Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun (12 page)

The
mutual back-patting went on far too long, if one could judge from the sound of
crinkling foil. People were tearing into the gold foil wrappers, flopping the
big chocolate Ms around and gnawing on the six-inch legs like bored terriers.
Even Talbot recognized he was losing them as he elevated his voice to the tenor
of a Baptist preacher and boomed, "Well, let's get on with the
big
news!
Marathon Studios has once again crossed the finish line ahead of the pack. We
have just signed"—he gave a long dramatic pause—"Eddie Smith for a
three-picture deal!"

Talbot
held out his arm pointing stage right, and Eddie Smith came bounding out right
on cue.

"I'm
all yours, baby!" He bellowed his trademark laugh line at Talbot.

"And
I'm delighted!" Talbot roared in reply.

Giving
Talbot a big bear hug, Eddie turned to the audience with perfect comedic timing
and growled, "Whatsa mattuh? This the first time you ever seen two gay
guys express their affection for each other?" The audience roared with
laughter and applauded wildly. It was definitely something to tell the folks
back home in Sioux City.

Callie
and I exchanged looks. Benny Kaye was apparently out, because they had landed
the prize of prizes, Eddie Smith.

"Eddie
Smith's been offered a gazillion dollars to make a movie anywhere in town, and
he's refused for five years," I said.

"Must
mean someone got him what he wanted," Callie replied.

An
hour later the show had been turned over to several corporate VPs armed with
charts and graphs, who took us through the financial ups and downs of Marathon
with rationales for every decision Marathon had made all year. The questions
from the audience were respectful and good-humored, as opposed to last year,
where it was reported a stockholder threw a chair at the stage. Having Eddie
Smith warm up the crowd had done its job. I slid out of my chair and inched my
way to the back of the room for more coffee, towing Callie in my wake. At the ever-present
danish tray, I bumped into Marsha Brown wearing a large Marathon name tag. I'd
met Marsha right after she'd left MGM to work for a small independent film
company. I'd once pitched her a theatrical at the precise moment L.A. was
struck by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake.

Marsha
was the thin, nail-biting type to begin with, but when her large steel desk
bounced three feet nearer the seventeenth-floor windows and the building did a
few concrete hulas, I could have been a one-armed troglodyte and Marsha still
would have clung to me. After the second shake, we extended our stay under her
desk for another ten minutes. It had a bonding effect.

"So
what did they barter Eddie?" I asked.

Marsha
shot me a piercing look. "Bet it's nothing you can bank. Love to have you
over tonight." She stepped in very close to me and slid her hand swiftly
between my legs, a reminder that we'd once shared an evening together.

"Can
you come?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye, and I jumped reflexively.

"No,
I can't. Sorry," I said, and Callie shot me a look that indicated
sorry
was most likely not the appropriate word.

Marsha
headed for the buffet table, and Callie put her arm around me in a proprietary
way and whispered softly, "Have you slept with everyone in L.A.?"

"I
never had sex with that woman," I said, imitating Bill Clinton. Callie was
not amused.

The
financial presentation wrapped up and Eddie popped out from backstage and began
working the room, shaking hands with the shareholders as if this were the room
he'd waited a lifetime to play. He put his arm around a short, chunky,
middle-aged woman with bright orange hair who looked very smart and colorful in
a matching orange suit.

Marsha
reappeared with a fresh cup of coffee and informed us that the woman in orange
was Rita, Eddie's wife of twenty-seven years. "He's notorious for sleeping
with anything in a skirt. She's threatened to leave him over the last one, who
happened to be a call girl and gave her the disease of the week by proxy."

"That
guy's got an aura darker than the Black Hole," Callie chimed in.

"Ever
seen how they rear-screen fifty projectors?" I asked, dragging Callie
backstage before she could make any other damaging remarks about Marathon's
extended family.

We
rounded a row of screens creating a backstage for the equipment. Off to the
right at a thirty-degree angle were two more partitions to conceal equipment
cases. I showed Callie the computer into which the fifty projectors were
programmed.

