Authors: Peter Robinson
Stuart kept his eyes on the road. ‘I know, sweetie,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘What happened?’
‘The cops don’t really know anything yet.’
‘All you told me on the phone was that Jack had been killed and the police thought it was either Jaimie or some sort of homophobic maniac. I can’t believe it was Jaimie.’
‘Arvo doesn’t think it was, either.’
‘Then it was some maniac?’
‘Well, there’s a theory it might have been someone Jack picked up on the Boulevard or—’
‘Oh, come on, Stuart. You know as well as I do that Jack wasn’t like that.’
‘Yeah . . . well.’ Stuart scratched the side of his nose. He seemed a little sheepish, cagey.
Sarah paused a moment, then said, ‘Did the detective suggest that there was any connection with the letters, the body I found on the beach?’
‘Look,’ Stuart admitted, ‘I didn’t really want to go into it over the phone, but yes, Arvo says it’s all too much of a coincidence. I mean, he thinks someone could be out to bring down the show, some fucking crazy.’
‘There
couldn’t
be any connection,’ Sarah murmured. But she knew there had to be. ‘Does he have any evidence?’
Stuart shook his head. ‘Not that he’s told me about. He just seems very sure of it.’
Stuart negotiated the airport maze, a small city in itself, and took Lincoln. It was early evening, just getting dark, and a pale full moon shone low in the indigo sky. Opposite, the western horizon glowed deep vermilion. When Stuart turned on the radio, The Doors came on singing ‘LA Woman.’ Sarah asked him if he would change the station and he did, finally settling on a Mozart wind quintet.
As they rounded a curve in the road, just for a second they were at such an angle that the fanned leaves of one of the tall distant palms stood silhouetted against the full moon like a decal. That was so Southern California, Sarah thought, nestling deeper in the seat as the moment passed. Picture-postcard stuff. Beautiful but theatrical. And ephemeral.
Sarah closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. It was Thursday, 27 December, two days after Jack Marillo’s body had been discovered mutilated on the bed of his Laurel Canyon home. Stuart had phoned Sarah in England on Boxing Day, and she had managed to get a flight out of Heathrow the following day. She had left London close to three o’clock, and now it was just after five in LA.
That morning, after a miserable, sleepless night, she had received another letter. Mailed in Los Angeles and sent express delivery, it was addressed simply to Sally Bolton, Robin Hood’s Bay, England.
It was a Christmas card.
The picture on the front showed a typical garish manger scene with bright, blurry stars and the vague figures of the three wise men in the distance.
In addition to the heart with her name inside, the message read,
‘Merry Christmas. I miss you and I’m thinking of you always. I know we are One in Spirit. Maybe one day soon we will have a Baby to love like Little Baby Jesus.’
On top of the news of Jack’s murder, the card had made Sarah physically sick. Now she carried it in her purse next to the letter. She knew the police would be pleased to have his actual handwriting.
Sarah listened as Stuart told her exactly what he had discovered. So far, no drugs had been found in Jack’s system, despite the three grams of cocaine the police had found on his bedside table. And that was entirely consistent with the scenario they had constructed: Jack had just arrived home from Christmas dinner at his parents’ house in the Valley, which he had left at eleven o’clock that evening, and someone – either his lover, Jaimie Kincaid, or a stranger – had been waiting for him. He hadn’t had a chance. As far as the police knew, there was nothing of any value missing, so robbery was ruled out as a motive. They were still in the dark.
Jack dead? Sarah could hardly believe it. More than that, she had a terrible feeling that it was
her
fault. She had refused to face reality. Not only had she told no one about the heart drawn on the beach except Paula, whom she had sworn to secrecy, but she had even denied to herself that she really had seen it. She had almost convinced herself, too, until she read the letter she had carried with her to Robin Hood’s Bay.
