Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Page 10

  "Jesus God!" I backed out of the driveway and swung around the corner to a pay phone, leapt out, and used it to dial 911 so my cell number couldn't be traced. I told the female officer who answered that I thought two people had been murdered. The officer asked for my name. "Just get someone over to Eddie Smith's house, and hurry!" Tears were running down my cheeks and I could barely talk as I dialed Curtis and left word about Rita and Barrett.

  "I think she's alive, Teague," Callie said of Barrett.

  "Then we've got to go back and help her until the police come!" I drove the car back around the corner and pulled up alongside the curb, leaving the entrance free for emergency vehicles. This time, the gate latch on the big iron gates was locked, by the frightened servants, no doubt, and we couldn't get back in.

  Callie said it was just like her dream. "The two black tarantulas were the two men in black who attacked Barrett and Rita Smith. In my dream they were around a fire, remember? And these men set Barrett on fire and then, in the dream, they bit us. You were attacked and we were both chased, which is like being bitten."

  "And you said you dreamed Rita Smith died of the bite."

  "I hope that part's not true," Callie said.

  Paramedics arrived within minutes. The gates were opened for them by someone inside the compound. Barrett Silvers was loaded into an ambulance. The neighbors were starting to gather, walking down the street to see what the commotion was about. A second ambulance arrived and parked just below the staircase where Rita Smith lay.

  A news van followed and went live from the crime scene: Famous comedian Eddie Smith s wife Rita was attacked this morning at their home in Encino by unknown assailants who left her unconscious and bleeding on the balcony of their estate. Marathon Studio executive Barrett Silvers, also at the estate, was found badly burned and has been rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital. The motive for the attacks is unknown.

  "We need to go back inside and tell them what we saw," Callie said.

  "That two guys in black tried to kill them?" I replied. "How do we explain our having been there when it happened?"

  "Just tell them the truth. The gate was open and we drove in," Callie said. I looked at her for a full fifteen seconds, letting that thought sink in.

  "I know you're into truth, Callie," I finally said. "But our talking to the police won't catch those men. I've talked to the LAPD, Curtis, 911, and the APD. I've talked myself blue to the men in blue, and do you see any real help coming our way? But this crime is different. Rita Smith is a high-profile case, and the police are going to be under pressure to produce leads. I don't intend to be one of them."

  Callie said nothing further, and we drove home in a state of shock.

  Chapter Twelve

  A studio secretary from Dinallen Pictures phoned. Brenda Emory would take my pitch on the adoption story this afternoon, at three, if I were free. She was sorry for the late phone call but, the secretary simpered, "Things have been so wild here, you wouldn't believe it!" I refrained from saying she wouldn't know wild if it bit her in the buttocks, and instead graciously accepted the appointment. In Hollywood, only the deceased turn down an opportunity to pitch a story.

  Barrett and Rita Smith were so embedded in my consciousness that I functioned in nearly an out-of-body state. I was dressed in my pitch uniform, standing in front of the mirror checking out my jeans and hunt jacket, almost without being aware I'd gotten dressed. I got in the car in nearly the same state. Callie joined me, saying she'd love to see how movies were sold.

  "If you want to see how they're sold, go with someone else. If you want to see how they're pitched, you're with the right person. I've pitched more often than Fernando Valenzuela."

  Before heading over to Dinallen Pictures, we stopped and got the Jeep back from the body shop, and it looked as if it had never been driven off a cliff at high speed.

  "It's beautiful, Marty. You can do my face lift," I said.

  Marty beamed. He took great pride in his puttying and painting. I envied his being able to make a living at an occupation in which he did something people actually needed.

  Dinallen Pictures was always in turmoil, consolidating office space, moving office space, or building office space. Their corridors could easily be mistaken for a moving and storage locker: boxes floor to ceiling, up against every wall. Brenda Emory's secretary, who was the epitome of pert and perky with a thick mop of tight red curls and a stick-figure body, said Brenda was on a long-distance call. "Could you just hang?" she asked, and I felt the request embodied the true desire of studio executives toward producers and writers.

