Текст книги "Death of a Pirate King "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

I knew the minute I was ushered into Dr. Cardigan’s office on Monday morning that the news was not good.

Dr. Cardigan was seated at his desk frowning over a file that I had a suspicion was mine. He rose, shook hands, invited me to sit. I sat and glanced at the many smiling photos of his children and grandchildren on the bookshelves lined with medical tomes.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, sitting down again.

His black cherry gaze rested seriously on my face, and I figured this was not a rhetorical question. “Good,” I said determinedly.

He nodded like everybody said that and we all knew it wasn’t true. “Fatigue? Some difficulty catching your breath?”

“Fatigue – but nothing unusual.”

“Are you finding your arrhythmia a little worse?”

I think he could see by my expression that struck home. “Well, we’ve got your test results back and there are some things we need to talk about.”

I nodded automatically.

“I don’t think this is going to come as a surprise.” He was studying my charts again. “You’ve been largely asymptomatic for the past fifteen years, but your last ECG indicates changes in ejection fraction and enlargement of the left ventricle.” He looked up inquiringly. Apparently I was supposed to ask an intelligent question around about then.

I said, “Okay. In layman’s terms?”

“The pneumonia has aggravated your heart disease. Your heart is working harder with fewer results.”

I nodded, trying to process.

He looked up, scanned my face. “We’ve discussed surgery in the past. It’s now a matter of when, not if. I’m going to refer you to a cardiac surgeon –”

I missed a bit of the next part. Open heart surgery. Not my favorite thing.

I asked, “How soon would he have to operate?”

“Your surgeon will make the determination once he’s examined you. Once symptoms present, it’s best not to delay.”

I sighed. Rubbed my jaw. I felt broadsided. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I really didn’t feel that ill. Tired from the pneumonia, naturally. Stressed.

Dr. Cardigan said, “We want to perform surgery before the left ventricle is irreversibly weakened. Repairing the valve is preferable to replacing it, but that’s often not possible when the damage has been caused by rheumatic fever.”

I nodded. I’d done a fair bit of reading on valve replacement the first time the subject came up. Repairing the valve not only increased my odds of both short– and long-term survival but lessened the risk of stroke and worsening my heart failure.

Studying my face, Dr. Cardigan said, “I know this isn’t the news you wanted, but it is not, by any means, a grim prognosis. It’s not a routine procedure, I’ll grant you, but there are over a hundred thousand heart valve surgeries performed annually in the United States alone. Most patients experience marked improvement in health and spirits.”

“Great,” I said.

“The recuperation process is a slow one, but there’s every likelihood that you’ll make a complete recovery. Your overall health is good. In fact, with surgery you may discover you no longer suffer from the arrhythmia at all.”

So, really, everything was fucking terrific! Why did I have the ridiculous desire to cry?

* * * * *

“See! He likes you,” Natalie said triumphantly.

I stared down at the scrawny scrap of fur cautiously sniffing my hand.

“He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m going to feed him.”

“Now who’s being a cynic? Anyway, every bookstore should have a cat.”

The cat – assuming it was a cat and not some beige bug-eyed refugee from outer space – slunk uneasily down the counter, and flinched at the flutter of Mystery Scene pages as a gust of warm air blew in from the street.

It was Monday afternoon, and I was not in a great mood after my trip to Huntington Hospital. After leaving the med center, I’d stopped off for some lunch I wasn’t able to eat, then spent an hour or two wandering around the Paseo. I’d stopped in at Apostrophe Books and bought a copy of Paul Kane’s unauthorized biography, and then finally steeled myself to go home.

The sight of a flea-bitten alley cat – okay, alley kitten – on the antique mahogany desk that served as my sales counter did not improve my precarious mood.

“Nat,” I said, “I don’t want a cat.”

“But he’d be good for you, Adrien. There are all kinds of studies about how pets help people live longer – just petting a cat can lower your blood pressure. And he would be company for you.”

“My blood pressure is okay,” I snapped. “At least it was five minutes ago. And I don’t want a cat for company.”

