by Linda Barnes
A double mattress rested on a wooden platform dead center, mirror overhead. A few cushions, a hand-knotted rug in washed-out earth tones, a corner full of baskets, a collection of tall grasses in colored bottles …
The heavy cardboard box with the red-and-blue ad for detergent decorating one side was definitely out of place. It was packed with men’s clothing; toothbrush and toiletries on top.
“You a narc?” The accusing voice was deeper than Spraggue would have expected from the slight redhead—the hair brighter, bushier than he’d imagined.
He swallowed air and said no. For the moment denial was all he could come up with.
“You know,” she continued, posing in the doorway, “you guys should really give it up. I haven’t dealt in years, and if I do happen to have a personal stash, what’s the big deal?”
The reason for Spraggue’s temporary mental paralysis was Grady herself. Just from the way she stood, hands on tilted hips, he knew she was more than aware of her own effect; she counted on it. The Martinsons had been accurate enough in their skimpy description, but Grady outstripped adjectives. Her skin was like warm honey, so flawless it lent credibility to her outrageous hair color. She made a simple blue sundress look like it had cost plenty. His eyes kept coming back to her face. That hair had a life of its own.
She didn’t seem anxious to grab the phone and dial the cops. Spraggue thanked God for her previous run-ins with the police.
“You’re not the gas man,” she said speculatively. “Or rent man. Or the telephone repairman.…”
“I’m a friend of Lenny’s.” Spraggue offered the lie along with a tentative smile. “And you have got to be Grady. Lenny told me you were a knock-out, but I figured the old bastard was exaggerating again.”
Her mouth almost smiled at the compliment, but she caught herself. “Lenny told you to drop in any time, right?” she said sarcastically. “And you think this is a cool moment to make a move on his girl? Jesus, Lenny’s friends.”
“Hey, I’m sorry—”
“I thought I’d locked the front door.”
“I have hidden talents,” Spraggue said. She seemed like the type who’d be intrigued by a hint of outlawry. “I didn’t break the lock and I did try to call first.”
Her eyes narrowed. She was still blocking the bedroom door, his only exit. Spraggue wondered whether to push her aside and bolt. “What’s your name?” she asked.
He couldn’t risk a lie on that. No false ID. “Michael Spraggue.”
“I may have heard him mention you.” A frown of concentration lined her perfect forehead. Her voice stayed suspicious. “Just when did you talk to Lenny?”
“It’s been months. Look, Lenny and I go way back. I’m sorry I barged in on you. I’ll leave him a note, okay? Or maybe you could tell me where—”
“You don’t know,” she said softly. Spraggue took a deep breath; she’d bought it. She was worrying how to break the news of Lenny’s death, not how to get to the phone and dial police emergency.
He decided to jump to the wrong conclusion. “Don’t tell me you and Lenny have split? Jeez, that man is a moron. He—”
“I don’t—” she began.
Spraggue ignored her. “When I talked to him the last time, he was so happy. Told me you were thinking about getting married.”
“Really,” she said. “He never bothered to ask.”
“From the way he was hinting around, I swear I thought I’d miss the wedding. And possibly other blessed events.” He let his eyes slide down to her narrow waist. “But I guess I was mistaken about that.”
“Lenny talked a lot of garbage,” she said angrily. “Look, let’s straighten up a few things.” She stared at the floorboards, said bluntly, “I had a miscarriage. Then we broke up. And—Look, why don’t you come in the living room? There’s something else I have to tell you. You prefer Mike or Michael?”
“Michael.”
She steered him over to one of the red floor cushions, folded herself as neatly as a kitten on the other.
“Were you and Lenny really close?” she asked. “I mean, if you haven’t talked to him in months, you weren’t exactly like brothers.”
“Hey, if you want to bad-mouth him, go right ahead.”
“It’s not that. It’s …” She started to tell it several ways, considering various approaches. Spraggue watched her eyes. She didn’t seem flustered by his attention; men must stare at her as a matter of course. Whatever Lenny had meant to her once, he decided, she wasn’t that broken up by his death. She couldn’t be and still search for the most effective way to announce it.
