“You gonna stop eating when you’re full,” Dex asked, “or when your arms get tired?” He stood over me and grinned while I helped myself to a small plateful of the molded fish salad drizzled with some of the cucumber dressing.
“A girl has to keep up her strength,” I said a little hotly once I’d finished my mouthful. “So what’s your big plan?” I asked, thinking to divert him from my snack.
“Well, here’s what I figure,” he said, taking a crab-stuffed artichoke off my plate and nibbling it with surprising delicacy while we spoke, “everyone is going to be busy playing at being something they’re not. You and I will mosey around on our own and just see what we can see. Talk to people. Don’t worry about being found out: we got our invitation right enough. It’s not like we had to sneak in.”
I nodded, glad he’d reminded me of this. Despite the fact that I was both hungry and eating, I’d been somewhat shy about this whole escapade. Although, it wasn’t like you could tell that from the way I was stuffing my face.
“Let’s do this,” Dex said, “we’ll mosey around on our own, like I said. But we’ll meet back here in an hour, compare notes. OK?”
“Sounds good to me.” Before I shoved off, though, I risked it: I took one of the tiny pancakes and delicately dropped about a teaspoon of the shiny fish eggs on it, topping the whole with another teaspoon of the soured cream. Dex watched while I popped this in my mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
“Not bad,” I pronounced, reaching for my champagne. “Salty.” Dex pulled a face that said you couldn’t pay him to stick that in his mouth and headed in the direction of the foyer. I had a hunch he’d poke his head in downstairs, just to see what there was to be seen. I headed over to one of the windows that led to the verandah and the garden, wanting a gander of what was beyond all that expensive glass.
The verandah was host to cigar smokers and couples who looked as though they’d like to find a place to tryst. Though I’ve no fondness for cigars, I joined the smokers: I hadn’t brought the right sort of decoy to be playing at the other.
“Would you care for one of my Cubans?” Though the mask made it difficult to judge accurately, I gauged the man’s age to be between fifty and sixty, though dapper. The kind of man used to making headway with girls my age. He was nice-looking, too, I could see that, mask or no. There was something vaguely familiar about him: something in the shape of his head, I thought. And maybe the cut of his shoulders. I couldn’t place it, though. Nor could I shake the feeling.
“No thank you,” I said. Then, lowering my voice, “I don’t actually smoke,” allowing him to draw his own conclusions. He did.
“Ah,” he said. “Out here to escape someone.” It wasn’t a question. I just shrugged, noncommittal. He accepted it as a positive reply, which was fine by me. “But say,” he said, “you look familiar to me.”
“I was just thinking the same about you.”
“Have I seen you in anything?”
I shook my head. “I’m not an actress.”
He arched his eyebrows at me. That is, I could not actually see his eyebrows due to the mask he was wearing, but the rest of his face stretched around the way faces do when eyebrows are raised.
“You’re not?” said he. “What then?”
I touched a finger to my own mask. “There’s a reason we’re wearing these, is there not?”
He laughed, taking my meaning. “There is. All right then, can I at least know your name?”
“You can … you can call me Kitty,” I said, inexplicably reaching for the detested nickname rather than my real name. Something about the mask called it up.
“All right, Kitty,” he extended his hand, “I’m Baron.”
I shook the hand he offered, but my mind was reeling. That was why he looked familiar. Of course. Baron Sutherland had been a major star when I was a child. He still got roles now, but they were secondary ones—bad guys, fathers, bank presidents. In person I could feel the presence that had made him a star. There was a kind of subdued intensity about him. You had the feeling that, most of the time, he got what he wanted.
“You should maybe have made up a name, Baron. That’s a pretty distinctive moniker. So now I know who you are, mask or no.”
He laughed again, sounding unconcerned. “There are worse things.” Then, “Walk with me?” he said, not waiting for an answer, but steering me down the verandah stairs and into the garden. I trotted along obediently. A movie star, I thought. Imagine! I took his arm as we made our way around the garden path, trying not to look as though I were hanging on his every word.
He chatted as we walked. “Anyway, you’re the one who was cloaking herself in mystery, not I. Let’s face it: for someone as old as I have become to have a chance with someone as young and beautiful as you,” he stopped and took my hand as he said this last. Raised it to his lips. “I need every bit of magic I can muster. Are you impressed? Well, that’s just fine.” He smiled at me. Winked. I could see that wink through his mask. “That’s just what I want.” Then he led us on again, back down the garden path.
I laughed, as well. Drawn to him despite myself. None of this was getting me what I’d come here for. But—oh!—I was having a wonderful time.
“So, hmmmm,” he was saying. “You won’t tell me what you do. Will you tell me who you came with?”
I cocked my head at him, the mystery of the evening washing me in an unfamiliar coquettishness. But it was all the answer he seemed to need.
“All right then,” he said, “I’ll have to guess. Look at you: tall and reed slender. Elegant, certainly. Aristocratic if I hold my head in a certain way. So I say … you’re a princess—from Russia—and you don’t dare tell me your identity. You’re here in exile and have been since babyhood.”
“Oh, good guess! Quite, quite good. Only I was born right here in Los Angeles. And I have no Russian blood.”
