The Bequest (2 page)

“Who was that?” Tom asked.
“No one,” Mary said.
Tom was a big man in his mid-60s, well over six feet tall and a fit two

hundred plus pounds. He grabbed a dishtowel from beside his sweatstained cowboy hat that lay on the counter next to the sink and dried his
hands and
face. Where Mary’s face was sun-washed, his was sunweathered, lines etched deep around his eyes and mouth. Where Mary’s
countenance was perpetually sad, his was perpetually angry. His was a face
that had seen too many rodeos and taken too many hard falls.
His
shoulders slumped under the weight of too many chips.

He wadded the towel and tossed it on the counter. He put his hat on,
wiped his not-totally-dry hands on his jeans, and eyed Mary through a
squint. She knew that he knew exactly who it was, the name that dare not
be spoken lest it dredge up dark memories and break hearts all over again.

“Chad says to keep a close eye on her,” Tom said.
Mary nodded.
“We ought to put her down,” he added.
Mary knew Tom was talking about Bingo, but there was something

about the way he said it, something in his tone, that made her uneasy—as
if he were talking about someone else.
“We can’t,” she said.
“We damn sure can.”
“No, Tom,” she said evenly and firmly. “We can’t.”
“Then you keep an eye on her. Ain’t my job no more. Ain’t been for
a long time.”
Again, Mary got the sense he had someone else in mind when he
spoke the words.
Tom abruptly turned, walked out the door, and trudged across the
yard toward the barn. Beyond him, the beautiful Texas Hill Country
beckoned, but its beauty belied the ugliness that lived in this house.
Her heart heavy, Mary went to the refrigerator to take out the
makings for supper. She froze when her hand gripped the handle. The
picture that was stuck to the door with a magnet tugged at her heart. Her
daughter at sixteen-years-old, astride a black horse, rifle in one hand, a
trophy in the other. Tom stood beside Bingo, reins in his hands, pride in
his heart, his smile as big as all Texas. Mary tried to recall the last time she
had seen Tom smile that way.
For the life of her, she couldn’t remember.

Teri put the phone on the coffee table then picked up the offending paper
again. The headline seemed bigger and bolder than mere moments before.
“You can’t put any stock in that,” a voice said from behind her. She
looked over her shoulder at Mike Capalletti standing behind the couch,
adjusting the Windsor knot in his dark blue tie. His tailored suit clung to
his thin frame, screaming “European” and “expensive” all in one breath.
Five years Teri’s junior, with his slicked-back hair
and
swarthy
complexion, he
looked more
Mafioso than he
did
high-powered
Hollywood agent, something he had used to his advantage in more than
one negotiation.
“You put stock in it when the news is good,” Teri said.

“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“It just is.”
“Tell me how it’s different, Mike,” she said. “Tell me why I’m

supposed to believe the good stuff and not believe the bad.”
“Because you know as well as I do that it’s easier for a critic to
criticize than it is to praise. They’re called critics for a reason. Slamming
someone doesn’t require any thought. But they’d rather slit their wrists
than say something good, so when they do praise your work, it’s gotta
mean something.”
Teri focused on a paragraph midway through the article and read
aloud. “’Teri Squire has long since given up any hope of a third Oscar.
Now it’s all about the money for her, but if she doesn’t start turning in
better performances, she might as well give up that hope, too. She
sleepwalks through her latest disaster as if embarrassed to be associated
with it, which is hard to do when her name is so prominently affixed to it
as a producer and its star.’”
She dropped the paper on the coffee table again. “Sounds like he put
some thought into that one.”
Mike came around the couch and sat next to Teri. He took her hand
in his and kissed the palm. “It was bad material.”
“I picked the script.”
“We just gotta find a better one.”
“What if we can’t find one?”
“There are a million scripts floating around out there. The law of
averages says that at least some of them have to be good. And to be
honest, the one we pick doesn’t have to be great. It just has to be better
than the others. It’s all relative.”
“I could always go back to Texas.”
“Guitars and Cadillacs and Bob Wills music, huh?”
“It’s home.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “
Was
home, not is home. Now home is
here, and Texas is just a bad memory.”
He stood and adjusted his tie. “How do I look?”
But Teri was staring out the window and not looking at him. “It’s
gonna be bad, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll just work my magic and everything’ll be
okay.”
Without looking back, he went to the door and then he was gone.

The Pacific Coast
Highway was awash in red and blue lights as
half a dozen law enforcement vehicles sat on the edge of the drop-off, with
the old Regal sticking out like a sore thumb in their midst. In front of the
Regal, paramedics waited by the open back door of their vehicle. Behind
it, a construction crane had been set up, its cable lowered down the
cliffside. Every now and then, a car slowed as it passed by, its occupants
transfixed by the flashing lights but unable to see or even speculate what
lay below.

A two-year-old Chevy Tahoe pulled up next to the Regal and came
to a halt. A blue light flashed on its dashboard as the occupants got out.
California Highway Patrol detective Howie Stillman slid from the driver’s
side, his partner Jeff Nichols from the other. Both men were young in
appearance, with neatly-trimmed mustaches and sideburns, as if they were
the uniform of the day. The casual observer might even have thought the
two were brothers, both roughly the same mid-30s in age and both with
thick brown hair. But Stillman topped out at five feet nine inches, with the
thick build of a linebacker, while Nichols rose at least six inches taller, his
lanky frame more suited for basketball.

