“I’m afraid there’s not much left to see,” he told me. “The structure was pretty well destroyed in the fire. All that’s left is a black spot on the ground.”
“I’m not expecting much,” I said. “Would it be all right?”
Walt blinked, then nodded. He showed the officer and me the way, and led us out the back door of the main building and toward the spot where the gazebo had been.
The area still smelled from the fire, a smell that reminded me of barbecues when I was a boy—my father is a lousy griller. If you took a ream of paper, soaked it in water, waited for it to dry completely, and then burned it, you could get the same general scent. It wasn’t pretty.
Walt had been right: there wasn’t much to look at, just a burned spot, very large and remarkably symmetrical, round. Almost as if it had been designed.
It was still fenced off, but the fence was close enough and low enough that the spot could be seen clearly. Small pieces of wood, once painted white, were visible in the brown grass and the mud.
To one side, leaning on a walker near the police tape, taking no note of us, was Marion Borello. I think the walker was more for support when she was standing still than for when she was walking.
I kept my distance out of respect for her feelings.
“Where was the wheelchair?” I asked.
Broeker pointed to a spot near the top of the circle, nearest the natural path to the gazebo when it had been standing. He said nothing.
“You were here that night?” I asked him. He nodded, a cigar store Native American with a crick in his neck.
“A lot of officers were here,” Walt said. “EMS came, too, but by the time the flames were under control, there was nothing that could be done for poor Mr. Lillis.”
I knew it was pointless to spend much time in the area; the cops had seen everything there was to see, and I didn’t want this mental picture to linger for me. Harry’s death had hit me harder than I was willing to admit, more than it should have for someone who, technically, I had met only a couple of weeks before. But Harry Lillis had been a hero of mine all my life, and to lose him this way, so soon after meeting him, hurt more than it would have a month ago.
Marion seemed to decide something, then walked toward us, not very slowly, with the walker.
When she reached us, I said, “I’m so sorry, Marion.”
She didn’t even look at me. She just kept walking. I watched for a long time as she made her way back toward the building.
“Let’s go,” I said. My voice was hoarse. I clutched the guitar respectfully by the neck and started toward the parking lot. On the way, I thanked Walt for taking the time, and for letting me have the guitar, an impressively generous gesture.
“You were the first guest Mr. Lillis had had in quite some time,” he said. “I know Mr. Testalone spoke with him, but you were the first one to come specifically to see Harry Lillis. I know that meant a lot to him, because he spoke of you often after that.”
“I’ll bet he insulted me,” I said.
Walter Lee grinned. “Maybe a little.”
“I can’t believe nobody else wanted the guitar,” I said as we reached the police cruiser.
“Nobody asked for anything,” Walt answered. “I haven’t heard from anyone.”
“There must have been a next of kin on your records when Harry first applied here,” I said. “There has to be a name as a beneficiary on his life insurance.”
Walt looked uncomfortable. “Yes,” was all he said.
I narrowed my eyes as Officer Broeker opened the car door for me to place the guitar in the back. “There was someone. You checked,” I said.
Walt’s mouth flattened out. “Yes,” he said. “I did check. And it was odd.”
“No beneficiary?”
He shook his head. “No, there was one. Mr. Lillis’s life insurance listed one beneficiary. Wilson Townes.”
28
THE
drive back to Midland Heights was as quiet a ride as I can recall taking. Officer Broeker, chatterbox that he was, spoke only when absolutely necessary, and sometimes not even then. I had a lot of time to think, and that wasn’t my best option at this moment.
I realized that my coming to Englewood was supposed to be helpful for the police, and not necessarily for me, but I couldn’t help ruminating on the idea that I’d come home with more questions than I had when I’d gotten out of bed this morning. A lot more questions.
Wilson Townes was the beneficiary of Harry Lillis’s life insurance policy. How did that make any sense? Lillis had hardly seemed to remember that Townes
had
a son when I’d mentioned him, and certainly hadn’t exhibited any affection, outward or otherwise, when Wilson’s name had come up. Sure, Lillis had no children of his own, but Wilson Townes was barely an afterthought. Why leave him the death benefit (my favorite oxymoron) from Lillis’s policy?
