Murder on Location (19 page)

“Well, young fella, how are you feelin' in this cold? 'Course you're used to it. I used to be, but I can't take it any more. Remember one time I'd been thrown out of school and my father sent me up to Montana for the winter. Old friend of his in the cattle business. Boy, I learned about frostbite that winter. And about hard work. The best lesson I ever had. Went back to school in the spring
like a lamb to a ewe.” He looked back to see whether I was holding a drink, collected Adela's and topped it up.

“Damnedest thing, this Miranda business. Can't even say the word: death, suicide, hanging! Ugly!” He started this as a mutter between his big false teeth, but the force got away from him, surprising all of us. His eyes were on his drink on the carpet or maybe on the liver marks on his wrists. Then he caught my eye: “Would you ever get stuck so bad you'd hang yourself, Ben?” His expression seemed to reach inside me for the right answer. Only there isn't one.

“I don't know. Hope not. I guess she must have been stuck worse than I've ever been.”

“But don't forget courage,” said Adela. “It takes courage to tie a curtain cord around your neck.”

“I guess,” Sayre said. “I guess.” He sipped at his bourbon for a minute. Then the phone rang. Jim told somebody named Austin to fend off calls for the rest of the evening but to give him a list in the morning. Then Austin was putting his own oar in and Jim had to hear him out. Adela let an electric smile pull at her features for a second then ignored the rest of the telephone conversation.

“We had a nice old talk the day before yesterday, you know,” Adela said. “Just two old bags letting their hair down. She was so full of fun. We were in her room across at the other hotel. She slipped through the connecting door into Neil's suite and came back wearing a waiter's jacket, one of those room-service jobs with the logo on
the pocket, and gave a wonderful impression of a sleepy waiter rolling in breakfast on a trolley. She had everything. She was so quick in her observation of people's quirks. A wonderful eye. But …” She waved her hand hopelessly and we nodded and listened to Jim saying “Yeah … Yeah …” to Austin and to the sound of the falls on the wind.

Jim got off the phone, freshened his drink and sat down.

“What will her death mean to the picture?” Adela put her drink down hard and got up to look out the French windows.

“Pictures are bigger than people. That's the first fact of life. Why should it change anything? Oh I know Raxlin is having kittens, but it's more because of the bad publicity and delays. The part was just a supporting role. Even she knew that. Nothing will have to be shot over again. No, the picture is going to roll, it's going to roll on over everybody. That's the way it is. It's pictures.”

“I finished up one of the
Sally
pictures one time. Charley Oakley'd been taken off to do a picture in Santa Rosa, and I wasn't doin' anything much but collectin' my pay. I was on contract then. Miranda was a little winner in those days. Bright as a silver dollar fallin' into your hat. I was lookin' forward to working with her again. Damnedest thing.” His eyes were shining and he squeezed the bridge of his nose. Then he came up grinning: “I saw you out there today, Ben. Now you've seen how we do it. Did it take away the magic?” I smiled and
shook my head. Sayre reached for a cigarette and Adela watched him carefully. He looked at her through the space between the burning match and the cigarette in his other hand, and then brought the two together. He blew the smoke in her direction.

“Those the only clothes you brought with you, Adela? I swear I can tell what underwear you're wearin'.”

“Jim! We've got company.”

“I know that. So do you. Tryin' to vamp him, Adela? Tryin' to tie him up and put your brand on him?”

“Jim, shut up. Please,” she said, turning to me, “I'm sorry.”

“Don't say you're sorry. Ben's okay. You don't need to apologize. Not for me, anyway. I just thought you could have picked something a little more suitable. For tonight especially.”

“If you want me to change, Jim, just say it.”

“Drink your drink, Adela. Pay no attention to an old man.”

Adela got up, looked at me with a head tilted ironically, and excused herself.

“I'm an old prude, Ben, in my home life, I guess. Age does it. Maybe it's a reaction against the tits-out kind of business this is. A man needs a private place where you can't see everythin' for the price of admission. Sometimes it takes me worse than usual. I'm upset about Miranda. I know that. Don't have to be a shaman. We're all involved in every death, like the poet says.” I nodded.
It wasn't from
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. I was sure of that.

