by Arlette Lees
“You mean that motley crew of fornicating alcoholics? Who the hell cares what they think?” She took a couple deep breaths. “Just give it some honest consideration,” she said. “Do you mind carrying the box to the car?”
“I’m sorry, Dorothy. It’s my knee.”
She exploded.
“For crissake, Rusty, lose some weight.” Beezer gave a startled yelp as she set him on top of the pots and pans and struggled the box to the car. After she drove off, Hallinan called Tug at his apartment.
“What did the doctor say?”
“I see him again on Wednesday. I’m going to try and get a release, at least until the Adler case is cleared.”
“Why do I smell the strong odor of bullshit?”
“Okay, I have a torn meniscus, but it’s not a death sentence. What’s on the day’s agenda?”
“Nothing for you, big guy. The search is underway. The papers are on it. Strongbow will stay on the phones, and Trudy and Linda have volunteered to plaster the city with flyers.”
“It’s Trudy and Linda now?”
“It was their idea, so help me. Garner and I are checking the list of known sex offenders against the guest list.”
“While you’re doing that, I’m going to hunt down Kepler. I want the guest book and I want all the film he shot at the party. That’s just between you and me, okay?”
* * * * * * *
Balanced on crutches, Hallinan arrived at Kepler’s studio around nine. He clattered through the door into a waiting room lushly carpeted in a rose-gray pile, artful black-and-white photos of celebrities covering the walls. A distinguished older woman in a gray suit and gold knot earrings looked up from her typewriter. Her name plate read Dona Thatcher.
“Good morning, Miss Thatcher. I’m looking for Horst.”
“I don’t expect him until the end of the day.”
“He must have gone straight to the shoot.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I’m supposed to meet him, but it’s my first time out there, and the map he drew is a bit sketchy.” He showed her the flip side of the business card. “He told me to turn off by the bar, but I can’t read the name of the road.” Before he set off on a wild goose chase, he wanted to make sure that Kepler was in Chatsworth.
“Let me see,” she said. “I’ve heard him mention Miners Gulch Road.”
“Thank you, Miss Thatcher. I remember now.”
“What’s your business with Mr. Kepler? He seldom allows visitors on the set.”
“I’m on publicity for the upcoming release.” He had no idea what he was talking about, it just sounded like something a Hollywood big shot would say.
“Crown Enterprises does our publicity,” she said. “What did you say your name was?”
Hallinan was already crutching out the door. He cleared the curb, tossed the crutches in the car, and dropped heavily onto the car seat. He drove away without looking back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IF ONLY
Hallinan checked his watch and headed for the hospital. When he entered her room, Amanda rose from a chair by the window with a warm smile. It had been a long time since a woman smiled at him when he walked into a room. It felt like the sun rising after a long winter’s hibernation.
“Hi, Rusty. I’m checked out and ready to go.”
She wore gray wool slacks and a fluffy white sweater, looking painfully young without makeup, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Last evening, Mr. Hornsby let my friend Julia in the apartment so she could bring me some going-home clothes.” She picked up her raincoat from the back of the chair and put her arm through one of the sleeves.
“Here, let me help you with that,” he said, taking hold of the coat as he juggled the crutches and dropped one. He shook his head. “It can only go downhill from here,” he said.
She laughed and touched his cheek with gloved fingertips. The simple gesture sent a quiver through his body. “I can do it,” she said, slipping effortlessly into the other sleeve, tying the belt and looping a bright silk scarf around her neck.
“Shall we?” she said.
He opened her car door when they got to the parking lot and headed toward The Castleton. “I think you’re terribly brave,” he said.
“Not really. I’ve simply put my breakdown on hold. The coroner called this morning. The man in the car was my husband. Aside from funeral arrangements, I have to cancel the purchase agreement on the Topanga Canyon house, maybe move to a smaller apartment.”
“What about life insurance?”