  We sat down on a low stack of boxes for ten minutes before the secretary poked her Orphan Annie head out into the hallway again and said, "She'll see you now."

  We entered a spacious office decorated Sante Fe-style with a commanding view of the ocean. Brenda Emory was a middle-aged woman in baggy jeans and a white shirt that flapped loosely over them. She apologized for the delay, saying she was on the phone with a vet in New England about her hamsters.

  "Are they sick?" I feigned concern.

  "Oh, no. I breed them," Brenda said. "I began with Whitey and Sam, thinking they were both boys, and it turned out Sam was a girl, so we got Lucifer and Chin-Chin." Brenda reached over and picked up a stack of pictures: close-up shots of tricolored hamsters taking a whirl on the traditional hamster wheel. She took in a deep breath and launched into the problems surrounding the breeding of hamsters. Most of which, she lamented, had to do with the size of their anatomy and their general nervousness.

  Thirty minutes later, it struck me this woman was not going to buy anything I had to sell. No one who could devote thirty pre-pitch minutes to the breeding of hamsters had a life outside of hamsters, or an interest outside of hamsters, or frankly very many movies to produce that didn't have hamsters in starring roles.

  "Well, I know you've got a busy schedule. We're here to pitch you a true and extremely compelling adoption story."

  Brenda crossed her legs and her arms. Not a good sign. Twenty minutes later, as I wrapped up the story explaining how the long-lost adoptee finally finds his birth parents, and those same birth parents are now back together and in love after thirty-five years, Brenda let out a long sigh of boredom.

  "Does he come back home and kill them?"

  "Kill them?" I ask, startled.

  "If he came home and murdered them, you see, we wouldn't be expecting that, and then that would be a movie. Of course you'd want that to happen at the hour break."

  "No, actually, the story has an uplifting, happy ending."

  "Was he molested by them before he was adopted out? Or did he commit suicide after finding them?" she mused. "You see what I'm getting at? The unexpected."

  "Well, you've been so kind to listen to our pitch, Brenda," Callie said.

  I put a copy of the ten-page story treatment on her desk, and Callie retrieved it as we exchanged goodbyes, sent hugs to the hamsters, and left.

  At the elevator, Callie said, "She was just jerking off in there with her stupid hamster stories. Cut your losses and move on. And never leave your work behind when they've been so negative about it. Negative energy can transfer to the story and diminish its power."

  I stared at Callie. Underneath this fluffy exterior lurked an iron maiden.

  Callie took the car keys from me, and I got in on the passenger side, sagging against the window.

  "It took twelve years to sell Forrest Gump. Can you imagine what you can hear in twelve years?" I did an imitation of Brenda. "There's no sex? Just this dumb guy up there for two straight hours? Does he come home and bludgeon his mother? Because you see, that would be kind of interesting. Does he have a pet hamster?"

  "I should help you select places to pitch."

  "I'm only depressed that I got dressed for a trip to the Hall of Hamsters."

  I flipped on the radio to avoid further discussion. A newscaster's somber tone announced, "It has now been confirmed that the woman s body found this morning
in the home of prominent comedian Eddie Smith is that of Rita Smith, his wife of twenty-seven years. Mr. Smith, obviously shaken and grief stricken, has been taken downtown for questioning about an apparent burglary homicide. They are hoping he can lead them to clues that might apprehend the killer. Again, Rita Smith, wife of comedian Eddie Smith, dead following a burglary in her home. She apparently died of smoke inhalation, which occurred in afire that was the result of the burglary. "

  I flipped the radio off. "She died," Callie said solemnly.

  "That makes three by fire: Frank Anthony, Barrett Silvers, and now Rita Smith. We need to get into Barrett Silvers's office and see what we can find out."

  I slid my fingers into the breast pocket of my hunt jacket and felt something cold and hard.

  "What's the matter?" Callie instantly caught the look on my face.

  "I don't know. What's in my pocket?" I asked, struggling with the lining and the constrictions of my seat belt.

