“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Roy said mechanically as if repeating the words for the umpteenth time. “Althea came here all upset. She had a gun, but I’m positive she didn’t really intend using it—you know how long we’ve been friends. I tried to take it away. She struggled. There was only one shot. An accident, I’ve told Sergeant Torby all about it. An accident, a horrible, unbelievable accident. . . .”
Marylin put her arm around Roy’s tensely held shoulders, and Roy, crumpling toward her sister, began to cry softly.
A cop in uniform came in and whispered to the narrow jawed plainclothesman, who nodded.
“The gun registration checks with Mrs. Horak’s statement.”
“So?” Joshua asked bellicosely.
“It belonged to the father of the deceased.”
“Then there’s no further need, dammit, to badger Mrs. Horak.”
The ruffle curtained windows let onto the backyard, and masculine voices drifted into the smoky den. The detective glanced outside. “I have to talk it over with the captain,” he said. “This is a bigger number than I can handle.”
“In other words,” Joshua rumbled, “if the incident hadn’t happened to a member of the puissant Coynes but to one of us peasants, then Mrs. Horak would be free and clear?”
“You and Mrs. Fernauld are hardly in the peasant class, Mr. Fernauld, but that’s just about it.” The plainclothes cop stubbed out his cigarette. “Christ, a Coyne! Why couldn’t this have been my Sunday off?”
* * *
The violent death of Althea Coyne Cunningham Firelli Wimborne Stoltz crowded both the Vietnam war and the domestic struggles against it from the evening news. Old photographs of Althea were flashed onto the screen. Only CBS News could boast jerky, hand-held-camera shots of her covered body being wheeled from the garden of a tract house to the waiting ambulance. On radio and television, in the late editions, Althea was tagged in many ways: widow of the famed conductor, heiress to the largest family fortune on the globe, granddaughter of Grover T. Coyne, divorced wife of a distant cousin of the Queen of England, a socialite, a jet-setter, a close friend of Jackie Onassis.
CBS also showed a shot of Rain Fairburn being rushed into the house by Joshua, and another clip of Roy and Marylin, hiding their faces, as they got into Joshua’s Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.
“Miss Fairburn’s sister, Roy Horak, owner of an exclusive Beverly Hills women’s shop, reportedly fired the death weapon. She was released on her own cognizance. Her sister, actress Rain Fairburn, hurried her from the scene. Police are evaluating whether criminal charges will be filed. This is Terry Drinkwater reporting from Erica Drive, West Los Angeles.”
72
There was no question of Roy staying in her own house: she slept at NolaBee’s.
Joshua arranged a press conference—“It’s easiest to satisfy the fourth-estate bastards in one fell swoop,” he said. On the following morning, Monday, he arrived before nine to make sure that coffee, Danish and plenty of name-brand booze were set out. At ten he sat next to Roy in NolaBee’s dining room, once more the joke-slinging, gregarious pro from Hollywood’s Good Old Days when the press was treated to extravagant weekend junkets.
Minicams and Nikons were aimed, tape recorders adjusted, notepads taken out.
“Have you any explanation for Mrs. Stoltz coming to your house with a gun?” asked a frizzy-haired woman.
“Yeah, why would anybody want to shoot anybody?” interjected a stout television man. “You, Rain, and Mrs. Stoltz were three lucky kids.”
“You had everything,” added George Christy from the Hollywood Reporter.
There was the sound of pencils and ball-points scribbling.
“Did she have any motive?” persisted the frizzy-haired newshen.
“None,” Joshua replied for Roy. “But Mrs. Stoltz had been under a great deal of strain since her father’s death.”
Joshua expertly fielded most of the questions.
After exactly an hour, he pushed to his feet. “That just about wraps it up. Mrs. Horak looks all in—this has been a tremendous strain on her. But we all agree she’s been more than candid and very generous with her time.”
There was a scattering of applause, and everybody, including Joshua, departed.
Roy sank panting onto the living-room couch. But NolaBee’s loquacious concern threatened to smother her. The only escape was to get out of the house.
