Sympathy for the Devil (16 page)

“But with Bruno dead,” I said gently, “weren't you back in the game? Your husband might have inherited the land. You couldn't know that Bruno would cut his sons out of his will.”

“No? He was always taunting his sons about it. One day he would say they were in, and another day he'd say they were out. One night, he told me that he'd never leave a lot of money or property to his sons. He said they'd never enjoy anything they had not earned on their own.”

She smiled at that and added, “How little he knew them, don't you think? Bru, Jr. owes almost half a million dollars to some guys that aren't very patient. Do you think he cares where the money that will save his ass comes from?

“Please, I know I've been bad. I have. But you mustn't think I'd have hurt the only man I truly cared about.”

Before I realized I was talking out loud I heard myself say, “I believe you.”

All through her story she had been waiting for some sign from me. Some display of sympathy, or unbending of my harsh judgment of her life. Now, a flood of relief met me as she hurried on.

“All we were hoping to do was buy the land, don't you see? I'd have gained nothing if Bruno died. And as for the fact that his drink was poisoned, well it scares me. Could I have handed him that glass of death? I have no idea how that stuff got into his Armagnac. I swear I didn't put it there.”

Maybe not, I thought, but what about her mother? Was that woman angry enough to fulfill her family's curse? If she had condoned her daughter's needless sacrifice to the Huntley men, perhaps she felt justified to take Bruno's life in retaliation.

Carmen must have been reading my mind, because she added, “Mother is obsessed with owning Bruno's land, it's true, but she's not a foolish woman. She has been trying to find out if Bruno was telling me the truth about the deed. If he no longer owned our land, then someone else must. She was doing research on the title to the land. She wasn't interested in Bruno. She had no reason to kill the man I was in love with.”

At that moment, Carmen's mother stepped out of the side door of the garage. She'd probably been standing there for a while.

“Come inside, Carmenita,” she called. “You have talked enough about these sorry things, don't you think?”

I got into my car and mulled things over.

I pulled out the crumpled photocopy of Petranilla and
her mother and uncle, smoothing out the wrinkles and staring at the women. Carmen and her mother seemed like the perfect suspects: their connection to the curse that was on Bruno's dying lips, their present-day quest for the land in Los Feliz, Carmen's messed up relations with Bruno and son, and the fact that Carmen actually served Bruno the poisoned brandy.

The thing was, I just didn't think they did it. They weren't scared, or shifty, or defensive. They weren't inventing all kinds of stories to cover up their involvement. They were neither overly clever nor playing dumb.

I was stumped. The thing was, I wanted my murderers to
act
like murderers. Stealthy, lethal, on the attack. Of course, I had to remind myself, I'd never actually met a murderer. Perhaps, this is where experience might come in real handy.

I
started back down the hill and had to wait at the intersection for a flurry of cars to pass. My phone rang just as I found a small opening in traffic. I wheeled right, then grabbed the phone as I straightened the car onto Ventura.

“Madeline?” It was Holly. “Madeline! I'm going fucking nuts! I don't know where you are! I'm in my car. I'm driving around looking for you, for cripe's sakes. I took your spare cell phone with me and I called everywhere I could think of. Twice!”

“What's up?” I was getting alarmed. Holly does not freak like this.

“They've arrested Wesley. He's in jail! Oh, Madeline, I knew you'd want to go see him but they won't give me any information. The only reason I even know about it is that Lizzie Bailey called for you.”

“Shit!” I said, and then, noticing too late that I'd forgotten to make the necessary left turn onto Coldwater Canyon. “Shit!”

With the dozens of people in the world who really had good reasons to end Bruno's life, why were they still after Wesley?

“Geez! Arrested? Wes must be going completely mental. He didn't kill Bruno! Are the cops crazy?”

“Of course they're crazy! Why else would they take a sick job like being a cop?” Holly screamed. She was definitely not her normal cool cat self.

“Holly, you can't lose it, buddy. You hear me? I need to do some thinking and I don't want to worry about you driving into a pole,” I said calmly, as I severely corrected my steering to avoid the pole coming directly at me.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “I gotta pull over to the curb. I'm feeling kinda weakish.”

“That's the best thing for you to do til you feel better,” I advised. Meantime, I pulled over to the curb.

“The police have so little,” I said. “Okay, Wes had the key to the liquor cabinet. So what? Plenty of people had their hands on that key. And, all right, Wes was mad at Bruno about that land commission. But what about the party? Don't those pinheads realize Bruno just handed us a huge fee?”

In a nonlinear, odd, Bruno Huntley way, the score was being evened out. So why didn't the cops get it?

