Sympathy for the Devil (21 page)

“I see.”

No one was coming. I was going to have to make a move. The good news was that Gray had sort of mesmerized himself, deep in the justification of an irrational act, sitting still all this time in the soggy cold, telling his story. The bad news was my butt had sort of fallen asleep.

I jerked myself to my feet, pulling away fast down the path. Gray didn't give chase. He didn't even stand up right away.

“Hey. I still have the glass, Maddie. See?” He stood and held it up. Then with a strong, swift jerk, he smashed it on the paving stone near his feet. It was a million shards in seconds.

I took off past the tennis courts as fast as was safe on the slippery stones. Of course, he came after me.

When it comes to the winding paths through the prop
erty, I had a pretty good idea of which way they led, but soon I was at the border that separated the landscaped yards from the outer lands that were wild. I ran through a large iron gate, up an irregular dirt path seeking shelter in the tall wet weeds. Heart pounding, I ran as far as I dared on the cleared path and then darted into a tangle of tall grass and got down on my knees. I prayed I wasn't sitting in a patch of poison oak as I waited for my heartbeat to quiet down so I could listen for Graydon's footsteps.

“Maddie? Where are you? Hey, you shouldn't be out here on this kind of night. It's dangerous, you know? You could have a terrible accident.”

Would he really hurt me? Kill me? After all, he'd had a lifetime of pain and abuse before he'd halfheartedly sent a poisoned drink off in his father's direction. Not exactly the methods of a determined fiend.

But he had killed once; what now? Perhaps he'd decided that he could add murder to that extremely short list of things he could do pretty well. And why hadn't I taken the time to think all this psychological bullshit through before I ventured out in this muck?

“Maddie! Come out here!” He passed quite close to where I was sitting, missing me in the dark downpour. I waited until he was a distance away, and then bolted further into the hilly country.

The overgrown chaparral abruptly ended. Last year's brushfires must have burned right to this spot, four hundred yards above the border of Bruno's backyard. Where no plants grew, there was no longer a root structure to hold the hillside up when the rains came. In a downpour like this one, it was the wrong place to be. And, then, I saw something truly awful. The earth above me was moving. Inch by inch. The hill was coming down.

I veered left, going downhill in a deep crouch, while trying to make my way clear of the mud. Around me, everything was moving: rivulets of water, debris on the ground, and the mushy soil itself. I tripped and fell hard on my hip. Black waves of mud were building on themselves
and gravity was tugging it all down my way.

I pulled myself painfully up and knew I was in trouble. Moving in a crouched position was now impossible. Graydon would soon spot me. It was black night, and the rain was coming down hard again, but in my light colors, I was not exactly camouflaged.

I stood and made a run for it, trying to ignore the sharp fire in my hip. In moments, Graydon called out to me and I froze. He had been running up a section of hillside that hadn't burnt down so close to the estate. He spotted me and changed directions, crossing to the left as he charged back downhill.

I stumbled frantically, moving further left, trying to evade the horrible onslaught. The mud seemed to be shearing off, picking up momentum.

Graydon was closing in on me, cutting right to left and on an angle downward. He was moving with less caution and, therefore, much more speed. I was injured and winded and weakened from my hour in the freezing rain. I was sure I had already caught my death of cold. The rest of this nightmare was simply offering a multitude of quicker ways to cash in.

I had to get away. Gray was getting so close! And then, he went down. One moment Gray was crashing across the hillside, and the next moment I saw him fall. I tried to force myself to keep moving. Then I heard his screams. I looked back up the hill. He had stepped, unaware, directly into the path of the oncoming mudslide. The entire hillside seemed to be coming down and he was rolling down with it.

“Graydon!” I screamed into the stormy din. “Can you hear me?”

Graydon's voice floated on the wind. I couldn't be sure I heard him correctly. “Heal us!” Was that it? No. He said, “Feliz.”

I started moving upwards again, checking that my feet were planted on firm ground. I hoped to pull level with where he'd fallen, the better to evaluate my options for helping him.

“Graydon?”

A flash of lightning and a clap of thunder obscured any answer he may have offered. In that brief light I could see he was tangled in some thick low bushes. He had slipped and rolled downhill in the mud until the twisting bale of branches grabbed at his clothes and pinned him down. And now, just a few yards above his head was a wall of mud, sliding closer with every drop of rain that fell.

I couldn't get in there.

“I'll go back and get help!” I yelled. I doubt that he heard me.

Staying clear to the left of the mudslide, I tried to scurry down the hill. The rain seemed to come to a stop and the wind died down. Suddenly, I could hear his voice calling me clearly.

“He's coming to get me!” he cried. “He wants me!”

