Desert Spring

by Michael Craft

  “I want it. In fact, I’ve been planning on it. I asked Tide to draw up the contract rider this morning. You can sign on your way out if you like.”

  “I should have known—one step ahead of me.” I rose.

  The billionaire broke into a pouty frown. “Can’t you stay?”

  “For a few minutes, I suppose.” I sat again.

  Glenn smiled with satisfaction. “We need your advice.” He turned to the composer. “Don’t we, Lance?”

  As if waking from a nap, Lance replied, “Sure, Glenn, sure. If you say so.”

  “I do.” Glenn turned to me again. “When Lance wrote the incidental music for your production of Laura last fall, everyone agreed that it was a spectacular contribution to the overall effort.”

  Without hesitation, I concurred, “Lance’s original score made that show. He perfectly captured both the mood of the script and the style of the production. Lance’s music was every bit the equal of David Raksin’s famed movie score. In fact, better.” My words were true enough, but intentionally inflated for the sake of the composer’s self-image. No doubt about it—Lance Caldwell thrived on adulation, and I hoped to cajole him into lending his talents to future productions.

  “You’re far too generous,” he told me, lapping it up.

  “Not at all, Lance dear.” Turning to Glenn, I asked, “So what’s the, uh … problem?”

  “Let me back up,” explained Glenn. “When your production of Laura opened, inaugurating both the DAC theater program and the theater building itself, you invited numerous theatrical luminaries to the gala, including, of course, Spencer Wallace. And what a launch it was! We garnered national press.”

  “Yes, Glenn.” His unquenchable appetite for publicity went beyond boring.

  “At the reception following the performance, Wallace met Lance, and—”

  The composer picked up the story, telling me, “And Wallace took me aside to say that he’d absolutely adored my score—he loved the incidental music, which, in his words, ‘made the show.’”

  Though I myself had spoken the same words only moments earlier, I was galled to hear it attributed to Spencer and repeated by Lance. “Yes?” I asked patiently. Lance was oblivious to the steely edge my tone had taken on.

  “Well,” he continued, enjoying his own story with breathless excitement, “Wallace and I chatted for some time that night, and after a drink or two, he casually mentioned that I might compose the score for one of his future film projects. Needless to say, this struck me as a marvelous suggestion—to enhance the prestige of the school, I mean.” Lance smiled at Glenn.

  Glenn returned his smile.

  “So when I got wind of Photo Flash, I thought it would make an excellent vehicle for an original score. I phoned Wallace’s office, inquiring if I might have a look at the screenplay. I wanted to study it before I began toying with a few thematic sketches. The secretary I spoke to didn’t know anything, but when she checked and found out ‘who I was,’ she sent the script immediately.”

  I nodded knowingly. “I’m sure.” Deciding to accommodate him with another stroke, I added, “I’ll bet she’s still bragging up a storm in the steno pool, telling about the day when Lance Caldwell phoned.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. “So I studied the script, and I liked it—solid plotting, good dramatic tension—but I saw at once that the film could be immeasurably improved by a first-class score. And I wrote one.”

  “Hm.” I thought for a moment. “Really? I hadn’t heard anything about that. Neither Spencer nor Tanner ever mentioned that you were doing the music.”

  Glenn told me, “That’s where this story gets sticky.”

  “Oh?”

  Lance continued, “I wrapped up my work about a month ago. The score requires full orchestration, naturally—it’s lush, it’s me—and that gets pricey. So for presentation purposes, I recorded a synthesized version of the music, burnt it onto a CD, and sent it to Wallace along with the written score.”

  This struck me as standard procedure. “It sounds as if the project is moving right along.”

  “Well, uh … no, it isn’t.”

  Glenn leaned toward me, propping his elbows on the granite desk. Speaking softly, as if imparting something indelicate, he explained, “The project isn’t moving along, at least with regard to Lance’s score, because Wallace, in a word, hated it.”

  “Ah,” I said flatly. “I see.”

  “Can you imagine?” Lance was now huffy. “I poured my musical heart and soul into that score, only to have some Hollywood philistine tell me, ‘It’s not right for my script. I had something altogether different in mind.’”

