Текст книги "Night Night, Sleep Tight"

Автор книги: Hallie Ephron

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“Parked in the garage.”

“Maybe he’s up in his office.”

“It’s locked. I knocked. And yelled. Looks like he took a swim. He left some stuff out here.” Deirdre pointed to the shirt and slippers.

She edged a few steps closer to the pool, then stopped. Her neck tingled and she smelled blood in her nose as she realized that there was a shadowy shape submerged under the water at the deep end of the pool.

Chapter 3

Deirdre felt as if, for a moment, the iris of a camera closed and opened again in front of her. Click. She dropped her messenger bag and stumbled across the patio, onto the grass, cursing the crutch that made a lousy substitute for a good leg. She was a strong swimmer if she could ever get to the damned pool.

Henry flew past her. In seconds he was across the yard, through the gate, and diving in. He took two strokes underwater and then surfaced, driving the body that Deirdre knew was her father to the side of the pool.

Deirdre reached the edge and sank to her knees. “Oh my God. Daddy?”

Henry held on to the tile edge of the overflow channel, gasping and trying to lift what was surely dead weight. Deirdre grabbed her father under an arm. Between her pulling and Henry pushing they managed to lift him out onto the concrete apron.

Time seemed to slow down as Deirdre shivered and backed away, then sank into a crouch. Her father lay on his side, his back curled and knees bent, hands stiff in front of him as if the water had returned him to the womb. His eyes were open, their surfaces clouded over, and the skin on his hands had shriveled like loose latex. She knew CPR, but anyone could see that her father was well beyond help.

Bear licked her hand. Beside him, Baby was down on her haunches like a sphinx, coat glistening, her massive head tilted, staring at Arthur. Henry was ashen, holding on to the edge of the pool. His lips moved, and she knew that he was saying something, but it felt as if rushing water filled her head.

He was dead. Her father was dead. If only she’d gotten there sooner. If only she hadn’t stopped for that Egg McMuffin. They had to call an ambulance. Or the police. Or the fire—

“Deirdre!” Henry’s voice penetrated. “Are you okay?”

Deirdre tried to speak, but the breakfast sandwich was backing up in her throat. She burped and her mouth filled with acidic coffee.

“Stay here. I’ll call 911,” Henry said and hoisted himself out of the pool.

“I’ll go,” she said, reaching for her crutch.

Her weak leg was folded under her. She struggled to her feet, threw Henry the towel from the lounge chair, and clumped as fast as she could, hand over her mouth, through the gate, across the yard, and into the house. She reached the bathroom just in time.

Afterward, she stood at the sink, splashing water on her face and then drinking from her cupped hands, trying to wash away the nasty aftertaste. She looked into the mirror. Her long dark hair was wild around her face, like Medusa’s snakes in the Caravaggio portrait, her father’s haunted eyes staring back at her. She shivered, realizing that her dark leggings and top—an oversized T-shirt with XENO ART, the name of her gallery, silk-screened across the front, the neck artfully torn out—were completely soaked.

All she could find to dry her face was a ragged hand towel. She blew her nose and grabbed a few extra tissues for later, tucking them into the waistband of her leggings.

Numb, moving like a defective robot, she limped into the kitchen. The phone hung on the kitchen wall. She punched 911 and sank into a chair at the kitchen table, trying to collect herself.

An operator picked up. “Beverly Hills 911. Where is your emergency?”

Where? Deirdre wasn’t expecting the question. It took her a moment to come up with the address of the house where she had grown up.

“Thank you. What’s the emergency?”

“My father. He drowned in the pool. He’s dead.” Her voice sounded as if it were coming from someone else’s throat.

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

Deirdre closed her eyes. She could see Arthur’s stiff, clawed hands. “He’s dead.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

Deirdre squeezed the receiver. “Please send someone.”

“They’re on their way. Are you alone?”

“My brother . . . He’s—” She stood and gazed through the window, past white ruffled café curtains that she’d helped her mother hang. Her vision blurred. She had to call her mother.

“Hello?” The dispatcher’s voice sounded far away. Deirdre was trying to remember where she’d written the phone number her mother had given her months ago, before she’d checked into that Buddhist retreat. It had to have been in her datebook. Which was . . . she tried to recall where.

