Sympathy for the Devil

by Jerrilyn Farmer

“The old lady that owned the land died suddenly while the young woman who was arranging the sale to my mother was out of town. In the meantime, a relative inherited the land and sold it privately to Bruno Huntley. My mother had her real estate lady go to the Huntleys and try to buy it, but they wouldn’t sell. It was too late.”

  Carmen shook her lovely head, her shiny hair swinging. “Just rotten luck, but my mother had another idea. She suggested I meet Bruno’s son and tell him about the land. She said maybe I could appeal to his sense of chivalry.” She shook her head again at the futility of her plight.

  I understood. Trying to get sympathy out of a Huntley was like trying to get milk from a bull. Watch where you pull.

  “So you married Graydon?”

  “Yes. Why not? He was nice looking and I thought he had influence and authority. My mother said it made perfect sense. If I couldn’t persuade my husband to get his father to sell the land, Gray would in any event inherit it one day and leave it to my children. She was not in a hurry. To her that would have been fair and just.”

  “So when you found out that Graydon wasn’t exactly calling the shots at Bruno’s company and had little influence over his decisions, you shifted your attentions to the father.”

  “Mother thought it could help things, if you must know. I had been going through a bad point in my marriage. I felt less and less interested in my life.

  “I was at a family party and Bruno took me aside to show me something he’d bought, a necklace. Bruno said not to tell anyone in the family so there wouldn’t be any hard feelings.”

  “Was it expensive?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Of course. It was ridiculous, all diamonds and rubies.”

  “And you started sleeping with him.”

  “Mother thought if he would give me a ten-thousand-dollar necklace, perhaps the land was also negotiable.”

  “But it wasn’t.” I was adding up Carmen’s story, and wondering if the final revenge for all the promises and humiliation turned out to be murder.

  Tears were falling from Carmen’s perfect oval eyes. She shook her head. “Bruno was so smart and strong and in charge; everything that his sons could only wish to be. I actually thought I loved Bruno then. Do you think I’m horrible?”

  She looked at me for reassurance, but what could I say?

  “Back then, Bruno was so wonderful to me. Some nights we would sit with our drinks and he would talk to me about his work or his plans. He was a million times the man his sons have turned out to be. He was so forceful and clever and, and generous. You liked him, too, didn’t you Madeline? That’s why I’m telling you all this. I know you respected Bruno.”

  Had I? It had been hard not to be attracted to the man even as you were repelled by him, with his compulsive need to control you and please you and punish you.

  “Did he have plans for the land in Los Feliz? Could you persuade him to give it to your family?”

  “Of course not!” It was the most force I’d ever heard Carmen expel. She was crying and growing more agitated as she spoke. “He didn’t even own the land, he said. He chuckled and said, too bad Carmenita. Too bad! What did he know about how we’d suffered!”

  “Wait. Back up a minute. Bruno said he didn’t own the land?”

  “Who knows what he said?” She was wiping her eyes with a tissue she had pulled from the pocket of her skirt. “All I know is that I was married to a man I hated. I was in love with a man who was married already. I was no closer to helping my mother fulfill her dream. What did it matter what the details were?”

  “But with Bruno dead,” I said gently, “weren’t you back in the game? Your husband might have inherited the land. You couldn’t know that Bruno would cut his sons out of his will.”

  “No? He was always taunting his sons about it. One day he would say they were in, and another day he’d say they were out. One night, he told me that he’d never leave a lot of money or property to his sons. He said they’d never enjoy anything they had not earned on their own.”

  She smiled at that and added, “How little he knew them, don’t you think? Bru, Jr. owes almost half a million dollars to some guys that aren’t very patient. Do you think he cares where the money that will save his ass comes from?

  “Please, I know I’ve been bad. I have. But you mustn’t think I’d have hurt the only man I truly cared about.”

  Before I realized I was talking out loud I heard myself say, “I believe you.”

  All through her story she had been waiting for some sign from me. Some display of sympathy, or unbending of my harsh judgment of her life. Now, a flood of relief met me as she hurried on.

