Natural Causes (19 page)

22

Midway across America, I got drunk on airline booze
and flew drunk--and relatively happy--all the way home. It is, in my
opinion, the only way to fly.

The 727 touched down at Cincinnati International at a
quarter of ten-fifteen minutes behind schedule. Under different
circumstances that would have been cause for hysteria. But with three
or four little bottles of Dewar's in me, I didn't even mind the bumpy
landing. As we were coming in over Indianapolis, the plane made one
of its odd, hydraulic hiccoughs, and the woman sitting beside me
tensed up as if she'd seen her own death. I turned to her and
actually said, "Don't worry, it's just the ailerons being
lowered." She seemed unimpressed, in a polite way.

Once we'd landed and
disembarked, I wandered out of the terminal to the long-term parking
lot, where I'd left the Pinto, got the key out of my pocket, unlocked
the door, chucked my bag in the back seat, and drove home.

***

I woke up in a sweat at eight-thirty the next
morning. It felt like August again in my tiny bedroom--hot, sticky,
and windless. And there wasn't a mirror in sight. Just the oriel
window looking out on the Delores' parking lot. I got out of bed,
went into the john, and took a long cold shower--to wash the sweat
and booze out of my system. After I'd towelled off, I walked back
into the bedroom and pulled the white pages off the nightstand shelf.
I had three and a half hours to kill before I met with Frank
Glendora, so I decided to put them to use. I found Quentin Dover's
number and dialed it on the bedroom phone. A woman answered on the
fourth ring.

"Yeah?" she said sleepily. It was Marsha
Dover. I recognized the nasal twang of her voice.

"It's Harry Stoner, Mrs. Dover. Remember me?"

"No," she said.

I sighed. "I'm the guy who pulled you out of the
pool on Tuesday."

"What pool?" Marsha Dover said. "What
the hell time is it, anyway?"

"It's a little past nine."

"Jesus. Nine in the morning?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Jesus," she said again. "Who'd you
say you were?"

"Harry Stoner. The detective? The guy that Jack
Moon told you about? You know, I carne over to see you on Tuesday. I
pulled you out of the pool."

"Oh, yeah," she said dimly. "The
good-looking one."

I wasn't sure if that was me or not.

I could hear the rustle of bedclothes. "So what
can I do for you?" Marsha Dover said.

"I'd like to come out and talk to you about your
husband."

"Quentin?" she said as if she could barely
place the name. "Quentin's dead."

I stared at the phone for a second. "Yeah, I
know. United hired me to look into his death."

"Why? It was an accident, wasn't it?"

"Maybe if I could come out there, I could
explain it to you."

She thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, why
not? You can come out."

"When?"

"I dunno--later. In the afternoon, all right?"

"See you this afternoon."

"Right, bye."

I could hear her struggling with the phone. It took
her three tries to hang up. It certainly hadn't taken her long to
hang up on old Quentin. Sober--or, at least, halfawake--Marsha
Dover was a helluva lot less sentimental than she'd been when she was
drunk. I wondered if that was why she drank--to put a little feeling
in that beautiful body. Maybe Connie Dover had been right, about the
girl being all shallows. She certainly didn't sound like the same
person who'd attempted to drown herself in a suicidal fit of grief.

I scanned the phone book and came to Connie Dover's
name. She had an address on Camargo. It was a high-society address,
just like Quentin's. But that story had worn thin and needed mending.
I dialed her number and she answered immediately-no mornings in bed
for Connie.

"Yes?" she said. "Who is it?"

"Harry Stoner."

"Oh, yes? How are you, Stoner?"

"Pretty well. I was wondering if I could come
over and talk to you again."

"Of course, you can. I'd be interested in
hearing what you've found out about my son's death."

I wasn't so sure she'd be interested in hearing what
I'd found out about her son's life, but I went ahead and arranged to
meet with her anyway.

"We can share another
cup of coffee," the woman said.

***

Connie Dover lived in a condominium development
called Indian Village. It was a nice place, as prefabricated
communities go--chic, multilevel buildings, arranged in a semicircle
like the pipes of an organ. The buildings were brick with cedar
inserts and tall smoked-glass windows running from floor to roof. I
figured the condos couldn't have been more than five or six years
old, which meant that Connie had probably moved in just about the
time that Quentin married Marsha. The change from mansion house to
condo living must have been traumatic.

I parked on the street at ten sharp and walked up to
the front stoop. Two smoked-glass windows flanked the entryway, with
silver Levelor blinds hanging behind them. When I rang the bell, one
of the blinds crinkled open for a second. It snapped shut and Connie
Dover came to the door.

"Hello, Stoner," she said.

I'd forgotten how deep and acerbic her voice was. It
went well with her pale, blonde smart-looking face--like a dash of
bitters in a Manhattan. Although she was wearing slacks and a casual
shirt, Connie Dover still looked dressed-up--perhaps because she had
gold bracelets on her wrists and a gold pendant around her neck. Like
the last time I'd seen her, her face was powdered ivory white and her
hair was tied back in a bun.

She motioned to me to come in and I walked through
the door. It was cool inside the condo and dark with the shades
pulled. The parquet floor smelled of wax and air freshener--a heavy,
manufactured, woodsy smell that reminded me of the Belle Vista's
gardens. We went down a hall, past doorways opening on beautifully
furnished little rooms, to the kitchen at the back of the house. That
seemed to be Connie's idea of the proper place for me to be. This one
was small and modern, with Poggenpohl cabinets and built-in
appliances, gleaming spotlessly in the morning sunlight. I sat down
at a white pine table, beside the rear window. Through the window, I
could see the woven wooden fence that circled the development.

Connie unplugged a percolator and brought it and two
cups and saucers over to the table. She poured the coffee and sat
down next to me.

