The Huntley estate was of Spanish design, and standing out on a wrought-iron balcony was Lily. She had somehow attached an even longer extension onto her floor-length hair, and she threw this blonde rope down to the ground. Bruno smiled and hammed it up, and then actually began to climb! It was a trick, of course, but it did look like he was climbing up her hair.
The crowd went almost silent, and then there was furious whispering, and then laughter.
Bruno seemed to love the crowd’s response and he hauled himself all the way to the balcony. As he climbed over the rail, someone yelled, “Just like Jack Palance at the Oscars!”
He called down in his loud, hoarse, General Patton voice, “Friends! I am glad you could join Lily and me for this little get-together. Enjoy yourselves! What is life all about if not friendship and love?” And then he kissed his wife. The crowd had, most of them, been involved in making T.V. shows long enough to recognize an Applause cue. They cheered.
Wesley approached and could barely contain a snort. “‘Friendship and love!’ I need a drink!”
Wes had been stewing all day about old problems he had with Bruno. Being this close to the man seemed to bring up his rancor.
I looked at Wes, all dolled up in his Wizard of Oz getup, and had to smile. What he needed was a distraction.
“Is there champagne in the kitchen?” I asked him.
“After you.”
We walked to the kitchen door, eavesdropping on our way. No one had anything nice to say about the host, I’m afraid.
After pouring tall drinks into some regal Baccarat crystal flutes, Wesley proposed a toast. He always did this midway through a party. It was a Wesley Westcott tradition.
“Let’s hope the worst is over and the best is on its way!”
The bubbles were the tiny, expensive kind and we felt indulged. As we sipped the wine, I tried to see if there was anything else going on with Wesley that might be putting him off-balance. He hadn’t seemed quite himself all day.
“Everything okay at home?” I asked.
“Sure. Mal is fine. Although she may not forgive me since I’ve been working such ridiculous hours.” He looked at his watch.
Mal was Wesley’s beloved springer spaniel. He was so attached to her, he’d actually gotten her name tattooed on his left wrist.
I looked at the kitchen clock and figured now was a good time to find our fortune teller. I still had to tell her to cool it with the dire personal predictions.
By this time, most of the guests had finished their espressos and were moving off towards the dance tent. There was just enough time to get to the soothsayer before her next appointment.
I opened the door to the guest house and walked back to the fortune-telling room in the rear. The door stood open and a pretty young woman was just sitting down at the table. She wore a beautiful silk gypsy dress, much nicer than the one I remembered renting for the occasion. Her shiny black hair was pulled up into a ponytail, tied with a green paisley scarf. She had beautiful skin and wore gold hoops in her ears. With dramatic black eyeliner emphasizing her upturned eyes, she really looked the part.
“Hi, I’m Madeline Bean,” I said as she looked up.
“Yes. I know.” Her purring, deep Brenda Vacarro voice was unexpected.
“How’s it been going?”
“Not bad.” She looked at me with eyes that were a little too green. Contact lenses, probably.
“Thanks for filling in here on such short notice. You’ve been very effective.”
She smiled without revealing her teeth.
“Maybe too effective.” I smiled back. “I’ve been hearing from a few of your customers that your predictions may be a little too Stephen King for the room. Perhaps you could use some other words besides, oh…say, death.”
“Mmmm,” she murmured. She still looked me straight in the eyes with her disconcerting emerald greens.
“By the way, where are you getting some of that stuff? Knowing the model of cars and the names of secretaries?”
“Oh, that.” She paused.
She was extremely self-possessed. She wasn’t stalling so much as pausing for dramatic effect. These actresses!
“I guess the stars tell me,” she finished.
“The Star?” I asked. It was a popular rag that gave the National Enquirer a run for its money. Was she saying she’d read all these personal facts in the tabloids?
“No.” Another pause, eyes still gazing at me. “The stars…you know, the cosmos!” She smiled sweetly.
