Rufus shrugged. “Why complicate matters? I’m going to have a word with the construction workers and ask them to talk to the police but no one else. The fewer people who know about it the better. Think about Dumpster. And we don’t want Scott coming over here and getting involved.”
Without realizing it, I had been literally rooted to the spot with anxiety ever since I had seen the bow and arrow and when I moved to go back to my car, I was so stiff I nearly fell over. I drove slowly, my hands shaking slightly on the steering wheel, and I arrived at Mallaby in a state of high nervous tension. So nervous that I forgot all about Rufus’s suggestion that we keep quiet about the bow and arrow and blurted out what I had just seen the minute Shotgun opened the door.
I wasn’t prepared for his reaction.
“Do you have his cell phone number?” he asked without even saying hello. He was casually dressed in jeans and a dusky pink velour sweatshirt and his feet were bare. It was extraordinary, I thought, how his face could appear so gaunt and strained when his body seemed so relaxed.
“Rufus’s?”
“Yes, can you call him?”
I nodded.
“Do it. Now! Stop him telling Detective Morrison. Tell him to bring the bow and arrow here. Here, use my phone.”
But when I reached Rufus it was too late. Apparently Evan Morrison was already on his way to the building site.
“Do you think it was Dumpster’s bow? Were you going to try to shield him?” I asked Shotgun. “Wouldn’t that be obstruction?”
“Let’s have a cup of coffee,” he said by way of answer. “Believe me, I want to find out who committed these murders more than anyone but I just wish there was someone else handling the case. I don’t trust that man, Morrison. It’s ridiculous but I feel I want to make life hard for him. Arresting me was just insanity.”
“What happened exactly? Did they keep you in jail?”
It wasn’t the most professional start to our working relationship and I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d told me he didn’t want to talk about it, but he smiled and said, “Don’t look so worried. I’m out now, it’s okay. And of course it wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs being led into a police station in handcuffs worrying that at any second a guy from the Post is going to jump out and take my picture. I was stripped and it felt like every single orifice of my body was searched. And they gave me one of those orange jumpsuits and led me down all kinds of ramps and corridors and buzzed me through steel doors and all the time I knew some guard I couldn’t see was watching me through a monitor. My lawyer showed up pretty quick to bail me out but they still managed to make me feel like scum.”
“And what about the arraignment?” I said.
“Total farce,” he said, leading me into the kitchen. “The judge more or less said as much. The minute Dumpster’s mother changed her story and then he stood up and gave me a cast-iron alibi, it was all over. And now you tell me the bow and arrow’s been found—assuming it’s the one that killed Bettina. Evan Morrison didn’t even have the murder weapon and I don’t own a bow and arrow yet he couldn’t wait to pin the blame on me. He’d have been closer to the mark if he’d tried to nail me for Sean’s murder given that I didn’t mention my Purdey was one of a matching pair.”
I looked at him. He poured a cup of coffee from the pitcher in the machine and handed it to me.
“You’re dying to know, aren’t you?” he said. “Why I kept quiet about it. Well, I’ll tell you. I gave that second gun to Sean about a month ago. I wanted him to have something of his grandfather’s. I knew he wouldn’t ever use it. Sean was the gentlest of creatures. He wouldn’t harm the proverbial fly but I think he appreciated the gift. It was an antique of sorts, a family heirloom, and Sean was sentimental in that way, much more so than I am. He put it in a kind of makeshift display case in his room above the stables and he went so far as to invite me over to show me what he’d done and that was a pretty rare gesture on his part.”
“Did you know it was no longer there—after he was killed?”
“I did. When I took Morrison to his room I saw it was missing.”
“But you chose to say nothing?” I was highly intrigued.
“I thought Sean might have loaned it to Dumpster. They were close in some ways and Dumpster was pretty vocal in his admiration of the gun.”
“So you were covering up for Dumpster there too? Do you really think Dumpster was involved?” I was appalled to hear this.
