“I didn’t expect to see death in Shangri-la,” I observed.
“Shangri-la? I don’t understand what you mean. It’s just a dead fish,” Patricia said from the gazebo.
Claire peered down into the little stream and whispered to me, “You see how complicated the wealthy make things?”
“Maggie’s making fun of our garden, Mother.” Victoria leaned against the filigree railing, scrutinizing Claire and me as we entered the shade of the big white structure.
“But it’s just a dead fish. I don’t understand what the problem is.” She settled herself on a white wicker lounge filled with sherbet-colored pillows.
“I agree,” Claire said. “We live in a society that is more concerned with the death of minor species than the death of the human species. Roger Valcovich was murdered last night.”
“Who?” Patricia looked at me. “Oh. Isn’t that the man you were asking about at the Kenilworths’?”
I nodded.
“Well, we don’t know him. Ask the Kenilworths. They’re capable of most anything.”
“I think our attitudes about death are shaped in childhood,” Victoria said. “When I was five I won a goldfish at a school fair. It looked like a minute lady’s fan floating in the water—as if some beautiful woman had accidentally dropped it. When I woke up the next morning, the fish was dead. I remember staring at it for a very long time, thinking, This is death. I should cry. So I did. That’s when I first learned I could cry on cue. I knew, way down deep, I just wanted to get rid of it. And I did. Flushed it down the toilet. Mother was proud of me.”
“Screw the damn goldfish! I want that photograph. Where is it?!” Patricia snapped.
“We know that you have a copy of the same photograph. We would like to see it,” Claire said, leaning against a carved white post.
“How do you know?” Victoria asked sharply.
“Because I think you’re being blackmailed. And I imagine the blackmailer wrote something on the back of it.”
Patricia’s hand went to her mouth. Victoria stared at us with a calculating coldness. I looked at Claire. How did she know all this? Or was she just guessing? Or was this her plan?
“What makes you think we’re being blackmailed?” Victoria asked.
“Ellis…” Patricia said. “He told? In the suicide note?”
“Yes,” Claire lied. She held up the envelope with the picture of her servants in it.
My head and heart began to pound, and I knew my body wasn’t just reacting to an overdose of booze.
“What did he say?” Patricia asked timidly.
“Mother!” Victoria faced Claire. “I’m not easily frightened. I will pay you five thousand dollars. And that’s all I will do.”
“No, no. Wait!” Patricia pleaded to Victoria. “They’ve already seen the photograph. What can it matter if you show them the copy?”
“Be quiet, Mother. That’s my offer.”
“Let’s go, Miss Hill.” We moved toward the stairs.
“Wait!” Patricia screamed. She turned to her daughter. “Victoria, please, please! Show them. We’ve worked so hard.”
Victoria stared at the envelope in Claire’s hand. “Show me what’s in the envelope first.”
“I’ve already explained my terms.”
“Please, Victoria, I must know what he said.” Patricia stroked her daughter’s hand.
“They may not have the photograph, Mother. Something’s wrong. I don’t trust them.”
“Maggie’s already seen it.” Patricia looked at me. “When you found Ellis. You saw it then, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I lied.
Patricia turned back to Victoria. “You see? She already knows.”
“Who was in the photograph?” Victoria asked me.
I looked at Claire. Claire nodded. I reminded myself to thank her later for that shake of the head. What in the hell did she want me to do? Tell them what Bobby Alt told us? Make up another story? What? I decided, as usual, to play it down the middle.
“It was a picture of Ellis and a woman.”
“Who did the woman look like?” Victoria asked, as calm as a district attorney.
“She looked a whole lot like you.”
“And what did…Father…write on the back of the photograph?”
I was trapped.
“That’s what you’re paying us for,” Claire said flatly.
“Please…please…I want it to be over. I want you to be safe.” Patricia was sobbing and stumbling toward the stairs.
“Mother! Don’t!”
“I’ll get it. I’ll be right back.” She hurried over the footbridge.
“Mother!”
A blue jay screamed and flew out of one of the weepy trees with a small egg in its beak. Blue jays didn’t belong in Shangri-la, either.
I sat down on a chair. The wicker creaked under my weight. Claire remained standing.
Victoria stared at us. “Now my personal life is as cheap as my television show.”
I felt a little cheap myself and a little uneasy. I wanted to know how we were going to get out of Shangri-la without letting them know we didn’t have the photograph.
The little girl appeared on the footbridge. She stood just at the top of it, staring across at us. Victoria moved across the gazebo and leaned out toward her.
“Mommy loves you, darling,” she called across to the child.
The child rose up on half-point and curved her arms over her head and twirled. She ended by curling herself into a curtsy. Thick blond curls bounced.
“That’s very good!” Victoria applauded enthusiastically.
The child smiled, but her eyes remained emotionless. Victoria blew her a kiss. The child leaped up into the air and caught it. Her hand tightly closed around her mother’s imaginary kiss. She ran back up the garden and into the house.
