Randall #02 - Ghost Writers in the Sky (8 page)

Reporters accosted me as soon as I opened the car door, pressing around me as I tried to make my way to the Hacienda. They kept asking me questions like, “Are you romantically involved with Plantagenet Smith?” and “Are you and Plantagenet into necrophilia as well as S and M, Dr. Manners?”

Poor Plant was getting slimed by Jonathan’s
Post
interview along with me.

Rick escorted me through the crowd and into the lobby with practiced efficiency. I was glad to be in the company of a policeman, even such an infuriating one.

 “
Thanks,” I said as I stopped at the desk for my room key. “This is all such nonsense. They must be starved for news around here.”

“
I’m sorry Ms. Randall,” said Alberto, the little concierge. “You are no longer in room fourteen A. That room is not available.” He was engrossed in lettering a sign that said, in elegant calligraphy, “GUESTS ONLY & NO REPORTERS.”

“
My room is not available? Where is Gabriella?” Was I being given the boot because of Mitzi Boggs Bailey’s delusions?

“
Miss Moore is out. She says you can have Roy Rogers. No extra charge.”  Alberto put the final touches on his ampersand.

“
I should hope not. I’m supposed to get free lodging,” I gave a grumpy sniff. “First my luggage disappears and now this.”

Alberto silently pointed with his Rapidograph pen. My set of ancient Vuitton suitcases and laptop case were carefully stacked behind the desk. I ran to them. It felt like being reunited with family.

Rick picked up my two largest bags.

“
Roy Rogers is very nice. Sleeps six.” Said Alberto.

I gave him a cold look. “I don’t plan on doing any entertaining.”

“
Don’t be upset about the room change,” Rick said. “The place is full. Gaby probably wants to get Mitzi away from the crime scene. The old girl has already screwed things up for the i-team with that call to the Sheriff about your…” He raised his eyebrows in feigned shock, “Zombie sex
ménage a

trois
.”

“
Screwed it up for the investigators? What about me? Look what that old woman’s delusions have…” I stopped. Rick’s mention of “zombie sex” had quieted the lobby to an eavesdropping hush. Now I knew the punchline of those late-night jokes.

Rick hurried me out to his car.

I apologized for my crankiness when we were safely in his Saturn. “You seem to have a lot of practice with crowds.”

“
I was a rookie beat cop during the O.J. trial.” Rick started down the winding drive to the cabins. “I learned a lot about dealing with scandal-obsessed reporters. Since then, I’ve been assigned to dozens of celebrity cases. It’s absurd how the smallest thing can explode into a scandal once the media get hold of it.”

I just nodded.

The cabin area wasn’t as crowded as the Hacienda, and I couldn’t spot any lurking reporters, but all the cabin parking spaces were taken by what looked like the investigation team. Several determined-looking workers in Sheriff’s Department uniforms stood inside the yellow police tape barrier surrounding Zorro and its environs.

Rick had to park a few hundred yards up the hill, but didn’t complain as he grabbed my suitcases and started down the road. I had the laptop bag and make-up case as well as my tote, which made for an awkward load as I trudged after him. The warming sun beat down bright and hot.

“
Too bad we had to shoot the horses, Dusty.” Rick put on a stagy cowboy drawl. “But at least we got all your bricks in these here saddlebags.”

“
Sorry. I tend to overpack. I had no idea how people would dress out here in the Wild West—especially right down the road from the old Reagan Ranch. I didn’t want to look shabby if I was going to run into a bunch of Republican
grande dames
. They are the Manners Doctor’s fan base after all.”

Rick laughed. “My mother-in-law’s a Democrat, and she’s your biggest fan—swear to God. But everything I’ve heard about you is so different.”

Uh-oh. This was it. He was going to ask if anything in that article was true.

But he just grinned. “You seem real. You know, down-to-earth.”

“
I am real. So is the Manners Doctor, in a way. Most people have an inner child. I have an inner great aunt.”