“Gavin suggested it a while back, but we were both so young and healthy, I thought we should wait a few more years. You never think something like this is going to happen.”
“Are you hungry? Would you like to go out for something to eat?”
“I think I need to go home and take a nap. Nights in the hospital aren’t very restful, especially when they wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.”
“I see your point. Please, call me if you need anything at all.”
“What I need most, Rusty, are answers. I want to know who did this terrible thing. When we know what Gavin was doing in East L.A., we may find the answer.”
“Are there relatives you can turn to?”
“My parents are in Brazil and I’ve never met my Wisconsin relatives. How about you, Rusty? Do your parents live in L.A.?” she said, redirecting the conversation.
“My parents are the reason I work Missing Persons.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Five years ago, almost six now, they left on vacation, Dad pulling a Silverstream with a Ford truck. They were off to see the Wild West, old mining towns and ghost towns where the gold and silver panned out. And fish. Mom and Dad loved to fish. They called me as they headed east toward Nevada. That’s the last time I heard from them. I haven’t even taken their names off the deed to the house. I’m waiting for them to walk through the door, but they never will.”
“That’s dreadful. What happened?”
“I wish I knew. They dropped off the face of the earth.
“Were the vehicles ever recovered?”
He shook his head.
He swung into the parking lot of The Castleton. “Well, here we are.” Hallinan handed over her keys and ripped a scrap of paper out of his notebook. He scribbled something down and handed it to her. “My home phone. Call me when you’re ready for that breakdown. My knee might be busted, but I have a shoulder that was made for leaning on. Come on, I’ll walk you up.”
She smiled. “Under the circumstances I think you’d better stay put.” The wedding ring on his finger caught the light. She looked at him with those blue-green eyes and held his gaze a moment longer than she had to. “You’re a nice man, Rusty. I don’t know how I’d have gotten through these last few days without you. I wish you well.”
There was something sadly wistful about the way she said it…something so…final. He watched her walk up the stairs and go inside. Long after he was back on the road, the faint scent of perfume lingered in the car, and a small pain he couldn’t quite define twisted in his chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE LUCKY GAMBLE MINE
Hallinan headed north toward Chatsworth, the vision of Amanda floating across the landscape of his mind. Living with Dorothy’s constant disapproval had numbed his emotions. Feeling them reincarnate was a confusing mixture of exhilaration and uneasiness, like a sleeping limb reasserting itself. If only he was younger…better-looking…thirty pounds thinner…if…if…if.
He drifted onto the shoulder of the road and pulled back into his lane. Keep focused, Hallinan. Kepler. The guest book. He drove through rolling green hills studded with oak trees and giant boulders, hills that would turn gold-gray in the summer heat, and burst into flame at the kiss of a carelessly tossed match. He passed ranch houses and weathered barns, cattle grazing in pastures, and an occasional country store doubling as a post office.
He slowed the car when Bud�
�s Suds came into view. Out front were four motorcycles, three horses tied to a hitching post, a knot of leather-clad bikers, and three cowgirls drinking beer and laughing. When he turned onto Miners Gulch Road, he saw their eyes tracking him in the rear view mirror.
He was several miles back in the hills when a battered sign decorated with decades of rust and buckshot dings appeared on his left. It read: LUCKY GAMBLE MINE. Hallinan downshifted and started up the incline, his car rocking from side to side on the ruts. He’d gone about a hundred yards when a yellow Caddy flew off the hill. He cut to the side of the road. The car blasted by, scraped its underbelly at the bottom of the hill and raced toward the main road. He didn’t get the license number or see who was behind the wheel.
He continued up the hill to the flat. A van with its doors open sat in front of the weathered building Linda had described. He pinned the van between his car and a water tank at the base of a windmill.
Stiff and balanced on crutches, Hallinan approached the van. He leaned into the driver’s side and looked at the vehicle registration strapped to the steering column. It was registered to Horst Eric Kepler, on Ivarene in the Hollywood Hills.
