by L. J. Greene
Her car—or Lynette’s car, I guessed, since it belonged to whichever flavor of the month was put up at the Chateau—was a snazzy Aston Martin coupe with a surprisingly generous trunk. As I skidded to a halt, there was a loud tumbling thump from the back.
“There’s no traffic,” I’d growled.
“We’re keeping our noses clean,” she’d growled back. “You willing to gamble your life and mine on a red light?”
I didn’t like being wrong, but she had a point. We reached the canyons and I told her to stay with the car, but she was resolute.
“I owe it to Lynette,” she said, and so we each took our share of the digging and the guilt.
By the time we got back to Chateau Marmont the sun was setting fire to the sky as it came up, fierce as an inferno. It was as plain a sign as any, I figured, that I’d damned myself. It was too late for me, I knew that. But if I could save Bella from whatever Fate had in store for her, I’d settle for that.
I followed her into her bungalow. I was beat, but we had more to do still. She flopped on the Kagan sofa and stared listlessly at the wall, ignoring me when I said we’d better keep moving. So I cleaned out the bedroom on my own, and after a few minutes I heard the shower in the main bathroom start.
Chapter 46
It took me a while to get the bloodstains scrubbed to fading, and it wouldn’t fool anyone looking for them. But it would do long enough. I let Bella in to the bedroom once I was done, and left her to dress. When I came back, she was packing a suitcase. I watched her throw in the last few items, and she had to sit on the case to get it to shut.
All she left was a string of enormous pearls on the dressing table, laid out straight like an arrow. Pearls, I thought, running the back of a finger over the middle luminescent globe. It was familiar to me, this necklace, and then I remembered them around Lynette’s throat on the front page, and the headline: GARROTED.
“Shouldn’t the police have these pearls?” I wondered.
She snorted. “You really fell for that story? The Examiner paid my lunch for a week for that tip. Anyways, they were looking for what might have made the marks on her. Said a lead like that might be worth something. So I told them about the pearls.”
“But it wasn't the pearls?”
“Well, who knows? Mighta been. Don’t seem likely, though. It’d pop, a fancy piece like that.”
“But—”
The loud thunk of Bella’s case hitting the ground broke my train of thought.
“You done this before?” she asked, dragging the suitcase through to the living room. I followed her.
“Nope.”
“You’re mighty good at it.”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
We were getting tetchy with each other, and I didn’t want that. I sighed and said, “I never buried a man before. Just for you, Magnolia Girl.”
“Magnolia Girl?”
“It’s what I took to calling you. In my own mind.”
“My name is Bella,” she said, sounding hard. “You might want to remember that. This town likes to make flowers out of its victims, like it’ll make up for what happens to ’em. Pretties them up for the papers, I guess. Dahlias. Orchids. Magnolias.”
Shame made me bicker. “It was meant as a compliment, the nickname.”
“Sure, but it isn’t one. I’m no delicate flower, mister.”
Well, yes. I could see that now.
“Don’t give me that condescending look,” she snapped. “You know what your problem is? You don’t understand people. You look at a girl and you underestimate her. You look at a fella, and…”
“And what?” I challenged.
“Aw, forget it.” She wiped her brow and then stared at her hands as though they were still covered in dirt and dust and dried blood. “What do you think’ll happen now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you watch the movies? A couple can go crazy if they murder someone together.” She looked exhausted. Young.
“No fear of that,” I told her. “First off, we’re not a couple. Second, this wasn’t murder, not in cold blood. And third, I can keep a secret. Can you?”
“You got a cigarette?”
I gave her my last Gauloise. She wrinkled her nose, but she smoked it right enough, offering me a drag now and then. “You know I can keep a secret,” she said while she smoked it. “Besides, I’ve done what I came here to do. Maybe it was that snake who did it, or maybe it was his friends. Either way, he’s the one who betrayed her first. So the way I see it, he’s the one to wear the blame.”