“There's something else, Maddie. Something real bad. Something you don't know.” Holly's voice sounded stressed. “They found the poison in Wes's apartment.”

“What! What poison?”

“Strychnine. A shitload of it. The stuff that was used on old Bruno. They had a search warrant and went through Wes's place a few hours ago. I guess they found it in one of his canisters, you know, on his kitchen counter.”

“I can't believe it! That's impossible!” Wes had a set of canisters that he'd gotten from a scientific supply house. They were impressively large glass bottles with round glass stoppers. He used them to hold sugar and baking powder and flour and…and…strychnine? Oh my god! Where could Wes have gotten the stuff?

“I have to do something,” I told Holly, “but I'm not sure what.”

“I know what I have to do,” Holly replied, with a hint of her usual mischief.

“What?”

“It requires a toilet,” Holly offered, delicately.

I turned my radio on and tuned it to the all-news station. I was hoping the story on Wesley's arrest would give me more details, like where they had taken him. As they gave the traffic report, I thought about who we could call to represent him. We had done a lot of parties for successful attorneys. Problem was, most of them specialized in entertainment law—great for a network pilot deal, not so hot for murder one.

The weather report warned that large storm clouds were gathering off the coast and could be coming inland by tomorrow. That was disturbing. Many areas around Southern California had been devastated by brushfires this past summer. After having been stripped bare by days and nights of flames, the charred earth was vulnerable. Now, these same defoliated areas were in line to be drenched by huge downpours and inundated by mud. You could tell what season it was by what disaster was most likely to strike.

I got onto the freeway and heard the announcer tease the next segment to be reported after the commercial. “Coming up,” he said, “an arrest is made in the Bruno Huntley murder.” But first I had to listen to an ad for a tuneup franchise. Yes, why not get a car lube while waiting for Armageddon?

“Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, today, praised the diligent and speedy work of the Los Angeles police department in the arrest this afternoon of a suspect in the killing of T.V. producer Bruno Huntley. Huntley's death on Friday night had alarmed many in the entertainment industry who had counted Huntley a friend.

“The arrest of Wesley Owen Westcott, a caterer, came after investigators found a large quantity of strychnine at Westcott's residence. Strychnine was the poison used to kill Huntley while he was hosting a Halloween party at his estate in Los Feliz.

“Police say Westcott knew the victim and had become disgruntled after a real estate deal fell through.”

I had to admit, it sounded a whole lot more solid and plausible when you heard it reported on the news. I had to
talk to Wesley. I had to find out about that strychnine.

My mind was reeling as all the stories I'd heard in the past few days started to shift and reshuffle themselves. The last thing I wanted to do was doubt Wes. If only he hadn't known so damn much about how they use strychnine in street drugs…

In my heart, I knew he'd never kill anyone, but my mind is not my heart. My mind finally had to ask the question: Did Wes kill Bruno?

I
put ice cubes in my glass and moved to the faucet. I had been drinking way too much Diet Coke. Feeling it was time for a health food purge, I filled the glass from the purified water spigot. It was Tuesday morning, and I had an hour until I should leave to meet the attorney over at County Jail, where they were holding Wesley.

I had called a lawyer we knew, Tom Field, the previous evening. Wes and I had done his wedding about a year ago. It's odd what you remember about clients. I remember particularly that Tom loved oysters and hated Bruno Huntley. Bruno really must have jerked him around at one time. At Tom's wedding reception, he kept returning to the oyster bar for “just one more,” and he kept his guests amused by telling derogatory “Bruno” stories.

Tom Field specialized in network series packaging, but was happy to recommend a fellow with whom he'd gone to law school who was enormously respected in criminal cases.

I swallowed the water and dialed Honnett's number. I hung up. What was there to say? He'd arrested my best friend. I guessed dating him was out of the question.

Holly tiptoed into the kitchen.

“Madeline?”

“You don't have to whisper,” I offered.

“There's a woman. Her name is…”

“I couldn't possibly.” I shook my head at the thought
of someone applying for a job. I splashed the rest of my water into the sink, ice cubes clattering in protest against their ignoble end, and set the empty glass down by the drainboard.

The electronic beep-beep-beep of the timer meant my chocolate chip croissants were ready to come out of the oven. I bent to the task. Perhaps they wouldn't let me give them to Wesley. Perhaps they would. I just knew that baking had filled another hour until I could leave for the jail. The kitchen clock told me I'd been successful. It was now almost ten o'clock.

“So I should tell her to go? Or…” Holly was not used to me being vague, distracted.

Just as I roused myself to respond, this other woman entered the doorway to the kitchen right behind Holly. She was slender and dressed to show off her well worked-out body, in skin-tight black Lycra shorts that stopped at mid-thigh topped by a biker's black leather jacket. And hers was a face I remembered distinctly.

