Valley of Shadows

by Paul Buchanan

  Keegan put the phone back in its cradle. He’d have to go see Zinnia in her grief, and he wasn’t sure he could manage it on his own. He went out to the outer office and stood next to Mrs. Dodd’s desk. They were talking again now, but she still wasn’t happy with him. He had yet to make the promised phone call to Helen.

  Keegan cleared this throat. “Did you see the magazine I left for you on Friday?”

  Mrs. Dodd’s typing didn’t pause or even slow. “I got it,” she allowed. She hit the typewriter’s return bar, a little harder than seemed necessary, and moved on to the next line of typing.

  “You ever been inside the Chateau Marmont?” Keegan asked.

  Again, Mrs. Dodd’s typing didn’t lag. “Never heard of it.”

  “I’d have thought it would be all over those movie gossip magazines.”

  Mrs. Dodd didn’t respond. She didn’t look up at him. She didn’t speak. She typed, was what she did. The bell on her Remington chimed, and she hit the return bar again.

  “You know who I saw there by the swimming pool when I went by there the other week?”

  Mrs. Dodd still wouldn’t look at him, but her typing lagged a little, so he knew she was listening. Movie-star gossip was the chink in her armor.

  “She was in a very fetching blue swimsuit,” Keegan said, wanting to draw it out a bit. “Very glamorous. In the company of two handsome young men. They might have been movie stars too, for all I know about Hollywood.”

  Mrs. Dodd’s typing slowed to a stop. She flung her arms down into her lap in a huff but still wouldn’t look in Keegan’s direction. “Okay,” she said, sitting very straight in her chair. “Fine. Who did you see at the swimming pool?”

  Keegan allowed himself a sly smile. “Natalie Wood,” he told her.

  Mrs. Dodd’s head snapped in his direction. “Was one of the boys Warren Beatty?” she wanted to know. “You know Warren Beatty, right? He was in Splendor in the Grass? People say they’re seeing each other.”

  “Never heard of him,” Keegan said. “But I’ll bet he was one of them. I’m heading out there in a few minutes if you want to tag along.”

  As a gambit, it did the trick. Mrs. Dodd glared at him, then looked at the letter she was typing. “Give me five minutes to finish this,” she said. “What’ll we do with the dog?”

  “We won’t be long,” Keegan said. “She can wait in the car. We’ll roll the window down a crack.”

  ON THE RIDE over to the Chateau Marmont, Mrs. Dodd made it clear that Keegan still wasn’t on her good side. She sat in the passenger seat with the dog in her lap, staring straight ahead through the windshield.

  They idled at a stoplight on Sunset, outside Angel’s Corner Liquor. Keegan held the wheel with both hands and kept his gaze straight ahead at the blue Pontiac in front of them. He cleared his throat. “For the record,” he said, “I like Helen. I enjoyed meeting her. I just got held up at the damn fortune teller that night. I’ll call her when I get a chance. I’ll apologize.”

  He waited. In his peripheral vision, he could see Mrs. Dodd stroking the dog’s head. It seemed like she wasn’t going to answer. The light turned green. Keegan eased down on the accelerator and they pulled ahead through the intersection.

  “It’s been too long for a phone call,” Mrs. Dodd finally replied. “You should apologize in person. What you did was very rude.”

  Keegan sighed and nodded. She was probably right. At this point, it was something he’d have to do face to face.

  They passed the hotel and then turned on Havenhurst to park in the shade of a big magnolia tree. He rolled the driver’s side window down a couple of inches before he closed the door on Nora. He and Mrs. Dodd headed back towards Sunset Boulevard and the hotel. He glanced behind them at his MG. The dog was watching them through the back window. She’d be fine.

  When he and Mrs. Dodd entered the hotel lobby, the concierge at the front desk didn’t even look up from whatever paperwork he was bent over. Zinnia must have called him—or maybe he remembered Keegan steering the weeping woman back to her bungalow the other week. Either way, it was a relief not to have to deal with him. Keegan led Mrs. Dodd straight through the lobby and out through the glass-paneled doors to the garden courtyard without comment or challenge. They might have been invisible. They might have been ghosts.