She hung up the phone, belatedly registering the dispatcher’s “Please stay on the line . . .”

She must have dropped her bag on the patio. She went to look. Sure enough, there it was. She opened the sliding door and shouted to Henry, “They’re on the way. I’m calling Mom.”

A minute later she was dialing, even though she knew no one would answer—it was a silent retreat for God’s sake. At least she got an answering machine. “Cho Bo Zen Buddhist Temple. Please leave a message. Gassho.”

After the beep, Deirdre said, “This message is for Gloria Unger. I’m her daughter. Please tell her—” What? That something had happened and to please call back at once? No. Her mother would worry that something had happened to Deirdre or Henry. So she just said it: “—Arthur died. Suddenly. He . . .” Deirdre pulled the handset away from her face and stared at it, then put the receiver back to her mouth. “Mom?” Her eyes misted over and her throat ached. “Daddy drowned.”

Deirdre ended her message with “It’s Saturday,” because who knew if there was a date stamp on the phone messages or how often the monks checked the machine. “I’m staying at the house. Henry’s here. And I wish you were here, too.”

The doorbell chimed just as she managed to croak out, “Please, call back.” Could the police have gotten here that fast?

Deirdre hung up the phone, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and went to answer the door. She expected to find paramedics or grim-faced police officers outside. Instead, a woman about her own age stood there, arranging a white bow at the neck of the blouse she had on under the jacket of a dark pantsuit that was a size too small.

“I’m here to see Arthur Unger,” the woman said. Her gaze traveled to the crutch Deirdre was leaning against. Deirdre was used to that.

Was that a siren in the distance? Deirdre looked past the woman.

“Deirdre?” The woman wiped away beads of sweat that had formed on her upper lip. She seemed vaguely familiar. Maybe an actress? Arthur was always having hopeful young women over to the house to read lines, even when everyone knew that Arthur’s only lines were the ones he used to convince the world that he was still a player.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” the woman said.

Finally Deirdre really looked at her. Auburn hair. Sloping eyes. Pale soft flesh and freckles like sugar sprinkled across her nose. Deirdre did remember her. Of course she did.

“Joelen?” Joelen Nichol. Deirdre hadn’t seen or spoken to her in what, at least twenty years? Not since high school. Not since that night. She was the daughter of glamorous Elenor “Bunny” Nichol, a movie star known for her spectacular silhouette, electric blue eyes, and lousy taste in men. Joelen had confided to Deirdre that her father’s name was Joe. That explained her unusual name, pronounced Joe-Ellen—a combination of Joe and Elenor.

Joelen had her mother’s incredible aquamarine eyes, luminous complexion, and radiant smile with dimples on either side. “It’s so good to see you.” She grasped Deirdre’s arm, oblivious to the sirens that were growing louder. “This is so amazing. I had no idea you’d be here, too. Did he tell you that we had an appointment?”

“He?”

“Your father. I have a meeting with him this—”

“No.” The word came out louder than Deirdre intended. Joelen recoiled. “I’m sorry. He . . . he can’t see you now. It’s too late. He’s—” Deirdre couldn’t finish it.

“What? Did he change his mind? Is this a bad time?” Joelen started to back away, tripping over her own feet. The siren was screaming now. “I can come back. No problem. Another time?” She pulled a card from the outer pocket of her briefcase, lunged forward, and gave it to Deirdre. “Tell him to give me a call and—” Joelen broke off midsentence when the sirens fell silent. She turned and stared out toward the street.

Deirdre brushed past her. She moved through the courtyard, jerking her crutch loose when it got stuck between the paving stones. A police cruiser was parked in front of the house, lights flashing. Pulled up behind it was a red truck with gold lettering on the side: BEVERLY HILLS FIRE PARAMEDICS.

Deirdre was dimly aware of Joelen scurrying from the house, crossing the street, and getting into a dark compact car as Deirdre pointed two paramedics to the backyard. One of them carried an oxygen tank. Another maneuvered a wheeled stretcher that clattered up the driveway. A pair of uniformed police officers raced around ahead of them. Deirdre trailed behind. Henry was waiting at the gate to the pool. He’d wrapped up in the towel and, in spite of the heat, was shivering. He had the dogs on tight leashes, sitting tensed at his side.

