Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  “Last straw,” said Max. “I do see. How very odd. A frying pan, you say.”

  “Yes, perhaps you have a different word for it in the U.K.”

  “No, we call it a frying pan. I just meant, what an odd thing to steal. But if you’re quite sure…” Max at least was getting a sense of what Cotton had been hinting at with regard to the date rape drug. It sounded as if rendering the poor woman helpless for such wicked purposes had hardly been necessary.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Maurice. “When you think about it, it’s rather difficult to misplace a frying pan. You don’t tend to leave it in the living room or propping up books in the bedroom. No, he stole it. I guess he really needed one. Anyway, there were plenty of those last-straw moments when I would swear I’d had enough. I really did like Margot, and I felt protective of her. Talk about a babe in the woods. I loved her in some ways, I suppose, like an older brother. But in the end she was just too dangerous to keep around. I gave her a month’s notice—it was my place, my name on the lease—and helped her find a small place of her own.” He shook his head. “Later on, she’d sometimes show up in the makeup trailer with a bruise or a shiner. I felt terrible. Terrible. That had never happened when I’d been around the apartment. I’d no idea—my presence alone had protected her somehow. I’d thrown her to the … to the wolves. To the trolls. To the trolls of Hollywood, the worst kind.”

  There were tears pooling at the corners of the man’s eyes, and his throat had closed over his last few words, rendering them almost inaudible. He fished in his jacket for a tissue as Max waited, knowing those tears to be real. It didn’t mean Maurice wasn’t the guilty party. Max believed he was close to Margot, at least had been at one time. But the best of friends quarrel. A best friend can be standing in the way of something the other person wants—and not even know it.

  From behind the tissue came a series of thunderous honks, the sound of a hundred geese startled into flight: Maurice blowing his nose. When he had finished he was somewhat more composed but his eyes still were red. He probably hadn’t slept since it happened, dark room or no.

  “I have asked myself so many times,” Maurice said now, “if I couldn’t have done more to save Margot from herself. Over many years I’ve asked myself—not just since she … since she died. If I couldn’t have got her into therapy or something. Staged an intervention. Locked the booze cabinet. Given her a one-way ticket back to Kansas. I don’t know. Something.”

  “Would she have listened, do you think?” Max asked.

  Maurice smiled at him bleakly. “Of course not.”

  “There you are.” The latest New Agey advice was never to interfere with the difficulties of others. A compassionate man like Max, not to mention a man with the need to see justice done, struggled with this concept all the time, while recognizing its wisdom: there was safety in not getting involved.

  “And since there were never any real consequences—her career began to soar, there was always another movie, another man; there was always makeup to hide the bruises—it was difficult to warn her where she was headed. I wasn’t sure I knew that myself. A lot of women would have killed to be Margot.” He caught himself up. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Unfortunately, the story you’re telling isn’t all that unfamiliar. Some women are attracted to abusive men—in general, to people they think they can fix. It takes a whole lot more than warnings from their friends and family to get them to start trying to fix what really needs fixing, which is their own terrified, lonely selves.”

  Maurice nodded eagerly, relieved to be understood. “Because each one of these creeps, you see, was the one. Some one-night stand she met at a party that she managed to turn into a month-long stand if she was really unlucky. She thought she’d hit the jackpot if she convinced one of these Neanderthals to actually marry her. She was such a little fool. She would tell me all about it as I dabbed concealer under her eyes. A yellow-based pot concealer works best, you know. It neutralizes the blue. It took forever to camouflage the damage but you watch her films—you can’t tell it’s there. I really blended it in until no one could see. It’s different now, with high-def film and all … oh, my God. Don’t even get me started.”

  Max nodded solemnly, again unwilling to stop the flow of words.

