by Jane Lotter
Billie, who up to now has been silent, joins in. “After enough dreamy monkeys,” she says, “there was nothing dreamy about that young lady whatsoever. It was all ape.”
“Damned if we didn’t have to carry her to her room,” the One Who Speaks—Nevada—says.
“That would be room number—” I fish.
“That would be room number zero,” Nevada says tartly. “As in, if she’s really your niece, ask at the front desk. But no joke, that girl has attention deficit disorder. Definitely not good at keeping her eye on the little white ball.”
They both let out a hoot. Then they walk away from me for good.
I go back to my saddle, but don’t mount up. I stand there.
“Anything?” Tully asks of my encounter with the golf pros.
“Nothing,” I say.
At the far end of the lounge, there’s a wall of windows and a door that opens to the outside. Through the glass, you can see the swimming pool, the patio (crowded with women), and a large garden area.
Tully follows my gaze. “Let’s take a walk,” he says. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got time for that.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
SANCTUM SANCTORUM
Tully and I start down a garden path shady with tall shrubs and low palms. The air is clean and fresh and smells vaguely of citrus. I pull my cigarettes and lighter from my bag. “Do you mind?” I say automatically.
“Yeah,” Tully says. “I do.”
I stop mid-light. Now he wants to keep me from smoking? Outside? He really is annoying, no wonder Georgia left him.
“But only,” he says, “because I hate seeing anybody do that to themselves.”
Oh. I see. Yes, I want to tell him, yes, I agree. I hate it when people hurt themselves. But what Tully doesn’t know is that at the moment I need to smoke and drink and do unhealthy things. It’s all that’s keeping me going.
So I light up. I inhale the tobacco, letting the nicotine do its work on my brain cells.
“Something’s been bothering me,” I say. “Charlotte claims when Georgia ran away she took things that belong to her. Belong to Charlotte, I mean. Do you know what they are?”
Tully chews his lip. “Money, jewelry, cocaine . . . who knows?”
“Georgia does coke?”
He laughs. “Georgia does whatever she wants. But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if that butler, Juven, brings her blow on a tray, with coffee and biscotti.” He gazes down at the ground. “Hollywood’s a funny place. And the Illworths are a very Hollywood family.”
“I don’t know if this is about drugs,” I say. “I hope not. But I do think whatever items Georgia took must be valuable, or Charlotte wouldn’t be so eager to get them back.”
“Well,” Tully says, “you know the old saying: ‘One man’s treasure is another man’s trash.’”
Perhaps. But Charlotte’s house overflows with high-end furnishings and artwork. It’s doubtful anything she perceived as treasure would be considered trash by someone else. Besides, didn’t Tully get that backward? I thought the saying was “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
We round a corner and come upon a lizard sunning itself on a rock. The animal’s wide mouth and thin legs remind me of Charlotte. I halfway expect it to pull out a phone and strike a deal with Warner Bros. The creature sees us and darts off into the undergrowth.
“Have you no other notion what these missing objects might be?” I say to Tully.
“Not a clue. But you think they’re valuable?”
“Quite,” I say.
“Then, uh, I should point something out,” Tully says. “Every object actually has two values.” He holds up his index finger. “Number one is the price it’ll bring in the open market. What’ll people bid for it at Sotheby’s or Christie’s?” He holds up a second finger. “But every object also has a hidden value. That’s a wild card, totally unpredictable. Could be zero, could be millions.”
“And what is this mysterious hidden value?” I say.
Tully smiles and for the first time today looks almost happy. “I’ve thought about this a lot,” he says. “It’s part of the book I’m writing.”
“Dollhouses?” I take a drag off my cigarette.
“Sort of. The culture of collecting. See, the hidden value of any object is what that object is worth to you. Sentimentality can really drive up the price. Like when we were in that shop today and the guy was going on about his grandmother’s china and Ginger Rogers’s shoes and Marilyn Monroe’s underwear. That’s all schmaltz.”
“But surely some of that must have historic value,” I say. “History of the American cinema and all that.”
