The Bequest (12 page)

The same group
that had met at Denny’s after Teri’s encounter
with Leland Crowell had reassembled, this time at Doug Bozarth’s Malibu
home, perched above the beach overlooking the ocean. Mike seemed
almost giddy when he explained to Teri that this was Bozarth’s “beach
house,” complementing his three acre estate in Brentwood, his mountain
resort in Vail, and his four-thousand-square-foot vacation home on Anini
Beach, on the north shore of Kauai. And, oh, yes, there was also that small
island
he
owned in the
Caribbean
and
the
villa
overlooking
the
Mediterranean in Italy. Not yet forty years of age, and Doug Bozarth had
done quite well for himself.

Although
Teri
had
never
been
overly
impressed
with
the
accumulation of wealth and assets, Mike made no secret of his own
aspirations in that regard. He relished his newfound association with
Bozarth and his ilk, to the point, Teri thought, of shutting down his mind
and stifling any inclination to ruin a good thing by even considering the
possibility that matters were not as they should be with Bozarth. Mike’s
villains of choice remained Leland Crowell and his mother. Teri had a
more expansive list.

The four sat around a patio table on a teak deck that resided on stilts
above the beach. Mike and Bob enjoyed beer, Bozarth his Scotch, but Teri
stuck to water, wanting to keep her mind one hundred percent clear.
Although to any passerby below, it would appear to be a casual gathering
of friends, the atmosphere was anything but casual. The mood was tense,
even grim. The centerpiece on the table was the uncrumpled yellow page
with Teri’s rendezvous instructions, and it was the focused topic of
conversation.

“How do you know it’s Crowell?” Bob asked. “Maybe it’ll be the
mother. After all, she’s the one who left the note for Teri.”
“I don’t care which one it is. They’re both nuts. And I think that
makes them both dangerous.”
“It’ll be the writer,” Bozarth said. “The mother is just the messenger.
But what this proves is that they’re both in it together, and they have been
from the start.”
“I can’t get over this whole thing,” Teri said. “Do you know how
much patience it takes to run a scam like this? They’ve been waiting for
over two years, and they had no way of knowing at the start that it would
ever pay off. What were the odds that I’d even read that script, much less
like it?”
“Maybe it was just luck, and now they’re taking advantage of it,”
Mike said.
“Spencer West died right after I got the script.
If his death is
connected, then that’s a plan.”
“And that means there’s more to it than we know,” Bozarth said.
“Do you think the lawyer was in on it, too?” Mike asked.
“Probably. They figured they couldn’t trust him to keep his mouth
shut.”
“I think I’ve missed a step here,” Bob said. “Are you saying they killed
him? I checked with the police, and they’re pretty sure the lawyer was a
suicide.”
“But I did some checking of my own,” Mike said, “and I’m pretty sure
he’s the one who spilled the story to the trades. Like I told Teri back then,
it really didn’t matter if the script sucked, because we could rewrite it into
something worth a damn, and the buzz would carry it from there. I’m
with Teri on this; it’s all part of a plan.”
“The police were also pretty sure that Leland Crowell took a swan
dive off that cliff up at Big Sur,” Bozarth said. “But we now know he’s alive
and well. That spells plan, too. A lot of thought went into this. I don’t
believe in happenstance.”
“Somebody damn sure jumped off that cliff,” Mike said.
“But not Leland,” Teri said.
Bozarth riveted his attention on Teri. “So you see what we’re dealing
with: people who are willing to kill to scam us.” The subtext wasn’t lost
on her: We’ve got to be willing to kill to protect ourselves.
Then a sudden thought hit her. “It is a scam.”
“Welcome to the conversation,” Bob said. “Try to keep up here.”
“No, I mean what if that really was Leland Crowell who jumped off
that cliff? Annemarie identified his body; what if she wasn’t lying? What if
that really was her son?”
“I’m not following what you’re saying,” Bob said.
“I’ve been sitting here trying to understand how anyone, especially
someone who needs money as badly as Annemarie and the ‘undead,’ as
Doug calls him, could sit back and wait two years for their scam to pay off.
That doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t buy it. So what if this isn’t a twoyear-old scam, but it’s a brand new scam made out of opportunity?”
Bozarth furrowed his brow. “I think I see where you’re going. You’re
saying that the newly resurrected Leland Crowell isn’t Leland Crowell at
all. But he and Annemarie see a chance to get in on the money, so he
shows up claiming to be the dead man. Or maybe it was all part of a plan,
but Leland is still dead.”
“Exactly.”
“That would make sense.”
“So if we can prove it was really Leland Crowell who died, whether
he killed himself or not, then the script is legally mine. And even if it turns
out that the will wasn’t legally probated, that’s just a formality.”
“How do we prove that it was Crowell who died?” Bob asked.
“We don’t have to,” Mike said. “We just have to prove that Lazarus is
someone else.”
“Go there tonight, Teri,” Bozarth said. “If it is Leland, or whoever
the hell he is, who shows up, we’ll have someone watching. We’ll take it
from there.”
There was that subtext again that bothered Teri. And again, it was
nothing you could take to the bank, but she heard it as a mortal threat.
Maybe Annemarie and the scraggly-haired man were killers, or maybe
they were just scam artists. Either way, that’s what courts were for.
Taking the law into your own hands left scars; all this talk was picking at
the scabs over Teri’s scars.
She stood and walked to the edge of the deck and gazed at the ocean.
On the beach below her, a blonde-haired girl and a small dog that looked
like a Sheltie passed by. Carefree, a day on the beach. Teri wondered what
dreams and aspirations the little girl had. Did she want to grow up to be a
doctor or lawyer? Or an actress?
With her back to the others, even though she knew they were all
watching her, Teri said, “What do I tell him?”
“Tell him he’s not getting a damn dime,” Bozarth said.
She spun around to face him.
“Are you crazy?” Mike said. He got up and walked to Teri, then stood
beside her, as if lending support.
“It’ll rattle him,” Bozarth said.
“That’s what I mean,” Mike said. “We already know these people are
willing to kill, and now you want Teri to go in there alone and deliberately
piss him off?”
“He needs to know he’s not the only one willing to kill.”
The words hit Teri like a tidal wave.
There, he had flat out said it!
She supposed she should give him credit for honesty, but things
seemed to be spiraling out of control.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mike asked.
Bozarth answered Mike, but looked at Teri as he spoke. He wanted
to be sure she knew he was talking to her.
“What I’m saying is that people kill for lots of reasons. Sometimes it’s
for money. Sometimes it’s for love. And sometimes it’s just plain ol’ selfpreservation.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly when he spoke the last words. She
knew exactly what he meant.
“If he’s willing to kill, he knows others might be, as well,” Bozarth
continued. “There’s one other thing he knows. If he should suddenly
disappear, no one would miss him. After all, he’s already a dead man.”
“I don’t like the sounds of this,” Mike said.
“You don’t have to like the sounds of it,” Bob said. “It makes sense.”
“Look, Mike, don’t go getting all Grassy Knoll on me,” Bozarth said.
“He just has to
think
we’d kill him. It’ll put him off-kilter so he’ll make a
mistake. Then we can wrap this up.”
“Wrap it up, how?” Teri asked.
“Let me worry about that.”

