Murder on High (27 page)

Especially when you would be getting in on the ground floor with a million-dollar foundation.

She arrived at JFK Airport at five, exhausted from her quick trip back and forth across the continent. When she got back to her town house in Turtle Bay a short while later, she went promptly to bed, and didn’t wake up until seven the next morning. After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, home fries, and coffee at her local luncheonette, she went back home to call Elaine Kinney. She wanted to put the possibility of one of Linc’s sons being the murderer to rest. She figured that if she eliminated the least likely possibility, that would free her mind to concentrate on the most likely one. Occam’s Razor again. She had to admit, however, that some of her zeal to find Iris’ murderer had abated. She no longer felt any obligation to an old friend, that was for sure. In fact, the vindictive side of her wanted Iris’ murderer to get away with it, wanted even to give him a medal. But whatever vindictive feelings she may have harbored were overshadowed by the need to figure it all out, to subject Iris’ death to the same unyielding light that had just been shone on the corners of her own life. Charlotte’s friend, Kitty Saunders, who was fond of doing character readings—from the Tarot cards, tea leaves, the palms of the hands, you name it—had always described Charlotte as a wanderer, a person who thrives on the fuel of new experiences. Which was true. But she was a wanderer who relied heavily on her compass. In the wilderness, she needed to know where north was, and where south, east, and west were; where up was, and where down was.

She had yet to find her way in the wilderness that was Iris’ murder.

An hour later, she had retrieved her car from the garage, and was on her way out to Ho-Ho-Kus, the northern New Jersey suburb with the Indian name that never failed to elicit some comment from whoever heard it, to say nothing of being the bane of copy editors: one unbroken word (Hohokus) or hyphenated? And if hyphenated, upper or lower case for the second “Ho” and the “Kus”? Though Linc had left town for good when he was eighteen and had been dead for over thirty years, he remained Ho-Ho-Kus’ most famous former resident. And if there was ever a chance that the townspeople might forget that one of Hollywood’s greatest stars had grown up there, there was always Elaine to remind them. In fact, their middle-class upbringing was one of the things that had drawn Charlotte and Linc together. In a town in which many had clawed their way up from the bottom; such a background had been a rarity. And perhaps the reason they both had ended up in Hollywood instead of going on to lead comfortable lives in Ho-Ho-Kus, or, in Charlotte’s case, Hartford, was that their middle-class backgrounds had rested on such shaky foundations. Charlotte’s father, a successful attorney, had walked out on his family when Charlotte was a girl, and although he had paid for Charlotte’s tuition at a posh finishing school, he had paid for little else, which meant that her mother had always had to struggle to support Charlotte and her sister. Linc’s mother had married twice after his father died, in both cases to unreliable men with drinking problems whose priorities did not include providing for their families.

As Charlotte headed over the George Washington Bridge into the New Jersey suburbs on the other side of the Hudson, she considered what excuse she was going to use for her visit, and how she was going to raise the subject of Linc’s sons. She also wondered what it was exactly that she wanted to find out about them. On the first point, she decided to lie, her talent for dissimulation being a skill that she had parlayed into a lifetime career. She would tell Elaine that she had been in Ho-Ho-Kus for whatever reason, and, remembering that Elaine lived there, decided to drop by. On the second point, she decided to play it by ear: one advantage of being a wanderer was that you recognized that new discoveries were often made despite the fact that you might not have a destination in mind.

She pulled up in front of the Kinneys’ house forty-five minutes later. It still looked exactly the same: a small, charming faux-Tudor cottage on a quiet tree-shaded street lined with other small, charming faux-Tudor cottages. Elaine greeted her warmly, and escorted her into a neat living room.

The first thing Charlotte noticed was a picture in a silver frame on an end table. Identical to one in Iris’ green-wallpapered room, it showed Iris standing between Charlotte and Linc, with her arms around their waists. Just seeing it almost made her choke.

Charlotte needn’t have worried about how to bring up the subject of Linc’s sons. The subject was a natural one for two people who had absolutely nothing in common but the boys’ father.

“And what about Brent and Johnny?” Charlotte asked, having heard in tiresome detail about Elaine and Bill’s recently purchased retirement home on the inland waterway in south Florida.