  “Anyway,” said Maurice, perhaps realizing that Max was not the ideal audience for makeup tips, “one time it was a swollen lip and there wasn’t a lot I could do about that. Everyone assumed she’d gone crazy with the Botox. Anyway, the latest Misunderstood One was so talented, so smart. He just needed a break and she was going to recommend him to her agent, her director. Or she would buy him new clothes, get him a new haircut, whatever it was she thought he needed. It goes without saying she cooked and mended for these guys, and if they were late with a car payment she’d help them out—just this once, you know the kind of thing. It was enough to make you sick. Well, it made me angry, to be honest.”

  “How many times was she married?” Max asked.

  “Do you know, I rather lost count. Seven? She gave up on the big weddings after about the third one and would sort of elope to Las Vegas to cement her subsequent unions. She seemed to realize no one who cared about her wanted to encourage this crazy behavior anymore and besides, once her career started to soar, she didn’t need anything. I mean, how many toasters and coasters can you use?”

  “No children, I gather.”

  “None she was aware of. Sorry, that’s an old joke.” Maurice’s voice drifted off, and his gaze traveled to where Neptune listened, uncaring. “There were rumors of a child, way back in the beginning, maybe back in Kansas. Or was it after she came to Hollywood? Sorry to be so vague. She never ever ever talked about it. Not even in her cups.” He glanced sideways now and his gaze remained there. He sighed. “She would have sworn me to secrecy, anyway.”

  Max wondered if that was an admission he knew more than he was owning to.

  “The child would have been given up for adoption, presumably?”

  “I guess so. Or left with a family member. The only reference she ever made to the whole episode was a sort of Scarlett O’Hara moment when I overheard her telling wardrobe she used to have a nineteen-inch waist or something.”

  “Then how do … Sorry, but how is it you know so much about it if she never spoke about it?”

  “Oh. Some gossip columnist got hold of the story, years ago. God alone knows how. The studio paid out to shut them up and the whole thing died down. It couldn’t happen now: that’s another thing that’s changed, along with high-def film. You’d go broke paying hush money to the scandalmongers now, and it probably wouldn’t work, besides. The genie has left that bottle.”

  “Was it a girl? Boy?” asked Max.

  Maurice shook his head. “No idea. Sorry. And, mind, I can’t confirm there was a baby at all. It was gossip, I tell you. I’m sorry I brought it up.” He looked straight at Max. “You have a way of getting people to let down their guard, don’t you?”

  Max made a mental note to get Cotton on the case. Even if the records were sealed, if there had been an adoption, the police might be able to persuade a magistrate to open up the files in a case of murder.

  It would take time, however. And so long as they were in the dark about what was going on, time was what they didn’t have.

  Chapter 16

  ROMERO

  Romero Farnier was in one of the grander suites of the Grand Imperial Hotel, as only befit a man of his stature. Max knocked and entered as commanded, to find the famous director standing on the balcony, staring out to sea like the captain of a whaling ship. The day was turning cold and windy; the light over the sea had dimmed after a brief squall, shredding plump white clouds into gray smudges. It all made for a dramatic backdrop, and Max wondered if the director hadn’t chosen the setting deliberately, almost instinctively. Those who worked in cinema might go through life like that, framing every setting to exploit the maximum beauty and drama from the moment, which was not, when Max thought about it,
a bad way to go through life. The Hollywood sort of crowd, however, might also keep rotating to highlight their best angle, to stand where the light was most flattering, and that sort of thing might soon prove exhausting to be around.

  The director turned as if startled at Max’s approach. Romero might have been in the company of bad actors a bit too long; some of it had started to rub off.

  “This is dreadful!” Romero declared. “I can’t tell you…” Big sigh, furrowed brow, heaving chest. “You are Max Tudor. That inspector person—Cotton—told me to expect you. Although what more I can say I just don’t know.”

  “Do you mind if we sit down?” Max asked. “We may as well be comfortable.”

  Romero scanned the room. They were in the suite’s living area, where several chairs were grouped by a carved stone fireplace, the overmantel of which rose nearly to the ceiling. But Romero led Max inside to the bedroom where there was another grouping of chairs and a sofa in one corner—a sort of large Santa’s grotto. Romero pointed Max into a chair directly in the path of the sun, and the director took the seat opposite, where an angelic light from behind cast him in shadow. None of this struck Max as accidental. Harmless antics, perhaps—an automatic byproduct of the job at which Romero was reputed to be a master—but signaling a need for control over every transaction, a backlight to every scene whenever possible.

