”
“A police car was parked in the driveway. Two policemen were standing at the front door. The house was dark. Erwin obviously didn’t stop. Boulton followed him to Pasadena, then turned around and came back to the hotel just in time to carry you out of the Regency Room. I’m afraid you didn’t make a very good impression on Waingrove or the other guests.”
“Brian Waingrove is a misogynist.” My head was pounding, and facts weren’t clearing it up. “I don’t understand. Why would he send Erwin to The Smoker’s house?”
“What are we looking for, Miss Hill?”
Carefully, I raised my head from the pillow. “The codicil.”
She smiled.
“The Smoker has the codicil?!” Slowly, I let my head fall back on the pillow and shut my eyes. “I don’t understand. You mean she killed Valcovich and took the codicil?”
“I don’t think she killed him. I think she was in love with him, as you observed last night.”
“With my sexless brain.”
“I think she took the codicil after he was murdered, or he had given it to her for safekeeping before he was murdered. The Smoker might be trying to make some money out of her tragedy. Waingrove might’ve sent Erwin there to either pay The Smoker off, or to kill her, or simply to set up a deal to be consummated at a later date. The Smoker is playing a very dangerous game. That’s why she’s on the run. I hope she’s a clever woman. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll find her in the same condition as Valcovich.”
“How does Waingrove know Erwin?”
“More importantly, why did they pretend not to know one another? We have a lot of interesting problems.”
“Wonderful. I’m glad we’ve got a lot of interesting problems,” I groaned.
“So am I,” Claire said, delighted. “By the way, while you were sleeping, Victoria Moor called. She and her meretricious mother would like to see us as soon as possible.”
I thought of Ellis Kenilworth, and for the first time my memory didn’t conjure him up in bloody pieces but as the elegant, wistful gentleman I had once worked for, I had once admired, respected. I thought of Bobby Alt’s description of the photograph. I decided I wanted to keep Kenilworth elegant and wistful and a gentleman. Even if it wasn’t true.
“I don’t want to see those two women. I’m not interested in the photograph. Just the codicil.”
Claire stared at the ceiling and said, “The key to all of this is Ellis’s suicide. If we find out why he killed himself, I think everything else will fall into place. You will find, Miss Hill, that when the wealthy steal and murder, it may be under the guise of money, but there are usually complicated familial motivations behind their need for money.”
“What about the poor?”
“They’re different. They have no money.”
My head was beginning to clear. “Wait a minute. If Waingrove sent Erwin to The Smoker’s house, then that means he had to know that Valcovich was dead.”
“So it would seem.”
I sat up. We stared at one another.
“Waingrove murdered Valcovich?” My voice sounded hollow.
“Knowing someone is dead does not necessarily mean you killed them. But it could mean that he knows who did. It could even mean that the murderer asked him for his help. Waingrove seems to enjoy helping the Kenilworths.”
“Judith? Sutton? No, I can’t believe it.”
“They had the most to lose if the codicil were made public. Of course, Waingrove could’ve helped them by killing Valcovich himself.”
“Oh, God, I’m so confused.”
Boulton appeared and announced with a perfectly straight face, “Your bath is ready.”
Groaning, I got out of bed and gasped. I was naked! No, I still had on my beige dress. It was twisted and crumpled like old skin.
“You put me to bed with my clothes on?”
“Miss Hill, count yourself lucky. I was all for dumping you on the side of the Pasadena Freeway. Boulton thought it unwise.”
I looked at Boulton. “Thank you.”
He bowed. The perfect butler.
Claire stood up and stretched. “I feel out of sorts. I always do when I haven’t had a proper breakfast. You will remember to grovel, Miss Hill.”
She strode out the door with Boulton following her.
I staggered into the warm, steamy bathroom. Leaning against the sink, I took a swipe at the misty mirror. There I was. Not a pretty sight. The eye liner, shadow, and mascara I had put on yesterday was smeared in an abstract replica below each eye. My bright-red lipstick was smudged beneath my pale lips as if I had somehow miraculously kissed myself on my chin. A woman should never go to sleep with her makeup on. A woman should never go to bed with her exhusband who is going to marry another woman. A woman should never get involved in murder. A woman should never have a female brain…Oh, hell.
I stood in Gerta’s kitchen trying to hold my head straight so it wouldn’t tip to one side, spilling out my female brain on her spotless black-and-white tiled floor.
She stood with her back to me, facing a huge stainless steel stove. Small flames flickered like eternal lights under heavy cast-iron pots. The smell of cooking cabbage mixed with the sight of freshly chopped lamb on a blood-smeared cutting board made my stomach turn.
“I’m sorry.” My words hung in the air.
She shrugged her heavy shoulders.
“I don’t know exactly…I mean…I don’t remember…I said something about you not being my mother…which is the truth…but…well…I really wouldn’t want to hurt you…so I’m sorry…if I hurt you.” Oh, God.
She turned and stared at me, a big wooden spoon in her red hand. Standing there in her black dress, dark stockings and black sensible shoes, Gerta looked as solid as one of her iron pots. And suddenly, I wanted to put my arms around her and bury my head in her motherly breasts.