  In recent days, I’d heard many unflattering assertions regarding Spencer Wallace’s character, but I’d never heard anyone describe him as less than a genius when it came to the art and craft of filmmaking. If Spencer felt Lance’s score was wrong for his script, it had surely missed by a mile. Softening this conclusion, I told Lance, “In the artistic realm, judgments can sometimes be highly subjective.”

  “But to reject it out of hand,” the composer blustered. “And then, to add insult to injury, he didn’t even offer a kill fee, while informing me that someone else had been hired—‘for the job,’ as he so crassly put it.” Harrumph.

  “It was unconscionable,” agreed Glenn.

  “Hold on a minute.” I could expect the prissy attitude from Lance, but not from Glenn, who was, first and foremost, a consummate businessman. I asked, “Did Lance have a contract with Spencer?”

  “Well, no …”

  Lance said, “It had been a gentleman’s agreement.”

  From what I’d heard, this gentleman’s agreement struck me as little more than cocktail chat.

  “Yes,” Lance conceded, “I wrote the score ‘on spec,’ so to speak, but given our mutual stature, it would have seemed almost boorish to sully our agreement with ironclad clauses and such.”

  To my way of thinking, there had been no agreement at all.

  “It’s not the money,” Lance insisted, “or the loss of valuable creative time. I’m not driven by such considerations. However, the affront to my talents and the smirch on my reputation are insufferable. Far worse”—Lance turned to Glenn—“rejecting the score belittles Desert Arts College and everything our founder has struggled to establish here.”

  I doubted if anyone even knew about the rejected score; this was the first I’d heard of it. So how could the misunderstanding possibly be construed as an insult to the school?

  But Glenn was more than eager to buy into Lance’s indignation. “I never liked him,” he said through a disgusted shudder. “As far as I’m concerned, Wallace got what he deserved.”

  “Stop that.” I was getting angry.

  “Even after I—D. Glenn Yeats—phoned Wallace personally to ask him to reconsider, he flat-out refused. Now, I ask you—is that the sort of treatment a man in my position deserves? Don’t I deserve greater respect than that?”

  Oh, Lord. We’d previously battled over the semantics of respect. In Glenn’s lexicon, it was synonymous with ass kissing.

  Glenn’s rant continued, “I’d read the script; Lance showed it to me. I’d heard the music; Lance played it for me. Why, the score was fine, just fine.”

  “It was perfect,” added Lance, tossing both arms.

  “Perfect,” echoed Glenn, rising from behind his desk.

  There was no point in arguing the aesthetic merits of music I’d never heard, so I calmly voiced a practical and evident observation: “These artistic disagreements are history now. Spencer is gone. There’s nothing to be done about it.”

  “But there is,” said Glenn, wide-eyed, swooping around from his desk to sit next to me on the sofa.

  Uh-oh. “Glenn, dear, whatever are you talking about?”

  “Gabe Arlington, the director.”

  “Don’t you see, Claire?” asked Lance, leaning forward from his sofa. I’d have sworn the tight neck of his sweater stretched a foot. “With Walla
ce out of the way, we’ve got a second shot with Arlington.” His eyes flashed, intense and catlike.

  “I don’t know … ,” I said warily. “You probably shouldn’t tr y—”

  “Claire,” said Glenn, leaning close, “you could approach him. You and Arlington seemed to hit it off at your place on Saturday. And you have ready access to him through Tanner.” With a happy laugh, he asked, “Why not?”

  I could think of several reasons, not the least of which was my complete lack of interest in Glenn and Lance’s petty crusade. They were out of their element, attempting to influence artistic decisions in a medium they knew nothing about. For that matter, I myself knew zilch about filmmaking, and I wasn’t about to embarrass myself by exposing my ignorance to Gabe Arlington while displaying the gall to meddle in his production.

  I knew, however, that Glenn was beyond reasoning at the moment; he would be deaf to my protests.

  So I told him vaguely, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The profuse, giddy thanks lavished on me by both Glenn and Lance was embarrassing—as well as unwarranted—so I extricated myself from their grateful hugs, offered a round of farewells, and escaped to the outer office.

