V is for Vengeance

by Sue Grafton

  Nora stopped in her tracks. “For what? I’m not coming down at all this week.”

  “What are you talking about? We have the fund-raiser for the Alzheimer’s Association.”

  “A fund-raiser? In the middle of the week? That’s ridiculous!”

  “The annual dinner dance. Don’t play dumb. I told you last week.”

  Nora followed him down the front steps. “You never said a word.”

  He glanced back at her, irritation surfacing. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No, I’m not kidding. I have plans.”

  “Well, cancel them. My presence is required and I want you there. You’ve begged off the last six events.”

  “Pardon the hell out of me. I didn’t realize we were keeping score.”

  “Who said anything about keeping score? Name the last time you went anyplace with me.”

  “Don’t do that to me. You know I can never think of an example in the moment. The point is, Belinda’s sister’s coming into town from Houston. She’s here one day and we have tickets for the symphony that night. We had to pay a fortune for the seats.”

  “Tell her we had plans and it totally slipped your mind.”

  “An Alzheimer’s event and it ‘slipped my mind’? How tacky is that?”

  “Tell her anything you like. She can give your ticket to someone else.”

  “I can’t cancel at the last minute. It’s inconsiderate. Besides, you know how much I hate those things.”

  “This is not meant as entertainment. I bought a table for ten. We’ve gone every year without fail for the last ten.”

  “And I’m always bored out of my mind.”

  “You know what? I’m tired of your excuses. You pull this shit at the last minute and it leaves me scrambling around, trying to find someone to fill in. You know how embarrassing that is?”

  “Oh, stop. You can go by yourself. It’s not going to kill you for once.”

  “Screw you,” he said.

  He tossed his briefcase and a duffel in the trunk and then moved to the driver’s side with Nora close behind. She was exasperated having to trot after him, which reduced their conversation to fits and starts.

  Channing slid in under the wheel and slammed the car door. He turned his key in the ignition so he could power down the window. “You want to talk about Thelma? Fine. Let’s talk about Thelma. She said you called on Friday, asking her to cut you a check for eight grand. She said you were very frosty when she said it would have to go through me. She was worried she’d offended you.”

  “Good. Perfect. She did offend me. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You should have told me she controlled the purse strings. I had no idea.”

  “Stop. You know better. Every expenditure gets funneled through her and then through me before it goes on to the accountant’s office. With seventeen attorneys in the firm, it’s the only way I can keep track. She doesn’t say yea or nay to anyone without checking with me first. That’s just a fact.”

  “Fine.”

  “There’s no reason for you to get all prickly about it. She’s doing her job.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “That’s unlike you. You’re usually hell-bent on talking everything to death.”

  “Why are you acting so put-upon? It’s a goddamn dinner dance in L.A. It’s not the White House.”

  “I told you twice.”

  “No. You did not. You’re bringing it up now because you’re hoping to deflect the issue.”

  “What issue?” he said.

  “I don’t see why I should have to justify myself to her.”

  “You didn’t offer an explanation. You told her to cut you a check. Is it too much to ask what you have in mind? Believe it or not, an eight-thousand-dollar check isn’t trivial.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it now.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Six months ago, I wanted to buy shares of IBM. You pooh-poohed the idea and the stock jumped sixteen points in two days. If I’d had access to even a modest sum of money, I could have cleaned up.”

  “And two days later, it tanked. You’d have lost it all.”

  “I’d have sold before the price dropped and then bought it again at the new low. I’m not stupid about these things, whatever you might think.”

  “What’s this really about? Clearly, you’ve got your nose out of joint.”

  “I wanted the eight thousand dollars to buy shares of GE. Now it’s too late. By the time the market closed on Friday, the stock had jumped from 82 to 106.”

  “Eight grand? What good would that have done?”

  “That’s irrelevant. I shouldn’t have to beg.”

  “There’s no point in throwing a tantrum about good business practice. You want money, I’ll set up an account for you.”

  “You’ll open an account for me, like you’re my father?”

  Channing’s sigh was accompanied by a rolling of his eyes. High theater for him. He lowered his head, shaking it with resignation. The window slid up. He put the car in reverse and backed across the courtyard until he had the necessary clearance to pull out, which he did with a testy chirp of his tires.

  The next thing she knew he was gone.

  She returned to the house and closed the door behind her. It wasn’t the first time they’d clashed and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The emotional uproar would fade and cooler heads would prevail, but she wasn’t going to drop the matter. For the most part, they were capable of settling their differences, but she’d learned to avoid negotiations when one or the other of them was in high dudgeon.

  She went into the kitchen and cleared the counter of stray martini glasses, which she placed in the machine. She loved having the house to herself again. Monday morning, Mrs. Stumbo would do a thorough cleaning, changing sheets, doing four loads of laundry, and generally restoring order. For now, Nora was free to enjoy the quiet. Briefly, she checked the guest room with its spacious adjoining bath, making sure the Lows hadn’t overlooked personal items. Nora didn’t like other people’s stray shampoo bottles accumulating in the shower, and there was always the chance someone had forgotten the odd piece of jewelry or a garment hanging in the closet. Meredith had left a copy of Los Angeles Magazine on the bed table.