The cat cringed at my raised voice, and slither-ran down the counter, sending papers flying before he leaped to the back of a nearby chair and balanced there, sinking his little claws into the leather.

“Now you’ve scared him!” she exclaimed, scurrying to retrieve the scattered flyers and receipts. “He’s just a baby!”

“A baby what? He looks like a cross between a lemur and Gollum.”

“He’s starving.”

“Then feed him and put him back in the alley where you found him.”

“I didn’t find him,” she said indignantly. “He came in on his own.” She gave me an expectant look. Like, what? This was supposed to be the universal sign that I and this feral cat were Meant To Be?

“He’s filthy,” I said, and to prove my point, the little beast balanced on three legs and proceeded to scratch itself briskly behind its torn ear with the fourth. “He’s got fleas. He’s probably disease-ridden.”

“You sound like Lisa,” Natalie said, quite unforgivably.

I gave her a long look. “I do not want this cat,” I said. “No, Nat. Not in a hat. Not in my flat. Not in the store, not any more, just out the door – if you please.”

I thought that was pretty good for off-the-cuff, but she was unimpressed. “He’ll die out there!”

“Or you’ll die in here. Take your pick.” At her expression, I sighed. “Honest to God, Natalie. I don’t – I can’t take on the responsibility for a pet right now. And if I was in the market for a pet, it would be a dog.”

A big dog. That ate cats for lunch.

Apparently Natalie’s case of selective deafness had grown worse while I’d been out. As though I hadn’t said a word, she said, “And I’ll watch him during the day while you’re working this case.”

“I’m not –” I amended, “I don’t know that I’m going to do any more sleuthing. It’s taking up a lot of time I don’t have.” I hoped that wasn’t as portentous as it sounded.

Even before Dr. Cardigan had advised me to take things easy for the next week or so before my surgery, I’d decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to keep poking around in Porter Jones’s death. Not because it was dangerous – it hadn’t been so far – and certainly not because of Jake. No, it was after leaving Paul Kane’s boat the evening before. It bothered me the way Kane had manipulated me – and Jake – for his own amusement. At least, I couldn’t see any other reason for his behavior the evening before. And it made me uneasy. I already didn’t like him, and now I didn’t trust him.

True, that left me squarely in Detective Alonzo’s sights as a murder suspect, but it sounded to me like Jake was guiding the investigation toward Ally Beaton-Jones.

Natalie was eyeing me curiously. I said lamely, “Besides, Guy is allergic to cats.”

She didn’t say it, but I could see what she was thinking: that Guy – at least as far as she knew – hadn’t been around since last Thursday. Hadn’t even called.

I missed Guy. I missed him a lot right now.

“Feed him a can of tuna and put him outside,” I said. “He’s an alley cat. He’ll survive.”

“He might not! He’s just a few months old!” She was getting angry now, and – oddly enough – I was getting angry too.

“Then you take him home.”

“You know Lisa won’t allow animals in the house.”

What the hell was a healthy, twenty-something-year-old woman doing living with her parents anyway?

“Then call the pound. I don’t care. It’s not my cat, and this is not my problem.”

She stared at me like I’d morphed into something that belonged in a Playstation. Even the cat seemed to be staring at me with those E.T. eyes.

I tried to bring it down a notch. “Natalie,” I said placatingly, “Have a heart. I can’t deal with this right now. You can understand that, can’t you?”

She was still not speaking to me when I left to take Emma to her riding lessons.

* * * * *

While I was watching Emma go through her paces, Jake called and left a message on my cell phone. I didn’t discover it until I was back at the bookstore.

His recorded voice sounded terse and self-conscious.

“It’s possible you’re onto something with Nina Hawthorne. It turns out she was at Paul’s the morning of the party. There’s still no indication of how she might have introduced poison into the cocktail mixture, but it might be worth talking to her.”

Why tell me? He was the police. It was his job to check this stuff out. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was using this development with Nina as an excuse for contacting me. Was he – like Paul – worried I might pull out of the investigation? He didn’t agree with any of my theories so far, so why the hell would he care? Wouldn’t it be easier, really?

Or was I the only one struggling with old feelings?