Roy zigzagged aimlessly along the quiet Beverly Hills streets between Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard. Her body ached from the intensity of that struggle for the gun and her strained efforts to ease Althea’s floppy slide to the ground. Her right ankle ached dully from hitting against the sprinkler head. She couldn’t shake off an overpowering sense of guilt. Why had she mailed that dumb, mysterious letter to Charles? Why, when Althea showed up obviously deranged, had she not attempted calming measures, then slipped away to dial Dr. Buchmann for professional advice on how to handle things? Surely there had been a smoother way of getting the gun than trying to wrest it from Althea. All my fault, my fault, repeated her silent words.
Sunk into herself, Roy ignored the discomfort of the new patent shoes she’d put on for the press conference until a jagged tenderness in her left heel and right big toe informed her she had blisters. She limped homeward.
In front of NolaBee’s house a nondescript gray coupe was parked. Another reporter? she thought. Maybe it’s a sympathy caller. Whoever, I don’t need ’em. She would have kept walking, but with each step the stiff patent dug into the raw flesh, so she hobbled up the narrow cement path.
NolaBee sat in the furniture crowded living room with Charles.
For a moment of sheer masochistic relief, Roy imagined that Charles had come as an accuser to press charges. Charles’s red-streaked eyes and controlled greeting, however, showed no trace of condemnation.
“I just got in,” he said.
She embraced him. “I’m so sorry, Charles. I can’t tell you how torn apart I am.” Tears ran from her eyes.
“You musn’t blame yourself, Roy.” A trite platitude that many had uttered, yet Charles said it firmly.
They pulled apart.
NolaBee’s gossipy voice was already flowing. “Charles says he wants to have a little private talk with you, Roy,” she said. “I’m going in the other room directly. Charles, you will remember, won’t you, to tell your dear grandmother that I’ll drop over to express my sympathies the minute she feels up to it. Your mother was a right fine girl, Charles. What a terrible accident—it just doesn’t seem possible. I cannot believe she’s gone. . . .”
NolaBee embroidered on this theme of personal incredulity until Roy said raggedly, “If you’ll wait a minute while I change my shoes, Charles, we can take a walk.”
She striped Band-Aids over her blistered feet, then went into the back bedroom. Here, NolaBee, a pack rat, stored boxes and cartons of her children’s past. Roy found a pair of loafers from her college days.
Outside, in the smoggy sunlight, Charles took her arm. “About an hour ago I talked to a Captain Sullivan,” he said. “The police aren’t filing any criminal charges.”
Roy sighed with relief. During the long, wakeful night, she had conjured up scenes from the hundreds of detective novels she had read, movies, TV shows, envisioning herself as unjustly sent to trial, maybe even sentenced to life. “You’re sure, Charles? There was some talk of referring the case to the district attorney’s office.”
“Who told you that?”
“One of the reporters today.”
“Reporters,” Charles said coldly. “We’ve had to post guards outside Belvedere to keep them out.”
“Was it the gun being registered in your grandfather’s name that convinced the police?”
“Actually, when the detective took your statement, he had it evaluated an accident. But because of who Mother is . . . was, he didn’t want to seem negligent, so he referred the case to Captain Sullivan.”
“Charles, I could have handle
d it better. She was so shook-up, so obviously not herself.”
“She took Grandfather’s death very hard,” he said, then paused. “Since he died, she’s been behaving oddly. The family said those weeks I was in Sweden she stayed holed up in her apartment, not taking any calls. Then suddenly she made scores of dates. I can’t understand why. She was flying over to see me.” He paused again. “At Belvedere, she didn’t even say hello to Grandmother.”
“She only wanted the gun, I guess,” Roy said, wincing. She could still see that round circle of blood spreading on white French silk.
“That’s what I wanted to ask. Why should she want to hurt you?”
Roy’s steps faltered.
Here was her chance at a full and blessed confessional. He wants to know Althea’s motive, and what’s so wrong with telling him?
Is it so monstrous that he’s the son of my husband?
Okay, it might jolt him at first. Charles isn’t the type to be thrown, though. Later, maybe he’ll even accept me as a kind of surrogate mother.