The interior of the cab had been ransacked. Gas receipts, crumpled cigarette packs, a shaving kit, and a few photography supply catalogues were scattered around the interior. Maybe he wasn’t the only person after the guest book. He approached the building and pounded on the door. “L.A.P.D. Open up.” It was eerily silent. “I’m coming in.”
He pushed on the door and it swung back on squealing hinges. Mining equipment lined the walls, dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight streaming through the cracked windows. A mouse scurried across the floor.
He announced himself, opened a second door to his left and entered a room with high ceilings and open rafters. There was a movie set against the right wall, consisting of an ornate bed with a scarlet, velvet backdrop. A man fitting Kepler’s description lay naked on the mattress. His hands were bound to the headboard with pink stockings, his feet duct-taped to the footboard. An ice pick rose like a radio antenna from his chest. Beside the bed was his smashed camera, the film removed.
“Holy shit,” said Hallinan, blowing out his breath. No matter how many times he looked at death, he never got used to it. He remembered what Kepler had told Linda. “It’s not who you know. It’s what you know about who you know.” Maybe the man knew one thing too many.
Hallinan approached the bed. Kepler’s undershorts had been stuffed in his mouth, his wide eyes capturing for eternity the denouement of a life that had not ended well. Film cans had been opened and tossed on the floor, their contents burned and lying in melted clumps, as if the perpetrator or perpetrators had wanted to obliterate the identity of whoever was on them. Hallinan was long on motives and short on suspects.
Hallinan also had a problem. He wasn’t supposed to be here, but with a gaggle of bikers and cowgirls watching him go up the road, he’d lost the luxury of deniability. And what about Miss Thatcher? He could see her being questioned now. “Any identifying characteristics, Ma’am?” “No Officer, just a blue-eyed fat man on crutches.”
Back at Bud’s, the bikers bought him a beer and told him there were three guys in the Caddy who almost plowed into their bikes when they skidded across the intersection. They were too busy scrambling for cover to get the license plate number.
Hallinan called the local sheriff and reported the homicide, then got Stanek on the line and brought him up to speed. He gave him Kepler’s address on Ivarene.
“I’ve just about had it with you, Hallinan,” Stanek said. “I’d better see a medical report on my desk. No more coloring outside the lines.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
After an hour at the murder scene conferring with the officers from the Sheriff’s Department, the forensic team arrived and Hallinan headed home. By the time he climbed the porch steps his knee was locked, the skin pulled tighter than an overstuffed sausage, a tom-tom throbbing in the joint.
All he wanted was an ice bag, pain pills, and bed. Instead, a tall man stepped from the shadows at the far end of the porch. He wore a ten gallon hat, chaps with fringe as long as a horse’s tail, and spurs with Spanish rowels that rattled when he walked.
“Hello Monty,” said Hallinan, in a weary voice. He’d seen Monty’s face on a dozen magazines…big charismatic smile…blond curls…depressingly youthful and handsome. “If you’re here to kick the shit out of me, someone beat you to it.”
Monty looked surprised. Maybe a bit offended. “My Mama would whoop me good if I took advantage of an aging man on crutches.”
Whoop me? Was this guy for real?
“It’s nice to know the fellow who’s planking my wife has such high standards,” said Hallinan.
“I know you’re being sarcastic, but I’m only here to talk about Miss Dorothy. Seems we’re both in love with the same woman.”
“Seems so. The only difference is you don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for, kid. If you were smart, you’d cut and run.” Hallinan reached for his house key. “My leg is killing me. If you want to talk, you’ll have to come in.”
“I’ll say my piece right here. It won’t take but a minute.”
“You’ve got five, then I’m going to bed.”
“I want you to stop being pigheaded and sign those papers. If my parents find out I’m shacked up without benefit of marriage, they’re going to have a hissy fit, and I can’t marry her as long as she’s married to you.”
“Succinctly and accurately stated.”