I listened to the message again, started to dial Jake, and then stopped myself. There was nothing to discuss. Not really. If I called him it would be because I wanted to talk to him, and that way lay madness.

I opened a can of Wolfgang Puck’s tortilla soup and made myself eat it, browsing through a stack of books that had arrived that morning from publishers. I’d been looking forward to Richard Stevenson’s new one for months. There were enticing offerings from favorites P.A. Brown, Neil Plakcy, and Anthony Bidulka – and a promising first book by new author Scott Sherman (although if I had to read one more mystery about a hustler turning detective, I was going to shoot myself). I flipped pages and listened absently to the sounds of the street settling down for the evening outside my window.

Rising, I went to turn on the stereo and listened to the opening notes of Snow Patrol’s “You’re All I Have” from Eyes Open.

I tried not to think. I especially tried not to think about Guy.

I could call him, of course. If I called him and said I was ill and needed him, he’d be here in a minute.

But that would be the wrong reason to call. And the wrong reason for him to come back.

I remembered that I had bought Paul Kane’s unauthorized biography, and I went downstairs to retrieve it. For a moment I stood in the silent gloom of the store, staring through the plastic dividing wall.

Nothing to see but ladders and scaffolding. A couple of drop cloths. A generator sat to one side beside a pile of broken plaster. There were coils of wire, cans of paint. Nothing sinister lurked there. I was just getting jumpy in my old age.

I retrieved my book and returned upstairs.

The book was called Glorious Thing, a nod to Paul Kane’s role as the pirate king in the fantasy flick The Last Corsair. This was the film that had made Paul Kane a star – maybe a minor star as Hollywood galaxies went, but a star nonetheless. I’d seen the film a couple of times, and I had very much appreciated Kane’s acting – along with other things. Well, what was there to object to in watching a beautiful male animal run around half-naked for two and a half hours? Even if the dialogue did consist of creaking lines like, “I swear by all that is holy, I will have my revenge!” and “What kind of demon are you?” (That last was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but had anyone asked me, I’d have been happy to explain that there was, in fact, a fairly complex demon hierarchy.)

I wasn’t far into the book before I sussed that the author, Bonnie Kirkland, was not a member of Paul Kane’s fan club. It was hard to put my finger on what it was. For the most part she seemed to be sticking to facts – everything seemed properly attributed and footnoted. And, if anything, Kane’s background was one that should have generated sympathy. Born Humphrey Horfield in Bristol, England, he was orphaned at an early age and placed in institutional care. He ran away when he was fifteen to become an actor. He changed his name and supported himself as a rent boy on the streets of London. Talent, his extraordinary good looks, and luck won him a number of small roles in theater productions, but his big break came in 1980 when he won something called the SWET Award for Best Newcomer for his role as Phineas in A Separate Peace.

He played the role again in a film version, and then moved to the States where he landed a number of increasingly large parts in movies – some bad, some good, but all seeming to move his career forward. But the most significant thing during that period was the friendship he formed with wealthy entrepreneur Langley Hawthorne, who had recently put together his own film production company, Associated Talent.

Hawthorne thought Kane was going to be this generation’s Cary Grant, and he had invested considerably in him. But it was more than a business investment. Hawthorne had befriended Kane – practically made him one of the family. Without actually saying so, Bonnie Kirkland managed to convey that she thought this was a mistake on Hawthorne’s part, and that Kane was a charming and manipulative user.

As far as I could tell that opinion was based on two things: Kane’s affair with Nina Hawthorne – Kirkland’s sympathies clearly lay with Nina – and the fact that Hawthorne’s death had left Paul Kane rich and in control of Associated Talent.

Not exactly conclusive proof. I flipped through the extensive photo section – picture after picture of Paul Kane in the glowing picture of health – and little else – selected from film and stage roles as well as a number of candid shots. Fortune had favored him, no doubt about it. But it hadn’t all been luck. He had worked his arse off to get where he was, and there was plenty to admire in that.

After Hawthorne’s death and the disastrous relationship with Nina, Kane grew less and less discreet about his sexuality – and I thought I began to better understand where Kirkland’s disapproval stemmed from. As she elegantly phrased it, “If it moved, Paul screwed it.”

