by Susan Dunlap
“Look, O’Shaughnessy, Hollywood’s a small town, and the stunt world’s one little block in it. I don’t have to be in bed with the girl to know the word on her”—he paused, catching her eye—“but it’s a nice way to find out.”
Or maybe it was too many face up. She ignored the comment.
A woman not watching her opponent would have missed the slight tightening of shoulders, the quick sideward glance that preceded the steady gaze. “I could give you the rundown on anyone in the business. Just ask me—go ahead, ask me.”
“Back to Lark. How come she trotted around to the media and hinted at more than the high fall? Was she a publicity slut?”
“No. The opposite. That whole thing was bizarre. Stunt doubles try to stay out of the limelight, to protect the illusion that the star does everything. Lark.” He shook his head. “The studio was furious.”
“What could she have told the press?”
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing. Think! Did she talk about Greg? About doing his Move?”
“Not to me. But I did hear that she wanted the studio to acknowledge Greg in the trailers—the credits on the screen—and it was no go.”
Kiernan nodded. Greg Gaige deserved that honor, small as it was. She liked Lark better for her asking. “Yarrow, tell me about Lark. What was she doing at the party?”
“I don’t know why the hell—”
“No, not why she was there. Tell me how she behaved there. Close your eyes, see the scene, describe it for me.”
“Look, I’ll tell you what I know, but I’m not about to go weird to do it. Here’s what I know about that night. It was maybe six months ago. I probably saw her for five minutes. She was just leaving when I got there.”
“What time was that?”
“Eleven? Eleven thirty?”
Kiernan raised an eyebrow and let him make his own assessment of its meaning. He was trying to guess her hidden cards as much as she was his.
“I’d just gotten off work. I’d been troubleshooting and when the computer goes down, you gotta run no matter what time it is. I remember thinking I was lucky to be done before midnight.”
“So you got to the party at eleven or so. Why was Lark leaving so early? Did she have a gag the next day?”
“That’s what I asked. She was downright offended. She said she’d never have stayed out that late if she’d had to work the next day—even if the gag wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon. She made a big point of adding that. The truth is, the girl was a pain in the ass. Young, eager, ready to pump you for everything you’d learned in twenty years. And then you realized that she didn’t give a damn about you, it was just the gags—the stunt work—she cared about.”
Kiernan laughed. “Little hard on the ego?”
“Anyone would be pi—” He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
She smiled. At least one of Yarrow’s down cards was better than she’d expected. “What was Lark drinking?”
“Light beer.”
“You sure it was a light?”
“Oh, yeah. You may think of stunt men as the beer-and-horse or beer-and-cycle set, and in the old days that would have been true. I’m not saying they don’t drink now, but you won’t see anyone seriously in the business downing a six-pack. A stunt double can’t afford to put on an extra pound. You know why?” A grin tickled the corners of his mouth. His dark blue eyes twinkled.
“It makes the gags harder to perform?”
Yarrow nodded. “Good guess. That’s the official line.”
“And the real reason?”
Now the grin took hold. “The star would throw a fit if he thought that the stunt double standing in for him was a blimp. In this business, if you want to eat, you don’t eat—or drink fat beer.”
Another card revealed. Another card she liked. But that was only two in a five-to-seven-card hand. She knew better than to bet the pile on two cards and a feeling. Or she should. And right now she wanted to see Lark Sondervoil’s cards more than Yarrow’s. “But Lark did drink?”
“Yeah, but I’d be surprised if she’d had more than one. She wasn’t showing any effects. And I’d come straight from work, so I was still clear enough to notice.”
Thinking back to the question of opiates, Kiernan said, “Maybe liquor wasn’t so much her thing. Maybe she’d done a line of coke?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, it’s a small community. I would have heard if she was a sniffer. The handle on Lark Sondervoil was ‘ambitious.’ She talked gags; she hung around with whoever knew the most—”
“The people who were the most influential, or the ones she could learn from? There’s a big difference.”