"If
anything goes wrong, you're out of sync for the rest of the show, but when it
works it's impressive," I said.

A
man's muffled voice spoke gruffly from behind the angled partition.
"You've had two fiascoes and I don't want another! And I want the fuckin'
list, or the only list you're gonna be on is in the obits. Eddie's deal is
contingent. I had to kiss the little snake's butt to get him here today because
you didn't deliver!" This voice was vaguely familiar.

"It's
Isaacs," Callie said flatly.

"Okay,
okay, we're doin' her tomorrow," the second voice said.

Isaacs
burst forth from behind the partition, proving Callie right, and headed back
out onto the floor.

"It
is Isaacs. I believe you are psychic," I said.

She
ignored me, her eyes following Isaacs. His demeanor changed from irate to
jovial the moment he came within view of the stockholders.

"So
who was he talking to?" I whispered.

"That
guy over there." Callie pointed to an older man in green coveralls who,
from a distance, looked like a stage hand.

Suddenly
Callie yanked the back of my suit jacket so hard I did an involuntary
genuflect.

"Damn,
I'm already so sore I need horse liniment. Do you have to yank me around?"
I said irritably.

"Barrett
Silvers."

I
looked where she was pointing, and sure enough, Barrett had been within earshot
of Isaacs's conversation. She seemed upset, and after looking around to make
sure no one had spotted her, she disappeared.

"I
thought she was an executive vice president. She has to resort to getting
information from her boss the same way we do, by listening through walls?"
Callie asked.

"And
what do you suppose 'we're doin' her tomorrow' meant?" I asked.

Callie
froze. "That's how they got Eddie. Yes, I'm getting an affirmation..."

"From
whom?"

"The
cosmos. I'm telling you," Callie said to quiet my disbelief. "They're
killing a woman to get Eddie Smith. That's the trade they're making."

"I
don't know about that," I said, not wanting to know about that. My nerves
were getting the better of me. "And what list are they talking about?"

Marathon
Studios was obviously in the middle of something that would give the mafia the
jitters.

The
phone rang late that afternoon, and I dodged the dancing Elmo to get to it. The
voice on the other end of the line belonged to Wade Garner.

"Got
intel on the Anthony murder. Last call Frank Anthony received before he died
was from a gal in L.A. named Barrett Silvers. Ever hear of her?" Wade
asked.

"She's
a friend of mine!" I said, startled.

"Well
your gal pal's gonna be getting a visit from the FBI," Wade said.

I
thanked him, grabbed my jacket, and told Callie what Wade had just reported.
"We need to corner Barrett and get the whole story," I added.

"The
first night I met you, I told you someone who couldn't sleep nights called
Frank Anthony just before he died. So it was your friend Barrett!" Callie
said, seemingly amazed.

"Does
it surprise you that you're right in your predictions?"

"Yes,
because I just say what I see, or what I feel, at that moment. When it turns
out to be true, it sort of validates.. .everything."

"Validation
is good," I said, trying to be supportive.

I told
the guard at the Marathon gate that we'd left something behind during the
stockholders' meeting and needed to go back for it. He said the soundstage was
locked up.

"Aaaaarnold!"
The guard yelled over the top of the car, nearly deafening us. An older man
wearing one-piece zip-up coveralls stopped welding a metal sign at the entrance
gate that said Drive Slow and ambled over to us.

The
gate guard gave Callie a seductive wink. "Arnold's got friends in high
places. He can get you into every nook and cranny of the place. He'll be glad
to unlock the soundstage for you."

Arnold's
scowling face didn't seem to bear that out. He wiped away a tiny trickle of
blood running down the crease next to his mouth, as if his skin were so thin it
couldn't hold the blood inside his face.

"The
soundstage is open!" Callie leaned across me, waving her cell phone at the
guard, as if someone on the line had just told her that.

The
guard waved Arnold off, and us through, as I stared at Callie in amazement.