In a couple of magazine interviews Kane had admitted he was bisexual and hinted that he had a taste for the kinkier side of romance. When he was photographed at Cannes in a compromising position with a male companion, his career had taken its first serious hit in over a decade. The experts at Entertainment Weekly and Variety had openly speculated that his career was over, but then The Last Corsair was released, and Kane ended up a bigger star than ever before.

It was late when I finished Glorious Thing, and I wasn’t sure if I really had a better understanding of Paul Kane. I wasn’t sure if it mattered. I tossed the book aside. It landed a few feet from the bed, cover facing up with Paul Kane grinning that dashing pirate king smile at me. I turned out the bedside light, pounded the pillows into shape.

The tune to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirate King and Chorus” was running through my mind.

Oh, better far to live and die

Under the brave black flag I fly,

Than play a sanctimonious part,

With a pirate head and a pirate heart.

Away to the cheating world go you,

Where pirates all are well-to-do;

But I’ll be true to the song I sing,

And live and die a Pirate King.

Somewhere in the alley below, a cat was yowling.

Chapter Sixteen

“I realize that duck confit never goes out of fashion,” my mother said, discarding the elegant foldout brochure she had been browsing, “but I was hoping for something with a little more…verve.”

Verve. Yes, because what’s the point of eating food that just tastes good? Not that duck confit with pomegranate molasses on crispy rice paper exactly fell into my “just tastes good” category. I’d have gone with crab puffs if it had been left to me.

But apparently Lisa was speaking Nina Hawthorne’s language. “Of course,” Nina said, very businesslike. “I know the exact thing.” She opened a binder stuffed with gorgeous photos of comestibles – I mean, you couldn’t call that stuff anything as plebeian as food. “Grilled New Zealand lamb lollipops with a blueberry port wine sauce.”

“Oh my,” Lisa murmured, gazing at the sumptuous photograph. She glanced sideways at me. “Adrien?”

Yep, she was enjoying this way too much.

“Lamb for an SPCA banquet?” I said doubtfully.

Lisa made a little exasperated sound. Another woman would have smacked her forehead. “He does have a point,” she said regretfully.

Nina took it with good grace. She had taken everything with good grace, and that can’t have been easy given Lisa’s peculiarly playful mood. I studied Paul Kane’s former paramour unobtrusively. It was strange to meet someone I had been studying as though she were on my final exam. Like meeting someone in history. Like Betsy Ross, but with fewer stars and more stripes.

She was a bit younger than Kane, but her odometer showed the wear and tear of those years of booze and pills and one-night stands. She was very pale – almost dry looking – and her face was very lined. Her hair was in the crew cut she had adopted a decade earlier, but she had let it go prematurely silver. The result was striking. She was small and fine-boned – and with that papery, delicate skin she reminded me of origami.

“What about crispy swordfish bites with a wasabi dipping sauce?” she suggested, reaching for another binder.

Apparently she really wanted this SPCA gig.

“Your firm catered that party at Paul Kane’s, didn’t you?” I said, having decided we’d had enough preliminaries to get her relaxed. “I recognize the salmon canapés.”

Nina stared at me. Her eyes reminded me of Jake’s: that tawny color that looks almost amber in certain light. Lynx eyes, I thought.

“Yes,” she said briefly, dampeningly, and offered another binder to Lisa.

And, astonishingly, Lisa leaped to the rescue, taking the binder and exclaiming, “Oh, I saw that on the news! How dreadful for you! The man was poisoned.”

“It was not the food,” Nina said quickly.

“No, they think it must have been something in his drink,” I said.

Her eyes flicked to mine again. “Yes. I heard that also.”

“I was sitting right next to him when he collapsed,” I confided.

Lisa turned and gave me a long look – which I ignored.

“That must have been terrible,” Nina said politely. Hard to believe she had once been in love with Porter – but then she had been in love a lot back then.

“He was a big Hollywood producer,” I said. “Maybe you even catered one of his parties.”

“Porter didn’t give parties,” Nina said. Meeting my gaze, she said, “I knew him, yes. He was a friend of my family’s.”