“Born right here in L.A.? Well, that’s something. One of the three, then?” He kidded.
I looked at him blankly.
“Well,” he said, motioning dramatically around the verandah, “everyone’s from somewhere else, aren’t they? Go ahead and ask. I myself was born in a small town in Michigan. We’re all from somewhere else. But one in three …”
“Ah, I get it. Though it’s a shrinking number, isn’t it? I’d wager that, these days, it might even be one-in-six. Or more. I’m an aberration now. An outsider, almost, in my own hometown.”
“An outsider? Oh, princess: look at you. Never an outsider. Not here or anywhere.”
The level of champagne in our glasses had grown low and we’d left the girls with trays behind on the verandah. Baron settled me on a bench under a palm and went off to find full glasses. As I watched him go, I took myself to task. He was twice my age—maybe more—and I was enjoying his company more than was appropriate. When he came back with our drinks, I determined to steer things around to business if I could. If I couldn’t, I’d go off and find someone else to talk to.
“There you go, your ladyship,” he said when he returned, passing me my glass. “Your most royal highness.”
He extended his hand to me and I took it, rising. We continued our walk, deeper into the garden. I couldn’t see much of it, but what I could see—and smell—was lovely. A lush, tropical oasis with a footlit path. We walked on.
“Thank you,” I said, “I feel just like … I feel like Catherine Calderon in The Cardboard Heart. Have you seen it?” I asked in what I hoped was a guileless manner.
“Seen it?” he said laughing. “I was in it.”
“You were?” All coquettishness was off me now. I was genuinely astonished. “Perhaps it’s not polite to say, but I don’t recall that.”
He sighed and then he shrugged. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? A decade ago, it would have been me kissing the lovely Miss Cat in that movie.” I wondered if I heard a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Ah well. No, I was the sheriff. In the scenes in the town?”
“You were?” I said, trying
hard to remember, carrying with me only the impression of someone grizzled and beyond prime years. A cutout of a sheriff, then. A character without weight or substance. “I barely remember you there. But it’s not your fault. It was a silly role for you. I think you should still play leads.” It came out sounding juvenile and ridiculous, yet I meant it. He could see that straight off.
“Ah, that’s sweet, princess,” he said, obviously touched. I thought maybe the bitterness I’d heard had been my imagination. “Balm to an old man’s heart to hear a pretty girl—a Russian princess no less—say things like that. You oughta be careful with your powers. A man could fall in love with a girl who said things to him like that.”
He’d stopped next to a small bamboo grove that sheltered us from the house. There was a low table there, and a bench, though we did not sit. He took my glass and placed it on the table with his own. Then he moved in close, close enough that I could catch the woody citrus scent of chypre on his jacket. My stomach fluttered in a way that made me feel as though I might fall over with it. I felt literally weak in the knees.
We didn’t speak for a moment and then he reached out—ever so gently—and touched my chin, lifting it softly between thumb and forefinger. And even as he bent his head, even as he kissed me and all the sensations were swirling around me like a movie vampire’s cape, I felt myself wonder at the art of this seduction. Though such things—stolen kisses by handsome men—had been rare enough in my life that I had practically no experiences to recollect, I understood even while it was happening that the same could not be said for him and that even as he made me feel rare and special—a princess fallen across his path—such occurrences were, for him, neither rare nor especially unique.
I understood these things with the part of my brain reserved for calm judgment. And I did not care. In fact, I felt my neck extend further into him, felt an instinct overtake me and my body, my mouth, my heart respond to him. And a part of me felt ridiculous. And a part of me felt swept away. The two parts were somehow not at war.
It was he who finally pulled away, not I. He held me at arm’s length, peered into my eyes. “Were it not practically considered a sin here, I’d reach over and pull off that mask. I so want to see your face. And I want to see your face regard mine.”
“What would you see?” I said, matching his tone. Meeting it, as though both of us were in some lighthearted film brimming with romance.
“Why,” he said, more honestly than I’d anticipated, “perhaps I’d see my youth.”
I shook my head. “Perhaps not. Perhaps you’d see something to frighten you. Something to make you run away.”
“Ah, princess. Not that. Never that.”
I was surprised when, despite his words, he pushed me away from him, gently but firmly. When he righted his hair and the items of clothing that had become slightly askew in our gentle tussle, I was surprised because, had it been left to me, I would not have made that decision. I blush to think of it now but it’s possible that, in those few heated minutes, I would have followed anywhere he led.
“Forgive me, Princess, because I am loath to leave your side.” Fully and expertly repaired, he reached across and picked up our half-full champagne glasses, keeping one and handing me the other. I took mine gratefully. Sipped carefully. I was parched, though I didn’t think much more alcohol would do me a great deal of good. “But I came here with another,” he continued. “And I suspect that you did too.” He looked a question at me and I shrugged, again allowing him his own conclusions; knowing at which he’d arrive.
He got us moving again and we traveled the footlit path in companionable silence. Sensing I might not get another opportunity and sensing also that our time together was drawing to a close, I decided without anything ventured, there could be nothing gained.
