Bannerman's Law (4 page)

“
Miss Dameon
,”
Lisa said gently,
“
my mother was
born in Madison, Wisconsin, and she lived there until she
was eighteen. My grandmother also lived there all her life.
She only died five years ago. Same build, same coloring
as the rest of us. As much as I'd like to believe it, I don't
think you and I are related
.”

The old woman turned away, nodding distantly, sadly, seeming to accept what Lisa had told her. Suddenly, she
straightened, peering over the hedge. The young doctor
had caught her eye. He had finished with the man in the
yachting costume, or he had changed his mind. He was
striding, with apparent purpose, toward the great double
doors of the main house. She squeezed Lisa Benedict's
hand.
“
Go now
,”
she whispered.
“
You'd best go
.”

Lisa hesitated, wondering. She remembered the look of
distaste on the doctor's face when he referred to
those
people
there.

“
Is today Sunday
?”
the actress asked, her eyes still on
the house.

”Um
.
.
.
yes. Yes, it is
.”

“
Next Sunday. Will you come then
?”

“
I'd love to. Could I
.
.”
Lisa wrung her hands. She
wanted to ask if she could bring a tape recorder but she
was afraid that would be pushing it.
“
Could I bring you
anything
?”
she asked instead.

Nellie chewed her lip.
“
Have they written about me
?”
she asked.

“
You mean biographies and such. Sure
.”

“
Do they say that I have children
?”

“
I'm not sure. I could look
.”

”I remember one daughter. The one with your hair.
And I remember one son. There might have been others
.”

“
Well
...
ah, what would their names be? Their last
names
.”

The cobalt eyes glazed over. They were suddenly far
away. Lisa had a sense that they had gone back in time, searching. At last, she came back. The eyes cleared. The shoulders fell.

”I don't know
,”
she said sadly.
“
D'A
r
conte, perhaps
.”
She spelled it.
“Or
perhaps Dunville. I don't know about the girls. Except that the one with the birthmark is the eldest
.”

“
I'll, u
m
.
.
.
see what I can find. Can I say that you
asked me to
?”

“
Oh, you mustn't. Not until
.
.
.
”

Nellie's head had turned. She craned her neck once
more. There was activity on the terrace. Lisa peeked over
the hedge. That man, sport jacket and sunglasses, had
come back outside with the doctor. They seemed to be
arguing. The two with bandaged faces turned their heads.
The first two began walking in Nellie's direction.

“
Go
,”
Nellie said, pushing at Lisa.
“
They mustn't
see you
.”

“
Who are those two in the bathrobes
?”

“
Go now. Hurry
.”

“
Next Sunday
,”
Lisa whispered. She gave Nellie Da
m
eon a final squeeze, then backed into the tree line.

₃

Nellie Da
m
eon.

Lisa Benedict had turned, during the intervening week,
to the listing in her copy of
The Film Encyclopedia.

Born Eleanor Demjanek, July 1903, Ames, Iowa.
Toured 1916 to 1917 with the Baker Stock Company of
Omaha. Arrived Hollywood, 1917, on her own. Bit parts
for D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett. First featured roles:
The Hun Within
with Dorothy Gish and
Six-Shooter Andy
with Tom Mix, in 1918.

On the road at thirteen, Lisa noted. Possibly
a
runaway.
No mention of theatrical parents. Then, by fifteen, a fea
tured film actress. But that was not, Lisa knew, all that
unusual. The Gish sisters had made some seventy-five
movies between them before they were out of their teens.
Mae Marsh and Mary Pickford had made their first films at sixteen and No
rm
a Talmadge at fourteen.

Youth was king in Hollywood back then. It had to do
with the film quality and the lighting technology available
at the time. K
l
ieg lights hadn't been invented yet, re
fl
ec
tive lighting was still experimental, and the nitrate film
stock then in use had trouble distinguishing betwee
n
soft
shading and dark shadow. The result was that any facial
line was enhanced on the screen. Actors and actresses in
their early twenties looked to be ten years older.

Nellie, like most of them, cranked out six or eight movies a year until she finally hit it big in
Broadway.
Married 19
21,
widowed 192
3.
Husband was a rancher turned actor,
killed doing a stunt in a western movie. But no children,
apparently, from that union. Nellie kept on making pic
tures right up through 1928. Two talkies. Then a series
of nervous breakdowns. Her voice was said to be shrill,
nasal, irritating.

Wait a second, thought Lisa. From the little
she'd heard, it certainly had never been nasal. On the
contrary, it was low, soft, throaty. Might even be called sexy. And she'd had two years with a stock company, probably performing twice a day in small towns all over
the Midwest, which meant she came to Hollywood know
ing how to say lines and how to project.

She would ask Nellie about that. And for a few more
details about these children she seemed to think she had.
The daughter, apparently her mother's age, would be about
sixty now. And she was the eldest.

Hmmm. Hold it.