If the same person had killed Jack, an idea she was still resisting, then she was at least partly culpable. If she hadn’t been such a bloody fool and denied to herself the existence of the heart, if she had acted immediately when she got the letter that referred to it, then Jack might still be alive. Paula was right; Sarah was selfish, and she had put her own Christmas plans above someone’s life.
Maybe she couldn’t blame herself for taking the letter to England and not reading it sooner, but that wasn’t the point. The minute she
had
read it, she should have phoned Arvo Hughes. Maybe he would have arranged for her to fax it or have it couriered to him immediately. And maybe it would have led him to the killer
before
he got to Jack. What could she say to the detective now? How could she even face him?
The car hit a bump and jolted her. ‘What?’ she said.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Stuart answered. ‘I think you must have been dreaming.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah, rubbing her eyes. ‘I’m
so
tired.’ She realized she had been dozing and looked at her watch. ‘It’s after one in the morning for me, you know.’ When she looked up, she caught a glimpse of a car in the side-view mirror and thought she had seen it pull out behind them at the airport. She could have been mistaken. It was dark, and she couldn’t tell one car from another most of the time. Even if it was following them, it was probably a reporter too impatient to wait for tomorrow’s scheduled press conference at the studio. Or maybe even some sort of bodyguard, a police escort. She mustn’t let her paranoia run away with her. Next thing she’d be suspecting Stuart.
Stuart dipped under the Ocean Avenue tunnel, where Highway 1 hit the coast again after its inland detour from Long Beach. Sunset colours writhed on the ocean’s ruffled surface like oil slicks. On the hillside, oil pumps jogged rhythmically back and forth like giant insects. The car was still behind them.
They didn’t talk much for the last couple of miles. Sarah settled deep in the comfortable seat staring out of the window through half-open eyes, gnawing at her lip and wondering what the hell she would say when the detective interviewed her. Which he would surely want to do before long.
She knew she should just tell him everything, but she felt so foolish and so damn
guilty
over what had happened to Jack that she didn’t know if she could. She was tired and scared; and when she got scared she got all hard-shelled and defensive. At least she hoped she would get some time to rest first, take stock and prepare herself, like she did for a stage role.
Occasionally, she glanced back through the mirror and became convinced that the same car had been following them all the way from the airport.
When Stuart put his left blinker on to turn towards the house, Sarah noticed that the car behind them did exactly the same. That was too much of a coincidence. She panicked.
‘Don’t stop, Stuart,’ she said. ‘Please. I think he’s after us. Just keep going.’
But Stuart turned off the highway towards the parking area.
‘Stuart!’ Sarah repeated. ‘Please!’Why was he ignoring her?
Stuart didn’t reply until he had come to a complete stop, and by then the other car was pulling up behind them.
‘Calm down, honey, it’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s only Arvo. He wants to talk to you, and he won’t wait. I agree with him. Things have gone too far. And there’s no way you should come back here alone.’
Sarah nodded. Her spirits sank. She should have known. Now she wouldn’t get any chance to bolster her defences before the questioning began.
25
Arvo pulled up on the dirt shoulder behind Stuart’s Caddy. He took the keys from a tired and edgy-looking Sarah, opened the door and punched in the alarm system code that she had given him.
The door opened into a long hallway with a welcome mat and a closet full of jackets and shoes. It was stuffy inside the house, consistent with a place that had been shut up for a week.
Slowly, gun in hand, Arvo headed down the corridor, flicking on light switches as he went. The kitchen was first on the right, the bathroom next. The entire left side was taken up by the walled-off garage space, which he guessed Sarah Broughton never used. A connecting door, locked and bolted, led from the hall.
Next he went into the living room. The drapes were closed. A red light flashed on the telephone answering machine.
He opened the drapes and the sliding glass doors to let the sea breeze in, then flipped on the outside light. Steps from the wooden deck led to a short platform of rock that dropped about twenty feet almost sheer to the beach. Arvo glanced down into the dark where a narrow stairway had been cut into the rock. Moonlight illuminated the tall gate at the bottom with sharp iron railings. It was closed.