The EMTs raced for the pool. Henry watched them for a moment, then led the dogs back into the house. Deirdre waited on the patio for him to come back out. She crossed her arms, feeling stiff and chilled as she watched one of the paramedics kneel beside her father. The oxygen tank lay abandoned on the ground.

A police officer stood by the pool, talking on a radio. All Deirdre could hear were bursts of static. The officer belted the receiver, exchanged a few words with one of the paramedics. He crouched by the body, then lingered there a few moments longer, looking into the pool.

Slowly, he got to his feet and took in the yard and the back of the house, then shifted his gaze over at Deirdre and Henry. He crossed the grass to the patio. He was an older man with the boyish intensity and short sturdy stature of Richard Dreyfuss.

“I’m Officer Ken Millman.” He offered Deirdre his I.D., just like in the movies, only this wasn’t a movie. “I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

Deirdre knew full well that her father was dead, and yet she felt as if the air had been sucked out of her. She groped for a chair and sat. Tears filled her eyes, her stomach clenched, and her mouth opened in a silent scream.

Chapter 4

Deirdre barely heard Henry’s “Are you okay?” Or the police officer’s “Do you need a glass of water?” She tried to say I’m fine, to wave them away, but it was another few minutes before she could even lift her head. She found the tissues she’d stashed in her waistband and wiped her eyes. Blew her nose. Sat some more, just trying to wrap her head around what had happened.

At last, she found her voice. “Sorry.”

The police officer whose name she’d already forgotten was crouched in front of her, his eyes searching hers. “The county coroner will be here soon.” He was speaking slowly. “It’s routine in an unattended death. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He waited for her nod, then continued, “I need to collect some information. Are you okay with that? Can you answer a few questions?”

Deirdre blinked. Henry put his hand on her back.

The officer stood. He pulled out a notebook and flipped it open, then thumbed to a fresh page and jotted a few notes. “The victim’s name?”

“Arthur Unger,” Henry said. “He’s our dad.”

“He lives here?”

“Yes. I live here, too. Deirdre lives in San Diego.” Henry gave the officer his name and phone number. Deirdre gave him hers.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“We don’t know what happened,” Henry said. “My sister got here and found him floating in the water.”

Not really floating, Deirdre thought. Arthur had been barely suspended above the bottom of the pool, beneath the surface, like a fly in amber. She choked at the memory.

“How long ago?” the officer asked.

“Not long,” Henry said. “Fifteen, twenty minutes maybe.”

“I called it in right away,” Deirdre said.

The officer drew a rectangle on his pad, and around it a larger dashed rectangle with a gap that Deirdre realized was meant to represent the chain-link fence. “Can you show me approximately where your father was when you found him?”

Her hand trembling, Deirdre pointed to a spot near the edge in the deep end.

The officer drew an X. “Then what?”

“My sister called 911.”

“You’re both wet.” The officer squinted at Henry, then looked over at Deirdre. “I’m guessing one of you went in after him.”

“Of course,” Henry said, looking more annoyed than chastened. “I did. I thought . . . Actually, I didn’t think. I mean, it was just a gut reaction. He might have had a heart attack or a stroke. Or fallen in and hit his head, for all we knew.”

“I see.” The officer gave Henry a long look. Deirdre had the distinct impression that he didn’t think Arthur had just fallen in. “Thank you. That’s all for now. I need you both to wait in the house until we finish up our investigation out here.”

Henry hesitated a moment, then turned and started for the house.

“And I need you to leave that where you found it,” the officer said, indicating the tumbler that Henry had picked up from the table.

Deirdre sat at the dining table, watching the activity through the sliding glass doors. Investigators had constructed a makeshift tent over Arthur’s body. To protect him from what, she wondered. A photographer took pictures—not just of Arthur but of the entire pool area.

“You want anything?” Henry called out from the kitchen.

“No thanks.”

