Satisfied that they would be all right, Charley followed the others outside, running most of the way. He jumped into the car and turned the ignition key—only to hear the starter continuing to grind, as the engine flooded. And for an eternal fifty or sixty seconds he and Eve could do nothing but sit there and wait for the thing to clear.
Meanwhile, with Terry sitting next to him, Brian backed the Travel-All around and headed for the sculpture garden. In his initial charge, he felled the towering cigar and then proceeded across the shallow reflecting pool and totaled the king-size black outhouse, carrying bits and pieces of it with him as he circled on the golf-green lawn, ripping and gouging it until the station wagon was in position for a second run at the sculptures. And this time he tore up the electric chair and smashed into the huge stainless steel doughnut, which caved in the front of the wagon at the same instant it broke loose from its base and started rolling downhill, gathering speed as it went, finally crashing through the estate wall and wobbling a bit before continuing downhill, heading through the brush for Beverly Glen Boulevard.
Charley tried the ignition again, and this time the engine fired, almost drowning out Eve, who was pleading with him to get moving.
“Come on, Charley! Come on, for God’s sake!”
Heading down the driveway, Charley had to slow down because of the Travel-All ahead, limping along, spouting steam from its damaged radiator. But once they reached the street, the narrow, curving Alana Lane, Charley floored the accelerator and they went shooting past the wagon.
“Shouldn’t we wait for them?” Eve asked. “What if they don’t make it?”
Charley glanced over at her. “How could they not? God still looks out for children and idiots, doesn’t he?”
“Then why isn’t he looking out for us?” she asked.
The last thing Charley wanted to do was go straight back to Stephanie’s and wait there for the triumphant return of Brian and his new sidekick. He would have preferred cruising into Hollywood and finding a quiet little bar where he and Eve could have spent the afternoon with some cool vodka tonics. But she rightly pointed out that his car and license place might have been seen by a neighbor of Greenwalt’s or someone passing through the area, so he headed back up Beverly Glen toward Mulholland. And almost immediately they came upon an accident scene: a white Rolls Royce sitting askew in the middle of the road, its rear half squashed flat and its doors and hood gaping open, as if the vehicle were bellowing in pain. Beyond the wreck, a narrow path of vegetative blight led straight up the lawn of a luxurious hillside home to the engine of destruction itself: Greenwalt’s silver doughnut, lying on its side in the grass, looking not unlike one of the worn-out tractor tires farm women painted white and put to use as planters. All it lacked was a hub of daisies.
After punching through Greenwalt’s wall, the doughnut evidently had continued hurtling downhill until it reached bottom in the backseat of the Rolls, then bounced on across the road and started uphill. Miraculously, no one seemed to have been hurt. The car’s apparent occupants—a runtish, sunbaked bald man and a well-preserved blonde, both in tennis whites—were outside the car, the man whooping and hollering at anyone who would listen while the woman merely stood by the side of the road, calmly smoking a cigarette. Other cars had stopped and their drivers had gotten out to gawk, but as yet no police were on the scene. So Charley simply drove around it all and kept going.
When they arrived at Stephanie’s, taking the side stairs down to the patio, she came out of the game room carrying a bottle of champagne and almost fell over one of the pool chairs. Charley caught her and helped her back inside.
“Terry’s all right,” he assured her. “They should be home soon, mission accomplished.”
Stephanie’s mouth fell open. “Then, he did it? He actually did it?”
“Oh, you bet he did,” Charley said. “He was in rare form. Hollywood will never be the same.”
“We got there too late to do anything but watch,” Eve told her.
“And Terry helped?” Suddenly Stephanie had the look of a stage mother, her terror of a few moments before giving way to pride.
“I’m afraid so,” Charley said. “She was his accomplice in every sense of the word. He even had her toting a shotgun.”
At that, Stephanie had to feel her way down into a chair. “Oh no. Please, tell me the truth.”
“That is the truth. But there’s no reason to panic. Chances are, she’ll be pulling in here any second now. Home free.”
“You think so?”
No, Charley did not think so, at least not the home free part. Until now, he really hadn’t given it much thought, why Brian and Terry had taken both cars. But the more he considered it now, the more he became convinced that Brian had taken the Porsche along with them as their getaway car. Which meant they probably had left it somewhere near Greenwalt’s, some out-of-the-way place where they could later abandon the Travel-All, transfer to the Porsche, and take off—but for where? Charley had no idea, except that it would not likely be Stephanie’s, since the police would surely find the Travel-All before the day was out, and it in turn—its license plate, pink slip, whatever—would soon lead them to Stephanie’s.
Charley turned to Eve. “Where’s your room? I think we ought to check Brian’s stuff.”
Eve gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Well, we’ll have to go to Brian’s room for that, won’t we, Stephanie?”
“Brian’s room?” Charley asked.
“Yes, we were assigned different quarters,” Eve said, smiling sweetly now. “Why? You think he’s taken off?”
“Could be why they took the Porsche along.”