I looked back. Graydon, still pinned, stopped struggling against his tight prison of black branches. He pointed up above him on the hill.

“Don't you see him?” he shouted, hysterical. “The old man on the waves? The old man with the face like a skeleton!” he yelled, gulping water, mud now up to his neck and pushing forward.

“Run, Maddie! Don't let the old devil catch you!” He turned to look up at the moving mountain of black mud that was overtaking him.

“Graydon,” I shrieked. “Move! Move!”

“It's okay, Maddie. Everything's okay. I'm going to be his guest in…”

And that was it. Graydon vanished under tons of wet hillside.

As I scrambled down towards the estate, rescue workers appeared. They were making a human chain, passing large sandbags and warning me to stand clear. It took me a minute to realize what was going on. My cavalry hadn't finally arrived. They were there to protect the house from the slide.

Somehow, I managed to get to the house. Inside, I couldn't seem to feel its warmth. Regretting the puddles I
was leaving on the beautiful old wood, I numbly walked through the entry, down the back hallway, and through the butler's pantry into the kitchen. The little liquor cabinet, sitting beneath the counter, looked so innocent.

In the kitchen I turned on the tea kettle. I only knew that if I didn't put hot liquid into my system, I might be spending the night at Cedars Emergency Room, learning everything I'd ever wanted to know about the effects of exposure.

Honnett walked into the kitchen, followed closely by Lily.

“There she is!” Lily beamed, and then got a good look at me.

“Get towels! My god, get blankets!” Honnett ordered, and Lily ran out of the room. “Get a doctor to come out here at once!”

“And you might want to get the coroner, Chuck,” I suggested, my voice hoarse with fatigue. “Graydon killed his father and then, out there somewhere, he died.”

One moment I was trying to remember in which cupboard I'd find a teacup and the next I was suddenly sitting sprawled on the kitchen floor. So, in an attempt to cover my graceless fall, I opened the lower cabinet that was now at eye level. As Honnett rushed over, bending down to help me stand, we both looked into the cabinet at the same time.

Little Lewis Huntley was curled up, asleep, unaware that the world around him was moving, with parts of it moving just a little too fast.

T
he police were busy on Wednesday and Thursday. Carmen Huntley confirmed that she'd left her husband alone with the open liquor cabinet on the night of the party. She also admitted to her affair with Bruno.

They identified Graydon Huntley's fingerprints on Lily's safe and on the glass beaker taken from Wesley's apartment, the one that had contained the half-pound of powdered strychnine. That poison had been their strongest evidence linking Wes to the murder.

After that, it was just a lot of details. Like digging up a hillside to find the remains of the final suspect in the murder of Bruno Huntley.

Thursday, Lily made a public statement forgiving her stepson's act. Gray's secretary turned up on “Inside Edition,” confirming Gray's murderous motives. Charges against Wesley were quietly dropped.

I had spent most of the two days in bed, watching developments on the news, reading the papers, talking on the phone. Exhausted and bruised, I had thus far not developed a cold. So tell that to your mother the next time she catches you out in the rain without your galoshes.

By Friday, I'd had enough of recuperating. Wesley had been released, and we decided to meet at Pinot Bistro for lunch to celebrate his freedom. Holly and I drove there together and when we saw Wes, looking thin and hand
some, none of us knew whether to joke around or thank God.

“You've lost weight,” were my first words. In L.A. that's like the ultimate compliment.

“I found this terrific spa.” He hugged me tight and then gave Holly a turn.

After we were seated, Wesley grabbed my hand and looked at me. “Can I say thanks?”

“You're welcome.”

“You could have been killed, Madeline, you could have…”

“Okay, that's enough thanks. Let's look at the menu.”

“Madeline…”

“Food!” I said, and both Holly and Wes dutifully picked up their menus.

We concentrated on what would be good with what, and what we were in the mood for and allowed the moment of too much emotion to gently wash away from our shores. The waiter took our order, puzzling over our eclectic choices, and left us.

“To freedom!” I proposed and we clinked glasses. Wes's was champagne, Holly's was iced coffee, and I was back to Diet Coke.

I waited for our first course to be served to drop my bombshell.

“I've got big news.”

Wes did not interrupt his reverent plunge into a serving of green risotto with salmon flakes, sugar snap peas, and scallions, but his eyes did briefly flicker upward.

“Lily just heard from the attorneys. Guess what?”

“Bruno's
a-l-i-v-e
!” Wes did a pretty fair impersonation of Geraldo.

“Please.”

Holly was stumped. “What more could they have to say? Isn't Bruno broke?”

I smiled.

Wes stopped eating.

