What Remains of Me

by Alison Gaylin

  Moments later, Kelly was standing at the sink with the water running, breathing hard, that locked drawer opening. The night of April 21 sprung to life in her mind, starting with the midnight drive up Outpost Road—a short solo run to clear her head before sleep, the radio on and that song playing, making her feel seventeen again. Bette Midler. “The Rose.” Bette had been singing about an endless aching need when Kelly’s cell phone had started ringing—ringing past midnight. She hadn’t recognized the number on the screen. And she never would have answered if the song hadn’t brought back memories, if it hadn’t made her feel so stupidly, stubbornly hopeful.

  More hopeful still when she heard Sterling Marshall’s voice. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, Mr. Marshall.”

  “Call me Dad,” he had said. “Call me Dad, Kelly,” and “Please don’t tell Shane. We need to talk. I need to see you.” And then, “Kelly, my girl, I have cancer. I’m dying.” A triple blow. Who wouldn’t have gone to Sterling Marshall after that? How could anyone resist that kind voice? Call me Dad . . . My girl . . .

  And so Kelly had gone. Instead of turning around and heading home, she’d swung onto 62 and flown toward Hollywood at eighty-five miles per hour. “I’ll be there,” she’d said into her phone. Like an idiot. Like a child.

  When she arrived, the gate had been open. She’d driven through and parked in the Marshalls’ driveway and rung the front doorbell and when no one had answered she’d opened it herself. Like someone dumb and trusting. She’d run up the stairs to his office—weird how it all felt to her, as though no time had passed, as though Kelly really were the same person she’d been thirty years ago, before McFadden, before prison. She’d half-expected Bellamy to greet her as she passed the den, seventeen-year-old Bellamy, shaking a bag of magic mushrooms, her smile lighting up the room, the street, all of Hollywood and beyond . . . “’Bout time you showed up, Kelly . . . Let’s have a ‘no-day.’”

  Kelly had run up the stairs, feet clomping like a kid, “The Rose” still playing in her head along with Bellamy’s voice, her best friend’s voice . . . “Check it. I got some of my mom’s pills too. I think they’re downers. Wanna try?” The whole house had been silent, Mary Marshall passed out in her room no doubt, the servants sleeping, everyone asleep save for Sterling Marshall and whatever he had to say to her . . . An apology? After all these years?

  She’d thrown open the door to her father-in-law’s office, thinking, I’m here, Dad. God, that really had been what she was thinking. All is forgiven. I’m home.

  And then the smell had hit her, that awful smell, coppery and intimate. Blood. Bits of bone on the polished wood floor, his face destroyed. A gun next to his hand and she’d knelt down, she’d touched him.

  Had it all been a setup? Had he called her with a plan? I’m dying of cancer, Kelly. I’m killing myself and leaving no note and you, you, my girl . . . You will take the rap. My son will be rid of you at long last.

  She’d pulled up her hoodie. She’d run out the back door. But did that matter? Did any of it matter—a convicted killer, leaving a dead man’s house at 2:00 A.M.?

  Kelly’s car in his driveway. Her number in his phone. All that blood. Her footprints in it. Her fingerprints on him, two days after he’d given an interview to the Los Angeles Times on the fifth anniversary of Kelly’s release, reminding the world of her role: Hollywood have-not. Drugged-out wild child. Murderer.

  “He even gave me a motive,” she whispered, her voice hollow in her ears, doomed.

  ONCE SHE WAS IN SHANE’S ROOM, KELLY TRIED TO IGNORE THE VINTAGE movie poster over the bed (Sterling Marshall shines on in GUNS OF VICTORY!). She headed for the desk in the corner of the room and turned on his computer. Shane’s bedroom doubled as his office. (With clients, he called it the “guest room.” Yet another secret in their lives.) And so it was very neat—pristine, save for the empty pill bottles stashed away in the nightstand drawer—the computer ringing in such a clean, professional way as she switched it on and clicked on the icon marked “address book.” She searched for Bellamy’s name, found it. But there was no address listed; no e-mail, even. Just a home phone.

