by Susan Dunlap
“Look sweetie, the script didn’t call for the hero to burn up three-quarters through the story. We had the fire on film, but we didn’t have him getting out of it. So we had to rebuild the whole damned house and shoot some makeup scenes with it. And that was the small part. Then there was the funeral, and there was a holiday weekend, and we couldn’t get the lumber for the house for a couple of days, and by the end of it all, we were looking at a ten-day delay, with the whole damned payroll sitting around on location. You know what that costs, sweetie? Close to a hundred thousand dollars each and every day. All the leases needed to be renegotiated. The release date had to be postponed, which meant the distribution contracts had to be adjusted—not in our favor, I’ll tell you. It was a nightmare.”
“Did they blame you for Greg’s—or whoever’s—death?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why were you the scapegoat? Just because you were the producer?”
“Because, dammit—and don’t you repeat this—I was a woman.”
Dolly was the last person to cloak her failings in accusations of sexism. It was a moment before Kiernan said, “Ah, the affair you had on the set!”
“You got it, sweetie. A guy screws around, it’s normal extracurricular activity. Doesn’t affect anything—not his marriage, certainly not his work. No reason why it should, it’s not like he’s dealing with anything above the short hairs. But a woman has a fling, a fling so minor I couldn’t have told you the stud’s name a month later, and everyone in the business is saying: ‘Oh, yeah, Dolly was so head over heels, she let the set go to hell.’ My whole career could have gone down the tubes. It took me five years of the tightest-budgeted shoots to live down a reputation for negotiating every contract on the casting couch. And now, you—you dredge it all up again. Jesus, why didn’t I let the San Diego cops lock you up when I had the chance?”
“Hey! Pay attention to the problem at hand here. You’re going to be talking to the sheriff in the morning. And he’s going to be asking who’s in that grave.” Kiernan could hear Dolly taking a deep breath.
“How would I know? That was ten years ago.”
Dolly had been straight with her; the woman had been too angry to concoct stories. But now that she was getting herself under control, Kiernan couldn’t read her as well. “Dolly, whoever is in the grave also did the fire gag.”
“And made a bloody mess of it.”
Kiernan let that drop. No need to push Dolly for an opinion on the deceased. Ten to one she herself knew who it was. She looked across the dark desert sky. The lights of Conroy were dim and low, like worn beige broadloom. On the top of the cemetery hill, the flagpole was, as she had suspected, lit brightly like a beacon for extraterrestrials. Or maybe a beacon for her. “Dolly,” she said slowly, “the last time I saw Greg Gaige, he talked about his career being like climbing up a hundred-foot pole. He’d been at the top for years, but still he had no intention, no thought, of ever getting off.”
“Why would he?” she asked. “That’s the way it is in the business. You’re not on top, sweetie, you’re nothing.”
“And if you’re not in the business?”
“You’re dead.”
It was just what Greg would have said—only for him the business was doing stunts. Whether his stunts showed up on celluloid was secondary. But Dolly wouldn’t understand that.
“Dolly, if you’re concerned about staying on top of that pole, start asking yourself who could have been in Greg Gaige’s grave. Who could be gone for ten years and not missed at all? Get ready for the sheriff to ask: ‘Where is Carlton Dratz?’ Do you really know it was him harassing Bleeker year after year? And how much better has your life been without him?”
CHAPTER 33
IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Kiernan got home. She opened the door to Tchernak’s kitchen and was greeted by sounds of Beethoven, the aroma of garlic, and a canine yawn and guttural yip she took to mean: Don’t you humans ever sleep? Ezra might have made it as a pub hound, but he wouldn’t have approved of the two A.M. closing hour.
Tchernak, however, was definitely not sleepy. “Fifty thousand dollars! That’s what informed environmental sources contend that Pacific Breeze Computer paid to get rid of their embarrassing toxic waste.”
“Whew! People have murdered for a lot less than hiding fifty thousand illegal dollars.”
“Plus undermining the environment,” Tchernak insisted. Tchernak had been the spokesman for a group opposing offshore oil drilling. He took environmental insults personally. “Looks real bad on the old resume.”