It didn’t ring quite true, her satisfaction. I realized when she couldn’t meet my eyes that my Magnolia Girl, my unflappable Bella, was finally shaken. Bashing a man’s brains in and burying him had done what threats on her life could not.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, then.”
“I’m going home for a while. Laying low.”
“Where’s home?”
“Never you mind.”
I sighed. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”
“If you’re lucky.” She sounded exasperated. “What’s wrong with you? You got a yen for trouble? You bury a body with someone, you never want to see them again. That’s the way it goes.”
“So you’re kicking me out?”
“You always take things so personal.”
“What other way is there to take them?” I asked, bewildered.
She hustled me to the front door and stuck out her hand. I shook it, because I didn’t know what else to do. “Nice knowing you,” she said. “Take care of yourself. Sort out that man of yours, if you want him so bad.”
“I thought you were scared of him,” I said suddenly. “You said he looked dangerous.”
“That’s your problem, ain’t it?” she explained patiently, like I was a child. She kissed me on the cheek and started to push me out. “You’re a swell guy, Cole Fox. Don’t let that get you killed.”
I wheeled round, a question on my lips, but all I saw was the shut door.
My first worry was Pete Walker. If Fred King never reported back to him, he’d come looking—or send his boys to pay a visit, anyway. Time was ticking on, and I needed to be somewhere safe, but I looked like a hobo and I was only going to attract attention outside the grounds of Chateau Marmont. I was bone-tired. My chest ached where I’d been burned, and I stank of sweat, mud, and something that reminded me of my Ma’s Sunday roast. The thought of my mother made me long for Iowa again. I’d been sending them money regularly, Katie and Ma both, but I’d long ago figured out that it was doing them a favor to stay distant—no detailed letters, no hint of the troubles I was in. No need to get them mixed up in my life, after all.
It sure wouldn’t do them any good now. Iowa wasn’t the bolthole I was looking for.
I didn’t know what would happen to me, but at that moment I needed sleep, and I needed it badly. Besides, while I stayed inside the Chateau grounds, no one would give me a second glance, and no one would rat me out, either. Wasn’t good for business. I took myself off to reception, trailing past the pool on heavy feet like a thousand partied-up guests must have done over the years. One more wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.
Monsieur Antoine was on the desk. I’d never been so happy to see him.
“Hullo, friend,” I rasped out.
He gave me the once-over and then avoided eye contact just as politely as he always did. “Monsieur would like the key to his bungalow?”
“Yeah. My bungalow. And no phone calls, unless it’s Mancini himself. You know his voice?”
“Of course, monsieur,” he murmured.
Cresswickham’s death might not have been in the morning paper, I realized. It’d make the evening dailies, but that still bought me a little time. I only needed a few hours, after all. A shower, a shave, a sleep. Fred King would be found eventually, but not that day, not if my luck held. “I’ll want my suit cleaned and pressed by five, and my shoes cleaned,” I said t
o Monsieur Antoine. “Send someone to collect them, would you? Might as well get me a copy of the LA Examiner while you’re at it.”
“Certainly,” Monsieur Antoine said, and handed over the room key.
The lobby was quiet, like the whole Chateau was holding its breath for me. No starlets swanning; no leading men having breakfast. I thought about Monty Clift as I walked back to the bungalows, and snorted at the idea I might bump into him looking like I did. There’d’ve been no dinner invitations for me in that state.
Bella’s bungalow was all closed up when I passed, blinds drawn and no noise from inside.
After I’d given my clothes to the maid and accepted the newspaper, I found out Monty Clift would be issuing no more invitations for some time. The front page of the Examiner had it splashed all over: MONTGOMERY CLIFT IN SERIOUS CAR ACCIDENT. His accident had finally displaced the Incubus from the lead story, and Lord Cresswickham’s demise was nowhere to be found.
