Night Night, Sleep Tight (23 page)

Chapter 42

S
y rocked back in the desk chair and gazed at Deirdre across tented fingers. “I never thought you, of all people, would walk out on your father’s funeral.”

“I never thought you, of all people, would betray him.”

Sy barely blinked as he held her gaze. “Oh, Deirdre. I do wish it had not come to this.”

“And what exactly is
this
? You went to a lot of trouble to make us all think you’d been mugged.” She knew from his bemused expression that this time she’d gotten it right. There’d been no mugging, and no police officer (phony or otherwise) showing up at the scene. Only a well-connected “victim” who could get himself checked into a tiny private clinic that specialized in cosmetic surgery where, for a fee or perhaps as a favor to one of their regular clients, the staff would pretend to care for “injuries” that had been conjured courtesy of smoke and mirrors, as Bunny would have said, along with a little help from Wardrobe and Makeup.

“I am sorry,” Sy said, and he did seem genuinely saddened. “You have been caught up in this from the beginning. We tried to disentangle you. Really we did. And it
was
taken care of. Until your father decided to write a tell-all. I warned him not to. It was not worth it, no matter how much publishers were offering him.”

“Publishers were making offers?”

“And a producer was eager to option the rights, according to Arthur at least. No one had actually read it, as far as I can tell. Thank God for that. And of course he hadn’t finished writing it. But if there was one thing your father knew how to do, it was pitch.”

“So do you really think anyone would have wanted to read it?” Deirdre asked.

“Are you kidding? It has everything. Old Hollywood, glamour, sex, intrigue, and violence. Details about a true crime that captured the imagination of a generation of moviegoers. In other words, a blockbuster. And I’m fine with that. Arthur can have his bestseller. Bunny will have her comeback. I can make all that happen. But the manuscript needs a few tweaks before it can go public. I’m already working on that. And in the meanwhile, I can’t have a copy of Arthur’s draft floating around.”

“Arthur’s draft?”

“So where is it?”

“It’s in the mail.”

“You mean this Xerox copy?” Sy crossed the room to his briefcase, opened it, and pulled out a FedEx envelope. He held it up so Deirdre could see her own handwriting on the mailing label. Deirdre’s mouth went dry.

“I had you followed. So where’s the original?” He shook the envelope at her.

“The original? Good question,” Deirdre’s words came out a rasp. “Because as you can see, that’s a Xerox of a carbon copy. I’ve never seen the original. Knowing my father, I’m guessing he gave it to someone to read. Someone whose judgment he respected. Whose integrity he trusted. You.”

Sy didn’t bother to contradict her.

“And of course, you recognized the potential for disaster. Bunny’s audience could forgive her for murdering a murderous boyfriend, but not for seducing a sixteen-year-old boy.”

“Yes.” Sy rubbed his chin. “It would have been a public relations nightmare. I tried to reason with him. But your father let his ego get in the way. I’m sure you can imagine.”

Deirdre could. Serene in his own sense of entitlement, Arthur would have blown off his oldest friend’s concerns.

“He was going to reveal details Bunny had been sure he’d never tell,” Sy said.

“But he didn’t know who killed Tito. He thought it was me or Henry.”

“It was.”

For a moment Deirdre felt short of breath. “But you told me—”

“I told you it wasn’t you. Henry killed Tito.”

“Henry killed Tito?” Deirdre parroted the words, but her brain wasn’t taking them in. “He didn’t.”

“He did. He came over late that night after the party. Bunny met him. Tito discovered them together.”

“But Henry told me Bunny stood him up.”

“Henry lied. He’s been lying for so long, I’m not sure he even knows what the truth is.”

“Henry?” Deirdre felt the air go out of her. She groped behind her for a chair and sat. “It had to have been self-defense,” Deirdre said, her voice sounding wooden.

“Of course it was self-defense. No jury would have found your brother guilty. He was a kid who’d gotten in way over his head. He was ready to confess. But Bunny couldn’t let that happen. She’d have been pilloried for having an affair with a teenaged kid. So she called your father and when she saw him driving up, she ordered Henry to take your father’s car and drive you home. She promised him that she’d take care of everything. Which she did. She called me.

