by M. K. Wren
She said into the phone, “Conan’s here. I’ll talk to you later,” and hung up, offering him a smile as he approached. “Conan, you’ve come back to me. Forever?”
He sat on a stool facing her, wondering who she’d been talking to. Dana Semenov, no doubt. And wondering at the subtle contours of her face, the shimmering light in her blue-violet eyes. “No, not forever.”
Savanna put on an expression of desolation, then shrugged. “Well, have some champagne anyway.” She reached over the bar for a glass, filled it, and handed it to him.
He asked, “What are you celebrating?”
“My freedom! My future! But most of all, getting out of here.” She touched the rim of her glass to his. “Except…I truly will miss you.”
That face was amazing, changing in a moment, and every new mood as true as the sky, the sea, the sunlight flooding the room. He tasted his champagne, asked, “Doesn’t your celebration include the four-million-dollar advance you’ll collect from Nystrom for Odyssey?”
She laughed, shaking a finger at him in mocking reproof. “You are a very stubborn man. I told you, that was for my autobiography.”
“Oh, yes. The hardbound you said Nystrom was going to have on the shelves in a month. I don’t know much about the publishing business, but I’m damned sure that would be one for Guinness.”
“Did I say a month? Actually, I don’t know how long it’ll take.”
“You don’t even seem to know how much the advance is. There’s quite a difference between three hundred thousand and four million.”
“Oh, Conan, if you’re going to be such a grouch, you can just go away. Nobody’s going to rain on my parade today.”
“I’m afraid I have no choice about raining on your parade.”
“But you do, love.” She leaned toward him with a heavy-lidded look of invitation. “You can celebrate with me.”
“Are you sure your husband didn’t leave a will?”
She sighed, put aside her coquettish persona. “Well, nobody found one, did they? And they won’t. I asked him once if he’d made a will.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. A couple of years ago. I’d just made a will leaving nearly everything I owned to him. He thought that was funny. Said he’d never make a will. Let the survivors fight over the spoils.” She began humming along with the raucous, bittersweet melody of a song called “Mona’s Theme.”
Conan listened to Savanna’s recorded voice, as amazed as he had been when he first heard it at the convincing cockney accent, the exuberant sexuality in it, the sheer, vivid aliveness.
“Savanna, he lied to you.”
“Mm? What about? He lied about so many things.”
“About his will. He made a will soon after he married you. It was in a safety deposit box in San Francisco.”
She stared at Conan. “I don’t believe you!”
“I can show you a copy of it.”
She put her glass down on the bar. “What did it say?”
“That you’re his heir, except for a bequest to his first wife.”
“Oh…” Her breath came out in a sigh.
“It also said that the Laskys are to continue as agents for his literary estate, and they’re to have complete control over it. You get the royalties, minus the usual commission, but they make the decisions.”
She reached for her glass, hit it with her hand, and it tipped, cracking its fragile rim, spilling out a froth of champagne. “Damn!” Her chagrin seemed focused on the glass, and she went around behind the bar for a towel to wipe up the spill, then found another glass, filled it, and calmly drank from it.
Conan watched that performance in silence, then said flatly, “That contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
“What contract? Is there anything in the will that says I can’t sell my own autobiography?”
“You know what contract I mean. The contract for Odyssey. You’ll collect the royalties, but the Laskys will decide who publishes it, and I leave it to you to predict whether they’ll choose Nystrom as long as Dana is editor-in-chief there.”
From the speakers Mona Fatale belted out her philosophy of life: Make him laugh, make him sing, but never make him love you.
And Savanna walked around the end of the bar, as unconcerned as a girl walking through a field of wildflowers on a summer day. “I told you, I haven’t signed any contracts for Odyssey, so why should I worry who publishes it, as long as I get the royalties? I never wanted any of Ravin’s money, but I’ll take it. Why not? I earned it.”
“Savanna, for God’s sake, you have plenty to worry about, and one thing is that in a very short time, Sheriff Wills will be knocking at your door. He’s coming here to arrest you. On two counts of murder.”