  Mrs. Dodd trailed behind him through the courtyard. She kept lagging, her head swiveling this way and that, afraid she’d miss something. Keegan kept having to wait for her. No one was at the swimming pool today. As they passed it, Keegan felt a little disappointed on her behalf. Natalie Wood was lounging stylishly in some other location today.

  The bungalow’s gate was open and the front door ajar. Zinnia was waiting for them. Keegan knocked on the doorjamb and called out, “We’re here,” before he pushed the door wide and waved Mrs. Dodd through into the dim front room.

  Mrs. Dodd had never met Zinnia—or Ida Fletcher or Frank the Boxer, for that matter—but of course, Keegan had told her all about them. To her credit, Mrs. Dodd seemed to know exactly how to react, she slipped quickly to the other woman’s side on the sofa. After a few minutes of cooing and consoling, she got up to put the kettle on in the little kitchen. Mrs. Dodd might not be as poised and professional as Roland Dion’s receptionist, but she was good with people. She was kind and forgiving—unless, of course, those people were Keegan.

  “The safe?” Keegan asked Zinnia.

  She sat perched on the sofa’s edge, looking impossibly small and exposed. She’d been holed up in this shabby bungalow for days, grieving her lost love alone. Keegan realized, only now, that he could have—should have—done more for her.

  “It’s in the big bedroom,” Zinnia answered, her voice sounding weirdly distant.

  “And you don’t know the combination?”

  She shook her head forlornly.

  Keegan nodded. “It’s just a formality,” he said. “I’ll call the front desk. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Mrs. Dodd rushed over from the kitchenette carrying a steaming cup of something. She set it down on the end table next to Zinnia. “I’ll call the front desk,” she told Keegan. “This girl probably hasn’t eaten in days.” She went to the phone in the kitchenette and dialed the operator.

  Keegan went back to the bedroom. An antique black Parcells’ safe squatted on the closet floor. It had the old brass dial and the three-pronged spindle. It was even more out of date than the safe in Keegan’s office. He tried the spindle, just in case, but of course, it wouldn’t budge.

  He could hear Mrs. Dodd’s voice out in the kitchen. He couldn’t make out the words, but, even from here, he could sense her displeasure. Her voice was getting progressively louder. He went to the doorway.

  “I don’t care what time it is…” Mrs. Dodd was saying.

  Keegan closed the bedroom door and sat on the corner of the bed, smiling. He’d brought the right reinforcements. If anyone could get someone at this contrary hotel to come down here and open the safe, it was Mrs. Dodd. And it felt good to have someone else be the focus of her ire, if only for a few minutes. Keegan waited until the phone call was over before he came out of hiding.

  Klaus, himself, arrived at the bungalow’s door a few minutes later. Today his bow tie was sapphire blue. He entered in a huff, pushed past Keegan, and headed to the bedroom. Keegan followed him back and found him bent, working the safe’s dial. He consulted something written on an index card and then pressed it against his starched shirtfront so Keegan couldn’t read it. He spun the spindle and pulled the safe’s door open.

  The thing looked empty.

  The concierge stood, nodded disdainfully to Keegan, and left the bedroom without uttering a word.

  “Weren’t you supposed to bring a sandwich?” Mrs. Dodd voice came to Keegan from the other room. “We ordered a sandwich.”

  Keegan smiled and kneeled down to make sure there was nothing inside the safe. He couldn’t hear the concierge answer.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Dodd’s v
oice came from the other room. “Some meat, some cheese, some mayo? Surely someone in this dump knows how to make a sandwich. What do you do when Natalie Wood gets hungry?”

  Keegan closed the safe again and heard the bungalow’s front door pulled shut. He sat down on the edge of the bed again—smiling again. He’d give Mrs. Dodd a few minutes alone with Zinnia. They could talk. Zinnia could eat her sandwich. Keegan would be fine just sitting here, minding his own business.

  ON THEIR WAY back through the hotel’s courtyard, the swimming pool was still empty, but Mrs. Dodd paid no attention to it this time.

  “She’s only got to the end of the month,” she was saying. “And all the old lady’s money is tied up right now. She doesn’t have a penny to her name.”

  “She’s going to have more money than you and me and Wendell put together,” Keegan said.