“Months later, when the news stories had finally died down and Bunny had given birth, she told Arthur that the baby was his grandchild. They struck a deal. She had me draw up a trust that your father agreed to pay into until Jackie turned twenty-one, and your father agreed he’d never tell a soul that Henry was Jackie’s father. In return, Bunny would make sure the police never found out that Henry and you had been in the house at the time of the murder. She’d make sure the police never found these.”

Sy rose to his feet and walked over to the coat stand. He bent, picked up his briefcase again, and brought it over to her. Deirdre knew what she’d see even before he got there—the stained yellow dress, looking no more soiled than when Bunny had taken it from her. Lying on top of the dress was the bone-handled knife. The splash Deirdre had heard had been just another of Bunny’s tricks, playing to her audience’s expectations.

“By the time I got to the house,” Sy went on, “she’d switched knives and wiped the one that killed Tito on the dress you’d been wearing earlier that night. Always thinking ahead, you can say that for her. She showed your father the knife and the dress. Promised to give them to him after he had finished paying into the trust. Your father thought he was protecting you and Henry both. These can still be handed over to the police . . . if it becomes useful to do so. You can be sure that will never happen if you just give me the last copy of the manuscript.”

“You thought the manuscript was in his office, didn’t you?” Deirdre said. “That’s why you set the fire.”

“Not me personally. But yes, I hired someone. I had no idea that your mother would be up there looking for the manuscript herself, or that you would come back when you did. The important thing”—Sy grabbed Deirdre’s arm and pulled her close to him—“is that you give me the last copy of that manuscript. Now.”

Deirdre’s shoulder throbbed as Sy’s grip tightened. “Is this what you tried with Dad? When persuasion and reasoning and arm-twisting didn’t work, you bashed him on the head?”

Sy winced and loosened his grip. “It does not have to be this way. Your father wanted to tell his life story. He wanted to be the star. Give me the manuscript and I will do everything in my power to see that it is finished and well published.”

“Too bad it has to be posthumous and filled with lies.” Deirdre wrenched free and backed away.

“Not lies. Omissions.”

“Henry?”

“Erased.”

“Can you explain one thing to me? She could have had anyone in Hollywood. Why Henry?”

Sy seemed taken aback by the question. “He was young.” Sy shrugged. “She wasn’t.” He shook his head. “Bunny wants what she wants, and she is used to getting it. Your father, too, in his way. He thought he was entitled to write whatever he damned well pleased. It was pure, shortsighted hubris on his part. Bunny couldn’t let that happen. Too much was at stake.”

“Cerulean,” Deirdre said, the word sounding like air leaking from a balloon.

“You know about that?”

“Bunny had the art for the ad framed in her dressing room. All very hush-hush, or so she said.”

“Selling a dream to a vast and untapped audience: women of a certain age.” Sy held up his fingers as if he were framing the slogan. Like her father, he was a pro at pitching an idea. “It’s going to be huge. Television ads. Free samples in the Oscar gift bags. International tour. She’ll be on Johnny Carson. Barbara Walters.
Good Morning America.
She’ll be getting scripts again.”

“Arthur’s memoir would have soured everything,” Deirdre said. “Except for Walters. She’d have wanted her even more. What’s more fun than a public shaming?”

“You understand. I tried to convince him of his folly. What she would do if she found out what he was up to.”

“And she did find out, didn’t she?”

Sy didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

“So what happens now?”

“If I’m writing it, then you give me the last copy of your father’s memoir and I fix it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Ah. Then Susanna comes forward and challenges your timeline. She tells the police that you left the gallery early and she finished the installation alone. Susanna, not Shoshanna, by the way.”

“Susanna? You . . . ?”

“Didn’t you think it was just a bit far-fetched that a prominent Israeli artist would want his work shown in a third-rate San Diego art gallery? So desperate, in fact, that he would pay for the privilege?
I yem Avram Sigismund,
” Sy said, affecting a thick accent. “
I yem very well known in Israel, but I hev to show my verk in the United States. . . .
Lucky for me, your partner cannot tell a Russian from an Israeli accent. And you still were not suspicious when, right after that, an arts reporter you never heard of calls and wants to feature your gallery in an article?”

