by Rick Copp
“Charlie, maybe you ought to wait downstairs,” I said trying to put a lilt in my voice to cover the fury. I failed miserably.
“Now don’t be mad at Charlie,” Isis said. “I’ve been reading you for ten years, Jarrod. I saw right through you the minute you came in the door.”
I nodded, chastised, and then rose to leave.
“Not so fast. I know how much you cared about Willard. I adored him too. Next to you, he was one of my favorite clients. So I think his spirit will be okay with me sharing a few things with you.”
I was back down on the couch. She had something good. I could feel it. And I could tell she was already in the mood to gossip, and Charlie’s interruption was not going to deter her from getting some kind of rise out me.
“I saw it all. And, of course, at first Tamara insisted I was wrong. That it had to be the other way around. She tried conning herself into believing it was Willard who tried putting the moves on Spiro. But deep down she knew the truth, and I helped her to face the reality of what really happened.”
“So when she left here, she was finally convinced Spiro was the one who betrayed her?” I said.
“Yes,” Isis said.
I sat back and looked at Charlie and Isis. I must have chugged my last cocktail too fast. I was now seeing four of them.
“She was devastated,” Isis said. “I mean, the poor woman came to me hoping I would advise her on how to fix her marriage and what do I do? I deliver the deathblow. She just kept sobbing and sobbing. I tried to comfort her. But I felt I was right in convincing her.” Isis stared into space, remembering. “It was a very difficult reading.”
“How did you leave it?” I asked.
“She was in such a state. She wanted me to try and raise her son’s spirit so she could beg his forgiveness, but I don’t do that sort of thing. I told her to get tickets to the Crossing Over show with that hottie John Edwards. I just said her marriage had been over for a long time, and this was the information she needed to end it immediately and move on. I warned her that when she confronted her husband he would try to dismiss me as a fake and say her son was lying. But she had to listen to what was in her heart, and in her heart she knew he had done it. She had to accept it. I told her she was strong enough to get past it. It was time for her to begin a new phase in her life, to put Spiro’s dark energy behind her, and focus on the positive.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she had every intention of focusing on the positive. She was going right home to kill the dirty, lying bastard.” Isis stopped and thought for a moment. “I thought she was just being dramatic.”
I wobbled a bit, using Charlie’s knee to steady myself as I stared at Isis in shock. And my favorite psychic and Price Club spokeswoman sat back with a proud grin. She had gotten just the reaction out of me that she wanted.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I want to thank you, Jarrod,” Tamara Schulberg said. “I never dreamed you would turn out to be my knight in shining armor.”
I shrugged. “I just told the police what I heard.”
She smiled. “I don’t mean for backing up my story. I mean for dashing out to Palm Springs to save me. After how I’ve been acting, I’m surprised you didn’t just sit back and let the bastard get away with it.”
“I guess I’m not built that way.”
Charlie and I had barely fallen into bed after returning home from Isis’s apartment when the phone rang. It was Tamara, just back from the desert and desperate for me to rush over. I had known her son for most of my life, and this was the first invitation I had ever received to actually enter the formidable iron gates of her Bel Air home.
I let Charlie drift back to sleep, and then I jumped in the shower, threw some clothes on, and hopped in the car. There was very little traffic so early in the morning, and I made the trip to her house in less than half an hour.
I rang the buzzer, and Tamara’s housekeeper opened the gates. As I passed on through into the blooming foliage that lined the gravel driveway, I noticed the house was an exact replica of Tara, Scarlett O’Hara’s Civil War plantation in Gone With the Wind. Tamara may have been a fixture of the Hollywood scene for decades now, but she was still a southern girl at heart, and this home was a testament to her heritage.
I parked the car and before I had a chance to ring the bell, the door opened and Tamara’s housekeeper, a large stout woman with a stern face, ushered me in and led me through the hallway, past the kitchen, and into the backyard, where Tamara sat at a round glass table next to a kidney-shaped pool with a small waterfall.
She picked over a silver bowl of fresh strawberries and blueberries and clutched a champagne glass filled with what I assumed was a mimosa. When the housekeeper handed me my own champagne glass, one sip confirmed it. Tamara was always up for a buzz-inducing drink, even at six in the morning. Never too early to dull the pain.
I never expected Tamara to invite me over to her house to thank me. I thought, if anything, she would warn me to stop hounding her or else I would wind up with a gut full of lead like her nasty husband Spiro. But given everything this woman had been through in the last few weeks—losing her son, facing yet another bad choice in men (the worst yet), and escaping a near arrest for murder—she was a bit more reflective and subdued.
Tamara stared at the pool, her eyes hidden behind an expensive pair of Gucci sunglasses.
“You were right, Jarrod. I did blame you for Willard being gay. I needed some reason to explain it. And because you two were so close, I decided it had to be your fault. He probably would have been very happy with you. He’d probably still be alive.”
Her face remained still, but I could tell she was crying. She adjusted her giant sunglasses to make sure I didn’t see the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“We were kids,” I said softly.
“What bothers me the most . . .” Her voice got caught in her throat. She was trying to maintain her composure, but talking about Willard was difficult for her.
