by Rick Copp
“Tamara Schulberg heard you on the phone with Spiro. He was hiring you for a job. Was it to kill Willard?”
“No!”
“Did you get him drunk and drown him in the pool?”
“No, I didn’t do anything!”
“Come on, Eli, you expect me to believe that?”
“He didn’t hurt anyone. Eli would never do anything like that,” Elliot interjected as he put a comforting arm around his brother.
“In case you’re both suffering from a memory lapse, Eli had no trouble dunking me when I asked too many questions about Willard!”
“He was scared,” Elliot said, “He was only trying to warn you off.”
“Why? What did you have to hide, Eli?”
Eli gazed at the gravel. Dust was settling from my hair-raising near accident, and morning traffic was picking up as we stood at the side of the road. “I did go over there that night, but I didn’t kill him.”
“I’m listening.”
“Willard and I knew each other for a couple of months. He saw my ad in Frontiers, and started calling my voice mail. I’d go over to his house once, maybe twice a week. He really dug me, and to be honest, I really liked him. Even though he paid me for my time, I always looked forward to seeing him. We didn’t always have sex. Sometimes we’d just hang out and talk. God, I used to think it was such a shame we hooked up the way we did, because if we had met at a cocktail party or in a bookstore, it might have been a completely different kind of relationship. Something real, you know?”
“Sounds like it was real,” I said.
Eli nodded perfunctorily. He didn’t necessarily believe me. Like most hustlers, no matter how good-looking they are, they rarely overflow with a lot of self-worth.
“He confided to me that he was having trouble with his stepfather,” Eli said.
“I know all about that. How Spiro made a pass at Willard, and got rejected.”
“He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept following him. Everywhere Willard went. To auditions. To his therapist. There was no getting rid of him. He was terrified Willard was going to blow the whistle on him.”
“What got you involved?” I asked.
“One night when I was leaving Willard’s, I saw Spiro lurking in the shadows. He watched me leave. I was worried about what he was going to do to Willard, so I came back to check up on them. I heard them shouting. Willard was threatening to go to his mother if Spiro didn’t leave him alone and Spiro was trying to push his way inside. Finally, Spiro gave up and left. About a week later, I got a call from Spiro. He wanted to hire me.”
“To do what?”
“Scare the shit out of Willard.”
Eli sighed, a shameful look on his face.
Elliot piped up, “Eli needed cash badly. We both owed a lot of money, and neither of us knew what we were going to do. We were under a lot of pressure, and the tips I was making up in San Francisco weren’t going to cover our debts.”
“So he offered to pay you to go rough up Willard a little bit, threaten to bash his head in with a baseball bat or something if he breathed a word to his mother,” I said.
Eli nodded. “Something like that. Yeah.”
Elliot, responding to an innate need to protect his twin, interjected, “It’s true Eli went over there, but he wasn’t going to hurt Willard. He was just going to try and reason with him.”
“What happened?” I said.
“I called Willard, told him I knew it was his birthday, and offered to come over and give him a free massage. He said some friends were throwing him a party that night, but if I could get to his place by four-thirty, we’d have time for a session. When I got there, he was feeling pretty good. I guess he had just landed some kind of part on TV or something, so we celebrated.”
“You gave him a massage?”
“Among other things.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was going to hold him down while we were fooling around, slap his face a couple of times, and tell him who had really sent me there and why. But I couldn’t. He was so happy. Between getting the part and you throwing him a party, he was walking on air. I couldn’t ruin all that. It was then that I realized how much I cared for Willard. I could never do anything to hurt him.”
“So you left him there alive?”
“Yes. I left and called Elliot in San Francisco. I didn’t know what I was going to do. Spiro had already paid me a thousand bucks. I was a mess.”
“I told him to keep the money and skip town,” Elliot said. “Willard was heading off to your party. Calling his mother was the last thing on his mind. We knew we had some time before Spiro found out Eli didn’t go through with it.”
