Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky (21 page)

I understood how Rick might have thought the folder was mine when he found an unfamiliar manuscript in his room, but I couldn’t figure out how it got there. It seemed odd that anybody would ask a policeman to critique a chick lit novel.

Plant chose a sexy little Valentino jacket dress in an aquamarine knit. Watching him choose my clothes transported me back to my debutante days, when Plant and I bonded over clothes, society gossip, and dishing every celebrity we met.

“
So you know Duncan Fowler?” I said as I re-did my make-up for the paler outfit. “He’s gay? Isn’t that difficult for a right wing pundit?”

Plantagenet laughed. “There’s always talk of outing him, especially now he’s aligned himself with the gun-nut crazies. And it’s weird—about his guns. You know the big cannon that they say killed Ernesto—the thing they found tossed on the floor of my Ferrari?” 

 “
Of course. I’m the idiot who locked the car door after it got put in there. I’m afraid that’s why the police suspected you.” I gave his arm a squeeze, hoping he knew how sorry I was about what he’d had to go through.

“
I’m kind of an obvious suspect: the old fool with the frisky young lover—one of the ten basic plots.” He gave a grim smile. “But what I was going to tell you is about that big Colt. It was reported stolen—the day of the murder—from Duncan Fowler. Odd coincidence.”

“
Odd indeed.”

My brain started connecting dots. Duncan Fowler, who owned the gun, was the ex-boyfriend of Donna. So Donna had access to that gun. Donna was Miguel’s cousin: Miguel—with the Viboras tattoo. Last night, alone at the front desk doing his substitute concierge duties, Miguel had had the perfect opportunity to kill Toby. Or let his cohorts inside to do the deed.

 “
That’s it,” I said out loud. “It’s definitely Miguel! He’s strong enough to lift that cow head.”

 
Plant lifted an eyebrow. “That waiter who was just here? Why on earth would you suspect him?” Plant was neatly tidying the room and putting things into my suitcases. Very helpful, since it wouldn’t be right staying in Gaby’s apartment, under the circumstances.

“
Miguel has that tattoo. He was trying to cover it up.”

“
Plenty of fine people have tattoos, darling. The Manners Doctor needs to get a clue.”

“
The Manners Doctor has no problem with tattoos!” I hated it when Plant got all politically correct. “In fact she’s written that a small one can be quite elegant. But Miguel’s tattoo is the same devil snake design as Ernesto’s—and the one on the wall over Toby’s body.”

Plant’s expression changed. “Like Ernesto’s gang tattoo? Are you sure?” His tone was businesslike. “You should tell the investigators.”

His phone rang. “That will be Silas. I’ve got to meet him downstairs. I’m hoping he’ll have some news about Gaby—and he ought to be able to help me figure out this Oscar Wilde mystery.”

Oscar Wilde. I’d almost forgotten. How did he fit in?

A few minutes after Plant left, I heard frantic knocking at the outside door.

It was Donna, back in camera-ready make-up and Donna Karan evening wear. I searched her black-lined eyes, but saw no hint of nervousness that might indicate guilt. Of course, even if she’d stolen that gun, she could be ignorant of what it had been used for.

The only emotion she showed now was exasperation.

“
You gotta help me with the old lady,” she said. “She says she’s got something to give you, and she won’t leave that room until she gets rid of it.” She gave an exaggerated shrug. “You gotta hurry, because I need to get her moved to her new cabin before dinner.”

I followed along the upper-level porch and down the stairs to the old wing. As I walked behind her, the evening breeze wafted with her perfume—a familiar scent:

Patchouli, with a hint of tuberose and apricot.

I sped up and sniffed again. Yes. There it was—the same scent I smelled on Rick last night.

The phantom woman who crawled in his bed could have been Donna.

“
Do you happen to own a Burberry coat?” I asked with what I hoped was nonchalance. “A belted trench in the signature fawn, cream and red plaid?”

Donna looked at me with scorn. “Do I look like I’d wear plaid?” The phone in her bag played the
Sex in the City
theme.