  “Margot was always a handful,” Romero began, unprompted. Max suspected that opening was rehearsed and unspontaneous, as well. “She was lovely, and everything a star should be. Imperious, you know: grand, in the way old-time movie stars were grand. Given to large gestures. Generous. But tempestuous as well. Tempestuous, yes, that is the best word to describe her. She drove producers wild as they watched their investments explode before their very eyes. Of course, now we are left to wonder, who did she rile so much they would want to kill her? It is unimaginable, and yet…” Romero’s eyes drifted off to scan the walls for answers. His gaze caught on a framed etching of Durdle Door and paused there, as if captured by the cinematic possibilities of the limestone arch.

  “And yet it is what happened,” Max finished for him.

  “Really? I was content to think it was an accident, you know. But knowing her…” He shook his head dramatically, a man burdened by the weight of too much reality.

  “Do you know,” Max added conversationally, to move Romero beyond his rehearsed speech. “I’ve always wondered. What exactly does a producer do?”

  Romero laughed. “Mostly they get on the director’s nerves. They are the ones who try to hold me to a budget, for one thing, but at the same time go about talking about their ‘vision’ for the film and wringing their hands over who should play the lead. Margot drove them into a darker state of crazy, the money guys. Because she simply doesn’t care about anything that wasn’t circling around Planet Margot. Didn’t care, I should say.” A pause. “If you believe in that sort of thing, I guess she really is in a place now where she couldn’t care less what some producer thinks.”

  “I am certain that she is. But, I do understand it’s a business where every delay counts,” said Max.

  “Yes.” Having been diverted from his prepared notes, Romero’s attention was already wandering, his eyes again casting about the room. As he turned his head, Max saw the barely visible wire that emerged from his ear: a high-end hearing aid, unlike the National Health Service aids Max was more accustomed to seeing, which were just a step up from the ear trumpets of old.

  “Whoever chose this wallpaper was a lunatic,” Romero declared at last. “So turn-of-last-century, or the one before that. If they had wallpaper in the Cheddar Caves this was it. If I have to stay here much longer I’ll have people in to tear it down and repaint. Something in a soothing gray violet, to reflect that gorgeous light glancing off the waves.”

  Max wasn’t sure if he was joking, but then Romero smiled. It was a smile of great charm—the term “reckless charm” came to mind—a display of great white teeth beneath a well-tended walrus mustache. He had the thick eyebrows to go with the mustache, well-tended also, but white where the mustache was dark. The shock of thick but receding salt-and-pepper hair came across as a compromise.

  He was an exceedingly good-looking man. Max wondered why he’d not appeared in his own films, but some people, he knew, were happiest working the spotlight rather than being in the spotlight. Max himself was one of them.

  “Would you mind starting at the beginning?” Max asked, to bring the director back on topic. “How long had you known Margot?”

  “Oh! Well, I suppose we must dig up all that ground. Well. I met her in London, as it happens. Decades ago. She was performing in some play—don’t ask me the name, it was utterly forgettable. But she was not—my God, she was not. I sent roses backstage. That’s the kind of idiotic thing one did back in the day, to win a lady fair.”

  “I don’t think much has changed,” said Max with a smile.

  “Oh, don’t you? Well, that’s sweet. But where have you been living?”

  “Nether Monkslip, actually. And it is a bit off the beaten path. My wife loves any sort of flower, by the way, especially wildflowers. So tell me, what has changed?”

  “Nether … oh. Well, these days—I have a daughter living at home, so I know.” He waved a hand in the direction of a framed snapshot displayed on a dresser across the room. It showed a smiling young woman standing on a beach holding a surfboard. “They show up on motorcycles and practically drag her out of the house by her hair. And that’s just the girls. It’s shocking. Gallantry is dead. Anyway, back in the day, it worked, the flowers. Margot let me come backstage—this was before anyone knew who I was. Correction: before I was anybody in London.” He actually preened, sitting up straighter, and saying, “Now I can go backstage pretty much anywhere I please.”

