Indiscretions (12 page)

Paris sank back into the cushions. “Apparently we don’t have to worry about it,” she said in an awed voice. “Mr. McBain called an hour ago with instructions about everything. He’s been in touch with Jenny’s agent, Bill Kaufmann, and her lawyer, Stanley Reubin, about the funeral arrangements. He even discussed the pallbearers with Bill and has called each one personally to ask if they would accept that honor.” Just in case, she thought cynically, they might have wanted to refuse. Mr. McBain was a man who left nothing to chance. “The funeral is to be at St. Columba’s in Beverly Hills and he’s taken care of the seating arrangements and the ushers. He’s even selected a plaque to be erected at Forest Lawn—with our approval, of course, but Ronson says it’s perfectly plain—just her
name and the dates. McBain has thought of it all. Even our clothes. I. Magnin are sending round a selection of suitable things for us to choose from. Mr. Ronson guessed our sizes, as he didn’t want to disturb us. Accurately, I might add.”

Their amazed eyes met hers. “Fitz McBain did all that?” asked Venetia.

“He did. He thought of absolutely everything.” Paris sighed as she contemplated Fitz McBain’s power.

“But why? We don’t know him. I only met Morgan once, a few nights ago.…”

“Then either it was love at first sight, or Fitz McBain was a Jenny Haven fan.” Paris stretched out on the sofa luxuriously. “Either way, it feels very nice to be looked after …” She didn’t add “for a change” but the words seemed to hang in the air unspoken. In the easy luxury of the McBain compound, Amadeo Vitrazzi and her struggle for success and recognition of her talent seemed very far away.

India began to prowl the floor restlessly.

“Being a princess must feel a lot like this,” she said, thinking longingly of Rome’s teeming thoroughfares and crowded cafés. “I’ll be glad when it’s over. I can’t bear being trapped in this house.”

It
, thought Venetia, is the funeral. And
it
would take place the day after tomorrow. How was she to bear it, when maybe if she had come home when Jenny wanted, she would have still been alive.…

“Vennie,” said India warningly, “there’s no use getting upset all over again. Surely we’ve cried enough!”

Venetia stood up suddenly and headed for the door.

“Vennie! Where are you going?” India hurried after her.

“To the kitchen,” she said with a sigh. “I think we need a cup of tea.”

Fitz McBain ignored the flashing red light on his office telephone, indicating that there was another call for him, and instead pressed the buzzer that meant he wasn’t to be disturbed. He was watching Channel 2’s six o’clock news report.

Paris in stark black silk and broad-brimmed hat took Bill Kaufmann’s arm as she stepped from the car, lifting her chin defiantly at the television cameras. Her escort walked her rapidly toward the church door, where she turned to check that her sisters were all right. India, wearing a simple black linen suit and holding tightly to Stanley Reubin’s hand, almost ran the length of the path. Venetia hesitated as she emerged from the limousine. She wore a short-sleeved black silk dress with a jaunty bow at the neck, and as she took the arm of Jake Matthews, superstar of the screen for two decades, four times Jenny’s costar and possibly onetime lover, her stricken eyes fastened on the camera lens in despair. Then, dropping her gaze, she pulled her hat lower over her brow and, helped by Jake, followed her sisters into the church.

The television news summary switched quickly to the scene of Jenny Haven’s flower-garlanded coffin being borne up the steps of the church, and to the watching crowds. The pretty red-haired gossip reporter, who considered herself a bigger star than the faded Jenny Haven—after all, she was on TV every night and that was
now
, not twenty years ago—continued her glib narration.

“Among this crowd are many of the people who found Jenny Haven to be a true friend—the commissary waitresses at the studio who she always remembered at Christmas, the grips and carpenters, the wardrobe people, and the hairdressers, all of whom worked hard to make things go smoothly on the set of her films and whose families she remembered to ask about by name.
There are the drivers who picked her up to take her to the studio at five-thirty in the morning, a time when few of us look our best, but who swear that even then she was lovely. Yes, around the studios of our town Jenny was known among these ‘little’ people as a generous woman. Generous with her time, listening to their problems, and often generous with a loan that was really a gift because she didn’t believe in loans.

