A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) (22 page)

“Final” was a word with deep reverberations. That I might be killed by this smarmy bastard made me madder than ever.

He pulled me upright, but before I got my balance he shoved me back on the bed where I sprawled ignominiously, but front side up. I struggled into a sitting position and glared at him.

“If looks could kill,” he taunted. He walked to the bureau and picked up two items, exhibiting them for my inspection, one in each hand. I recognized the letter I’d taken from his room and Pedro’s tape. He waggled the tape in front of my nose and said, “Thanks for letting me listen to this on your recorder.”

So, while I’d been wedged in my ingenious hiding place in the
boules
truck, Alexander had had the leisure to break into my room and suitcase, find the incriminating evidence, and play it on my tape recorder. How humiliating.

“Good old Pedro,” he said, stuffing the letter and tape into the pocket of his jeans. He stood in front of me, arms folded, looking down. “What should I do with you?” he asked.

Since I couldn’t answer, I shook my head and narrowed my eyes, trying to look my most hateful.

“If I let you go, you’re going to start squawking that I killed Carey. I can’t afford that. I want you to drop it.”

I didn’t blink.

“You think you’re so goddamn smart, and you’re so screwed up,” he said contemptuously. He walked to the window and looked out. In the streaming sunlight he looked older and more dissipated. He looked like a handsome, wasted brat. On his wrist the Rolex— or the fake Rolex— gleamed.

“I have to shut your mouth,” he continued, turning back to me. “How? Beat the shit out of you? Maybe you think I’m going to kill you. That would shut you up, wouldn’t it?”

The maid, or Alexander, had closed the window. A fly buzzed loudly against the pane. Provencal flies, I’d learned, were loud, and a nuisance, but dumb. Easy to swat.

“Let me surprise you,” Alexander said. “I’m going to do it another way. I’m going to tell you the truth.”

If disbelief can be conveyed by rolling eyes, raised eyebrows, and flared nostrils, I conveyed it.

He laughed. “Sure, sure. You don’t like me. You
want
me to be a killer. But don’t get committed to the idea.”

I had slumped back on the bed. He took me roughly by the shoulders and pulled me upright.
“Listen,
captive audience!”

I put on an attentive look. What choice did I have? The fly, stupid as they come, continued to buzz futilely, banging itself against the pane.

In a corner sat a green ladder-back chair with a cane seat. Alexander turned it around and straddled it, resting his arms on its back. Of course he wouldn’t sit in a chair the normal way. Too constricting on his balls.

His eyes were now on a level with mine. He said, “I came to New York the day before Carey was killed. For reasons that have nothing to do with the murder, I wasn’t traveling under my own name.” He scrutinized me and said, mockingly, “Following me so far?”

I nodded.

“Very
good.” He blinked rapidly. For the first time I saw that behind the bravado he was nervous, too. “I come to New York fairly often. I don’t usually tell Vivi, because it makes for complications. She insists on seeing me, and I have business to do. She knows nothing about the business. I want that clear. On that trip, though, I knew she and Carey were having a lot of trouble, so I called her when I got to town. She was in a bad way. She and Carey were on the verge of splitting up. We arranged to meet the next night at a bar I knew, to talk.

The chair had a sloppy paint job. I studied the brush tracks. Alexander went on, “When Vivi and I talked, I think I said something like, ‘Don’t worry. If Carey gives you any more grief, I’ll smash his face in.’ I said it because I knew she’d love it, and she did. The idea that I’d really kill Carey is ludicrous. I’ve got better things to do. But I figure Pedro was listening in and heard what I said.

“So— I was supposed to meet Vivi. In the early evening, though, a serious business problem developed that meant it was advisable for me to get out of New York fast.”

What could it have been, I wondered. Police problems, more than likely. A raid on their warehouse, if they had a warehouse.

“I didn’t have time to call Vivi and cancel the date before I left town,” Alexander said. “I figured I’d call her from the airport. Only the traffic was completely snarled because of the weather, and by the time I got to the airport it was too late to call. She would’ve already left to meet me at the bar. Besides which, I was afraid they’d close the airport, and I needed to get the hell out, so I didn’t have time to waste. I got a flight, we sat on the runway for a while, and finally took off. When I got back to California I went to— a friend’s house, so I didn’t get Vivi’s message about Carey until late the next morning. By the time we got a chance to talk she was reassuring me that everything was OK, that my name had never come into it. I didn’t know what she was talking about at first, and then I realized she thought I’d done it.

