Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! (26 page)

“Acting?” He hadn’t read
Variety
lately. He wondered if there was a casting call out for the role of a musician.

“God, no! The fishbowl situation’s gotten unbearable since I last set foot on a soundstage. I used to give music lessons to support myself while I was waiting for my big break. I don’t need the money, but there isn’t much future in being an idle former celebrity. It’s hard on the liver, among other things. Every day a busload of showbiz hopefuls comes into town. Some of them have talent, but can’t afford the instruction they need to excel. Call me a cut-rate Svengali.”

“That’s as unflattering as it is untrue. I think it’s a wonderful idea. Are you all right? I stopped by the hospital, but they said you’d checked yourself out against the advice of staff.”

“I’m tougher than I was last week. There wasn’t a thing wrong with me that a little wardrobe couldn’t cure. I made quite a spectacle of myself, didn’t I?” She colored slightly.

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“I meant before. I’m sorry, Val. I had an awful few days, and this town’s dripping in sex. Have I lost a friend?”

“Never.”

She rolled the cover down over the keys and stroked the mahogany. “It’s a beautiful instrument. Wonderful tone.”

“It should be. I had to borrow against my life insurance to pay for the restoration.”

“You won’t regret it. I couldn’t resist playing. I came to return this.” She got up, retrieving a fold of blue cloth from the top of the organ, and came his way, holding it out. It was his Windbreaker. “That was a gallant thing to do. I didn’t think you could surpass yourself that night, but you did. Not that I appreciated the first time. I thought I was losing my charms.”

“You’re a beautiful woman. As for your charms, you couldn’t cover them with a polar coat.” He took the jacket.

A vertical line broke the smooth expanse of her forehead. “Will they get that man?”

“I’m sure of it. The police are more efficient than you think. It took me a while to learn that lesson, but it’s taken root.”

“Poor Craig. I’d have helped him out if I thought he was that desperate for money.”

“It wasn’t money he was after. He wanted to be successful again, and you can’t give a man success. He went about getting it for himself the wrong way. The booze and drugs destroyed his judgment. He wasn’t Craig at the end. Not our Craig.”

“I wonder if he ever was. Actors, you know?” She smiled sadly.

He knew, but he couldn’t tell her without giving away the fact he’d suspected her himself. When you scraped away the sex, the town was built of canvas and balsa and you couldn’t trust it. “Would you like a tour?” he asked. “I’m afraid it isn’t much to look at just now.”

“Another time. I’m expecting my first student at three.” She put a palm to the side of her face. “I’ve got stage fright, can you believe it? First time in years.”

“You’ll do great. Promise me you’ll keep the date open for The Oracle’s grand reopening. I wouldn’t want anyone else on the keyboard.”

“When is it?”

“In about ten years, assuming the unions cooperate.”

“I think I’m available.” She went up on her toes and kissed his cheek. She smelled of some delicate scent; no alcohol this time. “I hope that that someone in your life appreciates what she has.”

He escorted her out without acknowledging what she’d said.

*   *   *

Theodosia Burr Goodman was sitting up in bed, wearing a silver lamé jacket trimmed with feathers over her hospital gown, a twentieth-century update of a Roaring Twenties design. The bandages swathing her head looked like a turban, adding to the effect. She looked more piratical than usual with a gauze patch covering a fractured eye socket. She drew on a plastic straw in a plastic cup and set it down on the table beside the bed. Valentino swore he smelled bourbon.

“Most people protect their homes with an alarm system or a Rottweiler,” she said. “Leave it to a movie sap like you to hire a couple of mugs from Warner Brothers.”

“They weren’t working for me. You know that. What did you think you’d find rummaging through my apartment?”

“Are you wearing a wire?”

He couldn’t help noticing that her blood-pressure monitor didn’t register anything out of the ordinary while she was asking such a volatile question. She was no longer hooked up to any other machines. Cedars had moved her out of ICU into a private room, establishing a recovery record of some kind. An enormous bouquet with Mark David Turkus’ card attached stood by the window. There were no other flowers and no one had autographed the cast on her left arm or on her right leg in traction. Had the woman no friends?

