Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (5 page)

And why the hell was I once again thinking about this? Once
more -- with feeling -- I redirected my thoughts.

My own impression of Ally and Porter was vague at best. If
I’d realized he was going to get himself bumped off, I’d have paid closer
attention. He had seemed too old for her -- and way too obsessed with deep-sea
fishing. She had seemed very…blonde.

Blonde or not, I couldn’t see why she’d have to resort to
murder. Granted, I was no judge, but she seemed like a girl who wouldn’t have a
lot of trouble landing another meal ticket -- assuming her acting skills
weren’t breadwinner caliber.

Maybe Porter had told her one too many deep-sea fishing
stories. In that case, she had my sympathy. There had been a moment or two at
luncheon when I wouldn’t have regretted seeing Porter impaled on a swordfish’s
bill and disappearing into the sunset à la Captain Ahab in the last act of
Moby Dick
.

Anyway, it wasn’t like I had any theories, so Ally
Beaton-Jones was as good a place to start as any. I just couldn’t imagine her
willingly opening up to me -- even if she hadn’t knocked her old man off --
regardless of how sensitive and tactful Paul thought I was.

“Look, Adrien!” cried Emma.

I looked and smiled. Her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes
sparkled, the dark ponytail bobbed perkily beneath her safety helmet as she
cantered past, the gelding’s hooves thudding rhythmically on the sand. I never
saw myself as the paternal type, but even I had to admit I was pretty damned
fond of Emma.

“Heels down,” I ordered.

She giggled.

Paul had promised to phone Ally and set up my visit. That was
fine as far as it went. I wondered if there was some way of my finding out the
name of the PI that Jones had hired.

Jake probably knew. Jake was a methodical and relentless
investigator. By now he’d be deeply immersed in Porter Jones’s public and
private lives, sifting and sorting through the kinds of things most of us would
prefer to have buried with us. But cops can’t afford to be tactful -- not in
the ordinary course of things. In a homicide investigation every minute counts;
most murders are solved within forty-eight hours. Of course, that’s because
most murders are committed by morons.

Yeah, if Porter Jones had really hired a PI, Jake probably
knew all about it. But there was no way I could ask him. I wasn’t going
anywhere near Jake. Of course, I could always ask Paul Kane to talk to Jake,
but -- funny thing -- I didn’t like that idea any better than the idea of me
talking to Jake.

In fact, I liked it less.

Chapter Five

The Joneses were keeping up with everyone else in Bel Air.

The house sat at the end of a long, hedge-lined drive behind
tall and ornate gates reminiscent of those guarding Paramount Studios. It
looked like a small-scale replica of the Palace of Fontainebleau -- and
probably cost more. Just one of any number of the lushly landscaped
multimillion-dollar mansions dotting the winding hillside of Chalon Road in the
Platinum Triangle of Los Angeles’s Westside.

A maid with a German accent opened the door to me, and I was
escorted upstairs to an enormous bedroom suite. It looked like it had been
decorated for Barbara Cartland -- or Emma. I’ve never seen so many shades of
pink in one room. The grieving widow greeted me in her red satin slip. By
greeting, I mean she spotted me and said, “I don’t have time to talk to you.”

“Would you prefer that I come back later?”

“I’d prefer you not to come back at all.” She held up two
black dresses on hangers. “Which do you think?”

Did I look like Mr. Blackwell? “The one on the right,” I
said, which is what I always say on the rare occasions a lady asks for my
sartorial guidance.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, and tossed both dresses
over the winged back of a rose-colored Queen Anne chair. Then, propping her
hands on her hips, she stared at me.

I estimated her age as a little younger than mine. She was
very tanned and very blonde. I’d assumed because her hair was such a brassy
color that she -- unlike my stepsisters -- dyed it, but the startling absence
of eyelashes and eyebrows indicated otherwise.

“I just have a couple of questions. I won’t take long,” I
assured her. The flimsy slip and bedroom setting pretty much guaranteed that.
Nothing against Ally, who was built like a Valkyrie, because I wouldn’t have
been happy interviewing any half-naked stranger in his chamber.