“People in Wyoming are on the conservative side compared to you Hollywood folks, Mr. Hallinan.”
“Believe it or not, Monty, I’m on the conservative side myself. When I said, ‘until death do us part,’ they were more than idle words.”
“Then I will just say one thing and be gone. If your marriage to Miss Dorothy is all you hoped for when you walked down the aisle, all the more power to you. But, if you’re hanging on out of ego and spite, I intend to fight for her happiness and mine.” True to his word, Monty tipped his hat and drove away in a Lincoln with steer horns on the hood and spotted cowhide seats.
Hallinan lay in bed listening to the wind, the proverbial one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest. An aging man. He’d wanted Monty West to be an arrogant S.O.B. so he could feel good about hating him. Instead, he was a likeable kid with a naïve streak as wide as…well…Wyoming. He washed down a handful of knockout pills with a shot of brandy, and dreamed that Horst Kepler died channeling Jack Webb through the ice pick in his chest.
* * * * * * *
There was no bullshitting Dr. Moisha Levinson, no drive-through surgery on tap, no jumping back in the saddle like you-know-who.
“Do you know you have a hundred and three temperature, Rusty?”
“Maybe that’s why I’m so lightheaded.”
“You’ve been staying off your feet, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“The meniscus is not only torn, now the knee is seriously infected. I’m sending you home with antibiotics. When the inflammation subsides, we’ll fit you into the surgery schedule.”
“How soon before I’m back on the job?”
“Provided we don’t cut the leg off?” Hallinan went silent. “I’m joking, but you have to stay off your feet and think salad instead of pizza. You’re going to need T.L.C. If Dorothy has vacation time coming, I suggest she take it now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LOST
When morning came, hunger drove Daisy from her lair. It was still raining, but winter rains often last a week, so she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for it to clear. She wrapped herself in the tablecloth and began walking.
Lightning flickered above Mt. Lee and thunder rumbled over the hills. There were houses in the distance, but canyons, steep hillsides, and thick brush made it impossible to get to them. She called for help, but everyone was indoors, and she couldn’t be heard above the
clatter of the storm.
The tablecloth dragged on the ground, becoming muddy and waterlogged. She stumbled on it and cast it aside. Mud sucked off a slipper and she kept going. When her bare foot became bruised and raw, she switched the remaining slipper from foot to foot. Soon both feet were so sore, it was hard to trudge on. Someone had abandoned an ice chest on the hillside. She hoped to find something useful inside, but it was empty. Hours later, she passed it a second time and knew she’d been walking in circles.
Daisy was cold and hungry. Her hair hung in wet strands over her face. Her lips and fingertips were blue, and her face and body were full of scrapes and scratches. Horst wanted her to look like a fluffy little kitten, not like something the cat dragged in. He was going to be very angry. He called her his little gold mine, but never when Mom was around.
That afternoon the rain stopped and the temperature plunged. When dusk came she knew she’d have to survive another night in the cold. All she could think about was food, a warm bath, and a soft bed. She found a piece of canvas from a tent. It was wet and smelled of mold, but when evening came she wrapped it around herself and crawled beneath a hollow log. She was surprised when heat built up inside her cocoon. She wondered if anyone was looking for her. She wondered how much trouble she was in.
In the distance, she saw the lights of the observatory. It looked like a ship floating on a dark and distant sea. Daisy knew it was to the east. When morning came, she would walk in the direction of the rising sun.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ON ICE
Hallinan put the medical report from Dr. Levinson on Stanek’s desk.
“I hate putting you on ice, Hallinan, especially in the middle of a case,” he said.
“Conover told me that they’ve got suspects in the Gavin Chase homicide.”
“The Mexican kids? It didn’t pan out. The truck was stolen in front of a twenty-four-hour convenience store at 3:15 A.M. The time is corroborated by both the victim and the clerk. By the time they got to the abandoned gas station, Chase had been dead for hours, just like the coroner said.”