“Teddie, I’ve already told the police I won’t file charges.”

“Don’t do me any favors. My lawyer says I’ve got a good case against you for reckless endangerment.”

“You were committing burglary!”

“I was doing my job. If you didn’t wimp out over a little felony now and then, you’d be the best in the business instead of a distant second. To answer your question, I wasn’t sure just what I was after until I found those books on Karloff and Lugosi scattered around and read the underlined sections. I keep a shopping list in my head. I had a pretty good idea you’d snared the
Frankenstein
test, or were hot on its trail. I’d’ve found something to go on if Dumb and Dumber hadn’t come along and checked me down the stairs. Are those things even up to code?”

“I can show you the receipt for what it cost me to bring them into compliance. I’m sorry you were hurt, for what that’s worth. No film justifies that.”

“If you believe that, you’re even more of a loser than I thought. So who has the reels?”

“The San Diego Police Department.”

“Idiot! By the time they let go of it there won’t be enough left to start a good fire.”

He changed the subject. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’d put in my order, but you’d just lose it.” She closed her one visible eye. It looked much smaller without shadow and mascara, and her face paler than usual without blusher. “Mark sees to it I’ve got everything I need. Sweet of him, considering he offered you my job.”

“How did you find out about that?”

“I’ve got people, even in the West Hollywood station of the LAPD. So why didn’t you take him up on it?”

“I’m not that low.”

“Loser.”

He told her he’d be back to visit her later and put his hand on the door handle.

“Valentino.”

He turned back. The eye was open, watching him.

“Don’t go thinking you did a good deed,” she said. “The first time you dropped the ball, Mark would’ve dumped you like toxic waste and hired me back with a raise and a big fat bonus. You know it, and
that’s
why you turned him down.”

He felt himself grinning. “Once again, Teddie, you’ve figured me out before I did.”

“You better hustle while you can. I’ll be back running rings around you as soon as I get my crutches.”

26

HE READ OVER
the transcript of the statement he’d made before a video camera and signed it. Sergeant Gill took the pages and slid Valentino’s cell phone across the desk, which belonged to a lieutenant with the Armed Robbery division. “You’ll need to charge it.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t include me in that.” John Yellowfern leaned in a corner with his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to crack it open, get all the messages, and run down all the incoming and outgoing numbers.”

“Except somebody was using the time machine and you couldn’t go back and kill James Madison before he wrote the Bill of Rights. No probable cause, Detective.”

“Go ahead and bleed. Just don’t expect me to mop up.”

Valentino asked if there was any news on Horace Lysander.

Yellowfern looked at his partner and shook his head, but Gill shrugged. “What’s the diff? Press conference is in twenty minutes. This morning a late-model Mercedes washed up at Long Beach. It’s registered to Lysander.”

“How long has he been on foot, do you think?”

“Not long,” Yellowfern said. “He was curled up in the trunk with a slug in his head and both arms broken above the elbows. Didn’t I say there were plenty more where Pollard and Wirtz came from?”

Valentino shuddered. “Are you questioning Mike Grundage?”

Gill’s smile was bland. “Just as soon as he steps off the plane from Vegas. Those executive types are never around when it starts raining dead lawyers.”

“What about Pollard and Wirtz?”

“Shoes are made to drop.” Yellowfern looked smug, in a sour-lemon way. “Dickey sang and rolled over on Pudge when Lysander’s body showed, in return for murder two. Pudge isn’t taking it well. I say we throw ’em in the same cell and save a buck, but it’ll turn out the same either way.”

“So that’s the end of it.”

“It is for us,” Gill said. “We’ll help the locals any way we can, of course, but it’s just paperwork. We’re headed home today.”

“High time, too. The air here should come with a warning label from the Surgeon General.”

Valentino started to ask a question, then remembered his resolution. He apologized again for the trouble he’d caused and took himself out.

He barely had the phone plugged into the dashboard charger when it rang.

“Mr. Valentino, my name is Philip Pastern. I’m representing Mrs. Elizabeth Grundage in the, er, absence of Horace Lysander.” It was a neutral sort of voice, neither young nor old. This episode seemed to be top-heavy with attorneys.