“Hmph,” she said with a little toss of her head. I didn’t
know women really did that.
Hmp
h
! Just like a cartoon character. Like
Betty Rubble when Barney was more of a bonehead than usual. She turned away,
rifling through one of those tall jewelry boxes that could have doubled for a
walk-in closet, and muttered, “This is the dumbest plan. I don’t know what Paul
is thinking.”

I was with her on that one. I said, “I guess he’s hoping to
circumvent a lot of unpleasantness with the police by having people talk to
me.” Yeah, hand me my monocle and top hat because I can babble this stuff on
cue.

While she pawed through the crown jewels, I took a look
around the bedroom. Either she’d had every trace of Porter removed or she was
sleeping single. There wasn’t so much as a stray slipper or tie pin. Nor was
Porter featured in any of the numerous gold-framed photographs.

Of course, some married people did sleep separately. Or she
might have gotten rid of all the painful reminders.

“Well, I don’t see how talking to you is going to save me any
unpleasantness with the police. I’ve already had to talk to them once, and I’m
sure I’ll have to talk to them again,” Ally said. Which just goes to prove that
a woman may be foolish enough to receive you in her boudoir wearing nothing but
her slip, and yet not be a total idiot.

So I changed the subject. “How are you holding up? I never
got a chance to tell you how sorry I was about Porter.”

She raised her head and gave me a wide-eyed stare. “Can you
fasten this for me?”

Where were the sleaze horns when I needed them?

She sauntered over to me and turned her back, indicating that
I should fasten the necklace around her throat. I obliged. For all the obvious
care and pampering that had been bestowed on Ally, there was something sort of
coarse about her, but I couldn’t pin it down. Her neck was a little on the
thick side. She smelled of Chanel, which my mother occasionally wears, but
somehow Ally made it smell cheap. Her back to me, she said, “I know what Paul
thinks. Everyone thinks I didn’t love Porter, that I just married him for the
money, but Porter and I --” She shrugged.

As avowals of lasting love go, I’ve sat through more
professional presentations.

But I said, “No outsider can understand a relationship
between two people.” Hell, sometimes even the people
in
the relationship couldn’t understand it.

“That’s right,” she said, turning to me in surprise. “People
on the outside never understand. They always want to give you advice or tell
you off or…something.”

I said, “Maybe everyone hadn’t heard the divorce was off.”

“What divorce?” Her expression changed. “I know where you
heard
that
,” she spat. “That’s
totally Paul. I don’t know why, but he has
always
had it in for me. Maybe he had a thing for Porter.”

I tried to picture that, but the picture wouldn’t come --
thankfully.

She went on, “Yes, Porter and I did discuss divorce, and we
realized we loved each other too much to do anything so silly.”

“That’s got to be a comfort to you now,” I said. “I can
imagine how painful it would be to have someone you care for die with a lot of
unresolved --”

“
Ye
s
!” she exclaimed. “That is
exactly
right!” She gave me an approving
lashless gaze. “See, gay guys always understand these things!”

“We’re born with that understanding gene,” I said. “Do you
and Porter have kids?”

She swallowed hard at the idea. “No.”

“How long were you married?”

“Four years.”

“Was it your first marriage?”

She smiled at this bit of whimsy. “It was my first
real
marriage.” She shot me a
speculative glance. “You know, if I had to pick someone who I thought might
have wanted Porter out of the way -- which I wouldn’t do because that would be
totally
crass -- I’d suggest you talk to
Al January.”

“You’re kidding.” If I’d had a monocle it would have popped
right out at that point.

She shook her head. “Paul didn’t tell you
that
, did he? No. Because he likes Al.
And because he needs Al for this movie. Al’s like his Bosley.”

“His what?” I had a sudden vision of Jill, Kelly, and Sabrina
gathered around the loudspeaker to receive orders from Charlie.

“Oh, you know. His biographer. Al’s like his personal
screenwriter. Paul’s happy to throw
me
to the wolves, but he doesn’t want anyone looking too closely at Al January.”

I deciphered as best I could. “What would there be to see if
someone looked closely?”

