Natural Causes (20 page)

"Would you care to elaborate on that?" I
said.

"What's the point?" she said bluntly. "Just
take my word for it Jim didn't measure up in the guts department."

"He's dead?"

"Yes," the woman said.

"I think I should tell you that I've heard some
confusing things about Quentin's background. Harris Sugarman told me
that your son was down and out when he first met him. And Jack Moon
said that he seemed desperate for the job on 'Phoenix.' But you gave
me the impression that he was born to wealth."

"I never said that," the woman said after a
moment. "I just said that he came from an old family. The money
part was your idea."

She said the money part with a touch of scorn, as if
money didn't enter into her idea of a pedigree.

"Then he was hard up for money?"

"He was when he started out," she said
cooly. "No one ever handed him anything, either."

"So Sugarman said."

"Sugarman made his ten percent. Don't let the
hype fool you." She stared at the oil spots drifting on the
surface of her coffee. "Everyone got his share of Quentin
Dover," she said in a way that made me think she was including
herself as well. She'd started to look sad, for the first time since
I'd arrived.

"He had a bad time?" I said.

"He had to do ... certain things on the way up.
They stayed with him." She blinked and a tear ran down her
cheek, turning white with powder, like a tiny ball of snow. "And
then he didn't pick the easiest row to hoe. But he had guts, Quentin
did. I don't think you know how much." She wiped the tear from
her face and rubbed it between her fingers, leaving a white,
glistening smudge on their tips. She stared at the powder for a
second. "You know, they say that cocaine is the drug of choice
in Hollywood. But they're wrong. Money is the drug they're high on.
It always has been. The getting and spending of money. It does things
to your mind."

"To Quentin's, too?"

"To everyone's," the woman said.

"Sugarman said that Quentin was having financial
problems."

Connie Dover drew herself up in the chair and shook
her head slightly, as if she were still thinking about the things
that Quentin had had to do to make it into life's charmed circle.
"I'm sorry," she said. "What did you say?"

"Was he having some financial problems?"

"Not really," she said. "Keeping
Marsha in booze and stomach pumps was always an expensive
proposition. And he'd had some unexpected outlays. His house in New
Mexico was damaged by a flash flood and that cost him a bundle to
repair. In fact, Jorge Ramirez, his overseer, was here last Wednesday
to give him an accounting. Also to drink a lot of Quentin's beer. I'm
sure the New Mexican thing was costly, judging from the way they
carried on. But Quentin had things under control."

"Then the new project wasn't crucial to him
financially?" I said.

"No."

"If, as you say, things were looking up on
'Phoenix' and his financial situation wasn't desperate, then why was
he looking for another job at all?"

"I said things were looking up. I didn't say
they were satisfactory. When Quentin Dover took over on 'Phoenix,'
the show had a seventeen rating and a fourteen share. In less than a
year, he built that up to a twenty-one rating and a seventeen share.
The only reason that 'Phoenix' started to slip was because Helen Rose
capriciously changed her mind about Quentin's last document and
decided to try out some fantastic hoo-doo of her own. The results
speak for themselves. Just as in the case of Russ Leonard, Helen had
to find a fall guy to take the blame for her mistake. Quentin was the
obvious choice. And he deserved better than that, after two hard
years of work. That's what I told him on Friday, and he knew that I
was right. Why should he have shown any loyalty to a woman who had
wrecked two years of work and then tried to fob the disaster off on
him? Of course, he had a right to look for another job. A perfect
right."

I began to wonder whether we were talking about the
same man. But, of course, we were. I was just getting a different
slant on him. Something, perhaps, closer to his own view of
himself--or the view that he wanted his mother to take in. It was
kind of interesting.

"The project he mentioned--you thought it was
another TV deal?"

"That was my conclusion, yes. Quentin didn't say
so specifically."

"Did he say anything, specifically? At lunch or
when he called you that night?"

"Only what I have told you. That it was
something new, something he found more exciting than 'Phoenix'."

"He said that?"

"No. I said it for him, and he agreed."

"During the preceding week, do you know if he
talked to anyone in the industry?"

"I believe he talked with Frank Glendora on
Thursday. That was one of the reasons I assumed it was a TV project."

"United claims that they didn't offer him
anything."

Connie Dover bit lightly at her lip. "It could
have been with someone else, couldn't it? He had other friends in the
business. Did you talk to Harris?"

I nodded. "He didn't know anything about any TV
project outside of 'Phoenix'."

"That's surprising," she admitted. "Quentin
generally depended on Harris for all of his television contracts."

I looked at her and she looked at me.

"He didn't actually say it was a television
project," she said guardedly. "It could have been something
else."

"Like what?"

"A movie. A play. A novelization. There are many
possibilities."

Too damn many, I thought. And too goddamn much
secrecy.

"He said nothing about it on the phone when he
called you from the Belle Vista?"

"It wasn't a long talk. Good Lord, it was past
two in the morning. He just said what I told you--that he'd had a
bumpy flight and that he would be out of touch for several days."

But Quentin Dover was already out of touch, although
it took me a second to realize it. "He called you at two A.M.
Cincinnati time?"

"Somewhere around then--yes," the woman
said. "He often called me late at night from L.A. He knew I'd
worry if he didn't. You know, there's a three-hour time difference on
the coast."

"I know," I said. "Two in Cincinnati
would have been eleven P.M. in L.A."