Next, he went upstairs, where he found three bedrooms and a second bathroom, all neat and tidy, all empty. The two smaller bedrooms were over the garage, and the largest, Sarah’s he assumed, was at the front, over the living room. It, too, had sliding glass doors and an open balcony facing the ocean. The carpet, duvet-cover and wallpaper, he noticed, were in blended shades and swirls of green and blue, reflecting the imagery of the sea. He found the colour scheme a little cold but couldn’t deny it seemed to suit her.
Stuart and Sarah carried the baggage into the hallway, Stuart huffing and puffing, then they came through to the living room. Sarah dimmed the light and turned on a shaded table-lamp.
Her movements, Arvo noticed, were all fluid and unselfconscious, full of grace, despite her evident weariness, and her actions immediately transformed the ordinary room from a place of possible threat and menace into a safe and comfortable place to be.
She was the kind of person who created atmosphere rather than simply responded to it, Arvo felt. Probably an actress’s skill, and one to watch out for. She seemed much more natural in her bearing now than she had the first time he met her, on the set of
Good Cop, Bad Cop
.
The room reflected in the half-open glass doors, centred around the dim, warm glow of the lamp. Arvo could hear the ocean and he could see, beyond his reflection, the white line of foam as the waves crested and broke.
The room had a waxed parquet floor, except where a Turkish carpet of intricate design covered the tiles in front of the rough stone fireplace. The wallpaper was a neutral off-white shade and Sarah’s taste in art, Arvo noticed, favoured Native American prints, bold and austere in the weak light, and Canadian Inuit sculptures. He approved. He didn’t collect art, couldn’t afford to, but if he did, that was the kind of thing he would be looking for.
There were some framed Hockney prints of bright California scenes, which he also liked, and some Georgia O’Keeffes – flowers in close-up, skulls in the desert. Arvo wasn’t too sure how he felt about those. At least he assumed they were prints, like the Hockneys; surely even a TV actress as popular as Sarah Broughton couldn’t be rich enough to buy genuine Georgia O’Keeffes?
The sparse furniture was modern in design, the Scandinavian kind, in either black or white. Facing the fireplace, a three-piece suite, upholstered in black leather, ranged in a semicircle around a low glass coffee-table.
Sarah said she was just going upstairs to change and asked if they wanted coffee, apologizing because she only had instant.
Stuart and Arvo nodded.
‘I want to talk to Sarah alone,’ Arvo said to Stuart when she’d gone out of earshot.
‘Why?’
‘Because she’s confused, she’s got a lot of defences and I don’t want her inhibited by anyone else’s presence, and I certainly don’t want anyone else interrupting the interview, answering her questions for her.’
‘I’ll keep quiet. I promise. I’ll—’
‘You won’t be here, Stu. Period. It’s not a request. Look, I know you’re concerned, but go for a drive or something. I’d say she should count herself lucky we didn’t take her straight down to Parker Center and let Robbery-Homicide question her in a police interview room, the way Joe wanted it done.’
‘Oh, come on, Arvo. This is fucking ridiculous.’ Stuart was still red in the face from carrying the luggage. ‘Sarah hasn’t done anything. She’s not a suspect.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is that it’s my feeling she’s been holding something back. This has gone beyond
possible
connections, Stuart. It’s
real
now. I thought you realized that.’
Stuart shrugged and Sarah came back with a tray of coffee. She had changed into black jeans and a white chunky-knit sweater, at least a size too big for her. Blue and green, black and white; those were the colours she seemed to define herself with, Arvo thought. Apart from the paintings, there wasn’t a hint of red, yellow or orange in the place.
‘What do you take in it?’ she asked Arvo. ‘I’m afraid I’ve only got Coffee-mate.’
‘Black’s just fine with me,’ said Arvo. ‘Stu won’t be staying.’
A look of alarm crossed her face. ‘Not staying? I . . . I . . . don’t understand. Why?’