He could believe the spectrum of emotions she displayed now was authentic: shock wavering into fear, then chagrin, and finally anger. She shouted like a fishwife, “You bastard! I trusted you!”
“You trusted me to fall blindly in love with you. That way I not only wouldn’t be a threat to you, I’d be your informant.”
“That’s not true.” Now she was all contrition: “I mean, I never said I loved you, but you understood that. I thought you did. Conan, I’ve never had to sell my body for anything, and I never will!”
He looked away from her, because the appeal in her eyes was too convincing. “I thought I did understand at the time. I didn’t betray you to Giff, by the way. He came up with his own version of the truth.”
Her eyes narrowed then she pushed herself up onto the stool, sat facing him. “And what is his own version?”
“I do make a good informant, don’t I?” he asked with an oblique smile. Then he recounted the scenario that Earl Kleber had presented—the one that, according to Neely, Giff Wills had also embraced—while the music segued into a chorus singing “Rock of Ages” against the rumbling bass leitmotif for the V-2s. She didn’t seem to hear it. She was intent on him, her face void of emotion, as if she were waiting for a cue.
The cue seemed to come at the point when Kleber speculated that she left the Herndons and went to her condo to brew the decaffeinated coffee and add the Nembutal. But her response was subtle: only a slight movement around her mouth suggesting a smile reined.
Conan withheld the vital element of the story, concluding with Savanna Barany, aka Mrs. Sarah Talbot, returning to the Eyrie in the Ferrari at nine in the morning. And Savanna laughed.
“Oh, Conan, don’t tell me anybody believes all that. It’s a crock, the whole thing. You know that.”
“Do I? Unfortunately there’s one piece of evidence I can’t ignore, the one that guaranteed Giff an arrest warrant.”
She didn’t try nonchalance again, but waited breathlessly, lips parted. Conan said, “The carafe had been wiped clean. There were no fingerprints on it other than Arno’s—except for three on the bottom. The police have identified them. Savanna, they’re yours.”
Again he recognized the authenticity of her emotions. She was too stunned to move, until finally she shivered, and when she spoke, the words came out in a whisper: “That’s not possible.…”
“It’s possible. And those prints will be the keystone of the DA’s case against you.” He took her hand, felt a brief resistance. “Savanna, you know how your prints got on that carafe.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” She put on an ironic smile as she withdrew her hand. “This whole thing is—well, it’s ridiculous. I didn’t kill…what was his name?”
Conan said irritably, “You know his name. You phoned him Saturday night to make arrangements for your flight to Portland.”
“I told you, I did not kill that pilot!”
“I know you didn’t.”
That seemed to throw her off balance. Then tears gathered in her eyes. “Oh, Conan, I knew you wouldn’t believe I could kill anybody.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I know you didn’t kill Dan Arno.”
“But you do believe…
what, Conan? Go on! Say it!”
“I believe you murdered your husband.”
She twisted off the stool, took two strides away from him, then stopped, finding herself looking over the back of the couch at the pillows that hid the bloodstained cushions where Gould had died.
Conan said, “I believe you shot your husband, point-blank, in the heart with a twenty-two caliber handgun.”
“How could I? I don’t even own a gun. I told you that.”
“So you did.” He picked up his glass, but didn’t drink from it, only watched the glitter of rising bubbles. “I saw the unedited videotape of the donnybrook at the bookshop Saturday. In the confusion, you dropped your purse—the orange one, remember?—and a gun fell out of it. A small automatic. Where is it now?”
“There isn’t any gun,” she insisted. “There never was!” He studied her, aware of the sweet conviction in her voice purring from the speakers in beguiling harmonies with the male lead’s tenor. One more day to live…one more day to love…
“Savanna, what I don’t understand is why you didn’t simply divorce him.”
“I was going to divorce him.”