“Maggie…” She paused, touching the curved back of the large spoon to her lips as if she were kissing a child’s forehead. The gray eyes glistened. “I had a husband and a child. I lost them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. Too many women, they are afraid of losing nowadays, so they never try.”
“It’s just that we have so many options…”
“Options! Excuses. That’s all you have. I hope you’ll be very happy with them.”
“Yes. Well…I just wanted to apologize.”
“I accept.”
She beamed her motherly expression. I smiled my good-daughter smile.
“You want something to eat?”
I knew this was a dangerous question, because it involved the giving and receiving of food. I knew that if I said yes that meant I was truly sorry—which I was. I also knew that if I said no, Gerta was not going to accept my apology. I knew that if Gerta were my real mother I’d be fat.
“I’d love to eat. But Claire wants us to leave now. We have to see Victoria Moor.”
“The hunt always comes first with her.”
“The hunt?”
“The search. She is always searching.”
“For what?”
“The murderer. In Hungary I know who murdered my family. The KGB. She doesn’t know who murdered hers.”
“You mean her parents’ deaths weren’t an accident?”
“You go. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Gerta turned back to the stove and began to lift large pale-green leaves out of the pot and into a colander.
In the Bentley, I stared at the small bunches of wildflowers placed in the little crystal vases. Clusters of blue, yellow, and white.
“Where do you get the flowers?” I asked.
“A fl
orist delivers them every morning,” Claire answered, putting a black-and-white snapshot in an envelope.
“They look like a child’s bouquet—the kind a young girl might pick to give to her parents before they drove away in their Bentley.”
Claire looked up sharply. Penetrating eyes studied me. “Very astute, Miss Hill.”
“I saw the photograph of you holding a similar bouquet. Why didn’t you tell me your parents were murdered?”
“I can’t prove it. And it’s best to keep your mind on one case at a time.”
“All right. Victoria and her mother are going to want to see the photograph I supposedly stole. And you’re going to show them a picture of your indentured servants from the fifties. This is not going to fool them.”
“The photograph was chosen for its shape and size, not its content. Trust me, Miss Hill, I have a plan. All I will need is a diversion.”
My head still pounded. I leaned back in my corner and wondered why I didn’t trust her.
Boulton maneuvered the Bentley up a long black ribbon of a driveway. Victoria lived in a nouveau castle high in the mountains looking down on Beverly Hills. The house had more turrets than a castle in a Grimms’ fairy tale. Every gray stone, every oak-framed and beveled window oozed money, and yet the whole structure looked as unstable as a drunken woman teetering on expensive high heels.
Wrought-iron gates stood open. Boulton pulled the car in and parked next to a truck filled with camera equipment. Two men dressed in Levi’s, T-shirts, and work boots sat on the open gate of the truck, playing backgammon on a portable board.
“What’s going on?” I asked them, getting out of the car.
“I just drive,” one man said, rhythmically shaking the dice in a leather container as if it were a maraca.
“Public-service announcement with Victoria Moor. Don’t trip over the cables,” the other warned, gesturing toward the house.
Cables, like entrails, gushed out of the open front door.
Claire pointed to one of the turrets. Above us a little blond-haired girl somberly watched our arrival. She was about eight or nine. I waved. She didn’t.
“Don’t ingratiate yourself to children. They don’t like it,” Claire said.
“I’m just trying to be pleasant. It’s not such a terrible thing to be pleasant.”
“You just can’t see yourself as the intruder, can you? Victoria didn’t mention she has a child.”
“Maybe it’s not hers.”
“They have the same eyes. Depleted.”
I looked back up at the turret. The window was empty.
“Wait here,” Claire commanded Boulton. “Come along, Miss Hill.”
We walked into the house, careful not to trip over the cables taped to the hallway floor.
“I suppose if we follow them, we’ll find her,” Claire observed.
“Like Dorothy,” I said.
“Dorothy who?”
“Dorothy following the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz.”
“A subversive story.”
“Subversive?”
“It shows a young girl how terrifying her imagination is. Imagination has the power to take her away from home—the implication being that she can only be happy in Kansas, preferably in her own backyard without a thought in her head.”
“I never looked at it that way.”
The cables veered right. We followed them down a long galleria. Large contemporary paintings, depicting ugly men and ugly women doing strange things to one another around geometrically shaped swimming pools, lined the stark white walls.
“Freud wins,” Claire sighed.
An archway, breaking the line of paintings, disclosed a vast living room draped in cabbage-rose chintz. The synthetic smell of the new and unused wafted out at us. An oil painting of Victoria Moor, looking like Winged Victory in a cocktail dress, hung over the fireplace.
The cables continued past the living room and veered left into a group of people, lights, and a camera stuffed into a small, cozy den. As we approached, two people turned and held their fingers to their mouths, warning us to be quiet. We stopped in silence by the door of the den.
“Ready, Victoria?” a man standing next to the camera asked solicitously.
She sat on a green tufted leather sofa, wearing simple slacks and a girl-next-door plaid shirt. A ribbon held back her long blond hair. She looked young and fresh and sincere.
“We’re going to pick it up from the children of poverty. Here we go. Everybody ready?” The man leaned close to the camera.