“What do Marilyn Monroe’s panties have to do with the annals of American film?” Tully says. “You tell me.”
I’d like to tell him. There must be historical importance to Marilyn Monroe’s panties, if only I could think what it would be. Wait a minute! What if they were the panties from that film The Seven Year Itch? The panties Marilyn takes out of the icebox and innocently waves under Tom Ewell’s nose? That was a classic scene of comic male frustration.
You could say in that film Marilyn’s panties were a metaphor for political repression in America during the 1950s, juxtaposed against the awakening sexual freedom of the middle class. Oh, that’s good, isn’t it? Those panties are of significant historical interest. Those panties should be in the Smithsonian!
But before I can make my case, Tully starts in again. “See, the hidden value can go way deeper than sentimental attachment. Sometimes you feel it down to your soul. Like maybe you’re the one person who appreciates a work of art that everybody else hates.”
He stops walking and squats down to examine a basketball-size plant growing in the ground. It’s a round, cactusy thing with milky-white spines.
“This thing you treasure,” Tully says, gazing at the cactus, “this thing nobody else wants, could also be what you’d call organic. It could be alive. Could be, I don’t know, a dog. Or a human being. That’s what falling in love is, isn’t it? Discovering the hidden value in someone.”
Tully reaches out and touches the cactus. It pricks him, and he jerks back his hand. He stands there and considers the spot of blood forming on his finger.
I stub out my cigarette under my shoe, then rummage in my bag for a tissue. “Here,” I say. Tully holds out his palm to me.
I lay the tissue against Tully’s finger. I’m pushing down, applying pressure to the wound, when I glance up and look at Tully’s face. I take in his smooth cheeks, his rough chin and jaw, the developing wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
“We fall in love with somebody who maybe seems like a bad match,” Tully says, “and our friends run around saying, ‘What does he see in her?’ What he sees in her is what’s hidden from everyone else. He’s fallen in love with something invisible.”
“Or possibly he’s made a common mistake,” I say, gazing at Tully. “He was needy. He fell for outward appearances. He projected onto this person whatever it was he’d always longed for in a relationship, whatever he hungered for in life. He fell in love with the idea of love.”
“That’s a pretty cynical point of view,” Tully says. He pulls his hand away and removes the tissue, sucking at the cut on his finger. “Or do you speak from experience?”
The garden path circles round until it comes out by the hotel parking lot. The MG is there, parked in the shade of the building. Amid rows of more expensive luxury vehicles, my father’s car shines like a cherry in a bowl of vanilla ice-cream. Two women walk by. One of them pulls out a camera and directs the other to stand next to the MG. She snaps a photo. They laugh and move on.
“The car’s a photo-op,” Tully says.
“It has style,” I say.
“It does. Except style, like value, is a matter of opinion. That reminds me—those shoes in the shop, the ones that belonged to Ginger Rogers. How’d you know who designed them?”
“Oh, well,” I say. “Roger Vivier was French, h
e created women’s high-fashion mid-century footwear. If you know his work, it’s not hard to spot.”
“Still, that was pretty good.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Of course, I also saw the label.”
There’s a beat, then Tully gives a short laugh. I laugh too.
We walk over to the MG. It’s sleek and inviting, and has an air of speed even when it’s standing still. Despite having spent much of the day in that car, I have an urge to sit in it. I turn the chrome handle on the driver’s side and get in.
I perch in the driver’s seat, my fingers wrapped round the steering wheel. The red dashboard in front of me is curved like a pair of lips. In the center of the dashboard are three old-fashioned instrument dials. They have octagonal-shaped black faces and white numbers and pointers. There’s nothing at all digital or electronic or modern about this car. A time machine, yes, that’s what it is. Finn would have liked it. I like it. I like being in it, imagining the places I could go. Home, mostly.
Tully rests against the hood, facing me. He talks over the windshield. “Look, Margo,” he says, “you want to find Georgia and Charlotte’s stuff, whatever that is. Me, I just want to find Georgia. How about we try to get along? Seriously, I’m not a bad guy. We could, you know, join forces.”
