The Bequest (4 page)

Teri didn’t consider
herself a snob, and she certainly didn’t think
of her home in the Hollywood Hills as an ivory tower, but as she wheeled
her dark blue hybrid Toyota Highlander SUV past a row of crumbling
frame structures wedged one after the other along a street that hadn’t seen
any tender loving care in decades, she felt as if she had entered another
world. Most of the houses were set back mere feet from the curb, some
with fading memories of white picket fences. She knew that this had once
been a neighborhood of blue-collar workers who took pride in their homes
as they raised their families in the shadows of downtown. But urban blight
had crept in, families moved out, and now gangs, prostitutes, and drug
addicts reigned.

She pulled to a stop in front of a frame house with aluminum siding
that flaked huge chunks of paint like canker sores. She double-checked the
number on the mailbox with the number written on the notepad in the
passenger seat. A perfect match.

She killed the engine and stepped out of her SUV. She looked
around, wondering where the roving pack of car strippers lurked that
would surely denude her car in a just a matter of minutes, but no one was
in sight.
She
probably
should have
taken Mike
up
on
his offer
to
accompany her, but the last thing she wanted from him right then was
either his company or his advice. She paused for a moment, debating
whether to get back in her vehicle and get the hell out of there. But the
siren call of the mystery was too much. She shut the door, punched the
remote lock, and headed toward the front walk.

A rusty gate, barely thigh high, swung by one hinge. She pushed it
with her foot and stepped inside the gated area that passed for a front yard.
Maybe at one time kids had played with toys in this yard, but that would
have been a lifetime ago, if ever. She stepped over a broken step at the
front porch, sure her foot would punch through and a rusty nail would
impale her ankle. The porch creaked, and she wondered whether it would
hold her weight any more than the step would have.

A sign on the front door, made of letters nailed to a wooden block,
said: SPENCER WEST: ATTORNEY AT AW. The missing L lay on the
porch beside the door.

She was surprised to hear it ring somewhere in the house. She would
have bet it didn’t work. After about thirty seconds of no response, she
rang it again then knocked.

She tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. She turned it and
pushed the door open. As she did, a small bell over the doorway rang.
“Hello? Anybody home?” she called.
Silence. She slipped inside, but left the door open behind her. She
found herself in a tiny space that passed for an entryway, crowded with a
hat rack, a small table with newspapers and magazines piled on top, and an
umbrella stand. A lone umbrella rested forlornly inside the stand.
“Hello? Mr. West?”
“Be right there,” a voice came from the recesses of the house. A few
seconds later, a small man, to the point of looking frail, appeared from the
back of the house. He wore creased jeans, a blue button-down dress shirt,
and a dark green bowtie. Teri pegged him as fiftyish, but his thinning hair
might have added ten or fifteen years to his actual age.
“Mr. West?”
He extended his hand. “Spencer West, attorney at aw, at your
service.”
Okay, Teri thought, so he’s got a sense of humor. But if it was
intended to disarm, it failed completely.
“I’m Teri Squire.”
“Of course you are. I recognized you right away. Love your movies.”
He said it almost too glibly, as if he had rehearsed the line.
“Which one is your favorite?” she asked.
He hesitated for a moment then smiled. “Okay, you got me. I never
saw any of them. Then again, I don’t get out much.” He turned toward the
back of the house, gesturing with his hand for her to follow. “Come on in.”
He led her to what had probably once been a den, but now served as
an office. The lighting was poor, but just bright enough to see a gunmetal
gray desk stacked with papers, a row of filing cabinets beside it, and a
worn leather
couch. The
walls were
obscenely
bare, lacking
the
accoutrements every other law office she had ever seen had sported:
diplomas, law licenses, certificates, and pictures of notable clients or
acquaintances. She had once heard what some lawyers call their “me” walls
referred to as the “proof” wall. By hanging law school diplomas and law
licenses on the wall, they proved their legitimacy to clients who sat in
their offices. But Spencer West lacked any such proof; only an attorney at
aw sign on his front door.
West grabbed a few files from the couch and stacked them on the
floor, clearing a spot for Teri. “Have a seat,” he said, but Teri remained
standing, just in case she needed a quick getaway.
“Mr. West, I think you’ve got the wrong person,” she said. “I’ve been
wracking my brain, and I’ve never heard of Lester Crowell.”
West sat in a wooden chair behind the desk. “It’s Leland Crowell.
And I hardly think you’re the wrong person. Are there any other actresses
in this town named Teri Squire who’ve won two Oscars?”
Her silence provided his answer.
“I didn’t think so.” He swiveled his chair around and picked up a file
folder from a small shelf, then spun back around to face her.
“Please, Ms. Squire, sit.”
She slowly lowered onto the couch as West opened the file folder
and thumbed through its contents. “Leland was a very troubled young
man.
He
had it in his mind to write the
great American novel.
Unfortunately, he got writer’s block on Chapter One. So he tried his hand
at screenwriting. He had a little more luck there. Fewer pages, more
white space, and all that. At least he was able to finish one.”
“Mr. West, I don’t mean to be rude, but could you get to the point?”
“Everyone’s always in a hurry. Yes, of course, the point. The point is
that he thought you’d be perfect for the lead in his screenplay. I can’t say,
myself, whether you are or not, since I haven’t read it. Nor have I seen
your movies. Not my cup of tea—no offense intended.”
He paused in his monologue, as if inviting a rebuttal, or at least a
defense.
“And?” Teri asked.
“And so he left his screenplay to you in his will.” He paused again
then added, “Right before he killed himself.”
If West expected to shock her with that last revelation, it worked.
Her face flushed, the heat rising along with her eyebrows. “That’s crazy,”
she said.
“I’ll admit it sounds a bit off, but nevertheless he did it. You are now
the proud owner of the sole screenwriting accomplishment of my client,
Leland Crowell.”
“I don’t want a screenplay. I can’t even read it unless it gets
submitted through my agent—” She stopped, aware that she no longer had
an agent. “Or my lawyer.”
“That would be true if you were worried about Leland suing you for
stealing his screenplay or his idea, but that’s not a concern here. He gave it
to you, so the screenplay is yours. Legally. You don’t have to worry about
the deceased signing a release. Which he clearly can’t do, anyway.”
“What am I going to do with a screenplay?”
West leaned back in his chair, a bemused smile on his face. “Ms.
Squire, I’m just a dumb ol’ lawyer, and I don’t really know what you
Hollywood types do
with
screenplays. I’ve heard tell, though, that
sometimes you read them. Sometimes you even turn them into movies. I
happen to have seen some of those movies. Not yours, though. Sorry. But
maybe if you make Leland’s screenplay into a movie, I’ll come see it.”
Teri stood. “I don’t want his screenplay.”
“Please, sit down.” The sharp tone in his voice surprised her. When
she sat again, he said, “If you don’t want it, then burn it, shred it, do
whatever you want with it. It’s yours, after all, to do with as you please. I
guess you could even disclaim it.”
“Disclaim it?”
“Yes. Leland has made a bequest to you, and you could disclaim it, if
you choose. It’s a simple legal matter of signing a disclaimer.”
“What would happen if I did that?”
“It would go to his alternate beneficiary. Leland’s mother. But if you
decide
you don’t want it, you could always give it to Annemarie,
yourself.”
“Who’s Annemarie?”
“Leland’s mother. She wants to deliver it to you personally. Would
that be all right?”
Teri shook her head. This was just too frickin’ bizarre. First her
agents fire her, then some nutcase she’s never heard of wills her his
masterpiece screenplay—oh, yeah, she was sure it was just great—and
now his mother wants to hand-deliver it to her. She felt like she had
stepped into an episode of
The Twilight Zone
.
“Have you got it here?” she asked. “Why don’t you just give it to
me?”
“Annemarie has it. Besides, don’t you think it’s the least you can do?
Come on, she just lost her son. He apparently worshipped you. He said in
his will that he wrote his screenplay specifically for you, but that you
refused to read it.”
“No one ever told me about any screenplay by a Lester—”
“Leland.”
“Leland Crowell. It would have gone through my agent or my
company or someone else, but it never came to me.”
“Well, it’s coming to you now. You don’t have to like it. You don’t
even have to read it. But can’t you at least be gracious to a poor old
woman who’s just trying to carry out her son’s last wishes?”
Teri stood again. She paused, as if she wanted to say something. But
what? The bequest was downright crazy, but the mother’s request was
imminently reasonable. How could she possibly deny the poor woman
something so simple?
“Have her call me,” she said at last.
Then she turned and left.

