Rich Friends (49 page)

Cricket was there. She made no sound, but her face, white under messy curls, turned a pale, tentative green. Her freckles appeared three-dimensional. She moved to the cooler for the shift, letting it float over RB's torn, naked body. Eyelet, already marked, blotted up red.

The sound of retching. A toilet flushed.

Roger, help me, Alix thought, and tried to lift him. Tell me, please, darling. How can he? He's dead. She didn't believe this thought.

“I'll call the police.” Vliet had a cloth at his mouth. Tears oozed from his eyes. “Get them over here.”

“I already phoned.” Cricket was crying, too.

In the human mind is something rather like a Dutch door. When reality becomes too painful to accept, the bottom half closes. A sort of partial amnesia to reduce the horror. This was happening in Vliet and Cricket.

Alix, having lost more—everything—the top door, the door to sanity, had begun to swing. She stood, carefully adjusting her skirt.

She was not crying.

Chapter Thirteen

1

The elder policeman was rotund, florid, with bushy, peaked gray eyebrows, the stereotype Irish cop. The younger, though fair-skinned, by feature, was obviously Mexican-American. They noted that a red Austin-Healy, license number 850 DIW, was parked in the courtyard with its motor running and both doors open. An overturned grocery bag seeped milky liquids onto floorboards. In the background a dog barked their arrival.

The two men, drawing their handguns, started cautiously for the open door.

Almost immediately the elder returned on the run to use the radio.

Within ten minutes patrol cars filled the entry, their sirens drawing a Sunday crowd in shorts, muumuus, swim trunks, and bikinis from nearby apartment buildings. The media converged. Routinely, police calls are monitored. Working press and Sunday indolent alike were kept beyond the iron dagger gates. Overgrown citrus trees limited their view. Each time a police officer came in sight, questions were shouted. A network helicopter circled overhead. As the hot afternoon wore on, the old house shuddered with its final burst of activity. Patrol cars, a fire department rescue unit, an ambulance, three members of the county coroner's office were admitted. A team of detectives. More uniformed police. News cameras whirred and clicked. And finally Dr. Thomas Noguchi, Los Angeles County's chief coroner, arrived. The crowd buzzed his name with satisfaction.

It was a big case.

Reporters beyond the pale put together snips of information. Extrapolated. And news bulletins interrupted Sunday afternoon programming: “What appears to be a ritual mass murder took place this afternoon in a secluded West Hollywood mansion. Victims include RB Henderson, star of
One Step, Two Step
. Miss Henderson is the former wife of the film's Oscar-winning director, Loomis Henderson. Dr. Roger Reed, a member of the Van Vliet market clan, is reportedly another victim. Possibly three others are dead. For details tune in at five.”

Dan, freshly showered from golf, had turned on “The Game of the Week.” He caught the full interruption.

“Again? Oh God! Not again.” Paling, he moved on the color Zenith as if to shake a denial from it by the tubes. “But how? How? They're in Baltimore.”

It had been decided to do the preliminary questioning in the house rather than at police headquarters. Cricket was questioned first, Alix second. The plainclothes detective with the wandering left eye sat opposite Alix in the breakfast room. There was a wedge of dust on the heavy Tudor-type table. Fingering it away, she answered concisely.

“We were gone a little more than an hour. An hour and fifteen minutes at the most. We had something to drink at Jack-in-the-Box, we marketed—at Chalet Gourmet—then stopped at Sav-on.”

“When you returned, did you notice anything unusual?”

“Yes. The front door was open and the stereo was tuned very loud. It was music that Roger never normally would listen to.”

“Or the others?”

“I don't know about them.”

“Where were the bodies?”

“The same place. Orion was in the living room. RB and Roger were in the kitchen.”

“There were signs of struggle in the kitchen, but Lance Putnam—Orion—doesn't appear to have put up a fight. Did you rearrange anything in the living room?”

“No-no.”

“Did you see anyone else here?”

“Nobody. Oh, wait. There's the caretakers, the Tadovitches.”

“They're down in Vista for the day. With their son. We checked it out.”

“Oh. I didn't know. While I fixed breakfast Roger let out their dog and played with him.”

“Did he lock him back up?”

“He had to so we could play tennis.”

“Are the bodies exactly as you found them?”