I shivered, and caught sight of my face in the mirror on the wall in the lounge room. The red morning light was making its determined way through the window, casting odd aspects on my jaw and nose. I barely recognized myself. It seemed for a moment as though I’d somehow stolen Monty Clift’s luck for myself, and used it all up on a gamble. Used it up on Bella, on a night ride east of the city and a shallow grave.
I vomited up pink-tinged bile. Then I got on with washing, and fell onto the bed still wet from the shower. I slept like the dead until five. A knock at the door woke me, and I pulled on the Chateau-provided robe to crack it open and peer out suspiciously. It was housekeeping with my suit, which was almost good as new. I washed out my mouth after dressing, and wished I could take the edge off with a drink, but I couldn’t come at bourbon.
It was time to get out of there. Return to Leo, and see if he’d handled his dead body as tidily as I had mine. What a perfect couple we were, I thought sourly, with our cool heads for killing. We might brush these murders off our shoulders as calmly as lint, if it weren’t for a little problem with the stag films. If it weren’t for the fact that I feared Leo might use that level head and those tranquil hands to do for me as neatly as he’d done for Cresswickham.
Because somewhere in the burying of Freddie’s body it had occurred to me what I’d missed when he told me his story. Why had Freddie picked this night, of all nights, to take out Bella? It couldn’t be a coincidence that Cresswickham had met his end on the same night. And come to that, why had Freddie kept referring to ‘the toff’ in the past tense? It might have meant nothing, but I couldn’t shake my certainty that Freddie had known Lord Reginald Cresswickham had met a sticky end.
If that were true, someone must have rung him up and told him, because the papers were silent on the matter. Maybe he got the order to put down Bella during that same call. Over and again I replayed the sound of the lifting receiver I’d heard just after Leo pushed me out of the mansion. I’d assumed he was calling the police, but…
If Leo had sent Freddie after Bella—well. It was one thing to do away with the aristocrat who, after all, had caused nothing but misery and fear. But Bella? No, I couldn’t overlook that.
I still had Bella’s gun, and though it was only one step up from a toy, it was better than nothing. I slipped it into my pocket where it sat a snug weight up against my thigh.
I had to have it out with Leo. I couldn’t let it be, and I wouldn’t wait here like an obedient pet. I wanted to rock him, to see him shake on that steadfast plinth. Just a little shove to watch him wobble, a little bet against the King of Spades, and then—then we’d see how the cards played out.
Part X
The Killers
Chapter 47
I whiled away a few hours in the lounge, drinking water like I’d come out of the desert, and then flagged a cab outside the Chateau. I hopped out a ways down from the house. No need to announce my arrival to all and sundry. It took me another twenty minutes through the dusk-covered streets to reach the gates of the driveway. They were closed. It wasn’t unusual; Betts liked to shut up tight in the evenings, but not always this early. It was only just on nine.
I had two choices: I could press the communicator at the front gate, or I could hoof it round the side of the estate to where I knew it was easier to get a leg up, and climb the railing fence. Something made me want to stay hidden, even though the danger was supposedly gone now. Lord Reginald Cresswickham, the Marquess of Holford, was dining below ground tonight. Yet I didn’t feel safe, and besides, who knew what was waiting for me beyond those iron bars, behind the great stone walls?
I shinned over the wall at the side of the estate, and made my way to the hedge rows by the side of the mansion, near the French doors of the drawing room. A large rock poked out of the ground behind the hedge, and was flat enough for me to sit on. There was a light on behind the curtains, and for a moment my gut cramped with an overwhelming sense of exclusion. It was my own doing, of course, and yet I couldn’t help feeling rejected. Made to stand outside my bungalow last night, and now outside the mansion; it made me wonder where exactly I fit in the world.
“You never wanted any of this in the first place,” I muttered to myself. I shifted on the cold rock. Was it true, though? Had I never wanted this? I’d been so quick to jump at the chance. The suggestion to move to Chateau Marmont barely left Mancini’s lips before I was dragging my battered suitcase into the bungalow. And the mansion—as trapped into it as I was, I’d never bothered to make plans for escape, had I? Never pressed Leo about leaving, never tried to make my own way even if he wouldn’t.