“I don’t know what to think,” said Shotgun. “I know Dumpster was at Mallaby the night Sean was killed. He was putting up shelves. But I have no idea how long he stayed. He could have been gone by eight o’clock and I wouldn’t have known, the place is so huge. But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t with me in the house the night Bettina was killed. He usually makes his presence known whenever he arrives and he didn’t. So it looks as if he lied at my arraignment and there’s got to be a reason.”
I couldn’t help noticing that both he and Franny were protective of Dumpster. I wanted to tell Shotgun what Franny thought Dumpster was up to, about the dealing and how Dumpster was Detective Morrison’s informant, but I decided that I had said quite enough for one morning and it was high time I steered the conversation in a more professional direction. I was about to bring up his book when he turned to me.
“So are you going to run to Detective Morrison and tell him Dumpster was lying?” I shook my head. “No? Well, that’s obstruction too, isn’t it? And it doesn’t really make any difference if I tell them I gave my other Purdey to Sean. They don’t seem to have found any shell casings and without those they can’t identify which gun fired the fatal shot. Morrison can take my Purdey that’s in the mudroom, or the one he found in the woods, or any other twelve-bore shotgun and he can say ‘This is the kind of gun that killed Sean Marriott,’ but he can’t prove it’s the actual one. Tell me something.”
I looked up, wary now that he had claimed me as his accomplice in obstruction.
“If I write this book—correction, if you write this book—who do you think will be the market for it? Why would anybody want to read the damn thing?”
I bristled instinctively. He was the one who had said he wanted to do a book in the first place. But then he had just acknowledged that I would be doing the writing and that was more than a lot of my subjects were prepared to admit.
“You’re a world-famous musician—” I began.
“Was a world-famous musician,” he jumped in. “I haven’t had a gig in fourteen years.”
“There’s a big nostalgia market.”
“So I’ll only be read by the follicularly-challenged, hard of hearing seniors who were once my fans? There’ll just be a large-print edition?”
“Is that how you see yourself?” I challenged. Was that why he had a fashionable razor cut? Had he had his once luxuriant locks shorn because he was going bald? Although whatever the reason, it suited his fine-featured face.
“I’m okay about my age,” he said, “the last thing I want to do is go around in the kind of flamboyant gear we all wore forty years ago. I’m almost sixty. If I wore fringed leather jerkins and earrings and studs and long flowing scarves, I’d look grotesque. I saw a member of my old band being interviewed on TV the other night and he had hair down to his shoulders and most of it was dyed fuchsia—yet his face was lined like an old hag’s. He looked ridiculous.”
The time was fast approaching when I would have to come clean with him. When I would have to tell him that the only reason publishers would be interested in his story would be if he told what really happened the night the groupie was found dead in his room. Suddenly I was apprehensive. What if he refused to talk about it? What if all my time on Long Island had been spent on a wild-goose chase?
“Do you miss it?” I was too chicken to plunge right in and ask him about the groupie as Bettina no doubt had.
“Miss what? The rock ’n’ roll circus I used to be part of? Not at all.”
“You don’t?” I was amazed.<
br />
“Oh, I miss jamming with the boys after hours, but going out on the road, the actual performing? I never really enjoyed all that like the rest of them. I was in it for the music itself, nothing else. If I could have cut the live performances and just gone into the studio to record every now and then, I’d have been happy. And as for the publicity, the intrusion into my private life, that was something I really abhorred. I”—he searched for the right word—“I detested it.”
I could tell he meant it. So how was he going to feel about me getting him to rake up as much detail as possible about his private life for the book?
“But don’t get me wrong,” he went on, “I’ll promote the book. I know it has to be done when you’ve got a product to sell. But I could never understand those guys who worked so hard to promote themselves. It had nothing to do with the albums they made, they just wanted to go on TV and talk about their own crass little view of the world. Anything to give their ego a boost. I’m not like that. I’ll only talk about the music.”