  Without thinking much about it, Kelly clicked on Shane’s Internet icon and opened his e-mail. In the five years she’d lived with him, she’d never once used his computer without him in the room, let alone opened his e-mail. But after scrolling through to find only client correspondence and, later, queries from the press, she switched screens to Google. She had never before checked his search history.

  But she did now, moving from step to intrusive step as though by reflex, as though Shane had forfeited his right to privacy by turning into someone she needed to figure out.

  A sound just outside the house snapped her out of it. A car horn honking, out on the road, and when she listened more carefully, voices. People out there. Shame filled her, an awful cold feeling, as though whoever was outside had actually seen Kelly at Shane’s computer. She shut it off—but not before she noticed something strange on her husband’s search history. In the midst of searches for porn and photo processing centers and generic Ambien, one name had jumped out at her. And judging from its placement, the search had taken place within the last week or two.

  Shane had googled Artist + Rocky Three.

  Kelly swallowed hard. She left Shane’s bedroom quickly and headed back to the kitchen. Outside, she heard tires skidding to a halt. A door slamming. A man’s voice saying, “Dude, this is our space.”

  “What, you reserved it?” another, deeper voice laughed.

  “What the hell . . .” Kelly cracked the front door.

  “Kelly!” a woman’s voice yelled.

  She opened the door a little wider and found herself staring at a small cluster of news vans parked just across the street.

  “Kelly, have you spoken to your husband?”

  “Do you know who killed Sterling Marshall?”

  “Does Shane have substance abuse issues?”

  She sighed. Slammed the door. “No, maybe, and yes,” she said quietly.

  Amazing. Her address wasn’t listed. And, except for meetings with his most trusted clients, Shane did most all of his photo archive business remotely. Yet still the press had found her.

  The press could find anybody . . .

  Kelly backed away from the door, an idea closing in on her. She grabbed her purse off the table, opened her wallet, pulled out Sebastian Todd’s business card. She tapped the gold-embossed number into her phone.

  “You’re a mind reader,” Todd said by way of answering. “I was just about to call you. What did you think of The Demon—”

  “I’ll give you an interview.”

  “Wow that’s . . . impulsive of you.”

  “An exclusive. When the time is right. I’ll talk about my parents. John McFadden. Anything you want.”

  “To what do I owe this—”

  “I just want one thing in return.”

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t pay.”

  “I don’t want money.”

  “I’m married.” Sebastian Todd laughed. Kelly didn’t.

  She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “The only thing I want,” she said, “is Bellamy Marshall’s home address.”

  “THIS IS GOING ON TOO LONG,” MARY MARSHALL SAID. “I NEED TO plan the funeral.”

  Barry Dupree coughed and got an elbow in the ribs from Louise Braddock. He frowned at her. What? He hadn’t meant anything by the cough. It was just a cough. What kind of an asshole did Braddock think he was?

  “Mrs. Marshall,” Braddock said. “I understand your frustration. But as I said before, the medical examiner will be releasing your husband’s body very soon.”

  “I need to contact his relatives. He has relatives all over the country. He comes from a big family. How will they be able to get out here if I don’t know when the funeral will be?”

  She said it to Barry, not Louise, but they were both used to that. Most older ladies preferred Barry’s company to tha
t of his partner—either because he was a guy and therefore more trustworthy to them or because Louise was about as welcoming and warm as the iceberg that sank the Titanic or both. Probably both.

  Louise held Sterling Marshall’s appointment book in her lap, and she kept tapping on it—an almost hostile gesture, somehow made worse by the fact that she was wearing evidence gloves.

  Barry said, “Can I get you a glass of water, Mrs. Marshall?”

  She shook her head. Pointed at Louise Braddock. “She isn’t listening to me.”