Yarrow leaned back, balancing with ease on two legs of the chair. His own legs were extended, his feet off the floor. A guy in any other line of work would have landed on his head, but Yarrow was barely moving. Kiernan had to stare to find the minute adjustments of his hip flexor muscles with which he balanced. And the tiny adjustments looked so automatic as to be almost unconscious. She could do that, she thought, if there were another chair sturdy enough to balance on. Not now, Kiernan. Trace Yarrow was begging to be distracted. But as soon as she got home …
“Lark was a smart cookie. She looked too pretty to have brains, too. But the one time I saw her do a long stair fall, she’d been called in to replace a woman who’d broken her arm. Lark asked every stunt double on the set, not only about what she should do, but how Lainey, the one she replaced, had screwed up. Was Lainey a daredevil? Did she prepare decently? Had she done stair falls before? Had she had time to prepare for this one? Lark was thorough to the point of tedium. Taking that job was a risk, but it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. People have risked a lot more than limbs for jobs,” he said with an edge to his voice that she hadn’t heard before. “Not to mention, there was a good adjustment that went with it.”
“Adjustment?”
“Pay for a specific gag. You don’t go off a bluff for an hourly wage.”
“What did Lark go off the bluff for?”
“Seventy thou for the Move and the high fall. Word of that spread like pollen. It wasn’t the biggest adjustment in the business, but it was damned good for someone of her stature. It knocked her from novice to name. If she’d pulled this off, she would have been number one in high falls.”
Outside, a motorcycle roared through the alley, its spray of sound bouncing off the cement walls. The screen door shook, the table vibrated; Yarrow flexed his hips abruptly to keep from losing balance. Purposely she didn’t make eye contact with him, and she could see from the corner of her eye that he was looking away. In his place, she knew, she would have done the same. She hoped there would never come a point when she had to admit she couldn’t balance in a handstand, couldn’t walk on her deck rail without worrying about the rocks below, much less be seen losing balance on a kitchen chair. God, it must be hard to be a former stunt man.
“So if she’d gotten jobs with one day’s notice, she needed to be ready?”
“Yeah, right. Lark Sondervoil was not a girl to miss her chance because she’d partied the night before.”
“And yet, Yarrow”—Kiernan waited until he looked over at her—”the California Highway Patrol got a finding of opiates in her urine when they stopped her a week ago.”
“You heard that at the screening room?”
“It doesn’t matter where I heard it. That’s not the type of story anyone fabricates; it’s too easy to check. It’s got to be true.”
“No way. First of all, Lark wouldn’t do drugs. And even if she did, she’d never go out and drive on top of that.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Her parents were killed in a head-on crash. Drunk driver. The word I heard was that she still clutched every time she drove. Whoever told me said that anyone else would never have driven again, but Lark, being Lark, couldn’t permit herself that cowardice. So she made herself drive. On the road, I mean; in the business she steered clear of car
gags—she did falls and fights mostly. But every time she got in her car, she checked the tires. And when she started the engine, she checked the brakes. My friend said he’d driven with her once and she nearly sent him through the windshield before they were out of the driveway. No way would that woman do drugs and drive.”
“And yet the CHP got their finding,” Kiernan insisted. She could feel herself tensing. Dammit, she liked Lark Sondervoil. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Yarrow shifted forward. His chair came down with a bang. “Won’t the autopsy answer questions like that? Isn’t that the type of thing you get paid so much for finding out?”
She almost laughed. If you’re dealing, why don’t you get all the aces? “I don’t make findings that aren’t there. If Lark did drugs a week ago and hasn’t since, there won’t be any evidence.”
“But if there’s some other reason, like maybe some weird chemical imbalance or something, that’ll show up, right?”