“So it’s going to be a book about your music?” This wasn’t looking good.
“No,” he said slowly, “no it’s not. Not at all. I’m going to tell my life story and sure, music’s a big part of it, but I’m going to include everything that’s happened right up to this very minute and beyond. The first thing you have to understand is the reason I’m doing this book. I’m not doing it to make money. I’m not doing it to try and restore my career. I’m doing it for Sean. I planned it long before he died but now that he’s gone, somehow it’s even more important that I set the record straight for him. When I tell you the story of my life, Lee, I’m going to be talking to Sean. No”—he held up his hand as he sensed the barrage of questions I was about to unleash—“let me finish. What I was about to say was that I know what you want me to include in the book—the full story about that girl who died in my bed. Well, you’ll get that but now I also want to include the outcome of this investigation. I owe it to Sean to deal with his murder and, if possible, write about the person responsible for his death. So, Lee”—he turned to me and fixed me with a penetrating look—“we’re going to work out who the killers were, you and I. We’re going to be partners in obstruction and we’re going to beat Detective Morrison at his own game. For my son,” he said and he opened a drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets. “This is Sean,” he said, handing me a photograph in a wooden frame.
I was reeling from the thrill of what he’d said—not about our obstruction but the fact that he’d promised I’d get the full story of the girl in his bed fourteen years ago. To cover my distraction I took the photograph he handed to me and pretended to study it.
But then I looked closer, because the image of Sean Marriott took my breath away. When I’d seen him dragged upon the beach, his face had been a bloated mess and I’d turned away quickly. Now I could see what it had been like before. He had the innocent look of a choirboy with shiny hair cropped short but flopping from a side parting in a slight wave over his forehead. His features were small—a perfect little straight nose, a rosebud mouth with a larger, sensual lower lip, a delicate chin—except for his eyes, which were large and almond-shaped. He looked like a softer, gentler version of his father. I couldn’t see anything of the drama of his mother’s looks in him.
I handed the picture back to Shotgun, still feeling uneasy. It was understandable that he would want to dedicate the book to his son but it sounded like he wanted to do more than that. He had talked about setting the record straight for Sean. It sounded like he had something he wanted to get off his chest. Had he killed the groupie and was he going to confess via his autobiography?
I snapped to attention. More paranoid notions. This was what happened when I allowed my mind to wander off on its own like an errant child. I came up with the most absurd fantasies and it always got me into trouble.
“Where would you be most comfortable working?” I said to change the subject and get things moving.
“Well, where would you?” he said. “I spend most of my time indoors in that room we were in last time you were here. The one with all the books.”
“That would be perfect,” I said, “so long as you’re comfortable there.”
But when we were settled on one of the enormous sofas, a pitcher of water and two glasses on the coffee table before us as if we were about to speak at a conference, instead of talking about himself, he began to show an enormous amount of interest in me.
“Where do you live? London? Yes? Whereabouts? Ah, Notting Hill. That’s where Angie lives although she’s not a Notting Hill type as I remember them. She’d be better off in Mayfair or Belgravia or somewhere where rich businesspeople hang out. Why do you live in Notting Hill?”
I told him about the house on Blenheim Crescent where I had lived virtually all my life, about the fire that had nearly destroyed it. I told him about my parents’ separation and my mother’s commitment to the Phillionaire. In fact I prattled on and on and on because—and I would only realize this much later—he made me feel as if he had never been so interested in anyone in his entire life. It’s a gift and he had it in spades. He made me feel—and I know there must be a way to describe this that sounds less of a cliché but right now I can’t think of it—he made me feel special. And maybe I’m flattering myself but I do believe it was genuine.
“And are you married,” he said, “do you have any children? You’re not wearing a wedding ring, I see, but then sometimes people don’t.”
And that’s when I noticed that he was. He saw me looking at it.