"Yes. He'd just gotten back to his hotel room
after dinner."

"He said that?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Yes. What of it?"

"That wasn't the strict truth," I said.

She laughed peremptorily. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Quentin wasn't in his hotel room at eleven P.M.
He checked into the Belle Vista early that afternoon, had supper in
his room, made several phone calls-one of which I thought was to
you-then drove off in a rented car at eight P.M. and didn't return to
the Belle Vista until after midnight."

I left out what he'd done after that. The woman was
already upset and there was no sense in making her feel any worse.

"Are you telling me that he lied to me?"
she said weakly.

"I'm telling you that he wasn't in the hotel
when he called."

"Maybe he didn't say he was in the hotel. Maybe
I was mistaken. Maybe it was just a manner of speaking--another way
of saying that he was in L.A."

"Or of saying that he was working on a new TV
project?"

"Take that back," she said angrily. "My
son didn't lie to me. He had no reason to lie to me."

"Does it make a difference?" I said.

For a second I thought she was going to hit me. "Of
course, it makes a difference," she said through her teeth. I
got up from the table.

"I'm sorry, Connie. He just told so many
different stories to so many different people." She didn't say
anything.

"I'll let you know when I find out what was
really going on.

She nodded slightly. "Let me know."
 

23

I stopped at a phone booth on the way downtown and
called Seymour Wattle in L.A. It was about nine in the morning on the
coast, and Seymour sounded as if he'd had a rough night.

"No, I haven't got nothing yet," he said
before I could say anything more than my name. "Chrissake, it's
only been one day."

"That's not what I called about."

"Well, what did you want?"

"The phone call that Dover made to Cincinnati on
Friday night--do you have a record of the number?"

"Yeah, it's right at my fingertips."

"Take it easy, Sy. Find it, and I'll call you
back later in the day."

"Make it a lot later, man," Seymour said.
"I don't need to use you for no wake-up service. Shit, do you
have any idea how many television production companies there are in
L.A.?"

"Keep at it," I said.

But after I hung up, I wondered if that was such a
good idea. I was pretty sure that no matter how long he looked,
Wattle wasn't going to come up with anything about Dover's mysterious
TV project. I had the feeling that there wasn't anything to come up
with. Connie Dover had had the same feeling--that Quentin had allowed
her to believe something that wasn't true. It wouldn't have been the
first time he'd done that, either.

He'd certainly lied to her about the document he'd
said he was working on. He'd told Helen Rose the same lie at just
about the same time. But then lie was a strong word for it. He'd told
them what they wanted to hear. I had the feeling that he'd been doing
that with his mother for a long time. Most children paint a brighter
picture for their parents. And Quentin had played son to a lot of
people. Son and father, like Connie had said.

I got to the Maisonette at twelve thirty-five and
found that Frank Glendora had reserved one of the private rooms on
the second floor. He was a careful man, no question about it. The
maitre d' directed me upstairs to a small, paneled dining room,
furnished with French provincial sideboards and chairs. A
linen-covered table was set in the center of the room, sparkling with
crystal and silver.

Frank Glendora was sitting at it, his elbows on the
tabletop.

"Hello, Harry," he said.

"Frank."

He pointed to the other chair at the table and I sat
down.

"Charles," he said to the maitre d', "bring
us some drinks and a menu."

Charles took our bar orders and left. Glendora didn't

have to tell him to close the door. He did it on his
own. "You had a pleasant trip back?" Glendora asked.

"What I remember of it."

He gave me a perplexed look.

"I was drunk, Frank. I don't like airplanes."

"I don't blame you," he said. "I used
to hate them myself, before I went to work for United. Then it became
a contest of wills--mine and the company's." He laughed. "The
company won out."

So Jack Moon had said.

"You have something to tell me?" Glendora
asked.

I said, "Quentin went to L.A. on Friday
night--three days before his usual meeting with the 'Phoenix' team."

"Yes," Glendora said. "I've been at
some of their Monday meetings."

"At this point, I'm not really sure why he made
the trip. He checked into the Belle Vista Hotel, then left again late
on Friday night."

"He left the hotel?" Glendora said with
surprise. "I thought he'd been there the whole weekend. That was
the impression I got from the police."

"That was the impression he wanted to create.
However, he wasn't in his room between sometime after one on Friday
and sometime before he died early Sunday morning."

There was a knock at the door. Glendora's hand shot
to his lips. It was an involuntary gesture--a reflex. It surprised
me. And it rather surprised him, too. He dropped his hand from his
mouth and rubbed his chin in perplexity.

"Now why the hell did I do that?" he said.

The door opened and Charles came in with our drinks.
He served them and handed each of us a menu. After we'd ordered and
Charles had departed, Glendora picked up his glass and the
conversation. "You said he was out of his room between Friday
and Sunday. Do you know where he was?"

I shook my head. "I was working on the theory
that he was meeting with someone about a television project. That's
what he implied to his mother. But it might not have been the truth."

"It was always a hard thing to know with
Quentin," he said with a touch of sadness.

"I thought you liked him."

"Oh, I did," Glendora said. "I liked
him enormously. But he was a complicated man--a troubled man. And not
entirely an honest one."

"Are you basing that on the rumors you heard?"

Frank Glendora looked offended. "I'm not a fool,
Harry. Contrary to general opinion, I do occasionally see things for
myself."