Teri sat with
her legs curled up beneath her on the couch, a stack of
screenplays on the coffee table. Through the sliding glass doors, smoke
hung heavily on the horizon, obscuring the views of the Santa Monica
Mountains with a London-like fog. This was just one more thing that made
her long for home in the Hill Country of central Texas, with perennially
clear skies and no fear of forest fires, earthquakes, and mentally disturbed
screenwriters.

Yeah, about that screenwriter. Lester Crowell, or whatever his name
was. When Teri first moved to Los Angeles, seeking a future in film while
simultaneously seeking to escape her past, she knew that the movie
business dominated the landscape of the city like no other industry in no
other town. To use an old Texas expression, you couldn’t swing a cat by
its tail without hitting an aspiring actor or director. Or, as it turned out, a
screenwriter. Teri knew that screenwriters were sometimes the invisible
building blocks in the movie business. After all, without a screenplay,
there could be no movie. Most movie fans could name the stars of their
favorite movies and could usually name the directors. But ask them to
name the screenwriter, and their eyes glazed over, as if you had just asked
them to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity.

You mean somebody writes those things? I thought the actors just made it up
as they went.
She looked at the stack of scripts on the coffee table, some of which
had been in her hands, yet unread, for months. Mike sent a load over just
that morning, his last official act as her agent. And, as far as she was
concerned, as her boyfriend. He assured her that, even though he was no
longer her agent, he intended to help her find the next great screenplay
that would springboard her back to the top. If that actually happened, and
if her star should rise again, she had no doubt that he would swoop back
in, take credit for it, and demand his cut.
She grabbed the top script on the pile, flipped to the back, and
looked at the page number on the last page: 142—too long. It seemed as if
everyone in town was writing a screenplay—waiters, bartenders, store
clerks, schoolteachers, cab drivers, and suicidal nutcases—but very few of
them seemed to know what they were doing. At roughly a minute of
screen time per script page, no one wanted anything more than 105 to 115
pages these days.
She tossed the script on the floor beside the couch, grabbed the next
one, and looked at the last page: 112. Okay, length was good. How about
the story? She flipped to the start and began reading. By page three, she
had reached three conclusions: the writer couldn’t spell; the writer
couldn’t construct a reasonable sentence; and the writer didn’t have a
story to tell. She tossed the script on the floor. Usually Mike had readers
at the agency weed out scripts before they reached her, but apparently the
readers no longer made time for has-beens. It seemed to Teri as if Mike
had simply grabbed a stack of scripts and sent them, then probably
checked off “help Teri find a script” on his to-do list.
She grabbed the next script just as the doorbell rang. She wasn’t
expecting anyone, and she had banned Mike from the premises. Maybe he
was sending over another batch of scripts. Or maybe it was Mona. They
had talked by phone after Teri’s return from the attorney-at-aw’s office,
and Mona had been just as perplexed as Teri by the bizarre turn of events.
“Look at the bright side,” she said. “Sounds like you had a potential stalker
who decided to take himself off the board. You got lucky.”
Teri opened the drawer in the coffee table and grabbed the deadbolt
key next to a .22 handgun she had won in the last shooting competition
she entered before leaving Texas. The time she entered the mixed division
and actually outshot all the men. The prize gun that was now gathering
dust, just another memory of a distant past.
Key in hand, she went to the entryway and peered through the
peephole. The back of a woman’s head, gray hair wrapped in braids, filled
the viewfinder. Who the hell was this? Teri punched her security code on
the alarm pad, then inserted the key into the deadbolt and unlocked it.
The woman on the porch turned as Teri opened the door. Her appearance
momentarily shocked Teri, face grotesquely made up with bright red lips.
