Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky (34 page)

“
We don’t need guns now, Walker,” said Duncan. “We’ve got the letters. It’s all over. You can let Luci go, too.” He moved toward the house and leafed through the letters under the porch light. “Thank you, Marva. Walker’s been beside himself…. Oh, my God, do you suppose this is true about President Reagan?”

Walker
leaned on the car, clutching his wounded arm. “Marvin, you pervert bastard! You had those letters all along? Luci said she was getting them from somebody—it was you?”

Marva dismissed him with a cold look and turned back to Duncan.

“
Duncan, baby, don’t let Miss Thing over there give you any more shit. Those are yours. Bought and paid for. You do whatever you want with them. Give me my twenty thou and we’re done. A deal’s a deal.”

“
A deal?” Walker exploded. “You’re going to pay this blackmailing drag queen for stuff I already paid for? I told you I’d take care of it.”

 “
Oh, sure. You took care of it, Walker,” Marva said, keeping both guns on him. “You didn’t even bother to get the letters from Toby after you killed him.”

“
I did not kill Toby Roarke!”

Walker
’
s voice boomed as he supported himself on the car’s hood. “I own over a hundred guns. Why would I kill somebody with a sissy frying pan? Besides, Duncan will tell you—I was here all last night.”

“
That’s right,” Duncan said. “We had a little dinner party with some of the network news crew who were here for the grape protest. Walker was here the whole time. Marva, can we go inside and be civilized? I’ll get your money.”

Marva motioned for everybody to go back to the house.

Duncan
took Donna’s arm and eyed her ruined dress. “I’m sorry about your dress, honey. Walker can be so awful, can’t he?”

I hated to go back into the house I’d just escaped from. But Marva had the power right now.

“
Yes. Walker is awful,” Marva said, menacing the men with the big Colt. “He’s also a liar.” She ushered us into the den. “So Walker—where the hell is Luci? Did you kill her too?”

Walker
collapsed in the big chair, clutching his arm.

“
Marvin, I did not kill anybody. That bitch Luci said she was in contact with somebody who had the letters. She wanted two hundred thousand. No way was I going to let her extort that after I’d already paid once. For totally bogus shit. I’ve never seen those letters before. They’ve got to be some kind of crazy forgery.”

“
And that’s why you killed her?”

“
Would anyone like a quick cup of coffee before you go?” said Duncan, putting on an absurd perfect-host smile.

“
Totally!” said Donna. “Can I have mine with nonfat milk?”

“
No, we wouldn’t,” Marva said, stifling her with a look. “And we wouldn’t like you to go call the cops or get more guns. Just show me the money, Duncan. Sorry, Walker. He wanted to keep it a secret from you. He said you wouldn’t pay one more penny after what you gave Toby.”

She stood by the doorway, wielding a gun in each hand—looking like an old-time, two-gun cowboy, except, of course, for her extraordinary cleavage and the purse in the crook of her elbow.

“
I don’t care how many network flunkies you hired to provide an alibi, we all know Walker killed Toby.”

Walker
sprang to his feet. “I did not kill anybody!” He took two steps toward Marva. It was hard to believe he wasn’t the murderer, since he looked as if he might kill us all with his bare hands. “They’ve got the real murderer in custody, over at the Rancho.”

Marva snorted.

 “
Walker’s telling the truth,” I said, in a tea party voice. “Silas Ryder was just on the phone with Alberto. Apparently they have a confession. It was one of those Viboras after all.”

 “
Oh, right,” Donna said, plopping down on the couch. “Some gang kids walk into a fancy-ass resort, without anybody noticing, and murder Ernesto. And instead of tagging the place, they get all cute and make it look like a suicide. Then they sneak in the next night and bonk some geezer with a frying pan, even though they’ve all got, like, guns up the wazoo. And the third night they break into Luci’s locked hotel room and kidnap her—and don’t ask for ransom! And they don’t touch that bitch’s brand new two-thousand dollar boots or the collectible handbag. But they take the time to go through my manuscript and throw it all over the room. Oh, yeah. Gangbangers do that stuff all the time. They don’t give a shit about money.”

Marva laughed.

“
Right. So why don’t you admit it, Walker? You killed all of them. You knew that hotel inside and out. All its weird little secret passages. Because you worked for Hank Boggs way back when. I’m sure you learned how to sneak in and out of that place just like I did. So why don’t you tell us where you dumped Luci’s remains?”

Walker
gave a raspy laugh. “You always did live in fantasyland, Marvin.”  His grin looked grotesque in the firelight. “And Luci’s fine—sort of. She shouldn’t have lied and told me she had all the damned letters when she only had three. I only wanted to search the room. It would have been slick, since there’s that door from the servant’s wing that leads onto her balcony. I could have just sneaked in and out. But she sat in that room forever, painting her damned fingernails. I only found the three letters and she wouldn’t tell me where the rest were.”

“
But she didn’t know, because I had them.” Marva was savoring this. “I promised Duncan I’d get them and I did.”

“
Well, the one thing I knew about Luci is she lies a lot. So I brought her here for a little persuasion.” Walker grinned his feral grin. “Then she lied again and told me Donna had the letters and was asking a hundred thousand for them.”

Donna wailed. “Liar is right! She is such a bitch. I asked her for a hundred thousand for my novel advance, not some stupid letters. And it’s totally worth it. It would make such a great movie. It’s totally right for Leo DiCaprio.”

Duncan
harrumphed. “But it’s all over now! Everything is fine. It’s time to forgive and forget.” He opened the folder Marva had given him, took out a letter, crumpled it and tossed it into the fire. “The important thing is the Sheriff has somebody in custody for both deaths, and Luci will be fine. This little episode is over.”

