The Last Embrace (31 page)

S
tephen Pico pounded the steering wheel as he drove, crying tears of impotent rage. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but Lily was right. His own father had some connection to Kitty Hayden’s murder and maybe the others too. Solving the case would mean exposing, perhaps even destroying, his old man. How could he pursue it? How could he not?

When he arrived at headquarters, there was a message from the Crime Lab—they had an ID on the trace fur found on Kitty Hayden’s clothes.

In the lab, technician Franklin Abbott, fifty, balding, and baby-faced, bent over a microscope.

“You led us on a merry chase with this one,” he said.

“Thanks for hurrying it up.”

“I like a challenge.” Abbott straightened. He walked to his desk and picked up a report.

“Damnedest thing. We had to send out to a dairy in Artesia for samples. Then I called a pal of mine out in Animal Sciences at Cal Poly to make sure. It’s fur of an unborn calf.”

Pico’s face wrinkled, trying to make sense of it.

Abbott pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But it gets even better. There’s a sediment coating one end of the hairs. Near as we can determine, it’s glue or latex. Something artificial.”

Pico had a flash of insight. “Like a doll or stuffed animal?”

“Don’t know who’d give a kid a toy like that,” Abbott said.

“I do.” Relief surged through him. Maybe his dad was off the hook after all.

“Where’d it come from?”

“My guess’d be it’s the model ape they used in
Mighty Joe Young,
” Pico said. “But I’ve still got a lot of work ahead of me.”

Abbott grinned. “I loved that picture. How’d they do that, anyway?”

Pico looked away. “Haven’t the foggiest.”

Abbott leaned against the porcelain sink. “If you find out, let me know. I’m nuts for that stuff.”

“Looks like one more nail in the coffin,” said Magruder, feet propped on the desk, chomping on a bag of pretzels.

“Circumstantial,” said Pico. “She had one of those apes in her room, remember? Maybe she handled it that night and some hairs came off. It doesn’t mean he killed her.”

Magruder slurped salt off his fingers. “He was obsessed with her. He showed up delusional at the rooming house pawing at one of the other girls. His colleagues say he goes into rages.”

“You’re not exactly Mr. Even Keel. Does that make you a murderer?”

Magruder’s jowls quivered with outrage. “Bring him in. It’s time we have another chat.”

W
earing dark clothes and comfortable flats, Lily made her way up Canyon Drive to Rhett Taylor’s house in Beachwood Canyon. She’d gotten the address from Jinx, who’d gotten it from a friend who answered mail for a Rhett Taylor fan club.

“I thought you weren’t interested in movie stars,” Beverly said.

“I promised Kitty’s niece in Illinois that I’d get his autograph,” Lily lied. Ever since the
Confidential
story, she’d been careful about what she said around the rooming house.

Rhett Taylor lived in a Mediterranean-style villa behind a high stone wall a mile up the canyon. The gate was locked. Lily gripped the ornamental iron bars and peered in. The property was overgrown, ancient carts and plows rusting in the tall grasses. Rows of citrus trees, fruit rotting on the ground. Old pines, their trunks green with lichen. Lily walked the length of the property, halting at an old oak whose branches overhung the wall. It was tall and gnarled, with a saddle four feet up where the trunk split. Finding a toehold, she climbed into the cleft, then inched her way along a branch and lowered herself onto the wall. From here, she could see Rhett Taylor’s house. Two people stood silhouetted behind a curtain in a ground-floor window. Feeling like a cat burglar, she leaped down.

At once a bloodcurdling shriek split the air. Then another. Lily expected Taylor to charge out. She’d be caught. The moon came out from behind a cloud and she beheld a peacock, moving like a majestic ship through the underbrush. Its iridescent feathers rustled. Another followed, bobbing its tiny crested head. The bird opened its beak and gave another unearthly cry.

Lily practically fell against the bushes in relief.

Rhett Taylor kept peacocks. Their plumage was gorgeous, which made her think of Rhett himself. Of course he’d admire these haughty, glittering birds.

Lily crept toward French doors that opened onto a flagstone patio, the susurrus of falling water from a fountain camouflaging her steps. She heard a man speaking softly, in pleading tones. Then a woman’s voice, cool and hard. A lover’s tiff? Maybe Alex was wrong about Rhett Taylor. And then she heard, “…would kill my career. I beg of you.”

Lily shrank into the shrubbery.

“You should have considered that before making a pass at your driver, Mr. Taylor,” the woman said. Her voice sounded familiar.

There was a gasp, then silence. Finally, Taylor said in a dull, defeated voice, “You can’t run a photo like that.”

“So you know which one I mean?” The woman laughed.

And then Lily knew her, saw bottle-blond ringlets piled atop her head, the lascivious red mouth like a gash, the bleached white teeth. Violet McCree.

“You’re right,” Violet said amiably. “We can’t run a photo with your hand on his crotch, but—”

“Don’t,” Taylor pleaded.

“But we can crop it at the waist.”