“There were many facets to Jenny Haven, the glamorous movie star who we all knew on the screen, the accomplished actress who could make us laugh, as she did in
Matchless
, or cry, as she did in her Oscar-winning performance as Maggie in
A Time Gone Forever
. Or the difficult star who demanded the best from everyone, whether it was the performance of her costar or the service at the best hotel, because she
earned
it, damn it. Of course there is a facet to Jenny that we don’t know about—Jenny as the mother of the three beautiful daughters you saw here at her funeral today. That was the woman few people knew, and they remain the mystery of Jenny Haven’s life.”

The cameras again followed the Haven daughters as they left the church and got into their car, and then focused on the hearse that held their mother’s coffin.

“Today Hollywood said its farewells to possibly one of the most loved and one of the most envied women of our time.”

Fitz switched off the television set, walked across to the table, and poured himself a bourbon. Swirling his glass he stared at it moodily. Who would have thought that the youngest one—Venetia—would look so like Jenny? It was uncanny seeing that familiar wide blue gaze staring at him like that of a stricken doe. The eldest girl, Paris, was a sophisticated beauty, very chic and with some of Jenny’s proud, steely quality. India was a curly-haired gamine in her severe suit.

He knocked back his drink and poured another. Well, it was over now. And so, at last, was his long, solitary romance with Jenny Haven.

4

Bill Kaufmann’s red Porsche was, for once, well under the speed limit as he drove along Pacific Coast Highway toward Malibu. The sun felt hotter than it had any right to at this time of year and, closing the windows, he turned on the air conditioning. He was still sweating. Goddamn it, he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting one little bit! Why the hell did Jenny have to do what she did? Accident or not, it was goddamn thoughtless of her to leave it all to him and Stan Reubin. What were they going to say to those girls? She’d pampered them all their lives, doling out the luxuries until they’d left school, and then just left them to get on with it alone. He’d argued with her about that, saying she couldn’t just abandon them. “But I haven’t abandoned them, Bill,” she’d replied calmly, “I’ve provided them with all the assets they need in the world and now I’m giving them their freedom.”

She’d been sitting in the makeup chair at Burbank Studios while the girl fussed with blushers and lip-gloss and he’d known it was the wrong time to discuss it, and somehow after that there never seemed to be a right time. “Don’t worry, Bill.” She’d laughed. “I’ll always be around to catch them if they fall.” Yeah? Well look at them now, Jenny, they’re falling and where the hell are you?

He and Myra had been puzzled when she sent them off to Europe. Almost everyone they knew had grandparents who had fled Europe for a better life in America and Jenny had wanted to reverse the process. Where in the world, he and Myra had asked each other, could you find a better place to raise kids than easy, affluent Beverly Hills? Half the world wished they could be so lucky as to live in Beverly Hills!
And
she had the beach house. Wouldn’t those girls have been better off there at weekends than at those fancy schools?

Bill Kaufmann had been a Hollywood agent for twenty-five years, during which time he had, with some justification, earned himself the reputation of being “a killer.” He didn’t like being stuck with that reputation but privately admitted that there had been times when ruthlessness had meant winning, and Bill Kaufmann was destined to be a winner. As a young man with ambition, and street-wise, beat-up good looks, he had maneuvered himself into the position of confidant and friend to the young Jenny Haven, ultimately undermining her relationship with her manager. He had taken over from there as her manager and agent. That is, until three years ago.

Hell, it had been a relief not to have to go through the same endless scene over and over again … why hadn’t he got her the part in the Hofmann movie and why, when she’d expected the lead in the multimillion-dollar TV miniseries, had he come back with an offer of the part of
the older mistress who gets killed off in the first forty minutes?