“You bastard.”

Sy looked genuinely wounded. He sat back in his chair. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. When your father told me you were going to help him get ready to move, I needed to make sure he would be alone the night Bunny and I came over to reason with him. It was a conversation I could not afford to have interrupted. I had no idea Susanna would get creative and have you paper over the gallery’s windows. Or that Bunny would want to come back . . .” Sy’s face fell.

“Or that I’d pick up the shovel on my way up the driveway the next morning.”

“Yes. I do wish you had not done that. But let’s not dwell on missteps.”

The scary thing was, the scenario Sy was spinning sounded entirely plausible. Whether Deirdre had gotten to the house in time to kill her father would come down to her word against Susanna’s, and her fingerprints on the murder weapon sealed it.

On the other hand, Susanna wasn’t real. “How hard do you think it will be for me to discredit someone who’s not even a real artist’s assistant?”

“She is not. She is a rather mediocre actress. A good detective could demolish her story, and a defense attorney worth his salt could poke holes in it. But it will never come to that because after she comes forward and it becomes clear that you will be arrested and charged, you will find a quicker, cleaner way to extricate yourself.” Sy paused and thought for a moment, his gaze snagging on the umbrella she was using for a cane. “A car accident, I think.”

Deirdre felt as if ice water were trickling down her back. “You’d kill me?” she said, though she could see from his expression that he was dead serious.

“I am very fond of you, and it will make me very sad. So let’s not find out. But there is a great deal at stake. Millions this year. More millions for years to come. Not to mention the legacy of a great actress who is far more ruthless than I. Surely we can come up with a better ending.”

A better ending.
As if her father could spring back to life like TV’s Bobby Ewing in
Dallas
. Instead this would be the ending in which someone gets away with her father’s murder.

“Step one is not negotiable,” Sy said. “You give me the last copy of Arthur’s memoir. In return, Susanna backs your story that you left the gallery late. And I do everything that I can to make sure you are not indicted for your father’s murder. As you know, I am very good at my job.” Sy picked up a chewed-on cigar from the ashtray on his desk and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “Then we discover your father’s memoir among his papers. Finished, of course. And edited slightly. But basically his life with a never-before-revealed, eyewitness account of the events surrounding Tito Acevedo’s murder.

“Most of the story will be a familiar to you. The glamorous party. You were sleeping over. Your father came back to get you. Wonderful stuff, how he comforts Bunny in her distress. She practices the confession she plans to deliver when the police get there. We take out the part where they move Tito’s body from Joelen’s bedroom. It just makes things more complicated than they need to be.”

“Is that where Tito was killed?”

“According to Bunny”—Sy raised his eyebrows—“and on this I take her at her word, Henry burst into her bedroom, yelling at Tito to leave her alone and brandishing a knife. But he did not have the nerve to use it. Tito chased him. Henry hid in Joelen’s bedroom, but Tito came after him. It was pure chance that Tito was the one who ended up dead. Pure chance that you were not there. Tito died in the bed you had been sleeping in.”

Deirdre closed her eyes and for a moment she was back in Joelen’s bedroom, smelling hairspray and feet and ripe pungent sawdust in the cage where Joelen’s pet guinea pigs lived.
I thought I was protecting my mother.
That’s why Joelen said she’d confessed. In the end, her confession had protected Bunny and Henry both.

“Like I said, we leave all that out,” Sy went on. “Before the police arrive, your father drives off with you. Next thing he knows is the morning headlines: Joelen’s confession and arrest for murder. We add a third act. The trial. Bunny’s triumph in court. Happy ending: Justice is served. In its way.”

“And Henry? Is he in the movie?”

“Who’s Henry?” Sy chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest.

“What about Jackie?”

“A mere footnote. Bunny will endorse the book. Publishers will be crawling all over one another to get their hands on it. Movie rights will go at auction. You and Henry will cash in. And Bunny will go back to her favorite private clinic, Beverly Medical Center, for more plastic surgery in preparation for her product launch and a starring role in the feature film. Arthur will be dancing in his grave. The changes to his story will seem minor. Believe me, he would not have cared.”