These kids, if they existed, would have been born after Nellie had her first breakdown. In fact, probably well after
she'd been committed to Sur La Mer. Which meant that
they were very likely a delusion. But the son's name, or
names, anyway, did not seem likely to have come out of
thin air. Maybe there really is, or was, such a person. Named Dunville or
D'Ar
conte. No mention of either in
The Film Encyclopedia
or in any of her other directories
.

But Dunville. That name seemed to ring a tiny bell.

In her files, under
“
miscellaneous
,”
she found several
xeroxed pages with references to Sur La Mer. And there
it was. Dunville. It was the name of the executive
director
of Sur La Me
r—C
a
r
leton Dunvill
e—a
nd of two of its sen
ior staff as well. V.P. Administratio
n—C
arleton Dunville II. V.P.
Admission
s—H
enry Dunville. Must be a family enterprise.
Maybe Nellie had just given her the first familiar name
that popped into her head. But then, where did D'Arconte
come from?

She could ask Professor Mecklenberg to do a computer
search. He had files on everyone, from 1907 on, who ever
spent fifteen minutes near a Hollywood camera. But he'd
ask why she wanted to know, and where she'd heard those
names, and she would have to lie to him. Or, worse, she'd
have to break her promise to a sad, sweet, dotty old
woman who saw, in her, or in the color of her hair, the
daughter she probably never had.

It would keep. At least until Sunday. One more meeting
with Nellie. Ask her the dozen or so questions she'd prepared. She would bring a recorder this time. Get Nellie's
voice on tape
.
.
but only if she agrees to it
.
.
and if
she even knows what a tape recorder is.

₄

Lisa could see sky now through the sugar pines. Quietly,
but for her own labored breathing, she climbed forward.
She saw the roofline of the ch
a
teau.

It occurred to her that the greased rocks and the trip
wires she'd passed would be just as effective at keeping
people out. Not that any of the
members
could have man
aged that slope, trip wires or no. She thought of the two,
the younger ones, with the bandaged faces who seemed to have been breaking a rule by merely sitting on the terrace
steps. Could they have been prisoners here? Committed
here? Lisa doubted it. They seemed too
.
.
.
confident for that. And that other man had seemed intimidated by them.

She stopped, still inside the trees.

The old actress was on her bench, waiting, as if she'd never moved. Same hooded coat, her back to her, keeping
an eye on any movement from the main house. Lisa looked
over the grounds. No sign of Jason Bella
r
m
i
ne. No one
else in sight either. Seemed strange. She was tempted to
wait for another member or two to be wheeled out, some s
ign of business as usual, but Nellie, suddenly, raised a
gloved hand. Must have heard her. Or sensed her. She was
motionin
g
her forward, signaling her to stay low beneath
the hedge. Lisa, crouching, stepped from the trees. Her
own eyes on the ch
a
teau, she followed the beckoning hand. She saw it open, as if to take her own hand in
welcome. Lisa reached for it.

The old woman's grip, the strength of it, surprised her.
Nellie's body half-turned. The other arm came up, reach
ing behind her neck as if to embrace her. No. It was seizing her.
The fingers were gripping the hood of her running suit,
pulling it down over her eyes, jerking her forward. Now
Nellie was rising, wrestling with her, driving her sideways until her legs struck
Garbo's
bench and her body slammed
against it. Lisa cried out, more startled than afraid, but a
hand, a third hand, now reached in from the side and
clamped firmly over her mouth. She saw a flash of red. A
sweatshirt. Her eyes widened. It was that man. The jogger
from Tower Road. And the woman wasn't Nellie at all.
The face was young, dark, the skin deeply pitted.

Suddenly all fear was gone. She felt a warmth. A heavi
ness. The marble bench began to soften. Her body was
sinking into it as if it were a bed. She saw, or thought
she saw, a syringe being drawn from the flesh of her
forearm, now bare. She wondered, vaguely, what it might
be doing there. Then, in seconds, she no longer cared.

It seemed to her that she was home in bed dreaming.
Her dreams annoyed more than they frightened. She tried
to wake up, to shake them, but she could not. She was in
a white room, like an operating room, strapped to a table,
and she felt no clothing against her body. It seemed that
her nakedness should have bothered her more than it did.

There was a single bright light above the table. A doctor, an older one, was talking to her, asking her questions.
Most were about school. The woman with the pitted face
was there. And there were other people who came in,
looked at her. The woman showed them her recorder and
some things from her purse. That was funny. Lisa tried to t
hink. It seemed to her that she'd locked the purse in
her car.

The doctor asked if she had family in the area. Did she have a boyfriend? No? Then whose
w
a
rm
up suit was that?
She did not mind answering.

One of the men who came in held out his hand for her
keys. She tried to see his face but she could not move her
head. Then he stepped closer and she recognized him. It
was the man in the red sweatshirt except that he had show
ered and changed into a sport jacket. It was also the man she'd seen the Sunday before, arguing with the bandaged
man.

With his free hand he reached out to her and, his eyes
becoming strange, began exploring her body, feeling the
slight mound of her breasts
,
the flatness of her stomach,
touching his fingers to her lips. The woman spoke sharply
to him. He stepped back, sighing. Such a waste, she heard
him say, as if from a great distance.