“If it’s within the parameters of what the pathologist is looking for. The thing is, Yarrow, pathologists don’t have time, and corpses don’t have enough tissue or fluid to allow them to check for every chemical. If there’s an abnormal finding in the area they’re questioning, it will come up. If it’s somewhere else, it won’t.”
“But drugs—surely they’ll check for drugs in this case.”
Kiernan nodded. “They’ll check for drugs, but not for anomalies.”
“And if they turn up drugs in her body, good chance everyone’s off the hook.”
She stared him in the eye. “And if they don’t, Yarrow, well, there’s still the CHP report.”
He met her gaze and held it. The gaze they shared held the certainty that somewhere in the movie business, some one was cutting his losses and cashing in his remaining chips. And Lark Sondervoil was of no more importance than a plastic disk worth a dime or a dollar. Yarrow tapped his fingers on the table. “Grounds for a helluva reasonable doubt. No one’s going to push.”
“Her family?”
“Nope. The parents were all of it. That’s why she took their accident so hard.”
“Then you’re right. The only people who care will be the ones eager to blame her.”
“Yarrow, Lark Sondervoil’s start mark was keyed by the inner cordon, right? After the first pole was moved, it’d be natural for guys to lend a hand moving the rest of the poles into line. The first pole is the key. Who shifted that?”
He shook his head. “The place was a madhouse. No one will ever tell you that.” Yarrow glanced slowly around his room, as if inventorying his possessions.
For the first time since she’d arrived, it was silent outside, and in the silence she could hear his breaths coming just a bit too fast.
“So what’s next?” he asked. “You bring a contract for me to sign?”
Despite herself, Kiernan laughed. Yarrow probably wasn’t even good for bail. But the man did have connections. Using his name could open doors—or slam them. She’d just have to watch her toes on the sills. “No, this one’s on me.”
“How come?”
Because she’d once been one decision away from being a Lark Sondervoil? Because she wanted to know what Lark was so desperate to announce to the world? Or because Greg Gaige had changed her life, and this was the least she could do in return? She said simply, “I knew Greg Gaige.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. She couldn’t tell from his expression if he understood her commitment or if he was trying to assess whether he’d won with a pair of deuces. A motorcycle roared down the alley. He waited until the sound was no more than a distant hum before he said, “How did you know Greg?”
She shrugged. “Knew is too strong a word. I only met him twice. I’ve barely thought about him since he died.”
Yarrow leaned forward. “Come on, we’re in this together. Tell me how you met Greg.”
It wasn’t a memory she shared easily; it was too integral to her to be disbursed in casual words.
She could still see the gym the day she had met him—Greg Gaige Day. Blue and gold banners hung beside the poster of him on the newly painted white wall. The floors, scrubbed and relacquered, sparkled in the sprays of sunlight and were still sticky under her bare feet. The locker rooms smelled of paint and Pinesol rather than sweat. And as they awaited the arrival of the great one, excited girls fingered their braids, pulled strands loose and braided again; boys clasped and reclasped wrist braces and chalked their hands until white clouds floated through the room.
“He came to the gym the year after my older sister died,” she said, brusquely enough to block questions. Yarrow didn’t need to know that she had stormed out of the church when they refused to bury Moira in hallowed ground. Or that the neighbors in Saint Brendan’s parish had warned their children away from her. She’d been thirteen years old. The gym had become her haven, but even there she’d been a stranger, a refugee among the public school Protestants, a tiny, spark-angry girl, with an emptiness held at bay with scissor lifts until her abdominal muscles ached, stretches until her tendons burned and her mind was numb. “I was much newer to gymnastics than most girls my age. I’d missed a lot of practice when my sister died, so I was awkward and unsure if I’d ever get the key moves.” Unsure, too, she’d realized later, whether a girl like her could deserve success.
“It was Greg Gaige Day. The idea was that gym routine would be normal: student groups would go from vault horse, to bars, to rings or balance beam, to floor-routine mat. I remember that the cymbals in the floor-routine music crashed and jolted a girl off the balance beam; a boy lost his grip on the rings and clumped to the mat; one of the other guys tried a new release move and made it—barely. Everyday stuff. The whole place smelled of sweat and chalk dust that got thicker by the minute.