“It sure could.” Eve led him out of the game room and down the same hallway, this time stopping at the bedroom next to Stephanie’s. “Yes, Stephanie just insisted on having him to herself,” she said. “But only for conversation, she claimed. And of course massages. The lady do like her massages.”
Charley didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing, just stood there watching as Eve quickly went through the room, checking the closet and the drawers and the adjoining bathroom.
“You’re right, he’s not coming back,” she said. “Some of his stuff is here. But the important things, like his razor and swim trunks and the flight bag with your money in it—they’re missing.”
“Beautiful,” Charley said.
“So what do we do now?”
“Well, it would be pretty stupid to hang around here and wait for the police. So why don’t you hurry up and pack, and I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“I’m all for that,” Eve said. “The only problem is where. My parents’ place and the condo are probably both staked out.”
“I’ve got a room at the Bel Air Hotel,” Charley told her. “I’ll be flying home tonight, but you could stay there. I could pay a week or so in advance.”
She smiled quizzically. “You’d do that? You’d put me up at the Bel Air after the way we bugged out on you?”
“I figure that wasn’t your idea.”
“It wasn’t. But still—” She shook her head. “All right, I’ll go, but not to the Bel Air. I just thought of a place that won’t cost a cent.”
“Good.”
Starting out of the room, she looked back at him. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”
While Eve was upstairs getting her things together, Charley went back to the game room and told Stephanie that they were leaving. He also said that he believed there was a good chance that Brian and Terry would not be coming back very soon, because they had taken both cars and Brian’s things were missing. This was not something Stephanie wanted to hear.
“You’re crazy!” she cried. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! If you knew my Terry, you’d never say such a thing. She’d never leave me in the lurch like this, without even a car. I can’t get around. And I can’t keep up this big house all alone—she knows that!”
“I hope you’re right,” Charley sai
d. Then he went on, trying to advise her what to do in the event the police did come to the house before Terry and Brian returned. He suggested that she keep her story simple, that she admit she had taken Brian in but hadn’t known he was wanted by the FBI and the police.
“Tell them you don’t read the papers or watch the news on TV. They can’t prove any different. And tell them Eve left right after she and Brian arrived. There’s no sense involving her in this new thing. She didn’t even know about it.”
Toward the end, Charley could see that Stephanie wasn’t listening to him, in fact was straining to see around him. Fingering the remote, she turned up the sound on the TV.
“Move over!” she cried. “It’s on now! The noon news is on!”
Just then Eve came into the room, quietly setting down her luggage. Charley sat back against the arm of the sofa. On the TV, the news anchorman had just paused to glance at a late bulletin a young woman had handed him. Now he returned his steely gaze to the camera.
“We’ll report on the fires in a moment. But this just in—another development in the Miss Colorado case. Channel Seven has just learned that fugitive Brian Poole, boyfriend of the late Kim Sanders, has been identified as the man who less than an hour ago broke into and vandalized the Bel Air mansion of Kevin Greenwalt. Greenwalt is a noted art collector and head of Wide World Studios, which is producing Miss Colorado, based on Kim Sanders’ life. The Beverly Hills police report that the suspect, along with a young female accomplice, gained access to the Greenwalt mansion and, after forcing the servants to disarm the security system, proceeded to vandalize one of the most valuable modern art collections in America. Here’s Donna Chan, on the scene.”
The picture cut to a striking young Asian woman in Greenwalt’s house, standing with the man himself at the entrance to the gallery, with the defaced paintings in the background. “Thank you, Paul. I’m here in the art gallery of the Greenwalt home with Kevin Greenwalt. Sir, can you give us any sort of estimate of damages caused by the suspect?”
Greenwalt, staring into the studio, kept shaking his head in disbelief. “Well, you can see for yourself,” he mourned. “The damage is almost total. It’s incalculable. The man is simply insane. Look at the message he leaves us: No Miss Colorado film. And where does he scrawl it? On a Franz Kline, for God’s sake! On a Motherwell! I just can’t believe it!”
“Me either,” Charley said, waiting to hear something he didn’t know, such as whether the police were looking for the station wagon or the Porsche, or his own rented car for that matter. But the newscast moved on to the brushfires, and Charley went over to Eve and picked up two of her three bags.
“Well, I guess we’ll be on our way,” he said to Stephanie.
In response, she waggled her hand as if she were shooing away flies. “Yes, go on, leave. My Terry will be back soon enough. I’m not worried.”
“Good,” Eve said, picking up the other case. Following Charley, she went out onto the patio and together they hurried up the stairs to where Charley’s car was parked.
“Where are we headed?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “How about Santa Barbara?”
Chapter Ten
Before driving up to Santa Barbara, Charley first had to go back to his hotel to check out. On the way, Eve explained that though she couldn’t stay at her parents’ home, figuring that it, like Brian’s condo, would be under surveillance, there was also her widowed aunt’s place in Carpenteria, near Santa Barbara.