“Am I right in thinking you were one of the founders of the Masquers, Baron?”
He smiled down at me as we walked. Sipped. “I was.”
“Then you know Laird Wyndham.”
“Yes, of course. Poor chap.”
“Why poor?”
“Well, that business? With the girl? So tragic.” Yet it seemed to me there was something in his voice that said he didn’t find it tragic at all.
“Yes,” I said. “I only … I only know what the papers said. Sounds awful.”
“Indeed.” For a moment, Baron seemed lost in thought and when he spoke, I wasn’t sure he spoke to me or simply to express his thoughts aloud. “He always had a streak in him though, Laird Wyndham.”
“He … he did?” I said.
“Well, not so just anyone could see it.” Were the words spoken too quickly? A recovery from a near-fumble? Or was my imagination running away from me? Jumping at shadows. “But a darkness, you understand. When I heard the news, I wasn’t surprised.”
“Really,” I said, prompting. “How so?”
“Well, we worked together many times over the years, Laird and I. Hell, I guess you could say we were friends for a time, of a sort.”
“A sort.”
“Well, I was the leading man and he was the pup, coming up. And then, slowly, you understand, a shift came.”
“A shift. And then he became the leading man?” I asked the question, but I didn’t have to. We both knew what had gone on. One day your name was on the marquee, in lights. And the next? You were the grizzled sheriff. The father. The town barber. You were someone with less lines, less money, less fame. “That must have hurt.”
We had come back to the foot of the stairs that led to the verandah. Baron stopped and looked down at me carefully. The look must have reassured him. After all, what did he see? A slip of a girl not yet in her mid-twenties, a pliant girl with soft lips. I could not blame him for not seeing anything else. I had not intentionally brought him to this spot, but I was not now sorry that I had.
He took a sip of his champagne and leaned into the base of the concrete banister gracefully. It was a casual movement, easy. But I could see it masked deep thought.
“Hurt? Hurt is not the word for it, Princess. It scorched my soul, in a way. It burned.”
Now it was my turn to look closely. Did his eyes swim at the words, just a bit? But it was impossible to tell protected by the twin shields of the dark and the mask.
“I’d want to do something about it.” I said the words quietly. I addressed them to my shoes.
I felt rather than saw Baron move his hand to the top of my head. It seemed to me he caressed my hair the way he might have done with a dog. Or maybe it was just that I was seeing him differently now, differently than I had in the garden. When I would have followed him anywhere.
“You’d want to,” he said absently, as though his mind were far away, “but you’d think very carefully before you did.”
“Were you at the party?” Did I move too quickly with this question? But no: I was not a detective, after all. Just a slip of a girl.
“At Laird’s party at the Ambassador? Sure. I wouldn’t have missed it. Why? Were you there? I don’t remember seeing you.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have seen me,” I said, not answering his question but not even sure where I was going with my remarks. “Maybe you would have been busy?”
“That could be. There were a lot of people there, that’s for sure. But listen, Princess, I’ve known Wyndham a good long time. We’ve worked on movies together. We worked on this place together.” He indicated the gardens we still stood in and the house that loomed above us, alight with party noise and golden light. “And I’m a man who prides himself on being able to judge a character, do you understand?”
I nodded. “I think so. Yes.”
“So I stand more or less side by side with Laird Wyndham for a dozen years and now someone tells me he murdered a girl. Brutally and without care. And that’s not the Laird Wyndham I used to know,” he said flatly. He’d put down his champagne in order to slap the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “But maybe—just maybe, mind—maybe he’s changed.”
&nbs
p; “People don’t change,” I said, repeating something Marjorie said often enough.
“Don’t they, Princess?” He smiled at me—indulgently or with respect, I couldn’t tell. It was a little too dim in the garden for visual nuance. Still, all things considered—soft lips, champagne and the tendrils of moonlight I could now begin to see poking around the edge of the house—my money was on the former. “Oh, but I think they do.”
There seemed to me something chilling in those five words.
I tried to get more out of him, but he wouldn’t budge. And I had the feeling it wasn’t just the conversation he wanted to get away from. I had the feeling he had gotten nervous and was keeping an eye out for someone, a feeling that increased when he led me back up the stairs and onto the verandah.
Just as we’d reached level ground, a girl appeared framed in the doorway. She was devastatingly beautiful, with hair the color of honey and limbs so long they gave her a coltish appearance. Her dress was silk and looked as though it had been poured onto her while warm, settling into every groove as the material came to body temperature which, on her, probably hovered around the melting point of bronze.
“There you are, Baron,” she said. Her voice was like honey, as well. Deeper than I’d expected, but feminine just the same. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Seeing us chatting, she smiled at me, but her eyes were cold. “Let’s go in, shall we? I’ve been speaking with the Hutchinses. They want us to come with them on their yacht this weekend,” she said in a voice that indicated yacht trips were possibly a daily occurrence. “Just a day trip to Ensenada. I told them we would, if you’d like to go.”
“That sounds lovely, Beatrice. Look … we were just talking a bit of business. I’ll meet you at the buffet table in two minutes flat, all right?”
Death Was in the Picture Page 10
