Текст книги "Night Night, Sleep Tight"

Автор книги: Hallie Ephron

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Joelen shook her head. She put her finger to her lips. “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.” She paused. “Did you?”

“Did I . . . ?” For a moment Deirdre was too shocked to even form a response. “Are you kidding? You’re telling me that you don’t know who did it?”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t sorry he got killed and I’m not sorry I confessed.” She glanced toward the door and lowered her voice. “I thought I was protecting my mother. It worked out. I only wish that had put an end to it.”

Before Deirdre could ask Put an end to what?, she heard a familiar piano introduction, then horns, then Louis Armstrong. “Oh, Lawd, I’m on My Way.” They’d picked it not for the lyrics but because her father loved it, and because it was so deeply sad and hopeful at the same time, and because if her father had had his druthers, he’d have wanted a jazz funeral procession that stopped traffic and marched right down the middle of Avenue of the Stars in Century City, once a back lot of the studio where he’d done his finest work.

The song was the last in the medley accompanying the slide show and Deirdre’s cue to get going. “Here. Take my crutch,” Deirdre said, and gave it to Joelen.

Joelen gave Deirdre a pair of oversized white-rimmed sunglasses and a black umbrella. Deirdre put on the glasses and gripped the umbrella handle—flat instead of a hook. She took a few tentative steps, using it like a cane. The tip, with its corklike rubber fitting, didn’t slip on the tile floor.

“Looking good,” Joelen said, tightening Deirdre’s head scarf around her own head and putting on Deirdre’s sunglasses.

“Front row, second seat in on the left,” Deirdre said. “Break a leg.”

“You break a leg, too,” Joelen said, giving Deirdre a hug. “Be careful, okay?” She took Deirdre’s crutch and, faking a limp that made her look like Quasimodo, started for the door. “Too much?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Dial it back, just a smidge.”

Chapter 41

Deirdre cracked open the restroom door just in time to catch a glimpse of Detective Martinez following Joelen into the chapel. So far so good. As soon as he was gone, she hurried through the lobby and outside. The umbrella made a surprisingly serviceable substitute for her crutch.

The limousine met her as she reached the end of the walkway. Its front passenger door swung open. She got in. Tyler reached across her and pulled the door shut. “Everything okay?”

Deirdre took off Joelen’s sunglasses and dropped them in her coat pocket. “So far so good.”

Tyler pulled out into the street and headed back toward Westwood Village. “You were right, by the way. There’s no record of a new warrant to search your house. And there’s nothing in the West LAPD blotter about any mugging yesterday in or near your lawyer’s office building.”

“You don’t think Detective Martinez was ordered up from Central Casting, too?” Deirdre said hopefully.

“No. He’s real. And very competent.”

Minutes later, they were double-parked in front of Sy’s office. “Your car’s up on the second level,” Tyler said, offering Deirdre her car keys. “Why won’t you tell me what you’re doing? Maybe I can help.”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m just waiting to see who shows up. I’ll be invisible.”

“Invisible?” He sounded skeptical. “Why do you have to do this alone?”

“I just do.” Sure, something could go wrong. She was willing to put herself at risk. She wasn’t willing to risk putting yet another person, someone she cared about, in danger. Her thoughtless actions had already harmed Sy. And she wasn’t about to go to the police. Not yet, anyway. She was already considered a suspect, and as Sy said, once they had a suspect they did their job and built a case. “Besides, you need to go back for Gloria and Henry, and to rescue Joelen if it turns out she needs rescuing.”

“Here.” Tyler gave her a slip of paper. “This is the number of the car phone in this rig. Promise you’ll call if you need backup. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Deirdre leaned across and kissed Tyler on the cheek. “Thanks.” She got out of the car and entered the building, then turned and watched as Tyler pulled the limo away from the curb and drove off. Then she turned back. Centered herself. Reviewed her plan.

First thing she’d do would be to go into Sy’s office, unlock the drawer, take out the envelope she’d left in it, and put it on top of the desk in plain sight. Then she’d settle into the closet and wait. She’d photograph, not confront, whoever came. Wait until the person was gone so she could safely emerge from hiding. Develop the snapshots, take her evidence to Sy, and together they’d bring it to the police.

Deirdre started up the stairs. The tip of the umbrella thumped each time it connected with the glazed tile floor. She was halfway down the second-floor hallway when she froze. The door to Sy’s law office was ajar. Someone was already there.

