by Linda Barnes
“Right.”
“What about Hudson?” Spraggue asked. “I was sure he had nothing to do with it, but he threw me with that total failure to react.”
“Says he just figured it as one more prank. And he’s real busy consoling that redheaded wonder woman. I’ll bet she put it out of his mind.”
Spraggue drank hot coffee.
“I bear greetings, too,” continued Hurley. “Your little blond friend is out of jail. She sends her undying thanks. If you’ll call her, she’ll say ’em in person.”
“Yeah.”
“The other one, Karen Snow, asked me to give you this.” Hurley thrust a small square envelope into Spraggue’s hand. “She left town this morning, with her stepbrother. Going up to Maine to see the family. No one pressed charges.”
Spraggue turned the slender envelope over in his hands. Just as well, he thought. If she hadn’t fooled him so completely—
“Don’t you want to know what Spider said?”
“Sure.”
“Spider really started the whole business—” Hurley began.
“By blackmailing Darien over that car accident?”
“You got it. Darien was dead drunk. Spider saw it all, from the backseat of the car, no less. By judicious use of shady connections, he got Darien off the hook—for future considerations. Darien had a real future back then, before he got labeled a drunk.”
“When did the cocaine come in?”
“While visiting friend Caroline down in Colombia. Spider was bleeding Darien pretty good by that time. Darien got inspired, smuggled a little dope back to the States, just enough to keep Spider off his back. Later, after Caroline left De Renza, Darien figured out a way to take advantage of the orchid scam.”
“He had a confederate in Colombia?”
“One of De Renza’s assistants. As far as De Renza knows, he only sent Caroline floral tributes for one year.”
Spraggue smiled. “That’ll be a blow to a king-sized ego. Think she knew what was going on?”
Hurley shrugged, tipped back a slug of bourbon. “I doubt she wanted to know. I’m sure she never questioned her popularity as a Darien leading lady. Only the critics did that.”
“The one time she talked to me about her pals, Spider and Darien, her dog died. Spider must have let her know there was a connection between the two events.”
“Spider admitted killing the dog.”
“And what else?”
“Oh, he was anxious to confess, to everything but murder. That honor he gives to Darien.”
“Funny how all the pieces fit together,” said Spraggue.
“Make me laugh, then. I still don’t get it all.”
“From the beginning?”
“Great place to start.”
“Okay. Gene Arnold gets himself cast in Darien’s play. He borrows another actor’s résumé; the real Eddie Lafferty’s probably off on some European tour. Gene’s goal: to give Darien a severe case of guilt. Maybe even scare him out of the business.
“Darien panics. He wants protection, but he’s afraid to go to the cops because of the cocaine. So he tries a couple tricks of his own.”
“Get me another bourbon,” Hurley said to the barmaid. “Which tricks?”
“He gets rid of Frank Hodges via the Bloody Marys. If that hadn’t worked, he’d have tried something else. Because he wanted me to come in and catch his joker. And to hook me, he sent me the bat, imitating the joker’s printing.”
“So all the small stuff was Eddie’s? The dolls and the—”
“Here. I’ve been through this.” Spraggue pulled his black notebook out of his pocket, opened it to the page he’d scrawled in the cab. “Take a look.”
A
B
1. The beheaded dolls
1. The Bloody Marys
2. The bloody mask
2. The beheaded bat
3. The dead raven
3. Caroline’s dressing room break-in
4. Eddie’s strangulation
4. Caroline’s trip wire
5. Emma’s bloodbath
5. Caroline’s stolen orchids
6. Alison’s tape, the rats
6. Caroline’s murdered dog
7. Langford’s death
“A is for Eddie?” Hurley asked.
“Eddie or Gene, whichever you prefer.”
“Your handwriting stinks. B for Darien?”
“Darien and Spider.”
“Okay. So the first two pranks on the B list are designed to bring you in.”
“Right.”
“Stupid move.”