“And it’ll be empty,” she told him. “Aunt Maureen went along with my parents to Ireland. They’ll be gone another two weeks.”
“Does Brian know about the place?”
“Sure, but he wouldn’t go there. I probably told him about their vacation in Ireland, but he never listens. As far as he knows, Aunt Maureen is at home. And anyway, he wouldn’t be able to get in even if he wanted to. You have to know the security code.”
“Which you do?”
“Which I do.”
“Fine. I’ll drop you there, and then go on to the airport.”
Eve smiled at him. “Home to Illinois, uh?”
“Might as well. Brian could be anywhere, right? So I guess my bird-dogging days are over.”
When they reached the hotel, Eve said that she would wait in the car for him, but he explained that he would be a while because he had some telephone calls to make and suggested that she might prefer to wait out by the swimming pool or in the bar.
“Looking like this?” she said. “They’d probably put a mop in my hand and tell me to get to work.”
“Of course,” Charley said. “Eve Sherman, the typical American washerwoman.”
She joined him outside the car. “You just haven’t been in town long enough, Charley. Half the drudges here expect to be stars one day.”
“If I can’t find you when I get back, I’ll know you’ve been discovered.”
“Finally!” She was smiling as they parted.
In his room, Charley tried to phone Donna at her office, but was told by Rose Biaggi, his old secretary, that Donna had driven up to Evanston to see Jason, their son. Charley asked if anything was wrong.
“Only that you aren’t here, boss. We keep seeing your brother on network TV, and I think Donna expects to see you on it soon too, as his victim or something.”
“I hope you disabused her of that notion.”
“Oh sure, me telling Donna what to think.”
“Tell her I’ll phone her at home tonight.”
“Will do.”
Calling Denver next, Charley was able to get Agent Ramos on the phone almost immediately. He told him where he was and why, and Ramos made a clucking sound, as if he were shaming one of his six children.
“You told us you were going back to Illinois,” he said.
“I changed my mind.”
“Well, I guess so.”
“Somehow forty thousand dollars seemed worth it,” Charley said. “I guess I just lost my head.”
“I hear you, Charley. It’s just when an important party in a case like this says he’s gonna be at such-and-such a place and then changes his mind, we want to hear about it.”
“That’s why I’m calling now.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have learn to live with that, huh?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Right. Now, about your brother. I take it you ain’t found him yet.”
“No.”
“So you weren’t in on that little art gallery caper, then?”
“That’s right.”
“I kind of figured that.” Ramos, who apparently had plenty of time on his hands, then began to ruminate on the “gallery caper,” allowing as how Brian’s taste in art was pretty much like Ramos’ own. “Fact is, I think your brother improved on some of them paintings, you know? Which don’t mean, however, that we ain’t still after his ass.”
“No, I’m sure you are. More than ever.”
“That’s a fact.”
Charley then told Ramos that he would be flying home that evening and that if the FBI needed him for anything, he would be happy to cooperate.
“That’s good to hear,” the agent said.
“You’ve got my Illinois address and phone number.”
“Yessir, right here in front of me.”
Minutes later, packing his few things, Charley couldn’t help feeling that though Brian might have been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, the agents themselves were not exactly consumed by the need to bring him to justice. They evidently considered him something of a flake, a dilettante, a harmless miscreant when compared with the usual run of monsters they normally dealt with.
After checking out and and tipping the bellboy at his car, Charley went looking for Eve and found her at the pool, a large blue oval surrounded by lounge chairs and umbrella tables set amidst exotic palms and flowering trees. In the shade of one, Eve lay back with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted, as if she were about to whisper a secret. Charley hated to
disturb her.
“You ready to go?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “No, I’ve decided to take you up on your first offer and stay here a couple of weeks.”
“Too bad,” he said. “I’ve already checked out.”
Once in the car, with the windows up and the air conditioner purring, Charley asked Eve about Brian—where he might be headed, what his plans might be—but she said she had no idea. The Greenwalt incident apparently had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, she said, like almost everything else Brian ever did. So she could only assume that his plans now would continue to be spontaneous and impulsive.
“I wonder if he’s skipped town,” Charley said.
“Well, he’s certainly got enough friends around. When they retire, movie people often head north—Oregon, Washington, Idaho.”
“And you think some of them would take him in?”
“Especially the stuntmen. They’re mostly a bunch of outlaws anyway. Or at least they like to think they are.”
Following Eve’s directions, Charley drove north to the Ventura freeway, then headed west toward Santa Barbara, which was about ninety miles away, at the eastern end of what Eve called the south coast. As Charley expected, the freeway was a roaring river of cars, a good portion of them Japanese. For many miles, Charley debated with himself whether he should even bother to state the obvious to Eve. Finally, he went ahead anyway.
“You know the FBI’s after you too,” he said.
That made her shudder. “Don’t remind me.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“For now, nothing. Lay low. Let them come to me. I haven’t really done anything but tag along with Brian.”
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