  Callie reached over and freed my jacket, reaching inside the pocket and extracting a small one-by-two-inch off-white stone.

  "That's the stone! The death stone! We've been marked. We're going to die. I mean immediately! Check outside. Is anyone around us? Is the door locked?"

  Callie yanked on my arm with such force that it snapped my head to one side. "Calm down!"

  She didn't seem to understand the peril we were in. "That's the thing the man brought to the table. The man who tried to kill Barrett."

  "Is this the jacket you were wearing the day you lunched with Barrett?"

  "Yes!"

  "Then maybe when Barrett collapsed into your arms at Orca's, she managed to slide the stone into your pocket for safekeeping," she said calmly.

  I sank back into my seat, relieved that we were not going to die this instant. "Good God. This has to be what everyone's looking for. That's why they followed me to Tucumcari and to Tulsa, why they tried to run us off the road and why they ransacked my house. This is a dangerous fucking thing to be carrying around!"

  "Thank God you didn't send that jacket to the cleaners!"

  "So if Barrett stored it on me, why didn't she try to get it back after she got out of the hospital? That would be the logical thing to do, but instead Barrett didn't want to see me anymore."

  "Which means she planted it on you to make you a decoy," Callie said.

  "No," I said wearily, not wanting to believe Barrett would set me up to be killed. I let out a deep sigh, somehow more relaxed in finally knowing what they were after. At least now I wasn't just randomly selected in some mob lottery, but instead merely had the one thing they wanted.

  Callie cooked spaghetti and made a large salad while I scavenged croutons off the countertop and contemplated the stone having been with me all along.

  "Don't eat off the countertop. I haven't wiped it down!"

  "I've been known to pick up food off the floor and eat it," I said. "That was in your former life as a buzzard." She smiled sweetly and snatched the crouton out of my hand.

  "I can't get over the fact that the stone was in my jacket in the closet the entire time," I said.

  "Remember, I told you that you had something tangible they wanted," Callie reminded me.

  She held up a large spoonful of spaghetti sauce for me to test. I tasted it, not taking my eyes off her, as if it were her I was tasting. "Fabulous!" I whispered and put my arms around her waist.

  "More salt, vinegar, sugar?" She took a taste from the same spoon. "It is pretty good," she acknowledged without waiting for further input from me.

  "Good in the kitchen, good in the bedroom..." I said.

  "After last night..." she said hesitantly.

  I reached behind her and deftly switched off the burners before leading her into the bedroom where I pushed her gently back onto the bed and slid on top of her.

  "You're wrecking my hair, ruining my makeup, destroying my clothes..." she complained gently.

  "That's precisely the plan," I said. "You'll just have to get used to it."

  Callie swiftly rolled me over and grinned in delight at my surprise as I found myself looking up at her.

  "You can't always be in charge." She grinned and unbuttoned my shirt and unzipped my jeans. She glanced at my feet and, seeing I was barefoot, seemed to come to a tactical conclusion. She bounced up, grabbed the hem of my pant legs, and whipped my jeans off me in one swift move, not unlike a magician pulling a tablecloth out from under the dishes without destroying a plate.

  "So have you done that a few times before?" My voice became uncharacteristically high pitched.

  "Were you looking for someone who doesn't know what they're doing?" She arched an eyebrow, looking very seductive.

  "No, actually, this is fine...good, actually," I stammered and she knew she had the advantage.

  She pounced on top of me and kissed me into a frenetic frenzy, not giving me enough breath to ask her to remove her clothes or allowing me enough space to remove them for her. She moved down my breasts, kissing and caressing and holding them in her mouth while I twisted in absolute ecstasy. Finally she slid all the way down to my thighs, peeling the rest of my clothing from my trembling body, and buried her face in me. I sucked in my breath with the first warm touch of her tongue that stroked and I followed, demanded and I gave in, thrust into me and I returned the pressure. I ran my hands through her blond hair, allowing her to do whatever she would with me, pushing deeper into me until I let out a cry and lay awash in love. She gently kissed her way back up my entire body, arriving at my lips, staring into my eyes and saying, "Now, that was so wonderful."

