“Sanctuary was Alonzo’s pet charity,” Ed had explained. “You have to understand, Joshua, that the heavy-duty actors and actresses here in town, the big stars, they’re not the shallow, superficial beings you may think they are. Oh, they may blow thousands of dollars on real estate and Ferraris and nose candy, but deep down, you see, they’re deeply committed human beings. Every one of them—above a certain tax bracket, anyway—has a charity of his own. Usually he’s the spokesperson, and usually it’s a disease of one kind or another.”
He inhaled on his cigarette. “Well, by the time Alonzo was making enough cash to afford a charity of his own, all the really good diseases were taken. About the only thing left was postnasal drip. Alonzo decided to go with Sanctuary instead. It firmed up his standing in the Hispanic community, and it put him in solid with the Hollywood young guard.”
I had asked him, “Sanctuary is a bit leftish?”
Smiling, Ed exhaled cigarette smoke through his nose. “In a very civilized, socially conscious way. Somewhere slightly to the right of Greenpeace, maybe.”
“Being involved didn’t hurt Alonzo’s career?”
He smiled again. “So long as the receipts keep coming in, it’s perfectly okay for you to dabble in lefty politics. Or in witchcraft, for that matter. The bottom line in this town, Joshua, is the bottom line.”
I smiled back at him. “I hope I never get quite that cynical.”
“Then maybe,” he had told me, smiling, “you’d better head back to Santa Fe as soon as you can.”
Over the next few years, Ed said, Melissa had gone, usually with other members of the group, on fact-finding missions south of the border: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala. She had continued her work with them after her divorce. It was, in fact, just before her most recently scheduled trip, back to El Salvador, that the appellate court had decided in favor of her ex-husband and his visitation rights. Melissa had gone anyway, two days later, the second of August, leaving her daughter, Winona, with her sister in Brentwood. She returned to Los Angeles on August 17, picked up Wynona, and disappeared the next day.
I had asked Ed, “Bank accounts, credit cards?”
“She closed out her accounts on the eighteenth, checking and savings, for a total of about five grand. Converted some stocks into cash, another four grand. She left all her plastic behind. No action on any of her cards since she left. Left her driver’s license, too, and her passport.”
“Her car?”
“She left it at the airport. Took a cab home, took another cab to her sister’s house.”
“She’s being careful,” I said.
Ed nodded.
“She was able to raise only nine thousand in cash?”
“Her lawyers, the trials, ate up most of what she had.”
“She couldn’t borrow a ruble or two from Mom and Dad?”
“Dad stopped paying her an allowance after she married Alonzo. He disowned her after she went to the police with the story about Alonzo’s sexual abuse.”
“Why?”
Ed shrugged. “Bad publicity?”
“Alonzo told me that the P.I. he hired had been able to put her with a woman named Elizabeth Drewer, a lawyer.”
Ed nodded, inhaled on his Marlboro, exhaled. “You know anything about Drewer?”
“According to Alonzo, she’s a connection to something called the Underground Railroad. People across the country who help women and children who’re running from the kind of thing Melissa Alonzo was running from.”
Another nod from Ed. “Drewer doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t admit it, either. But she’s an industrial-strength feminist, and she’s very vocal about the way the courts have handled child abuse.”
“You think Alonzo could’ve disappeared down their pipeline?”
“It’s possible. They’d be able to provide her with papers, a new name, safe houses.”
“Seems a rough way for a poor little rich girl to travel.”
Another shrug. “Maybe she thought the alternative was rougher.”
The house I wanted was on a side road at the top of the mountain. Hidden from the street by a small forest of maples and elms, lying at the apex of a semicircular asphalt driveway, it was a long, low, Spanish-style structure that, if it hadn’t looked as though the peons had finished erecting it just yesterday, might have been built back in the seventeenth century. I parked the rented Chevy and followed the flagstones to the front door, which was about eight feet tall and four feet wide, built of solid oak and braced with strips of antiqued black wrought iron. There was no doorbell. In the center of the door, at chest level, was a wrought iron clapper. I raised it and banged it down once. I half expected the door to be opened by Zorro.
It was opened by a maid. A real maid, in a real maid’s cute little frilly black outfit that displayed quite a lot of very good leg. She was young and attractive, her features even, her hair in tight black curls, and she was, like maids were supposed to be, extremely pert. But probably, with the kind of salary she made, she could afford to be pert. She cocked her head, smiled, and she said, “Yes? May I help you?” She spoke without a French accent. This was, for me, a major disappointment.
“I’m Joshua Croft,” I told her. “I have an appointment with Mrs. Carpenter.”
“Yes,” she said. No accent at all. The neutral, nonregional inflection of a television anchor. She smiled pertly. “Please come in.”
Six
I FOLLOWED HER DOWN THE HALLWAY, across a living room with a floor big enough and a ceiling high enough for a soccer match, past plush cream-colored furniture and across plush cream-colored carpeting. I didn’t look around for a fax machine, and I was conscious that I wasn’t looking around for a fax machine.
She stopped before an open pair of French doors and turned to me. “Mrs. Carpenter is waiting for you by the pool.” She gave me another smile and then flounced pertly away. Anxious, no doubt, to get back to her screenplay. Or put in a margin call.