“You went through some motions—after he was dead. But why didn’t you divorce him sooner? You married him three years ago, and you told me you knew by the end of the first year it was a mistake. You also told me he was systematically sabotaging your career. Now, I can imagine some women staying with unhappy marriages for various reasons. The remnants of love. Hope. Fear. But you aren’t like ordinary mortals, Savanna. You need a stage to make you whole, to keep you alive. You wouldn’t have stayed with any man a week, much less over two years, once you realized he was coming between you and your stage. Why did you stay with Gould?”
She returned to the bar, sat beside Conan with her hands clasped in her lap, eyes downcast. “I told you why, but obviously you didn’t believe me. I loved him, Conan.”
He turned to face her. “The trouble with extraordinary talent is that it can be an obsession, and obsessions make you vulnerable. Gould enjoyed his power over you, didn’t he? What was he blackmailing you with? Why did you have to kill him to gain your freedom?”
“He wasn’t blackmailing me with anything, and I didn’t kill him!”
“The irony is that in a way Gould passed on his power over you when he died. To Dana Semenov. I suppose she came here Saturday night at some inopportune moment and discovered you with Gould’s body and the proverbial smoking gun. She was in the Baysea bar from about ten-thirty until eleven-thirty, and she was expecting someone. Maybe Gould promised to meet her there, and when he didn’t come, she decided to drive by the house to find out why, or just to scout out the possibilities of seeing him alone. Maybe she heard the shot.”
Savanna’s tone was pointedly sarcastic now. “Conan, you should be the one writing books.”
“This one would be nonfiction.” He put his glass, still half-full of a wine of celebration, on the bar. “For whatever reason, Dana appeared at the crucial moment, and she had you in her power. You were Gould’s heir and could sign the contracts—or so you both assumed. In exchange for Odyssey, she would not only remain silent about Gould’s murder, she would become your accomplice. Is that when you loaned her your black wig? You were wearing it Monday afternoon when you arrived at the Surf House in your pregnant woman disguise. You’d been to see Dana at Baysea. Did she return the wig to you then?”
Savanna eyed him coolly. “This is your story, Conan.”
“No. It’s yours, Savanna. Someone was in Dana’s room that afternoon. Someone wearing pale lipstick, who drank a glass of water; someone who purloined one of the pillows from the bed. And that morning, you took something out of your safety deposit box at the bank. The disks with the third draft of Odyssey. You gave them to Dana, and I’m sure as soon as you left, she went to the post office and sent them by express mail to Nystrom.”
Savanna reached for the bottle and poured more champagne into her glass. “All I got out of the safety deposit box was some jewelry.”
He ignored that. “You and Dana didn’t have much time to make your plans. You had to meet Arno at the airfield at midnight, and Dana had to leave her car at Baysea first. I suppose you followed her in the Ferrari, maybe waited on the road while she parked her car outside her room. She went into the room and a few minutes later came out with a flight bag and a carafe of coffee. Did she tell you she needed the coffee for the long drive ahead of her? That was when you handled the carafe, wasn’t it, probably just to put it out of the way somewhere. And that was when you gave her the map of Portland you kept in the car.”
Cool sarcasm gave way to annoyance. “Conan, damn it, this isn’t funny anymore.”
“No, it isn’t funny. Do you want to tell me the rest of it?”
“There isn’t any rest of it!”
“Then I’ll tell it. You and Dana drove to the airfield, where Arno was waiting for you. Rather, for Mrs. James Booth. When you arrived at Valley West Airport, you called a cab and gave the driver the address of an apartment a block from the Eyrie. The fact that you knew that address implies premeditation. On one of your trips to Portland to shop with Maggie Herndon, you noticed that conveniently located apartment and memorized the address. Of course, with your training, I’m sure you only had to see it once. Anyway, on Sunday morning, the cabbie left you at that apartment, then you walked—or probably ran—the block to your condo, where you got rid of your Mrs. Booth disguise, then presented yourself at your neighbors’ door, thereby establishing the time of your arrival with two very credible witnesses.”