“Vliet and I tried to see if we could help Roger. We moved him, sort of.”

“And that's it?”

“I think—yes. Cricket covered RB. Her shift was off.”

The voice and face were calm. Shock, the walleyed detective later told his assistant, the beautiful one's in shock. It wasn't shock. Alix was a decimated army that has not yet surrendered: the mortally wounded cry in a dark charnel house alone, for every available force has been dispatched to the front. She concentrated on externals. About those three crumbs under the table? She retrieved them while answering: “What was your relationship to Dr. Reed?”

“I love—I mean, I lived with him. We were going to be married.”

“I have to ask this.” The left eye wandered, but the right looked kindly on her. “You understand, Miss Schorer, don't you? It's my job.” He coughed. “Was there anything between Dr. Reed and Miss Henderson?”

“They hardly knew one another. She was his brother's friend, not exactly Vliet's girl, but sort of.”

He nodded. “That's all for now,” he said. “Is there anything I can do? A car to take you home?”

“Home?” She pronounced it as she might a foreign word. “No-no. But thank you.”

He led her into the octagonal hall, saying, “Mr. Reed?”

She and Vliet stared at one another. They had not spoken since he'd vomited. The B-type blood pattern had rusted on his shirt. A flashbulb popped on his dark glasses. “Mr. Reed,” the walleyed detective repeated. Vliet moved silently into the breakfast room.

On the bottom stair, two uniforms sat smoking. Another pushed dust into an envelope. Someone else knelt, examining a bloody footprint. “Hell, it's probably my own.” And a fat sergeant, eating a glazed doughnut, used the phone. “Honest to God, Myrt,” he said into the receiver, “I seen less blood on Okinawa. I mean it. A real battleground. So? Tell 'em I won't be able to make it. No, I don't know the hell what time.”

Across the eggshell paint in the living room was scrawled, rusty, bloody:
VENGEANCE IS MINE
,
SAITH THE LORD
. A sheet covered Orion. Standing on the couch, a photographer aimed downward.
Pop flash
.

She circled a man reading a magazine. She pushed open the kitchen door. A policeman was pulling a Baggie onto RB's hand. A sheet covered Roger. As she started for the sheet, a tall detective came at her, saying, “Sorry, honey. You're not allowed in here.”

“Why?”

“We're working,” he said. “Is someone coming for you?”

“I'm waiting for the phone,” she said. “When can I see him?”

“Later. Look, while you're waiting, why not change your clothes?”

In the bedroom she found a man powdering with gray dust. She locked the bathroom. She stood under the lion-head shower. Icy jets pricked her unfeeling skin.

2

They came for their children.

First the Mathenys. Caroline, erect, lipstickless, and arrogant, swept by police. Gene, his face set, pale, followed. They shed tears with Cricket in the small library—the police had set it aside for family. Vliet came out of the breakfast room. Gene left Cricket to put his arms around Vliet, then Caroline pressed herself to her tall nephew. Always they had been close to the twins, and since Vliet had been in the business he had taken on filial status. He let himself be embraced. His arms were at his side and his hands trembled.

Then the Reeds. Upon seeing the remains of her son, Em opened her mouth and let sound come, peal upon peal of sound. Vliet hurried to the Austin-Healy, handing the bottles of Louis Jardot to Gene to open, and Em drank lukewarm wine that had been bought for steaks now never to be barbecued. She gulped one glass, two, three, then sank into the horsehair couch, Sheridan's arm around her, Caroline—kneeling—patting her hand. “My poor luv, my poor luv.”

A woman stuck her pretty, raddled face around the door, announcing, “I'm Lance's mother, Mrs. Putnam.” Cricket, wiping her eyes, went to her.

A bald man wearing tennis shorts—he was older than any of the parents—after identifying the dead woman as his former wife, RB Henderson, clutched his round stomach and began to weep. He was comforted by a bearded man who identified himself as David Froude, Mr. and Miss Henderson's agent. They left immediately.

Caroline had learned the value of social trivia. At times like this, homely actions can be the glue that holds us together. She suggested Mrs. Putnam and everybody needed some of Vliet's wine.

