The mansion, used as the main set for Lethal Promise, had everything a mansion should have. It had been built for the new wife William Lockett was importing from the east. Nothing was too good for Lucy. Marble bathrooms, stone fireplaces, kitchen appliances big enough to handle restaurant crowds, tennis court, swimming pool, small lake stocked with fish, and stables.
Poor Lucy never saw it. The private plane William had sent to fetch her had gone down in a storm, killing all on board. Shortly thereafter, the oil business fell on hard times and William lost buckets. He put the house up for sale and went off to Texas. There were lots of lookers, but no buyers. Mostly people were just curious, they just wanted to see the inside of the place, but even those who might want to buy couldn’t afford it.
The place sat empty, except kids breaking in for parties or homegrown vandalism, until Hollywood came along. They cleared out the rats and the spiders and the old beer cans and the used condoms, and painted and fancied up all the rooms they wanted to use in the film.
Yancy stood on a pathway under the shade of the maple trees, almost kissing the fence around the tennis court, sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. Whenever a camera operator yelled he was in frame, he moved back a grudging inch.
A dozen or so onlookers—boring as this was, he’d expect them to get tired of it, but they were always around—were behind a roped-off area back of the trees. He kept an eye on them too. Some he was beginning to recognize, like the guy with the backpack.
The temperature once again approached the mid-nineties and the humidity topped that, too damn hot for early June, and too hot for Fifer’s artistic demands. Periodically, Fifer stopped the action and a team moved in to mop up his stars. Apparently, stars weren’t allowed to sweat. For all Yancy knew this was supposedly taking place in the dead of winter. That made as much sense as anything else. People with umbrellas and battery-operated fans would swarm out, makeup and hair people, people carrying bottles of water with straws. Actors couldn’t just grab a bottle and chug it down, that smeared the makeup.
It must be torture out there. Yancy could barely tolerate the heat and he was standing still. These Californians were tough, you had to give them that.
In the far corner of the court, Sheri Lloyd waited, with somebody holding an umbrella over her, for the director’s call. Robin McCormack, the dead woman’s boyfriend, looked pale and sweaty. In shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, even the snake tattoo on one bare arm looked subdued. He wore dark glasses and moved carefully, obviously protecting a pounding head. Yancy saw him speak to Sheri. She turned away. He grabbed her arm. In her snotty way, she tossed her hair and took a step back, distancing herself.
At Fifer’s word, the swarms cleared and the actors went back out in the sun and smacked the ball back and forth. Yancy pulled tight on all his muscles and clamped down on his back teeth. Nothing could happen. This ball was just an ordinary ball, the exploding one was locked in a safe under the eye of the special effects man, and wouldn’t be used until Fifer called for it. Then the new stunt double would be on the court.
Fifer was beginning to look like a candidate for sun stroke, his face taking on the color of rare steak. Khaki shorts and white T-shirt left a lot of skin exposed to the sun and all of it was turning brick red. Nick seemed to know how to play tennis and moved with the sureness of an athlete. Laura could hold the ball up there and place an okay serve, even make the right moves, but she wasn’t quick with it. She looked beautiful though. Periodically, a man behind a wind machine would turn it on making her gold hair flutter.
“She had lessons in preproduction.”
Yancy looked around and found Clem Jones, narrow face looking pinched, coming up behind him, eyes fixed on Laura. Envy of all that beauty and perfection? Clem would be better off without the black mascara, white makeup, and pink hair. The men’s black swimming trunks and huge shapeless orange shirt didn’t help much either. Maybe she was also just hoping nothing would go wrong.
Fifer called, “Cut. Beautiful, children. Just beautiful.” He granted everybody a twenty-minute break.
* * *
Pink. Laura my beloved. The universe is pink. He watched Laura, his lovely Laura, go into the mansion surrounded by cast and crew. The cop went in too. Soon, my beloved. Do not get discouraged. Soon we will be together in a land of beauty throughout eternity. He needed the gun. Always, too many people around. The gun was his. I’m coming my princess. It will be fast and painless. We’ll be together. He edged up to the barrel of trash that held the water bottle and straw she’d used. He grabbed the straw and walked off. Away from the court he put the straw in his mouth, moved it slowly back and forth, sucking gently. It tasted of the sweetness of her lips, the purity of her soul.
* * *
Both Nick and Laura, along with a herd of people whose job it was to soothe and succor, trailed up to the mansion. Yancy followed. On the way, he snagged a doughnut and bottle of foreign water from craft service. Inside, the stars climbed the big staircase side by side, without touching, without looking at each other. At the top, they split and Nick went into one room, Laura into another, with Mac on her heels, Officer White on his.
Yancy plopped in a love seat in the hallway and downed the water. Knowing Laura’s minders were on her tail—and beautiful as it was—he zeroed in on Sheri Lloyd’s petulant face as she chugged up the stairs. He let her get settled, then barged into a room that had obviously been meant as a child’s bedroom. The switch plate was a train with a smiley face, the wallpaper had trains, trucks, and hot air balloons. William Lockett had been planning a male heir.