Walker
clutched his wounded arm. Marva stood in the doorway, her guns trained on him. Nothing seemed fine to those two.

“
I couldn’t care less about Luci,” Marva said, “But if she’s still alive, I suggest you keep her that way, because nobody’s going to believe that gangbangers fairy story two times in a row.”

Duncan
threw another batch of letters into the fireplace. We all watched the flames in silence.

But I kept wondering: if Walker had done the killings—which Marva obviously believed—what was all that gang nonsense about? Why did Alberto tell Silas a gangster had confessed?

Duncan
looked mesmerized by the fire. “What about those other folders you found in that cabin, Walker? Do they have forged nonsense in them, too? Let’s get rid of everything and have done with this whole nasty business.”

Walker
opened an ancient roll-top desk and took out two more gold folders.

 “
You want to burn
Under Deadwood
by Mitzi Boggs Bailey? Or
Blue Rage
, a novel by M. J. Zukowski?” He started to toss them in the fire.

“
No!” I sprang to save the manuscripts. “Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s play? And Rick’s book! You stole them—why?”

Walker
lasered me with an angry glare.

“
You know perfectly well, Miss Oh-So-Innocent. You’re the one who had the letters all along. You gave the letters to Mitzi Boggs when she came to Plant Smith’s cabin the night that kid got shot. That’s why they weren’t there. Toby said the letters had to be in that cabin—because Ernie stole them to give to Smith and get back at Toby. But I searched that place from top to bottom the next night after the cops left. All I found was poor old Mitzi’s cowboy play. You must have switched them the night the kid died, because the cops were there the rest of the time. I don’t know why, but I know you did it.”

He tossed the folders to me with a sneer.

Truth dawned as I remembered that night. Plant trying to zip his trousers. Mitzi coming over with her play and then taking it back. I must have given her the wrong folder. There must have been two: one with her play and the other with Ernesto’s forgeries and all the other blackmail stuff he’d stolen from Toby. Maybe he had intended to confess to Plant. It was so tragic.

“
I didn’t do it on purpose! All the folders look alike.” I stared helplessly at the yellowed pages of Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s play as I realized what had happened. “Detective Fiscalini kept accusing me of violating his crime scene, but that was you looking for Toby’s folder, wasn’t it? Then you snuck into my cabin, pretending to be headless—still looking for the letters?

 
Walker glared at the fire. “Yeah. I broke in and took the folder. I tried to look like a headless ghost for Mitzi’s benefit. I thought it was her asleep in that cabin—it had been hers the night before. But all I got for my trouble was that drivel written by Captain Road Rage. Plus a bump on my head from a flying shoe.” He gingerly touched the bruise on his forehead.

“
You thought putting up your collar and slinking around would make me believe you were a dead bandito?” I was not going to let him know his ridiculous ploy almost worked.

“
It was Mitzi’s cabin, for God’s sake,” Walker said. “The collar thing had worked on her before. But why the shell game, Dr. Manners?”

He moved closer to me. I could see blood dripping from the sleeve of his wounded arm. He wasn’t clutching it now. In fact, his good hand hung limply at his side. Was something wrong with that one, too?

“
Have you and Marvin been working together all along?” He took another step toward my chair.

“
Of course not. I only met her when she broke into my room and started rummaging in my luggage…” I turned to Marva. “How did you know I had the folder? Mitzi only gave it to me right before dinner.”

“
Don’t I know it! I was hiding under the old lady’s bed the whole damned time. I knew the letters must be in her room, because she had Ernesto’s Oscar Wilde stuff that had been in the same folder. I heard about her giving the Oscar Wilde forgery to Plant Smith. The maids must have packed that folder in with her stuff when they moved her from the cabin up to the Hacienda.”

“
So you were Mitzi’s ghost that last time—the one she thought put the folder in her chifforobe?”

Donna sighed. “Can we stop talking about ghosts? I’m tired of the stupid ghosts.”

Marva ignored her. “Yeah. Only I was there to steal it. But she gave it to you. Mitzi moving around from room to room sure did make for one crazy shell game.”

“
And you have a Burberry coat? In the fawn plaid?”

“
Of course. Just like you wore at that fundraiser when you had that photo in
People
Magazine.” Marva turned to Duncan. “Hon, you want to get a move-on with my twenty thou? I want to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Walker
seemed to be moving closer to me. I wanted to get out of there too. The man terrified me more than any ghost.

Marva waved her gun at him. “Walker, why don’t you help Duncan get my money. After that, you can deal with these two idiots any way you want.”

I felt my throat close. Marva was going to take the money and run.

And leave us here. With a couple of dangerous lunatics.

I tried to keep my expression calm as I watched Duncan unlock a drawer of the old desk and pull out a fat envelope that looked stuffed with cash. Keeping her guns on Walker, Marva indicated to Duncan that he should drop the money into her faux Fendi spybag.

“
You’re just going to fucking leave us here? I don’t think so.” Donna jumped up and exploded in fury at Marva. “Do you know how much I paid for this dress? I deserve a cut of that.” She lunged at Marva, trying to take the envelope from her purse.

Marva elbowed Donna in the stomach, flinging her back toward the couch.

Donna grunted and Marva looked the tiniest bit apologetic. “You do not ever want to come at me like that, girlfriend. Special Forces training.”

That was when Walker made his move. He had a dagger-shaped letter opener in his good hand. He grabbed Marva from behind, with the dagger-point at her throat. Blood dripped from his gunshot wound, but he had the strength to grip her, pinning her arms.

“
Drop the weapons, Marvin. Drop them on the floor now.”