His reddened eyes were fixed on her, calm with command.
Blinking confusedly, she looked down. She still felt that enduring, endearing schoolgirl loyalty as strongly as she had decades ago.
“Roy?” Charles prompted. “What did she say?”
“She was all upset.”
“She must have made some coherent remark.”
“Let me think,” said Roy, who since yesterday had traversed this mine-infested territory a hundred times. “First I offered her coffee. She refused. Then she rambled a bit about coming over to see me, although it was nothing so special. Whenever she came to town, we got together.”
“That doesn’t sound too distraught.”
“It really was. Her clothes were creased—all her life your mother was impeccable. I’d never seen her like this. Sari said she looked strange, too.”
“Sari?” Charles turned away, but not before Roy saw a muscle jump in his eyelid.
“She was staying over. We planned to have brunch at my sister’s, and she left right away. Althea asked whether she was gone or not. That’s how she was. A little off center, as if she couldn’t keep track of what was happening.”
“She seemed fine in Stockholm, but she was only there two days, workdays, so I didn’t have much time with her. We planned to go to Lake Siljan for the weekend. I’ve rented a place there. Then . . . she just left. No message to the servants or anything. That wasn’t like her, but I invented an excuse—she had met friends and would contact me any minute. I should have tried to find her.”
They walked half a block in silence.
“It’s so senseless!” Charles burst out.
“She was under a lot of stress.”
“I know, but why pick up a gun to see you? She must have intended to use it all along.”
Roy ducked her head. “Stop trying to find anything rational in this, Charles. A death in the family is a terrible trauma. Anybody can crack. Believe me, I know. She was out of it, she didn’t have any idea what she was doing, or why.”
Althea, old buddy, old enemy, other of the Big Two, even beyond the grave you can place your trust in Roy Wace Horak, also known as Miss Priss Trueheart, who keeps all secrets. Then, to Roy’s shamed chagrin, her knees went weak. She clutched at the hard, lean masculine arm. “When’s the funeral.”
“We’re flying her back East to the family burial ground,” Charles said. “As soon as I get back to Belvedere, we’re leaving.”
“Have you talked to Sari?”
“I called. She was out,” he retorted in a detached tone.
Roy held on to his arm more tightly, halting them. A jacaranda tree bowed over the sidewalk and fallen purple blossoms strewed the pavement blocks. “Probably she was up at the old adobe. She’ll be terribly disappointed not to . . . not to be able to express her sympathies.”
“To be honest, I don’t care to trade on this kind of situation.”
“I thought you two had quite a thing going.”
“Unilateral, I’m afraid,” Charles said brusquely. “She canceled her plans for Stockholm.”
“She told me she thought you wouldn’t be around.”
“My work does shift me from place to place—but she certainly realized I’d have made every effort to be with her and her cousin.”
“Niece,” Roy corrected without thinking, stifling an off-kilter inner laugh. She thinks he doesn’t want her, he thinks she doesn’t want him. What masters we all are when it comes to screwing up our lives!
“Charles, she thinks you’re evading her.”
“She told you that?”
“I tried to argue her out of it, but does she ever listen to common sense?”
“She is pretty much all feelings,” Charles replied noncommittally.
“Charles, listen, I’m going to talk out of turn, and if you’re angry, blame it on a buttinsky aunt. Sari’s so wild for you that she’s positive it’s unfair pressure on you to tell you that she’s pregnant.”
For a moment Charles’s tear-reddened eyes stared blankly at her.
“She’s pregnant,” Roy repeated.
“And never told me?”
“Something about not wanting to tie you down.”
“She hasn’t done anything?”
“Oh, Charles, you know Sari.”
“No, she wouldn’t, would she? Roy, she really believed I didn’t want to see her?” he asked, his voice sounding softer, younger.
“What’s so odd? You thought the same thing.”
His lips pressed together, an expression of relentless concentration. Roy smiled, her eyes misting. This was how Gerry had looked when he painted.
“Let’s get back,” he said, taking her arm and abruptly turning around.