  "My God, you're telling me." I looked at her with eyes that had seen another dimension. "I love you." The words came out before I could stop them and made me self-conscious, especially since she said nothing in return. Why did I say I loved her? How can I even know that really? Maybe I frightened her. Maybe I frightened myself.

  I attempted to roll her over, but she slid away from me. "You just rest and enjoy. I'm finishing dinner for us," she said, amused at my groggy condition.

  "No, come here," I said, but she was out of my grasp.

  "It doesn't always have to be tit for tat." She smiled. "I'll be right back."

  I was aware that she was still running away from me, but just like the guys, I fell soundly asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We arrived at Cedars Sinai and went to Barrett's room, which was on the top floor. I asked the nurse guarding her door if Barrett could talk. She wanted to know who we were and furrowed her young brow for emphasis. I pulled a snapshot out of my purse of Barrett and me, arms around each other. "Her sister," I said sweetly and walked past her, knowing I had the age advantage and using it to intimidate her.

  "You carry a picture of your 'sister'?" Callie hissed in a decidedly un-cosmic-like moment of jealousy.

  "She can't talk long," the nurse warned, and I assured her we'd only stay a moment.

  Barrett was propped up slightly, and whoever had bandaged her body probably worked in an Egyptian tomb in his last lifetime. Only Barrett's face was visible.

  "I have to ask you to leave...not feeling well," Barrett muttered, almost unintelligibly.

  "I'm not feeling too well myself." I yanked the stone out of my pocket and flashed it in front of her eyes. "Because ever since you planted this little time bomb on me, people have been trying to kill me. Now why is that?" I felt bad verbally assaulting a woman who had been physically assaulted, but she was the only one who could answer my questions and, after all, whatever she was involved in had made me a big target. "Start with Frank Anthony, who died clutching a death stone just like this one."

  Barrett answered only because she was too weak to fend me off. "Hank Caruthers was on the Marathon board. Frank Anthony was too, but Frank had decided to resign. He knew something illegal was going on at the board level, and he didn't want to be part of it. Caruthers didn't want his old friend to resign. He knew Frank was starstruck, so Caruthers talked Frank into coming out to the s
tudio to discuss his issues and think about staying on. When Frank agreed to come out to L.A., Caruthers called Isaacs, who in turn called me and told me to get Frank Anthony anything he wanted for the weekend. You know, impress him so he'd want to remain on the board. Turned out Frank just wanted to meet starlets for a drink, a few autographs, and a tour of Disneyland. Kind of refreshing, you know? Frank liked Egyptian stuff, so I arranged a private showing with Waterston Evers."

  She pointed to a drinking glass with a hospital straw in it. I retrieved it for her. She took a sip, grimacing in pain, and collapsed back onto her pillow. "I'd phoned Frank earlier on several occasions about the prostitutes and the snuff films. I wanted someone to put a stop to it. He said it was all going to stop. The barter deals, the skimming money off the top, everything. He said he knew who was behind it. He had a list of names and some bank information. The last time I called him, he said he was going to talk to the FBI. He said if anything happened to him, to remember what he'd given me, and that the list was 'written in stone.'"

  "So the names are written on this stone, like the Bible on the head of a pin?" I asked.

  "I don't know, but they're somehow connected with this stone, and they'll kill to get it back." Exhausted, she sagged back into her cocoon-like bandages, in a deep sleep. I carefully opened the drawer next to her bed and searched through her belongings until I found a date book.

  "Hide this in your purse," I told Callie.

  "I'm sorry, she's not supposed to have visitors." The nurse poked her head into the room. "I shouldn't have let you in. My supervisor is having a fit."

  Callie leaned over and whispered, "The flowers are from Sterling Hacket."

  "So Sterling Hacket owes her a debt of gratitude," I mused. "You know, at lunch with Barrett, she told me she got called to a famous actor's house in the middle of the night and did CPR on this kid to save his life. Barrett said she realized it was a 'fuckin' near miss,' and she could just as easily have been on a murder scene."