“I headed for San Francisco the next morning,” Eli said. “I had been on the 5-freeway north about ten minutes when I heard on the radio that Willard had died. I knew then that Spiro would never find out that I didn’t do what he paid me to do.”
“Weren’t you afraid Spiro would think it was you? That you went too far and accidentally killed Willard instead of just scaring him?” I asked.
“Maybe for half a second,” Eli said, “But then I thought, if he tells anyone, he’s only implicating himself.”
“And you swear what you’re telling me is true?”
“Yes,” Eli said emphatically. “On my life.”
I must have given him a look that said I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced, because he followed up with, “On my brother’s life.”
I finally believed him.
“What time did you leave Willard that night, Eli?” I said.
“Five-thirty, six at the latest. Why?”
“I spoke with Willard on the phone around seven-fifteen and he was just leaving for my house. So whoever killed him had to have arrived sometime after we hung up.”
Flashes of Willard’s body face down in the pool kept distracting me. I saw the empty tequila bottles next to the chaise lounge. “There was a lot of alcohol found in his system. Did you two have a drink to celebrate his birthday?”
Eli shook his head.
“Not even a glass of wine? There were two glasses and a half empty bottle on his coffee table.”
“Willard never drank before he worked out. He must have had it after.”
“Excuse me?”
“He called his trainer while I was there. I remember him joking that he had to burn off ten pounds in forty-five minutes if he was going to spend the whole night stuffing himself with ice cream and cake.”
There was no way Willard could have driven to Custom Fitness on Melrose Avenue, worked out with his trainer, showered, got dressed, and driven to Beachwood Canyon in such a short amount of time. I spoke with him by phone at seven-fifteen, which meant if he had worked out, it was an in-home session. That put one more person at his home the night he died: his personal trainer Terry Duran.
Chapter Thirty-Three
By the time I arrived at Custom Fitness on Melrose, the hot summer sun was descending in the west. A cool breeze swept through the city, and there was a strange tension in the air, as if the universe was trying to tell me something, but I unwisely chose to ignore the signs, again.
I raced up the steps to the second floor of the building and found the gym empty except for a perky brunette with a pixie cut, wearing a bright blue form-fitting spandex one-piece.
She flashed me a wide smile. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Terry. She around?”
“Nope. Finished up with her last client about an hour ago.”
“Oh, we were supposed to work out.”
She frowned and checked the schedule. Obviously it was unlike Terry to forget about an appointment. Miss Perky perused the page, and flipped over to the next one.
“What’s your name?” she asked, now frantic to get to the bottom of this scheduling snafu.
“Jarrod. Jarrod Jarvis.”
“I don’t see it. Are you sure it was for today?”
“I called to confirm this morn
ing.”
“Let me try her cell phone.” She grabbed the receiver next to her and dialed. She smiled uncomfortably as she waited for Terry to pick up.
“Maybe she’s just running late,” I said.
“No. I’m sure she was done for the day. She said something about going over to her grandmother’s house in Los Feliz.”
Could her grandmother be Gladys Phelan? I was sure there were plenty of grandmothers in the Los Feliz area, but those bells and whistles were going off in my head again, which had to mean something. It was strange, however, that Mrs. Phelan talked non-stop about her grandson Theodore but never mentioned a granddaughter.
“Hi, Terry,” Miss Perky said brightly, confident the matter would now be dealt with and solved. “I have a client of yours here with me. He says he was supposed to work out with you now . . .” She glanced up at me. “What was your name again?”
“Jarrod Jarvis.”
“Right. Jarrod Jarvis.” She listened for a moment, and then shifted nervously as Terry talked on the other end of the line.
“Terry says you’re not a client, and you have no appointment,” she said, a sheepish look on her face.
I grabbed the phone and said with a cheery grin, “Hi, Terry. Are you sure we don’t have a session scheduled?”
“What’s this about?” Terry said coolly. “I don’t know anything about any appointment. What are you trying to pull?”
