by Andrews
At five a.m. we drove up to the Marathon guard gate where the late shift was still on duty. A sleepy-eyed man stuck his head out the window.
"Muirfield with a delivery ordered by Arnold Talbot," Callie said.
"He's a maintenance supervisor," the guard said, staring at the flowers.
"I don't know what he is. I just know who I am, which is the person told to deliver plants if they get ordered. Talbot said they needed to be here by 5:15 a.m., so I've been up since forever."
The guard punched a buzzer trying to reach Arnold as Callie held her breath. Finally the guard said, "He must be walkin' around. Drive up to that building, go right around Soundstage Two, and his office is the maintenance building to your right."
Callie pulled into the lot and parked behind a large van. In minutes we were standing in front of a door with a gray plastic nameplate. The white letters read: Maintenance Supervisor Arnold Talbot.
The door was unlocked, so I pushed it open a few inches. No one was in the office, which was entirely concrete except for a small window behind a wooden desk that looked out onto a brick wall. Arnold came around the corner dragging a fifty pound bag of concrete.
"Mr. Talbot, could we talk to you a minute? I'm Teague Richfield and this is Callie Rivers."
At the mention of my name, Arnold Talbot's eyes widened like a horse's in a burning stall, and he leaned up against the wall, I assumed to brace himself. I asked if we could go inside. He moved hesitantly through the doorway and walked around behind his desk, imposing a barrier between us. He reached for his desk drawer.
"Is there a gun in there?" I asked amicably. "I have one too. Why don't we just talk? Here's the way we figure it. See if we're close. You hired South American thugs, brought them here, where they readily fit into the Latin population, and put them to work in the studio's landscaping and maintenance department. Only these guys have serious criminal records in South America and could be sent back or jailed here if anyone knew that, which is how you control them. You sent one to Orca's—that would be Spider Eye. You had the blond-haired boy we call Raider track us on the highway. Spider Eye and Gigante tried to kill us at your father's estate. But after Isaacs threatened you backstage at the stockholders' meeting, you didn't trust your guys with the Rita Smith job, so you and your handy blowtorch accompanied them. You killed her and torched Barrett Silvers. In fact, I think Callie rocked you to sleep on Rita Smith's lawn."
Suddenly the door behind us opened, nearly giving me a coronary, and there stood Hank Caruthers, his Southern charm all but drained.
"What timing you two have! Of all mornings! You've interrupted some very important business. Haven't they, Arnold? You never called me, Miss Richfield. This does change the script. Get him, Arnold." Arnold moved to the small closet on the right side of the room, opened the door, reached down onto the floor, and dragged out Robert Isaacs. He was hog-tied, his roped legs pulled up behind his head and his mouth taped shut, a scene I'm sure Callie could have enjoyed more under other circumstances.
"We were about to give Mr. Isaacs, our former friend and associate, a new home with an ocean view, but your arrival has changed all that." Isaacs's eyes darted pleadingly to Callie, and for a moment I felt sorry for him.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to make this look like a love triangle," Caruthers said.
"That makes no sense." I was stalling for time.
"I was in the process of scaling down my operation, you might say, the night my men were at Lee Talbot's Bel-Air home. You interrupted them and then escaped. Your friend Callie left prints in several places in Mr. Talbot's mansion, which will allow me to prove that she was there to see Talbot and ask for his help with Isaacs. She was distraught and furious that her ex-husband, Robert Isaacs, with whom she was still desperately in love, was having an affair with her best friend Teague Richfield. She came to the studio to confront Isaacs about your affair and found him, alas, once again with you. She killed you both, and herself, in a mad lover's rage. The stuff of which movies are made. I've always been big on plot."
"And how does Arnold Talbot figure into all this?" Callie asked.
"Ah, Arnold. Imagine having a father who was head of one of Hollywood's largest studios and he throws you the scraps by making you, his only son, head of maintenance. We weren't sorry to see Lee Talbot die, were we, Arnold? Unfortunately, most of Arnold's staff is now dead as well. Therefore, he's a liability, drawing too much attention to us."
This was apparently new and disturbing information to Arnold, who ran for the door just as Caruthers nailed him in the back. He sagged to the floor, blood flowing from his body. "Silencer," Caruthers said, explaining the lack of sound.
"You killed Frank," I said, and tried not to look at Arnold, bleeding on the floor, a reminder we could be next.