  “Not right now, she doesn’t.” Mrs. Dodd stopped walking, which meant Keegan had to stop too. He turned to look at her. She stood akimbo, looking up at him. “Halloween’s on Thursday,” she said obstinately. “They’re going to throw the poor thing out on her ear. Come on, boss. We’ve got all that cash just sitting in the office safe.”

  Keegan sighed. “Okay, fine,” he said. “We’ll pay for another month.”

  The concierge stiffened when they came back into the lobby. Mrs. Dodd held her hand out to Keegan and he fished in his jacket pocket for a business card. She took it and strode in Klaus’s direction. The man swallowed hard; the sapphire bow tie dipped visibly.

  Keegan went and stood behind Mrs. Dodd. He had to admit he was rather enjoying himself.

  “We’re paying for another month on Bungalow One,” she said. She slapped the card down on the desk under his nose. “Bill it to our office.”

  The concierge looked down at the card and nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He looked up at Keegan, grudgingly. “Thank you, sir.”

  Keegan smiled. A month at the Chateau Marmont would cost him an arm and a leg—and he might never get reimbursed for it—but it was worth it just to hear the concierge call him sir.

  ON THE RIDE back to the office, Mrs. Dodd was in much better spirits. She kept up a steady monologue about the hotel and the concierge and poor Zinnia’s predicament. Keegan let her talk. It was good that she was venting—because Keegan needed to ask her a favor.

  He waited until they were back in the downtown traffic, in the shade of the tall buildings on Figueroa, before he asked. “I’m going to have to head out to Catalina Island this week,” he told her. “I can catch the ferry over Wednesday and be back by Thursday evening.”

  In his peripheral vision, he could see her turn to look at him. “And you need someone to babysit your dog.”

  That was, indeed, the favor he needed. “I do,” he said.

  “That’s fine,” she told him. “You can drop her off at my house tomorrow night.” She held the dog and looked out through the windshield.

  “Can’t you just take her home with you after work tomorrow?”

  “Well,” Mrs. Dodd said, “you’re going to be dropping her off at my house because you’re also going to go next door to apologize. In person.”

  Keegan glanced over at her and then looked back at the traffic. Mrs. Dodd may not have had the poise and polish of Roland Dion’s redhead, but, in her own way, she knew how to get things done.

  IT WAS GETTING close to midnight when Keegan pulled up in front of Mrs. Dodd’s house that Wednesday night. The lights were still on in the living room downstairs. Mrs. Dodd’s old Hudson was parked in the driveway and her husband’s Lancer was at the curb. Keegan parked in front of the Lancer, got out, and walked up the front path, carrying the sleepy dog.

  Helen’s red Plymouth Valiant was parked in the driveway of the house next door. A lamp burned in that front window as well, a yellow-tinged oval against the blue curtains.

  When Keegan rang Mrs. Dodd’s doorbell, Nora began wagging her tail and squirming to be let down. She was now fully awake and she knew where she was. Mrs. Dodd looked after her any time Keegan had to leave town. Keegan guessed that Mrs. Dodd spoiled her.

  When Mrs. Dodd pulled open the door, the dog wriggled out of Keegan’s hold before he could put her on the ground. She jumped up on Mrs. Dodd and then darted around her into the house. Keegan pulled her coiled leash from the pocket of his jacket.

  Mrs. Dodd was dressed in a blue bathrobe and a pair of hand-knit pink slippers. The black-and-white television in the living room behind her was tuned to The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson was hamming it up in his monologue with the volume turned low. Mrs. Dodd’s husband, Wendell, lay snoring in a green recliner.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” Keegan said.

  Mrs. Dodd waved for him to give her the dog’s leash, so he did. She hung it on a hook by the door. “I thought for sure you’d chickened out,” she told him. “If you had stood that girl up again, I was going to come to your place and beat you to death with your own telephone.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder at the house next door. “You think she’s still up?”

  Mrs. Dodd shook her head, like he was looking for a coward’s exit—which he probably was. “I told her you’d be coming by,” she said. “Don’t worry. She’s a night owl.” She looked beyond him at the other house. “And, for God’s sake, make it good. You’re not going to get another chance with her.”

  She looked him over then and seemed to feel a little pity. “You can do this, boss,” she said. “Just be your best self.” She reached out, turned him by the shoulders, and gave him a little push in the direction of Helen’s house. She then closed the door on him, and the porchlight went off.