I gaze at Tully, trying to figure him out. On the plus side: attractive smile, nice head of hair. But the rest of him? Fortyish, dumped on his wedding day, writing a little book about dollhouses. Frankly, I feel sorry for him.
“Well,” I say, “Georgia’s my niece, but the sole reason I’m pursuing her is because Charlotte’s paying me. I need money. I’m broke. What about you?”
“I make a living.”
“No, no. Why did you get in this car and come after Georgia?”
“Oh.” Tully pokes his thumbnail into the rubber coating along the edge of the windscreen. “Well, I’m in love with her. She’s young, I know. And we had a huge fight yesterday. Gigantic. I told her I was sick of all the partying. I want her to dry out, ditch the drugs, grow up. That pissed her off. She threw stuff around, said nobody could put her on a leash.”
“All right,” I say. “You argued; she bolted. But on her way out the front door she paused long enough to nick two or three items belonging to Charlotte. Again, what do you imagine those objects are?”
“Who knows? The only thing out of the ordinary I know for sure happened is Georgia got into a room over the garage. When Charlotte found that out she was ticked. Nobody’s supposed to go up there.”
A dim memory floats back to me from childhood. Before I can even think what it is I want to ask, I say, “The sanctum sanctorum.”
Tully waits, as if there must be more.
“It’s Latin,” I say. “It means—”
“Innermost sanctuary.”
“Yes. Remember that actor John Barrymore? Drew Barrymore’s grandfather?”
Tully lets loose a laugh. “Before my time. But I bet the two of you rode around in this car every day, eating ice-cream.”
“He died before I was born,” I say. “But my father knew him. Barrymore was a legendary drunk. He kept a room, a private bar, in the attic of his Beverly Hills home. He called it his sanctum sanctorum. When my father bought the house at Malibu, he had his own sanctum sanctorum built over the garage. It was his private clubhouse, but it was also his office. If Georgia took something from that room it was almost certainly, even after all these years, an item that belonged to my father.”
This starts me thinking about what Charlotte said, how Irene kept all of our father’s things. However, as much as I loved my dad, the only item of interest I can picture him leaving behind, other than the MG, is a bottle of good Napoleon brandy. Besides, whether or not Georgia filched something from the sanctum sanctorum is of minor importance. To get my fifty thousand dollars, I first of all have to find her.
I need to know more, but I’m aware of not wanting to hurt Tully. I suspect he’s been hurt enough. “Do you think it’s possible,” I say gently, “that Georgia might have, well . . . any chance she ran off with someone else?”
Tully pokes some more at the rubber coating. “I thought of that. But if she was with a guy, she probably wouldn’t need cash, meaning she wouldn’t have hocked her dress so fast. Jilting me was a prank. She wanted to hurt me, and she did. Plus, she gets a kick out of driving her mom crazy.”
He looks straight at me. “Georgia’s wild, yeah. Immature as hell. But she’d never really leave me without . . . It’s a stunt. She said she loved me.”
I listen and nod as if Tully were right. As if nobody in the world ever lied about who or what they were. Or whom they were capable of loving.
The tiny dashboard clock reads four. In a couple of hours the sun will disappear behind the mountains.
I open the car door and swing my legs out to the ground. “Think I’ll go to my room and change,” I say. “I want to go for a swim.”
Tully jumps from the hood and holds the door for me. “What about Georgia?” he says, shaking his head. “We should be looking for her. We could walk around the place, see what we can . . . see.”
“Walk around all you like,” I say. I give Tully my cell phone number so he can call me if he discovers anything. “But just remember,” I say, “all we really know is that Georgia is at this hotel. Somehow we have to figure out what room she’s in, and what our next move should be. Our ‘intentions.’ In the meantime, I believe a swim will help me think. Who knows? Maybe Georgia will show up at the pool.”
Half an hour later, I’ve already been for a dip. Now I lie poolside, on a slightly damp lounge chair, watching women splash about in the water. Cocktails are served by the pool. I order a martini.