She finally settled on a simple show of bravery: a quiver in her lip, a hand on his, and “Lenny’s dead.”
Spraggue tried to get a sense of her expectations. Her eyes were wide. She hadn’t quite worked up a tear but she seemed eager to ooze sympathy. He decided a suitable length of stunned silence was called for. She pressed his palm with her fingertips. Her nails were long and painted red.
“How did it happen?” he asked finally. It seemed the appropriate question, the equivalent of “Where am I” from the recently revived fainter.
Did she hesitate? For the best dramatic effect, he knew he should look away. She’d assume he was fighting back tears. But he needed to see her face.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “There were rumors and then I heard it on the radio this morning. I went to the store for the newspaper, but they’re all sold out.” Her lip was quivering in earnest now. “The police found his body—in some car trunk or something. It’s so unreal. I mean, I knew somebody who knew a woman who was killed by the Hillside Strangler, but that’s different. That’s removed, you know? But Lenny … I mean, Jesus. Lenny.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She bit her lower lip. “Yeah. Lenny and I must have split right after you talked to him. I wasn’t holding any torch either.”
“He leave you because of the—”
“We just weren’t getting along. He was still living here, but he was using the place like a hotel, killing time until he could move in with some new lady.” She put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “Want some tea? I make good herb tea.”
“Thanks.”
She bustled off into the tiny kitchen much to Spraggue’s relief. Maybe with her spectacular self out of sight, his mind would engage. The front door was temptingly close. Should he take the opportunity to escape before getting deeper into a net of lies? Dammit, how could he leave when he’d learned so little? He stood up and his knees creaked louder than the wooden floor. Grady, he hoped, would assume he was about to join her. Or maybe she’d think he was pacing the floor in grief at his friend’s passing. He made his way to a bureau in the hallway, jerked open the top drawer, covering the motion with a sneeze in case the drawer squeaked.
Grady kept a lot of photos of herself. Hell, anyone who looked that good ought to. He shuffled through a pack of Polaroids, came on one of a laughing Grady hugging an unmistakable George Martinson. Somehow he didn’t think Mary Ellen had snapped the shutter. He heard footsteps and shut the drawer just as Grady emerged from the kitchen carrying two teacups.
“Should I put some honey in yours?” she asked. “I don’t have any sugar, not even brown sugar. I’m into health foods. I’ve got lemon and cream.”
“I’ll take it straight,” Spraggue said, returning to the red cushion.
“You from around here?” she asked.
“L.A,” he said without thinking. Once the lies started, they were easier than truth. As long as they stayed simple.
“What do you do?”
“I’m in the movies.” And as long as you kept to as much of the truth as possible.
“Sure you are,” she said.
Spraggue wondered why he sounded more convincing when he lied than when he told the truth.
“Are you Equity?”
“Yeah,” he said, thankful he’d given his true name.
“Screen Actors’ Guild? You have a card?”
�
��Sure.” The SAG card impressed the hell out of her. She got very self-conscious, smoothed her hair back and sat up taller.
“I can’t believe Lenny never told me about you,” she said. “And him knowing I could use an in. Speak no ill of the dead and all that, but Lenny was such a pain. I mean, I’m really an actress.”
Spraggue gave an inward shudder, but kept a smile glued to his face. So was every pretty woman within two hundred miles of L.A.
“This stuff …” She indicated her artwork, spread out around the perimeter of the room. “This is just a hobby. I was in L.A. for months, trying for a break, you know? Auditioning, cracking my neck going up against stone walls, knowing absolutely no one. I came up here for a rest. I was practically a wreck … skin and bones.”
The “skin and bones” part wasn’t as hard to believe as the “wreck.”
“Michael Spraggue,” she said. “That’s really familiar. Tell me what you’ve done.”
Lenny had probably cursed him out in her presence. Or else she’d heard of the filthy rich East Coast family. Either option was about a hundred times more likely than her having seen any of his acting work. How the hell was he going to get the talk steered back toward Lenny? How was he going to walk out the door with that cardboard box?
He mentioned a few titles, dropped a few names. She was rapt, fascinated.