The two females patting Sheri’s cheeks, forehead, and the nape of her neck with damp cloths looked at him with astonishment. He pointed, they stomped out, he closed the door.
The room had a bed, two chairs, a bar stool, and two carousel horses. Why carousel horses? Sheri had, naturally, arranged herself on the bed with pillows propped around her in such a way as to show off her body. “It’s so terribly hot. I feel ill. I can’t talk with you.”
He pulled a blue bottle of water from the six-pack on the table next to the bed, twisted off the cap, and handed it to her. “Sit up and drink it. You’ll feel better.”
She took it and glared. Apparently, he wasn’t being sensitive.
Hard-faced, he pulled one of the chairs close to the bed and sat on it. Ms. Sheri Lloyd would be apt to misinterpret anything else, so in the interests of intimidation and the pursuit of information, he sat rigid, eyes flinty.
Automatically she wiggled herself around on the pillows so that her tits were thrust forward in maximum position for distraction.
“What were you talking about with Robin McCormack?”
“I don’t believe that’s any of your business, but if you must know I was extending my sympathies.”
Miss Sheri was not one to drop sympathy around where it wouldn’t do her any good, and it had been Robin who’d approached her. “Ms. Lloyd, I told you before the consequences of withholding information in a murder investigation.”
“When two old friends make a date to get together, it hardly constitutes withholding evidence.”
“You and Robin are old friends?”
“Of course.”
“When are you getting together?”
She studied the veins in the back of her hand as though they were a road map. “There’s nothing definite.”
Yancy wondered if maybe Sheri Lloyd was one of those people who simply lied all the time.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I really need to regather my strength.” She flipped on her side and mashed another pillow under her head.
He left her to the ministering women and went in search of Robin. In the condition Robin was in, it wouldn’t need thumb screws; a loud voice ought to do.
Six or seven crew members were schmoozing in the kitchen, Robin sat glugging down a Coke.
“Talk to you a minute?”
“What about?”
Yancy looked at the other guys. “Ma
ybe we could step into the pantry.”
Yancy could see him want to refuse, but in the end it was just too much trouble. He drained the can, crushed it, tossed it in a trash container, and grabbed another.
The pantry hadn’t been spruced up, it remained in its cobwebbed seedy condition. Robin propped himself against a wall of empty shelves. “What is it?”
“How you feeling?”
“I been better.”
“Remember last night?”
Robin gave him a rueful grin, and rubbed a hand along the back of his head. “Not crystal clear. Didn’t you run over me?”
“You said somebody pushed you.”
“Did I?”
“Who?” Yancy slouched against the door frame and crossed his arms.
Robin popped open the Coke and took a long drink, giving himself time to think, or because he was thirsty. “I don’t know.”
“You see anybody?”
He started to shake his head, grimaced, and thought better of it. “I wasn’t exactly in top condition.”
“Why would anybody push you in front of my Jeep?”
“Nice guy like me?” Robin shrugged. “I can’t imagine.”
Yancy was getting a little irritated. “You loved Kay Bender, right? If you had anything to help, you’d give it to me, right?” Yancy paused. “Who’d you see?”
“Could you, maybe, not talk quite so loud? I don’t know.” He tipped up the can and swallowed. “A kid, I think. And—oh, yeah, another guy.”
“The kid, male or female?”
“Male.”
“What do you mean by kid? Ten, twelve?”
“Seventeen, eighteen.”
“What’d he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“The other guy, it was a guy? Male?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d he look like?”
Robin closed his eyes, kept them closed so long Yancy wondered if he’d gone to sleep. “Somebody who came out of the hotel.”
“Describe him.”
“You’re asking an awful lot, man. Medium. Medium everything. Not tall, not short. Kinda stocky, maybe. That’s it. You think I was studying him?”
That description would fit any number of males, including his old friend, Howie. “Age?”
“Youngish. My age or so.”
“Who else?”
“Only you.”
“Why do you think Sheri killed Kay?”
“I don’t.”
“You wanted to talk to her last night. Just a few minutes ago, you did talk to her. Why?”
“I need to get back to work,” Robin said.
“Not until you lay it out for me.”
“It’s nothing, okay? It’s only a feeling. You ever heard the expression the cat who ate the cream? That’s the way she looked, Sheri. Like she knew something and she was going to use it to her advantage. Okay? That anything you want?”
“You’re reading an awful lot into an expression.”
“I told you.”
“What else?”
Robin hauled in half the air in the room. “She was singing. ‘Take what comes and use it your way.’”
“That’s a song?”
“Yeah, man. A line from the theme song for this movie. I gotta go.”
* * *
From the bedroom window, Sheri looked out at the tennis court and watched Laura hit the ball back to Nick. It should be her out there. She’d be much better. And she could play tennis, for God’s sake. None of this holding the ball up and serving and then cutting in the stunt double. Laura was hot and sweaty and not at all sexy. Sheri hoped she’d drop over from the heat. Sheri patted at moisture on her own forehead. It was so hot. Even when they managed to get the air-conditioning going, it kept breaking down. Fifer would yell and they’d fix it again.