"Frank looked at every company as a takeover opportunity, so he couldn't be content with just an outsider's view. While we were working out at the club, he said he knew some pretty shady things were going on at Marathon, and he cited Barrett Silvers's call about the bartering of controversial items and services, and of course the money skimming. Frank wanted me to go with him to talk to his friend at the FBI, since Marathon was a publicly held company. I couldn't let that happen. Looking back on it, I should have skipped Frank Anthony, a good man really, and I should have merely killed Barrett Silvers. She was the one stirring up all the trouble." Caruthers stared at me, but his eyes signaled a mental drift, as if his mind were having to leave his body in order to avoid witnessing what his trigger finger was about to do.
"You shot Frank Anthony with a silencer and then removed his gun from his gym bag," I said, trying to force him to focus on me. "But why the torch?"
"Workers were fixing pipes in the locker room showers and had left an acetylene torch lying there while they took a break. I fired Frank up to kind of muddy the trail."
"But what about his shoes in your locker?" I persisted.
Caruthers suppressed a laugh. "Why is it that the near dead are always so curious? Frank had already taken off his gym shoes. I took his gun out of his gym bag and slipped it into his shoes, storing them in my locker. In the chaos of discovering the body, I slipped his gun and mine out of the building, but left his shoes in the locker. An oversight on my part, of course."
"So your men broke into the Anthony mansion after Frank's death and broke into the antiquities looking for the real stone."
"Right you are." He grinned with glee.
"The trouble was always with the missing stone. I knew Frank had two. I'd seen him buy them at Waterston Evers's. He said he carried them on him for luck, but of course we only found one—the wrong one. Then it dawned on me that he must have given Barrett the other one for safekeeping while we were at Evers's estate. I pried the stone out of Frank's hand, yes. Ramona was right, Frank was clutching the stone when he died. I sent the stone with the man you call Spider Eye to visit Ms. Silvers to warn her that she'd better fork over the other one, but alas, things went awry. And since you had interjected yourself, we felt you had them both for safekeeping. Then you got very creative and began manufacturing fakes, and well, things just got very messy."
"Look, we know where the financial information is that implicates you. We'll take you to it, and you'll let us go. You destroy it, and it's anyone's word against one of the most powerful men in Hollywood."
"There's a quicker fix. Just give me the stone." He held out his hand for it.
I paused and Callie said quickly, "Give it to him, Teague."
I pulled it out of my pants pocket slowly to assure him that I wasn't pulling a gun on him. He snatched the stone out of my hand and pulled it apart, knowing immediately how it worked. He tore the vault numbers off the bottom of the paper, then struck a match and set the list on fire. It burned to ashes in seconds. The list we had unknowingly, and then knowingly, risked our lives for. The list that could bring about the downfall of Marathon Studios. The list that would end the seedy barter system and serve as a warning to oth
er studios about the consequences of embezzlement now no longer existed.
"Well now, that's all just hearsay, isn't it?" He grinned and raised his gun to my eye level, the huge silencer staring into my face.
"I'm a spiritualist," Callie interjected with her head bowed. "Would you allow me one small ritual before I die?" I couldn't believe she was actually suggesting some voodoo ceremony at a time like this. Caruthers seemed amused and asked what it entailed. She said it would only take a second and asked permission to reach into her purse for the cards. Caruthers kicked her hand aside and upended her purse, tossing the cards on the floor at her feet. She picked up the cards and with trembling hands shuffled them. I was about to crawl out of my skin, my eyes darting to every possible escape. I could lunge at him, but now he had the gun barrel flat up against Callie's head. I was panic stricken that he might shoot her.
She carefully placed the cards in a strange pattern, praying, "My life is placed at the four corners of the earth." She stretched her hands up above her head, her eyes closed. "To the sacred spirits who have guided my life. I pray for guidance at this hour." She swung her arms down slowly. "And I offer up these orbs..." Callie raised her arms up swiftly and secured a death grip on Caruthers's crotch, at the same time trying to escape the gun barrel at her head. I grabbed the gun, deflecting the bullet that Caruthers fired reflexively as he writhed in pain and fell forward on top of me. I poised my right hand in the air, forming a hook with my index and middle finger, and brought my hand forward into his face, striking his eye. Between his eyes and his crotch, Mr. Caruthers was pretty much in agony from head to toe. Callie rang the guard gate, and in five minutes we had enough Marathon people in that office to shoot a movie. I shouted at the security people to take Caruthers into custody.
"Touch me and I'll have you fired!" Caruthers bellowed. The guard hesitated and then backed away. I had underestimated the power of the studio executive. On this lot, Hank Caruthers was one of the studio gods, and lesser folk trembled in his presence.