Between Spencer West’s
former office, Annemarie Crowell’s
apartment complex, and the
Crescent Hotel, Teri had seen enough

rundown, ragged structures in the last couple of days to last her a lifetime.
These weren’t the charming “holes-in-the-wall” that she learned to love
back home in Texas, the quaint ranch and farm houses and classic cafes.
These were the kinds of places that testified to a world of sadness and
poverty that she and her friends only read about in newspaper articles or
saw on television or the big screen. The world that she subconsciously
hoped she would never know about firsthand. The world that she had
somehow been drawn into against her will by a bizarre sequence of events
that even the most creative screenwriter might have dismissed as not being
credible. But before she could put that world of rundown structures
behind her, she had one more to visit.

Caleb’s Diner.
At exactly midnight, Teri pulled her SUV into the sparsely-populated
parking lot and stared at the building, constructed in the style of a railroad
car, or maybe Airstream trailer, with windows lining the front with a row
of booths. What looked like a narrow aisle separated those booths from
stools at a counter. Through the windows, she saw that all booths were
vacant at the end away from the front door, and only a couple of the stools
at the counter supported diners. No Leland Crowell, as far as she could
tell.
She got out of the car, wearing her same unsuccessful disguise from
the day before: baseball cap, ponytail, and sunglasses, despite the lack of
sun. Given the location, the hour, and the shadows, she hoped it would be
more effective than it was the last time. She stood beside her car for a
moment, steeling her nerves. She had to restrain herself from looking
around, searching for Doug Bozarth’s men, who surely were out there
somewhere. She would feel better if she knew exactly where they were,
but she would have to be satisfied with the sure knowledge that they were,
in fact, there.
Or would she actually feel better if they weren’t there at all? She
wasn’t entirely sure.
She entered the diner with a façade of bravado. “Show no fear,” she
thought, although she was painfully out of her comfort zone. The trick,
though, was not to let anyone know that. She stood in the entryway for a
moment and let her eyes adjust to the light. It would have made sense to
take off her sunglasses, but she opted against that.
A waitress approached, dressed in a dirty tan uniform, decorated by
the various foods and drinks she had served that day. When she smiled, she
revealed a black tooth in front that almost made it look as if the tooth were
missing.
“How many?” the waitress asked.
“I’m meeting someone here,” Teri said, “but I don’t see him.”
“Some guy just went to the men’s room.”
“What does he look like?”
“Oh, I don’t know, thin, longish hair.”
“That sounds like him.”
“I’ll take you to his table.”
The waitress led her to the back of the diner, the last booth against
the wall farthest from the door. As Teri passed a scattering of late-night
customers, she wondered if any of them could be Bozarth’s men. None
paid her
any attention as she
walked by, but then again, a
good
surveillance man would ignore her. The faux leather seats on the rear
booth, colored a sickly orange, were split, with tufts of foam rubber
sticking out. A half-empty cup of coffee sat on the far side of the booth, so
she slid in across from it.
“Need a menu?” the waitress asked, as she set a glass of water on the
table.
“No, thank you.”
The waitress left, and Teri sat rigidly, posture ramrod straight, and
looked out the window. After a few minutes, she heard footsteps behind
her. She refused to turn her head as a shadow loomed, then Leland
Crowell—or whoever he was—slid into the far side of the booth. He
wore tattered jeans, his bony knees poking out, and a long-sleeve blue
denim workshirt that was so faded as to be nearly white.
“Ms. Squire, how good of you to come,” he said.
She said nothing in reply, but simply stared at him.
“Are you hungry? Let me get you a menu.”
“This is not a date. I don’t need a menu.”
“No reason we can’t be pleasant.”
“Actually, there’s every reason we can’t be pleasant,” she said, “so