Nichols came around the car and stood by Stillman’s side as they
peered over the railing. The body basket was still a good hundred feet
below, the crane’s chain working slowly. A paramedic rode up with the
body. Far below the basket, waves crashed aggressively against jagged
black rocks. The drop was sheer, the sides of the cliff bare.

“Not much to break a fall,” Nichols said.
“I think that’s the point. If you’re going to do it, do it right.”
Nichols glanced at the back seat of the Tahoe. In the glare on the

“It’s a little late to second guess. Besides, you were there, and I
didn’t see you trying to stop her from coming along.”
“She scares me a little,” Nichols said.
“Ain’t it the truth.”
Stillman approached the car and opened the rear driver’s side door.
“You want to step out, ma’am?”
Annemarie Crowell slid her legs out, then stood. She was nearly as
tall as Nichols, nearly as lanky, but the most striking thing about her
appearance was a thick cake of white make-up, face pale, eyes highlighted
in black, and lips a garish red, that almost made her resemble a circus
clown. All she lacked was a big red nose and floppy shoes to complete the
look. Her face was frozen in place, though whether by the make-up or
simply by lack of emotion, neither detective was sure. She approached the
guardrail, her steps shaky in high-heeled shoes. She stood beside the
detectives and looked down at the basket, which was nearing the lip of the
precipice.
“You sure you want to do this, ma’am?” Stillman asked.
“That’s my son,” Annemarie said.
“We don’t know that for a fact, ma’am. Like I told you before, we
just know that’s his car.”
“He never lets anyone drive it. If Leland’s car is here, then that’s my
Leland down there.”
Stillman cut Nichols a look. At a glance, he could see that his partner
was as taken by the lifeless tone as he was. And that’s when Stillman saw
it. He couldn’t be sure at first, but a second look confirmed it. Tears had
amassed along Annemarie’s eyelids. They looked out of place against the
backdrop of her frozen features. What he couldn’t tell, though, was
whether they were real or simply had been summoned up because she
deemed them appropriate for the moment.
It seemed to take minutes but was really only seconds before the
basket reached the top. The paramedic jumped off onto solid ground,
relief on his face. The detectives and Annemarie approached slowly.
“Unzip it,” Nichols said.
“He’s a mess, Detective. Face first on a rock.”
All three men looked at Annemarie, who remained stoic.
“Unzip it,” Nichols said again.
The paramedic slowly drew the zipper downward about a foot, then
spread open the plastic to reveal a pulpy mass of red and gray, mixed with
the white of skull fragments. Stillman recoiled. It wasn’t recognizable as a
face even though they all knew it was. Stillman could tell from the
proportions where there should be a nose, where the mouth and eyes
should be, but for all he knew, this man never had a face.
Annemarie remained emotionless. The tears remained frozen on her
lids, unwilling or unable to fall. “He had a tattoo,” she said. “On his right
forearm. A blue star in a football helmet.”
The paramedic pulled the zipper down farther then extricated the
corpse’s right arm. He rolled up the sleeve and, sure enough, there was a
blue star in a football helmet.
“How ‘bout them Cowboys,” Annemarie said in a deep monotone.
Stillman and Nichols exchanged looks. What a perfectly bizarre thing
to say.
“Is that him, ma’am?” Stillman asked.
“Deserted his mother again.”
Yet another perfectly bizarre thing to say.
“Take me home,” she said.
Stillman took Annemarie by the arm and turned her to the car. “Get
the thing,” he said to Nichols.
As Stillman put Annemarie in the car, Nichols approached the Regal,
reached in through the open window, and grabbed the bound pages that
Leland had tossed inside before jumping. He carried it back to the Tahoe
and handed it to Annemarie. She looked at the cover—“THE PRECIPICE,
a Screenplay by Leland Crowell”—and put it on her lap without opening
it.
“Ahh, yes, the masterpiece,” she said.
Then she pulled her door shut.

Teri carried a
tray with ice, diet soft drinks, and two glasses onto
the deck. In the distance, a smoky haze hung over the hills, testifying to
yet another wildfire out of control. This one had raged for nearly a week
now, but news reports had firefighters finally turning the tide.

She
set the
tray on
a
table.
Mona
Hirsch, her
partner
in SH
Productions, curled her legs under herself on the padded loveseat as she
poured a drink into one of the glasses. Mona was nearing forty, but
fighting age with everything she had, including regular visits to the gym
that kept her frame lithe and lean, as well as nips, tucks, and color-in-abottle that kept the gray away from her otherwise jet-black hair. She and
Teri had set up the production company five years earlier, just prior to
Teri’s second Academy Award, and it had all been downhill from there.
Not that it was Mona’s fault; that’s just the way things had gone.

Teri poured herself a drink then sat on a lounge chair. She took a
deep drink, then refilled her glass, leaned her head back, and closed her
eyes. They sat in silence for a few moments. The smell of smoke made
Teri think of fires in fireplaces, and that made her think of Texas.

“Have you read all the reviews?” Teri asked.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“
Illegitimi non carborundum
. Don’t let the—”
“—bastards get you down. I know. But the bastards didn’t drag your

name through the mud. And what gets me is they act like they enjoy it. It’s
one thing to be critical. It’s another to be so mean-spirited.”
“It’s what makes them the
illegitimi
in the first place.”
Teri combined a swallow with a laugh, followed by a fit of coughing.