She cleared her throat and continued. “What bothers me the most is that he wanted to please me so much that he gave up you, his first true love. He let you go because he was so desperate for me to accept him and love him. And yet, I kept distancing myself from him. My only son . . . I pushed him away . . . just because he wasn’t what I wanted him to be.”
“I think he knew you loved him.”
“You’re just being nice. He never knew. Sure, I used to tell him all the time when he was a big star. But then, after you two were in the tabloids, and the work stopped coming, I resented him. I thought his life was over at sixteen years old. And I never told him how I really felt ever again.”
She threw her hands to her face and began sobbing. I sat there watching her in so much pain, and I felt helpless.
She grabbed a cloth napkin off the glass table and dabbed at her face.
“And then I go and marry Spiro . . . who . . . who does the unthinkable . . . to my own son . . .”
Her voice trailed off. We sat there in silence for a while, and then she gathered the strength to continue, to get everything off her chest.
“I had heard rumors about Spiro after we got married. Christ, we even paid off a hustler or two to keep quiet about his past, but I never in a million years ever thought he would go after Willard. When I left the psychic, I ran home and just threw up. For hours. I stayed in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet, unable to lift my head. Every bone in my body ached.” She swallowed the rest of her Mimosa. “And then I got mad. Frightfully mad. I wanted him to pay.”
“And that’s when you decided to kill him? I know you did, Tamara. It’s only a matter of time before the police prove it.”
She didn’t even flinch. She just kept staring at the pool. I had no idea what was going on behind those large Gucci sunglasses, but I could tell she knew I was right.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said. “I was so confused. Did Willard kill himself because Spiro drove him to it? Did
he get drunk to forget that his own stepfather had tried to put the moves on him? Or . . . did Spiro hire someone to . . . ?”
She let the idea hang in the air. Tamara picked up a strawberry and took a bite. “It wasn’t premeditated. I didn’t go to Palm Springs to murder him. I was going to confront him, have it out, demand a divorce. But when I broached the subject, he was so arrogant, so unapologetic. He didn’t even care that I knew he made advances towards Willard. In his mind, he had already decided to kill me. I knew he carried a gun. I grabbed it and started firing. Bang! Bang! Bang! It felt so good. The shock in his face was worth the life sentence I would probably get for doing it. Honestly, Jarrod, deep down I felt killing Spiro was the first positive contribution besides Willard that I ever made to this world.”
I noticed the housekeeper hovering by the open sliding glass doors that led into the kitchen. She was getting quite an earful. But she was loyal to her mistress, and would never rat on her. I, on the other hand, was the wild card. What made Tamara think I wouldn’t rush right home and recount all the gory details to my policeman boyfriend? At the moment she didn’t seem to care.
“I was consumed with so much anger, so much passion,” she said. “I never bothered to stop and think of the logistics or how I would explain it. But then you just showed up out of nowhere with a story that put me in the clear. It might as well have been gift-wrapped with a big red bow on it.”
“Tamara, why are you telling me all this?”
“Because . . . for so long I’ve been such a scared little rabbit, so afraid I might make Spiro angry . . . Well, now Spiro’s gone . . .”
Thanks to her, I thought, but I wasn’t about to say it.
“And now I want to set things right . . . with my son, with everyone. And if Willard is up there watching me, maybe just this once, he’ll have reason to be proud. I don’t even care if I go to jail.”
“You won’t go to jail.”
She snorted. “It was a long drive back from Palm Springs this morning. I had plenty of time to think about telling you all of this, and what the consequences would be. Believe me, I went around and around and I kept coming back to a picture of me in a drab gray smock with an embroidered number on the front.”
“We can always keep this between us,” I said.
She looked at me. I couldn’t tell if she was relieved or angry that I wasn’t going to share this information with the police. In Tamara’s mind, I believed there was a part of her who wanted to be punished for her past sins, and that giving up her freedom was a small price to pay for abandoning her only son. But I had other ideas.
“I’m never going to breathe a word about this to anyone, Tamara. Because I know in my heart that Spiro had every intention of killing you. He was a callous and ruthless human being and no one’s ever going to miss him. What if you hadn’t shot him in the mud bath? Then he would have found the opportunity to do the same to you. And now you’d be dead, and he’d be here to carry on. To hurt more people.”
I stood up and put my hand on her shoulder. She gently rested her face on my forearm. “And the only other outcome I can think of,” I said, “would be if you had managed to defend yourself from his attack, and if that had happened, then Spiro would still be dead and we’d both still be here now. So in my opinion, everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”
She wasn’t entirely convinced I was right. And to be honest, neither was I. But the logic made us both feel better, and I was betting this would be the last time either of us ever discussed it.
Tamara kissed my arm, and then stood up. She took her sunglasses off and smiled at me. For the first time I noticed she had the same haunting green eyes as Willard.
“You’ve got a good soul, Jarrod. I wish I had been smart enough to see that when you were sixteen. It might have saved us both a lot of heartache.”
I gave her a peck on the cheek and turned to leave.