  “We’re both listening, ma’am,” Barry said. But he couldn’t return her gaze. It was the look in her eyes—this-can’t-be-happening to the hundredth power. He’d seen it before on people like her—attractive, wealthy, basically happy people who’d lived a certain number of years and thought they could make it all the way to the finish line without the world falling in on them. What could you say to that look—Life sucks? Shit happens? Sorry you had to live so long?

  Making matters worse was the pharmaceutical influence. By her own admission, Mary Marshall had been zonked out on sleeping pills when the shots had woken her. She was half groggy when she found her husband’s body, and had tried to numb the initial horror with a handful of Xanax (she couldn’t remember how many), then a few Klonopin parsed out by her well-meaning daughter when the Xanax-calm started to loosen its grip.

  As a result, the shock was settling in little by little as the drugs wore off. One minute, she’d be perfectly lucid, answering questions, asking them . . . and then reality would hit her and she’d get that look in her eyes and she’d shatter. She’d go either comatose or combative—and at the moment she was definitely combative. “You can’t just hijack my husband’s body,” she said.

  “No one is taking Mr. Marshall’s body for any longer than it needs to be taken. You must try to be patient,” said Louise, ever the diplomat, talking to Mary Marshall like she’d been complaining about her dry cleaning not being ready. Barry couldn’t believe Louise had given him shit for coughing. Did she ever even listen to herself?

  “When was the last time your son spoke to your husband?” Louise said.

  “My son? Why are you asking about my son?”

  “He took a whole bunch of your pills, ma’am.”

  “I know that.”

  “A dangerous amount.”

  “He is grieving, Detective Braddock. We’re all grieving. Do you know how that feels?”

  “They didn’t see each other much, though, did they?”

  She looked at Barry again, for such a drawn-out moment that he felt obliged to nod. “My son and my husband spoke on the phone every week,” she said. “They were close.”

  “When was the last time you and your husband had dinner with your son and his wife.”

  “We don’t do that.”

  “When was the last time the two of them just got together to play golf? Shoot the breeze?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So would you classify Shane and Sterling’s relationship as strained?”

  “No,” she said. “No, they loved each other very much.”

  Louise opened the appointment book. “When was the last time Mr. Marshall spoke on the phone to Shane?”

  She exhaled. “Just this past Sunday.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “Sterling told Shane about his cancer diagnosis. My daughter, Bellamy, had already known for weeks.”

  “Were you in the room during the phone call?”

  “No.”

  “How did your husband seem after he hung up with your son?”

  “He seemed the way he always seemed,” she said. “Why are you asking me about Shane?”

  “Did your son know that Sterling had made an appointment with his lawyer for this coming Monday?”

  “What?”

  “It’s in his book.” She tapped at the open page. “Did you know about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “When did he last speak to your son again?”

  “Sunday.”

  “He made the appointment on Monday, for one week later.”

  “So what?”

  “Is there anything your son could have said to him during that conversation that would make him call his lawyer?”

  “What are you hinting at, Detective?”

  “Louise,” said Barry.

  “Did they fight at all? Did your husband mention anything about changing his will?”

  “What are you trying to say about my son?”

  “Louise, it stands to reason that he would want to get his papers in order.” He gave Mary Marshall a sad smile that he hoped would appease her. “I mean, in his condition.”

  “Yes,” Mary said, the tension draining out of her. “Yes, that’s true.” So often, Louise and Barry played good cop/bad cop. But it was very rarely intentional.

  “I’m going to check in with the rest of the crew.” Louise got up from the couch, leaving the two of them, taking the appointment book with her.

  It was probably the kindest thing she could have done under the circumstances, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable for Barry. “We called your daughter a little while ago, ma’am,” he said. “She said she would be here soon.”

  “With Shane?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Mary gave him a weak smile, which crumbled fast. “I hope he’s all right.”

  A few tears trickled down her cheek. She wiped them away with a handkerchief she’d tucked into the sleeve of her silk blouse, plucked a gold compact out of her handbag, and applied red lipstick. “Do I look okay?” she said. “I don’t want to scare my son again.”

