Beverly Hills Dead (33 page)
"He's alive," somebody yelled back, "but we're gonna need a stretcher and some rope to get him out of here."
"I'll take care of that," the sergeant said, then left.
Rick walked down the steps of the brownstone and sat on the bottom one to get his breath back. An electric cart driven by Sid Brooks came around the corner and stopped.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay. How's Tom?"
"The doctor said he wasn't too bad; only one shot hit him and not in a fatal place, apparently. The ambulance took him away."
"Good."
"Rick, what was that all about?"
"The guy who shot Tom killed Susie Stafford. The police are taking him away now."
"Well, I'm glad nobody got killed."
"Just Susie," Rick said, "and a woman named Hank Harmon."
Rick got home on time, after visiting Tom Terry in the hospital, where he was recovering from surgery. His eldest daughter climbed into his lap. Glenna was holding the baby.
"Did you have a good day?" she asked.
"All in all, pretty good," Rick said. He started telling her about it.
EPILOGUE
1999
Rick Barron stood with a small group of people and an Episcopal priest in the marble hall of a mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Glenna stood next to him, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. The casket was slid expertly into the crypt, like a file drawer into its cabinet, and a man used a battery-operated drill to screw in a series of bolts, sealing the marble slab. Etched into the slab was:
VANCE CALDER
1928-1991
Rows of similar crypts lined both sides of the hall, each with a legend of its own.
Rick was eighty-seven years old, and Glenna was eighty-four; they were great-grandparents. It was hard for Rick to believe that Vance had been seventy-one; he had looked older than his age when Glenna had spotted him at their construction site in 1947, and, remarkably, as he aged into his forties, Vance began to look younger than his age. That was a pretty good trick, Rick thought, especially if you were a movie star, perhaps the biggest ever. Vance had won his first Academy Award for
Bitter Creek
, the first of five Oscars and twelve nominations. Rick had won, too, as had the cinematographer. Susie Stafford had been nominated.
Vance's young widow, Arrington, walked over to them, leading a man who appeared to be in his early forties. "Thank you for coming to the cemetery, Rick, Glenna."
There had already been a very large funeral on a soundstage at Centurion, but only a handful of invited guests had come to the cemetery.
"I'd like you to meet my friend, Stone Barrington, who is a lawyer, from New York. Stone has been very helpful over the last week, since Vance's death. Stone, this is Rick and Glenna Barron. Rick is the chairman of Centurion Studios, and Glenna is one of its greatest stars."
"How do you do," Barrington said, shaking hands with them both.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Stone," Rick said. "I've been hearing about you."
Arrington looked around. "There's a place here for me, too," she said, "next to Vance. He told me he bought these crypts fifty years ago. I suppose it's a peaceful place to rest." She turned to Rick and Glenna. "Do you need a lift home?" she asked.
"No, we have our car," Rick replied. "You go ahead. I know you must be tired. Good to meet you, Stone."
The two walked away, but Rick and Glenna remained for a moment. "Funny how everybody seemed to end up in this place," Rick said. "Eddie and Suzanne Harris are right down there," he said, pointing. Eddie had died of a stroke nearly ten years before, and Suzanne the year after. "Sol Weinman and his wife are a little farther down. It's like Centurion Hall. And Leo Goldman, too." Leo had blown his own brains out in what was thought to have been an accident, during the late eighties.2 His wife had remarried soon afterward. Tom Terry had recovered from his gunshot wounds and was still alive in an old-age home out in the valley, having lost both legs to diabetes. Jerry O'Toole had been sent to the gas chamber at San Quentin in 1952.
Vance had died the largest stockholder in Centurion as well as its biggest star, having bought Sol Weinman's widow's shares. Leo had been a big stockholder, too, and upon his death, Rick had bought his shares from his widow.
"Yes," Glenna said. "It's Centurion Hall, and we have slots down there somewhere," she said pointing.
"I forgot," Rick said. "You ready to go home?"
But Glenna wasn't listening to him. Instead, she was staring at another crypt. She moved closer. "Come here, Rick, and take a look at this," she said.
Rick walked to her side and looked at the marble slab covering the crypt next to Vance's. The legend read:
SUSAN ANNE STAFFORD
1924-1948
"And this one," Glenna said, pointing to the next one down.
HENRIETTA "HANK" HARMON
1922-1948
"My word," Rick said. "Do you suppose this is a coincidence?"
Glenna shook her head slowly. "I don't think so," she said.
"I remember that Susie's mother had said that funeral arrangements were being made for her in L.A. by a friend. I suppose that friend must have been Hank Harmon, who then joined her."
"Are you ready to go to Malibu?" They had moved into the beach house full time after the girls were grown.
"Yes," he said. "Let's go home."
They stood for a moment in silence, then the two old people turned and walked slowly toward their waiting car.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.
However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all of my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.
If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.
Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.
When you e-mail, please do not send attachments, as I
never
open these. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.
Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get e-mail addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.
Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of
Writer's Market
at any bookstore; that will tell you how.
Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may e-mail it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.
Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90212-1825.
Those who wish to make offers for rights of a literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022. (Note: This is not an invitation for you to send her your manuscript or to solicit her to be your agent.)
If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website, www.stuartwoods.com, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact his Penguin representative or the Penguin publicity department with the request.
If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Rachel Kahan at Penguin's address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.
A list of my published works appears in this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.
BOOKS BY STUART WOODS
FICTION
Shoot Him If He Runs+
Fresh Disasters+
Short Straw
Dark Harbor+
Iron Orchid*
Two-Dollar Bill+
The Prince of Beverly Hills
Reckless Abandon+
Capital Crimes++
Dirty Work+
Blood Orchid*
The Short Forever+
Orchid Blues*
Cold Paradise+
L.A. Dead+
The Run++
Worst Fears Realized+
Orchid Beach*
Swimming to Catalina+
Dead in the Water+
Dirt+
Choke
Imperfect Strangers
Heat
Dead Eyes
L.A. Times
Santa Fe Rules
New York Dead+
Palindrome
Grass Roots++
White Cargo
Deep Lie++
Under the Lake
Run Before the Wind++
Chiefs++
TRAVEL
A Romantic's Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland (
1979
)
MEMOIR
Blue Water, Green Skipper (
1977
)
+A Stone Barrington Novel
*A Holly Barker Novel
++A Will Lee Novel
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