Elaine sighed. “It’s a sad story. As you may know, Gloria was hospitalized for schizophrenia in 1961,” she said, referring to Linc’s wife.

Charlotte nodded. She had heard about it through the grapevine.

“She never came out again,” Elaine said. “She died there last year. After she was committed, the boys continued to live with their stepfather, but from what I understand, he pretty much left them to take care of themselves—that is, when he wasn’t being abusive.”

“How sad,” said Charlotte.

Elaine nodded. “We wanted to take them in, but Bill was out of work. Nor was there anything from Linc; as you know, he was broke when he died. In fact, he still owed money to the lawyers who represented him in the custody battle. I felt terrible about it, but I don’t think we would have gotten them anyway.”

“Why not?” Charlotte asked.

“Gloria had named the stepfather as their legal guardian.”

Charlotte had assumed that the boys had gone to live with Elaine after Gloria’s hospitalization. Elaine’s news left her feeling conscience-stricken as well. “I feel terrible,” she said. “You should have contacted me. Maybe there was something I could have done.”

“What?” said Elaine. “If we couldn’t get custody, there wasn’t any chance that you would have been able to.”

Elaine was right. “Maybe I could have looked after their interests in some way,” she said. “Protected them.”

“How? We had no way of knowing that their stepfather was abusing them. It only came out later on. Anyway, it wasn’t so bad for Brent. He was sixteen by then, and he just took off on his own after a year or so. He’s done very well. He even worked his way through college.”

Named after the actor Brent Fogarty, who had been Linc’s closest friend, Brent had been the spitting image of his father. Charlotte could still remember his pale white face at the funeral, a miniature of Linc’s own. “And Johnny?”

“John’s a bum. He hitchhikes around the country, working at odd jobs here and there. By the time he was in his early twenties, we were back on our feet financially, and we offered to send him to college. But he just turned his nose up at our offer. It made me pretty mad.”

“I can imagine,” said Charlotte sympathetically.

“He had this anti-materialist ethic. He also had a very big chip on his shoulder. He said that he was the way he was because of his upbringing. Well, if you ask me, that’s a cop-out. There are lots of people who have difficult upbringings who don’t turn into bums.”

Charlotte nodded in agreement.

“We had a big scene here one night, during which he set fire to the last of his money at the kitchen table.” She nodded toward the kitchen at the back of the house. “To show his contempt for money, and for our middle-class values.”

“Where is he now?”

Elaine shrugged. “I have no idea. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of years. But he’ll show up eventually. He always does.”

“And Brent?” she asked.

“We’re still in touch with Brent. He lives out in Colorado, near Linc’s old ranch in Ouray. He’s happily married, with two children. We don’t see him much. He won’t come East; he says he can’t stand the congestion. But we get out there to visit him every couple of years.”

“What does he do out there?”

“He has a sort of dude ranch. Hunting, fishing, white-water rafting.”

Charlotte could easily picture Brent in such a setting. As she remembered, he had his father’s adventurous streak. Linc’s ranch in Ouray had been his favorite place, and the boys had spent a lot of time there. It would make sense that Brent would be drawn to that life.

Elaine had now moved on to the careers of her own children.

Charlotte, who had been lulled almost to stupefaction by Elaine’s nonstop recap of thirty years of family history, suddenly snapped to attention. Colorado! The Ford Bronco that Jeanne had noticed at Hilltop Farm had had a Colorado license plate. Could it be? she wondered.

She endured a few more minutes of conversation and then, after thanking Elaine for the visit, beat a hasty retreat to the nearest pay phone. Thank goodness Tracey was at the barracks. “Howard!” she said, almost breathlessly.

“Ayuh!” he said, in his usual laconic tone. “This. Charlotte?”

“Yes. Listen. I need some information right away. I’d like you to find out what make of car is registered to a Brent Crawford of Ouray, Colorado.”

“Gonna tell me what this is all about?” he asked.

“Not quite yet,” she replied.

“It’s gonna cost ya.”

“Cost me to get the information or cost me that I’m not going to tell you what it’s all about?” she teased.

“The latter. You’re going to owe me one. The former’s free. Though it’ll take a few minutes to check with the DMV out there. Where are you, anyway?”