He had a delicious grin. He even carried my bags into the bedroom and lifted the biggest one onto the folding luggage rack.

“
You’ve been so kind,” I said. “I don’t know how you managed to be there exactly when I needed you, but thanks. If I can do anything for you…”

He laughed. “I wish I could claim to be psychic, but actually Gaby sent me this morning. She felt awful about Mitzi’s call to the Sheriff, and if she could have picked you up herself, she would have.” He leaned closer, smelling of Old Spice.

Mr. Stowe, my favorite stableman when I was growing up at Randall Hall, used to wear Old Spice.

Rick looked into my eyes a moment longer than necessary. I wondered if he was thinking about kissing me.

“
Actually, there is something.” He gave a nervous laugh.

“
Sure.” I wouldn’t mind a goodbye kiss. Those big brown eyes were melty.

“
If you could—look at my novel? I’m supposed to show it to somebody tomorrow, and if you had any suggestions, or catch any typos…”

Oh, dear. I didn’t want to ruin a potential friendship, but first novel attempts tended to be so abysmal.

“
I’m sure it’s great. Great!” I said with feigned enthusiasm. “But I’m no kind of expert. Unless you’ve got a character who’s worried about where to seat an ex-mother-in-law at a third wedding, or how much to tip the galley crew after a sailing party…” I started bustling around the room, unzipping cases and opening drawers. “You’d be better off asking Toby, or one of the other fiction people.”

“
Toby charges an exorbitant fee, and everybody else is furious that I’m getting a big advance on an unfinished manuscript. They say that never happens to a new writer.”

“
Advance?” I stopped mid-bustle to look at Rick in this new light. “You have a contract? Congratulations. You must find all these amateur workshops boring.”

 “
Believe me, I need workshops. I’ve got a great agent, is all. Lucille Silverberg. She’s going to be here this weekend. In fact, she was due last night, but she got hung up in L.A., thank goodness. I don’t get a penny until I’ve finished the book, and I’m going crazy trying to end it. It’s up in the car.”

I watched him sprint up the hill to the Saturn. That whole exchange was odd. Usually writers with agents were too far up the food chain to bother with conferences—especially a Z-list one like this.

Over at the Zorro cabin, the Ferrari sat in its former spot next to the fountain. Two of the Sheriff-Coroner’s investigators were pulling out the seats, looking for God-knew-what. Plant must have been moved out of the cabin. As soon as I got some sleep I had to find him and ask about the mysterious gun and that smashed phone Detective Fiscalini claimed he found in the Ferrari. Right now I was too sleepy to make sense of any of it.

Rick rushed back in.

“
Here it is.” He presented me with another of the ubiquitous gold folders. “Except the last four chapters. They’re still in progress. I’d appreciate any comments you’ve got.”

I set the folder on the coffee table with ceremony. “I’ll bet everybody here is sick with envy. These people would kill to get an agent. How did you do it?”

“
Dumb luck. My agent found me. Or Toby did. He sent Luci a short story I wrote about busting a Hollywood sex party—you get a critique from him as part of the conference—and I guess he went nuts over it, because the next thing, Lucille Silverberg was on the phone, offering me a contract to expand the story into a book.”

“
Congratulations. I didn’t know agents did that.”

“
She and Toby are tight, is all. She’s going to be the main speaker on Sunday. I think most of the people here came to meet her. She’s a big shot in New York publishing, I guess.”

I only semi-stifled my yawns, but Rick didn’t seem to be getting the signal it was time to go. His face looked tense.

Finally he spoke “You’re not going to help Plantagenet Smith if you withhold evidence, you know.”

I didn’t like this on/off policeman thing.

“
Don’t be silly. I’m not withholding anything. I’ll be happy to tell Detective Fiscalini and his investigators anything they want to know. Nobody asked, but I did witness Ernesto being humiliated in front of everybody, and he took it very hard. Then he went down to Plant’s cabin and—who knows why—but he shot himself. Plant was his idol. I suppose he was afraid he’d never have that kind of success, so he…”

Rick’s words finally sank in.

