Chapter 25
Chapter 25
Her office was hot, and the paint kept drying on her brush. She had a headache from everything that had happened the night before and her lack of sleep didn’t help. She hadn’t yet called the police and she hadn’t figured out if she should. She was afraid to leave the studio, though the blue Ford had pulled off before she’d reached the gates, and so she knew she was right in feeling safe there. Images from her wrecked apartment wouldn’t leave her mind, but even worse was the image of Walter across the table from her in the Lucky 8, his smug face when she realized that she couldn’t ignore him and she couldn’t run away this time. He’d expose her if she didn’t get him what he wanted. But how to do that and get him out of her life at the same time? Otherwise this would go on forever. Forever and forever and—
The brush dried for the tenth time, and she jabbed it at the easel in frustration. If only she could send Walter to the ends of the earth, some nice location in the darkest reaches of the Amazon or something. Something like The African Queen . He could play a poacher or something. Maybe he’d get eaten by a crocodile ...
She paused, remembering that there was a film in preproduction at Lux that would be shot on location in Mexico, and hadn’t the screenwriter Philip Yordan put together a unit in Madrid? She thought she’d heard something like that, and yes, they were shooting films in Spain and Great Britain to avoid the blacklisting problems here. Walter had been right about some things, Lena did have contacts. She probably could get someone overseas to take a look at him. She’d put Walter on a plane, fly him to Spain to shoot some B movie, and let him find his own way back.
It was the perfect solution. All she needed was a list of directors and producers shooting overseas. Shirley could get that for her by tomorrow. Lena was off her stool and halfway to her door when there was a knock and Shirley stuck her head in.
“Oh good! I was just coming to—”
“The police are here to see you, Lena,” Shirley said quietly.
Lena stopped short. She had not called them. “The police?”
Shirley opened the door wider to reveal two men who didn’t look like police officers. They wore no uniforms, but instead suits and hats. Both had their badges, clearly marked as Los Angeles Police Department, in their hands; both were nearly six feet tall. One had brown eyes, the other blue. The blue-eyed one said, “Detective Joe Miller, Miss Taylor, and this is my partner, Detective John Von Colucci.”
Lena sent a questioning look to Shirley, who only shrugged.
“We need to talk to you about a Mr. Walter Maynard?”
“You mean ... this isn’t about my apartment?”
Both men frowned. “Your apartment? No.”
It took Lena a moment to recalibrate. She ushered them into her office and shut the door. “Look, whatever trouble Walter has got himself into, I don’t want any part of it.”
“He’s dead, Miss Taylor.”
Those were the last words she’d expected. “What? What do you mean? What happened?”
“We believe he was murdered.”
Lena stared at the detective in shock. “ Murdered? How? Why?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine, Miss Taylor. He was found at ten o’clock last night outside his hotel, about forty-five minutes after he left the Lucky 8 tavern. Do you know anything about that?”
The Lucky 8. Where she had been with him. Now Lena was afraid. How much did these men know about her relationship with Walter? “About his death? No, nothing.”
“Do you know why he also had a screenplay in his room with your name and phone number on it?”
“No.”
“Your fiancé is a screenwriter, isn’t that so?”
“There are a thousand screenwriters in this town, Detective. I can’t think what one has to do with the other.”
“All right, all right. When was the last time you saw Mr. Maynard?”
She wanted to lie, everything in her screamed to lie, but she saw the way they were looking at her, and they’d mentioned the Lucky 8. She remembered how those men in the tavern had looked at her, too, and worrying she’d be recognized. She didn’t know if the police knew she was Walter’s wife, but it seemed stupid to lie about meeting him at the tavern. “Last night. At the Lucky 8.”
She’d been right not to lie, she saw, when Von Colucci nodded. “Yes, witnesses saw you there. What was the meeting about?”
“He wanted money.”
“And you gave it to him,” Miller noted.
Another thing not to lie about. The men at the Lucky 8 had seen it all. “I was feeling generous. He was an old friend.” She took a chance on the last. Surely they would have mentioned her marriage by now if they’d known about it. Walter was dead. She could say anything. At least, she hoped she could.
“You didn’t seem happy to do it, according to those there. One man said you threw it at him. Another said there seemed to be tension between you,” said Miller.
“Is that a question?” she asked.
“What is your relationship with Mr. Maynard?”
They didn’t know. Lena felt a surge of relief. “I knew him a long time ago. When I first came to LA. I hadn’t seen him in years. He asked for money, I gave it to him. As a favor. That was it.”
“Why the tension?” Von Colucci asked.
“Walter was ... troubled. He had a temper. And honestly, I was irritated to be asked for money after so long. As I said, I hadn’t seen him for a while.”
“Irritated enough to kill him?”
“No, Detective. I didn’t kill Walter. I left him in front of the Lucky 8 and I went home.”
“Is there anyone who can vouch for that?”
“I was alone.”
“Anyone who saw you there? Anyone you might have called?”
When she got home, her apartment ... her phone ... she’d called no one. She’d come to the studio. The only one who knew otherwise was whoever followed her in the blue Ford—and why were they following her? Had it something to do with Walter? Or something else? Who had searched her apartment? What could she tell these men about any of it? They’d ask why she hadn’t called the police and they would be right to ask. She couldn’t explain, and now there was Walter’s death on top of it, and it all felt weirdly connected and she was afraid. “No, no one. Am I ... am I in trouble?”