“Darien’s. Spider never approved of me.”
“And the break-in to your leading lady’s dressing room?”
“Spider, I think. He must have dropped one of the orchid boxes, spilled some coke. So he broke a jar or two of Caroline’s powder as a cover-up.”
Hurley’s finger moved down the list. “Caroline’s trip wire?”
“That threw me almost as much as it threw Eddie. Darien must have finally concluded that Caroline’s performance could sink the show. He was in a bind. He had to use her; she was the cocaine source. Eddie’s tricks gave Darien the idea. If the leading lady was injured, if she broke a leg, for instance, orchids could still have been sent to her hospital room. It would have been tricky, but I’ll bet Spider could have found a way to arrange her flowers for her, and get ahold of the coke-filled boxes. Darien would get the money. He’d have Caroline in a local hospital, and he’d line up a great replacement.”
“The stolen orchids?”
“John Langford. Pursuing his own detective inquiries. If he’d said anything to anyone else, he might still be alive. But he trotted his discovery straight to Arthur Darien.”
“And Spider killed the dog,” said Hurley.
“Yeah. And Darien killed Langford.”
“Can I borrow the notebook?” Hurley shoved it into his back pocket at Spraggue’s nod. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”
“It wouldn’t help.”
“How about another puzzle piece?” Hurley tried to keep the satisfaction off his face.
“What?”
“The theater.”
It took Spraggue a minute. “The Acme Holding Company,” he said under his breath.
“Huh?”
“Aunt Mary tried to find out who owned the place. She ran up against some holding company.”
Hurley nodded. “Darien. That’s where all the cocaine money went.”
“What’ll happen to the theater?”
“Probably tear it down. It’s a white elephant. Unless some rich young out-of-work actor decides to buy it—”
Spraggue finished his coffee, got to his feet.
“Let it rot,” he said.
He walked out the door, Karen’s envelope still unopened in his hand.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Michael Spraggue Mysteries
1
“Knee pads?”
“Check.”
“Elbow pads?”
“Check.”
“Extra flannel stuffed in your long johns?”
“Feels like ten yards of it.” Michael Vincent Spraggue III stared impatiently at the beefy man some ten feet below and cautiously removed his hand from a rickety one-by-three some carpenter had thoughtfully installed as a guardrail. “Strapped, taped, and padded. Just stick a gag in my mouth so I won’t have to say this god-awful line when I fall.”
“Can’t be too careful,” the stuntman said drily. “Especially with one of our stars. You ready?”
Spraggue wiped his sweaty palms off on his corduroy pants. From where he stood, on a rough-boarded five-foot-square platform at the top of a built-for-the occasion flight of wooden stairs, he could look down on the basketball hoops at either end of the old YMCA gym on Huntington Avenue. The distant floor was reassuringly padded with tumbling mats. The steps weren’t. He tried not to think about slivers.
He seemed taller than the six feet one claimed on h
is résumé, too thin for his height. His shoulders were broad enough, but when he took off his shirt every rib stuck out like a spoke. Women tried to feed him; stuntmen recommended extra padding.
He ran the back of his hand across his forehead and hoped the beads of fear-sweat weren’t too visible. His face was a careful blank, remarkable more for its mobility than any uniqueness of feature. Studying it in repose, emptied of emotion, one could note the slight asymmetry that accounted for the marked differences in left and right profiles. His eyes were an odd pale golden-tawny color that defied driver’s license description. When asked, he called them brown.
“I said, you ready?”
“Yeah,” Spraggue said reluctantly.
“Okay. No fall this time. Just a nice easy roll down the steps.”
“You sure you don’t want to count it out? Slowly?”
“It’s only ten steps. For a movie. You won’t have to do it every night on Broadway.”
“Still,” Spraggue said, lying down at an angle, “I’d really hate to wind up with any critical portion of my anatomy in a sling.”
“That’s why I’m here: to make sure you don’t.”