“Come on!” I laughed. She was joking and I had been buying her whole otherworldly act. She was good.
“Ah, a disbeliever! You should pay attention to my predictions. The stars show good things in your future.”
“Uh-huh,” I drawled. I liked hearing her do her spiel. Whoever she was, Bruno had found us an interesting soothsayer.
She gazed off into the distance. I was disappointed to see she didn’t even glance at my expensive crystal ball.
“Yes. I see a dark man. A new romance, perhaps? And a lot of money and…the stars say you’ll leave this job.”
Actually, I could use a dark man and a lot of money if they might be lying about, but the last prediction cracked me up. I’d been through hell getting this little career started. I studied cooking in San Francisco, and slaved myself out to work at one of the most food-forward restaurants in Berkeley. I peeled and whisked and kept an applewood-burning pizza oven stoked and then plunged into major-league debt to get my show on the road. I’d been racing against the clock to have a profitable year before I turned the big three-oh. The clock was winning.
“I won’t quibble with your predictions about the man and the money, but I’m keeping my job. Good try,” I told her.
“It’s in the stars, Madeline, you can’t avoid it.”
“Anything else from the heavens?”
“A warning: watch yourself. The sun is dangerous.”
Safe advice in L.A., the skin cancer capitol of the world.
She looked out across the cosmos and then focused back to me. “Something is going to happen tonight. Something terrible!” she whispered in her dramatic low rasp.
“Something worse than Bruno pretending to be Prince Charming?”
“Prince Charming?” She looked puzzled.
Well, at last my smooth friend was showing that she was not all-knowing, all-seeing.
“Just Bruno’s subtle way of saying welcome to the party. He climbed up Rapunzel’s hair and kissed his wife in front of the dinner crowd. Didn’t you know?” Her omniscience was slipping.
“No.” She seemed to be thinking about something else as she explained, “I took my dinner break alone, over in that building they use as the gym.”
“Well, your next appointment is due soon. I just wanted to thank you for helping us out at the last moment. And if you can keep from freaking out the guests, so much the better.”
“Mmm,” she answered, mind still elsewhere.
Just then a bell rang from the reception room out front, and a drunk female voice shouted, “I’m a little late, is that okay?”
The beautiful gypsy snapped back to the here and now, moving past me and out into the corridor to greet her new arrival.
“I’m Madam Cassandra, and I have some fearful news for you, Ms. Summers.”
“Bad news? Oh no! Well, you must tell me, my dear!” she slurred, following Cassandra into the little room I had just left.
I walked out of the cottage, astounded at how much people really do seem to like to hear bad news. Everyone except me.
Most of the dinner crowd had finished and moved on, but I could see Graydon, still at the table he’d been at all night. Next to him was his hot little wife, Carmen. Also there were the latecoming host and hostess of the party, just starting to eat, I realized with alarm. I moved towards their table.
“Are you just getting around to dinner?” I asked, eyeing their untouched plates. The pumpkin ravioli in sage sauce had been sitting in a warm
ing tray forever. It would taste terrible.
“Let me freshen up your plates. This food may have been waiting a bit too long.”
“Okay,” Lily agreed, not really paying attention to my last words, since Bruno’s tone had gotten more aggressive in the background. She turned her attention toward her husband.
“Exactly what are you saying, Graydon?” Bruno demanded.
If there was anything this family loved to do more than fight, it was to fight in public. I took the two plates and left quietly. Not that anyone noticed.
In the kitchen, Wesley was supervising the cleanup. He looked at me and asked, “How many are still eating?”
“Just a few,” I answered. “Do we have any fresh food for the Huntleys? They’ve waited until every item on their buffet has run out or gone cold,” I complained. It was nicer when the hosts, who were paying the tab, after all, had the meal of their lives.
“Not to worry.” Wesley proceeded to arrange two perfectly beautiful plates with fresh food from the kitchen.
I took the hot plates quickly back to Bruno and Lily. As I approached their table I could hear that the volume had been turned up another few notches in the conflict between father and son.