He came out with an open bag of potato chips and set it on the table in front of her. “I found this on the floor in the front hall,” he said, snapping a business card down on the table. “You know anything about it?”

Deirdre picked up the card. It had Joelen’s name on it. “She was here this morning.”

“I didn’t know you two kept in touch.”

“We didn’t. Did you?”

“Why would I?” Henry said. “I barely remember her.”

Deirdre let it go, but she knew that Henry remembered Joelen Nichol. Remembered her well, and not just because she’d made headlines. Henry, who’d never wanted Deirdre within fifty feet of him and his friends, used to hang out with her whenever Joelen came over. Once she’d discovered the pair of them making out on the musty sleeper sofa that her parents stored in the garage.

Sometimes, on nights when she was sleeping over at Joelen’s, Henry would show up late and toss pebbles at Joelen’s bedroom window so she’d come down. One night Henry’s pebble missed Joelen’s window and hit Bunny’s instead. Bunny’s boyfriend, Antonio Acevedo—the man everyone called “Tito”—had come whaling out of the house, armed with a baseball bat. Lucky Henry had ridden over on his bicycle and could get the hell out of there before he got hurt.

“She wasn’t here to see me,” Deirdre said. “She was here to talk to Dad.”

Henry’s look darkened. “Why’d she want to talk to Dad?”

Deirdre pointed to the setting sun logo and SUNSET REALTY above Joelen’s name. “Just guessing. She’s a Realtor. He’s selling a house.”

“I thought he already talked to a Realtor.”

Deirdre shrugged. “All I know is she was here. She said she had a meeting with him. She freaked out when the police arrived.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

“Don’t be mean. I remember, you liked her.”

“Sure I liked her,” Henry said. “We had fun. Fooled around. But it was never serious. I haven’t talked to her since she killed—”

“Supposedly killed.”

Henry stood at the glass door and looked out into the yard. “Hey, she confessed.”

Chapter 5

The story had made national news—DAUGHTER KILLS STAR’S BOYFRIEND.

It had happened on a night when Deirdre was sleeping over at the Nichols’ house, late after one of Bunny Nichol’s lavish parties. Bunny’s boyfriend, Antonio “Tito” Acevedo, was stabbed to death in her bedroom.

Deirdre didn’t find out about the murder for days after because she was in the hospital. Her father—he and Gloria had been among the guests at the party earlier—had come back in the middle of the night to take her home. He’d carried her, half-asleep, out to his car. On the way home, his car skidded off the road and she was thrown out.

She’d spent weeks in Northridge Hospital—Arthur had insisted the ambulance take her there because of their excellent reputation rehabbing Vietnam vets. After multiple operations, skin grafts, and physical therapy, the doctors finally conceded that the damage to her femoral nerve was permanent. She’d never be able to move her hip or bend and straighten her leg. She’d never feel heat, or cold, or pain, or even a gentle touch on the front of her thigh. Over time, the muscles would atrophy.

No one had warned her how much she’d come to cherish what she’d once been—unremarkable and nearly invisible. Instead, her mere presence would attract uneasy stares.

Desperate for anything to distract her from the pain and uncertainty of her ordeal, Deirdre had found a newspaper someone had left in the hospital visitors’ lounge and read about the murder. After that she watched the nightly news, first from her hospital bed and later from the living room couch, as the story of the murder, photographs of the crime scene, and the lives of Bunny and Joelen Nichol and Tito Acevedo were endlessly dissected and fed to an audience ravenous for every sordid detail. Later, when Deirdre was strong enough to visit the public library, she surreptitiously tore news articles from the public copies of the L.A. Times and stole away with them so she could read and reread their accounts of the murder and inquest that followed.

The cause of death was a single knife thrust to the solar plexus; apparently Tito had dropped like a stone. “I did it,” Joelen had told the police, who must have arrived at the house after Arthur drove off with Deirdre.

At the hearing, the coroner made a big deal about the lack of defensive wounds. Why hadn’t he tried to protect himself? But that didn’t seem at all far-fetched to Deirdre. Tito Acevedo, who carried a roll of hundred-dollar bills and a silver monogrammed gun-shaped Zippo lighter in his trouser pocket, would never have seen it coming. He wouldn’t have been the slightest bit afraid when Joelen came at him, all of fifteen years old, a hundred pounds, dressed in that flowered cotton granny gown she wore whenever Deirdre slept over.