Beverly and Dan arrived last. Kings Road was jammed with police and press cars, and Dan got as close as he could, leaving his car—with keys—in the middle of the road, shouldering aside onlookers, reporters, and police. He and Beverly didn't know if Alix were alive, dead, or in some hideous limbo between. They knew only what Dan originally had heard. The same message came five times over the car radio, KNX and KFWB. Beverly, pale, large eyes wild, could have posed for Tragedy. As they came through the open door, Alix descended the stairs, passing through afternoon sun that illuminated the landing. She wore clean white pants, a pink French cotton T-shirt. Her long combed hair shone in the sunlight.

Beverly moved toward her. The stairs were wide. Alix evaded Beverly. “Mother,” she said. “I was about to call you.”

“Alix. Oh my God!”

“I'll be right back. I have to see Roger.”

Neither he nor RB was in the kitchen. Chalk outlines replaced the bodies. A small group of plainclothesmen, drinking Cokes from bottles, surrounded these outlines.

“They've been taken downtown,” said the detective with the wandering left eye.

“But they promised!”

“Dr. Noguchi's orders.”

Alix turned to Dan. “
Make
them let me see him.”

Dan said to the lieutenant, “They already left?”

“Dr. Noguchi's orders.”

“Then come on, Alix,” Dan said. “Come home.”

“I have to get my things.”

And followed by Beverly, she ran upstairs. Dan questioned the police.

Beverly sat on the bed, watching her daughter meticulously fold a man's denim work shirt. Alix looked normal. Which is to say beautiful, which is to say every male in the house had stared as she passed. Her voice was normal, even to the faint bickering note that inevitably permeated their conversations. She moved normally. By this normalcy she rendered help superfluous. The huge tree engulfed the bedroom in premature dusk. Alix smoothed Roger's clothes, folding at the proper creases.

Beverly watched, her eyes dark. Her joy at finding Alix alive was melting into something else.

She sat on this high bed where Alix had slept (and, Beverly guessed, made love) with the dead boy. Dead, she thought. The unreachable place, death. Jamie, she thought, I've been in the environs myself. Roger. And specific and clear, Beverly remembered a dinner table and the dead boy explaining, intent and embarrassed, yet the blue eyes remaining steady:
She doesn't want you to understand, Mrs. Grossblatt
. A sweet, serious boy. I'd hoped.… Dead. At least I had Alix. What has Alix got? These worn clothes. (My God, Beverly thought. Euripides could write the family chronicle. Our story as told to.) Why can't she show grief? Why won't she let me help her? Why can't I force her to let me help? I have to help.

Alix now had two piles. Male. Female. “The rest's in the car,” she said, opening the cream American Tourister she'd bought when she entered Pomona, packing the male clothes and two large books. “His
Anatomy'
s in the yard,” she said. “Don't let me forget.”

“I won't,” Beverly promised.

Alix opened the top drawer of the old bureau, checking. The middle drawer stuck. She yanked. The bow front stood firm.

“Don't worry,” Beverly said. “If you leave something, Dan'll send for it.”

Alix wedged the drawer open, inching it forward. Empty.

“Mother, take these?” she asked, handing Beverly a flat makeup case and three pairs of sandals. She went into the bathroom to make sure the faucet wasn't dripping.

“Do you want Dan to get the suitcase now?”

“It's Roger's stuff. It's the Reeds',” Alix said. “Is Father in town today?”

“I'll find out.”

“Would you, Mother?” And she moved the carefully packed suitcase a little. “I'll finish here.”

Philip Schorer, sailing home from Catalina, had heard nothing of the murders. As he unlocked his door, the phone rang. Beverly's low voice rushed at him. “Oh Philip. Thank God. I've been dialing and dialing. Alix needs you. She needs you so.”

After Cricket had said good-bye to Mrs. Putnam and the fat, ruddy man that Mrs. Putnam had introduced as “Lance's father,” she remained at the door. One of the squad cars was maneuvering out of the jammed courtyard, a sweat-drenched policeman directing the effort. In the hall, just behind her, a kneeling man brushed dust on the floor. He was talking to a photographer. “Sixteen stab wounds, can you buy this, in a pattern, like buttons, down her?” Cricket had been questioned first. She had answered questions numbly, without thought. “The guy, the doctor, he took a long time. He must've put up a real fight. They weren't so damn neat with him.” “Yeah, all them arm wounds. And that head!”