"Being
blond works. It just does." She shrugged.

We
parked out of sight of the guard shack and walked directly to Barrett Silvers's
office. She was meeting with someone, her door was closed, and her male
secretary was seated next to a new guy who was obviously her bodyguard, judging
from the fact that his forearms were the size of my thighs. Barrett's secretary
asked if we had an appointment. I said we didn't, but we'd wait to see her. He
assured me that wasn't possible. I suggested he tell Barrett we were outside.
He disappeared into her office and was gone about thirty seconds, then returned
striking a friendly but defiant pose. "She said she would just love to see
you, but she just can't today."

"Hollywood
friendships," I said to Callie and picked up a note pad and scribbled,
"The FBI is looking for you." I folded the note in half, handed it to
the annoyed secretary, and asked him to deliver it to Barrett while we waited.
He disappeared back inside Barrett's office. In thirty seconds Barrett's
"meeting" was ejected from her office like spent shell cartridges,
and we were ushered in. She asked that we close the door behind us.

I
was in no mood to be pleasant. "The FBI says the last phone call made to
Frank Anthony's cell phone before he was murdered was from Barrett
Silvers." I waited. I could see the wheels in Barrett's head grinding
together like the innards of a three-dollar watch.

"So
what?" she finally said.

I
burst out laughing. "I'm glad you got to audition that ridiculous response
on us instead of the feds. How the hell do you know Frank Anthony, Bare?"
I asked.

"Look,
after the incident with the snuff films, where I freaked on Isaacs, I called
Frank because he was on the Marathon board and I'd met him before."

So,
Frank was on the Marathon board. That's a connection between the stone at Orca
's and the stone etching in Tulsa,
I
thought.

"I
told him what had happened," Barrett continued. "I was just trying to
put a stop to the craziness before I ended up in jail. I didn't want to phone
the LAPD and get some cop who was going to sell my story to
Hard Copy.
That's
it. Frank said he'd call a buddy of his at the FBI."

"Except
Frank Anthony is dead," Callie reminded her.

"Somebody
backstage at the shareholders' meeting was being threatened by Isaacs." I
raised my voice, "And that somebody said, 'We're doin' her tomorrow.' Now,
call me selfish, but I'd like to know who her is. Just to make sure it's not
me!"

Barrett
paused while her blood seemed to roll down into her shoes. "I have no idea
what you're talking about."

"I'm
not a detective. I'm just a writer, but you're acting real strange, Barrett,
and pretty soon, you're going to have to tell someone what you know."

I
locked eyes with her for just an instant before she turned her head away,
saying, "Teague, go get a life, will you? You're acting like a bad Angela
Lansbury!"

"Go
fuck yourself!" I said, and on that note, we left.

Outside
on the flower-trimmed walkway, Callie said we might not see Barrett again. When
I asked her to elaborate, she got a vague look in her eyes and said something
about color shifts around her.

"I
just see her in an altered state," Callie said.

I
didn't pursue the "color shifts," because I had all I could deal with
in the real world. Barrett Silvers had turned on me.

"What's
with you and tall, rude women? I'm getting a sense that you have some karmic
tie that you might want to think about breaking," Callie offered. I wasn't
about to tell her that all the women I'd dated had been tall, and arguably
rude, and that the joke among my lesbian friends was whether it's fish or
women, throw the small ones back.

At
home that night, I took every precaution: floodlights on, alarm set, blinds
shut. My body now protected, it was my soul that ached. I found myself staring
at Callie Rivers. I was so close to her all day that I could smell the way her
perfume changed with the heat of her skin—from sweet, to potent, to sensually
musky—as the day wore on. I knew now what that poor teaser horse at my
grandmother's farm felt like every time they brought her in to get the stallion
excited and then yanked her out to put the expensive brood mare under him. I
was excited out of my skin with no outlet. Callie was loving and sweet and cuddling,
but she had stuck to her word about not sleeping with me, the earthquake
incident seeming to remind her that we'd ventured too close.