“Was he the kind of person who gets murdered?” Lisa asked innocently.

Nina turned the lynx’s gaze on her. I could see various unkind comments going through her mind, but what she said was, “No. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill Porter. He was…” She shrugged. “He was an inoffensive old sot, really.”

I said, “Maybe the intent was to kill someone else and they poisoned Porter Jones by mistake?”

Her laugh was jarring. “That would make more sense. I imagine half the people at that party had reason to want Paul dead.”

“I don’t really know him that well,” I said. “His production company optioned one of my books.”

“Congratulations,” she said politely. “Just watch the fine print on anything he asks you to sign.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Bitter experience,” she agreed. To Lisa she said, “Might I suggest our cornmeal-crusted calamari with a hot cherry pepper aioli?”

“Oh, yummy,” Lisa murmured.

I left them to it, concurring when requested, watching Nina while they pored over the books. I didn’t place much significance on her curtness. I’d have been pretty curt too if someone had treated the death of someone I knew as a tourist attraction. She didn’t seem particularly guilty, not that I would necessarily recognize guilt. I might mistake it for offense or wariness. But one thing did stand out: regardless of what Paul Kane thought, Nina Hawthorne still hated his guts.

* * * * *

After Nina gathered up her binders and departed, Lisa and I had lunch.

“You didn’t want to observe her in action for any event,” Lisa said, serving me a slice of spinach quiche warm from the oven – Marie Callender’s oven, that is.

“Er…no,” I admitted.

“You’re investigating that man’s murder, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t really use the word investigating,” I said, avoiding her eye. I picked up my fork. “I’m asking a few questions at the request of Paul Kane, that’s all.”

“This is the case that Jake is working on.” It was not a question.

I answered, “He’s a police lieutenant. I think he keeps tabs on a lot of cases.”

Lisa sighed.

I waited for her to say more, but to my relief she actually let it go. I smiled at her. “Thanks, by the way. You were great with her.”

She preened a little. “I was, wasn’t I?”

We finished lunch and I split for the bookstore so Natalie could have the rest of the day off.

“The cat was in here again,” she informed me accusingly, as I glanced through the morning’s receipts.

“Was he? Did you recommend Lilian Jackson Braun? She should be right up his alley.” I glanced up. “No pun intended.”

She was not amused. Glaring at me, she said, “I cannot believe how hard-hearted you are.”

“Believe it,” I said. I checked my watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be meeting Warren in twenty minutes?”

She went.

I spent the rest of the afternoon refreshing my knowledge of what booksellers actually did – sleuthing turned out not to be part of the job description – and trying to decide if it was worth calling Jake over anything I’d discovered talking to Nina Hawthorne.

Since I’d already decided I wasn’t going to pursue the investigation, it shouldn’t have been much of a decision, but reading the biography on Paul Kane the night before had unwillingly revived my interest in the case.

Or maybe I was just grasping for something – anything – to take my mind off my own problems.

Guy had not called. I wondered just how much support from his friends Peter Verlane required? But I knew – or at least, I thought I knew – that Guy’s withdrawal probably had more to do with me than Verlane.

Luckily the afternoon was busy, and I hadn’t time to brood. By the time I pulled the ornate security gate closed and locked the front door, I was beat. I’d have liked nothing more than to get takeout from someplace and watch one of my favorite flicks from my collection of pirate movies, but I remembered that Partners in Crime was meeting that night.

I went back downstairs and assembled the chairs in a circle, set up the coffee machine, and hunted up extra red pencils. I finished off the orange-pineapple juice while I glanced through the newspaper.

Porter Jones’s murder was already off the front page, which probably said more about his noncelebrity status than the effort LAPD was making to solve the case. There didn’t appear to be much headway in the investigation since Jake and I had last spoken on Friday night.

Friday night. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

* * * * *

Detective Paul Chan, Jake’s former partner in homicide investigation, was the first of the Partners in Crime group to arrive.

Chan was middle-aged and putting on weight. He smelled of cigarettes as he set down a couple of packages of Oreo cookies on the counter, and I deduced his latest effort to quit smoking had crashed and burned.