“Believe it or not, I’ve never been able to convince her otherwise. When I try she claims to believe me, but I know she doesn’t. She
wants
to think I killed for her.” He cocked his head at me. “What do you think?”

I shrugged. I thought it was more convincing than I’d expected.

“So who did it? I don’t know. I’m sure Vivi didn’t, because she’s so convinced I did. The letters I wrote accusing her were to scare you off. When they didn’t work, I had to get over here. I knew Vivi would be pissed at me for showing up, so I hung around a few days trying to figure out what to do.”

He breathed deeply. “I was on a plane when Carey was killed. I know the flight number. I can tell the alias I was using, if I have to. I don’t want it to get to that point, because if it does I’ll be kaput for reasons besides Carey’s murder. See?”

Little did he know he was kaput anyway, as soon as Missy got busy. I wouldn’t have told him, even if I could talk.

He laced his fingers. A knuckle cracked. “You should’ve taken the money I offered you. Saved a lot of trouble.”

He stood and checked the Rolex. “Got to go. We’re leaving to see the lawyer in Carpentras in half an hour.” He leaned over me. “I could hurt you. And I will, if I have to. So keep your mouth shut.”

He went to the door and let himself out.

It was a long struggle to free myself from my abominable pantyhose. When I did, they were nearly as tattered and full of runs as they would have been after a couple of normal wearings. There was now no question of making the one o’clock bus. I wandered around the room gathering my possessions, thinking about Alexander’s story. If he really could prove he’d been on that plane, he hadn’t killed Carey. And after all this, I still didn’t know who had.

I sorted my scattered clippings. Why was I doing this? They were of no use to me now. I could toss them in the hotel incinerator before I left.

Even so, I looked at them. And as I looked, I realized I wasn’t quite through. I had to go back to Mas Rose one more time.

NICE BOY

The hotel proprietor agreed to extend my stay with his customary lack of grace. I showered, dressed in fresh clothes, stowed the clipping in my shoulder bag, put on my straw hat. My loins reasonably girded, I started out.

Beaulieu-la-Fontaine was closed down. Light sifting through the plane trees made moving patterns on the sidewalk, and a bird perched on the rim of the fountain. I left the town and walked out into the blazing countryside. The weather was getting warmer; it was almost June. Summers in Provence, I’d heard, were hot and dry. I wouldn’t be here to see for myself. For me, Provence was spring— blazing poppy fields, climbing roses, the first eggplants and melons of the season. Or that’s how I’d have liked to remember it.

The road climbed upward, and the woods closed in. I wasn’t afraid. Everybody was on the way to the lawyer’s office in Carpentras, to learn details about the good news. I’d see what I had to see and go. If Marcelle was there, perhaps I could tell her good-bye properly. I didn’t want to return, but I wouldn’t suffer through all this and leave without knowing.

Mas Rose came into view at last, a tile roof glimpsed behind the cypresses. I had thought it was so beautiful when I saw it for the first time. It was just as beautiful now, and as indifferent to the emotional storms it had sheltered. Our short visit was nothing, less than nothing, in the life of Mas Rose.

Sun reflecting from the white wall made my eyes water. At the gate I stopped and looked in at the patchy yard, the olive trees, the shed, the stone table. The glass doors to the kitchen were closed, a curtain drawn across them. Alexander’s motorcycle was parked in its customary spot, but the car was gone. By this time, the group should be well on its way.

With the creepy feeling of being a trespasser, I crossed the yard. Mount Ventoux stood against the sky with etched clarity. I opened the door of the shed and went inside.

It was dark. The windows were closed, the air stuffy and still. I pushed open the shutters and light streamed in. The place looked much as it had when I saw it before. “Nice Boy” was still propped against the wall, the ape as grotesque and the Mona Lisa as calm. I pulled out the
Patrician Homes
clipping and unfolded it.

Just then I heard a noise in the doorway, and someone behind me screamed, “No!” I half-turned, and caught a heavy impact on my shoulder that staggered me but didn’t quite knock me down.

Blanche, her eyes streaming, flailed at me with both hands.
“No!”
she screamed again.