“Hello,” she said. “I didn't want to bother you. But I simply had to see you.”

Holly looked confused. She wanted to shield me from the intrusion. We both spoke at once.

“Look, I'm sorry…” Holly started herding the woman away from the door.

“Please come in,” I said at the same time.

“Holly, don't you remember our soothsayer?”

“Holy shit!”

The out-of-costume soothsayer gracefully sidestepped Holly and entered the kitchen. She had the kind of nose and cheekbones and, for that matter, bosom that made one curious to know if such perfection was possible without a helpful surgeon. Her thick eyebrows arched beautifully over the greenest of eyes. I still found myself wondering if they were contacts.

“My name is Angelica. Angelica Sands. I'm afraid there's been a terrible mistake.”

For a crazy moment I thought she was going to confess
to Bruno's murder. Police made big mistake. Arrested the wrong person. She did it. Hope is so fucking illogical.

“What mistake?” I asked, removing my oven mitts.

“You've been looking for me, right? About the party? I guess I shot out of there pretty fast. I was like devastated, you know?” She looked pretty shook up. “Devastated!” She really liked that word.

“Were you and Bruno close?” I asked, checking her out in the bright kitchen light. She seemed awfully young.

“Well, sort of. I'm going to be a big star some day. Bruno said so. And he was going to give me my first big break. He said I was a really gifted actress, like a Meryl Streep or a Lisa Kudrow. But now he's gone. Man, what a waste. Bruno was an angel, you know?”

People loved Bruno at first. The man could be very enthusiastic. Later, when they began noticing his footprints all over their dreams, they began to despise him. From her reaction, I was betting she hadn't known Bruno all that long.

“It was such a shock. A real American tragedy, like
MacBeth
or something.” She looked deeply touched, and held it for a beat. “I mean he died, for God's sake, right there at the party. So I bagged it.”

“Yes, I see. Well, we did want to pay you for your work that night but there was no way to contact you.”

“Oh, I wasn't doing it for money. See, Bruno called me very last minute. He said I'd meet all the most powerful men in Hollywood. I did the soothsayer gig just to please him, really.”

Angelica smiled at something, some memory. When she realized we had noticed, she decided to share it with us.

“Bruno had such a great sense of humor, didn't he? I wasn't supposed to tell anyone this, but I guess it's okay now…well, now that he's gone.

“He had this major plan. He was so naughty. He paid off some guy at the air freight company to screw up your shipment of fancy food for the Halloween party. He wanted you to send your assistant out on some wild goose chase
so he could arrange for me to step in as the fortune teller.”

Bruno was behind the truffles/nightcrawlers switch? I suddenly felt off-balance.

“Well, why?”

“For fun. He gave me a list with a lot of very personal dirt on the party guests. I mean, intense. Then I predicted horrible fortunes for each one, with lots of specific details. Like I knew that actress was going to get fired off her soap because it was Bruno's show and he told me!”

She laughed at the looks on our faces as we recalled the impact of Bruno's fiendish plot. “Really! And it went great. Everyone was completely freaking!” She smiled. “Wasn't he a bad boy? It was just to have a giggle.”

I nodded my head slowly. It did make a sick kind of sense. And it sounded like that old devil Bruno Huntley.

“So that guy who was nuts about his new car?” I asked, remembering back. “And the guy who dated his secretaries?”

“Yeah. It was hilarious. I had these big powerful men shaking! Bruno was supposed to meet me at the dinner break to get the details. He thought it was the biggest hoot.”

Holly cleared her throat. “You predicted I would get a new boyfriend before Christmas.”

Angelica grinned. “You weren't on Bruno's hit list, so I just made it up.”

“And what about Madeline? You said Arlo would propose.”

“Now that was Bruno.” Angelica turned to me, smiling. “He said I should rub in what an old maid you are.”

It figured. The joke was on me, too.

“I'm not that old,” I mumbled, more to myself or maybe to Bruno than to anyone in that room.

“Bruno told me to think of it as an audition. So I really got into the character. Things just started coming to me. Can you believe that? I actually started getting, like, messages. I felt that something awful might happen at midnight. Isn't that wild?”

Well, Stanislovsky said that acting is believing. I could tell she'd make quite an actress some day. Maybe even a Kudrow.

In my kitchen, with the sun shining on her young pretty face, there was none of that ethereal quality I'd noted on the night of the party. If anything, there was a bit of the Valley girl.

“Nice performance,” I commented.

Her dimples deepened and her shiny black ponytail bobbed.

“But wait a minute.” Holly was confused. “Bruno couldn't have met you during dinner. That was when I accidentally walked in on Lily and him in their bedroom.”

