Born to Be Wild (29 page)

Jack was surprised at John's reaction when he heard Elizabeth, Lou Lou, and Mary Lisa were all at the Goddard Bay Inn. He insisted on calling them and inviting them all to lunch.

“Elizabeth is something, isn't she, Jack?” John asked as Jack pulled his truck into traffic.

Now this was interesting. Had he been blind down in Malibu? He looked at the contented look on his friend's face, and smiled. “She is.”

“She told me they'd stop eating breakfast right away.” And he gave Jack a fatuous grin. Jack nearly jerked the wheel into an old Pontiac parked on the side of the street.

“Hey, careful, Jack. You really needed a break, I can see that, and so do I. So let's try not to talk about business for a couple of hours,
capisce
?”

“Since when did you get a transfusion of Italian blood?”

John merely shook his head and looked happy.

A few minutes later, Jack pulled up in front of the circular entrance of the old gray stone edifice built long before either of them was born.

John said as he got out of the truck, “I've always been grateful this place is nearly completely hidden behind all these oak trees. You only have to see those seedy old chimneys poking up through the tops of the trees. They look like smudge pots, all sixteen of them.”

Jack waved one of the parking attendants over. “Keep an eye on this state-of-the-art machine.”

“Yes, sir, dude—Chief, sir.”

They walked across the formal lobby with its overstuffed dark furniture and huge palm trees, whose sweeping fronds looked big enough to swallow them, to the creaky elevator that belonged in a scary movie. They got off on the third and top floor, took a right down a long, dismal hallway with an ancient cabbage rose runner, and knocked on 333B.

Lou Lou answered the door. “Hi, guys. Have you figured out why room 333B is on the third floor?”

John said, “Hi, Lou Lou. Old Man Willis built this place and died two years ago when he was nearly ninety. They say he chose all the room numbers at random.”

“Oh, I see, the ‘consistency is the hobgoblin' theory?”

“I'm not so sure about that,” John said. “Mr. Willis was, to put it kindly, the local eccentric who did as he pleased.”

“You mean he was crazy.”

“Nope, he was too rich to be crazy. Definitely eccentric.”

Jack kissed Lou Lou's cheek.

“Come on in, guys,” she said. “Hey, Elizabeth, Mary Lisa, we got both the big guns here.”

Mary Lisa contented herself with a smile and said, “Hello, Jack.”

“Mary Lisa.”

Lou Lou looked from one to the other and knew the air was cracking hot between them. A chief of police—who knew? And, Lou Lou suspected, he would be good for her, maybe a husband kind of good. She smiled, waved the men to sit down on the big eggplant sofa, the cracks in the leather as old as they were.

Jack sniffed. “The room smells like vanilla.”

Mary Lisa laughed. “Yep, I stopped at Ernie's little ripoff 24/7 and bought some on the way over. I hope it helps. Smelled musty before.”

John said, his voice all awkward angles, which made Jack jerk his head around and stare at him, “Elizabeth, it's really good to see you again. I'm glad you came up with Mary Lisa and Lou Lou. Ah, I'm surprised you could get away.”

“It required lots of shuffling, begging, calling in markers, promising favors, but Mary Lisa said she needed me.”

Lou Lou said slowly, eyebrow arched at Elizabeth, “I think one of the reasons you wanted to come up was to see this district attorney here.”

Elizabeth met John's eyes, smiled. “Maybe so.”

“Good,” John said.

“And how is the investigation going, John?” Elizabeth asked, more naturally now. “We decided we might as well give you a hand. Anything you need done, we're available. I was born for excitement.”

“Where were you born?” John asked.

“Millicent, Texas, population six hundred and twenty-one. But in the past five years we've had a population explosion.”

“Oh yeah?”

She nodded. “We're up to six hundred and forty-seven. A local—Neddy Opper—opened a new rib house off the highway, all down-home with long wood tables and lots of paper towels. I hear that people drive from miles around.”

Mary Lisa took Jack's hand in hers. “Listen, Elizabeth is right. We're here, let us help.”

“Why not?” John said. “It's a deal. We don't have to pay them, Jack.”