“I know you have six-thirty p.m. on Fridays free now that Willard is no longer with us. Am I right? Wasn’t six-thirty on Friday reserved for Willard? I’m pretty sure it was. I know for a fact you were at his house on that day, at that time, the night he died.”
There was a long interminable pause, and then I heard a loud click. I flashed Miss Perky a winning smile and handed the phone back to her. “Her cell phone cut out. Must be going through the canyon,” I innocently offered.
“I suppose so,” she said, not entirely convinced.
I had hit pay dirt. Terry’s reaction had confirmed everything in my mind. And it was time to bring down the final curtain on this long-running show of deceit and murder.
I was on my way out the door when Miss Perky spoke up. “You’ll have to forgive Terry. She’s been a bit of a mess lately. Not only did she lose one of her clients, her therapist died too.”
I stopped cold. “Her therapist?”
“Yes. Nice man. He was murdered. At a dance club in the valley of all places,” she said, a disdainful look on her face as if she had just smelt a two-week-old piece of fish.
I spun around. “Was his name Vito Wilde?”
Miss Perky perked up. “Yes. I think it was.”
I was out the door.
I knew it would be impossible for me to break into Vito Wilde’s office and pore over his patient files. The office was locked and sealed off for the on-going police investigation. And the thought of calling Charlie wasn’t a desirable option either. I knew he was home, taking a much-needed break from crime busting and bailing me out of jail, so I decided not to test the limits of our relationship. Besides, my cell phone was only partially recharged so I probably wouldn’t have gotten past “Hello.”
My only remaining alternative was to follow my hunch, and speed over to Los Feliz for one final chat with schizophrenic granny Gladys Phelan. I had no idea which personality to expect when I got there. Doddering, daffy talk show fan granny or cold, rude badass gutter mouth granny? Or maybe I’d find someone entirely new.
When I arrived at the familiar tiny house with the peeling paint, blue tarp, and unkempt yard, there was still that persistent sense of dread in the air.
I figured if things got rough and Granny jumped me, I could probably take her in a fight. Or maybe I was being too cocky.
I rapped on the door. No answer. I pressed my ear against the door to see if I could hear her television set. It was quiet inside. If the TV wasn’t on, then she was definitely not home. I jiggled the door handle. It was locked. I snuck around back, stepping over weeds and dirt before finding a broken window that led into the basement. I reached my arm through, flipped the latch, and opened the loose, flimsy window frame with ease. I was becoming a pro at breaking and entering. But I knew if I got caught again, I’d be right back on the front pages of the tabloids. The headlines would scream, “FORMER CHILD STAR A SERIAL TRESPASSER! BREAKS IN BUT DOESN’T STEAL ANYTHING! WHAT SICK GAME WILL HE PLAY NEXT?”
The house was very still and sweltering hot. Beads of sweat formed on my brow as I made my way through the cluttered rooms, looking for anything that might connect Terry to Gladys and Teddy.
In the back bedroom, I found the computer. It was turned on. I placed my hand on top of the monitor and found it was warm. Somebody had been using it only minutes earlier.
Was Gladys home and just hiding in a closet waiting to spring out at me? She had sworn to me that she never touched the computer. Only her grandson Theodore ever had cause to use it. I swung around. Was Teddy hiding in the closet? Was he about to pounce on me? It was deathly quiet. I stood there, frozen for a moment, straining to hear any sounds that might alert me to someone else in the house, but there were none.
I started walking out of the room when I spotted a framed photo on the dresser. It was a snapshot of a young man, very handsome, probably in his early twenties. What struck me about him was how effeminate his features were. So smooth and delicate in the face, but his arms were thick and his legs muscular. I marveled at how much he looked like Terry Duran. Were they twins, like Eli and Elliot?
And then I noticed the ring on his finger in the picture. It was a gold ring with a small green emerald in its center. It could have been a graduation ring or a fraternity ring. But I knew it was the same ring the intruder wore who attacked me in my house that night with a knife.