“Even in the movies. Bad publicity.” A whiff of garlic and spices teased her. “What’s cooking?”
“The garlic polenta rolls with no-longer-secret herbs and spices. Hot from the oven.” He waved a hand at the baking pan. He was in gray shorts and sweatshirt with the arms cut out. But the proud grin on his craggy face beamed gold.
“Dolly Uberhazy’s beloved snack? How’d you ever get the recipe? I certainly couldn’t.”
“Wasn’t easy. I drove up to the set this morning and bearded the cook. My working MO is charm,” he said, grinning. “Okay, so it doesn’t work as well on guys. But with Correra, the cook, it was zip. Correra relates to food, not people—or as much as he can manage in the midst of a hundred people on a movie set. In the end I think it came to nuisance value. He realized the only way to get rid of me was to hand over the recipe.”
“Did you ask if he was the cook on Bad Companions?”
“Three times before I got an answer. No, he wasn’t. And no, he doesn’t know who was. Not the woman he got the recipe from; that he did say.” He scooped a polenta roll from the pan and held it out to her, watching as eagerly as the now-alert wolfhound.
She took a bit, chewing slowly, savoring. “Great. A creation worthy of your own self, Tchernak. I can see why Dolly remembered them for a decade.”
“A miracle.” Tchernak inhaled deeply, smiling so broadly, he had to stop and reposition his face before he could eat.
She held out a taste to Ezra. Normally she loved being in Tchernak’s kitchen with its chaos of green sauce and golden batter-coated bowls, its Eiffel Tower of used and abandoned pots, wooden spoons, stainless spoons, spoons that were round, oval, shallow, deep, full of holes or edged with lips, and knives and saws the like of which she hadn’t seen since she’d left the coroner’s office. She loved the smells she couldn’t possibly have named. It pleased her to watch Tchernak moving from counter to stove in one long stride, humming the Beethoven he insisted was essential to the culinary art. Every time she walked in on him cooking, it comforted her at a level too deep to touch that someone was cooking just for her.
But now the memory of the broken and charred body in the funeral home shoved everything else to the edges of her mind. “By tonight, the sheriff will have identified the body.”
“Carlton Dratz,” Tchernak put in.
“In the meantime all I’ve accomplished is putting Greg Gaige in danger—and I can’t save him. Dammit, I can’t even find him to warn him.” Or discover if he is responsible for Dratz’s death, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that aloud. Tchernak’s expression told her he had the same unspoken thought. “What happened the day of the fire? Who was responsible? Where is Greg Gaige—”
“And where does Lark Sondervoil fit in? What made her worthy of being murdered, huh?”
“Lark was going to have a press conference. What did she know? What was she going to reveal? It had to be something connected to Bad Companions and the toxic dumping. Something that would touch off the kind of investigation they should have had ten years ago. But dammit, how did she find that out?”
Kiernan picked up another polenta stick. “How did Carlton Dratz get into the fire gag and die?”
Ezra nudged her arm. “Okay, I’m eating as fast as I can and still think.” She dropped him a piece. “On Dratz’s remains, there was no indication of a blow to the head, nothing to suggest he was assaulted and dragged into the c
abin to die. Besides, Yarrow recalls seeing him standing inside the window.” She ate the other half and said, “Dratz was fascinated with the set. He was even found camped out in the set house one night—who knows how many nights he was there and not spotted? He could have been in the fire house one or more of the nights when the toxics trucks made their dumps. He thought stunt doubles were paid too much for stuff that was just sleight of hand. So you can imagine how easy he figured the fire gag would be. And what a triumph it would be to do it and then whip off the hood and show everyone on the set that he had been right all along.”
“But the suit’s tight like a diver’s suit, isn’t it? How could he get in that by himself?”
“He couldn’t. Greg was the only one who managed that. Not even other stunt doubles could do it. So Dratz needed help.”
Tchernak held up a polenta stick like a finger. “Bingo! So Dratz coopted the person he’d seen dumping the toxins?”