Maybe this might have been some house when it was new, but now it was a dump, falling down and moldy. Even if it was all remodeled it wasn’t practical. She was nothing if not practical. She knew what was important, like the right script, the right money, a limo and driver. She should have a trailer of her own. Not that little crummy cubby she was stuck with. She’d tell her agent, her own trailer from now on.
She liked things to be right. If they weren’t, she would make them so. Like her name. She’d been born Martha Gutlet in Newark, New Jersey. As soon as she got to California, she knew immediately that wouldn’t do. Gutlet was impossible and Martha was a plain, obedient kind of name. The whole name just didn’t have a euphonious—her high school English teacher would be surprised at the use of that word—ring to it.
The way she found her name, she was taking the bus home to this shitty apartment that she shared with another girl and somebody’d left a paperback book with this handsome guy on the cover. It turned out to be this really sweet story about this girl who fell in love and the guy loved her too only she didn’t know it and the girl’s name was Sheri Lloyd. Then and there she knew that was her name. Her best friend from high school laughed and said it was just like her to choose such a dumb name. Well, she got the last laugh. She made it. And her best friend wasn’t her best friend anymore, she was a housewife. Sheri knew the name was right. She knew a lot of things. It was just a matter of figuring out how to use them. She wasn’t as dumb as people thought.
She frowned, then consciously smoothed her face. Frowning caused wrinkles.
And she was not only fulfilled as an actress, she was a right-thinking member of society, advocated the right causes. She was against pollution and offshore drilling and oil spills. And for endangered species, saving trees, and AIDS research. Women who wore fur coats deserved to have red paint thrown over them. People who picketed abortion clinics should be dragged away and shot. Except, of course, that would be capital punishment and she was against that.
And then there was religion. Religion was all right, even though it was the opiate of the masses—see, Miss Strickler, I was paying attention—and everybody had the right to worship in his or her own way, but the God squad wasn’t satisfied with choosing for themselves, they wanted to ram their choice down everybody else’s throats. You couldn’t even talk to them, because they wouldn’t hear and you might as well be talking to a brick wall, or they made you feel like the biggest sinner since Pontius Pilate. Or they wanted to pray for you. She hated it when they wanted to pray for you.
And that time on the Tonight Show when she said she was for abortions. Of course, she didn’t mean that. She meant for choice. Picketers followed her around for days. Good Lord, you’d think she’d recommended slaughtering whole nurseries full of babies. Most people didn’t have the scope to transcend their own narrow horizons.
She swung the crystal on the gold chain around her neck. Wasn’t it ever anything but hot and sticky in this godforsaken place? Even at night, it was hot. Dreadful place. She watched Nick out on the tennis court smack a ball that Laura missed completely. She wasn’t even graceful about it. Not that it mattered, the finished film would only show what Fifer wanted, the stretch and the hit and the bouncy flouncy. Sheri studied Nick and wondered how she was going to get him in bed again. And get him she would. It was only a matter of working it out.
Laura ought to understand. Good God, they weren’t even married, and these things happened. Sheri knew Nick was much more suited to her than to Laura. Look at how they were fighting all the time. If that romance wasn’t already dead, Nick wouldn’t have been interested in the first place.
Out on the tennis court, Fifer called a break. Everybody rushed like commuters to the mansion. If Laura’s fans could see her now they wouldn’t think she was so sexy. Her face was red and she was sweating like a pig.
“People!” Fifer called after them.
Sometimes Sheri thought Fifer didn’t appreciate her. She’d mentioned it once, tried to bring it right out in the open like you’re supposed to do for good relationships, but somehow they’d ended up talking about team playing and the good of Lethal Promise.
�
�I want everybody in the ballroom,” Fifer said. “That means everybody.”
13
Sheri took tiny sips at her drink. The moment of silence was turning into a cocktail party. It had started out all quiet with everybody in the ballroom and kind of avoiding looking at each other, and Fifer making that sweet speech about the stuntwoman. How Kay Bender was one of us. What a tragedy it was. How sorry we all were. How good she was at her job. How much we’d all miss her. How we were a family and what happened to one affected us all. Everybody had shuffled their feet and looked at the floor, but Sheri thought it was touching. After he finished, alcohol was poured. Ice cubes tinkled and glasses clinked, hors d’oeuvres on a long table were being perused and eaten. Sheri liked cocktail parties. People tended to drink too much and say things.
The sound level rose. Eighty people in one room with alcohol and food and you had a party. Sheri was drinking rum and Coke. So what if it was sneered at? She liked it. She usually tried to limit herself to one drink unless she felt really comfortable and knew what was going on. She didn’t know what was going on here but something was. There was a really bad aura, and she kept feeling somebody was watching her. She couldn’t catch anybody, just people standing around wondering how soon they could leave. It was tense in here. Really tense. She was sensitive to these things.
She didn’t know why Fifer picked this room. It wasn’t like it was nice or anything. Just this one huge empty room, nothing in it but the folding table brought in by the caterers. There wasn’t even anyplace to sit down or anything. It was scummy, cobwebs on the ceiling and patches of wallpaper missing.
Murder Take Two Page 12