“He’s a bit more than just absent.”

“I’m aware of that. I didn’t realize the police had gone public with the information. At present I’m engaged in obtaining the release of personal property belonging to my client that is no longer evidence in a criminal case.”

That was the question he’d almost asked Gill and Yellowfern. “I don’t know why you called me, Mr. Pastern. My employers have no legal claim on the item.”

“I’m glad to hear you say it, since if it had been offered to you, the transaction would not have stood up in court. However, as I’m sure you’ll understand, Mrs. Grundage has no interest in retaining ownership of something that has nothing but sordid associations. By neither word nor deed did she ever encourage the late Mr. Lysander’s—delusions—nor ask him to undertake any unlawful action on her behalf. She is desirous of relinquishing ownership of the item, in return for acceptable compensation and provided no public mention is made of her part in the exchange. I cannot overstress the importance of that last demand. Her name must never appear, or the negotiations will be terminated with prejudice.”

Valentino sat back in the driver’s seat. The fact that he’d followed every word of this oration was evidence enough that he’d been spending too much time in the company of lawyers. “You have my assurance the university I work for is just as earnest as your client about avoiding negative publicity.” Henry Anklemire, he did not add, would be the exception: The little flack would cry murder from the roof of the administration building for the free advertising he’d get from the media. But he needn’t know about the business until it was too late for him to interfere.

The archivist gave Philip Pastern the number of Smith Oldfield’s office, and when their conversation concluded left a message with Oldfield’s voice mail to expect the call.

He felt the old thump of anticipation, like a motor kicking on in his chest. Then he leaned forward and started the car. Just because the thrill was still there didn’t mean he was fanatic enough to repeat the mistakes of the past.

*   *   *

He parked the car in his reserved space in the garage and walked to The Oracle, passing a van alongside the curb. Someone shouted his name, and he turned to see Harriet Johansen leaning out the window on the passenger’s side. The vehicle bore the markings of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was a coroner’s van. As he approached it, Harriet turned her head and said something to the man behind the wheel, who got out and walked away down the street. Valentino recognized him as one of her colleagues he’d seen in the break room at headquarters.

“How’s your head?” Harriet asked.

He reached up and pulled loose the bandage. “I just realized it stopped hurting. I guess I can take the stitches out anytime.”

“Let a professional do it.” She opened the door and stepped down. She was wearing her working smock, from a pocket of which she drew a vinyl case and removed a pair of surgical shears. In a moment the thread was snipped through and cast away. She frowned at the result. “It’s just a little scar. When the hair grows back in, no one will notice it.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need it to remind me to mind my own business and let the police mind theirs.”

“Actions speak louder than words. Or rather, the lack of them.” She leaned back against the side of the van with her hands in her smock pockets. “How have you been?”

“In a word? Miserable. These past few days I’ve felt farther apart from you than when you were in Seattle.”

“It wasn’t all you, you know. Would you like a detailed description of what’s been keeping me busy? I’ve been up to my elbows in—”

“Work,” he said, before she could get graphic. “I do know. But I also know I’ve failed to keep up my end of this relationship.”

“It isn’t just the meddling and the lying. There are trust issues.”

He said nothing. He’d feared this conversation almost as much as never having another one with her again.

“If I were going to cheat on you, Val, I could do it here in town just as easily as if I were two thousand miles away.”

“If?” He seized on the word as if it were a piece of floating driftwood.

“You have female friends—that Lorna, for instance—but I would never suspect you of fooling around with any of them without proof.”

In that moment he came as close as he knew he ever would to telling her what had happened just before the night at the wax museum. His regard for Lorna stopped him. In any case, something told him this wasn’t about her, or any other of his woman friends.

“I’m not entirely innocent,” she went on; and his heart plummeted. “You got so upset every time I mentioned him, I lied about attending a convention panel instead of telling you Jeff invited me to his home and I accepted. Then when I found out everything you’d been up to without telling me, I let you think there was something going on between us. I wanted to punish you.