She reminded Teri of Carolyn Jones as Morticia in the old
The Addams
Family
sitcom. Or maybe Yvonne DeCarlo as Lily in
The Munsters
.
Then Teri saw the screenplay the woman gripped in her hands, and a
light clicked on. “You must be Ms. Crowell.”
“Call me Annemarie. Mr. West said you’d see me.”
“How did you find out where I live?”
“Some things about Hollywood never change. You can still buy maps
to the stars’ homes on almost every street corner.”
Yet another reminder of how vulnerable Teri could be, or could have
been if Lester Crowell had turned out to be a stalker. On the other hand,
the way her star was flaming out over the Hollywood sky, it wouldn’t be
all that much longer before no one knew, or cared, who she was or where
she lived.
“May I come in?” Annemarie asked.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Yes, please come in.”
Teri stepped away
and
escorted the
strange
woman inside.
Annemarie stood stock still in the entryway and scanned the interior of the
house. She seemed to take in a portion of the view, then shuffled her feet
and turned a bit, a pattern she repeated several more times, almost as if
taking a panoramic photograph for her memory. If the neighborhood this
woman lived in was anything like the neighborhood where her lawyer
lived and worked, Teri’s house must look like pure luxury to her.
Teri led the way to the den, with Annemarie following slowly
behind. “Please, have a seat,” Teri said as she resumed her place on the
couch.
Annemarie perched on the edge of a Queen Anne chair across from
Teri, her back rigid, the screenplay held primly on her knees. She looked
out the sliding glass door at the smoky horizon then scanned the den,
repeating the panoramic routine from a seated position, shifting slightly in
the chair as the camera of her mind swept around the room. For a
moment, the two Oscars held her attention then her eyes swept across,
and locked on, the stack of screenplays. It was as if she were mesmerized
by the very sight of them.
“I’m very sorry about your son,” Teri said.
Annemarie tore her eyes away from the scripts. “Coffee.”
“Excuse me?”
“I believe it’s customary to offer a guest coffee. Or tea.”
“Well, you can see that I’m very busy.” Teri gestured at the stack of
screenplays. “I hope you’ll understand if I don’t.”
Annemarie stared at the stack of scripts again, then suddenly met
Teri’s gaze so sharply that Teri had to look away. The woman’s eyes were
dark to the point of appearing black, and they were totally devoid of
emotion. Annemarie looked at the scripts scattered on the floor, then back
to Teri again.
“It must be difficult finding just the right script to suit a woman of
your—
talents
.” Annemarie made the last word sound like an epithet, as if
talents were a four-letter word.
“It’s always tough to find the right script,” Teri said. “For any actor.”
“Then my loss is your gain.”
“Excuse me?”
“My boy Leland wrote
this for you. It’ll make you famous.”
Annemarie spoke in a low voice, almost a monotone. She held up the
script, clutching it in what Teri could only describe as talons. Long curved
nails painted as red as her lips. She began to sway, as if the weight of the
screenplay threw
her
off
balance.
Unconsciously, Teri watched the
movement, her eyes slowly moving back and forth with the swaying.
“Ms Crowell, I don’t want to sound conceited, but I’m already
famous.”
“Leland is a very talented writer.”
“I’m sure he was,” Teri said, correcting Annemarie’s misplaced use of
the present tense.
Annemarie’s swaying took on more length and momentum. Teri’s
eyes continued to follow, and suddenly she felt incredibly sleepy, as if the
past few sleepless nights had finally caught up with her.
“It’s hard for screenwriters to get noticed in this town,” Teri said.
“There’s a lot of competition.”
“This will make a lot of money for you.”
“Again, Ms. Crowell, I don’t want to sound conceited, but I already
have a lot of money.”
“Yes, you’re already famous, and yes, you’re already rich. You’re
also yesterday’s news. This will make you tomorrow’s headline.”
The words stung, more so even than Bob Keene’s hanging the
“poison” label on her. Bob was a businessman, driven by money, and she
could understand his motivation, whether she agreed with his judgments