He asked for more tea, mumbled his appreciation when she complied. “This must be really hard on you,” he said, dropping his voice. “Lenny’s death.”
She was an actress, all right. She saw the opportunity for the scene and grabbed it. From the moment she’d discovered his Hollywood connections, she’d been auditioning.
The scene was not half bad. This time she even got a few tears going. Spraggue held his applause at the end.
“Packing up his things must have been terrible,” he said.
“It was,” she said earnestly. “Of course, I packed them before I knew, but even then I had this premonition I’d never see him again. And then that horrible woman …”
“What horrible woman?”
She paused to consider the best way to spill the tale. “I put Lenny’s stuff in the box maybe two weeks ago. I didn’t want to be reminded of him all the time. I waited for him to show up and claim his stuff, but”—a hint of a sob touched her voice—“he never did. And then, last week, this woman banged at the door and demanded his things. It was really this dramatic confrontation. The girlfriend and the ex-wife. You ever meet his ex? Alice or something.”
“The blonde?”
“No. She’s short and dark and kind of plump. Pretty hair, but all shoved back and tied up on her head. No makeup. No color in her face.”
“Why didn’t you give her the box?”
“Well, who was she to come in here like that? I wasn’t exactly Lenny’s best friend at the time, but I wasn’t going to sic her on him. They’d had a lot of trouble, you know. Alimony and shit. I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. Maybe she was planning to hock his clothes.”
“Think she’d have gotten much?”
“For Lenny’s junk? Hell, no. There’s nothing of value in that box. I probably should have given it to her.”
“If you want to get rid of it, I’ll give it to Goodwill,” Spraggue offered. “It must upset you to have it around.”
“Would you?”
“Sure,” Spraggue said easily. “Did you put Lenny’s mail in the box?”
“No papers, just clothes.”
“I wrote him a letter a while back, telling him I might be visiting. To this address. Do you know if he got it? I’d like to think he did.” Spraggue’s deep voice caught a little on the last words. It was one of his acting tricks. Sounded sincere as hell.
“I don’t know,” Grady said. “I could check. I stick all the mail in one of the baskets in the bedroom. That big round Colombian one.…”
They emptied it on the bed. Junk, mostly. Except for one fat envelope, addressed in a rough scrawl to Grady. No last name. No stamp.
“That’s Lenny’s writing,” said Spraggue.
“Think I should give it to the police?”
“It’s addressed to you,” he pointed out. “Maybe you should call the cops. Of course, it could be personal.”
That got to her.
She slit open the envelope with a silver-handled paper-knife. Another envelope fell out, together with a thin sheet covered with Lenny’s straggling print.
She read it silently. Spraggue peered over her shoulder. She didn’t seem to mind his closeness, leaned lightly against him. He didn’t want to touch the letter. If it got to the police, he didn’t need his fingerprints turning up.
Grady, baby [it began],
By the time you get around to cleaning out that damn basket of yours, either I’ll have it made or I’ll be down the toilet. We had some good times, right? So, in memory of those, if anything happens to me, send my Last Will and Testament on its merry way.
The enclosed envelope was sealed and stamped, addressed to Taylor and Fordham, Attorneys at Law, 55 Kearney Street, San Francisco.
Otherwise [Lenny’s note continued], keep the blasted thing for me. Oh, and if I do die, call Alicia and tell her things are looking up. I left it all to her.
Lenny
10
Spraggue woke up when the stewardess assigned to the first-class section waved the menu card in his face.
“Go away,” he mumbled.
“Wouldn’t you like your dinner now?” The woman’s voice was so nursery-school bright that Spraggue pressed his eyes shut more tightly. “Well,” she continued undaunted, “I’ll just leave this on the seat next to you, and whenever you wake up …” Her voice trailed off down the aisle.
Whenever—Damn, he was up now.
A wave of doubt swept over him. Had he remembered everything? The box of Lenny’s clothes—locked up in the station wagon. The letter to Lenny’s lawyer—dropped in the mailbox at the airport. The phone call to Bradley.…
The memory was enough to straighten him up in his chair, open his eyes. The nursery stewardess noticed, flashed a smile. Luckily, a pair of traveling businessmen had her practically barricaded in the toilet.