“
What do you mean—help Plantagenet? What’s happened to him?”

“
He was taken to the county jail for questioning early this morning. Fiscalini is pretty tight-lipped, but I got some information out of Sorengaard. From what he told me, it’s looking a whole lot like your friend the screenwriter killed the Cervantes kid. Did they have some kind of tiff? Just tell me what you know, and maybe I can help.”

I flopped down on the couch—my head full of the horrible image of Plant in his Zegna and Ralph Lauren, sitting in a smelly, seedy cell: the ghost of Cary Grant trapped in some Spaghetti Western nightmare. So unfair.

“
What I know is that Ernesto shot himself. I saw it.” I looked up at Rick—all stony-faced policeman now. Did he really believe Plant could be a murderer?

“
You saw it? If you witnessed the death, you should tell the investigation team. They’re still collecting evidence in the cabin over there. I can go with you.”

Why was he so dense?

“
I don’t mean I actually watched. But I did see the boy humiliated. And I saw the body. And the gun that killed him. He had it in his hand when I got there.”

“
Smith held the weapon when you arrived at the cabin?”

“
No.” I was getting annoyed now. “Ernesto—his body—did. A silver-colored gun was in his hand next to...” I didn’t want to revisit the memory. “It was on the pillow. Silas said it was left over from Ernesto’s gang days.”

“
A .22 caliber pistol?” 

“
It was a gun. The kind that makes people dead. They’re sort of one-size fits-all, aren’t they?”

“
Not exactly. A .22 at point-blank range can certainly kill, but from what I could get out of Sorengaard, it seems like half this kid’s head was blown off. He said they found another gun that could have made the wound—a King Cobra .357 magnum. They found it in Smith’s Ferrari, along with a scarf that belongs to you. The car you drove up to the Hacienda—after the murder. You want to tell me about that?”

“
I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” I couldn’t hide my anger. “When the detective showed that big gun to me—it was the first time I saw it.”

Rick stared at me as if he were accessing an inner lie detector.

I didn’t like his attitude. “Even if it is murder—which I can’t believe—why suspect Plant? There’s no motive. The boy was hot and had a crush on him. They were about to have great sex. How can the Sheriff’s people be so stupid?”

Rick sat in the chair opposite me.

“
Actually, these local guys seem like a pretty bright bunch. They don’t have a big pool of possible suspects. Gaby says no one would have been around the cabins at that time of night, except Mitzi Boggs Bailey. Conference guests usually stay at the Hacienda and these cabins are for workshops and VIPs”

“
Plantagenet wasn’t down here either. Gabriella can vouch for that. She’d just talked to him before you and I met her in the bar. He’d have walked down the hill, since he’d given Ernesto his car. That takes at least ten minutes.”

“
Yes, Gaby met him in the lobby a little after ten. I was there, too, checking for messages. I didn’t know who Smith was at that point, but I figured he had to be one of Gaby’s VIP celebrities, with all that Italian tailoring on him. She invited him to join us in the bar, but he said he wanted to shower and ‘decompress’ because a couple of geezers had tailgated him all the way from the San Marcos Pass.”

I remembered Gabriella had mentioned the tailgating. Plant hated that.

“
Your friend Smith was already upset, and then Ernesto rushed in, furious about Toby. He said some choice things in Spanish that I wouldn’t want to repeat.”

“
To you? You knew him?”

“
No, but you couldn’t help noticing—a Latino kid with that bleached hair and the gang tattoo. He was shouting that stuff to everybody, mostly to Smith. He probably thought nobody understood.”

“
He yelled at Plant? They were fighting?” Plantagenet was the most non-violent man I knew, but everybody has a breaking point. I suppose something awful could have made him snap.