"It's refreshing to see you in dry clothes,"
she said with amusement. "You look like a different man."

"How's Marsha been doing since Tuesday?" I
asked.

"She is, as they say, 'bearing up.' In fact, she
was bearing up the phone man when last I saw her. She thought he
needed a drink. Marsha thinks the world needs a drink and a warm,
tight place to rest its penis. That's her philosophy of life."

"Glendora told me that you buried Quentin on
Thursday."

"Had to," the woman said dryly. "He
died. I guess someone should have told Marsha."

"She didn't go to the funeral?"

The woman shook her head. "Miss was so overcome
with grief that she drank a couple bottles of gin that morning. Her
feet hurt her, you see. I told her to stay in bed. Better than having
her whoops on the coffin. It was a simple and refreshingly dignified
ceremony without her. Frank was there. And a few others. I thought
you might show up."

"Why?" I asked. "I didn't know your
son."

"Something about you, Stoner. You look like a
joiner."

I laughed. "You seem to be 'bearing up'
yourself." She smiled sadly. "It's just the makeup, believe
me. On the whole, I don't think I've ever felt worse in my life."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Are you? I would have thought, after all the
dirt you've been told, that you wouldn't care one way or another
about Quentin."

"How do you know what I've been told?"

She smiled again. "Don't kid a kidder, Stoner. I
know the people you've been talking to--almost as well as Quentin
did."

"I don't know how I feel about him," I said
honestly.

"A diplomatic answer." She picked up her
cup of coffee and took a sip.

"How do you feel about answering a few more
questions?" I asked.

She thought about it. "I will, if you'll answer
a few of mine."

"Like what?"

"Like what specifically did you hear about my
son? I think he's owed the chance to defend himself, even if it is by
proxy."

"Fair enough," I said. "Opinion was
divided. Helen Rose and Harris Sugarman liked him. Walt Mack and Jack
Moon didn't."

"Harris is O.K.," Connie said. "He was
honest with Quentin."

"And the other three?"

"Various species of crocodiles," she said.
"Not Jack as much as the other two. Jack's just hatched. But
Walt and Helen are fully matured reptiles."

"Helen liked Quentin," I said.

"Haven't you ever had a pet?" the woman
said. "Helen was Quentin's pet croc, until she started snapping
at him. Helen Rose doesn't like anyone for very long. It's just not
her nature."

"And Walt?"

"I think I would pay to see him die. He is a
viperous little faggot with a forked tongue and a malicious temper.
He did everything he could to thwart Quentin, often successfully."

"He claimed he had his reasons," I said.

The woman frowned at me. "If you're alluding to
the Russ Leonard thing, you probably don't know the whole story."

"I'm willing to listen," I said.

"All right." Connie laid her hand sideways
on the table, as if she were exposing a poker hand. The gold bracelet
jangled against the wood. "Quentin was originally hired on
'Phoenix' as a consultant, which in the paltry code of televisionese
is the nice word for 'heir apparent.' He would have preferred to take
over after Leonard had been formally fired. But Helen Rose is not the
kind of woman to make a tough decision gracefully. She told my
son--on the day she hired him--that Leonard was out and Quentin was
in. Then she spent three months trying to get Russ to cut his own
throat publicly and spare her the embarrassment of canning him. That
three-month transition period was the kiss of death for Quentin. He
made enemies just by showing up. Russ's whole team was against him.
Quentin wanted to quit right away, but he'd signed one of United's
goddamn contracts. By the time he'd goaded Harris into trying to
break the deal, Leonard had cut his wrists and the show had gone into
limbo. Helen begged him to stay on at that point, promising him
anything and everything. What choice did he have? He stayed."

"I was under the impression that Helen tried to
help Leonard," I said. "And that Quentin was originally
hired strictly to consult."

The woman laughed. "If feeding Russ Leonard
cocaine was helping him, then Helen did all she could."

"Are you saying she was his connection?"

"She told Quentin that it was safer than letting
Leonard hustle it on the streets. It's not at all unusual, by the
way. Cocaine is a form of legal tender out there."

"For Quentin, too?"

"Certainly not," she said. "My son had
too many health problems to make cocaine into a habit, although he
might have tried it at one point or another. They all do."

"Do you think he might have tried it at the last
point?"

"The thought had occurred to me," she
confessed. "But what with the new project in the works and
things looking up on 'Phoenix,' I can't see him dicing with
death--because that's what it would have amounted to in his
condition."

"What makes you say that things were looking up
on 'Phoenix'?" I asked.

She gave me a funny look. "You heard
differently?"

"I heard that your son was having problems, yes.
Serious problems. Walt Mack claimed that he'd been carrying Quentin
for some time. And it's a fact that he hadn't produced any material
since his heart surgery."

"He was working on a story line," Connie
said defensively. "He told me so three weeks ago. And as for
Mack, it was just the other way around. Quentin had been carrying
him. Part of the deal that Quentin made when he agreed to stay on the
show specified that he would have complete control over his team.
Naturally, everyone assumed, under the circumstances, that he would
let Walt go. But he didn't. He kept him on, drying his eyes for
months after Leonard's suicide and cleaning up his sordid little
messes for him whenever Walt fell into the sack with Mr. Wrong. Which
was every other week. Between Walt and Russ and his own wife, Quentin
was kept rather busy in the scandal-snuffing department."

"Why did he do it?" I asked

The woman shook her head. "I don't know. You
would have thought that he'd have tired of them after a point. But he
didn't. When I asked him why, he laughed and said he'd grown used to
other people's troubles. I suppose helping out made him feel
valuable. Quentin was always playing father or son to friends and
enemies alike. Perhaps because his own father was such a failure."