  True to Glenn’s word, Tide awaited me with a contract for my summer services, offering a pen. There was no point in reading it; coming from Glenn, the terms of the agreement had surely been subjected to microscopic scrutiny by a roomful of lawyers, and there was never any question of Glenn’s generosity to me. So I signed, told Tide good-bye, and left the presidential suite.

  Walking the circular hall toward my own modest office, I began to mentally reconstruct the list of guests who had attended Saturday’s party. Among them, of course, were Glenn Yeats and Lance Caldwell.

  I now understood why they had both been in such ill humor that night.

  What’s more, I now was aware that they had both read Spencer’s script.

  14

  Reconstructing my guest list took longer than I’d planned. During the final production weeks of Traders, I’d had a lot on my mind, and the mess in my office had gotten out of hand. So I now had to dig through the piles on my desk, as well as my files, to find the names of everyone I’d invited to Saturday’s party. I put my own name at the top, as host, then listed the two guests of honor, Spencer Wallace and Tanner Griffin. Moving on to the other attendees, I first listed Lance Caldwell and Glenn Yeats. The names went on and on. My earlier estimate had been correct—about fifty guests. I knew, however, that the list was incomplete; there had been a number of people at the party whom I hadn’t recognized.

  Leaving my office, I needed to rush to make it back to my house by three o’clock, the hour at which Grant Knoll and his brother, Larry, had planned to meet there for some “little business matter.” While driving through the flat, straight back roads of Rancho Mirage, I wondered what possible bit of business could bring the gay real-estate broker and the murder-minded detective together on a Monday afternoon. Their lives seemed to revolve in two distinct orbits.

  When I turned onto my street, I saw that Grant was already waiting for me, parked at the curb in his hefty white Mercedes. What’s more, he had a passenger with him, a woman. As I pulled into my driveway and drove into the garage, they got out of the car, and I recognized the woman as Brandi Bjerregaard, Grant’s fellow broker and developer from Los Angeles.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I told them, greeting them in front of the house.

  “No problem,” said Grant. “Larr y isn’t here yet, and we’re in no hurr y.” Tucked under the arm of my friend’s nubby-silk sport coat was a zippered leather-bound folder.

  Brandi said, “Thank you again, Claire, for including me at Saturday’s party. What a bash.” She breathed her languid laugh, looking pretty but bored—or disconnected—like an urban fish out of water.

  “Any friend of Grant’s is a friend of mine.” I wasn’t concentrating on my insipid phraseology; I was thinking about Brandi’s odd behavior on Saturday evening. She, like so many others present, had turned peevish upon the moment of encountering Spencer Wallace.

  The afternoon was getting hot. I suggested, “Let’s go indoors. I’ll get us something to drink.” And I took them into the house.

  Setting my keys, wallet, and guest list on the pass-through bar, I offered, “I could open a bottle of wine.”

  “Sure, doll, that sounds great.” Grant had set his leather portfolio on the boomerang-shaped coffee table and drifted to the patio doors with Brandi.

  She asked him, “And that’s where it happened?”

  “Yup,” he answered, almost bragging, “the scene of the crime.”

  Having stepped into the kitchen, I called to Brandi, “Too bad you had to leave the party so early. You missed Grant’s heroics.”

  “That would have been worth seeing.” She lolled her head back again and emitted her barely audible laugh. A smart little purse dangled on a gold chain from her elbow.

  Entering the living room with a bottle of chardonnay and a corkscrew, I asked Grant, “Palatable?” He was a wine snob second to none.

  “Very.” He raised an approving brow. “Let me open it for you.”

  Handing him the bottle and the opener, I said, “I’ll get the glasses.”

  “I’ll help,” Brandi insisted. “You relax, Claire.” She stepped into the kitchen.

  Grant and I sat on the cushioned bench. He got to work, squeaking the cork from the neck of the bottle, telling me, “I’ve got the most delicious dirt.”

  “Really? Is that the purpose of this visit?”

  He frowned. “Actually, no. That’s too dreary to discuss. Besides, you’ll hear it soon enough, once Larry arrives.” He popped the cork out of the bottle, then sniffed it.