No. She wasn’t anywhere near my height. Even with a wig, she couldn’t be my Burberry phantom. But I was going to keep an eye on her—and her cousin Miguel.

As she chatted to someone about workplace issues, she led me to a door with a plaque that said “Ronald Reagan Suite.” She knocked on the door.

Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s gray head poked through a crack. She’d styled her hair in a perfect 1950s pageboy and wore a red, white and blue bandanna around her neck.

“
Are you all right?” She opened the door a little wider. She was dressed in an amazing rhinestone-studded denim cowgirl outfit, complete with fringed white cowboy boots. “I got myself all gussied up for dinner, but I thought you’d skedaddled somewhere…”

She opened the door to reveal a large, rustically-decorated room that was a mess of open drawers and tossed-about pillows.

“
I can’t find my play. The ghosts took it.” She looked at me with an expression of something between recognition and disgust. “You look like that Dr. Manners. I suppose you’ve come for the rest of the junk the ghosts left in my chifforobe?” She pulled me away from the door and lowered her voice. “Filthy stuff, if you ask me. But I guess you didn’t. Neither did the ghosts.”

“
That’s why we’re here, Mitzi” said Donna with a bored sigh. “So you can give the stuff to Dr. Manners here and then you and me can move you down to a cabin near Jonathan Kahn. So you wanna get a move-on? That Santiago guy has got a golf cart waiting. I don’t know how long he’ll wait. He doesn’t speak much English or Spanish. Just some Guatemalan Indian dialect.”

 
Mrs. Boggs Bailey looked confused for a moment.

“
Now where did I put it? I don’t want those maids seeing that filth when they pack my things.” She bustled around the room. “I’m glad I won’t be around Ronald Reagan any more. He stares at me.”

She gestured to the end of the room where, above the stone fireplace hung a huge oil portrait of the late President, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, with an ax in his hand. A framed note beneath read: “There are no easy answers, but sometimes there are simple answers.” It was signed “For Gabriella—Ronald Reagan, 1964.”

I sincerely hoped there was a simple answer to all the questions swirling in my brain at the moment. Could someone actually have stolen the old woman’s play and substituted some sort of “filth”? Like maybe the Burberry woman? The old woman could have been hallucinating, of course, but for us both to hallucinate the same apparition seemed unlikely.

When she was out of hearing range, Donna leaned in and whispered. “You’re pretty tight with that L. A. cop, right?”

I had no idea how to describe my relationship with Rick at that moment, but I nodded anyway.

“
I think I might have left something in his room last night. I really need it. It’s the only copy I have, and I’m dying to show it to Jonathan Kahn.”

She left something in Rick’s room. And she wore that perfume. Maybe she wasn’t Ms. Burberry, but she certainly seemed to be the failed seductress.

Now I could place that scent: Donna Karan’s Black Cashmere.

“
And what did you leave in Rick’s bedroom?”

Donna looked embarrassed.

“
It’s the first three chapters of my chick lit novel,
Newsbabes
. Can you ask him to return it? I kind of went in his room by mistake last night. I wasn’t hitting on him, I swear. I thought he was…somebody else. Somebody who promised to show the manuscript to that agent—Lucille Silverberg. I got so flustered when I realized I was in the wrong place that I left my folder.”

Newsbabes.
So Donna was Lourdes Donna Inez Carillos, who must have left the folder when she crept into Rick’s room. The “someone else” had to be Toby.

He must have planned his assignations in the hotel’s lousiest room—thinking it was sure to be unoccupied.

So Donna thought Rick was Toby—that room had no windows, so not even moonlight would have illuminated the darkness. She’d probably arrived to exchange sex for a recommendation to the great Luci. That explained Donna’s revulsion at the sight of the sparkling wine bottle with the room number on it. What a slug Toby had been.

Above us, Ronald Reagan’s portrait did indeed seem to be staring as he wielded his ominous ax.