Spraggue wriggled backward so that his right hip rested on the very edge of the platform, then eased himself down until his shoulder met the first step. He kept a firm hold on the handrail and glanced below. The platform suddenly seemed to shoot up like an elevator. The foot of the stairs turned into a distant runway. The phone jangled.
He looked up hopefully.
The stuntman frowned. “Three, two, one, now.”
Spraggue closed his eyes, released his grip finger by finger, and shoved off with his right foot.
“Relax, dammit! Protect your head. Hit on your butt and your thighs. Roll with it!” Spraggue gritted his teeth and thought he could do without the play-by-play. “Now roll when you land. Roll! Good!”
He lay winded, but exhilarated, on the mat. It wasn’t that much different from his first high dive. He wiggled his fingers and toes, stretched each extremity independently. No broken bones.
Muted footsteps approached, vibrating the floorboards. “Mr. Spraggue?”
The stuntman must have pointed down at him. Spraggue turned his head and winced. One muscle, on the left side of his neck, hadn’t enjoyed the fall.
“Telephone. Says its urgent.”
He got slowly to his feet, marched into the hallway without limping, and snatched the receiver off the hook.
“Spraggue?”
How many months since he’d heard that gravelly voice? His mouth spread into a slow smile. “Holloway,” he said:
“Right the first time.”
“How are you?”
“It’s about Lenny.”
“God, Kate. Again?”
The stuntman lumbered heavily across the hall, gestured up at the clock. Spraggue nodded; if he didn’t want any more “star” razz, he’d better keep the call short.
“Look, I’m busy. Are you home?”
“I’m at the Napa County Sheriff’s Office.”
“Can I call you?—Wait.” He turned his back on the stuntman, lowered his voice. “What the hell are you doing there?”
“Having my civil rights violated. It took me forever to get a hold of you, and don’t you dare say you’ll call me back!”
“What’s going on?”
“Lenny’s missing.”
“Who’d miss him?”
“We would, dammit!” Her voice dropped. “Michael, it’s harvest. The crush is going full tilt. We need him.”
“Okay,” Spraggue said soothingly, glancing at the stuntman’s impatient face. “Okay. So Lenny’s flown.”
“Gone. For three days. I called the police this morning. And the hospitals. Everyone I could think of. No winemaker would just run off in the middle of the harvest.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Then after lunch, a squad car pulled up in front of the winery. This cop asked me to—to identify someone, if I could. I didn’t know—I went with him.”
“Where?”
“Some funeral home. I don’t know.… Christ, Michael, it was awful.”
“Lenny? Car accident?”
He heard a long shuddering sigh and then the customary firmness crept back into Kate Holloway’s voice. “I don’t know who it was. But it couldn’t have been a car crash. Even seventy miles an hour into a bridge abutment wouldn’t do that to a man.”
“Do what?”
“It made me throw up in front of a goddamned deputy sheriff. You know how long it’s been since I’ve gotten sick like that? Maybe when I was five. And then, I made it to the bathroom …”
“Take it easy.”
“It was like he’d fallen off a ten-story building and landed smack on his head. Almost nothing left. And he wanted me to identify that … that thing … as Lenny.”
“Kate, go home. Get in the tub. Open a bottle of—”
“Why in hell do you think I’m calling you? For sympathy? They’re not about to let me go home and soak in the bubbles. I need you here. With Lenny gone … and me in jail … and the grapes coming in by the ton—You’ve got a lot invested in that winery, and if you get here as soon as you can—”
“Back up. Why won’t they let you go home?”
“You must be sleeping, Michael! I call the cops this morning about a missing man, and he turns up dead, practically on my doorstep, and—”
“You don’t know it’s Lenny.”
“I don’t know it’s not. Maybe you could look at it. I can’t. Not again.”
“Where did they find the body?”