As I silently slipped the plates down onto the table, Bruno was on the verge of shouting. His face looked mean. He said, “You imbecile! You had no right to tell the network we’d have the sketches to them by Tuesday!”
Oh. Work.
“D-a-a-d!” Gray whined loudly. “I told them maybe!”
“You have no…fucking…right! Got that? Do I have to write it down?” Bruno was choking on his anger, spitting out each word.
“I told you…” Gray tried to tell him again, this time louder—the Huntley way!
I left the table quickly. In my days of working for Bruno, I’d heard him berate and undermine his kids’ efforts many times. I’d also heard him overpraise them and overpay them for absolutely awful performances. He had unwittingly trained them to be unfit to do much of anything. And it appears that they were still at it.
I could see the other Huntley brother, Bru, Jr., approaching, drawn by the fight. And I decided to get the hell out of there.
The party had moved into its final phase; after-dinner drinks were being served at all three bars, and tables of miniature desserts were being set up at the dance tent. The rest of the party should wind peacefully down.
I looked at my watch. It was only eleven o’clock, but I was exhausted. And as I walked over to the tent, I couldn’t help feeling a tingling of dread. What was it the soothsayer had said? “Something is going to happen tonight. Something terrible.”
I was getting the itchy feeling that there was still time for something truly terrible to occur.
Chapter 6
Wesley and Holly and Alan and I were standing together outside of the dance tent. Strains of “You’ve Got To Change Your Evil Ways” provided a soundtrack to our conversation.
It was almost midnight and the party was going on like mad. People were found clutching one another in various deserted areas around the grounds. Important guests were raving about the food, and most everyone was feeling the effects of the drink.
We started the ritual comparison of war stories from the night’s event. This kind of banter was our comic relief. After three sleepless nights hammering every single detail in place, and then charging through these last intense hours coercing all those details to work, we were ready for a break.
As was our custom, we tried to outdo each other for most scary moment in the party, best save of a crisis, most important movie gossip overheard, and so on.
“Did you talk to our soothsayer?” Holly was asking Wesley.
“Yeah. She told me my life would soon be in jeopardy.”
“Oh, dear,” I muttered. Death again.
“I live in L.A.,” Wes said. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
We laughed. In L.A., you either develop a great sense of humor, a great sense of denial, or you move out of town.
“But she did have some good news about you, Madeline. She said that Arlo would propose soon. Don’t give up hope!”
I groaned. Why does every fortune teller take it as a given that unmarried females are hungry to hear those words?
“Want to know when Arlo will pop the question?” he teased.
“No.”
“Yes!” insisted Holly.
“Stay out of this.”
To change the subject, I offered, “Did I tell you? The Huntleys were fighting right after dinner!”
“See,” Wes jumped in, “I told you everyone enjoyed the party. The Huntleys love a good fight. The louder they fight, the closer that family feels.”
“What do you mean the Huntleys were fighting after dinner?” Holly demanded. “I saw them after dinner and they were definitely not fighting.”
“Where?” I asked her.
“I was upstairs in the house, bringing dinner plates to the staff and the little boy. I opened the door to this room that I was sure was the Nursery, and I’m afraid I accidentally walked in on Rapunzel and Prince Charming…” She paused for effect. “…doing the deed.”
“No!” the rest of us hooted.
“Oh, yes!” Holly was loving this. She had waited quietly while we were doling out our best party stories, holding back her aces.
“Not doing…it?” Good old Wes.
“Well, I couldn’t just stand there staring at them, could I? I just opened the door, spotted the pair on the floor…”
That got another hoot out of our crowd.
“On the floor!” from Wesley.
“Gotta give the old boy credit,” from Alan.
Holly said, “Hey, do you want to hear?”
That quieted us down.
“He was on the bottom, and the two of them were covered with all that fake hair she had on. He was kinda writhing and moaning. You know, the usual.”