“You have a lovely daughter,” Claire said. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’ve never been married. Like me, my daughter, Rebecca, has never had a real father. Of course, when you make the kind of money I make, I’m not sure she really needs one. I’m not so sure she needs any man. I’m not so sure Rebecca isn’t better off…” Tears filled her eyes. Her cheeks flushed. “I sometimes think if I hadn’t pursued my father, none of this would have happened.”
“What do you mean, you ‘pursued’ him?” Claire asked.
Victoria sat on the wicker lounge. Two sherbet-colored pillows fell to the floor.
“I was only eighteen. All I wanted was him to acknowledge me. No, more than that—love me. Like a father should love his daughter. But he wasn’t capable of that kind of love. He desired me. And I was so needy. You don’t look well, Maggie. Blackmail make you feel a little queasy?”
“It’s hard for me to think of Ellis Kenilworth…”
“Seducing his daughter?”
“You’ve been seeing your father since you were eighteen?” Claire asked.
“After our first couple of encounters…I stopped seeing him. I loathed myself. He never tried to get in contact. All those years of him not seeing me. All those years of letting Mother and me scrounge while they stayed safe and rich. As I told you in the limo, Mother had a way of turning disaster into opportunity. Of course, she was smart enough not to tell the papers that it was my father who raped me. That might turn the public off. Make the sex object less desirable—even pathetic. But it was the beginning. We were on our way to being safe and rich.”
“Why did you start seeing him again?” Claire asked.
I looked out at the garden. Victoria Moor had always been unreal to me. I couldn’t handle the very real, tortured look on her face.
“Three years ago, when I turned thirty, I decided that I was famous enough and wealthy enough to go back and seduce him. Eleanor didn’t think Mother was good enough for her son. Well…I was. Would you like to hear the intimate details? I think you should get your money’s worth.”
“That’s all right,” I mumbled.
&nb
sp; “Maggie’s not as good at this as you are.” The depleted eyes stared at Claire.
“It’s a matter of experience,” Claire said.
“Isn’t it always? Do you know what I experienced? Power. Power over my father. Finally.”
I watched Patricia emerge from the house, waving a white envelope in her hand like a flag of surrender. She hurried around the pool and down the rolling lawn. As she reached the top of the footbridge a gust of wind blew her hat off. It floated in the air. Patricia grabbed wildly at it.
“Mother,” Victoria whispered sadly.
The hat sailed slowly down into the stream. She watched it for a moment, then hurried into the shade of the gazebo.
“My beautiful hat!” Patricia gasped as she sat next to her daughter on the lounge.
“Tomorrow the gardener can scoop it out with the dead fish,” Victoria offered.
“You’ve been crying. What have they said to you?”
“Nothing, Mother.”
She grabbed her daughter’s wrist. “What have you told them?”
“The truth.”
All the tightening, all the lifting, couldn’t keep Patricia from suddenly looking very old.
“Only as you see it. He did it to you. He’s responsible. Not you.” She turned on us. “He did it to her!”
“I wasn’t a child.”
“But with him you were.” She stroked her daughter’s cheek. “Don’t you understand? You still are. You are. You’re mine.” She turned to Claire. “Here, look at it! Damn you!”
She threw the envelope at her. It fluttered to Claire’s feet. Claire picked it up and took out the photo and studied it. Patricia and Victoria sat on the lounge holding on to each other. I sat on the little wicker chair, feeling like shit and wondering if Victoria Moor was the ultimate good daughter. I took a deep breath, stood up, and peered over Claire’s shoulder at the photograph.
Ellis Kenilworth faced the camera, pressing Victoria Moor to his body, his mouth wide with pleasure, eyes half-closed with satisfaction. Victoria’s arms embraced him. Her head tilted back and to the side; a profusion of blond hair cascaded down, framing her chiseled nose, turned-up chin, and opened lips. A white blouse draped off one shoulder, revealing a curve of breast. Ellis’s hand cupped her ass. His other hand was under her skirt, pushing her bare leg up around his waist. Dark clouds formed an abstract pattern over their heads. A disturbing, overwhelming passion emanated from this grainy black-and-white snapshot. Claire turned it over. Words cut out from a newspaper were pasted to the back. They read: THERE ARE MORE.
Patricia whimpered.
Victoria said, “I look as if I’m enjoying it, don’t I? Maybe I was.”
“Stop talking like that,” Patricia said.
“Can’t you just see it by the cashier’s stand in your supermarket?” Victoria’s mouth curved down into a deprecating smile.
“Where was this picture taken?” Claire asked.
“I think at Zuma Beach. We sometimes went up there.”
“Do you know who took the photograph?”
“No. All I can think of is that somebody either followed us or just happened to be there who knew who I was and…found out Ellis was my father. May we see your photograph?”
“When did you receive this in the mail?”
“About six months ago.”
“Could you tell where the picture was mailed from?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Was Ellis being blackmailed at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“And you have no idea who is blackmailing you?”
“That’s my business.”
“How do you pay?”
“I repeat, that’s my business.”
“Why have you never gone to the police?”
“I’m not interested in justice. I’m interested in keeping my life private.”
“In other words, you’re going to go on paying your blackmailers.” Claire dropped her walking stick. “Would you pick that up for me, Miss Hill?”
I leaned over and retrieved the walking stick.