"He shot Arnold Talbot and he's a killer!" I shouted at the nervous guard, who saw his retirement plan teetering in the balance. He stood immobilized as Caruthers stumbled by him and out the door. I made a move to go after Caruthers, but the guard blocked the doorway.
"We've called the police," he said as if I were the problem.
Another guard helped Isaacs up, untaping his mouth and untying his legs. Isaacs rubbed his arms to bring back the circulation and managed to get Callie in a position where he could talk to her.
"Thank God you came here when you did," he said. "I was pretty terror stricken."
Callie looked at him, her eyes seeming to pierce his skin, and said coldly, "Then you must know some of the terror my brother felt before he died." Isaacs tried to say something, but I guess he couldn't think of anything. Truth sometimes has a way of rendering one speechless.
Detective White arrived on the scene, more interested this time in what we had to say. He put out an APB on Caruthers.
Paramedics were working on Arnold Talbot. Isaacs was dialing his attorney, and I called Isabel Anthony in Tulsa, who promised me her story rights. And in Hollywood, "a verbal" is as good as "a written." Like everyone in Hollywood, we'd all hit the phones at the first break.
After an hour of filling in Detective White and his promising to call us for more details, we were released. We stepped out into the main parking lot into a blur of news vans broadcasting, camera shutters clicking, and reporters screaming, "Over here! Talk to us!"
We got in our car, locked the doors, and drove through the crowd.
"I can't believe while people were bleeding and being untied, you were phoning Mrs. Anthony for her story rights."
"Isn't that why we did all this? Make a great theatrical, and only we know the whole story? Speaking of unbelievable, how about your final ritual with the orbs?"
Callie shot me a shy grin. "Well, I rarely use spiritual rituals in vain, but I do think this was an exception. And besides, I learned it from you."
"It's interesting that you wanted to see Isaacs dead and you ended up saving his life," I mused.
"I thought about that. He and I obviously had unfinished business from another lifetime," she said, very matter-of-fact. "I have some unfinished business with you also," she said, letting me know she had plans for our evening. "This will be the first night since I met you that no one is chasing you but me."
I awoke wrapped around her, both of us naked, the sheets down around our legs, our own body heat having kept us warm. I was so in love with her that I could never bear to be without her. I liked the smell of her, the look of her, the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she dressed. I was, as the Shakespearian bard said, besotted with her. I kissed her sleepy face into recognition of the dawn, and she opened her eyes, looking lovingly at me. "It's possible that I could fall in love with you." Her voice had a teasing lilt to it.
"Too late. You already have." I grinned.
"You are a little too cocky." She punched me. "I have to tell you something." And almost before she said it, I caught a glimpse of a suitcase on top of the dresser, partially packed.
"What's that?" I asked, my heart in my throat.
"I have to go back to Tulsa in a few days."
"Okay, I'll go with you," I said.
"Me, not you. I live there."
"You live with me now," I said, and she laughed.
"Why would I live with you? You're not tidy and you're spoiled." She smiled lovingly at me.
"And your point would be?"
"Seriously, Tee, we barely know one another. In fact, I would say you really don't know me at all yet. We have to spend time together."
"My point exactly. Which is why you can't leave."
"I have to go home and take care of some clients, but I'll come back."
"No!" I said, and Elmo chimed in with a well-placed howl.
"Have to. We'll meet in Vegas." She was upbeat.
"Meet in Vegas? You think I just want to meet you places. No, I want to live with you! I'm going to live with you. In fact, if you leave and go back to your condo, I'll just show up, and we'll be living together there."
She pulled me into her. "I've made a hotel reservation in Vegas for us two weeks from Thursday. We'll meet there and we'll gamble."
"That's right, you're a gambler," I said sadly, knowing she was indeed leaving me for some mysterious reason she would not, or could not, explain.
"Only a gambler would contemplate falling in love with you, Teague Richfield. And I'm betting as time goes on, you'll be happy with the outcome." And Callie Rivers rolled on top of me and began kissing me. I didn't know if she'd keep her word and show up. I didn't know if we'd ever live together, but I did know that whatever this woman wanted from me, she was bound to get.
About the Author
Andrews & Austin are pen names. The authors are life partners and live on their ranch in the Central Plains with their horses, dogs, cats, Austin's mom, and an occasional assortment of friends, family, and stray animals. They are avid writers, riders, and lovers of wide-open spaces.
Their upcoming works include Stellium in Scorpio: A Richfield & Rivers Mystery (February 2007).