  Nora scooped it up, intending to toss it into the trash. Instead she took it with her to the kitchen, where she made herself a cup of tea. She carried both teacup and magazine to the sunroom and sank into an upholstered chair. She put her feet up on the ottoman, grateful for the rare moment of relaxation. She leafed through glossy pages, checking the advertisements for shops on Rodeo Drive, expensive salons, art galleries, and boutique clothing stores. There was a six-page spread on the mansion of the month, some overblown though tastefully done palace built by one of the hot new movie producers. She also read the feature-length profile on an actress she’d met and disliked, taking a wicked satisfaction in the journalist’s acid observations. What was meant to be a puff piece was devastatingly snide and unkind.

  When she reached the society section, she checked to see who’d been in attendance at various charity events. Channing was right about her begging off the last six occasions. She knew many of the couples who’d been photographed, usually paired with friends, or linked with board members or celebrities, drinks in hand. The women were all decked out in full-length gowns and fabulous jewelry, posed side by side with their self-important husbands. The men did look elegant in their tuxedos, though the pictures, two inches by two, were monotonously similar. The photographs represented the Who’s Who of Hollywood society with some couples in attendance at every event.

  She was secretly congratulating herself for ducking out on so many tedious evenings when she spotted a photograph of Channing with Abner and Meredith at the Denim and Diamonds Ball, which she’d also missed. The Lows beamed as though blissfully happy. Now that was a laugh. She looked at the voluptuous redhead on Channing’s arm. She didn’t recognize the woman, but the
dress she wore looked like a knockoff of the strapless white Gucci Nora kept at the house in Malibu. It couldn’t be an original because she’d been assured hers was one of a kind. Briefly she considered how awful it would have been if she’d showed up at the same party in a similar gown.

  She looked back at the redhead, alerted by the doting smile the woman was lavishing on Channing. It was the only photograph on the entire page where a woman was gazing at her companion instead of smiling directly at the camera. She read the caption and felt a silvery chill, like a veil of mercury, envelop her from head to toe. Thelma Landice. She had her hand tucked in the crook of Channing’s arm. His right hand covered hers. Thelma was still overweight, but she’d managed to compress and confine every excess pound into a bloated approximation of the hourglass figure Marilyn Monroe had made famous thirty years before. Gone were Thelma’s yellowing teeth and the drab, ill-cut hair. Now her gaudy dyed red tresses were smoothed into a french roll. She wore diamond earrings, and the smile she flashed showed several thousand dollars’ worth of snow white caps.

  Nora felt the heat rise in her face as comprehension flooded her frame. She’d misunderstood. She’d misread the signs. Meredith hadn’t sent her those beseeching looks in hopes of confiding her own marital misery. She’d pitied Nora for what she and half of Hollywood knew was going on between Channing and Thelma Landice, the fucking typist who worked for him.

  6

  DANTE

  Dante had taken up swimming for the second time in his life when he bought the estate in Montebello eighteen years before. He was actually Lorenzo Dante Junior, commonly referred to as Dante to distinguish him from his father, Lorenzo Dante Senior. For security reasons, he avoided exercising in the open, which meant jogging, golf, and tennis were out. He’d set up a home gym, where he lifted weights three times a week. For cardio, he swam laps.

  The thirty-two-acre property was surrounded by a stone wall, with entrance effected through electric gates, one set at the front and a second set at the rear, each with its own small stone guardhouse complete with a uniformed armed guard. There were six men altogether, working eight-hour shifts. A seventh oversaw the security cameras, which were monitored in situ by day and remotely by night. There were five buildings on the compound. The two-story main house had a detached five-car garage, with two apartments above. Tomasso, Dante’s chauffeur, lived in one, and the other was occupied by his personal chef, Sophie.

  There were also a two-bedroom guesthouse and a pool house, which included Dante’s home gym and a twelve-seat theater. Dante’s home office was in a sprawling bungalow, referred to as “the Cottage,” which had its own living room, bedroom, one and a half baths, and a modest kitchen. He also had a suite of offices in downtown Santa Teresa, where he spent the better part of his workday. The Cottage and the pool house appeared to be separate from the main house but were actually connected by tunnels that branched off in two directions under the tennis court.

  Dante had added the indoor lap pool across the back of the main house: two lanes wide and twenty-five yards long with a retractable roof; the bottom and sides were lined with iridescent glass tiles, and when the sun shone overhead, it was like moving through a shimmering rainbow of light. His mother had taught him to swim when he was four years old. She’d been fearful of the water as a child, and she made certain her own children were skilled swimmers from an early age. Dante did twenty-five laps a day, starting at 5:30 in the morning, counting backward from twenty-five to zero. He kept the water temperature seventy degrees, the surrounding air at eighty-four. He loved the way sound was muffled by the water, loved the simplicity of the crawl stroke, loved how clean and empty he felt when he was done.

  He and Lola, his girlfriend of eight years, had returned the night before from a ski trip to Lake Louise, where a fluke in temperatures made the runs almost too sloppy to ski. He hated cold weather anyway, and if it had been up to him, he’d have cut the trip short, but Lola was adamant and wouldn’t even entertain the idea. He found vacations stressful. He didn’t like to be idle and he didn’t like being separated from his business dealings. He was looking forward to getting back in the swing of things.