Mrs. Boggs Bailey emerged from the bedroom with yet another gold-colored conference folder.

 “
Here,” she said, handing it to me. “Don’t think I’m not on to you.” She shoved the folder at me with tight-lipped disapproval.

“
Santiago isn’t going to wait all day,” Donna said. “I had to flirt with him like crazy to get him to take us down to the cabins while he’s supposed to be helping Miguel. Come on. Jonathan Kahn is down there. I gotta see him before he leaves.”

As I made my way toward the dining room, I opened Mitzi’s ghostly folder and stopped dead. Stuffed into the pockets of the folder were at least a dozen handwritten letters, on different kinds of stationery, all yellowed with age, the ink faded to a pale purple. I couldn’t imagine what Mrs. Boggs Bailey thought they had to do with me. They were addressed to a man named Joaquin Montoya, at a Los Angeles address. I opened a fragile envelope and started to read the bold, masculine hand, but the words made my face flush.

It was a very explicit, homoerotic love letter.

But what was most shocking was the signature: “Will Sugarfoot Hutchins”—one of the old time TV stars whose picture graced the walls of the Hacienda’s main corridor downstairs. As I made my way back to the apartment, I pulled a few more letters out of their fragile envelopes. The missives all seemed to be in the same blush-making vein, each one signed by famous and semi-famous stars of the nineteen-fifties and ’sixties. This Joaquin was quite the gay caballero.

Another letter from “Ty Hardin” was full of cowboy metaphors for some steamy sexual activity, and when I opened a third, I could barely breathe. Underneath all that homoerotica was the signature, “Ronald Reagan.” The handwriting looked identical to that on the note I’d seen framed on the mantle of Mitzi’s suite.

I tried to fit these into the other mysteries of the past three days, but it only hurt my head. Were they related to the Oscar Wilde book and Calamity Jane letter? Strange coincidences. But aside from the fact that they concerned gay men, these letters didn’t have much to do with the Oscar Wilde find that I could see—separated as they were by nearly a hundred years.

I had to show them to Plantagenet. Immediately. I hoped I could get him alone before dinner was served.

As I put back the letters, I felt something sliding around behind the envelopes in one of the folder’s pockets. A small photograph. I drew it out and my palms went clammy. There it was—another copy of Luci’s horror—showing Jonathan’s butt and the surgically-enhanced Manners Doctor in pearls.

At dinner, Plant was surrounded by fans, so I couldn’t sit anywhere near his table, much less get him alone for a conversation. I could almost feel heat coming from those steamy letters in my tote bag. I hoped Plant knew of some gay cowboy star named “Joaquin,” so we could return the letters.

Rick seemed to be surgically attached to Luci. They were sitting at the center of another knot of eager students, and Rick was still wearing that damned jacket. I saw him reach under the sleeve to scratch his forearm—the forearm with the snaky scar. Maybe he and Luci deserved each other. She had to be mixed up in this somehow, since that photo was in the folder with the letters.

I sat with some memoirists who all agreed that Gabriella Moore was a national treasure and couldn’t be guilty of anything, and they wouldn’t be surprised if it was ghosts. Everybody knew the place was haunted. One of the ladies was sure she’d seen the ghost of an old cowboy last night, floating outside her window.

 
Donna and Mitzi arrived just as I was finishing my dinner.

I promised Donna I’d run right up and get her manuscript back. The girl was an idiot, but it wasn’t her fault Toby died before he could deliver her a read from the great Luci. I’d feel terrible if I kept her from getting the opportunity to show it around. She was just an innocent bystander caught up in all this craziness.

At least mostly innocent. Of course, if her cousin Miguel was the murderer, maybe Donna had helped Miguel do it. Or—the thought exploded in my brain—what if Gabriella killed Toby, then got Miguel and his gang to cover it up? A couple of tough young guys would have no trouble moving the body—and the steer head.

And Rick had that scar. If he’d once been a member of the gang, he might have helped them, too. And that’s why he’d been wandering around that night.