Bannerman's Law (12 page)

₁₀

One
w
eek earlier. Sur La Mer.
They talked for two hours that night. Haltingly, at first.
There were many silences of five minutes or more. At
times, the mind of the old woman seemed clear and sharp.
At other times it wandered.

Marion, the wooden actress whom Nellie had mimicked
,
and then apologized for it
,
was Marion Davies. The film was
Beverly of Graustark
made in 1926, now on a cassette. Bar
bara read the label as Nellie Da
m
eon poured her a sherry.
Having set down the glass Nellie took a framed photo
graph from an antique chiffonier and handed it to Barbara.
In it, smiling for the camera, were Nellie herself, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, and a very young Gary Cooper. The latter three had autographed it. Marion Davies
had written,
“
Just found this. Popsy and Gary say get
well. Love you
.”
It was dated, in her hand,
October 193
1
.

“
She was Hearst's mistress, you know
.”

And prot
e
g
e
, Barbara nodded. She'd read about them
somewhere.

“
Marion didn't do much after sound came, either
,”
Nellie said wistfully.
“
She had a stutter
.”

“
Um
.
.
.
Miss Da
m
eon
?”

“
Nellie will be fine
.”

“
Thank you. Why do you pretend you're
.
.
.
” She searched for a word that would not offend.

“
Crackers
?”
Nellie offered.
“
Because I am. I think
.”

“
Not that I can see. But, at the window, you tried to
make me think you're catatonic. It would have worked if
I hadn't heard you laugh
.”

The old actress glanced at the drapes, now fully drawn.
“
I'll keep those windows closed
,”
she said.

“
Nellie? Please tell me
.”

The eyes drifted. They glazed over. She was doing it
again. But not for long.
“
It's a place I go
,”
she said, as
if upon waking.
“
It keeps me out of trouble
.”

That word again.

“
Would somebody harm you? If they knew you
could speak
?”

She hesitated. ”I don't know
.”

“
Are you afraid of the Dunvilles? If you are, why don't
you leave
?”

She smiled, sadly. She shook her head.

“
There are hundreds of places
,”
Barbara tol
d
her.
“
You'd be with people your age. You could tal
k
to them
all you want
.”

The glaze returned. It hovered. It did not settle. ”I
went on a picnic this morning
,”
she said, sitting back in
her chair.

Barbara waited.

“
Not here. At Malibu. Just girls. Me, Marion and Col
leen Moore
.”
She pointed to another old photograph. An
actress with bangs.

Barbara looked but said nothing.

“
We gossiped, and laughed, and ate everything we're
not allowed
.”
Nellie smiled at the memory.
“
We had
horses there. We rode them, bareback, through the
waves
.”

“
You went
...
in your mind
?”

The actress shook her head. She touched her fingers to
the back of her hand. ”I can still feel the salt
.”

Barbara understood. A little.
“
You're saying
.
.
.
you
were really there
.”

“
Yes
.”

“
You can do that? Go off, be young again, anytime
you like
?”

She nodded slowly.
“
You learn. But everything has to be just so. It only works from this chair. And from my
bench
.”
She reached for her sherry and sipped from it.
The light flooded back into her eyes.
“
Of course
,”
she
said, smiling,
“
it helps to be crackers
.”

Barbara laughed aloud. She clamped a hand over her mouth as the old woman, still smiling, shushed her. She
picked up her own glass and, with it, saluted Nellie
Da
m
eon.

“
Nellie? Why did you say that I'm in more trouble
than I know
?”

he smile faded.
“
Is Barbara your real name
?”

“
It is now
.”

“
Will you tell me who you were before
?”

”I want to. But it's better if I don't
.”

“
You don't seem
.
.
.”
She stopped
^
herself.

”A
bad person? I hope not. I like to think not
.”

Nellie wet her lips, deciding whether to speak.
“
Some
never leave
,”
she said at last.

Barbara stared.
“
Why would that be
?”

“
They break rules
.”

Tuesday morning. Los Angeles.

“
Get off here
,”
Ca
rl
a Benedict pointed.
“
Go east on
Slauson
.”

They were traveling southbound on the Harbor Free
way. Minutes earlier, they had passed the University of
Southern California campu
s
on their right, then the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Molly Fa
rr
ell followed her directions, turning at last
onto Alameda Street in the section called Huntington Park.
There was nothing pa
r
kl
i
ke about it, she thought. Not a
good neighborhood at all. Seedy apartment buildings, most
of them two or three stories, gratings over store fronts, the
residents mostly black or Hispanic.

Carla pointed toward a row of apartments, wood frame,
white, probably built just after World War
n
, in need of
paint. Molly pulled up at the curb. Carla took a long
breath, held it, then stepped from the car.