She tucked the umbrella under her arm and used the wall for support so she could approach the door silently. The door hadn’t been broken in, so whoever it was knew how to pick a lock and disable an alarm. She stood very still, just outside in the hall, listening for sounds. Footsteps. A cough. Anything that would tip her off to whether the person was still there.

She crept closer. Nudged the door open a bit more. It was dark in Vera’s outer office. No one was in the room. But the door connecting to Sy’s office was open. Creeping even closer, Deirdre heard a thump. The sound of a drawer being slammed shut? She fought the urge to flee. Instead, she forced herself to push the hall door open a bit wider. The hinge squeaked and she pulled back, waiting for someone to emerge. When no one did, she slipped inside, crossed the room, and closed herself in the supply closet.

She waited, her heart banging in her chest, afraid that any moment she’d be discovered. But still, there was silence.

Through the gaps between the louvers in the closet door, Sy’s office looked empty, too. But now she heard a shuffling sound. Footsteps? She felt for the camera she’d left on the shelf and took it down.

A black shadow crossed directly in front of her. Deirdre reared back, banging her head against a shelf. The person had been moving fast and was backlit. She’d have to wait—

The phone rang.

Deirdre aimed the camera at the desk where the light on the telephone was blinking. She looked through the viewfinder.

The phone rang again. The figure came back into her field of vision, moving away from her toward the desk. A man.

Click. She took a picture.

The man picked up the phone. After a pause, he said, “I know.” Click. Deirdre’s grip tightened around the camera and she took picture after picture of the man’s back, the camera whirring after each click.

He sat in the desk chair. “It’s not here,” he said. Eets not hyere. Deirdre froze. She knew this man’s voice. This was no intruder. It was Sy, sitting at his own desk in his own office. He must have been released early from the hospital.

Deirdre didn’t want to pop out of the closet and startle him. That was all he needed with his cracked ribs and concussion. So she crept from the closet, through Vera’s office, and continued out into the hall. Pretending she’d just arrived, she rapped at the outer office door with the umbrella handle and called out, “Hello?” When Sy didn’t answer, she rapped again and started through Vera’s office to the open connecting door. “Anybody here?”

She entered Sy’s office. He was still at his desk, now talking heatedly into the phone. When he paused, Deirdre came up behind him. “Sy?”

Startled, he swiveled to face her and did a double take. “Deirdre?”

“I didn’t expect you to be here,” she said, taking off her wig and the cap underneath it and shaking out her hair.

In a quiet voice, Sy said into the receiver, “I have to go.” After a brief silence, he added, “I will let you know.” He hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and gave Deirdre a wry smile.

It took a moment to register. No bandage around Sy’s head. No stitches down the side of his face. No blood in his eye. He rubbed his chin, his pinkie ring catching the light. “Tests were all coming back normal. I told them I had enough. All those tubes and wires—too much for bumps and bruises.”

Bumps and bruises that had miraculously vanished. Deirdre followed Sy’s gaze to the foot of the deer antler coat rack. There sat a bulky briefcase that hadn’t been there an hour ago. It was the same one that Sy had brought over to her father’s house, the one from which he’d pulled her father’s will, the one that had supposedly been stolen when he was attacked.

“The police recovered it,” Sy said, answering the question Deirdre hadn’t asked.

“Really?” Deirdre wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that Sy thought he’d been mugged. That he was here in the office because he was a tough guy who’d lost patience with overcautious caregivers. That, throughout her father’s life and even after his death, Sy was still her father’s best friend, the surrogate uncle who’d always been there for her and Henry and always would be. “Did they catch the guy?”

“No, but they found my briefcase”—and there was just a heartbeat of hesitation, Sy’s tell—“just around the corner in a Dumpster.”

Sure they did. Deirdre leaned against the desk, feeling sick. Because there beside Sy was the envelope she’d locked in the drawer, the title scrawled across it in black marker. It had been torn open, and the blank sheets of paper that she’d tucked inside were strewn across the desktop.

Chapter 42

Sy rocked back in the desk chair and gazed at Deirdre across tented fingers. “I never thought you, of all people, would walk out on your father’s funeral.”

“I never thought you, of all people, would betray him.”

Sy barely blinked as he held her gaze. “Oh, Deirdre. I do wish it had not come to this.”