  “All we were hoping to do was buy the land, don’t you see? I’d have gained nothing if Bruno died. And as for the fact that his drink was poisoned, well it scares me. Could I have handed him that glass of death? I have no idea how that stuff got into his Armagnac. I swear I didn’t put it there.”

  Maybe not, I thought, but what about her mother? Was that woman angry enough to fulfill her family’s curse? If she had condoned her daughter’s needless sacrifice to the Huntley men, perhaps she felt justified to take Bruno’s life in retaliation.

  Carmen must have been reading my mind, because she added, “Mother is obsessed with owning Bruno’s land, it’s true, but she’s not a foolish woman. She has been trying to find out if Bruno was telling me the truth about the deed. If he no longer owned our land, then someone else must. She was doing research on the title to the land. She wasn’t interested in Bruno. She had no reason to kill the man I was in love with.”

  At that moment, Carmen’s mother stepped out of the side door of the garage. She’d probably been standing there for a while.

  “Come inside, Carmenita,” she called. “You have talked enough about these sorry things, don’t you think?”

  I got into my car and mulled things over.

  I pulled out the crumpled photocopy of Petranilla and her mother and uncle, smoothing out the wrinkles and staring at the women. Carmen and her mother seemed like the perfect suspects: their connection to the curse that was on Bruno’s dying lips, their present-day quest for the land in Los Feliz, Carmen’s messed up relations with Bruno and son, and the fact that Carmen actually served Bruno the poisoned brandy.

  The thing was, I just didn’t think they did it. They weren’t scared, or shifty, or defensive. They weren’t inventing all kinds of stories to cover up their involvement. They were neither overly clever nor playing dumb.

  I was stumped. The thing was, I wanted my murderers to act like murderers. Stealthy, lethal, on the attack. Of course, I had to remind myself, I’d never actually met a murderer. Perhaps, this is where experience might come in real handy.

  Chapter 26

  I started back down the hill and had to wait at the intersection for a flurry of cars to pass. My phone rang just as I found a small opening in traffic. I wheeled right, then grabbed the phone as I straightened the car onto Ventura.

  “Madeline?” It was Holly. “Madeline! I’m going fucking nuts! I don’t know where you are! I’m in my car. I’m driving around looking for you, for cripe’s sakes. I took your spare cell phone with me and I called everywhere I could think of. Twice!”

  “What’s up?” I was getting alarmed. Holly does not freak like this.

  “They’ve arrested Wesley. He’s in jail! Oh, Madeline, I knew you’d want to go see him but they won’t give me any information. The only reason I even know about it is that Lizzie Bailey called for you.”

  “Shit!” I said, and then, noticing too late that I’d forgotten to make the necessary left turn onto Coldwater Canyon. “Shit!”

  With the dozens of people in the world who really had good reasons to end Bruno’s life, why were they still after Wesley?

  “Geez! Arrested? Wes must be going completely mental. He didn’t kill Bruno! Are the cops crazy?”

  “Of course they’re crazy! Why else would they take a sick job like being a cop?” Holly screamed. She was de
finitely not her normal cool cat self.

  “Holly, you can’t lose it, buddy. You hear me? I need to do some thinking and I don’t want to worry about you driving into a pole,” I said calmly, as I severely corrected my steering to avoid the pole coming directly at me.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “I gotta pull over to the curb. I’m feeling kinda weakish.”

  “That’s the best thing for you to do til you feel better,” I advised. Meantime, I pulled over to the curb.

  “The police have so little,” I said. “Okay, Wes had the key to the liquor cabinet. So what? Plenty of people had their hands on that key. And, all right, Wes was mad at Bruno about that land commission. But what about the party? Don’t those pinheads realize Bruno just handed us a huge fee?”

  In a nonlinear, odd, Bruno Huntley way, the score was being evened out. So why didn’t the cops get it?

  “There’s something else, Maddie. Something real bad. Something you don’t know.” Holly’s voice sounded stressed. “They found the poison in Wes’s apartment.”