Holly said, “Don't tell me…”

“He'd set up a living trust the week before he died, transferring all of his holdings into a special account. Technically, that meant he didn't own them anymore because legally, they now belonged to this trust.”

“I don't get it,” Holly said. “Does that mean he gave away all his money?”

“See, he turned over everything to the Bruno Huntley living trust and then he appointed himself as the trustee. That way, he had total control of the assets even though he didn't hold title to them anymore. Got it?”

“Not really. Why would he do something like that?”

“Really rich people do it all the time so their heirs won't have to pay millions in estate taxes.”

“Wow,” Holly muttered.

“So, this morning, Bruno's estate attorney calls Lily. He tells her that all the assets, the land, the money, everything, are residing in Bruno's living trust. Bruno had set things up so that in the event of his death, Lily would be appointed the trustee and have control of all the whole enchilada.”

Wes smiled. “So you mean that everything Bruno owned is still intact and Lily gets it?”

“Right.”

“Unbelievable!” Holly said with a sigh. “How much?”

“Roughly one hundred and five
million
in cash, stocks, and property.”

We all thought about that number and went back to our food.

“What I want to know is, since the will is invalid, does that mean you have to give back the pots?” Holly was always the practical one.

I ignored her.

“So Bruno never meant for his sons to have a penny of the money,” Wesley mused.

Our plates were cleared quickly and the main course was served. The food was exquisite, and we took a moment to savor a bite of whole lamb shank with garlic mashed potatoes here, a forkful of spicy grilled swordfish medallions there. It was our habit to taste each other's dishes, despite
the disapproving looks from our neighbors at the next table.

“Seems like Lily has gotten a whole lot of weird news lately.” Wes brought us back to the subject. “Nothing could be weirder than what you found out about the sperm. Nothing. It had to be like the world's first case of semen fraud.”

“She actually took that news a lot better than I would have thought,” I explained. Instead of being disillusioned with Bruno, in light of how miserably he'd tricked her concerning the parentage of her own child, she gave the sad event an almost romantic spin.

“Lily was delighted to find out that little Lewis contains some of Bruno's D.N.A. after all,” I announced to the table.

Holly picked up the thread. “So she was glad that if Lewis couldn't be Bruno's child, at least he was like Bruno's grandchild. That it?”

“Well, yes.”

We all kind of shook our heads at that one.

“I think Lily was about the only person who really got Bruno, you know?” Holly suggested. “It's like there's always somebody out there for you, no matter how weird you are.”

“At least you hope there is,” Wesley said.

“And here's some grim news,” I said. “Lily's decided to have a double funeral. Tomorrow.”

“Gross!” from Holly.

“Father and son? It'll save the family some time and trouble, I guess.” Wes thought that one over. “I've never actually heard of such a thing, under this kind of circumstances. But why not? It'll be small, no doubt.”

“Oh, no. Lily feels Bruno deserves more. She's expecting a thousand people.”

“Really?” Wes asked. “Who's catering?”

“Wesley!”

“Hey, someone has got to be thinking about our moribund company.”

We'd have to talk about the shambles that our business
had become, but now didn't seem like the right time to get depressed.

I tried to change the subject. “Oh. I've got something for the gossip-lovers in the group…”

Wes and Holly looked at each other in complete innocence.

“Lily says Donnie is moving into the guest house.”

“Bruno's
runner
?”

“Uh-huh.” I looked up for their reactions.

“Life must go on,” Holly observed.

“You can always use a good runner,” Wesley opined. “What do you think, Mad?”

“I just want everyone to be happy!” I wailed.

We laughed and asked for the dessert menu.

“What was Bru, Jr.'s reaction when he learned that Gray murdered their father?” Wes asked me.

“No one knows. Bru disappeared on Tuesday night and no one has heard from him. He even left his car parked up there at the house. He had to be concerned about not inheriting his daddy's fortune. If Perry Hirsh gets to him, it could be pretty serious trouble.”

“He'll turn up sooner or later. On a night like that, where could he run?” Holly asked.

“He couldn't run in the hills that's for sure,” I seconded. And then I had a chilling thought. Bru knew Perry was at the house. Perry's car was blocking Bru's in the driveway. If Bru was on the run and he didn't leave by car, had he tried to evade Perry by escaping into the hills? I pushed the gruesome possibility out of my mind.

“Well, what's the story on Perry Hirsh, anyway?” Wes asked. “You said you saw him again on Tuesday night at the Huntley place. Did you guys make up?”

“Yep. We're buds. In fact, I got a call from old Perry, yesterday, asking if we'd like to cater a party for forty of his closest associates.”