“And what exactly is this? You went to a lot of trouble to make us all think you’d been mugged.” She knew from his bemused expression that this time she’d gotten it right. There’d been no mugging, and no police officer (phony or otherwise) showing up at the scene. Only a well-connected “victim” who could get himself checked into a tiny private clinic that specialized in cosmetic surgery where, for a fee or perhaps as a favor to one of their regular clients, the staff would pretend to care for “injuries” that had been conjured courtesy of smoke and mirrors, as Bunny would have said, along with a little help from Wardrobe and Makeup.

“I am sorry,” Sy said, and he did seem genuinely saddened. “You have been caught up in this from the beginning. We tried to disentangle you. Really we did. And it was taken care of. Until your father decided to write a tell-all. I warned him not to. It was not worth it, no matter how much publishers were offering him.”

“Publishers were making offers?”

“And a producer was eager to option the rights, according to Arthur at least. No one had actually read it, as far as I can tell. Thank God for that. And of course he hadn’t finished writing it. But if there was one thing your father knew how to do, it was pitch.”

“So do you really think anyone would have wanted to read it?” Deirdre asked.

“Are you kidding? It has everything. Old Hollywood, glamour, sex, intrigue, and violence. Details about a true crime that captured the imagination of a generation of moviegoers. In other words, a blockbuster. And I’m fine with that. Arthur can have his bestseller. Bunny will have her comeback. I can make all that happen. But the manuscript needs a few tweaks before it can go public. I’m already working on that. And in the meanwhile, I can’t have a copy of Arthur’s draft floating around.”

“Arthur’s draft?”

“So where is it?”

“It’s in the mail.”

“You mean this Xerox copy?” Sy crossed the room to his briefcase, opened it, and pulled out a FedEx envelope. He held it up so Deirdre could see her own handwriting on the mailing label. Deirdre’s mouth went dry.

“I had you followed. So where’s the original?” He shook the envelope at her.

“The original? Good question,” Deirdre’s words came out a rasp. “Because as you can see, that’s a Xerox of a carbon copy. I’ve never seen the original. Knowing my father, I’m guessing he gave it to someone to read. Someone whose judgment he respected. Whose integrity he trusted. You.”

Sy didn’t bother to contradict her.

“And of course, you recognized the potential for disaster. Bunny’s audience could forgive her for murdering a murderous boyfriend, but not for seducing a sixteen-year-old boy.”

“Yes.” Sy rubbed his chin. “It would have been a public relations nightmare. I tried to reason with him. But your father let his ego get in the way. I’m sure you can imagine.”

Deirdre could. Serene in his own sense of entitlement, Arthur would have blown off his oldest friend’s concerns.

“He was going to reveal details Bunny had been sure he’d never tell,” Sy said.

“But he didn’t know who killed Tito. He thought it was me or Henry.”

“It was.”

For a moment Deirdre felt short of breath. “But you told me—”

“I told you it wasn’t you. Henry killed Tito.”

“Henry killed Tito?” Deirdre parroted the words, but her brain wasn’t taking them in. “He didn’t.”

“He did. He came over late that night after the party. Bunny met him. Tito discovered them together.”

“But Henry told me Bunny stood him up.”

“Henry lied. He’s been lying for so long, I’m not sure he even knows what the truth is.”

“Henry?” Deirdre felt the air go out of her. She groped behind her for a chair and sat. “It had to have been self-defense,” Deirdre said, her voice sounding wooden.

“Of course it was self-defense. No jury would have found your brother guilty. He was a kid who’d gotten in way over his head. He was ready to confess. But Bunny couldn’t let that happen. She’d have been pilloried for having an affair with a teenaged kid. So she called your father and when she saw him driving up, she ordered Henry to take your father’s car and drive you home. She promised him that she’d take care of everything. Which she did. She called me.

“Months later, when the news stories had finally died down and Bunny had given birth, she told Arthur that the baby was his grandchild. They struck a deal. She had me draw up a trust that your father agreed to pay into until Jackie turned twenty-one, and your father agreed he’d never tell a soul that Henry was Jackie’s father. In return, Bunny would make sure the police never found out that Henry and you had been in the house at the time of the murder. She’d make sure the police never found these.”

Sy rose to his feet and walked over to the coat stand. He bent, picked up his briefcase again, and brought it over to her. Deirdre knew what she’d see even before he got there—the stained yellow dress, looking no more soiled than when Bunny had taken it from her. Lying on top of the dress was the bone-handled knife. The splash Deirdre had heard had been just another of Bunny’s tricks, playing to her audience’s expectations.