“Right,” she said, reaching for another polenta stick. “And his helper—no fool—must have realized that Dratz was the kind of blackmailer who would never let up. He might never want money, but there’d always be something he’d be after, just because he’d love jerking someone around. He faces the prospect of Dratz carrying on until the police get called in. He must have lived in terror. Every time Dratz walked near the hole or mentioned ‘night’ or ‘truck,’ he must have figured the end was near. And then, suddenly, Dratz decides he wants to do the fire gag. He wants a little help. An offer he couldn’t refuse, right?” She broke off half a dog biscuit for Ezra and took another bite of the polenta stick. “So the helper dispenses with the town firemen by giving them a later call time. He creates a phony message to get rid of Jane Hogarth. Thus, no witness to Dratz getting up; no adoring girlfriend who might want to come along and who later would reveal all for the offer of a bit part in a B-movie.”
“But if he had help, why wasn’t Dratz wearing the hood to the fire suit? Even Dratz wouldn’t let his face burn.”
“It’s not like his skin was exposed. There was the mask that the wig was attached to. It wasn’t fireproof, but to a novice it must have seemed like protection. Easy to whip off at the end, like he wanted. And there was the fire-resistant gel. Dratz probably figured that was the elixir that allowed stunt doubles to create their overpaid illusion. Of course, fire-resistant is not fire-proof.” Kiernan finished the polenta stick. “And Tchernak, there’s the question of the oxygen. Why didn’t Dratz use the oxygen? Yarrow wondered why Greg didn’t. It was right there in the cabin.”
“So why didn’t Dratz use it?”
“Because, Tchernak, he wouldn’t have known how. He could have learned, but learning wasn’t his style. So you can see him figuring: Why bother for twenty seconds? After all, he wasn’t going to have a fire hood blocking out the air … Hoods are hot; they make people claustrophobic. He didn’t know how long he’d have to wait. All for twenty seconds of action. Twenty seconds is nothing.”
“But any halfway sensible—”
“We’re talking Carlton Dratz here. You can just see him planning to run out, whip off his wig, and show them all up.”
“So why didn’t he?” Tchernak said, herding the remaining polenta sticks together on the serving dish.
“Because,” she said, heading through the door to her own flat, “someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing can apply too little gel, expect it to do too much, or they can mix up the fire-protection gel with the fire-heightening gel. They don’t know that when they breathe in air as hot as it gets in a fire like that, it will burn their lungs. They don’t expect to panic.” She reached for a polenta stick but stopped halfway. It was a picture too awful to think about. “The person who could and would tell me is Greg Gaige. Damn, I can’t sit here eating. I have to—look, Dratz was planning to go to Mexico. An escape of sorts. Maybe he had false identity papers. Joyce Hogarth could know. We can call her.”
“Kiernan, it’s one in the morning.”
“For a man’s life, she can lose some beauty sleep. Besides,” she said, breaking off half of the last polenta stick, “you can use some of that charm you didn’t expend yesterday.”
“I see by we you mean me.”
“She’d rather talk to you, Tchernak. It’s the least you can do after waking the poor woman up,” she said, grinning. “I’ll take Ezra out and leave you two alone.”
By the time she reached the rocky beach, her smile was gone. Ezra’s nails clicked against the rocks, seeming to dance above the drumming of the ocean. She was so close to finding the key to Dratz’s death and Lark’s murder, and yet the suspects, they were so incestuous, all of them so busy staring at the top of the hundred-foot pole, they didn’t care who they kicked off beneath them. And Greg—was he out there, too, not in LA. or back in Baltimore but somewhere in the thousands of miles between? Or had Dratz’s killer killed him, too? So much life had been taken to cover up a couple of loads of toxins dumped in a spot no one cared about. To protect fifty thousand dollars and a career. A chance to get to the top of that pole.
She turned and started back. Murders so vicious, so desperate … Lark’s murder was calculated, but Dratz’s was the work of an angry person, one so enraged, he could decide to keep the Fire Department at bay while a man burned.
And yet both were what the police called clean-hands crimes—not ones where the killer had to face his victim as he died. Murders scripted by one used to directing the action from a distance, to budgeting time and creating an end to fit the script.
