“How did he die?” I asked.
“We’re guessing it was a cracked skull,” Paddy said. “Or drowning brought on by a cracked skull.”
“He wandered out of Traynor House and into the arms of that maniac Nast,” Gustin said. “That’s how he died. Nast killed him–maybe just to keep him from calling out–and dumped him in the river at the edge of the property. The body drifted down this far before it caught.”
“It could have been an accident,” I said by way of consoling him. “The terrace behind the house is a good thirty feet above the water. Whitehead could have wandered out to be sick, fallen in, and hit his head. The river’s lined with stone.”
“Thanks for trying,” Gustin said. “But I’m through looking the other way. It was murder and it was my fault. There were the marks of two heavy blows on his head. One on the front and one on the back. You can’t fall once and bash both sides of your skull. I’d show you the marks, but I already sent the body to O’Connor’s.”
“Drury’s there now making the formal identification,” Paddy said. “He has a deputy along to push his chair, but I’d feel better if one of us was on hand.”
Meaning me. Paddy elaborated as we walked to the parking lot: “Sheriff Gustin is going to pay a call on Marvella Traynor. I’ve offered to keep him company. Ever since you described the lady to me, I’ve been wanting to discuss Irish immigration with her.”
“I want to be there, too,” I said. “I’ve earned a ticket.”
“You have,” Paddy said. “But we’re unlikely to sneak up on her if you’re along.”
“Don’t worry,” Gustin told me. “I won’t be standing there with my hat in my hand. I’ve had enough of this job and enough of the Traynors. I’m getting the truth today if I have to take that place apart brick by brick.”
I got to O’Connor’s in time to help Drury’s new bodyguard manhandle the director and his wheelchair down the front steps. The bodyguard was the tall, thin deputy who had been hanging around on the edge of the case since the cross burning. In a movie, a character like that might suddenly reveal a secret identity, that of FBI agent or chief inspector of the Yard. I wanted to give the deputy a chance to unburden himself, so I asked him his name.
“Rodman,” he said, without adding “Texas Rangers” or “Northwest Mounted Police” or anything else.
“Rodman,” Drury repeated and then paused to collect his thoughts. He was uncollected in general, sitting slumped in his chair with his dark suit in disarray and his black hair in his eyes. He’d gone from looking thin and fit to gaunt and tired overnight.
“Rodman,” he said again after a moment. “I forgot to tell Mr. O’Connor something. I insist on John’s being treated decently. I don’t want anything of potter’s field about his arrangements. I’ll be responsible for the bill. Would you mind going back and telling him that?”
Rodman loped off, leaving Drury and me standing in the sun. The day was already very warm and very humid. I wheeled the antique chair into the thin shade of a honey locust tree.
“Thanks, Scotty,” Drury said. “Might I have one of your cigarettes?”
I gave him a Lucky and a light. He thanked me again and added, “You ought to find somewhere else to be. My assistants have suddenly become marked men.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He squeezed my forearm briefly. “Poor John. Of all the indignities he’s had to undergo these last few years, this might be the worst–ending up in the basement of a tank town mortuary, being examined by a horse doctor who somehow got himself appointed coroner.”
“It’s not bothering Whitehead any,” I said.
“I know. It’s bothering me. As long as I’m being honest, I should admit that what’s happening here isn’t really a new phenomenon. My assistants have always been marked men–not marked for murder but for frustration and mediocrity. I certainly didn’t make Hank Shepard’s life a song, and he fared better than John.
“What is it, do you suppose, Scotty? What makes me such a lodestone of bad luck?”
“I don’t know.”
“John thought it was a curse connected with First Citizen. I remember the night he first mentioned the idea. We’d just finished shooting the picture. It was very late, or rather very early, and the two of us were in an editing room working on the opening shot. You remember it–the tracking shot of the movie studio our D. W. Griffith character had built for himself in upstate New York when he thought he was bigger than Hollywood. The model we used was based on Griffith’s own studio in Mamaroneck, on the studio as it had been after Griffith had failed and taken to the bottle, a boarded-up place, dark and haunted.”
“It was a great opening,” I said.
“Yes,” Drury said. “It was powerful and uncompromising. John didn’t like it. He called it heartless. I remember him asking me if I wasn’t afraid that our unfeeling dismissal of Griffith’s life wasn’t an invitation to the fates to revenge Griffith by visiting the same kind of failure on us.”
I felt the sweat under my shirt turn cold. Drury, who’d been watching my eyes, nodded in agreement.
“I laughed at the idea, at John. I’d already begun to think of him as a fool, a hopelessly out-of-date fool.
“But it all came true,” Drury said, his voice flat for once. “It happened just that way. John became a drunkard no one would employ, and I became a has-been genius, someone everybody stole from and no one respected, someone who couldn’t touch the hem of his first triumph. I became a man doomed to live on like Griffith, for decades after his welcome ran out. At least poor John has been spared another day of that.”
Rodman rejoined us, ending Drury’s reminiscences. We drove back to the Roberts, Drury in Rodman’s cruiser and the Speedster and I trailing behind. We snuck Drury in through the loading dock, as Paddy and I had done the night before. I left the deputy and the director at the freight elevator with instructions to meet me on two. Then I made my way through the hotel’s kitchen and dining room and out into the lobby to order up Drury’s personal elevator.