  “Again?”

  “I think one of the things that upset him yesterday . . .” She cleared her throat. “I think I frightened him with the way I looked.”

  “You look great, Mrs. Marshall,” he said.

  “You’ve got to act and dress as though you always have an audience,” she said. “Sterling used to say that.” She let out a long sigh that became a sob. “Hell of a curtain call he’s taking.”

  Mary Marshall cried quietly into her handkerchief. Barry waited for the crying to subside. He wanted to pat her on the back but resisted the urge. Even in his mind, that felt awkward.

  Finally, when she calmed, he cleared his throat, turned the page in his notebook. “Can you tell me a little bit about Mr. Marshall’s schedule on April twenty-first?” Barry already knew about Sterling Marshall’s schedule that day—at least he knew what he’d planned to do from the appointment book Louise had been tapping to death at the start of this interview. The uniforms going through Sterling Marshall’s office had found the book straight off, and it had told them more by far than any witness interview. Turned out Marshall didn’t have a personal assistant, and while he did have a computer that had since been taken into possession, he preferred scheduling on paper, as anybody would expect from a seventy-nine-year-old movie star with a drawer full of fancy pens.

  “I’m not asking you for specific times or anything,” he said. “Just what you might remember him doing.”

  She dragged the handkerchief across her eyes. “I wasn’t home the whole day,” she said. “I . . . I had tennis and errands.”

  “I understand. If you can just think back, though. Did he do anything out of the usual? Was he behaving strangely at all?”

  “He had a doctor’s appointment.”

  Barry nodded. He’d seen that in the book. “What kind of doctor?”

  “His oncologist.”

  “Routine, or . . .”

  “Nothing was routine. He’d just been diagnosed a few weeks ago with pancreatic cancer.” She got up from the couch, moved over to the window.

  “Yes. Of course,” he said. “I guess what I’m saying is, how was he handling it?”

  “Handling it?”

  “His diagnosis. On that day. Was he acting strangely?”

  “Detective Dupree. I have a question for you.”

&nb
sp; “Okay . . .”

  “How do you suppose Kelly Lund got into our house?” She said it flatly, matter-of-factly, and she didn’t turn around. She stayed facing the window, the sun on her silver hair, her posture rigid as a ballet dancer’s.

  He stared at her back, not sure what she was asking. “We don’t know who that was leaving the . . .”

  She turned and faced him. “It was Kelly Lund. I know it was.”

  “All I can tell you,” he said, “is there were no signs of a break-in.”

  “It was the maid’s day off. The cook only rarely stays nights and didn’t last night. He and I were in the house alone.” She stared at him, eyes hurt and blazing. “And I was asleep.”

  He took a breath, said it calm as he could. She was trying to put words in his mouth, and he couldn’t let her do that. “You’re saying,” he said, “that whoever this on the surveillance video is . . .”

  “Kelly Lund.”

  “Fine,” he said. “You’re saying your husband must have let her into the house.”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “So . . .”

  “So, if that’s the case,” she said, taking a few steps toward him, the hurt in her eyes turning fierce. “If Sterling allowed Kelly Lund to come into this house, then yes. My husband was behaving very, very strangely.”

  There was a soft knock on the closed door. Barry cracked it, saw Braddock’s face.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Seriously?”

  She didn’t even bother nodding.

  Mary Marshall was back on the couch now, her head in her hands.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said.

  She didn’t look up.

  Once he’d closed the door behind him and was out in the great room, Braddock pulled him aside to one of the enormous windows behind the pink marble staircase, overlooking the canyon. Every once in a while, it would hit him how incredible this house was—probably the ritziest crime scene he’d ever set foot in, and with such perfect air-conditioning. He’d wonder if Mary planned to unload it fast and take the hit, or wait at least three years so her Realtor wouldn’t be obligated to tell prospective buyers what had happened in the study. He’d go back and forth over what he would do in her position and then he’d feel bad for it—what an obnoxious train of thought to be having at a murder house.