or not. That didn’t threaten her ego, though it certainly disrupted her
peace of mind. But in Hollywood, perception was everything, and as long
as the public perceived her as a talented actress, an Oscar-winning actress,
then she could survive the insults of business people who didn’t have a
single creative bone in their bodies. So for this odd woman to come into
her home and tell her she was relegated to the trash heap, with her career
hinging
on
the
most
likely
inane
screenplay written by
a
dead
psychopath—and surely the writer didn’t fall far from the nut tree that
now sat across from her—was more than Teri could bear.
Teri wanted to formulate the words to throw Annemarie out of her
house, but all she could come up with was, “I’m sure it’s very good.”
“Don’t patronize me, Ms. Squire.”
“I’m not patronizing you.”
“I hear it in your tone. You think you’re special because you make
movies and because you live up here in your fancy house. You don’t give a
damn about people like my Leland who go to your movies and fawn all
over you as if you mattered.”
“That’s not true. I appreciate my fans. I—”
Annemarie pulled a small photograph from inside the front cover of
the screenplay and handed it to Teri. Teri kept her hands in her lap, but
pulled her eyes away from Annemarie’s swaying to look at the picture. It
showed the face of a thin man, drawn and gaunt, with deep-set eyes that
had dark circles painted beneath them, and long scraggly hair. A face
obviously ravaged by hard living, the kind of face usually associated with
the homeless who panhandled the downtown streets in Los Angeles. She
found herself strangely hypnotized by the photo, yet at the same time,
tearing her eyes away from Annemarie’s sway seemed to have lifted the
sense of drowsiness that had overtaken her earlier.
“That’s my boy,” Annemarie said. “You should at least know what he
looks like. She gestured toward Teri with the photo, but Teri kept her
hands in her lap. Annemarie placed the picture back inside the screenplay.
“You read this screenplay,” Annemarie said, “then you make this
movie. You owe it to Leland.”
“Why do I owe it to Leland?”
“Because he wrote it for you. And because he died for you.”
“Ms. Crowell, Jesus died for me, but Leland didn’t. I don’t know
why he killed himself, but it wasn’t for me. I didn’t even know him.”
Annemarie slid back in her chair and stopped her swaying. “Making
money in the movies is all about making a big splash and getting attention.
I read the papers. I know all about the ‘buzz.’ A movie doesn’t have to be
good if there’s enough hype. But my boy’s screenplay is good. It’s better
than good. And what better hype than playing up a story about a writer
who died just so you would read his screenplay? It’s got blockbuster
written all over it.”
“If you think I would take advantage of your tragedy—”
“I think you’d be a fool not to.”
Teri stood. “Ms. Crowell, I know you’ve suffered a loss, and I’m
sorry for that. I’ve tried to be respectful, but I’d like for you to leave
now.”
Annemarie stood and stared at Teri, the intensity of her gaze finally
forcing Teri to look away. She extended the script to Teri.
“Please take the script with you,” Teri said. “It should be yours.
You’re his mother; you shouldn’t have been just an alternate beneficiary.”
“I’m not an actress. I can’t do anything with it, but you can.”
Annemarie gently, almost tenderly, laid the script on top of the pile on the
coffee table. “Read it. Then call your agent. Call the studio. Call your
publicist. Get the buzz going right now. Leland would have wanted it that
way.”
She paused, then added, “Leland died so it would happen. He’s your
Jesus; he gave his life for you.”
Annemarie turned and walked out. Teri dropped back onto the
couch in stunned silence. She listened to the echo of the woman’s
footsteps, then the sounds of the front door opening and closing. She had
once heard it said that the difference between fiction and real life is that
fiction has to be believable. But who would ever believe what had just
happened?
She leaned forward and looked at the cover of the screenplay: THE
PRECIPICE, a Screenplay by Leland Crowell.
She took it in both hands, without opening it, and tossed it on the
floor with the other rejects.
She grabbed the next one in the stack, opened it, and began reading
the first page.