Wes's ears perked up. “I'm spotting a trend. I see a renaissance of Madeline Bean Catering. I see us starting to pick up all the great funeral business that's in town, then
moving into small catered affairs for the organized crime set. Interesting client base.”

“I told Perry no thanks.” It was time to tell Wesley the worst. “I told Perry we were closing the company.”

“No, Mad.”

“Wes, let's not spoil this lunch, okay? We'll talk about it later.”

I knew it would be hard for him to accept. Here he was, just out of jail a few hours, and instead of his nice comfortable life, look what was waiting for him. Because of the murder and our connection to it, we had gone from “in” to “out” in record time, even for this fickle community. Being unemployed was a stomach-churning thought, especially with the loans we still had to pay off, but all that could wait until after lunch.

“Oh, did I tell you?” Holly asked. “In
Variety
today, there was a little item about Angelica Sands. She just landed a big part. She's going to play the girlfriend of Billy Baldwin in the new Oliver Stone movie. Isn't that cool? Maybe we could visit her on the set.”

“Quiet down. Can't you see Mad is studying the dessert menu?”

The waiter came to get our orders and, of course, we all chose different selections, the better to get a sampling.

The guilt set in as soon as the waiter left our table. “I shouldn't have ordered dessert.”

“Oh, of course you should.” Wes always played “good cop” in my struggle over calories. “This is a celebration. How many times does one of your closest friends get sprung from the slammer?”

“I know. But I'm going out again tonight…” I had this rule about how many meals I could indulge in on a given day. The “bad calorie cop” inside me was sure this one lunch had already blown my day's limit.

“So?” Wes said, helping me rationalize. “Arlo doesn't like to eat anything fun. Take him to a salad place.”

“Arlo doesn't eat salad,” Holly reminded him. “And anyway, Arlo's show films on Friday nights so…”

They both looked at me and by the transformation on their faces I could tell that they weren't such bad detectives themselves. Damn.

“So who are you going out to dinner with?”

Why prolong the heat they were about to lay on me? “Honnett,” I said casually.

“The cop who arrested me?” Wes gave me that reproachful look, like Mrs. Bean really should have taught her girl better manners.

“I don't want to talk about it anymore,” I said.

Both my companions smirked. I hate that.

The desserts were served and Wes remarked that he had never seen seven thousand calories displayed with such artistic flair. The chocolate mousse came scooped on a large, white plate and had a special message written in chocolate syrup around the flat, broad rim. It said, “Welcome home, Wes!”

“Oh, here's something you probably don't know about, yet,” Wes said. It was a rare conversation in which Wes missed an opportunity to top us with his own gossip finds. Naturally, being detained by the County of Los Angeles, he wasn't expected to contribute at today's lunch, but Wes would not be stopped by mere bars alone.

“I got home to my apartment and there were a few messages. Friends who heard I was getting out mostly. But there was also one from Carmen Huntley's mother.”

“You're kidding?”

“With all the publicity about my arrest, the story had been told a hundred times about the whole land deal I had done with Bruno. Apparently, Carmen's mom had just found out that I was the one who had made the arrangements to sell the forty acres to Bruno. Now, get this. She was making me an offer to act as go-between with Lily and help her acquire the land. She offered to pay me a ten percent finder's fee.” Wes smiled at the irony.

“Oh, God! Here we go again!” I couldn't believe the circles within circles that make up our daily dance. Hon
estly, it's a wonder we aren't just holding our heads all the time, dizzy with life.

“Anyway, I called her back and I found out that Carmen has moved out of town.”

“So soon?” I guess she didn't want to stick around for the double funeral. It kind of made sense.

“Yeah. Her mother was upset. Seems this is the first time that Carmen has been out on her own and her mom doesn't think she's strong enough to make it.”

“Where'd she go?”

“To Ojai with a friend of hers from high school.”

Ojai was an idyllic little grove town just inland of Ventura that attracted artists and writers.

“Ojai. Yeah. It's a jungle out there.” We all enjoyed the thought of Carmen being on her own. Maybe the best outcome for her was simply going it alone for a while.

Bringing Wesley up to date had taken us the better part of a two-hour lunch. We sent a note back to Octavio in the kitchen, thanking him for the brilliance of his cooking as well as his generosity. The chef had insisted on treating us and would not accept payment for our bill.

In our two separate cars, we headed back to the office. We had to plan the closing down of the company and get serious about finding ourselves employment. In one week, we had gone from Hollywood's culinary rising stars to something exactly like yesterday's news. The catering business, when played out on such a high profile, trend-setting stage, is like a souffle. One lousy client gets murdered and poof!

As we walked in the door, none of us really wanted to face it. Holly, as always, led the way.