Ally got a mulish expression. “Well, for one thing, Porter
and Al have never been that close even though they were all part of that whole
Langley Hawthorne clique, and for another thing they’ve all been arguing a lot
recently. Porter and Al were arguing at the party. Plenty of people heard them,
including Paul.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“I don’t think you were there yet. You arrived pretty late.”
She smiled. “I noticed you right away.” She gave me an approving look. “I like
quiet, polite men. And men who wear Hugo Boss. I was hoping you weren’t gay. Or
that you were only half-gay. Like Paul.”

“Uh…sorry,” I said. “It’s pretty much full-time now. The
pay’s not great, but the perks…”

She squealed with laughter. “I
scared
you!” Then she turned grave and dignified. “You know, I
am
a widow.”

“I know,” I said. And God help the unsuspecting Southland
with Ally on the loose once more. I thought Kane had it right: Mrs. Jones
wasn’t all that broken up over her older husband’s death. That didn’t mean
she’d knocked him off, though. Frankly, the poisoned cocktail seemed a little
complicated for Ally. I figured she was more the type to run him over with the
Jaguar or clunk him with a marble finial and toss him into the pool out back. “Do
you have any idea what your husband and Al January were arguing about?”

She had moved over to the dressing table where she proceeded
to put mascara on, tilting her head at an unnatural angle and ogling herself
open-mouthed in the three mirrors. Framed there in gilt, she reminded me of a
split-image Picasso.

“No.” She formed the word carefully, combing her lashes out.
“Business, I suppose.”

“Was business bad enough to kill?”

She shrugged another plump shoulder. “I never listened to
Porter when he got going.”

Ah. At last. The secret to a successful marriage.

“January tried to save Porter,” I pointed out. “He was the
one who administered CPR.”

“You’ll notice he
didn’t
save Porter, though,” she pointed right back.

“From the little the police have said, I don’t think anyone
could have saved him. It sounds like he got a massive dose of whatever killed
him.”

“Heart medication,” she said.

“Did Porter have a heart condition?”

She pumped the mascara wand in the tube. “Nope.”

“Do you?”

I smiled in answer to her indignant look. “See, I do,” I
said.

“Oh.” She unbent a fraction. “Really?”

I said, “Can you think of anyone else who might have had a
reason to get your husband out of the way?”

She blinked, creating an effect reminiscent of Malcolm
McDowell in
A Clockwork Orange
.
“Fuck!” She grabbed tissues and began dabbing away the black dots. When she had
wiped away the smears, she recapped the mascara, and placed it neatly back on
the tray of cosmetics. “No,” she said flatly, and it took me a second to
remember exactly what I had asked her.

“Did Porter have any enemies? Or any problems with anyone
besides Al January?”

She shook her head, staring down at the collection of
cosmetics.

“Was this a second marriage for Porter? Does he have an ex?
Or maybe kids by another marriage?”

She brightened. “Yes. He was married to Marla Vicenza. But
they didn’t have any children.” She slanted me a look. “Porter was sterile.”

Too much information. See, this is why I really wasn’t cut
out for the amateur sleuth gig. I really didn’t want to know that much about my
fellow man.

“How did Porter get on with his first wife?”

“Fine.” She shrugged. “Listen, if Marla was going to kill
Porter she’d have done it twenty years ago.” She waved a makeup brush at me and
little specks of powder flew through the air. “Now is that it? Because I have
to get dressed.”

I noted that she had decided I needed to leave once she was
putting her clothes
on
. I said,
“Yeah, that’s it. Is it okay if I call you if I have any other questions?”

She sighed. “I guess. I just want to make sure you understand
that Porter and I were
very
happy.
Our marriage had
never
been
stronger.”

“Sure. And thank you for talking to me so openly,” I told
her.

“I just want this all to go away,” she said, and while I sympathized,
I could have told her from personal experience that murder took a long time to
go away.

I found my own way downstairs through all the marble and tile
and priceless art. I’d rarely seen a place that looked less lived-in, unless it
was
the Palace of Fontainebleau. Casa
Jones had the chill feel of an after-hours museum. Maybe it was the décor or
maybe it was just the domestic vibe.