  At 7:00 that Monday morning, he showered and dressed. He could smell coffee, bacon, and something sugar-scented. He looked forward to eating in solitude, catching up on the news while he lingered over his meal. Before he went down to breakfast, he stopped by his father’s quarters on the second floor. The door was open and the nurse was in the process of changing his sheets. She told him his father had had a rough night and had finally abandoned any hope of sleep. He’d put on his suit and had Tomasso take him into the office in Santa Teresa. Most days, the old man sat at his desk for hours, drinking coffee, reading biographies of long-dead political greats, and working the New York Times crossword puzzle until it was time to go home.

  Dante went down to the basement level and took the tunnel from the main house to the Cottage. Coming up from below, he crossed a short stretch of lawn to the guesthouse to pay his morning visit to his Uncle Alfredo, who’d been living there since he was discharged from the hospital after cancer surgery the year before. Originally, the guesthouse had been set up to accommodate a series of nannies who worked for the previous owner. Now one of the two bedrooms was outfitted with a hospital bed and the second bedroom was available for the night nurses. A nurse’s aide came in days to help with his care.

  Alfredo was his father’s sole surviving brother and virtually penniless. Two younger brothers, Donatello and Amo, at ages nineteen and twenty-two, had died the same day, February 7, 1943, two days before the Battle of Guadalcanal came to an end.

  Dante couldn’t figure out what had happened to Pop and his Uncle Alfredo. How could you reach the end of your life and have nothing to show for it? Pop claimed it was bad financial advice from an accountant who was “no longer with the firm,” meaning six feet under. Dante suspected what his father referred to as bad financial advice was really the function of his living perpetually beyond his means.

  Lorenzo Senior was a local boy who’d risen to prominence during Prohibition, smart enough to cash in on the boom. The market was wide open with a premium placed on rotgut liquor. Gambling and prostitution seemed to flourish in the same spirit of excess. He’d never regarded the major syndicate mobsters as his allies. New York, Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, and Las Vegas seemed remote. He was distantly related to many of the players, but his ambitions were strictly provincial, and Santa Teresa was the perfect small community for promoting the sin trades. His organization became a feeder to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Beyond those two cities, he had little interest. He didn’t interfere with the big boys and they didn’t interfere with him. He had an open-door policy, offering safe haven for any made man who needed to lay low for a while. He also entertained his Midwest and East Coast cronies with a generous hand. The West Coast was already a magnet to rich and restless citizens who came from every part of the country, looking for sunshine, relaxation, and sheltered surroundings in which to indulge their low appetites.

  For six decades, Lorenzo Senior had enjoyed his status. Now he was treated with all the deference due a man who’d once wielded power but wielded it no more. Times had changed. The same money could be made from the same sordid activities but with a firewall of paid protection. The legal profession and big business now provided all the cover that was needed, and life went on as before. Control had passed to his oldest son, Dante, who’d worked for years papering over the cracks with a veneer of respectability.

  Lorenzo had taken for granted he’d die young and therefore had no need to provide for himself in his old age. Alfredo was the same way, so maybe it was something they’d learned in their youth. Whatever the source of their poor decisions, they now lived on Dante’s dime. He also supported his brother, Cappi, who was supposedly “getting on his feet” after an early release on a five-year bid at Soledad. Three of Dante’s four sisters were spread out across the country, married to men who did well (t
hank god) with twelve children among them, democratically distributed at three apiece. Elena lived in Sparta, New Jersey; Gina in Chicago; and Mia in Denver. His favorite sister, Talia, widowed two years before, had moved back to Santa Teresa. Her two sons, now twenty-two and twenty-five, were college graduates with good jobs. Her youngest, a daughter, was attending Santa Teresa City College and living at home. Talia was the only one of his sisters he talked to with any regularity. Her husband had left her megabucks and she didn’t look to Dante for financial support, which was a blessing. As it was, he had twelve full-time and five part-time employees at the house.

  Dante tapped on Uncle Alfredo’s door and the nurse admitted him. Cara had worked the morning shift, making sure the old man was clean, freshly dressed, and had taken his daily regimen of medications. Alfredo was in pain much of the time, but there were moments when he was able to sit out on the patio surrounded by the roses Dante had planted for him when he first arrived. That’s where Dante found him now, his white hair still damp from his sponge bath. He had a shawl pulled over his shoulders and he had his eyes closed, enjoying the early morning sunshine.

  Dante pulled up a chair and Alfredo acknowledged him without bothering to look.

  “How was Canada?”

  Dante said, “Boring. Too warm to ski and too cold to do anything else. Two days in, my knees were killing me. Lola claimed it was psychosomatic so I got no sympathy. She said I was just looking for an excuse to go home. How are you?”

  His uncle managed a half smile. “Not wonderful.”

  “Mornings are tough. It’ll get better as the day goes on.”

  “With enough pills,” he said. “Yesterday, Father Ignatius came to the house and heard my confession. First time in forty-five years, so it took a while.”