“He ran into my knife,” Joelen told the coroner’s jury.

That ten-inch kitchen knife was scrutinized, as was the nightgown Joelen had been wearing. An expert who testified was skeptical. Why wasn’t there more blood? he wanted to know. From the wound Tito suffered, there should have been more.

But far more compelling than the presence or absence of blood evidence or defensive wounds was the dramatic testimony of Joelen’s tearful movie star mother. Bunny Nichol sat in the witness box wearing a dark suit and a blouse with a ruffled collar that swathed her neck like a bandage. Her jet-black hair was pulled back in a severe French twist. In the black-and-white television images, there were bruises under her eye and over her jaw, livid against skin that was otherwise flawless as bone china. She answered each question posed to her in a calm, quiet voice. It had been odd to see Sy Sterling, whom Deirdre had known forever as her father’s best friend, performing his courtroom role on TV, a scaled-down Perry Mason.

“Why did you stay with a man who beat you?” Sy had asked, just a trace of his Russian accent surfacing: bitt you.

“I was afraid,” Bunny said, staring down and kneading her hands together. “I had to do anything and everything he wanted or he said he’d ruin my face. He said I’d be sorry if I ever tried to leave him. He said if I told anyone, he’d get me where it hurt most. I knew what he meant.” She’d paused and her audience, including Deirdre, had leaned into the silence. “My daughter. He would have killed us both.”

Deirdre had heard Bunny and Tito fighting some nights when she’d slept over. Angry shouting matches. Breaking glass. She could easily imagine herself in Joelen’s place, listening to Tito’s escalating threats and growing more and more terrified. Formulating a plan. Creeping downstairs to the kitchen. Pulling open a drawer and selecting the longest, sharpest, pointiest knife she could find. As she climbed the stairs, had Joelen thought about what would happen after? Did she hesitate as she approached the closed bedroom door? Did she have second thoughts as she stood in the hallway, screwing up her courage? Something must have spurred her to act at the moment that she did. Maybe it had been the sound of furniture breaking. Or a fist slammed into a wall. Or Bunny crying out.

It hadn’t taken the coroner’s jury long. After a few hours they ruled. Justifiable homicide. It wasn’t not guilty, but it wasn’t guilty, either. The verdict kept Joelen from being indicted for murder.

A real “David slays Goliath tale” was the verdict rendered by the TV newscaster Deirdre watched, lying on the living room sofa recovering from her first operation. She tried to call Joelen after the hearing but no one answered. She wrote to her but got no response. She begged her parents to drive her over there but they said there was no point to that. Bunny had left town. It was as if Deirdre’s friend had vanished into thin air.

For months after, Bunny Nichol kept an uncharacteristically low profile too. Then came the news that she was back in town and married to a handsome young TV soap opera star, Derek Hutchinson. A few months later, the papers ran a photograph of the happy couple with a baby. Reporters were a tad more discreet in those days: Deirdre didn’t remember the press commenting on the obvious fact that Bunny Nichol had been pregnant when she’d had her final fight with Antonio Acevedo. Pregnant when she testified on nationwide TV. No one was surprised that the baby boy, with his head of dark hair, olive skin, and dark eyes, resembled Antonio Acevedo a whole lot more than he resembled Derek Hutchinson, who was slender and fair. But those rumors were a gentle breeze compared to the shit storm that got kicked up a few years later when Derek Hutchinson died of AIDS, one of the sad first wave that took out so many of Hollywood’s most talented.

Deirdre was finally well enough to return to school near the end of the academic year. At least she walked back into class on crutches, not in a wheelchair. Even the high and mighty Marianne Wasserman was friendly and solicitous, organizing a posse of her friends to carry Deirdre’s books between classes. It made Deirdre queasy now, remembering the small amount of celebrity status she’d found herself basking in simply because she’d been Joelen’s friend. Even as she’d traded on her friendship with Joelen, it had occurred to her how toxic notoriety could be.