The attacker had been Theodore Phelan, and Theodore Phelan was probably attempting to protect Terry, his sister or cousin or whoever.
Terry was the one who had been seeing Vito Wilde. And the night Vito Wilde met me at the bar in Silverlake he mentioned that someone was following him. He assumed it was Spiro, who was afraid that Willard was blabbing to his therapist all about his stepfather’s unsavory advances. But what if it wasn’t Spiro? What if it was another patient who was connected to Willard? What if this patient was afraid that Vito was going to tell me something else? Something that would put him or her in serious hot water? What was Terry hiding? What could be so dire that it caused her to murder two people and dispatch her brother Theodore to drive a knife through my chest to keep her secret?
And the fact that Gladys never mentioned Terry was still nagging at me. What was that all about?
I heard the door open, and someone shuffle inside. It was Gladys. She made her way to the kitchen, and I heard her start to unpack some grocery bags. I carefully slipped open a window, then slowly and quietly climbed out as the sweat from my forehead stung my eyes. I turned back to close the window so she wouldn’t know I had been there when I felt movement behind me.
A blunt object struck the back of my head. A jolt of pain shot through my entire body. I had trouble keeping my balance, stumbled, and then everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Four
My head was pounding when I opened my eyes and found myself engulfed in darkness. I tried to stretch my legs, but I was encased in what seemed like a coffin. Yet I was moving. I heard the hum of an engine, so it didn’t take me long to figure out I was in the trunk of a car.
The panic slowly seeped through my body, spreading and growing like a cancer. I had been claustrophobic since I was twelve and we filmed the one hour third season opener of Go To Your Room! on location in Honolulu, Hawaii. In the episode, which was a direct rip-off of a famous Brady Bunch three-parter, I stumbled upon an ancient Polynesian artifact that some two-bit thugs wanted, and the show climaxed with me getting trapped in a cave. We were a family sitcom that had no business doing crime capers, but our new head writer was so distracted by a nasty palimony suit, he banged out whate
ver came into his head.
My parents didn’t care about the implausibility of the script. They were just thrilled the whole family got a free trip to Hawaii.
When we filmed the scenes of me stuck in the cave, the director was so impressed with my performance he said, “I think I smell an Emmy.”
But I wasn’t acting. The short breaths were real. The cries for help were real. The intense feelings of isolation and alarm were all real. And ever since that day, the mere suggestion of being in an enclosed space stirred up panic attacks and meltdowns worthy of the late great Judy Garland.
I kicked the trunk lid over and over with my foot. It was as if I was trying to channel all the terror sweeping through my body into some kind of superhuman strength. I honestly thought I would be able to kick hard enough for it to pop open.
After several tries, common sense prevailed, and I chose to save my energy. What was I going to do? Theodore Phelan could be driving me out to the desert with plans to shoot me through the heart, and leave my body for the vultures as an all-you-can eat Sunday brunch. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious. Maybe hours. We might already be in Arizona or Nevada or even as far north as Oregon for all I knew.
As I rolled over on my back and tried to visualize myself in a wide-open meadow with lots of open space to move around and breathe, I felt a sharp, cutting pain in my left butt cheek. My cell phone! I had stuffed it in my back pocket earlier when I left the car to sneak inside Gladys’ house. I could call Charlie. But I had only been able to charge it for a few minutes. I had no idea if the phone had enough juice to make even one call. I flipped it open, and held my breath. The orange lights illuminated and I sighed with enormous relief. My euphoria was quickly dashed, however, when the digital words, “LOW BATTERY” started flashing. I quickly punched the speed dial to home button, and waited. It rang once. Twice. The phone began to BEEP, warning me I didn’t have much time before it would die.
After the third ring, I heard Charlie’s voice. “Hello?”
“Charlie, it’s me!”
“Where are you?”