“By the time I got to the house,” Sy went on, “she’d switched knives and wiped the one that killed Tito on the dress you’d been wearing earlier that night. Always thinking ahead, you can say that for her. She showed your father the knife and the dress. Promised to give them to him after he had finished paying into the trust. Your father thought he was protecting you and Henry both. These can still be handed over to the police . . . if it becomes useful to do so. You can be sure that will never happen if you just give me the last copy of the manuscript.”

“You thought the manuscript was in his office, didn’t you?” Deirdre said. “That’s why you set the fire.”

“Not me personally. But yes, I hired someone. I had no idea that your mother would be up there looking for the manuscript herself, or that you would come back when you did. The important thing”—Sy grabbed Deirdre’s arm and pulled her close to him—“is that you give me the last copy of that manuscript. Now.”

Deirdre’s shoulder throbbed as Sy’s grip tightened. “Is this what you tried with Dad? When persuasion and reasoning and arm-twisting didn’t work, you bashed him on the head?”

Sy winced and loosened his grip. “It does not have to be this way. Your father wanted to tell his life story. He wanted to be the star. Give me the manuscript and I will do everything in my power to see that it is finished and well published.”

“Too bad it has to be posthumous and filled with lies.” Deirdre wrenched free and backed away.

“Not lies. Omissions.”

“Henry?”

“Erased.”

“Can you explain one thing to me? She could have had anyone in Hollywood. Why Henry?”

Sy seemed taken aback by the question. “He was young.” Sy shrugged. “She wasn’t.” He shook his head. “Bunny wants what she wants, and she is used to getting it. Your father, too, in his way. He thought he was entitled to write whatever he damned well pleased. It was pure, shortsighted hubris on his part. Bunny couldn’t let that happen. Too much was at stake.”

“Cerulean,” Deirdre said, the word sounding like air leaking from a balloon.

“You know about that?”

“Bunny had the art for the ad framed in her dressing room. All very hush-hush, or so she said.”

“Selling a dream to a vast and untapped audience: women of a certain age.” Sy held up his fingers as if he were framing the slogan. Like her father, he was a pro at pitching an idea. “It’s going to be huge. Television ads. Free samples in the Oscar gift bags. International tour. She’ll be on Johnny Carson. Barbara Walters. Good Morning America. She’ll be getting scripts again.”

“Arthur’s memoir would have soured everything,” Deirdre said. “Except for Walters. She’d have wanted her even more. What’s more fun than a public shaming?”

“You understand. I tried to convince him of his folly. What she would do if she found out what he was up to.”

“And she did find out, didn’t she?”

Sy didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

“So what happens now?”

“If I’m writing it, then you give me the last copy of your father’s memoir and I fix it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Ah. Then Susanna comes forward and challenges your timeline. She tells the police that you left the gallery early and she finished the installation alone. Susanna, not Shoshanna, by the way.”

“Susanna? You . . . ?”

“Didn’t you think it was just a bit far-fetched that a prominent Israeli artist would want his work shown in a third-rate San Diego art gallery? So desperate, in fact, that he would pay for the privilege? I yem Avram Sigismund,” Sy said, affecting a thick accent. “I yem very well known in Israel, but I hev to show my verk in the United States. . . . Lucky for me, your partner cannot tell a Russian from an Israeli accent. And you still were not suspicious when, right after that, an arts reporter you never heard of calls and wants to feature your gallery in an article?”

“You bastard.”

Sy looked genuinely wounded. He sat back in his chair. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. When your father told me you were going to help him get ready to move, I needed to make sure he would be alone the night Bunny and I came over to reason with him. It was a conversation I could not afford to have interrupted. I had no idea Susanna would get creative and have you paper over the gallery’s windows. Or that Bunny would want to come back . . .” Sy’s face fell.

“Or that I’d pick up the shovel on my way up the driveway the next morning.”

“Yes. I do wish you had not done that. But let’s not dwell on missteps.”

The scary thing was, the scenario Sy was spinning sounded entirely plausible. Whether Deirdre had gotten to the house in time to kill her father would come down to her word against Susanna’s, and her fingerprints on the murder weapon sealed it.

On the other hand, Susanna wasn’t real. “How hard do you think it will be for me to discredit someone who’s not even a real artist’s assistant?”