  Keegan turned and looked across at the other house. The lawn between the driveways was closely mown and the privet hedge on Helen’s side was neatly trimmed. Everything about her house looked practical and elegant—well kept, like the woman herself. He dug his hands into his pockets and made his way across the grass to the other door. He climbed up the porch steps, took a steadying breath, and rang the doorbell.

  Inside, he heard footsteps coming along the hallway, and then Helen opened the door. She gave Keegan a nod. The expression on her face was impossible to read. She was barefoot but wore a tweed skirt and a simple cotton blouse. They looked wrinkled, like she’d worn them to work that day.

  “I hope it’s not too late,” he told her.

  “She told me you’d be coming by,” Helen said. She stepped back from the door, like she expected him to come in, so he did.

  “I hope you weren’t waiting up,” he said.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she told him. “I was correcting essays.”

  He went inside, and she closed the door, and then he followed her along a hallway. At the far end, through an open doorway, Keegan could see a kitchen table. It held two even-looking stacks of papers and a mug of pens and pencils. Whatever she was grading, she was only half finished. A half-empty bottle of sauterne wine sat on the counter beneath a cupboard.

  Helen reached through a dark doorway and switched on the lights. She nodded for him to follow her into the room. One wall held floor-to-ceiling bookcases, built on either side of a brick fireplace. The shelves were crowded with neatly arranged hardbacks, an impressive collection. A rosewood beehive clock ticked on the mantel. It was six minutes to midnight. Helen plopped down in a chair, arms folded.

  Keegan went over and sat down on a sofa across from her. “I just wanted to apologize for last week,” he said.

  She nodded in the direction of Mrs. Dodd’s house. “I’m guessing someone twisted your arm.”

  “She did,” Keegan admitted. “But I’d been meaning to apologize anyway. I’ve just been busy.”

  She didn’t speak, only nodded noncommittally, as if the apologizing should commence.

  “In my own defense—” Keegan began, but Helen was already shaking her head, so he stopped talking.

  “God, no!” she said, eyes smoldering. “Don’t even start.”r />
  Keegan shifted uncomfortably. “What?” he said. “What did I do?”

  “I’ve been grading essays all night,” she said. “Half of them start with ‘Webster’s dictionary defines…’ or ‘In today’s society…’ Three words into them, and I already want to drown myself in the kitchen sink.”

  “I’m sorry?” Keegan said, confused. “What?”

  “I’m saying that if this is supposed to be an apology—a real apology—you’re off to a pretty crappy start.” She stood then and smoothed down her dress. “Why don’t you just go on home?” she told him. “Let’s forget this whole thing. I have to deal with spoiled boys all day at work.”

  She started to move toward the door, but Keegan held out his hand, fingers splayed, a plea for her to stop. She was right, he knew. As a former reporter, he should be better with words. He’d come to apologize, and he’d buried his lead.

  She paused there by the doorway, looking down at him skeptically, arms folded.

  “I’m an asshole,” he told her—feeling that might be the proper, accurate lead for his story. “I’m selfish and stupid, and I’ve been holed up in my own damn head so long I’ve forgotten how to treat people. You deserve better.”

  The expression on Helen’s face went slack, though Keegan couldn’t guess what that meant. Still, she crossed back to her chair and sat down.

  Keegan took that as a sign he should continue. “The thing is,” he went on, feeling a strange mixture of disquiet and relief, “I got involved with a woman a while ago, and it ended horribly, and I don’t know how to get past it. I’m not sure I can.”

  Helen nodded. “Mrs. Dodd may have mentioned something about that,” she said. “The woman who died. She made it sound like it really haunts you.”

  Keegan nodded. If she only knew. “The woman got murdered,” he went on, like he was feeling for something in the darkness. “Shot by some mobster. I know it wasn’t technically my fault, but I keep playing the whole thing over and over in my head, and there were so many times when I could have done something different.” The words felt compressed—like they were something he’d been holding too tightly inside himself for too long. Something was loosening, threatening to tumble out in an avalanche. “I could have listened to her,” he said, shaking his head helplessly. “I could have trusted her. There are so many ways I screwed everything up.”