Jack closed his hand tightly around Mary Lisa's. “John's talking out of both sides of his mouth. He made me promise not to talk about any business here today. Besides, there's nothing to be done. After lunch, why don't you all go sightsee?”

“It's the same ocean, Jack,” Lou Lou said. “When you've seen one wave, you've seen them all.”

“Are you going to arrest Olivia Hildebrand?” Elizabeth asked.

“As in take her to jail? No, but she's at home, and I've posted two female deputies there to keep an eye on her. Her lawyer didn't have a problem with that, thank heaven. Her doctor's got her sedated so I don't have to worry about her trying to take off. So is everyone ready for lunch?”

“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked.

“Le Fleur de Beijing,” John said, “featuring real cloth napkins. And they've got mysterious foreign names for the food so you have to ask the waiter, giving him a chance to look at you like you're an illiterate varmint and don't belong in such a classy establishment. They're the big deal here in Goddard Bay right now.”

“Now that's what I'm looking for,” Lou Lou said. “Stuff like Japanese soba noodles in creamy mushroom sauce. Some people might blanche at that, but not me.”

Jack didn't like French food, since it was usually big on presentation and microscopic on serving size. “I think I counted a total of eleven noodles on my plate the last time I was there,” he said.

“So get the octopus,” Lou Lou said. “That way you'll be guaranteed eight legs.”

Ten minutes later, Lou Lou locked the suite door with a key the size of Burbank and hummed as they walked down the long hall toward the creaky elevator. As it lurched downward, Lou Lou patted the mirrored walls. “I love this thing.”

Elizabeth's eyes were tightly closed. “Next time I'm taking the stairs.”

“The inspector said the stairs weren't too bad,” John told her. “But that was last year.”

Halfway across the lobby, their path was blocked by the manager, Mr. Clement Rogers, who'd known Mary Lisa since her family had moved here over twenty years before.

He spoke directly to Jack. “Chief, Mrs. Willis saw you and District Attorney Goddard go up to the
ladies'
suite a while ago. She instructed me to ask if there was any reason for concern.”

Mary Lisa lightly touched her fingers to Mr. Rogers's arm. “It's okay, Mr. Rogers. Please tell Mrs. Willis that I am personally keeping an eye on these two very respectable gentlemen. Assure her that I will not give them any beer.”

“We will drink the beer ourselves, Mr. Rogers, tonight,” Elizabeth said. “It was too early this morning for the gentlemen to imbibe anything more than your excellent coffee.”

“Besides, there are only three bottles in the bar,” Lou Lou said. “We want them ourselves.”

Mr. Rogers said, softening under Lou Lou's brilliant smile, as did most people, “It's Mrs. Willis's favorite, miss, not that heavy hops-happy German stuff, so I'm sure you'll enjoy it.” He shot a look at Jack and John.

“The gentlemen will not be returning with us, Mr. Rogers. Assure Mrs. Willis of that. We need our afternoon naps.”

“Thank you, Mary Lisa. Mrs. Willis loves your show, watches it every day, talks about what a believable bad girl your character is. She says you do ‘bad' with a real flair.”

Two hours later, Jack and John followed the women back to the inn. Jack didn't kiss Mary Lisa, not that he didn't want to, but there were eyes everywhere, so he merely took her arm, leaned down, and whispered against her ear, “Believe me, there's nothing you can do to help. I want you to keep out of trouble.”

Mary Lisa patted his cheek. “You heard Lou Lou—it's nap time.” John and Jack left under the suspicious eye of Mr. Rogers, who actually followed them out of the inn and watched Jack's truck until they were out of sight.

“Does he think we're going to circle back, sneak in for an afternoon orgy?”

“Nah,” John said. “Not Mr. Rogers. But that old bat Mrs. Willis is another thing.”

Mary Lisa took a bite of Mrs. Abrams's pot roast and chewed slowly, savoring the taste of the spices Mrs. Abrams kept secret.