“Nothing,” Tchernak announced when she walked back in her flat. “If Dratz had an alias, Joyce didn’t know. And she did not want to discuss it in the middle of the night.”
“That’s okay,” Kiernan said excitedly. “Listen, I realized that the question is not what happened on the Bad Companions set. But why it happened. Think about why. Not why the murders—they came as a result. But why would someone take the chance of dumping the toxins?”
“Fifty thou?”
“An incentive, but still not worth mortgaging a career for. The dumping and the fire—what was the actual result of both those actions? Not what might have happened, but what did?”
Tchernak settled on the sofa, sprawling his legs into the room. “It threw Bad Companions over budget?”
“Right. And who suffered?”
“Bleeker?”
“No. The Bad Luck Bleeker legend didn’t take hold till the later films. No one could have predicted that. No, Tchernak, the one who suffered was Dolly Uberhazy. And that, anyone could have foreseen.”
Kiernan stood up and paced to the glass doors. “Tchernak, give Persis what you have to to move you to the front of the line. We need a Social Security check on Greg. It’s a long shot, but maybe he’s worked under his own Social Security number in the last decade.”
A hint of a smile twitched Tchernak’s wiry mustache. He let a beat pass and said, “Done. And zilch. And what I gave Persis you’ll never know. But, alas, she came up with nada. Nothing but this little homily: You just don’t pluck things out of the air because you want them.”
“Great, just what we need—some pop philosophy from Baba Persis! And inaccurate yet! Because plucking wishes from the air is exactly what Lark Sondervoil did. She got the Hollywood job that everyone knows you can’t walk in and demand.” She paused, reconsidered, and flounced on the sofa beside him, bouncing him in her wake. “Tchernak, you are superb. And Persis is a gem!”
“Those are words I never thought I’d hear from your mouth.”
“Look, here’s the link for Lark Sondervoil. She didn’t just call Hollywood and get a screen test sight unseen, like she said. We all know that doesn’t happen. Someone had to see her perform first—at the High Country gym. Some man came, saw her, and told her about Hollywood. And someone, Tchernak, taught her to do the Move.”
She grabbed the phone and dialed the High Country Gymnastics Academy. The phone rang six times before she put it down.
Tchernak was la
ughing. “Gym not open at two A.M.?”
She was already calling information for the gym director’s home number.
“Talbot here,” the sleepy male voice said. “What’s the matter?”
“Jerry, this is Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. We spoke a couple of days ago about the memorial for Lark Sondervoil. I need the names of the people who taught her. There was yourself, of course. And before you?”
“It’s the middle of the fucking night!”
“Wait! Don’t hang up! This is connected with Lark’s death, her murder, Jerry.”
“The movie studio is checking out her murder! Come on!”
“I’m an investigator, hired by her friends who were afraid her murder would be covered up. It’s a long story. I can explain it now, if you insist. But every moment we spend here means her killer may be getting farther away. Trust me, and I’ll call you when we have the suspect and answer any question you want.”
His breath beat against the phone; he didn’t answer.
“Jerry, if you’d seen the panic on her face when she went over the edge of the bluff, three hundred and thirty-five feet above the beach …”
“Okay, but you better be dealing straight with me.”
“I am.”
“Okay, Liz Putnam. I took over High Country from her. She’d been in charge since it opened.”
“And wasn’t there someone else? Another man?”
“No, just Liz and me.”
“Another man who worked with you briefly. A guy from out of town? Within the year before Lark left?” She was holding her breath. Talbot had to remember. Greg had to have taught Lark; there was no other way she could have mastered the intricacies of the Move.
“I don’t—”
“Would you check your records? It’s important.”
“Well, okay, but I’m going to have to go across the yard to the gym office.”
“Thanks.” She paced to the deck doors and stood looking at the tail of the moon as it floated atop the green-black waves, disappearing before the breakers could smash it against the rocks. The movement of the great waves almost always pulled her into its own pace, calming her at the most frantic of moments. But tonight she found herself silently urging the waves to ebb more quickly and flow harder into the rocks.