Maybe I did deserve all this misfortune. Another cramp hit me and my mouth went dry. My hands were shaking, so I stuffed them between my thighs.
I waited there until the light behind the curtain went out, and then gave it some extra time. Even now I don’t know what it was I had planned, what I wanted to say to Leo, whether I wanted to kiss him or kill him—or maybe it was all the same thing in the end. All I knew was, we’d started this torrid journey together and we had to finish it together, too. My head was pounding. Once or twice I retched quietly into the bushes.
Around midnight, I chanced smashing the pane of glass on the French door with a rock from the garden beds. I’d imagined a tinkle, but in the silent night it was much louder. I waited a while, tensed for flight, but eventually I slid a hand in to unlock it. I cut myself, I was trembling so much, and I couldn’t stop the string of oaths that escaped my lips. But finally I got the door open, and pushed the curtains aside so I could go through.
I’d never entered the drawing room this way, and it disoriented me at first, like being in a fun house where the angles slant away in the directions you least expect. The moon coming through the glass doors made a barred pattern across the carpet that stretched crazily sideways, reaching towards the screening room door. The screening room door that was ajar, and shouldn’t have been. Never was, except that night I’d crept down to find Cresswickham watching his stag films.
The back of my neck went cold, and I wrapped a slick hand around the grip of the gun in my pocket. I was too busy staring at the screening room door to notice the figure near the piano, until he stepped towards me, dipping his toes in the moonlight spill on the carpet.
“Hello, friend.”
I jerked so hard I’m surprised I didn’t shoot myself in the leg.
Mancini continued: “I told you to stay away until I called.”
“I got nervy,” I snapped. “And I got into a mess.”
“Oh?” A small rasp sounded, and his face lit up red in the flame of his lighter. “What mess was that?”
“Bella. She found out who was doing the Incubus killings.”
“Did she, now?” He was quiet, contemplative.
“Ended with a shallow grave in the canyons.”
“I see.”
“Want to know whose? Do you even care?”
“I should be very sorry if it were hers,” he said, sounding faintly surprised. “But I did warn her.”
“That you did.”
The scent of his cigarette reached me then, and made me gag. He walked forward a little, so I could finally see his face.
“It was Freddie King’s grave,” I said. “You knew him, didn’t you?” He gave no reply, but smoked on. “Fred told me all about what happened with Lynette Rochelle. I reckon you were there too, Mancini. Did you watch Cresswickham kill her? Did you enjoy it?”
Still he said nothing.
“Alright, then, if you won’t answer that: why’d you leave me sleeping alone down here, when you promised Alice you wouldn’t leave my side?”
“Sweet Alice,” he sighed. “One can hardly say no to her face, not when she’s begging with those eyes of hers. You haven’t asked how it went with the police. Want to know? Do you even care?” He was mimicking me with a faint whine and a mocking smile. “They’re satisfied it was an accident, since you ask. I even managed to keep it out of the evening papers, with the right incentive to the right officer.”
I ignored him, and continued doggedly on. I had to know. I didn’t want to know about the police, didn’t want to know what tale he’d spun. I had to know the truth. “You left me sleeping in here because you were setting up to kill him. Isn’t that right?”
Mancini gave a smile. “Is that really the way you plan to play it?” He was looking at my hand. I looked down too, and saw I had pulled the gun on him. “Goodness, bunny, I can't think why you're so peeved.”
“Why’d you leave me?” I challenged. I kept the gun trained on him as best I could, but I couldn’t keep it still.
“I had a very good reason, you know.” He walked slowly back to the piano and sat down as though he were about to play, but he kept his eyes on me. I steadied my wrist with my other hand, and kept the gun pointed at his head.