“In that clearing near Mary’s Vineyard. With the big rocks and the old rusted-out car we always planned to have towed. In the trunk of the car.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s still no reason for the police to assume you’re involved. Christ, from what you read in the Boston papers, Californians slaughter each other for the hell of it every day. Hillside Strangler, Sunset Strip Murderer. The coast is supposed to be psycho-killer haven, isn’t it?”
“Maybe the sheriff doesn’t read the Globe.” The phone made a clicking noise. “Look, I’ve got to hang up. Can you come? Are you working?”
“I’ve got a film. Still Waters. Like the title?”
“Congratulations.”
“Hollywood detective crap.”
“So why are you doing it?”
Spraggue rubbed his shoulders, shrugged painfully. “Actors act.”
“Even independently wealthy ones?”
“Yeah. Look, I’ve got some location shots in Boston Sunday. I’m due in L.A. Thursday. I could—”
“That’s a whole week away, Spraggue.”
“Hang on a minute, Holloway.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand, looked up at the clock: four thirty. “Matt!” he hollered.
The stuntman’s lazy footsteps padded across the gym.
“Can you work late tonight?” Spraggue asked.
“How late?”
“Late enough to get me ready for the Boston shooting?”
Matt pushed out his thin lips, paused. “That’s a lot of punishment.” He grinned suddenly. “Still, it’s a lot of overtime, too. If you can clear it with the union—”
“I’ll take care of it.” Spraggue put the receiver back to his ear. “Kate, listen. I’ll finish up here tonight. There’s a ten A.M. flight from Logan. Five hours minus the time-zone change. San Francisco by noon. Napa, a little after one. I’ll call the house. If you’re not there, I’ll go straight to the sheriff’s. In Napa?”
“Can’t miss it. Right in the middle of town.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Great. Good-bye, darling.”
Darling.
“Get a lawyer,” Spraggue said quickly.
She’d already hung up. She was always the first to hang up.
“Okay,” the stuntman said, “this time we do the stairs with the fall at the top, then we’ll add the
fight and the punch. And then the two other fights. Those we’ll have to choreograph. By the numbers. You’ll like that.”
Spraggue’s right eyebrow shot up. “Do they make thicker knee pads?” he asked.
2
Spraggue didn’t expect any welcoming committee at the San Francisco International Airport. He’d already deplaned from a blissfully boring coast-to-coast 747, strolled down miles of featureless corridor, and was tapping his foot in the Hertz line when he glimpsed Philip Leider, gesturing wildly from a hundred yards down the hallway. No one else answered the fat man’s frantic semaphores, so Spraggue waved in return.
“Thought I’d missed you,” Leider gasped, his bulk heaving with the exertion of moving two hundred and fifty pounds of middle-aged man.
“How are you, Phil?” Spraggue shook hands and gave Leider a chance to catch his breath.
The fat man beamed. “Just fine.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I spoke to Kate this morning on the phone from the county jail. Asked if there was any way I could help. It’s all over the valley by now, you can imagine. She told me you were on the way, so I volunteered to fetch and carry.”
“I could’ve rented a car.” Spraggue dismissed with little regret thoughts of the portable tape recorder he’d brought along, the lines he’d vowed to memorize on the drive to the valley. “You must be up to your eyeballs in grapes at your place—”
“Waste of money, renting cars. Kate’s got transport you can use. Luggage?”
Spraggue hefted a carry-on duffel. “Just what you see.”
“Good. I’m double-parked. Impossible to find a space.”
Spraggue followed Leider’s bobbing head out into the pale sunshine. He doubted that Leider had made any attempt to park legally. For such an important winery owner, they ought to reserve a private space. With a doorman.
“To tell you the truth,” Leider said, patting the trunk of a deep-red BMW 633 CSi before unlocking it, “I wanted to run down in my new toy. Like it?”
Spraggue nodded appreciatively and Leider opened the passenger door with a flourish. “The small winery owners of Napa have to stick together,” he said.