“Right,” Angelica said, coolly. “He didn't show up. I was really pissed about it at the time.” She smiled ruefully. “I thought he was going to put some moves on me during dinner.”

“At his own party?” Holly asked, thrilled.

“Oh, you get to know about these directors and producers. They pretty much want what everyone wants.”

“And you give it to them?” Holly was dying to know how these things worked.

“Look, why sell it on the street for a few hundred bucks when you can date these powerful men, travel first class, get great clothes and stuff, and land a career that will net you millions? Am I right?” She turned to me, like this is the way all us business women get started.

“Is she?” asked the ever-curious Holly.

“Making it in Hollywood…” I said, selecting my words carefully, “there are many paths. Some, such as Angelica, favor the time-honored route. Many don't. But tell us,” I said, quickly steering a conversational U-turn back to the party, “did you ever see Bruno that night?”

“Never. I was stuck telling fortunes until late. Then around twelve o'clock, somebody called me on the walkie-talkie saying that Bruno is, like, dying. It just creeped me out! I mean, all night I'd been getting vibrations about midnight!”

“But you said there was a mistake…” I reminded her, trying to get back to what she'd said when she entered my kitchen. The comment that had given me something to hope for.

“Oh, yeah. The other night, I borrowed a car from my cousin Perry. His Bentley. See, he was out of town and I know his bodyguard pretty good. I was real careful to get his car back before he came home. But then you show up at his house! How'd you find out about him, anyway?”

“The license plate.”

“Well, that was a mistake. My cousin is like paranoid. He doesn't dig strangers is the thing. He's really an okay guy, but he kind of flipped when you showed up on his doorstep. He just wasn't expecting you is all.”

“I got that impression.”

“So he's real sorry he got the wrong idea. He told me to make sure everything was okay. You know, with your car and all.”

“Those are some dogs he's got.”

“Nancy and Hillary. Yeah. But really, they're fine when they know you.”

“So what does your cousin Perry do for a living?”

Angelica hesitated.

“Or shouldn't I ask?” I asked.

“Yeah. Maybe you shouldn't,” she agreed, but then her tone brightened. “Oh! Perry wanted me to give you this. It's his way of saying no hard feelings.” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a white envelope.

“What's in it?”

“Money, I think. For fixing up your car. He's awfully mad at me about everything. So it would be great if you could take this money and make the whole incident disappear. Could you do that?”

I needed a minute to think that one over. “Holly, could you get Angelica's driver's license and xerox it for our files?”

Angelica looked at Holly and me and then mashed through her bag and drew out her license. Then she held
out the envelope to me and said, “Could you just forget about Perry and, well, all the shit that happened when you visited him?”

I looked at her young face. It was clearly unstruck by any slap of conscience. She had planned to accept Bruno's advances in exchange for that big break. Perhaps she had built up their future affair in her mind, had even seen herself as the next Mrs. Bruno Huntley. Was the gypsy so angry at Bruno for standing her up that she killed him?

“What were you doing with a gun at the party?”

“L.A.” She shrugged. “You know. It's dangerous.”

“And that white powder in your purse,” I continued, “what was that?”

She didn't question how I knew the contents of her shoulder bag. Still holding the envelope, she reached into her bag with the other hand. Holly, God love her, ducked.

“It's coke. You gonna bust me?” She held up the vial.

A twenty-year-old who nonchalantly carries a gun? And drugs? Well, it wasn't the L.A. I knew personally, but I read about Angelica's L.A. in the paper all the time.

“Are you going to give me a break?” she asked.

I took the envelope. “This is simply to fix my windshield? Nothing else?”

“Perry just wants to know that you're his friend.”

I handed her back the envelope. It had felt thick. “I don't think…”

“Oh no! You really have to take it.” She was definitely stressed. “He told me his dogs may have scratched your paint job. Perry takes cars very seriously. Look, he really wants you to have this. Please. Don't disappoint Perry.”

The last thing I needed right now was some sort of gang leader annoyed that I wasn't “his friend.” What was so wrong about letting him pay for my car's damage?

“Please,” Angelica pleaded.

I find it incredibly hard to say no. Call me a wimp. I didn't disappoint Perry.

Angelica left, and I was startled by the time on my kitchen clock. I quickly packed the cooled croissants into
a white box. I poured cafe au lait into a thermos. I grabbed Perry Hirsh's envelope and started for the door.

Holly stopped me.

“How much?”

I opened the envelope and scanned the contents.

“There are sixty five-hundred-dollar bills,” I said quietly.

“Yow! How much is that? Like…” Holly was breathless, doing the math. “Like…like thirty thousand?”

“Nice paint job.”