The Retrieval (6 page)

A uniformed maid showed them into the huge living room dominated by several couches, a grand piano, and a decent Persian carpet on the floor. A well-worn tapestry of hunting courtiers hung over the mantelpiece, filling the space between the windows on one of the flanking walls and the landing across the other. Aside from that obvious antique, there was a lack of imagination to the rest of the French-styled furnishings that suggested a severe pursuit of social respectability. The guests were much brighter and more impressive than the room.

Their host quickly broke away from a pair of studio executives to approach Laura and exchange sustained and doting hellos with her before offering drinks. Mr. Lowery was a lanky man with an appearance crafted largely from u-shaped curves. He had an air of edgy pep about him and was the sort of fellow who always seemed to be sitting at the head of the table no matter where his chair was located. Charlie would wager Lowery’s bite was worse than his bark.

However, Lowery’s wife was a subtler challenge. During the drive, Laura had warned Charlie that their hostess was one of the first stars of the silent screen still playing her greatest role. Mrs. Lowery, in her late thirties, had kept dark looks dazzling enough to easily attract a society court in any other small city. In Beverly Hills, she might dominate her surroundings, but competition made her position more laborious than effortless. The local gluts on the charisma and beauty markets ruthlessly reduced their usual value, especially for older women.

Mrs. Lowery had mastered the fine points of her role. Her greetings to Laura and Charlie were appropriately, warmly aristocratic, and she put on a good show of having read Charlie’s books. She could also rise to meet a true challenge. When Jake and his date came in about a quarter hour after Laura’s arrival, Mrs. Lowery’s greetings to Miss Cooper was regally friendly, an impeccable job of acting. However, the way she welcomed Jake made Charlie narrow his eyes. There was something subtly possessive about the quality of her attentions that was alarming.

A few minutes later, Charlie grabbed a rare chance to get Laura all to himself. He steered her over to where French doors stood open in the high wall otherwise dominated by windows. A cool evening would provide both the excuse for their huddle and an approximation of privacy; the air felt pleasant to a recently arrived New Yorker but was almost chill to anyone whose blood had been thinned by Los Angeles winters.

Charlie murmured, with a smile he hoped didn’t seem as fake as it felt, “I thought Jake was only being dramatic when he complained about our hostess.”

“Just because Jake’s dramatic doesn’t mean he’s dim,” Laura replied as she unnecessarily rearranged Charlie’s boutonnière, her own bright smile never wavering. “But he also couldn’t hide how his sympathy for Mrs. Lowery made him like her. At least, he liked her before she spooked him. Although his wariness came too late. Don’t worry; I’m dealing with the matter.”

Charlie regarded her with wariness of his own. “You’re not carrying a rusty tuning fork with you this evening, are you?”

“Darling, don’t be cryptic. Someone around here will read it as cleverness at his expense, and you’ll end up writing second-feature scripts about humorous rubes chasing pigs through State Fairs.”

Right then, the general migration toward the dining room began, and Laura gave Charlie an admonishing look before taking his arm.

Charlie got through the meal by recounting well-worn literary anecdotes to his neighbors and mentally reworking the people he was eating with into minor characters in an unprintable novel. It helped that Laura was on what passed for her best behavior. Even when she was talking with the actress Ingra Songaard, who was both a smolderer and an obvious handful, Laura stayed cheery and polite.

After dessert -- Biscuit Tortoni, and, as promised, quite good -- they all returned to the Lowery’s living room where a pair of photographers took pictures of attractively posed clusters of guests. Then the photographers left and the company relaxed into only slightly less attractively posed clusters as they talked politics and box-office returns. The stances were instinctive; most of the people in the room had the constant awareness of being observed that went with being either star performers or studio powers.

Laura drifted over to exchange smiles with Fran Cooper and give some low-voiced instructions to Jake that ended with him leaving the room. It was the only clue Charlie needed to know that the time for tribute had arrived even if the soft-footed reappearance of the photographers hadn’t been a give-away.