Holding a clap board, a younger man, in flowered Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, stepped in front of Victoria and said, “Poor children, take three.” He snapped the board and ducked away from the eye of the camera.
“And…action.”
“Yes. There are children starving in America.” Victoria spoke earnestly to the eye of the camera. “The children of the homeless. Of the poor. Children from abusive families. Runaway children. Children of single parents.”
She paused. Eyelids dropped. Slowly she raised them. Victoria was no longer just sincere; she had transformed herself into a woman of unimpaired morality. The moist, perfect lips were firm with integrity. I had seen that look before. She used it on “Family Rites” when she was going to lie to her wealthy stepfather.
Her voice was strong with principle. “You can adopt a starving child in America for just seventy-three cents a week. That’s all. Seventy-three cents. Less than you would spend for a diet cola. Please…save a child. And here’s how you do it.”
“Cut. Perfect. Perfect. Just one more.”
Victoria stood up and saw us.
“Was there anything technically wrong with that last take?” she asked the director.
“I just thought when you lowered your eyes—”
“Use it. I told you I only had an hour to give to this. Thanks, everybody.” She moved toward us. “Follow me.”
We followed her back down the galleria, past the unused living room, through the hallway, to a room that looked like an English pub. Claire stopped and studied the dark wood paneling.
“It’s real,” Victoria said, pausing by a row of French doors. “I had the whole inside of the pub brought over piece by piece. Cost a fortune.”
“I hope the pub owner was going out of business,” I said.
“The owner came out all right. Samuel Johnson’s initials are carved in the top of the bar.”
Claire ran her fingers over the S and the J and the date 1759. “The year his mother died,” she said softly.
“What about Boswell’s initials?” I asked.
“Who?” Victoria leaned against the bar.
I looked at Claire. “They’re not all equally famous.”
“I don’t read books anymore,” Victoria said. “I’m beyond revelation. Take you, Maggie—I wasn’t surprised you had the photograph. I won’t be surprised at the huge amount of money you’ll want me to pay for that picture. And I also won’t be surprised when you settle for less.”
She stared directly into my eyes as if I were a camera. The woman of unimpaired morals was gone. Claire was right. Her green eyes were depleted.
“Let’s go outside. Mother’s by the pool.”
She opened one of the many French doors, and we stepped out into Shangri-la. A vast, rolling garden was decorated with pink roses, pink bougainvillea, pink orchids, and pink camellias. There were other pink flowers, but they looked so rare and so expensive I was sure their names were unlisted. Three waterfalls intersected over a stone wall and cascaded into a rock-formed swimming pool. Weepy-looking trees gently brushed their melancholy branches against the lawn. A Japanese footbridge arched, as gracefully as a dolphin, over a stream to a small island. A white filigree gazebo, which looked as if it belonged on top of a giant wedding cake, was plopped in the middle of the island. I guess it was no longer enough to just have a pool and a tennis court. The rich and the famous needed to turn their backyards into theme parks.
; Patricia, covered in a pink caftan and big pink hat, leaned over the edge of the pool, giggling and dripping water onto Bobby Alt’s perfectly flat stomach. He floated on a pink candy-striped raft. A thin piece of white fabric cupped his genitals. In preliberation times Patricia, or Victoria, would’ve been floating on that raft with a man dripping water on her perfectly flat stomach. So this is equality—we trade our sex object for your sex object.
“Mother!” Victoria snapped.
Patricia and Bobby looked toward us and stopped laughing.
“We have guests. Go away, Bobby.”
“You don’t have to talk to him that way,” Patricia said meekly.
“That’s okay.” Bobby’s innocent eyes avoided us. He slipped off the raft and swam even breast strokes underwater toward the stairs. I knew he was wondering what we were doing here, if we were going to take away his grab for the center. He came up out of the baby blue and walked up the stairs, pushing back his wet hair. Only when Victoria turned away to pick up a towel did he sneak a searching look at us. Claire’s face was impassive. I gave him a big smile. He shifted his eyes away.
Victoria tossed him the towel. “After you put some clothes on, see that the crew gets out of the house without stealing or breaking anything.”
“And Bobby dear, don’t walk through the pub with wet feet. Chlorine stains the floor.” Patricia cooed like a seductive mother.
“Sure.” He winked an innocent eye and sauntered off.
“You have it!” Patricia turned on me. “I want it. Now!”
I quickly stepped back from her, remembering her sharp nails.
“Mother, please. Blackmail has a certain ritual, a tradition that must be carried out. It’s not polite to say ‘Give it to me.’” Victoria had a cruel smile on her face.
“I detest the sun. May we sit in the shade and discuss this?” Claire asked.
Patricia gathered the skirt of her caftan around her and led us across the little footbridge to the gazebo.
Pink fish sluggishly undulated in the stream beneath us. One floated belly up.
“Your fish is dead,” I said, stopping to take a look.
“They didn’t engineer the stream properly—not enough air or something. So they keep dying on us. The gardener will scoop him out tomorrow,” Patricia said, continuing her march to the gazebo. The pink caftan billowed around her.
Mother Shadow Page 14