Bill lit another cigarette and swung the Porsche smoothly through the gates into Malibu Colony, acknowledging the salute of the guard as he turned reluctantly toward Jenny’s beach house and his meeting with her daughters. As he parked the car in front of the high, pink-washed stucco wall that screened the house from the street, he hoped Stan Reubin had this under control, because he sure as hell didn’t.

It was Venetia who answered his ring. “Hello, Bill.” She kissed the man who had been considered their family friend as long as she could remember. “I’m glad you’re here. It feels so strange without Jenny.”

“You all right, kitten?” He put his arm around her shoulders as they walked into the spacious room that fronted the ocean. The tide was high today, rippling at the foot of the broad wooden deck where the other two sisters were waiting in the shade of the blue awning.

“I’m okay now. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through it all, but at least the worst is over. Come and sit in the sunshine, it’s such a beautiful day.”

Bill slid off his jacket and tossed it across the back of a chair, bending to kiss first India and then Paris. “Hi, girls, how’re ya doing?”

“I suppose we’re all feeling relieved—and that’s certainly a whole lot better than what we were feeling before.” Paris smiled as she got to her feet. “Can I get you something? A cold beer? Some white wine?”

The beer sounded tempting, but his wife would kill him if he went off his diet—or else the beer would. “Just a Perrier, love—no lime.”

He leaned against the deck rail, tapping his fingers nervously. Stan Reubin should be here any minute and then they’d get on with this farce. He lit his fifth cigarette of the morning. He shouldn’t have and he wondered again if
the relief of smoking it were worth the guilt and anxiety he would feel afterward. Goddamn it, what with diet and exercise, no booze and no cigarettes, self-denial had become a way of life; if it weren’t for cocaine and sex, where would Hollywood be?

“There’s no surf today.” India leaned companionably on the rail next to him, gazing at the ocean as it sloped in glassy waves, tumbling in faint, frothy ripples on the sand. A patch of kelp floated darkly, beyond the waves.

“Remember when you taught me to surf all those years ago? I must have been only about seven.” She laughed, remembering herself as a skinny, buck-toothed seven-year-old. “I’ll let you into a secret, Bill. You were quite a hero of mine for a long time when I was a kid. I thought you were more handsome than any of Jenny’s boyfriends and I liked you a whole lot better. I thought you liked me, too, but I figured seven was a bit young for marriage so I decided I’d be noble and unselfish and allow you to marry Jenny—at least then I would have you around forever. But it didn’t work out that way.”

Her amused brown eyes gazed at his battered face inquiringly. With his mane of silver hair, deep-set eyes, and misleadingly benign expression, he was still quite an attractive man.

“Just for the record, Bill, did you ever ask her?”

He ground out his cigarette impatiently. “No, India. I didn’t. Oh, I was in love with her all right—on and off in the beginning and in between the fights, and there were times when we were tempted to take it farther, but thank God common sense prevailed. Your mother and I managed to remain friends for most of our lives, until …”

“Until? What, Bill?”

Stan Reubin’s famous, booming courtroom voice sounded from inside the house and Kaufmann turned from India in relief, ignoring her question.

“Ah, here’s Stan, at last.” Taking her arm he walked
back into the sun-filled room. He paused for a minute at the door. “And, India, thanks for the compliment.”

She grinned back at him. “You’re welcome.”

“There you are, Bill.” Stan Reubin glanced at him coldly. It was his view that Bill Kaufmann should have been able to manipulate Jenny better than he had. After all, wasn’t that what he was there for?

“Come and sit down, girls, and let us get on with this. Not that I have much to say, but after I’m done I’m sure you’ll have a million questions.”

He leaned against the mantel of the empty fireplace with the three girls lined up on the white sofa in front of him. It brought back a memory of some long-ago Christmas with three excited little girls in party dresses and Mary Janes on the sofa in that same house, waiting for the moment when the presents were to be unwrapped. The memory upset him and Stan didn’t like to be upset. Emotion got him nervous. He began to pace the floor.