“In New Jersey. But I’m on my way home.”

“I’ll call you there in an hour.”

Charlotte was unpacking her bag on her bed when the phone rang an hour later, on the dot. It was Tracey. “It’s a black Ford Bronco,” he said, and proceeded to give her the license plate number.

Charlotte had found the trail, and she didn’t like where it was leading. It was Brent whose black Ford Bronco Jeanne had seen parked on Stillwater Avenue, and once, on the grounds of the farm itself, when she had noticed the driver studying the house through binoculars.

“It seems to me that I remember a vehicle fitting that description having something to do with the case we’re working on now. Remember that case?” Tracey asked. “It’s a murder case.”

“I remember,” she said.

“I also seem to remember your telling me just yesterday that Linc Crawford’s son might have a motive. May I remind you that the withholding of information in a murder investigation is a crime?”

“Now, don’t go getting all huffy on me. I’m not withholding anything. In fact, I’m going to need your help following up on this. Has Pyle been calling the hikers who were signed out to Katahdin?”

“Yep,” Tracey replied. “Found one who saw Jeanne Ouellette on Hamlin Peak, which confirms her alibi.”

“Has he got the entrance permits there at the barracks?”

“Copies of ’em,” said Tracey. “We left the originals back at park headquarters. They’re right here on my desk.”

“Great. Can you look through them for one with the name of Brent Crawford, and the Colorado license plate number? He probably would have entered the park on June eighth, the day before the murder.”

Charlotte watched the traffic passing by outside on East Forty-ninth as she waited impatiently for his answer. She could hear the soft rhythm of his breath, and the rustle of papers being shuffled.

Then he replied: “I’ve got it!” he said. “Brenton Crawford. He entered on June eighth, stayed overnight at Abol Campground, and left the next day. He signed out for Katahdin at the Abol hikers’ register.”

How had she ever missed his name? she wondered. But then, why would she have noticed it? She hadn’t thought about him in years. Moreover, she had never known that his name was Brenton, and Crawford was a common-enough surname that it wouldn’t have attracted her notice.

Sitting down on the edge of her bed, she took a deep breath. She couldn’t believe it! Linc’s son. He might have followed Iris up to the mountain from Old Town, but that still didn’t explain how he had known about Coley’s camp. No, she thought, something didn’t add up.

Then she remembered what Haakon Hilmers had said about seeing a man who looked like Linc on the Abol Trail. Hilmers had said that he appeared to be arguing with Mack, or a man fitting Mack’s description.

“I guess we’ll have to track this guy down and bring him in for questioning,” said Tracey, thinking aloud.

Charlotte, too, was still thinking. Even the entrance permit didn’t add up: What murderer would give his real name? He might as well have put down “to commit murder” as the purpose of his visit. “Were there any prints on the crossbow?” she asked.

“Nope,” said Tracey. “Wiped clean.”

Scratch that idea.

Tracey continued. “Though Henry Clough said the heads of the bolts we found at the camp matched the entrance wound. Which means that the murderer used those bolts or ones identical to them.”

No, Charlotte was thinking, it wasn’t enough for her that she had tracked Brent to Katahdin. She needed to know the route he had taken to get there.

“I’ll let you know what happens,” said Tracey. “Are you planning to come back up here anytime soon?”

“I don’t know,” she said. The thought of seeing Linc’s look-alike son struck panic into her heart. “I’ll check back with you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Tracey said as he hung up. “I think we’ve got a real lead here.”

But Charlotte wasn’t so sure.

14

After Tracey had hung up, Charlotte sat on the edge of her bed for a moment, thinking. If Brent had wanted to find Iris, he might have put the ads in
Variety
and the other trade papers, but he also might have taken steps on his own to find her, the logical first step being to ask her friends and associates if they knew where she was. Of Iris’ friends, Charlotte knew little; but associates were a different matter. There had been precisely two: herself, and the director Harold Ames. They had been a threesome—Iris, Charlotte, and Harold—and together they had made some of the best movies ever turned out by Hollywood—movies with class, not the garbage that they turned out today. Not that Hollywood hadn’t turned out garbage back then as well, but at least it hadn’t been all garbage, the way it was now.