The gifts to Mr. Lowery struck Charlie as rather expensive and extremely obvious. He thought Miss Songaard’s sterling silver pheasant was nice, but most of the other presents seemed forgettable. However, under the influence of this birthday bribery, Lowery was relaxing at last, smiling genially from where he’d settled into a
bergère armchair to one side of the largest coffee table.

Laura’s gift was the last presented, likely because she was the biggest star in the room. One of the young attendants carried in her antique wicker basket. Seeing it, Mr. Lowery sat up straight. “What have we here?”

“Something for your collection, perhaps?” Mrs. Lowery asked her husband with a fond smile. “I’m sure we could fit a few more display cases into your study if you’re willing to sacrifice your windows.” That earned some chuckles; Lowery’s hobby seemed to be well known around Hollywood.

Lowery was too busy unwrapping to respond to the teasing with more than another absent smile. He obviously knew his hunting accoutrements. By the time he’d revealed the teal decoy and studied it reverently, his smile had widened into a beam. “Now, here’s a hell of a thing,” he told Laura, setting the teal down on the coffee table for further admiration.

“Happy birthday, dear,” she said, planting a daughterly kiss on his cheek beneath the indulgent gaze of Mrs. Lowery. Everyone ignored the crinkling noises and brilliant flashes from the photographers’ bulbs.

Straightening, Laura turned in a swirl of skirt. “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s one last gift.” She made a broad and attention-attracting gesture toward the door.

In came a maid with Ducky in tow. To Charlie’s eyes, the maid was tugging Ducky’s lead harder than she needed to, obviously nervous. Ducky was following along patiently but with his raised tail hinting at his strain, and the passing look he turned toward Charlie was tragic. Even so, his appearance led to a predictable chorus of oohs and aahs, especially from the female guests.

The maid unclipped Ducky’s lead, set it on the coffee table next to the other gifts, and hastily retreated. Charlie started to move toward the dog, but Ducky sat without being commanded.

“Who’s this?” Lowery asked, still pleased but obviously a little bewildered.

“Yes, he’s a darling, but who is he?” Mrs. Lowery chimed in.

“Uwe von Entejäger Kamp,” Laura told them, doing a decent job with the pronunciation. “He’s a Weimaraner, the most aristocratic and exclusive of the gundog breeds. I’d heard you wanted someone like this around the house, a handsome creature who was smart, affectionate, and could be walked on a tight leash.” The way Laura’s flourish directed the crowd’s eyes toward Ducky even as her gaze met and held Mrs. Lowery’s was a brilliant bit of craft. “Although I’m afraid he can’t be bred, he’s the best alternative I could offer you.”

Mrs. Lowery’s expression was still friendly, but her lips tightened ever so slightly at this little speech.

“He’s something, all right,” Mr. Lowery said, his voice admiring even as he shook his head. “And I sure wish I could keep him. What a prize for my collection. But, Laura, you heard wrong; dogs make me sneeze.”

“Oh, no,” Laura said, raising one hand to her cheek. “I’d certainly never introduce anyone into your household knowing he might cause trouble.” Now her gaze flicked to Jake, who was obviously both amused and annoyed, and then back to Mrs. Lowery.

“That’s all right, kid,” Mr. Lowery said. “I doubt we’ll have any problems finding a swell dog like this a happy home.”

That was the moment when Laura’s morality play went off script with a vengeance. Almost before Mr. Lowery had finished his last sentence, Inga Songaard swanned forward through the clusters of guests. Maybe she was tired of Laura hogging the spotlight, or maybe she was genuinely worried about Ducky.

In either case, Miss Songaard placed an elegant hand on Ducky’s head and said to him, in the most dramatic tones a famous enigma of the screen could muster, “There is no need to seek any further. I will be the one to take this noble animal away from his despair. I will deliver him to happiness.”

When he considered the evening later, Charlie realized Ducky’s day had been even longer and rockier than his own had been. With the addition of this last dose of social drama, Ducky’s cup suddenly overflowed. Obviously pained, he raised his head beneath Miss Songaard’s hand before he looked over at Charlie and wailed.