“But of course, it wasn’t just any day. There was no chatter, no one missed a landing and shrugged it off. And every face there was turned to Greg Gaige as he watched the seniors.” He’d pointed out a more efficient grasp on the high bar, a better angle on the pommel horse, a way to get more power from a punch back. Most seniors stood a moment too long after he spoke, waiting, or unclear, or unsatisfied. Even then, she could tell Greg was awkward one on one, and teaching was not his skill. His feel for gymnastics had been too visceral to be taken apart and given piecemeal to the next hopeful.
“I was too much of a novice to be among ‘the observed.’ When my turn came on the vault, I pushed thoughts of the seniors, and Greg Gaige, out of my mind—I was good at pushing things away. All week I’d been fighting form breaks in an elementary vault. I pictured executing it perfectly, held up my arm, and pushed off. When I came out of the dismount, I felt as if I almost had the essence of it, but I knew that that hadn’t translated into arm or leg or hip movements; and to an observer I still looked like a clumsy kid who’d missed too much practice.
“But when I looked up, Greg Gaige had been watching. He said, ‘Good feel for it.’” She smiled at Yarrow as if that ended the recollection.
But she could still remember hearing Greg’s words, her breath catching in her throat with the shock and the glory of it all. She’d said to Greg, “It was just a beginner’s vault; nothing like the seniors—”
Greg had put his arm on her shoulder, leaned over, and said so that only she could hear, “The feel is what matters; it’s what makes a gymnast. You are a gymnast. This is where you live.”
Then the coach had asked Greg a question or pointed out something—she couldn’t recall what anymore—and Greg was gone. But she’d relived that moment with him every night until she was in college. It wasn’t until years later, after she’d seen him in San Francisco, that she realized what he’d meant when he said, “This is where you live.” He’d meant live as in alive. This is where you are alive. What he’d been admitting, even back then in Baltimore, was that gymnastics was the only place he was alive.
By then, it was way too late to ask him the question that had occurred to her only after she
was in medical school: All those years ago in the Baltimore gym, had he picked her out because she was the best prospect there, or merely the loneliest?
Whichever, his words had been the spark that reignited her. She hadn’t gone to the Olympics, but she’d come in second in the Nationals. She’d written to him each time she medaled; he’d responded with a sentence of congratulations. And when she chose premed over a gymnastics scholarship, she’d written him one last time. He hadn’t answered, and so she never knew whether she had slipped from his interest, or he found it too depressing to think she could give up the thing that made him alive for a career cutting up the dead.
He couldn’t know that the practice of forensic pathology did make her alive. She thought she’d chosen forensic pathology to understand the secrets of her sister’s death. It wasn’t until after she’d been fired from the coroner’s office that she realized she loved uncovering the secrets of the body—every body. When she was discovering the truth, she felt alive. Then she understood Greg Gaige’s passion.
She’d been lucky; she got a second chance, as a private investigator. And maybe Greg had been lucky, too, to die before his career ended, before he had to face life without being alive.
She met Greg again that time years later in San Francisco. But she certainly was not going to describe that night to Yarrow.
She looked across the table at Yarrow. He started to speak but stopped before a sound came out, for some reason choosing not to prod her. A sensitivity she hadn’t expected? Or merely no desire to be dismissed? “Anyway, Greg went out of his way for me. I can do a little for him.” She stuck out her hand. “So, I’m in.”
He took the hand, shook officially. Then leaning back, he said, “This death of Lark’s … I just can’t believe Lark is responsible. It’s too much of a coincidence. The last movie Greg Gaige was in, the one with the Move …”
He paused so long that Kiernan nodded.
“On the bluff today, there were five people who were on the set of Bad Companions the day Greg Gaige died.”