I stepped through the doors and out onto a redwood deck. Up here, two glass tables, both surrounded by redwood chairs, sat beneath bright yellow parasols. To the left, across a swath of lawn so green it looked as though it had been spray painted this morning, the view of the city was spectacular. Or it would’ve been, if the city—and the sea, which was presumably out there, too, somewhere below the four o’clock sun—hadn’t been buried beneath a blanket of smog. The stuff stretched out to the blur of horizon, sooty and yellow and somehow threatening, like a vast alien creature slumbering while it waited for feeding time.
Straight ahead, however, the view actually was spectacular. Lying on a white towel atop a redwood chaise, in front of a brilliant aquamarine swimming pool, was a slender woman. Her hair was thick and red. She wore a bikini bottom that was almost as large as a slingshot, and she wore a dark, even tan, and she wore nothing else. Her left hand was draped across her eyes, her hand hanging free, fingers limp. I admired the curve of her wrist very much. I admired all her curves, and she had quite a lot of them.
I crossed the deck, went down two steps to the lawn, and crossed that. “Mrs. Carpenter?” I said.
She moved her arm, turned her head, and slowly looked me up and down as though she were trying to guess my weight, or assess my stamina. Feline cheekbones, dark green feline eyes, a wide red mouth. “Croft?” she said.
I admitted that I was.
She nodded toward a redwood chair. “Grab a seat.”
I sat.
She was somewhere in her thirties, maybe even in her forties, but she was fighting it, and she was winning. She was in remarkable shape, so far as I could see, and just then I could see fairly far. The muscles of her thighs were long and sleek beneath the oiled brown skin, the muscles of her stomach were slightly ridged. It was a body that had seen a certain amount of exercise. All those tennis lessons, possibly.
When she sat up and swiveled slightly to her left to raise the back of the chaise, her breasts swiveled with her, too firm to be constructed entirely of human
flesh. She sat back, put her arms along the arms of the chaise. Her breasts stared at me. I tried not to stare back.
She smiled. “What can I do for you?”
I smiled. Engagingly. I was developing, like everyone else in this town, a nice repertoire of smiles. “Well,” I said, “you could try putting on a shirt.”
She glanced down at her breasts, glanced back up at me. Smiled again. “Never seen tits before?”
“Once,” I said. “I haven’t been the same since.”
She looked me up and down again. Maybe she was admiring my Wrangler shirt, my Levi’s, my Luchese boots. She said, “You’re not gay, are you?”
“Not even giddy.”
She smiled again, and then she shrugged. As her shoulders moved, her too perfect breasts slipped mechanically up and down. “What, then?”
“Mrs. Carpenter,” I said, “you’re an extremely attractive woman. Obviously, you take your body seriously. I take it seriously, too. The problem is, it’s a bit distracting right now. I’ve got this job to do. I’m supposed to ask you questions about Melissa Alonzo, and, in order to do that, I have to talk. I find it very hard to talk when my mouth is filled with drool.”
She laughed. Much as I had admired her body, I hadn’t really liked the woman herself until she laughed. It was a good laugh.
She said, “Nicely done,” as though I’d passed a test of some kind. Perhaps I had. With her left hand she reached down and lifted from beside the chaise a thin white muslin blouse. As she stretched her torso to ease it over her head, more muscles slid and tightened beneath her taut brown skin.
At least an hour every day, more likely two hours, working with free weights and Nautilus both. That was the only way anyone could put together, and keep together, a body like hers.
She shook loose her thick red hair, sat back, put her arms again along the arms of the chaise. “Better?” she smiled.
Not by much. Pointed brown nipples still peered at me from beneath the loose, gauzy material. I nodded anyway. “Thanks.”
She smiled again. “You’re so welcome.” Clearly, she thought I was entertaining. But that was good. That was part of my master plan.
“So,” she said. “What’s this about Melissa?”
“Do you have any idea where she might be?”
She shrugged lightly. “None. Just like I told everyone else. You’re working for Roy?”
“No,” I told her.
“Who?”
“Someone who’s concerned about Melissa and her daughter.”
She smiled, and this time the smile was slightly sour. “Ever heard of Mary Chatsworth?”
“No.”
“A television actress. A very pretty girl. I knew her. Some psycho, a fan, hired a private detective to find out where she lived. When he got the address, he drove over to her house and shot her. He killed her.”
I said, “No one wants to shoot Melissa Alonzo.”
“How do I know that?”
“My guileless face?”
She smiled, shook her head.
I told her.
“Roy’s uncle?” she said when I finished. “And he wants to know if Roy was fiddling with Winona?”
“Yes.”
“Melissa said he was. I believe her. Roy’s a slime bucket.”
“But you never witnessed any molestation?”
“I would’ve said so in court if I had.” She smiled another sour smile. “But then again, it’s not something you do in front of witnesses, is it?”
“You had contact with Melissa during the time of the trials?”
She shrugged. “A phone call now and then.”
“When was the last time you saw or heard from her?”
“Day before she left for South America.”
“In August?”