If anything, Miss Songaard seemed pleased by his dramatic response. “Yes, I shall take,” she repeated to Ducky right as Charlie gave him a stern look, “Take and deliver.”

Perhaps Charlie should have been warned by Ducky’s English nickname, but he hadn’t been. Or perhaps he might have considered the constant problems of mistranslation that must extend to gundog commands. But he was still as surprised as everyone else when the overtaxed Weimaraner, obviously relieved to sort out words that made sense to him, obeyed.

Ducky bounded forward, snatched up the teal decoy from the coffee table, dashed across the carpet, and plunged out through the open French doors into the garden.

***

For a few, critical seconds, surprise stilled the room. Displaying both his frankness and his swift wits, Jake was the first to speak.

“I guess Ducky’s taking and delivering,” he said. Then, “Don’t worry; I’ll get it back,” he added before he also exited into the darkness at full speed.

Laura closed her mouth on whatever words she’d been about to speak, gazed meaningfully at Charlie, and then turned back to the social chaos just starting. Charlie dodged a line producer’s wife to snatch the lead off the coffee table before heading outdoors himself.

To be honest, he was perfectly happy to leave behind what was now a memorable party even by Hollywood standards. As he took the stairs from the veranda down to the back garden quicker than he should have, Charlie could clearly hear the Songaard woman through the open doors behind him. She was beginning what sounded like one doozie of a remorseful monologue. Crashing through bushes in the dark was a better way to spend his evening than listening to that.

In the end, there wasn’t much crashing to be done. The moon was at three-quarters, and Charlie could faintly hear what he assumed was Jake doing his own crashing somewhere up ahead of him. Charlie also heard some two-fingered whistles and shouts of “C’mere!” that probably wouldn’t do any good. Rather than cursing the fact that those raised in Hell’s Kitchen weren’t taught the right words to stop a gundog carrying game, Charlie dodged around an oak tree and picked up his pace.

They were circling around the house, which soon had Charlie emerging from the shadows beneath the trees and onto the north lawn. Once out into the open, he had to pause and listen harder for the sounds of passage, which left him further back in the chase. After several heartbeats of hesitation, he heard more noises and broke into a fast trot that took him past the tennis courts, across some gravel paths, and onto a grassy stretch between the pool and the paved front courtyard, where the attendants had been parking cars.

He almost ran into Jake, who appeared from behind a Hispano Suiza to announce, “I lost him.”

“Make him…” A second or two to catch his breath and Charlie finished, “Make him find you.” He straightened and called out into the darkness, “Ducky, stop! Halt! Whoa!”

“Whoa?”

“Let’s hope they retrained his halt to something more common than his various retrieve commands.” Raising his voice again, Charlie tried, “Ducky, come!”

At least that word got results. After a few seconds, Charlie heard movement from over by the pool before Ducky came trotting up to them. Without being told, Ducky sat, his posture as mournful as anything a Mor could manage.

Charlie tried a stern look for a few seconds before giving up, sighing, and clipping on the lead. “You, sir, are a well-intentioned calamity,” he told Ducky.

“Nice to hear someone else told that for a change,” Jake said, his grin as audible as it wasn’t visible. Proving his ability to get back to the point, he added, “No decoy.”

“And no possibility of interrogating the courier. Now, if I was a tragic gundog, where would I drop off a fake duck?”

“A
teal
,” Jake said, and then, “Ouch!” when Charlie did jab him in the ribs this time. But Jake was also the one to say, “Well, he likes you. Me, too, I guess. And we drove him around all afternoon, not to mention the remaining bananas that may still be in the car.”

“Heel,” Charlie told Ducky, and they went off to try their luck.

Both coupes were parked right next to each other by the swimming pool. In the added light from the lanterns illuminating the pool’s water, Jake delved into the open rumble seat of his roadster. Sure enough, he found the decoy.

“Well, there’s that.” Charlie looked down at Ducky. “As for you. Get in. And you still can’t have a banana.”

Back into the rumble seat went Ducky, showing every sign of relief.