  Very well, I thought, the dreary part could wait. “So what’s the dirt?”

  “Well,” he began, setting the bottle on the coffee table, “you’ll never—”

  “Claire?” called Brandi from the kitchen. “I can’t seem to find the wineglasses. Which cupboard?”

  “Sorry, Brandi. I should have mentioned—they’re underneath, next to the dishwasher.” No doubt about it, my kitchen was still in greater disarray than my office. I reasoned that because everything in the kitchen was behind closed doors, it didn’t warrant fretting over.

  “Well,” Grant began again, “you’ll never believe what I’ve just learned about the widow Wallace.” He paused enticingly.

  From his tone of voice, and from his promise of dirt, I had a hunch where his story was headed. Playing dumb, I said, “Poor woman. I know she and Spencer didn’t have the happiest marriage, but it must be awful for her now, finding herself suddenly alone.”

  Grant was fairly bursting to tell his news; he looked as if he might wet his pants. “You bet it was an unhappy marriage,” he said, fidgeting with the wine cork, “but there was more to the problem than Spencer’s wandering eye.”

  “Hey,” said Brandi, entering from the kitchen with four wineglasses, two in each hand, “this is my stor y.” She set the glasses on the table near the bottle, then settled in one of the three-legged chairs. Removing the purse from her arm, she set it on the floor.

  Grant began pouring a few fingers of wine for the three of us, telling Brandi, “I acknowledge, sweetest, that you are indeed the source, but you gave me this information on an insider basis, broker to broker. Telling it to Claire, however, constitutes gossip, and I don’t think it would be terribly professional of you to spread gossip regarding your own clients.” Setting down the bottle, he begged, “Let me do it.”

  Brandi leaned to ask me, “Has he always been so persuasive?”

  “Yes, he has.” I picked up a glass.

  “There, now, all settled,” Grant told Brandi. He handed her a glass and picked up one for himself, saying, “Cheers, gang.”

  We touched glasses, then tasted the wine.

  Turning to me, Grant continued with his story. “I’ve learned some juicy details regarding the Wallaces’ rocky marriage. T
his information comes to me from an unimpeachable source, a colleague in the real-estate biz.” He turned briefly to give Brandi a big, obvious wink before elaborating, “My friend handles a lot of high-end properties in the Los Angeles area—she’s very well connected. It happens that she was a passing acquaintance of Spencer Wallace, and she knows Rebecca quite well. In fact, my friend brokered the deal when the Wallaces bought the house in Brentwood. So she also knows the lawyer, Bryce Ballantyne, because he handled the closing. Well! Here’s the dirt: Rebecca and Br yce have had more than just a ‘professional’ relationship for some time now.” Grant beamed.

  “Do tell.” I had deduced as much that very morning, but it was intriguing to hear Grant’s gossip, which seemed to confirm the conclusion I’d already reached.

  “In fact,” Grant added, “they’re practically living together.”

  “My, my, my,” I mused. I might have added that I’d already seen Rebecca and Br yce sharing a bathrobe, but I didn’t want to spoil Grant’s fun in delivering the unsavory news.

  Grant set down his glass. “So Spencer wasn’t entirely responsible for the loveless marriage with Rebecca—or their separate lives.”

  I sighed. “Ah, what tangled webs the wealthy weave.”

  From the side of his mouth, Grant told Brandi, “Say that five times fast.”

  “You’re right, Grant.” I tweaked his cheek. “That was delicious dirt.”

  “I thought milady would like it.”

  “Like it? I love it.” Leaning past Grant, I said, “Thank you, too, Brandi. I had a hunch there was something going on between Rebecca and Bryce.”

  “So,” Grant asked me, “you know what this means?” When I failed to respond quickly enough, he said, “I’ll give you a clue: motivation.”

  “Ahhh.” I swirled my wine. “The wealthy widow had a possible motive for wanting her husband dead—that much was clear from the get-go. But now we know that the widow had a lover, so he also had a motive.”

  Brandi leaned into the conversation. “A double motive, if you think about it. First, the money. And second, Spencer’s death has freed Rebecca to marry someone else.”