In our exhausted state, the mental picture was way too much to deal with. There were some soft “Oh, god”s and shakes of heads.
“I don’t think they even knew I was there.”
“Bruno probably likes an audience,” Alan offered.
“Okay! Enough!” I commanded.
“Well, anyway, they sure weren’t fighting when I saw them,” Holly finished, giggling.
“I didn’t mean that Bruno was fighting with Lily—”
I never got to finish my thought. Instead, I was interrupted by a strangled, animallike wail. It came from inside the tent and was followed by other screams, other voices shouting.
All of us ran the ten feet or so to the nearest entrance to the dance tent. We pushed quickly past others who, like us, were drawn to the screams. At the center of the dance floor, a tight knot of people had formed around someone who had apparently fallen.
Oh, lord! Someone taken ill or worse. My brain began to solve this unknown problem. There must be a number of medical doctors on the guest list. Someone would help, I prayed, as I pushed my way to the center of the crowd.
The screaming had stopped for a moment, which I took as a positive sign, but now it started again. As I moved closer to the trouble, I heard the sounds of violent retching and coughing that were punctuating the screams of pain.
The band had stopped playing, and as I almost reached the person who had fallen, I heard the man in front of me whisper to his date, “Don’t look!”
Of course, I had to.
It was Lily who was standing over Bruno, shrieking. It was Bruno who was lying on the floor, writhing and convulsing. His body arced backwards. It didn’t look like a heart attack. More like a fit.
Wesley and Alan were right behind me, and I heard them trying to move the people back.
My eyes were glued to Bruno’s face. It was contorted, agonized, dying. I reached out for Lily, who was now sobbing, but no longer screaming.
Bruno’s mouth was frozen in a painfully wide-open grimace, and with each sob from Lily, he actually seemed to grimace harder. It w
as horrible. His face strained, like he was trying to gasp for breath, but he was taking nothing into his lungs. Something stronger than he was seemed to be strangling him from the inside.
I heard a voice above the crowd’s whispering and crying. A man was shouting, “Let me through! I’m his doctor! Move aside!” It was Bruno’s golfing buddy, Dr. Cary Epstein.
Lily was still sobbing in my arms. I told her, “Lily, it’s Dr. Epstein. Don’t worry, he’s here!”
But Lily was not hearing me. Her face was blotched with red and her eyes were swollen. Her mascara had streaked her face with dark gray smudges. I’d never seen her looking a mess. Nobody had.
The doctor moved to Bruno’s twitching, arcing body, and yelled, “Somebody help me hold him down.”
No one moved.
“Would somebody…” the doctor started to ask again, but he was thrown off-balance by Bruno’s seizures.
Lily looked wild-eyed at the crowd. “Somebody, please!” she shrieked. “Somebody help!”
At each of her cries, Bruno’s body jerked and arched into almost a complete backbend. It was beyond grotesque.
I looked around and saw Alan moving people back.
“Alan!”
I caught his attention and he moved in to help subdue Bruno.
This was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen in my life. And it got worse. Bruno started to speak. That is, he tried to speak. It came out in a racked, choking whisper, like someone trying to form words on the inhale, desperately trying to drag in air at the same time. I couldn’t make out any words.
“What’s he saying?” Lily demanded, hysterical. “What?”
She pulled away from me and fell to her knees at Bruno’s side. The doctor was trying to look in Bruno’s eyes as Alan held him down. Bruno finally noticed Lily and he got even more agitated. Again and again, his fierce, gaping mouth grimaced horribly, as he struggled to catch a breath of air. He simply couldn’t.
And then he just stopped. Brown eyes open, distorted mouth gaping, long body rigid in a contortion one moment and frozen deathly still the next.
Alan let go of Bruno’s shoulders and Lily started howling, “No, no, no, no!” and threw herself on top of Bruno’s body, crying, her fake hair covering him in disarray.
Sympathy for the Devil Page 4