I’m sipping my drink, reflecting none too happily on the day’s events—and thinking hard about how the hell to find Georgia—when a female in a tank suit strides out to the edge of the diving board. She stands there, silhouetted against the late-afternoon sky, taking the measure of her dive. She’s slim, sinewy, and unusually tall. When she raises her arms for the plunge, I get a good look at her face. That hawk nose, those penetrating eyes. It’s Vera, beloved of Ruby the bartender.
Vera does a respectable front dive off the springboard, then swims over to my side of the pool. She floats there, treading water. She smiles up at me. “All alone?” she says.
“Well, I—”
“I’ll join you.”
This is the thing about Vera. She doesn’t ask, she announces. It’s like being in the path of a bad driver, an oncoming train, or a large wet dog.
Vera hauls herself out of the pool. She grabs a towel from a nearby cart and begins drying off. A healthy young woman in a two-piece bathing suit saunters by. “Hell-o, Raylene,” Vera says admiringly. The woman smiles and keeps walking. Vera finishes drying, then wraps her towel round her shoulders and drops down on the lounge chair next to mine.
“Always nice to see a friendly face,” she says.
“Vera, I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling the least bit friendly. I have a lot to think about, and I—”
“Meant me,” she says. She pushes back her wet hair. “I’m the friendly face. Because, darlin’, you look like you could use a pal.”
Oh.
She focuses on the glass in my hand. “Liquor is mighty pricey at this hotel, but money’s no object for you, is it?”
I laugh. “Money—the lack of it—is a huge object in my life,” I say. “But I’m here on a sort of expense account. So, you’re half right. At this exact moment, at this hotel, money is not an issue.”
She looks at me, and I realize I’ve just declared myself her own personal happy hour. Oh, what difference does it make? She might as well mooch off me as anyone. “May I buy you a drink?” I say.
By the time we’re on our second round, Vera and I are cozy as old chums. I have to admit there’s something engaging about Vera. She’s a steamroller, yes, but a big-hearted, laughing steamroller. She’s also a good listener.
Before you k
now it, I’ve shared with Vera the whole story of why I’ve come to Palm Springs. My financial troubles, my runaway niece. I explain that not only have I been hired to return Georgia to the family fold, but also I’ve been charged with retrieving Charlotte’s purloined goods, whatever they are.
Vera takes a swig of her whiskey sour. “There’s only one thing to do,” she says. “Slip into your niece’s room when she’s out, see what you find.”
I laugh. “Isn’t that breaking and entering?”
“Not if you had a keycard,” Vera says. “No breaking about it, just turn the handle.”
I laugh again. “Right. And where would I get a keycard?”
“From a friend,” Vera says. She strokes her chin. “Here’s what: I need a partner for tonight’s dance competition. You be my partner; I’ll get you a pass key.”
I feel myself growing nervous. Yes, I need to find out what room Georgia’s in. And yes, I’d like to have a look round that room. All that might help me earn fifty thousand dollars. But must I enter the dance contest? The idea of dancing cheek-to-cheek with another woman all evening makes me a tad uncomfortable. It’s false, it’s not who I am.
And there’s something else—a much bigger emotional hurdle to Vera’s proposition. The last time I entered a dance contest my partner was Finn Coyle. We won a trophy. I’ve held on to that night as one of the most sublime evenings of my life. I even told myself I would never enter another dance contest, not unless it was with Finn. I’m afraid that competing in tonight’s event might stir up memories, might make me feel somehow disloyal to Finn. I don’t think I’m up for that.
I move to put the brakes on. “Look, Vera, I realize this contest is important to you, but I told you before. I do not dance.”
“So you say. Trouble is, I need a partner; you need a keycard.” She wags her finger at me. “But if you ain’t dancing, then darlin’, I ain’t opening no doors.”
Vera’s twang gets thicker with every sip of her whiskey sour. She lays this cowgirl stuff on with a vengeance, but I have a suspicion she never set foot out west until well into her adult years.