I wanted to cry out, to tell her to stop, but I was too startled to speak. I tried to catch her wrists, but she was moving too wildly. One of her blows landed painfully on my cheekbone.

She continued to shriek, “No! No! No!” with rising hysteria. I managed to push her away, and she hit the wall, but charged back at me, her face contorted and her eyes wild.

I bent over, trying to escape the rain of blows, and my shoulder bag slid down my arm. Its weight was hindering me, and I let it fall. It hit the floor with a
thok!
that reminded me of the
boule
I’d stolen. Under the hail of Blanche’s blows, her screams resounding in my ears, I stooped, reached into the bag, and grasped the
boule.

By now, I’d found my tongue. As I tried to straighten up I cried, “Stop it, Blanche! Stop!”

“No! No!”

She was completely out of control, lunging at me again. Still bent over I backed away from her. I threw the
boule.

It hit her, not between the eyes, but in the upper chest. She looked shocked when it made contact. She gasped and stumbled back, losing her balance and falling heavily to the stone floor. She didn’t try to get up but lay sobbing, her hands over her face.

“Why didn’t you go to Carpentras, Blanche?” I asked. Of all the things I could’ve said, it seemed the most sensible.

She didn’t answer. A voice said, “Blanche and I stayed behind, where we belong.”

Ross was standing in the doorway. He crossed to kneel beside Blanche. “Buck up, Blanche,” he said.

The ragged crying went on. Ross stood. The
Patrician Homes
clipping I’d had in my hand lay on the floor near his feet, where I’d dropped it when Blanche first attacked me. He picked it up. “You came to have another look at ‘Nice Boy’?”

“Yes.”

He studied the photograph of his creation, then the work itself. “Do you know the goddamndest thing? Nobody noticed, until you,” he said.

I looked at Blanche, huddled on the floor. “I think Blanche must have.”

He shook his head. “Vivien never knew the difference. She saw it every day and never knew. Do you know how that can hurt? But you noticed. I had a feeling you would.”

He held the clipping out to me. I compared the photo with “Nice Boy.” In the picture, the gorilla’s middle finger was pointing directly at the Mona Lisa’s smile. Now, the salute was directed lower, at her cleavage.

“It makes all the difference in the world. The statement is
entirely
different,” Ross said.

Too tired to stand upright, I leaned against the wall. “What happened? Did the arm break?”

“The arm fell off when Carey took it down from the wall. It’s a very heavy piece. He shouldn’t have been so careless. I didn’t have time to re-attach the arm the way it was before. I was lucky even to find glue.”

I walked over to “Nice Boy.” Ross made no move to stop me.

I pushed my fingers into the mass of fake fur at the gorilla’s shoulder and found a matted place, where the fur was stiff— with glue, or blood, or both.

“You caved in Carey’s skull with the arm?”

“He had ruined ‘Nice Boy,’ the best piece I ever did. He called it junk. He said he didn’t want it, it was stupid and banal. He told me to take it away with me.” His eyes glistened. “I only went there to talk to him, to see if we could work things out about Vivien. But he’d pulled it off the wall after she left. He broke it. He called it junk.”

I stared at him. I would have given anything – anything — for it not to be Ross.

“I found some crappy glue and fixed it up as well as I could, and I hung it back on the wall,” Ross said. “I knew I was going to be caught any minute, because surely everybody would notice. The change seemed so obvious to me.”

“And nobody knew the difference.”

“Until you.”

“You gave it away. You denied it was different when I asked.”

“When you asked, I didn’t know you had that picture. I would’ve slipped up sometime, anyway. It’s all over. I know it’s over. I’m not sorry about Carey, or Pedro—”

“Did Pedro know you’d killed Carey?”

“Oh, hell, no. He thought Alexander did it, just like Vivien does. But Pedro was threatening Vivien. If he kept agitating, and tried to get the cops interested in Alexander, the case would be scrutinized again. I was sure I wouldn’t make it through a second time. And I was right.” He sketched a salute of tribute to me. “I told Pedro Vivien wanted to settle their dispute, and asked him to meet me that night to negotiate. I hit him with a rock and made sure he went over the cliff. Any decent investigation of his death would have turned up the truth, but there wasn’t a decent investigation. I wouldn’t call myself a lucky person, but I’ve been lucky in some ways.”