  “So you two began dating.”

  A minimizing shrug. “We went out to dinner a few times.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Pretty much,” he answered smoothly. “I gathered she was playing the field and apart from the fact that I stand in line for no one, then as now, that sort of playing about is a bad idea. This was before the AIDS epidemic really started gaining ground, but even so. She needed to keep herself tidier—I think that’s how you British put it: guarding the reputation? She needed to guard her reputation better. Margot was no good at keeping herself tidy.”

  “There is an impression … that is, I was given to believe your relationship with Margot was of more moment than that. That you and she were an item, at least for a while?” Max kept it deliberately vague who had said this to him, for indeed, no one had. It was more an impression he got from the director himself, from the type of man he appeared to be, and from the over-insistent tone of his denials.

  “Oh, really?” The expressive eyebrows shot up. “And from where did you get that impression? Margot herself?”

  “Indirectly, I suppose—yes. There’s been talk. Of course I never met Margot, but…”

  And right there—that was the rub, thought Max. He had never met the victim in this case. And so often, what could be learned from the life could act as a signpost to a hidden murderer. To how the victim came to meet up with his or her killer, and why the meeting turned fatal. To be able to see “in the flesh” the mannerisms, the expressions, even the hairstyles and dress—this showed an investigator so much about the victim’s character, background, choices in life. Without that animation of the living being, that spark of life, one was left only with the impressions of other people, impressions often viewed through their own distorting prisms. The stories they might tell about the victim so often were told to benefit only themselves. The truth, ever elusive, became more so at second remove.

  Romero sniffed. It was a sniff of great contempt. Of anger, even. He practically growled, “I thought so. God knows what some of the people from the yacht have been repeating as fact, without considering the source. Well, let me tell you, it suited Margot to pretend we had this big, passionate
love affair, a love to transcend the ages, yada yada. She wanted me to put her in my new film, and my refusal, if there were one, had to look like an utter betrayal of our timeless love. It was all bullshit but it was how her mind worked. Frankly, Margot could be a complete pain in the ass.” He hesitated, then added: “May she rest in peace.”

  “You say if there were a refusal. Does that mean you were considering her for a role?”

  “Oh, sort of. Maybe. There was possibly a part for her as the mother of my hero. A brief scene, the sort of thing where he drops in to say, ‘Bye, Mom, I’m off to war.’ Kiss, kiss, hug, hug; here, take these homemade brownies with you. You know. Anyway, Margot began pestering me for a part and it occurred to me she could just about handle this scene, so why not? She still has lots of fans who would gather round to make sure she was still breathing. Oh, sorry, I guess that sounds—anyway. She could just about handle it and I was just about to say the part is yours when she started coming up with all these brilliant ideas for expanding her role. She could be dying of something and the son visits her on her deathbed. Okay, fine. Then she could have this long deathbed speech where she gives him lots of advice as he heads out to war. Not so fine. Then she thought there could be flashbacks to her youth—heavily backlit and shot through heavy gauze, you know, to make her look young. Absolutely not. We had reached the absolutely not stage when she died.”

  “She was made distraught by this? Upset?”

  “Well, yes. I’m afraid she was, to be honest, and there was a tiny little scene with her at the party that final night. I may as well tell you because someone else is bound to. She was mutinous, alternating anger with a sort of manic hysteria. The usual thing. Only she was smashed, more smashed than usual, so it was a bit, well…”

  “Over the top?” suggested Max.

  “Precisely: over the top, even for Margot. Then she started in on Tina—accused me of robbing the cradle, of throwing her, Margot, over for a younger woman. I mean, I ask you. She and I had the tiniest fling decades ago and now I’m throwing her over for a teenaged temptress? I mean, it was ridiculous. Absurd. For one thing, Tina’s high school years are long behind her.”