“What was she like, Jim?”

“Oh,” he screwed his face up and worked his mouth from side to side while he thought. “Miranda was a bundle of talent when I first knew her. She had a funny, out-of-breath way of tellin' lies to me on the set, like she'd just run around the sound stage. Sometimes beauty's a trick, an illusion; but she had the real thing. I don't know what started her on narcotics. She still had her looks, her figure, talent to burn. I think Neil was good for her. The last of a long line of men that could all wear the same suits. She liked writers. Never actors. Once …” he looked me in the eye “… for five and a half days, she liked a director. In recent years she got to be the clingin' type. She watched a man so close he squeezed out the drain. Joe Gillis got out from under just in time. He was the one before Furlong.

“Let's see, what else is there? She could be funny. She could handle her money. That's rare. She didn't run around much. Took people one at a time. Sort of settled, but jealous, if you follow me. She was the makin' of Neil, you know. He was just a television writer when she met him. Didn't know what a screen credit was. She took him around, showed him off, opened a few doors. I guess there wasn't anybody in town she didn't know. And lots owed her favours. Neil harvested most of those favours over the last half-dozen years. Now he's comin' to be the best-known writer around. What with the Broadway plays
and the movin' pictures being made from them. Funny, I saw him on the coast a month ago. A young writer was pesterin' him about somethin' and over the noise I heard him say, ‘Send me the book.' Said it like the bottom had never been out of his pants. ‘Send me the book.' Like books grow on trees and he was born to the grand manner.” He took a pull at his drink, then seemed to sink deeper into the sofa he was sitting on. “I'm sorry for his trouble, as the Irish say.”

Adela came back into the room and we both got up. She was wearing a dinner dress that was suitably modest. Sayre said nothing, but I could see he approved. “We're goin' out to dinner,” Sayre said. “Marilyn and her beau have invited just the two of us.”

“He calls Peggy …”

“Ben's sorted that out, Adela; don't spoonfeed him.”

“You know who her beau is? Beau! Jim, you begin to date me. I'm going to have to stop listening to you. Tonight you said ‘vamp.'”

“I did not. Hampton Fisher's been takin' her out, and I think they want an old couple like us to show we approve.”

“And do you?”

“Well, he's a crank of the first water. He hates crowds, doesn't like publicity, parties or surprises.”

“Has his water flown here from California.”

“Carries a thermometer in his pocket. But, hell, he's young, and from what I hear he's puttin' those papers
back where they were in his grandfather's day. Increased circulation, all that.”

“I think he's kind of cute,” Adela said, with a broad smile and wink.

“Well, he's not a toad in the road. He'll give Marilyn a good home. He's not one to run around once he gets settled.”

“It's pretty serious, then?” I asked.

“I know Peggy likes him. She told me.”

“Well, if she likes him, that's all that matters,” said Sayre with finality. “She's a fine girl, just the opposite of all the publicity bumph. I don't think she'd have a mirror in her place if she didn't need it for her work.”

“Jim, what a lot of nonsense. Peggy's a normal, healthy girl with a normal, healthy vanity.” Jim joined our laughter, although a little after it had started.

“Well, if you're going out to eat, I'd better let you get ready.” I put down my half-empty glass and made movements to leave.

“Have another drink. No rush.” Sayre got up and collected my glass while Adela took a quick look at her jewelled watch. Her mouth made a straight line. But I don't think it was personal.

“You have to finish dressing, Jim,” she warned.

“Won't take two shakes: Lots of time.” He poured a drink for each of us, a bourbon for him and a Canadian rye for Adela and me. He added water and a couple of ice cubes to the glass as an afterthought. “Ben's practically family, aren't you, Ben? I don't know what I'd have done
without you that first day. He saved me from the demon hoards, like Cúchulainn against the forces of Madb.”

“What?” Adela said.

“The
Táin Bó Cuailnge
, the great Irish epic, the greatest cowboy story of them all.”