let’s just get this over with.”
“Ahh
, tsk tsk
, so little manners today. Okay, fine, let’s have it your
way.”
They sat in silence for a moment, each acting as if expecting the other
to talk first. Finally the thin man said, “Well, have you got something to
tell me?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, dear, are we back to that again? You know who I am.”
“I know who you
say
you are.”
“And I know who you say you are…Peggy.”
She tried hard to maintain her composure, but still blinked. The
question was whether he noticed it. “My name is Teri.”
“Credibility is a fragile thing.”
He had noticed.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Teri said. “Something I’ve always
wondered about the script. Why did you end the first act the way you
did?”
For a moment, she sensed that she had shifted the momentum. This
time, he blinked. Like a frog, with lifeless eyes, his expression totally
blank.
“It just seemed like it was the best way,” he said.
A bead of
perspiration popped out above his right eye then trickled down his jawline
despite the coolness of the diner. The question obviously made him
uncomfortable.
“Yeah, but what made you think that would work as a plot point?”
she asked. “You developed the set-up so well, but then you had your
protagonist—” She stopped, almost ready to laugh at the blankness that
had replaced cockiness on of his face.
“You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?” she asked.
“You don’t know what a plot point is or where the act break is, or
anything.”
Silence, the frog blinking in rapid succession.
“Leland Crowell would know,” she said. “The writer would know
exactly where the act break was and why he put it there. But you don’t
have a clue.”
“I don’t have to have a clue. I’ve got a copyright certificate.”
“But the certificate says that Leland Crowell owns the copyright, and
you’re not Leland Crowell. You just proved that. Did you kill him? Huh?
Did you throw him off that cliff?”
The man leaned back in his seat and stared out the window for a
moment. Then he rolled up his shirtsleeve and stuck his arm across the
table, with the blue football helmet tattoo directly under the light. He
pressed his lips together, as if to say, “There. That proves it.”
For just an instant, Teri flashed back to the Crescent Hotel, straining
for a memory that lurked deep in the recesses of her mind. What was it?
Oh, yeah, now she remembered: The tattoo was smudged.
Wordlessly, she took her water glass and poured a few drops on the
tattoo, then rubbed it with her thumb. She had to swallow the bile that
rose up in her throat as she touched his bare arm, but her little gambit did
the trick: the tattoo smeared.
“I’m not a lawyer, but I think I can help you get your money back
from the tattoo parlor,” she said. She kept her eyes locked on his face, but
he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you really are Leland
Crowell,” she said. “You know what’s really pathetic about that?”
Now he met her eyes. For the first time, emotion filled his. A mix of
rage and fear, and she wondered if she was pushing him too far. But she
also knew she couldn’t stop now. She felt that she was on the verge of
something.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re already dead.”
“Big threat from such a little girl.”
“It’s not a threat; it’s a fact, isn’t it? Leland Crowell already jumped
off a cliff, so if he disappears again, who’s going to miss him?”
The mix of rage and fear turned to pure rage. He leaned across the
table and spoke in what could only be described as a growl. “I want my
money.”
“You’re not getting anything.”
He pulled away, his back rigid against the booth.
“That’s right; not a damn penny.” She stood and looked down at him.
“See you in the funny papers.”
Then she turned and headed for the door, fighting to keep her head
high and her mouth set. From behind her, she heard the man’s shouts. As
he yelled, customers turned and looked at her
And recognized her!
“You come back here. You can’t threaten me, Miss Bigshot Actress! I
want what’s coming to me. You hear me? You won’t get away with this.”
She picked up her pace, but kept it to a walk, albeit a fast one.
Then she was out the door.