“I never took it off after she left. After all, we’re not divorced. I am still married to her.” He saw my look of surprise. “You didn’t know that? She doesn’t wear hers anymore,” he said sadly. “At least she wasn’t wearing it at Sean’s funeral. Anyway”—he stood up and stretched—“now I’ve brought that up I suppose I’d better let you turn the spotlight on me although I’d much rather go on hearing about you. Do you know, I crave the company of English people? There are things I love about the Americans—their confidence, their energy, their friendliness—but God I miss the English sense of irony. I say things and Americans look at me blankly. They just don’t get it. They just don’t do self-deprecation the way we do. They think we’re running ourselves down and that’s very un-American. We are, of course, but that’s part of the fun. And the saddest thing is,” the haunted look I’d grown used to seeing crossed his face again, “because he grew up here, my own son was American. I loved him but we were so different. He was one of the people who looked at me blankly. So,” he turned to me and his smile was forced and pathetically bright, “how does this work? Where do you start?”
“May I use a tape recorder?” I said, rummaging around in the bag of notebooks I’d brought with me and producing my trusty little Aiwa.
He looked startled. “Must you?”
“It really helps,” I said. “Speeds things up. Saves me scribbling away all the time and asking you to repeat yourself every five minutes. After a while you won’t notice it, honest.”
He was silent for quite a long time. Then he said: “Okay. But I’m going to have to ask you to leave the tapes here. I don’t want them leaving the house.”
I was appalled. “But I’m going to need to transcribe them. It takes hours sometimes.”
“You can do that here,” he said quickly. “We’ll set you up with a workspace somewhere in the house. Lord knows, I’ve a ton of empty rooms. And then you can take the transcripts away with you.”
He sounded paranoid. There was no other word for it. I thought about telling him that journalists all over the world walked away from interviewees with tapes full of “off the record” revelations that would destroy their careers if they were revealed. I thought about explaining that without corroboration none of it could be used. But presumably he knew all about that. Whatever he was going to talk about into the tape recorder must be seriously incriminating.
“What will be on the tapes,” I said, “will
be going in the book eventually and everyone will know it then.”
“And by then I’ll be ready,” was his enigmatic reply. “Now, where do you want me to start?”
“It’s your book,” I reminded him, “but the beginning is as good a place as any.”
At first I thought he’d fallen asleep. Because when he finally began to speak, he talked with his eyes closed and after a while I realized he wanted to pretend I wasn’t even there. Whenever I shifted my position or interrupted him in any way, he opened his eyes and stared at me for a second as if he’d forgotten who I was. Normally I prompt my subject in the direction I want the story to go but I also know that at the beginning when someone is clearly delving into their memory and coming up with whatever they find there, it’s best to let them keep going. Especially if the material was as unexpected as Shotgun’s life promised to be. After about five minutes I closed my eyes too and just sat beside him, silently listening as the story of his early years unraveled.
“The real problem of my life was that I was born upper class and I just didn’t get it. As I told you, we lived at Mallaby on the edge of the Yorkshire moors and it was pretty much on the edge of nowhere and that was fine with me. I suppose I had what you’d call a privileged childhood but if you tried to describe it to an American today, I doubt they’d see it that way. It was the fifties and we had no washing machine, no dishwasher, no central heating. And here’s something that will no doubt astound you, we didn’t have a television. Nobody did. It was pretty barbaric by today’s standards.”
I was fascinated by his account of his childhood, how he went to the local school and roamed the moors with the farm children. But his parents were “landed gentry,” his father’s family had owned vast spreads of Yorkshire for centuries, and in the claustrophobic and rarefied existence within the walls of Mallaby “castle” he was cared for by a succession of nannies and only saw his parents for twenty minutes every day.
He opened his eyes and turned to me. “I haven’t thought about all this stuff in years. It’s amazing it’s all coming back so easily. I suppose it’s because it’s truly a part of me. We can go into all the background details you need later, okay? What the house was like, my pets, whatever you need. I was an only child, by the way. What about you?”
How to Marry a Ghost Page 13