“These are only preliminary questions,” Detective Von Colucci assured her. “Right now, it’s only a fact-finding mission, Miss Taylor.”
“How was he killed?” she asked.
The detectives exchanged a glance. “We’re keeping that information quiet for now,” said Von Colucci.
“I think that’s about all for the time being,” Detective Miller said. “But we do ask that you not leave Los Angeles for the next few weeks, while our investigation continues.”
“I’m too busy to leave LA,” she told him.
A slight nod. “We’ll be in touch.”
Their departing smiles were thin and not the least bit reassuring. She showed them out, and shut her door behind them, ignoring Shirley’s worried look.
Walter was dead. Why? He was a hustler and he could be irritating with all his grand ideas about himself, but that wasn’t a reason to kill him. She felt sorry for it, but she didn’t really grieve him. She’d moved on from Walter long ago, and his death relieved her of two problems: she didn’t have to worry about divorce now, or his blackmail. She hadn’t expected the problem that he’d left in his wake, however.
Because, of course, the problems of marriage and blackmail were gone, but not the problem of her past. The police would dig, and if she truly was the last person to see Walter alive—but she wasn’t, how could she be? Someone had killed him. She hadn’t seen him in six years; she had no idea what his life had been, or what enemies he had. But those men in the Lucky 8 had seen her . They’d seen her argue with Walter. They’d seen her throw the money down in anger. They’d probably seen the way she’d recoiled from his kiss in the street. The police would keep digging. How long before they dug up a long-lost wife? How long before they stumbled upon Elsie Maynard, née Gruner? And who had searched her apartment? What did they want?
She did not want to go back there. But she wanted to see it again without the shock of Walter coloring the wreckage. She wanted to see if she could find any clue to who might have ransacked the place. By the time she left work and stopped at the grocery store, night had fallen, and her apartment building on Highland glowed with window lights. She got her mail and took the groceries upstairs to her apartment, her footsteps ringing hollowly. Uneasily she pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. She inserted the key and found nothing wrong with the lock.
In puzzlement, Lena went inside, and with a dawning horror she realized her apartment was as it had always been. Nothing out of place. It was as if the nightmare of last night had not happened. No drawers were open, no sketchbooks thrown about, no records strewn upon the floor. The Charlie Parker was in one piece and back in its sleeve and in its place on the shelf—she would have thought she’d gone mad but for the fact that while the broken records had been replaced, the torn pages of her sketchbook had been taped back together.
All her clothes had been folded and put back into her dresser, even her panties. A cold shudder of violation ran through her. She had to sit down. Who could have done this? Why? There was no way now to report it to the police. Who would believe her? She wasn’t sure she believed it herself. And it felt so tied to Walter, and Walter was dead. Unbelievably dead.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before she locked the door with the chain and put a kitchen chair beneath the knob to bolster it. She felt she was moving in a dream as she changed her clothes, looking over her shoulder, expecting what? A ghost? She opened the can of spaghetti she’d bought for dinner but left it. She’d bought it because it had a drawing of the Colosseum on it but it looked so unappetizing, and she really hadn’t believed it would taste like the pasta in Rome, but that picture ... so many pasts to put behind her; she hated how one raised the others in her thoughts—why couldn’t they stay separate, in nice little boxes, each with their own lock?
The silence was too much, that empty, un-lived-in kind. She opened the window to let in the night and the night sounds, turned on the television and went to look at the mail.
Lena spotted the envelope before she sat down on the beige couch with its low, rolling armrest. The familiarity of the address caught her eye: Lena Taylor, Costumer to the Stars . Another letter from Walter.
She started to crumple it and throw it away unopened, and then stopped. The police were obviously investigating her, she had to be careful. If they found out about the letters, they’d suspect Walter had been blackmailing her—which he had—and that would only lead to questions she did not want to answer. She looked down at the phone number written in pencil. CR-18131 r116.
A woman on the television screamed. Lena jumped. The shadows in the room reached from the corners; outside, a dog barked and a man snapped at it to shut up.
There was no stamp on the letter. He’d put it directly into her mailbox. But ... she’d picked up the mail yesterday, so someone had put it in her mailbox today. And Walter had been dead since ten o’clock last night—or actually, probably a bit before.
Lena frowned. If it wasn’t from Walter, then who could have left it? Did he have a partner? Someone who could tell the police about these letters? About their marriage? Was this the same person who had broken into her apartment and wrecked it? The same person who had set it so creepily back to rights? Why?
The music on the TV grew moody and ominous. Lena crossed the room and switched it off—a mistake; the apartment was too quiet then. She turned it back on and turned the channel, to an ad for Chevrolet that sounded familiar and normal. She picked up the note on the coffee table and looked again at the number, and then remembered Walter telling her he had a service. Lena went to her purse and searched for the card he’d given her. It was bent; she’d shoved it so hastily into her purse. Walt Maynard, actor/screenwriter, MA 64671.
Not the same number as that on the letter.
CR-18131.
The note wasn’t from Walter. Then who had sent it? And why?