“As I said, that’s my business. Give me your photo.” Victoria held out her hand.
“Tell her, Miss Hill,” Claire said as I handed the stick back to her.
“Tell her what?”
“Tell her the truth.”
“The truth?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going on?” Patricia moved toward me.
“We…ah…don’t have…the photograph…We…just wanted to see what it was that you were looking—”
“You bitch!” Patricia was on me, her nails digging into my arms.
“Mother! Stop it! Stop it!” Victoria screamed.
I shoved Patricia as hard as I could. She staggered backwards across the gazebo, falling on the lounge. More sherbet-colored pillows spilled.
Claire handed the photograph in the envelope back to Patricia. “Thank you for your time.”
Breathing hard, she snatched it from Claire’s hands. “Get out! Get out of here!” She clutched the envelope to her breast and sobbed. Victoria leaned over her mother, stroking her shoulders.
We made our way over the footbridge. I could smell the dead rotting fish. Hell, everything and everyone was rotten. Kenilworth’s body was rotting, and so was my image of him. I was rotten for tricking two desperate women. Only Claire, striding boldly in front of me, was determinedly above the rottenness. But then she could stay in bed and not get her clothes wrinkled.
“Hurry, before they open that envelope,” Claire said, holding one of the French doors for me.
“You didn’t give them their photo back?” I exclaimed, entering the cool darkness of the English pub.
“I exchanged theirs for mine.”
“When?”
“While you were picking up my walking stick. Being a detective is a little like being a magician. When you’re doing something devious with your left hand, make sure the audience is looking at your right hand. In this case you were my right hand. Of course, Patricia’s attack on you gave me a little extra time.”
We hurried by the bar. My arms began to throb and burn. I stopped to look. Patricia had left me with something to remember her by. Long welts swelled red from the inside of my elbows to my wrists.
“Now, that’s really rotten!” I moaned.
A hand reached out and grabbed me. I whirled around.
“Did you tell them I talked to you?” Bobby Alt asked desperately.
“No. But remember, Bobby, I can send you to jail,” I said viciously.
“But you can’t. You can’t,” he whined after me.
Why shouldn’t he feel rotten too?
We were out the front door. I looked up at the turret. The little girl with jaded eyes stared down at us. I wondered if she would grow up to be a good daughter.
Boulton aimed the Bentley down the drive. We pulled out onto the street. A silver Mercedes sped by us up the driveway. I recognized Brian Waingrove’s car.
13
WE WERE BACK AT Conrad Cottage. Claire sat with her long legs dangling over the arm of the Queen Anne. She peered through a magnifying glass at the photograph. I sat at the big table. The welts on my arms throbbed.
“My arms were the only part of my body that didn’t hurt. Now all of me hurts. I wish you would’ve let me in on the fact that I was going to be the diversion.”
“A serendipitous moment, I assure you. Boulton’s bringing you some sort of miracle medicine for cuts, scratches, et cetera. There’s something wrong with this photograph.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the photo, just the people in it.”
“Not the content. The angle. The camera is tilted upward. Do you know anything about photography?”
“Say cheese.”
“Neither do I.”
“You mean there is something you don’t know about?”
“I know my limitations, which frees me to surround myself with people who have abilities I do no
t possess.” She gave me a long, thorough look, then turned her attention back to the photograph. The telephone rang. I answered it.
“Conrad Cottage. Maggie Hill speaking.”
“Maggie, this is Sutton Kenilworth. Mother would like to meet with Claire Conrad around eight o’clock this evening, if that’s convenient.”
“Hold on.” I put my hand over the receiver. “Eleanor Kenilworth wants to see you tonight at eight if it’s convenient.”
She looked up from the photo. “Eight o’clock is a very civilized hour.”
“A very civilized hour,” I said into the phone.
“Judith told me about that poor Valcovich. Awful business. The police were here. A Detective Neil Brock found our name in Valcovich’s address book. He seemed to know that you had worked for Ellis.”
I’d forgotten Valcovich’s office was in Neil’s division. It wasn’t exactly the first thought that came to mind when I saw Valcovich’s corpse.
“I suppose you told the police the truth about the codicil.”
“Eight o’clock, then. Goodbye, Maggie.” He hung up the phone.
“Oh, hell. Neil’s the detective in charge of Valcovich’s murder.”
“Is he any good?” Claire asked.
“That’s not the point.” I stared at the welts on my arms. “I feel like Mrs. Henderson.”
“Who is Mrs. Henderson?”
“I saw her on the ‘Today’ show. She was a victim for twenty-two years.”
“I don’t think this case will last that long.”
Boulton came in with a silver tray covered with white linen and lined with little bottles of medicine.
“Here we are.” He set the tray on the table. “Hold out your arms.”
I did. He knelt down before me. I liked that. He poured some dreadful-looking liquid onto some cotton.
“Right.” He dabbed at my wounds, face somber with concentration.
“That stings.”
“Yes. Well, we don’t know where Patricia has been. I thought it best to use the strong stuff.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
The soft brown eyes looked up at me and I felt my brain turn even more female.
“I want you to take a look at this photograph, Boulton,” Claire said.
Mother Shadow Page 15