“I’m thinking of self-publishing,” he informed me.

Two packages of Oreos? What was Chan thinking? Golden Oreos did not count as a second selection. I could hear the womenfolk bitching now. And he hadn’t brought any cream or milk. I’d have to supply that again – along with the sugar and paper plates and cups and napkins. Did these people think I was made of money?

I said, “Ah. Did you hear back from –?”

“I’ve heard back from everyone in New York publishing,” he said. “What it gets down to is nobody’s interested in a book about what real police work is like.”

Well, no. Because it was apparently dull as ditchwater. At least the way Chan wrote it. I said, “Well, self-publishing is one option. Or you could try rewriting –”

But he was already on another track. “I saw Jake the other day.” His brown eyes met mine. “He said he’d talked to you.”

I didn’t quite understand his intent expression. “Yeah,” I said vaguely.

“He said you were on the scene when that Laurel Canyon homicide went down.”

“I’m lucky that way,” I said.

“So are you two square again?”

I halted, mid-ripping open the cookies, and stared at him. “Well, he’s pretty square,” I said. “I’m just a rectangular guy.” With latent triangular tendencies.

Chan said painstakingly, “I mean…are you two okay again?” Adding quickly and uncomfortably, “Friends?”

For an instant I didn’t have an answer. My mind was totally blown by the news that Jake had apparently confided – no, that couldn’t be right. Jake had apparently been bothered enough by our falling-out that he’d let Chan see it. And Chan must have deduced…or Jake must have said…

Chan must have noticed and maybe drawn some weird conclusion.

Because…

Because anything else was…not even in the realm of possibility, right?

So why was I standing there feeling sort of warm and…utterly idiotic? Because Jake had apparently been sorry enough to lose my friendship that he’d let his partner know? Pathetic was what this was.

But I said gruffly, “Yeah, we’re okay.”

“That’s good,” Chan said, more uncomfortable by the minute. “So what do you think of Alonzo?”

“I think he’s a freaking moron.”

“He’s not a moron,” Chan said soberly. “He’s a little rough around the edges, but he’s got good instincts.”

“I don’t know about that. He was sizing me up for a pair of bracelets not too long ago. I may still be high on his hit parade for all I know.”

Chan said easily, “He probably just sensed you were hiding something.”

I stared at him, but he didn’t seem to realize what he’d just admitted to knowing.

“Anyway,” he said, flipping through the copies of his story, “Jake’s staying involved on this one. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

I said slowly, “Do you think Jake would try to influence the outcome of an investigation to protect a friend?”

Chan stared at me. “You mean if the friend was guilty?”

“I’m just talking theoretical.”

“You know better than that,” he said scornfully, and went back to sorting through his papers.

I wanted to ask him if he had any ideas about the case, but Jean and Ted Finch arrived at that moment.

Jean was jubilant. “We did it! We’ve got an agent!” she crowed, waving a copy of an e-mail.

“We haven’t signed yet,” Ted corrected quickly, “but we’ve got an offer for representation.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

Jean and Ted had been writing and rewriting their ghastly first novel Murder, He Mimed for as long as I’d been hosting the group. There were many things I loathed about Murder, He Mimed, but my number one objection was that their main character, a gay gossip columnist by the name of Avery Oxford, bore an unsettling resemblance to me.

I seemed to be the only person who saw it, though. The one time I’d suggested it to the group, everyone had burst out laughing. The fact that Avery was thirty-two, had black hair, blue eyes, a cop friend by the name of Jack O’Reilly, and a penchant for getting involved in murder investigations was apparently just a coincidence. For four years I’d lived in dread of the Finches finishing that damn book, and now not only had they finished it, they’d apparently tracked down the only literary agent on the planet demented enough to want to represent it.

Jean – reading my response correctly – glowered at me. “No, we are not kidding. It’s a wonderful book, and now that we have an agent, I know we’ll sell it to one of the big publishers!”

Ted beamed at her fondly. “What we’re really hoping,” he admitted, “is that maybe we’ll have the same luck as you, Adrien, and someone will option our book for the movies!”