He’d just called to ask a favor; reassure Kate tell her he’d be back in a day or two, at most. But Bradley had been full of news; the autopsy report on Lenny was in.
“Drowned,” the lieutenant had said proudly, as if he’d invented the word.
Drowned. Swimming pool? Mineral bath? Hot tub? The nearest real water was Lake Berryessa, but—Spraggue didn’t get a chance to ask.
Bradley wasn’t finished. Not yet. “He drowned in wine. Some way to go, huh?”
Spraggue hadn’t answered, couldn’t. He’d hung up, bought a newspaper, headed for the departure gate with ten minutes to spare. Some sadist had installed a bank of phones there too. Spraggue stared at one for five minutes, then placed another call to Bradley.
“We got cut off,” he lied. “Did you get a cause of death on Mr. X?”
“Not yet, but you did hear about Lenny, didn’t you, before we got—”
Click. Spraggue hung up again. Screwy phone system out at the airport.
Good old Lenny, flamboyant to the end. Drowned in a butt of malmsey.… Acceptable in Shakespeare, funny in that Vincent Price spoof, but in real life …
Hadn’t there been real-life cases, though? Spraggue shut his eyes, this time in concentration, not sleep. Something to do with fermentation … One of the by-products of fermentation was carbon dioxide. And during the “pumping-over” process, when the wine in the huge vats was circulated, a man stood near the top of the tank, a hose over his shoulder, pouring wine over the cap, breathing in the CO2. Yes. It had happened at a small winery. He was sure of it now. The winemaker had passed out from the fumes, plunged down into the tank. Drowned.
But no one had found him stuffed into the trunk of a car.
Drowned. God, they probably had cops crawling all over the fermentation tanks at Holloway
Hills. Poor Howard.
The stewardess swayed down the aisle. Spraggue hastily picked up his menu. Steak, he decided. Request it raw, get it burned.
The back page of the menu made him smile. “Wines of California,” it proclaimed. Almaden, Wente, Mirassou … Spraggue raised an eyebrow. Leider had made the list. A dubious honor.
He ordered steak and Leider Cabernet, kept the menu.
The bottom half of the last page even included tasting notes. Leider’s ’75 Cabernet was described as “deliciously fruity, with a characteristic Cabernet nose, strong oak, and a faint tang of raspberries.” Half a bottle of that, Spraggue thought, might dull the edge of the airline cuisine.
The wine proved just as disappointing as the food. The only reminder of raspberries was that the anonymous critic deserved one for his review. Spraggue wished he could have read the piece in its entirety. Now that he studied it more closely, there were several suspicious strings of dots. Quoting out of context, that favorite trick of Hollywood movie publicists, transforming “What a shame the producer couldn’t lure some of our wonderful unemployed young actors to take over for his superannuated cast!” into “What a … wonderful … cast!”
On the other hand, maybe the wine review was perfectly legit. Maybe the airline had stored the stuff in the same oven as the steak.
Spraggue requested water. The wine had a bitter finish.
What with the usual pile-up over Logan, the plane didn’t reach the gate until eleven-thirty. Spraggue blinked in the brightly lit terminal, found the closest phone, woke the assistant director of Still Waters.
“It’s me,” he said. “Where and when tomorrow?”
“Spraggue, I’ve been trying to reach you for—”
“Never mind. Just tell me.”
“You’ve got to leave me a valid phone number! At least check in with your aunt—”
“Do I work tomorrow or not?”
“Downtown Crossing. You’ll be filming there and around Park Street Station. And you’re gonna love this: six sharp.”
“In the morning?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” Spraggue hung up.
He wound up staying at the Airport Hilton, cramming for the morning’s scenes, unwilling to waste two of his possibly five sleep-or-study hours on the drive home and back. He could have sworn he hadn’t been asleep ten seconds when the phone rang: “Wake-up call for Mr. Spraggue. Five o’clock.” The voice was pure Boston, the accent alone enough to wake the dead.