But that was just the beginning of the questions I’d compiled after meeting with Honig. Why had Lillis been using a wheelchair if he didn’t need one? I had no reason to disbelieve Walter Lee, who said he’d clearly seen Harry Lillis up and walking around at the Booth Actors’ Home, even though Lillis had insisted on using the chair when I’d visited. Was Lillis putting on a performance for my benefit? Why would he want me to think he was seriously injured if he wasn’t? Did that tie in with the insurance policy? Would there have been some kind of claim that I’d have been expected to testify about?
And what was the look that passed between Walt and Broeker when it was obvious something had been removed from Lillis’s room? I asked Broeker about it, and he responded in no uncertain terms that, “I was told to drive you. I’m driving you.” And he didn’t say anything else.
All this confusion was making my brain hurt, and since Broeker was unwilling to stop at an ice cream store to ease my pain (some people are so rigid!), I decided to take a walk after he dropped me off at Comedy Tonight. I’d left a key for Sophie in her family’s mailbox, as I’d prearranged (over Sophie’s objections that I was “using a woman like a slave”) before Broeker had picked me up at the theatre. Since I figured the three kids could run a matinee well enough for an extra half hour, I headed to Big Herbs, a vegetarian restaurant on Edison Avenue, for a quick bite. Well hell, I couldn’t get ice cream. I go from one extreme to the other when under stress.
I was hoping Belinda McElvoy would be behind the counter today, and I was lucky. Belinda, an African-American woman with striking good looks and an overwhelming serenity, could make you feel good about the seventh day of rain in a row. It was only cloudy today, so I figured I was already one step ahead.
“What’s good today, Belinda?” I asked as I took a stool. Big Herbs is a slightly renovated diner, at one point called Big Bob’s Bar-B-Q Pit, which had probably been closed by the Board of Health over cholesterol issues. Midland Heights being the kind of town it is, public demand was voiced for a vegetarian restaurant, and so Big Herbs was born.
Of course, most people are hypocrites, so Big Herbs was usually pretty empty, like today. Saturday afternoon at lunchtime, and there were three other people in the place besides Belinda and me.
She looked at me. “You don’t think I actually eat this stuff, do you?” she asked, and I laughed. Belinda was a woman whose tastes ran to pulled pork and french fries. She would have been better off working at Big Bob’s. And she stays perfectly trim. There are days the very sight of her could move me to violence.
“In that case, give me a Caesar salad,” I said. “Heavy on the croutons.”
“You a growing boy?”
“In all the wrong directions,” I told her.
Belinda went to place the order at the window behind the counter, then came back with a bottle of water that she knew I’d want, a napkin, and a counter setup. She took a long look at my face and asked, “Now, what’s the problem with you? Elliot, you look like somebody ran over your puppy dog with a steamroller.”
“I lost a friend,” I told her, and she frowned.
“Sorry,” Belinda said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Was it a good friend?” she asked.
“Not really. Well, maybe. Yes. I don’t know.”
Belinda walked away for a moment to deliver something containing a good deal of kale to one of the tables, then came back to pretend to clean the counter when she was actually talking to me. “Is that what’s got you so down?” she asked, as if the conversation hadn’t been interrupted at all.
“I guess. Thing is, my friend died under . . . odd circumstances. And I’m trying to figure it out. And it won’t figure.” I don’t know when, but Belinda managed to bring my salad while I was being incoherent. She knew I liked the dressing on the side, and had delivered it that way, so I poured a little on and started in. Charlie Brown once noted that, “Some psychiatrists say that people who eat peanut butter sandwiches are lonely. I guess they’re right. And when you’re really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth.” Of course, Charlie never had a Caesar salad for lunch. Or perhaps people who eat Caesar salads for lunch aren’t lonely; they’re bedeviled by a murder.
Okay, maybe not
all
of them.
“Tell me about it,” Belinda said. Others have a friendly bartender or a source at the telephone company to help in their detection. I have Belinda, the waitress at the vegetarian cafe. Of course, Belinda’s not only a very intelligent woman, but she’s also studying for her PhD in psychology. No, really.