“Have you ever tasted anything more delicious in your lives?” she asked. Lou Lou and Elizabeth were seated on either side of Kelly, opposite Mary Lisa and Jack. Mary Lisa's parents sat at the ends of the formal dining room table. The women wore dresses and heels, and the men were in suits, except for Kelly, who had on tight jeans and an oversized sweater. She was looking from Mary Lisa to Jack, but there wasn't a laser death ray in her eyes, which greatly relieved Mary Lisa. John, when told about dinner, readily excused himself from attending. He was a smart man.

“Even better than the blueberry pancakes this morning,” Elizabeth said, “and that's saying something.”

“It's great, Mrs. Beverly,” Lou Lou said, nodding toward Kathleen.

Mary Lisa was glad she didn't have to deal with Monica and Mark being there as well. Both of them were in Salem overnight for one of Monica's campaign rallies, a blessed relief.

“Elizabeth is an anchorwoman on a local L.A. TV station,” Mary Lisa said.

“Oh?”

Her mother's voice sounded only mildly disapproving, Mary Lisa thought, and plowed onward. “She was a crime reporter with the
L.A. Times
until about a year ago when the TV station producer spotted her at a party.”

Elizabeth said, “Serendipity or happenstance, whatever you wish to call it, it's a wonderful thing. Nearly the same thing happened to Mary Lisa.”

Jack asked, “How did you get started, Mary Lisa?”

“My agent called me one morning, said he'd gotten me an audition on
Born to Be Wild
. He said it was a lead role, sighed, and added that the audition would be good experience for me. Yep, he had no hope that I'd land it. Anyway, everything worked out very nicely.”

Lou Lou said, “Mary Lisa, sometimes I want to smack you, you're so bloody modest. Mrs. Beverly, your daughter is the biggest soap actress in history. Her very first year, she won the Emmy for the best lead actress. It's never been done before, and now she's won it a second and third time.”

“And the rest is history,” Elizabeth said. “Hey, here's to Mary Lisa.”

“Hear, hear,” Lou Lou said. Everyone clicked glasses together. Kathleen Beverly slowly raised her glass.

“And Lou Lou is about the greatest makeup artist in La-La Land,” Elizabeth said.

Mary Lisa waited, tense and wary, but again, her mother merely looked at Lou Lou, nodding.

George Beverly said, “Hey, Lou Lou, Mary Lisa told me you landed that primo makeup contract with the big producer.”

Lou Lou nodded. “Yep, that worked out well.”

Kathleen set her wineglass back on the table and said to Lou Lou, “You appear to know my husband well.”

“Well, ma'am, he's very popular with all of Mary Lisa's friends.”

“Are you responsible for Mary Lisa's makeup on the soap?”

“Most of the time.”

“You sure like to paint her up sometimes,” Kelly said.

“Yeah,” Lou Lou said easily. “That's for sure. Hey, it's Hollywood.”

Social time over, Mary Lisa thought, as a blanket of silence fell over the table. She tried to think of something innocent and light to say, but her mother leaned forward slightly and said to Jack, “Before we came in to dinner, Chief Wolf, you mentioned that you wished to speak to me about Olivia Hildebrand.”

“Yes, ma'am. I understand you are best friends. I hadn't realized how very close you were to her.”

“Yes, well, I would like to speak to you about her as well. I've told you once already that she's been through quite enough. She's sedated at home, as you know, under a doctor's care, with two of your deputies hanging around her house. And she's a wreck. Please have the decency to leave her alone. She did not kill Milo.”

George said slowly, his eyes on his wife's face, “You don't know that, Kathy. I've been thinking about telling you this all week, Jack. The fact is, Milo beat her their entire married life as best I can tell. I think she might have snapped. Maybe Milo's killing Jason and hurting Marci drove her over the edge.”

There was silence at the table. Only Kelly continued to eat, stabbing a small baked potato off the edge of the beautifully arranged oval platter with the pot roast at its center.

Jack carefully set down his fork. “Milo beat his wife? I noticed when I was with them right after Jason's murder that he appeared rather controlling with her, but—you're certain? He beat her? I didn't know this, Mr. Beverly. No one's said a single word to me about that.”

Kathleen said, “That doesn't matter. You don't understand. Olivia isn't a murderess, she isn't!”

“Perhaps,” George said, eyeing his wife from the other end of the dining table, “we'd best leave this for a while.”