Time passed. Minutes
.
.
.
hours, she wasn't sure. The lights came on again. The dream continued. The man who
had touched her was back. Asking more questions. Who
was her professor? Had he seen any of her work? Had
she spoken to him, or anyone, about Sur La
M
er? Did she have a locker at school and what was its combination? As
he asked these things, he sorted through notebooks and
papers that Lisa thought she recognized. Yes. They were
hers. From he
r
apartment. He was scanning them, dis
carding some, selecting others and making a pile of them
on her bare stomach. Next came two yellow Fotomat enve
lopes. He went through the photographs that she had taken
seven days earlier. He selected several, laying them out across her thighs.

Her mind was clearing, slowly
.
This wasn't her bed.
And she was not dreaming. The doctor came forward. He held a syringe
.
But the man she'd seen jogging waved him
back. No more, he said. Leave us alone now. The
doctor
seemed as if he might protest. But he didn't. He left the
room.

“
Go get Nellie
,”
she heard him say.
“
Bring her down
here
.”

“
What good will that do
?”
The woman's voice.

”
I want to be sure. I want to see her face when she
sees that we have this girl
.”

“
Henry
.
.
.
” she hesit
a
ted.
“
It's been a week. She
probably won't even remember that the girl was here
.”

“
She remembers more than all of you think. Bring
her
.”

A pause.
“
The Weinbergs are with her. They are
watching films
.”

“
So
?”

“
Mr. Weinberg has
.
.
.
asked
us
...
not to bother
her
.”

Henry Dunville bared his teeth. He snatched at one of
the photographs, his fingernails gouging the inside of
Lisa's thigh. She cried out. He ignored her. He thrust the
photograph toward the woman.

“
Show this to him
,”
he hissed,
“
and then ask him if
he would rather be bothered himself. You might ask him,
while you're at it, just who the hell he thinks he is
.”

More time passed. The waves washing over her brain were coming less frequentl
y
. She could feel her body. It
ached in places and burned in others. Her thigh, she
thought, was bleeding. The realization that she was
nake
d—n
ot just dream-nake
d—b
ecame more focused. They
could at least have given her a sheet. Not just those papers.
She heard voices. Two men. One was much deeper than the other and slightly muffled. Something else about it. She tried to listen but the voices stopped.

A white mass floated above her. She squinted at it. She
saw an eye. Oh, yes. The man with the bandaged head. Same white robe. He was looking, closely, at her face. Then her body. The head stopped above her thighs.

“
She took these pictures
?”
she heard him ask. Some
thing about his voice. Muffled. A trace of an accent. Ger
man, maybe.

“
They were in her apartment
,”
the jogger answered.

“
All
this, too.''
He gestured toward the many papers.
“
Even a map of our security system
.”

A snort.

“
We caught her, didn
'
t we
?”
came the icy reply,
petulant.

A wave of the hand. Dismissive.
“
Who is she
?”

”A
film student, or so it seems. Apparently doing some
sort of thesis
.”

The larger man straightened.
”A
student? That's all
she is
?”

“
If she's anything more, she'll tell me. I'll especially
find out what she wanted with pictures of you and your
wife
.”

The man known as Weinberg was silent for a long
moment. When he
spoke, it
was very quietly.
“
Why
,”
he asked,
“
did you not simply take her t
o a
room and ques
tion her, threaten her with arrest, as you would any
other intruder
?”

“
Because she spoke to Nellie. More to the point, I
think Nellie spoke to her
.”

“
Nellie does not speak. I would know it if she could
.”

Du
nv
ille shifted some of the papers on Lisa's stomach,
uncovering a pocket-size notepad, left open. He jabbed his
finger, jarring her, at several lines written in her hand.

D'Arconte?

Dunville?

Daughter
/
b.
1
93
1
-2/stra
w
ber
r
y birthmark

Who are
“
those people
”
in the house?

“
Where
,”
asked Henry Dunville,
“
would she have got
ten that information if not from the old woman
?’'

The man called Weinberg closed his one eye. The band
aged head shook slowly, wearily
.
His hands reached for
the papers and photographs that covered Lisa's body. He
gathered them all, then stepped to a cabinet where he found a supply of linens. He shook out a light cotton
blanket and covered her with it.

Next, taking a full five minutes, he scanned the notes
and photographs, including those that D
u
nville had dis
carded into a separate pile. This, he noticed, seemed to
make Dunville ill at ease. He soon discovered why. There,
before him, was a shot of Henry Dunville, mouth forming
a silent curse, his middle finger extended at the backs of
Weinberg and his wife. He smiled beneath his bandages.
The photograph, he sensed, was taken to no purpose other
than a conviction that cowardice should not go unrecorded.
He was beginning, he decided, to like this girl.

“
Has it occurred to you
,”
he spoke at last, tapping a
finger against the open notepad,
“
that this is not information
at all? That these are simply questions based on rumors, legend
,
which she came here hoping to have answered
?”

It was Dunville
’
s turn to snort.
“
Why, then, would she
have taken your picture
?”