“She is not. She is a rather mediocre actress. A good detective could demolish her story, and a defense attorney worth his salt could poke holes in it. But it will never come to that because after she comes forward and it becomes clear that you will be arrested and charged, you will find a quicker, cleaner way to extricate yourself.” Sy paused and thought for a moment, his gaze snagging on the umbrella she was using for a cane. “A car accident, I think.”

Deirdre felt as if ice water were trickling down her back. “You’d kill me?” she said, though she could see from his expression that he was dead serious.

“I am very fond of you, and it will make me very sad. So let’s not find out. But there is a great deal at stake. Millions this year. More millions for years to come. Not to mention the legacy of a great actress who is far more ruthless than I. Surely we can come up with a better ending.”

A better ending. As if her father could spring back to life like TV’s Bobby Ewing in Dallas. Instead this would be the ending in which someone gets away with her father’s murder.

“Step one is not negotiable,” Sy said. “You give me the last copy of Arthur’s memoir. In return, Susanna backs your story that you left the gallery late. And I do everything that I can to make sure you are not indicted for your father’s murder. As you know, I am very good at my job.” Sy picked up a chewed-on cigar from the ashtray on his desk and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “Then we discover your father’s memoir among his papers. Finished, of course. And edited slightly. But basically his life with a never-before-revealed, eyewitness account of the events surrounding Tito Acevedo’s murder.

“Most of the story will be a familiar to you. The glamorous party. You were sleeping over. Your father came back to get you. Wonderful stuff, how he comforts Bunny in her distress. She practices the confession she plans to deliver when the police get there. We take out the part where they move Tito’s body from Joelen’s bedroom. It just makes things more complicated than they need to be.”

“Is that where Tito was killed?”

“According to Bunny”—Sy raised his eyebrows—“and on this I take her at her word, Henry burst into her bedroom, yelling at Tito to leave her alone and brandishing a knife. But he did not have the nerve to use it. Tito chased him. Henry hid in Joelen’s bedroom, but Tito came after him. It was pure chance that Tito was the one who ended up dead. Pure chance that you were not there. Tito died in the bed you had been sleeping in.”

Deirdre closed her eyes and for a moment she was back in Joelen’s bedroom, smelling hairspray and feet and ripe pungent sawdust in the cage where Joelen’s pet guinea pigs lived. I thought I was protecting my mother. That’s why Joelen said she’d confessed. In the end, her confession had protected Bunny and Henry both.

“Like I said, we leave all that out,” Sy went on. “Before the police arrive, your father drives off with you. Next thing he knows is the morning headlines: Joelen’s confession and arrest for murder. We add a third act. The trial. Bunny’s triumph in court. Happy ending: Justice is served. In its way.”

“And Henry? Is he in the movie?”

“Who’s Henry?” Sy chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest.

“What about Jackie?”

“A mere footnote. Bunny will endorse the book. Publishers will be crawling all over one another to get their hands on it. Movie rights will go at auction. You and Henry will cash in. And Bunny will go back to her favorite private clinic, Beverly Medical Center, for more plastic surgery in preparation for her product launch and a starring role in the feature film. Arthur will be dancing in his grave. The changes to his story will seem minor. Believe me, he would not have cared.”

“If he didn’t care, then why are we here talking about this? Why is he dead?”

“Because he would not bend. Do not make the same mistake, Deirdre.” Sy’s jaw stiffened. “So, which will it be?” He raised his index finger. “Susanna goes to the police and tells them you had plenty of time to drive to Beverly Hills and kill your father?” He raised another finger. “Or I get the last copy of your father’s memoir and turn it into a bestselling book and blockbuster movie. Arthur, played by”—he thought for a moment—“Dustin Hoffman. You? What’s her name, the blonde in Footloose. Joelen? Maybe they’ll cast an unknown. Cameos by famous aging stars, all of them publicity whores.”

Deirdre held up three fingers. “Or I go through his papers, the way he asked me to. Sort. Cull. Inventory. Preserve. Certainly his memoir, even if it’s unfinished, gets preserved.”

“I’m running out of patience,” Sy said, reaching into the desk drawer and pulling out a small silver handgun. “Do I get the manuscript or don’t I?”

It wasn’t the gun that scared Deirdre. It was the cold expression on Sy’s face as he looked her squarely in the eye.