“No!” Kathleen nearly came up out of her chair. “You're the one who started it, telling Chief Wolf that Milo hit her sometimes, giving her a motive in his mind to suppose my best friend killed her husband. Well, she didn't.”

“Why not, Mrs. Beverly?” Jack asked calmly.

“You want the truth, Chief? All right, here it is. She's a wuss, no spine at all. She couldn't even discipline that loose daughter of hers.”

All the ugliness splatted in the open by the beautiful pot roast. Jack saw Mary Lisa open her mouth, then close it. He squeezed her hand beneath the table.

George Beverly said, “Kathy's right about Olivia being weak. Once, a long time ago, Olivia came here, all bent over like an old woman, clutching her ribs, crying and moaning. She said Milo had kicked her when she was crawling away from him. I was so mad, I went to see Milo.” He stopped, and stared around at the people at his dining room table. “Now isn't the time,” he said. “It really isn't.”

“Yes, Dad, Jack needs to hear this, please,” Mary Lisa said.

“Please, sir, she's right,” Jack said.

“All right. As I said, I went over there, confronted Milo. He was swaggering around, told me to mind my own business. Then he lost control and actually hit me. I hit him back, in the ribs, and he went down. Turns out Olivia followed me there. She came running in, screaming at me to leave him alone. When I managed to get her off me, I stood there, so shocked and appalled I couldn't think straight, watched her crouch over him, cooing and rubbing him where I'd hit him. Old Milo moaned and she looked up at me and threatened to have the police throw me in jail.”

“You never told us that, Dad,” Kelly said.

He shrugged. “Why should I? It had nothing to do with you girls. Besides, after that night, Olivia never dragged herself over here again to your mother after he'd beaten her. Maybe she didn't because she was afraid of what I'd do. I don't know.” He looked down the table at his wife. “What did she do from then on, Kathy? Call you? Beg you to meet her somewhere?”

“That's cruel, George. But it makes my point. Olivia would never have hurt Milo. She adored him, even though he was a monster. She would have done anything he told her to, anything.”

Jack said, “You and Olivia Hildebrand seem like very different people, Mrs. Beverly. How is it you're such good friends?”

She looked at Jack, locked her eyes on his face. “When we first arrived in Goddard Bay nearly twenty-five years ago, Olivia went out of her way to make me feel welcome.” The words seemed to catch in her throat. She downed some wine, swallowed. “No one else did. But Olivia came over to see me and we talked and talked. She became my best friend. That's all.”
And even you need a friend, don't you, Mom?
Mary Lisa thought.

Good enough, Jack thought. “Thank you, Mrs. Beverly, Mr. Beverly, for telling me about this.”

“You still think she's guilty, don't you?”

Jack looked at the beautiful woman who seemed better suited to a life in Manhattan, with doormen and limos and charity balls, than to a small town like Goddard Bay. He said, “It's my job to find out, Mrs. Beverly. This has got to come to an end somehow. Thank you for helping me.”

Kelly said suddenly, “I remember hearing Marci yelling at her mother once, called her a boring old rug. It was something about her father not letting her go somewhere and her mother not doing anything about it.” Kelly shrugged. “All the usual teenage angst, I suppose. But the rug bit fits, doesn't it?”

George Beverly cleared his throat. “I suppose we've let this dinner take a very unorthodox path. For that I apologize.”

Lou Lou smiled, raised her glass. “I would like to thank Mrs. Beverly for having us all over with almost no advance notice at all.” Lou Lou clicked her glass to Kathleen's, and glasses were raised all around.

Kelly, bless her heart, began speaking about Monica's run for state office. Then she eyed Mary Lisa and remarked, “Monica's husband nearly married Mary Lisa. But that didn't work out.”

“No,” Mary Lisa said, grinning hugely, “it didn't. Thank you, God.”

Jack's cell phone vibrated. He looked at Kathleen as he pulled his cell out of his jacket. “Excuse me, ma'am.” He nodded to Mrs. Beverly and walked out of the dining room.

He heard Mary Lisa say, “Kelly, what are you up to?”

He went outside. It was chilly tonight, and damp, the clouds covering the stars and the sickle moon. “Chief Wolf.”