  “What! What poison?”

  “Strychnine. A shitload of it. The stuff that was used on old Bruno. They had a search warrant and went through Wes’s place a few hours ago. I guess they found it in one of his canisters, you know, on his kitchen counter.”

  “I can’t believe it! That’s impossible!” Wes had a set of canisters that he’d gotten from a scientific supply house. They were impressively large glass bottles with round glass stoppers. He used them to hold sugar and baking powder and flour and…and…strychnine? Oh my god! Where could Wes have gotten the stuff?

  “I have to do something,” I told Holly, “but I’m not sure what.”

  “I know what I have to do,” Holly replied, with a hint of her usual mischief.

  “What?”

  “It requires a toilet,” Holly offered, delicately.

  I turned my radio on and tuned it to the all-news station. I was hoping the story on Wesley’s arrest would give me more details, like where they had taken him. As they gave the traffic report, I thought about who we could call to represent him. We had done a lot of parties for successful attorneys. Problem was, most of them specialized in entertainment law—great for a network pilot deal, not so hot for murder one.

  The weather report warned that large storm clouds were gathering off the coast and could be coming inland by tomorrow. That was disturbing. Many areas around Southern California had been devastated by brushfires this past summer. After having been stripped bare by days and nights of flames, the charred earth was vulnerable. Now, these same defoliated areas were in line to be drenched by huge downpours and inundated by mud. You could tell what season it was by what disaster was most likely to strike.

  I got onto the freeway and heard the announcer tease the next segment to be reported after the commercial. “Coming up,” he said, “an arrest is made in the Bruno Huntley murder.” But first I had to listen to an ad for a tuneup franchise. Yes, why not get a car lube while waiting for Armageddon?

  “Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, today, praised the diligent and speedy work of the Los Angeles police department in the arrest this afternoon of a suspect in the killing of T.V. producer Bruno Huntley. Huntley’s death on Friday night had alarmed many in the entertainment industry who had counted Huntley a friend.

  “The arrest of Wesley Owen Westcott, a caterer, came after investigators found a large quantity of strychnine at Westcott’s residence. Strychnine was the poison used to kill Huntley while he was hosting a Halloween party at his estate in Los Feliz.

  “Police say Westcott knew the victim and had become disgruntled after a real estate deal fell through.”

  I had to admit, it sounded a whole lot more solid and plausible when you heard it reported on the news. I had to talk to Wesley. I had to find out about that strychnine.

  My mind was reeling as all the stories I’d heard in the past few days started to shift and reshuffle themselves. The last thing I wanted to do was doubt Wes. If only he hadn’t known so damn much about how they use strychnine in street drugs…

  In my heart, I knew he’d never kill anyone, but my mind is not my heart. My mind finally had to ask the question: Did Wes kill Bruno?

  Chapter 27

  I put ice cubes in my glass and moved to the faucet. I had been drinking way too much Diet Coke. Feeling it was time for a health food purge, I filled the glass from the purified water spigot. It was Tuesday morning, and I had an hour until I should leave to meet the attorney over at County Jail, where they were holding Wesley.

  I had called a lawyer we knew, Tom Field, the previous evening. Wes and I had done his wedding about a year ago. It’s odd what you remember about clients. I remember particularly that Tom loved oysters and hated Bruno Huntley. Bruno really must have jerked him around at one time. At Tom’s wedding reception, he kept returning to the oyster bar for “just one more,” and he kept his guests amused by telling derogatory “Bruno” stories.

  Tom Field specialized in network series packaging, but was happy to recommend a fellow with whom he’d gone to law school who was enormously respected in criminal cases.

  I swallowed the water and dialed Honnett’s number. I hung up. What was there to say? He’d arrested my best friend. I guessed dating him was out of the question.

  Holly tiptoed into the kitchen.

  “Madeline?”

  “You don’t have to whisper,” I offered.

  “There’s a woman. Her name is…”

  “I couldn’t possibly.” I shook my head at the thought of someone applying for a job. I splashed the rest of my water into the sink, ice cubes clattering in protest against their ignoble end, and set the empty glass down by the drainboard.