He forgot his manners enough not to see her to the door. He did not say good-bye. He got into the nondescript coupe—it must be one that the Belvedere servants drove.
Roy shifted her weight on her blistered feet, watching him speed northward on Crescent Drive. She smiled as the car swerved west on Santa Monica Boulevard in the direction of Mandeville Canyon and Sari.
Book Eight
1972
Granddaughter of Grover T. Coyne, Althea Stoltz, slain under mysterious circumstances.
—Reuters bulletin, June 21, 1970
COYNE HEIRESS SHOT TO DEATH
—Chicago Sun Times, June 22, 1970
The question on everyone’s lips is why American police have hushed up the murder aspects of the recent death of Althea Stoltz? Londoners remember her kindly as the ever-so-young Mrs. Carlo Firelli and then as Mrs. Aubrey Wimborne, a member of the small, closed royal circle. (Sources close to Princess Margaret report that she is greatly saddened by her friend’s death.)
The rumors surrounding this mysterious death were increased by the sudden marriage of Carlo Firelli II, son of the heiress by her first husband, to Sara Fernauld, daughter of Rain Fairburn—and niece of Roy Horak, who wielded the murder gun! Conjectures have been made that the victim’s vastly wealthy family has squashed the case to avoid scandal.
There has been no news from California about reopening the investigations.
—Women’s News, London Daily Telegraph, August 3, 1970
The case has all the glamour and mystery of a best-selling novel. A beautiful, youngish, much-married heiress to incalculable wealth, a famous and beautiful longtime star of the movies and television, a successful businesswoman, whose lives were intertwined from early youth in the glamour capital of Beverly Hills.
—Mike Wallace, Sixty Minutes, December 6, 1970
RAIN FAIRBURN SHOW EMMIES IT FOURTH TIME
—Hollywood Reporter, April 14, 1972
One of the decade’s biggest news stories broke in a quiet West Los Angeles neighborhood on Sunday, June 21, 1970. During a struggle, a bullet fired by Roy Horak, widow of the artist Gerrold Horak and sister of Rain Fairburn, killed Coyne heiress Althea Stoltz. The mysteries of the case, not to mention the glimpses
into the lives of jet-setters, kept the Golden Girls slaying in the news for months.
—Voice-over accompanied by clips of Roy Horak, Rain Fairburn, Althea Stoltz, and Jacqueline Onassis, from The Decade in Review, NBC, December 31, 1979.
73
On a drizzly January day in 1972, the planning conference for the following day’s Rain Fairburn Show was canceled, so Marylin started home a good hour earlier than usual.
A hundred feet before her driveway she slowed nearly to a standstill to peer apprehensively at the dripping shrubbery that concealed chain-link fencing. After Althea’s death, reporters, photographers, thrill seekers, ardent fans had lurked in these bushes ready to sprint when the automatic gates swung open. Joshua, to ward off trespassers, had hired a guard service: for nearly a year, shifts of two armed men had sat here in a parked car. Marylin, despondent over the absence of both children, had found a wan ray of sunshine that Sari (with Thea, the baby, and Charles) was escaping the harassment by living in London. Finally the ferrets and groupies had given up, sparing the Fernaulds a monumental expense.
Though it had been months since Marylin had spied an interloper in the bushes, her finger shook on the remote control, and she had to press the button twice before the gates swung open.
On the patio she halted as she saw Joshua coming down the path from his cottage-office. She hadn’t honked, so he was unaware of her early arrival. His head was hunched like a turtle’s and his umbrella bobbled whenever he lurchingly descended one of the shallow steps. His slowness was due to the agony that wet weather kicked up in his arthritic left hip joint. An old, crippled warrior, Marylin thought, her chest aching with pity—pity that had Joshua suspected would have spurred him into furious revilements of her.
He raised his head toward the parking area and saw the car—not her. (If he’d spotted her, he would have waved.) Folding the umbrella, he swung it jauntily as he moved more rapidly—his old stride almost.
When he reached the spot where the path had been curved to save a clump of big live oaks, he stopped and staggered. The umbrella fell from his grasp. With both hands he clutched his big belly.
Everything and More Page 53