She nodded.
I asked, “You saw her or you talked to her?”
“Talked to her.”
“What was her mood like?”
“Angry. Furious. Who could blame her? The court’d just told her she had to let Roy see Winona. Unsupervised visitation. Which was the last bloody thing in the world she wanted.”
“She went off to El Salvador anyway.”
“The trip’d been arranged for months. Melissa took all that charity business very seriously. Central America. Starving refugees. Trying to save the world.” She shrugged. “She should’ve spent more time trying to save herself.”
“Did she suggest to you then that she might disappear when she came back?”
“No,” she said. Slowly, casually, she crossed her long legs. “Just like I told everyone else.”
I thought she was lying. I could’ve been wrong—I often am—but behind the overly casual movement of her legs I sensed a sudden concealed tenseness, a closing off.
“Who else asked?” I said.
“Who didn’t? Roy. The police. That silly little detective Roy sent over. The group she was involved with, Sanctuary. Even the FBI. Twice.”
“An agent named Stamworth?”
She nodded. “The second time. A week or two ago. He was a long cool drink of water.” She smiled. “Or at least he thought he was. I wasn’t thirsty at the time.” Her glance slid up and down my frame again, as though she were suggesting that her thirst might have increased since then.
“Stamworth talked to you recently? When, exactly?”
She shrugged. “The end of September sometime. I don’t remember the exact day.”
Why had Stamworth been asking about Melissa in September? “What did he want?”
She frowned slightly. “Something to do with illegal aliens. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t care much for Stamworth. He was a jerk.”
“Is Sanctuary involved with the movement of illegal aliens?”
“They’re a bit too chic for that.” She shrugged. “But I really wouldn’t know. I don’t pay much attention to do-gooders, either.” She smiled. “It’s not my style, doing good.”
I showed her my own smile in return, the neutral one. “Did Melissa contact you when she came back to Los Angeles?”
“No.” Once again, I thought she was lying.
“How did you learn she’d disappeared?”
“Roy called me and asked me if I’d seen her. The police talked to me later. Then the rest of them. It’s been a damn procession.”
“Did she contact you at any time afterward?”
“No.”
“No calls, no letters? No postcards?”
“I got a card she sent me from El Salvador. A few days after she came back. It’d been delayed in the mail, obviously. From some town called Santa Isabel. Just your basic postcard. Hello, how are you, see you soon.”
“Nothing since?”
“No.”
“Does the phrase ‘The flower in the desert lives’ mean anything to you?”
From her reaction, I could understand why her acting career had never gotten much past the giant bugs. She concentrated, frowning, for a beat too long before she shook her head and told me, “No.”
And a good director would’ve told her not to pause, as she did, before she asked me, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was hoping you’d know.”
She shook her head. “No. Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Roy Alonzo claims that Melissa instigated the sexual abuse charge because she was jealous of the woman Roy was seeing.”
Another sour smile. “Roy’s full of shit. Melissa couldn’t care less about that bimbo.”
“Which bimbo might that be?”
“Shana Eberle. Christ. Talk about a star-fucker.”
“You know her?”
“Everyone in town knows her. Has known her, in the biblical sense. She’s humped everyone but Lassie.” Another smile. “And we’re not really sure about Lassie. She’s keeping mum.”
“You’re saying Melissa isn’t a jealous woman.”
“Jealous of Shana Eberle?” Amusement and scorn showed in the wide red mouth, the dark
green eyes. “She thought it was a joke.”
“Is she normally a jealous woman?”
“No more than most.”
“How jealous is that?”
Her face tightened slightly in annoyance. “What’s jealousy got to do with anything? She was divorced from the scumbag, the marriage was over, she was getting on with her life. And then she found out what her asshole ex-husband was doing to Winona. It tore her up. It would’ve torn anybody up. What Roy did to Winona was vile. But I can tell you one thing, she wasn’t jealous of Shana Eberle.”
“All right,” I said. “She isn’t a jealous woman.” But I assumed, from all the smoke Edie Carpenter was putting out, that she was. Perhaps she hadn’t actually been jealous of Shana Eberle; but if she had been, I wouldn’t learn about it from Edie. “What kind of woman was she?”
She frowned. “How do you mean?”
“What’s she like? I don’t know her, Mrs. Carpenter. I need to get some kind of a handle on her. I need to know who she is. Maybe then I can figure out where she’s gone. The two of you were friends.”
“Friends, but not all that close.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s a do-gooder. Your typical kindhearted cheerleader. Very sincere, very sweet, and just a teensy-weensy bit boring.”
Friends, but not all that close.
I asked, “How did you meet her?”
She smiled. A small, self-amused smile that told me she was keeping secrets, and didn’t mind letting me know that she was. “At a party.”
“What kind of party?”
She shrugged. “Who can remember L.A. parties?” But the smile, although diminished now, was still there. I was supposed to guess why, apparently.
I said, “She was married to Roy at the time?”
She nodded.
“Did you ever meet her sister, Cathryn?”
She shrugged lightly, dismissively. “Once. She joined us for lunch. Mousy little thing. A librarian.”
A Flower in the Desert Page 5