“My friend was an old man. He wasn’t going to be around forever. But somebody went out of their way to kill him, and it doesn’t add up. What was to be gained by killing him?”
“Money?” Belinda asked. “On
CSI
, they always say people kill other people over money or sex. How old was your friend?”
“Around eighty.”
“Probably not sex, then.”
“Could be revenge,” I said. “There was this other guy who thought my friend was fooling around with his wife, and the wife ended up dead the same way as my friend. But that was fifty years ago. Why wait that long for revenge?”
“You really need to tell me the whole story from the beginning, Elliot,” she chided.
So I did. I told her all about Lillis and Townes, the fire in 1958, Townes’s suspicion that Harry was having an affair with Vivian, the wheelchair, the insurance policy.
Everything.
During which Belinda managed to serve up two veggie burgers, an omelet (it’s vegetarian at Big Herbs, not vegan), and some whole-grain pasta with zucchini, all while listening to my twisted tale. I managed to eat about half the salad (it was huge) and drank the whole bottle of water.
When I was finished, Belinda gave me a long look and sighed. “Sounds like quite a mess,” she said.
“You got that right. But what do I do about it?”
Belinda looked puzzled. “Why do you have to do anything about it? That’s why the police were invented, isn’t it?”
“You ever lose a friend, Belinda?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“How can I
not
do something?”
She thought for a long time. “Well, the cops aren’t going to share information with you, and you don’t have any witnesses you can talk to on this side of the country. Seems to me that if you think there’s a connection, you have to look into the Hollywood murder. You going to fly out to L.A.?”
“Seems unlikely,” I said. “What with this theatre to run and everything.”
“Not going to be easy from here. You know what you need, Elliot?”
“What?”
“A big juicy hamburger.”
I laughed. “Seriously,” I said. “What do I need?”
“What you need,” she said, “is to think about something else. That’s when you’ll get your best idea.”
Damn it. She was right. “How is it that you and I never moved past the ‘banter’ stage?” I asked her.
Belinda considered me for a moment, and grinned on the right side of her lovely face. “Honey,” she said. “You couldn’t handle me.”
29
MY
first order of business on returning to the theatre was to check on the staff, who couldn’t possibly have cared less than I hadn’t been there for a few hours. Sophie, at her station behind the snack bar, reported there were forty-seven members in the matinee audience for
The Ghost Breakers
, which unfortunately was about what I’d expected. Sophie said one African-American woman had come out about a half hour into the film, demanding her money back because the way Bob Hope treats his valet Willie Best in the film was “racist.” Which it unquestionably was, but 1940 will remain 1940 on film for all eternity, and there’s not much one can do about it. I’d already limited myself to comedy films, and half the time to those made at least a quarter century ago. To further limit myself to comedy films from at least a quarter century ago that contained no material offensive to a Midland Heights audience would be to ensure constant showings of
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
for the rest of my life, which wouldn’t be long, since I would soon commit suicide. The movie’s heart is in the right place, but, oh boy, is it dull!
Luckily, after listening to a few minutes of Sophie’s feminist invective, the woman was more incensed about Bob’s dealings with Paulette Goddard in the film, and rushed back in to see how it would turn out, and probably to break up with the guy who’d brought her to the film. It is our pleasure to serve our audience.
Anthony was upstairs, still reeling (you should pardon the expression) from his film’s latest disappearance, and no doubt concocting more reasons that it was all my fault. Or his father’s. One of the two of us was clearly responsible for all the evil in the world, because his father loved and cared and worried about him and paid for college, and I gave him a paycheck every couple of weeks and ran his film for him to show all his friends and family. Yup, we were a pair of blackguards, Michael Pagliarulo and I.
Jonathan stood at the auditorium entrance, looking tall and baffled in a Firesign Theatre T-shirt and his ubiquitous flip-flops. I breathed a sigh of relief that at least he’d cut his toenails, and wondered if a) he had conspired with a man I now believed to be a murderer to threaten me, and b) if he’d wear those damned flip-flops in a couple of months when the temperature would be in the twenties.