Lisa's apartment was on the far end
,
second floor,
reached by an outside stairway. Two keys opened the two
locks of the door. The hinges squeaked. Molly had half-
expected some sort of police notice to be taped to it, seal
ing the apartment while the investigation proceeded, but
there was nothing. She would have assumed that the police
had been there, and a few reporters as well. Apparently
they had not.

The apartment consisted of one good-size living room,
a small bedroom, and a tiny bath. The living room had a
kitchen at one end. Someone, long before Lisa, had removed the partition between kitchen and living room to
give it a loft effect. Sparse furnishings made it seem larger
than it was. It had a pullout couch. Ca
rl
a had probably slept on it when she visited. There were framed posters
on the walls, one Italian, one French, and a number of
artifacts that were obviously European, probably sent by
Carla over the years. Carla moved through the room,
slowly, touching things.

Molly said nothing, reluctant to intrude, as she watched
Carla'
s eyes. For the most part they were soft, unfocused
,
even lost. Now and then they would begin to melt as a
memory passed behind them. But at other times they
would narrow, and they would shine. Molly knew that
they were seeing, trying to see, the man who had killed
her sister. Trying to feel him, as she said she had where
Lisa's body had been found.

It was strange, she thought. Like watching two different
people. The Carla she'd known for years, and the Carla she was just getting to know as she'd finally stroked her
to sleep in their bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Molly had known, of course, that Carla and her sister
had been born almost fifteen years apart. She'd presumed
Lisa to have been an accident. Parents well into their for
ties by the time she was born. But the accident, it turned out, had been Carla. Her mother, unwed, became pregnant. Father forced into marriage. Embittered by it. Resented
Carla. Mother was much closer to her but became a drunk.
Lisa born while Carla was in high school. Parents, espe
cially the father, doted on Lisa, took her everywhere,
bragged about her, rarely mentioned Carla except in terms o
f the scrapes she got into and the cars she wrecked,
possibl
y
to get their attention, although she'd deny that,
possibly to hurt them back. And yet Ca
rl
a, far from re
senting Lisa, doted on her the most. She loved her, she
had said last night
.
.
.
“
with th
e
passion put to use i
n
my old griefs
.
.
.
and with the love I seemed to lose with
my lost saints
.''

Molly had to shake her head. Carla Benedict, Calamity
Carla, quoting sonnets from the Portuguese. The second
bottle of wine had done it.

They moved toward the bedroom. Molly entered first.

A queen-size bed, no headboard, stacked with pillows.
More poster art on the walls but these were of movies.
Old movies. Some of them silent films. By the window
stood a scarred oak desk with a computer and printer on
it. A telephone answering machine, not blinking. There was
a two-drawer filing cabinet, and three shelves crammed
with books.

Something was wrong here. She didn't know what, ex
actly. Perhaps it was the answering machine. After two
days, there should have been a call on it. She reached for
the switch and moved it to
Play.

“
Hi, gorgeous. It's Kevin
.”

The sound, a young man's voice, startled Carla. She
stepped closer.

“
Listen, I got a tape of
Flesh and the Devil.
Gilbert
and Garbo with a whole new score b
y
the London Sym
phony. Great stuff. We're going to watch it at nine at
DiDi
Fenerty's
.
I
f you get this in time
,
just come over
.”

Molly heard a TV in the background. The end of a car
commercial followed by a loud ticking sound.
“
The ma
i
l
this week was unusually
.
.
.
”
The caller disconnected.
But the television show, she realized, was
60 Minutes.

There was a second message. A woman's voice, no
name but obviously a friend
,
asking if Lisa planned to run
in the morning.
Two calls, thought
Molly. Both on Sunday evening. But who had played
them? Not Lisa. She was long dead by then.

“
That wasn't flashing
,”
Ca
rl
a said quietly.

Molly nodded.
‘T
h
e
police were probably here
.”
But now her eyes were roaming the room. They fell on the
surface of the desk. She sniffed it. It smelled of a cleanser. She felt it. It seemed to have been wiped clean. She leaned
over the keyboard of Lisa's computer. Same odor there. And on the answering machine. But on the outer reaches
of the desk she could see an accumulation of dust and
soot. And on the bookcase.

She noticed something else. The bookcase had not been
dusted, probably for a week or more. And in front of each
book she saw tracks in the dust, fresh tracks, as if each
of them had been examined. Why, she wondered, would
the police look inside every book? The answer: they
wouldn
'
t. Not unless they had reason to believe that some
thing had been hidden between the pages. Molly reached
into her purse. From a zippe
r
ed compartment she produced
a pair of thin surgical gloves and slipped them over her
hands.