  The electronic beep-beep-beep of the timer meant my chocolate chip croissants were ready to come out of the oven. I bent to the task. Perhaps they wouldn’t let me give them to Wesley. Perhaps they would. I just knew that baking had filled another hour until I could leave for the jail. The kitchen clock told me I’d been successful. It was now almost ten o’clock.

  “So I should tell her to go? Or…” Holly was not used to me being vague, distracted.

  Just as I roused myself to respond, this other woman entered the doorway to the kitchen right behind Holly. She was slender and dressed to show off her well worked-out body, in skin-tight black Lycra shorts that stopped at mid-thigh topped by a biker’s black leather jacket. And hers was a face I remembered distinctly.

  “Hello,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother you. But I simply had to see you.”

  Holly looked confused. She wanted to shield me from the intrusion. We both spoke at once.

  “Look, I’m sorry…” Holly started herding the woman away from the door.

  “Please come in,” I said at the same time.

  “Holly, don’t you remember our soothsayer?”

  “Holy shit!”

  The out-of-costume soothsayer gracefully sidestepped Holly and entered the kitchen. She had the kind of nose and cheekbones and, for that matter, bosom that made one curious to know if such perfection was possible without a helpful surgeon. Her thick eyebrows arched beautifully over the greenest of eyes. I still found myself wondering if they were contacts.

  “My name is Angelica. Angelica Sands. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible mistake.”

  For a crazy moment I thought she was going to confess to Bruno’s murder. Police made big mistake. Arrested the wrong person. She did it. Hope is so fucking illogical.

  “What mistake?” I asked, removing my oven mitts.

  “You’ve been looking for me, right? About the party? I guess I shot out of there pretty fast. I was like devastated, you know?” She looked pretty shook up. “Devastated!” She really liked that word.

  “Were you and Bruno close?” I asked, checking her out in the bright kitchen light. She seemed awfully young.

  “Well, sort of. I’m going to be a big star some day. Bruno said so. And he was going to give me my first bi
g break. He said I was a really gifted actress, like a Meryl Streep or a Lisa Kudrow. But now he’s gone. Man, what a waste. Bruno was an angel, you know?”

  People loved Bruno at first. The man could be very enthusiastic. Later, when they began noticing his footprints all over their dreams, they began to despise him. From her reaction, I was betting she hadn’t known Bruno all that long.

  “It was such a shock. A real American tragedy, like MacBeth or something.” She looked deeply touched, and held it for a beat. “I mean he died, for God’s sake, right there at the party. So I bagged it.”

  “Yes, I see. Well, we did want to pay you for your work that night but there was no way to contact you.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t doing it for money. See, Bruno called me very last minute. He said I’d meet all the most powerful men in Hollywood. I did the soothsayer gig just to please him, really.”

  Angelica smiled at something, some memory. When she realized we had noticed, she decided to share it with us.

  “Bruno had such a great sense of humor, didn’t he? I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone this, but I guess it’s okay now…well, now that he’s gone.

  “He had this major plan. He was so naughty. He paid off some guy at the air freight company to screw up your shipment of fancy food for the Halloween party. He wanted you to send your assistant out on some wild goose chase so he could arrange for me to step in as the fortune teller.”

  Bruno was behind the truffles/nightcrawlers switch? I suddenly felt off-balance.

  “Well, why?”

  “For fun. He gave me a list with a lot of very personal dirt on the party guests. I mean, intense. Then I predicted horrible fortunes for each one, with lots of specific details. Like I knew that actress was going to get fired off her soap because it was Bruno’s show and he told me!”

  She laughed at the looks on our faces as we recalled the impact of Bruno’s fiendish plot. “Really! And it went great. Everyone was completely freaking!” She smiled. “Wasn’t he a bad boy? It was just to have a giggle.”

  I nodded my head slowly. It did make a sick kind of sense. And it sounded like that old devil Bruno Huntley.