Adela laughed: “Is that the book you got Paramount to option?”

“I sent them an outline while I was workin' on
Donnybrook
. Changed the settin' to Arizona in the nineties. Madb became a cattle baroness. Claudia Horlick put me up to it. She just typed up my drunken ravin's from the previous night. And damned if they didn't option it. I turned the money over to Claudia. She'd done the work. One of the decent things I've done. One of the damned few.”

The doorbell rang. Adela put her cigarette out, and got up to answer it. “That'll be her. She's right on time, too.” In a second a dazzling Peggy O'Toole was in the middle of the room. She seemed to sparkle all over in a cool blue dinner dress and a fur wrap cut like a fluffy white bomber jacket. I could hardly bear to look at her, it was like she was giving out light and I had to shade my eyes.

“Hello, everybody. I'm sorry I'm late. Hamp said he's expecting us for …” She shook her wrist. “Damn it, I think it's stopped. I can never remember to wind this.” She was turning the jewelled bracelet in her hand. “All the others have batteries.”

She sent an electric smile my way, but the batteries were going on it too. There was something of the actress
in her manner tonight, something I hadn't seen before. “Adela, Mr. Sayre,” she said, taking Adela's elbow and pulling Sayre into a small circle of three. “Please promise we won't talk about it. I won't be able to stand it if we talk about it when we get over there. I'm ready for a straightjacket now.”

“Of course, my dear. Leave it to us.”

Jim took a last gulp from his glass and made a loud satisfied sound. I put my half-finished drink down, got to my feet and wished them all a pleasant evening. On the way down in the elevator, I wished that I had only a dinner to look forward to.

SIXTEEN

I was still early for my eight o'clock meeting with Noonan, so I took the elevator from the heel of the Pagoda up to the TV station where Wally Skeat hung out. He'd asked me to look him up more than once and this was a good time to take him up on it: I could use all the experience of the Pagoda I could get.

The elevator was one of those plastic affairs with a wrap-around view of the falls from the best angle. With the coloured lights shining on the water every view was a tinted postcard. In fact, as the car rose two hundred feet in the air the panorama widened, but the spectacle shrank.

The reception area if the TV station tried to make a contemporary statement with its furniture and decor. The trouble with contemporary statements is that you've seen them before. There were giant blow-ups on the wall of American television stars appearing as characters in series carried by this station directly or through the network it was affiliated with. I recognized most of them, but I must admit I was feeling a little strange. It had been nearly a week since I'd spent a quiet evening with my feet up and a box of potato chips in my lap. The receptionist's desk was empty and her typewriter covered. I
walked by her desk and through into what I found was a busy newsroom, with men in shirtsleeves and girls in T-shirts and jeans either leaning over teletype machines or sweating out copy of their own. The windows here, under the bright fluorescent ceiling lights, were black bands that half surrounded the room. Wally Skeat was sitting at the desk examining some copy that had just been handed to him. He read each page carefully, placing each sheet when he'd finished behind the sheaf in his hand. When he got to the bottom of the last page he smiled at the editor who was standing by his shoulder making reading difficult. “Can't you squeeze in a clip from the interview she did with me? There's good stuff in it.”

“Wally, we don't have the VTR time to edit it. But I'll see what Hester says, okay?” And off he went. Hester was a woman in a lively print dress with a high forehead and glasses perched in her hair. Everything was being referred to Hester. Hester was in charge.

“Benny! For the love of Mike! Where have you been? I've been trying to get you since this Miranda thing broke. Hey, Ralph!” he called, and introduced me to Ralph Fosdick, a senior editor, as the man who'd discovered the body. Fosdick shook my hand like he didn't want to get too close. He and Wally excused themselves for a short conference with Hester, who looked at me under her glasses, like I was a geek from the circus, and then crisply shook her head. Wally returned by himself having shifted into a lower gear. “Boy, are we busy with
this suicide story. We've got all the US networks taking feeds. I'm going to be on CBC News with a clip. I did a phone interview with a bevy of her co-stars long distance. It's been one of
those
days. You want coffee? They can struggle along without me for five minutes.”