The kid at the controls saw me coming and pointed to the desk behind me. The hotel manager was there, waving me over. Gilbert Traynor had cut off our credit, I thought, and I was going to hear the bad news. I sent the elevator up after Drury and Rodman, and crossed to the desk.
“A party is waiting to see you in the lounge,” the manager said, his pencil-line moustache twitching like a wren’s tail as he spoke. “A lady.”
For a happy minute I let myself believe it was Ella, in a day early because the engineer had known a shortcut. The hope had flickered out by the time I reached the bar. It was almost empty, as befit a small-town bar at noon. The out-of-town reporters were all at Victory Park, I told myself, picnicking on John Piers Whitehead’s sorry end.
The mystery woman was seated at a booth in the far corner. She was wearing a black dress, a flat, broad-brimmed hat, also black, and very dark glasses with harlequin frames. I recognized Linda despite the disguise, as the discreet hotel manager surely had. Any of the locals would have known her, a small part of the large price she paid for being a Traynor, so the glasses had to be for the reporters.
Linda must have been afraid I wouldn’t see past the cheaters. She’d resorted to a private signal, the equivalent of a carnation in her lapel. It was a Gibson, set on the table before her and untouched. I got the bartender’s attention and pointed to the drink as I sat down.
Linda removed her sunglasses before she spoke. Her almond-shaped eyes were sunken and dull. “Hello, Scotty.”
I took her gloved hand. “You look all in.”
“Who isn’t today? I came when I heard there had been a … second death. I tried the courthouse first, but the sheriff wasn’t there.”
“You must have missed him somehow on the road. He’s at Traynor House, questioning your mother-in-law.”
“If he got in to
see her,” Linda said. “She hasn’t let me inside her room, not after dinner last night or later, when you’d all gone. Gilbert managed to have an interview with his mother this morning, but he wouldn’t talk to me about it. He did tell me about the Liberator from the farmhouse being the murder weapon. I should have thought of that myself. I’ve seen it out there.”
It was natural enough for the head of the Traynor Company to know about the Liberator. And I remembered then that she’d been old man Traynor’s right hand during the war when the gun had been made.
Linda was still discussing her brother-in-law. “Something about that gun seemed to terrify Gilbert. I’m worried about him. He’s always useless in a crisis, but this morning he seemed to be in a daze. I think he was already drunk.”
She looked down at her own drink and pushed it away. “Tell me about this new killing, Scotty.”
I told her how Whitehead had probably died and where he’d been found. “Gustin thinks he met up with Nast while he was wandering your grounds last night. If the sheriff’s right, Nast killed him to eliminate a witness or just because he had time on his hands. Then he dumped the body in the river.”
The bartender brought my drink. When he was out of range, I said, “Is Marvella hiding Nast?”
“No,” Linda said. “I don’t think so. She hasn’t been out of her room since Drury and Whitehead arrived for dinner last night, which was hours before Nast could have gotten there. Besides, it wouldn’t be like her. She’d use a man like Nast, but she wouldn’t condescend to help him.”
“She would to save herself from a murder charge.”
“Marvella couldn’t have been involved in that, Scotty. She doesn’t have the backbone. None of her kind does. They had it bred out of them.”
“Marvella thinks the Pallisers were fighters.”
Linda almost smiled. “Some fighters. When their world was threatened by immigrants who spoke with the wrong accents and went to the wrong churches, what did they do? They dressed up like hobgoblins and tried to scare them away. They used fear because they were so familiar with it. They were frightened by every new thing that came along. Marvella’s the most frightened of the lot because she’s the only one left, except maybe for Gilbert. He’s having a hard time choosing a side.”
“What side would Mark have chosen? His mother remembers him as a Palliser in the rough.”
“She’s wrong there, too. Mark really was a fighter. If anything had threatened something or someone he loved, he’d have dealt with it directly and finally. He wouldn’t have wished it away like the Pallisers. Like Marvella.”
“She doesn’t have to have ordered the murders to be involved,” I said. “Drury thinks she lost control of Nast, and the murders are the result.”
Linda leaned back slowly, until her shoulders rested against the padded wall of the booth. “He may be right. I’ve had the feeling for a while that things were out of control, that events were directing themselves. It has frightened me as much as the twentieth century frightened the Pallisers.”
She didn’t sound frightened as much as dreamy and distant. “Why?” I asked.
“I’ve only gotten through the last ten years by keeping myself under the kind of rigid control Marvella likes to exercise over her whole world. Now I can feel all the control slipping away, mine and Marvella’s. I don’t like it, Scotty. I don’t like the idea that forces I can’t see or understand are pulling my strings. It’s even scarier to think that I might have set those forces in motion myself.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I know I arranged to see Hank Shepard, and he died.”
“There’s no connection.”
“None that we can see. But I have a feeling that there are connections we can’t see–like the one between my decision to withhold my evidence about the night Shepard died and this new killing. I’ve a feeling I’ve set something going that’s ricocheting around in the darkness still.”