“That wasn’t why I went to talk to Maggie,” she said, giving him a look of searing accusation. “And if I flew to Valley West by helicopter, how did my car end up parked at the condo early the next morning?”
“Magically, it seems, if you didn’t stop anywhere along the way. That’s what you told me. But the gas tank was three-quarters full when I drove you back to Holliday Beach Sunday afternoon.”
“Maybe I did stop for gas. I was so hysterical, I don’t remember.”
“You were never hysterical,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t remember stopping for gas because you didn’t drive the Ferrari. Dana did. When she left you at the Baysea airfield, she drove the Ferrari to Portland, and she stopped for gas in MacMinnville. She asked for her change in quarters. My guess is she needed them to make a call at a phone booth, a long-distance call she didn’t want on her credit card.”
“You think she was calling me?”
“No. She was calling Valley West Airport—as Mrs. Sarah Talbot.”
The wail of sirens startled him, and for a moment he thought Wills was approaching with a warning fanfare. But the wail came from the speakers and gradually merged into the jubilant “All Clear” chorus.
Conan glanced at his watch: twelve-twenty. He was running out of time, but he went on, chipping away at that impervious yet changeable facade: “Sometime after you left the Herndons, you probably went out and saw the Ferrari parked in front of the condo where Dana left it, and you breathed a sigh of relief. The rights to Odyssey were a small price to pay for the risk Dana was taking. I suppose you originally planned to leave the Ferrari at the Baysea airfield and return for it by bus yourself, but Dana assumed that task. She left the Ferrari at your door, then walked to the mall and called a cab. She was supposed to go straight to the bus station and take the first bus back to Holliday Beach. But she didn’t, Savanna. You were sure your Mrs. Booth persona was entirely convincing, that Arno would never link Mrs. Booth to Savanna Barany, but Dana didn’t have as much faith in your talent. She decided the only way to prevent Arno from identifying you was to see that he had a fatal accident. And, Savanna, she decided that before you left Holliday Beach. When she left her car at Baysea and went into her room, she filled one of Baysea’s carafes with instant, decaffeinated coffee. She carried a jar in her suitcase, and I suppose she made it with water from the tap. It would be hot enough. Hotels and motels usually set th
eir water heaters unnecessarily high. Then she emptied some of her Nembutal capsules into the carafe. Her prescription for fifty capsules was filled a few days before she left New York, and there were only ten left on Monday.”
Savanna was staring into her glass, and she didn’t seem to know what role to assume now. Conan leaned toward her, but her only response was to turn her head a few degrees away from him.
He said, “The question is, did Dana intend to leave your prints on the carafe? I think she did. Now the sheriff is convinced he has a case against you for both murders. Only you. A jury might be lenient when it comes to Gould’s murder, because he had a history of adultery and cruelty. But Arno’s murder is too cold-blooded to arouse any sympathy for you. He was an innocent bystander, one with a wife and two children, who will undoubtedly be in the courtroom every day of your trial. Savanna, your only hope now is to go to Chief Kleber and make a voluntary statement. Tell him what really happened.”
For a long time, she didn’t move, even to blink or breathe. Then her shoulders came back, and she had decided on her role. Conan recognized it as the role of maligned virtue.
“That’s a fascinating story, Conan,” she said archly. “The only trouble is, the whole thing is a figment of your imagination.”
He came to his feet, suddenly consumed with anger, and so strong was the urge to pick her up bodily, to drag her kicking and screaming to the Holliday Beach police station, that he had to move away from her until he got his anger under control.
Finally he looked directly at her and said, “There’s something else you must understand: Dana is a very dangerous accomplice. Now that you’ve signed the contracts for Odyssey, you’re only a liability to her. She set you up with those fingerprints so you’d be the prime suspect in both murders, but she can’t afford to let you live to be arrested. You might tell the police the truth, and you might be believed.”
Savanna slipped off the stool, took a step toward him. “I am not a liability to anybody, because you’re wrong, damn it, and I won’t—”