“Jarrod?”
I swiveled back around on my heel.
“There’s one more thing. I didn’t tell you this earlier when you were asking questions about the night Willard died because I was afraid it might somehow implicate Spiro, and I honestly didn’t think it meant anything.”
“What?”
“Earlier that day I heard Spiro on the phone. He was talking in hushed tones and being very secretive. I started to suspect he might be having an affair with another woman, maybe one of my friends he was always flirting with, so I picked up the other line to listen. He was talking to a young man. It sounded like Spiro was pressuring him to do something for him, and the young man sounded agitated, but before I could make out what they were talking about, Spiro hung up.”
“Did you get the man’s name?”
“No. But later I asked Spiro about it. He said it was a massage therapist. He knew Willard liked to get bodywork done to relieve his chronic tension, and this was a guy Willard hired on occasion. Spiro told me he was going to treat Willard to a massage for his birthday, and was just setting up the appointment.”
I knew the young man she was talking about was Eli. And Eli had never mentioned that he had been at Willard’s house the night he died. It was worth another trip to find out why he omitted such a crucial piece of information.
Tamara sighed. “I let myself believe whatever Spiro told me. I could barely accept the reality of my son being gay. To even speculate about my husband was too much to bear. I don’t know what this man’s relationship was to Spiro, but they sounded close. Close enough that this man was willing to drop everything and do whatever Spiro wanted.”
“I promise you, we will get to the bottom of this. And you’ll know what really happened to your son,” I said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
She put her sunglasses back on and returned to her private world of grief as I bolted back through the house towards my car. I was heading straight for Laurel Canyon and one final confrontation with Eli the tattooed hustler and his identical twin brother Elliot.
Chapter Thirty-Two
As I roared up toward the top of Mulholland Drive, a famous twisting and treacherous stretch of road on top of a mountain that straddles the city of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, I jammed my cell phone into its cradle for a quick charge-up. It had been dead since Palm Springs and was in desperate need of an energy boost. I finally remembered to bring along my cigarette lighter adapter from home. An actor without a cell phone was about as useful as a web designer without a computer.
I was overwhelmed with theories. Had Eli been conning me from the start? His valiant show of vulnerability during my last visit had completely won me over. I believed his sincere plea of innocence. I even bought into his fear of Spiro. Was it all an act? Did he help me out by telling me where Spiro planned on doing away with his wife just to throw the scent off him? And what about his walking reflection, Elliot? He was the one who persuaded his brother to talk. Was it out of concern for Tamara’s fate, or part of a cool pact with his brother to cover up a murderous misdeed they had pulled off together?
As I jerked the wheel and flew up Laurel Canyon Boulevard on the city side of the hill, I knew I would have to wing it once I found the brothers. But I had been a pit bull all along, grabbing onto tiny pieces of evidence and not letting them go, and I wasn’t about to soften up now when I was so close.
I didn’t even make it to the house on Lookout Mountain. As I rounded a steep corner, I saw two lean hard bodies up ahead, both in matching blue shorts and white tank tops, jogging down the canyon road side by side.
I zipped past them before I had a chance to get a good look at them. Staring back at them through the rearview mirror, I concluded it had to be the twins. Who else had such gloriously matching tight asses? I must have stared a few seconds too long because when my eyes glanced back at the road in front of me, a speeding black SUV was directly in front of me. All I could see was a junior development executive with a smart suit and frizzy red hair, cell phone clamped to her ear, screaming at our impending collision.
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I spun the wheel with all my might and slammed on the brakes. The Beamer squealed off the road, hurling dirt and brush into the air before barreling into a ditch and screaming to an abrupt stop. It was a miracle I didn’t hit a tree, but nevertheless, the airbag sprung out of the steering wheel, pinning me in my seat. The SUV disappeared, racing to one of the studios around the bend where the D-girl inevitably had a breakfast meeting with Ben Affleck or another rising generation Y star of his magnitude.
I sat in my car, trapped for a few moments before a shadow fell over me. I looked up to see Eli and Elliot, both dripping with sweat that glistened in the morning sun, staring down at me with big smiles on their faces.
Eli spoke first, and I could only tell it was Eli from his eagle tattoo. “If you wanted to get our attention, you could have just waved.”
“Are you all right?” Elliot asked as he and his brother opened the car door and tried to extricate me from the suffocating air bag.
“No, no I’m not all right,” I said huffily.
Each twin grabbed one of my hands and yanked hard. I fell out of the car into their waiting arms. If I weren’t so suspicious of them at this point, I would’ve enjoyed the moment more.
“Are you hurt?” Eli checked me over for wounds.
“No. I’m pissed. I’m pissed at you, Eli. For lying to me.”
The brothers exchanged a quizzical look. Eli was cute on his own. But standing next to his brother, they were a pair of aces to die for. I attempted to put any carnal thoughts out of my mind by trying to remember that at one point Eli had gone to great efforts to drown me in a lap pool.
“You were at Willard’s the night he died.”
“No, I wasn’t.” His voice cracked. He was a terrible liar, which made me believe he had been telling me the truth before.