I pushed her drink back into her hand. “Gustin thinks Whitehead’s death was his fault because he didn’t take off after Nast. Drury thinks he brought it on by making a film about D. W. Griffith. They’re both just imagining things, like you are. You’re all imagining too much.”
“Or you’re not imagining enough, Scotty.”
She took a break after that and sipped her drink. It was a chance for me to introduce a subject that I didn’t really want to discuss, a subject that wasn’t any of my business but bothered me anyway.
“I spoke with Eric Faris last night. Remember him?”
“Yes,” Linda said. She relaxed slightly and said, “All the energy of a terrier and none of the teeth.”
“That’s the guy. He told me you drove him to his motel after you’d warned him off Drury last Saturday.”
“That’s right. I did.”
“He said when you got him there, you kissed him.”
“What?” Linda said and laughed.
I smiled myself, from relief. “Out of the blue, you kissed him.”
“Why would I do that? It’s crazy. He must have made it up.”
It was the answer I’d wanted to hear. Linda read the line well enough. Then she undercut her delivery by blushing and fumbling her sunglasses back into place.
“Why would he say a thing like that?” she asked. “To get back at me? I didn’t treat him that rough.” She laughed again, but now it was forced. “Is there something about me that says ‘desperate widow’ to you California men?”
Before I could answer her, I heard Paddy’s name being called out, his Sunday name: Patrick J. Maguire. I turned in my seat in time to see a bellhop pass the open door of the bar.
I told Linda I’d be right back and chased after the kid. I caught him easily, since he was weighed down by a silver salver that held a single telegram. I traded him a coin for the flimsy envelope and returned to the bar.
Linda’s side of the booth was empty. The bartender pointed to the street door and shrugged sympathetically.
40
I opened the telegram with the sympathetic bartender looking on. There was no reason not to. He and I kept no secrets from each other.
The wire was from Los Angeles, and it read: “Drury’s leg not broken. All a publicity stunt says doctor. Lange.”
“Bad news?” the bartender asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been drafted again.”
I left the lounge and crossed the lobby to the elevators, thinking as I went how thoroughly Paddy’s attempt to move me from center stage to the wings had backfired. I thought, too, of Linda Traynor and how near the breaking point she seemed to be. And for what? Why was she suffering, and why were Shepard and Whitehead dead? The words from the telegram–“All a publicity stunt”–danced around in my head like the latest radio jingle until I felt like shouting them out.
The elevator jockey sensed my mood. “Who ran over your collie?” he asked.
“Just drive, kid,” I said, “and you won’t get run over yourself.”
Rodman answered the suite door, looking none too happy about his new duties. Beyond him, Drury was lighting a cigar. He’d lost his dark suit jacket. It had been covering up an open-collared shirt of white silk. The loose-fitting shirt and his wild hair gave him the look of a B-picture buccaneer.
“Scotty,” he said. “There you are finally. Do you feel up to eating something?”
I was still standing next to Rodman. “I need to talk to Mr. Drury privately,” I told him.
The deputy looked to Drury, who said, “It’s all right. Go find yourself a sandwich.”
Drury’s mind was still on food after Rodman left. “Can we order up lunch, Scotty? Or has Gilbert cut off our meal allowance?”
I’d noted before that Drury tended to find the center of any room he entered. True to form, he was parked in the open middle of the sitting room. I walked over to the si
de of the wheelchair.
“Can we eat while we talk?” he asked.
“No,” I said and tipped his chair over onto its side. It didn’t take much tipping, geniuses being top-heavy by definition. My foot on the chair’s arm and one good shove did the trick.
Drury ended up on his stomach, too startled or winded to call out. I pulled the chair away from him and patted him down for a gun. Then I extracted his cigar from the hole it was burning in the carpet and stepped away.
Drury had inhaled by then. “Scotty! Have you gone mad? My leg!”
“Good news from Dr. Petry,” I said. “He got your X rays crossed with another patient’s. You’re having twins.”
I left Drury lying on the floor, looking like a man poised for his first push-up, and went into the bedroom he’d been using. The maid had already straightened up the place, which was a shame. I intended to toss it, to use one of Paddy’s apt terms.
I started by emptying the drawers of the dresser onto the bed. I checked the nightstand next, finding only a Gideon Bible and the replacement script for The Imperial Albertsons, dug out of the RKO archives after Drury’s original had been stolen in California. Next I pulled the bedding onto the floor and checked beneath the mattress and under the bed itself. Then I emptied the closet of suits, shoes, and, finally, luggage. The last piece I checked was a large traveling bag of maroon leather. The bag made a thumping sound when I tilted it, but when I looked inside, it was empty.
The answer to that paradox turned out to be a false bottom held in place by hidden snaps. Inside the secret compartment was a duplicate of something I’d already found, another copy of the shooting script for Albertsons. This one had Drury’s name embossed on its beaten-up cover and marginal notes on every page, written in every color of ink.
I carried the script back into the sitting room. While I was away, Drury had managed to roll over onto his back. He sat up as I entered. I dumped the script on his lap.
Come Back Dead Page 26