“I’ll deny it,” Taylor said wildly. “I’ll say I did it on a drunken dare.”

“The driver will say otherwise. I paid a little visit to the studio today, and they told me he can be persuaded.” Lily could almost see Violet’s lip curl. “That’s right. And they gave me the photo too. We did a little switcheroo with some other sensitive photos I’ve recently acquired. So this is just a courtesy call, really. I’d like to get your side of the story before we go to press.”

There was a muttered oath.

“Yes, I know you’d like to wring my neck, but that would only add a murder charge to everything else. The photo’s locked safely away, the story’s ready to go. So come on, Mr. Taylor, won’t you talk to me?”

A crystal decanter flew through the air, hit the French doors, and shattered, brown viscous liquid dripping down the glass. Lily could see their shadows, backlit by dozens of candles, the flames shivering in the night breeze.

“How dare you?” Violet McCree screamed in outrage. “It’s no wonder Warner’s sacrificed you to save him. Why, Kirk Armstrong…” Violet’s voice faltered, then continued, “Or any of those guys, Burt Lancaster, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, they’ve got more class in their little fingers than you’ve got in your entire body. I’ll ruin you, you cheap thug.”

Lily crept closer.

“I’m already ruined,” Rhett Taylor said, and lunged unsteadily at her. She dodged and ran out of the room. Lily heard heels clattering on tiles. Then the front door slammed and Lily saw a small figure in a pastel suit running down the walk. Soon a car started up and zoomed down Beachwood Canyon.

The noise had riled the peacocks. They returned, circling and screeching, as if she were to blame for disturbing their rest. She tried to push them away, but they jostled one another, milling stupidly, blocking her.

She heard the crunch of dead leaves.

“Why are you molesting my birds?” asked Rhett Taylor.

She turned. He wore a monogrammed silk bathrobe and slippers, and his wavy hair stuck out in an unruly fashion. He also had a gun.

“This isn’t a studio prop in my hand, pardner,” he said, his words ever so slurred. “Answer me.”

Lily realized he couldn’t see her in the dark, probably mistook her for Violet McCree. Or maybe a prowler.

“Don’t shoot,” she said, stepping into the courtyard light. “It’s just me, Lily Kessler.”

He blinked.

“You again! Not the other one? Gone, is she?” He jerked his head from side to side like one of his infernal peacocks.

“She drove off.”

“What did you hear just now?” His jaw twitched.

Lily put on her most innocent face. “Nothing. Were you doing an interview?”

He drew himself up and said, with all the dignity he could muster, “Absolutely not. I refused to grant her one.”

“Glad to hear it. You tell her what you had for breakfast, she’d find a way to use it against you.”

Rhett Taylor’s eyebrows beetled suspiciously. “What are you doing on my property? Are you two in league?”

“We never finished our conversation this afternoon,” Lily said.

“And we’re not going to.” Rhett Taylor’s gun sagged at his side and he mopped his brow. “Allow me to escort you out, Miss Snoopy.”

“Do you think I might have a glass of water first? I hiked up from Franklin and my throat is parched.”

Rhett Taylor inspected her suspiciously. “Make it quick, then.”

The gravel crunched under their shoes as they walked to the house. Candles cast a pale light onto adobe walls in the living room, where an Indian-weave rug lay over the tiles. Behind an iron grate, a mesquite fire crackled.

He bade her sit and went to fetch water.

Lily felt a stab of pity for this man. “Mr. Taylor,” she said gently when he returned, “I heard part of your conversation with that reporter.”

His head jerked up. He poured himself a neat drink and belted it back with trembling hands. When he sat down, his body crumpled. And just like that, it was over.

“I’m ruined,” he said, burying his face in his hands. He stayed like that a long time. When he finally raised his head, his eyes had a haunted look.

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Lily asked.

Rhett Taylor shook his head. “They’ve got photos of me in a…compromising position. There’s a man…he tried to blackmail me once before and the studio paid him off.”

“Won’t the studio help you again?”

“I just tried to get through to Warner, but he wouldn’t take my call. The head of publicity says he’s sorry. The studio thinks I’m too much of a liability. They’ve decided to cut their losses.”

“Do you think she was lying about how she got the photo? I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“I don’t know,” Rhett said, mystified. “I even called a producer I know, but he said there was nothing he could do. He seemed to take pleasure in it, because of the time he tried…and I wouldn’t…Oh God, my life is over. I might as well kill myself.”

He looked around wildly and Lily was afraid he’d grab for the gun.

She walked over, sat down by him.

“You can’t. Imagine the headlines that awful reporter would write. You have to hold your head up and go on living. It’s time to plan your strategy.”

“My strategy?”

“Look, Mr. Taylor. Here’s your opportunity to salvage your pride. To redeem your soul. If
Confidential
’s going to make good on this threat, you might as well step forward and tell the cops what you saw October seventh.”

“I can’t,” Rhett whispered hoarsely.

“Sure you can.
Confidential
doesn’t come out until Monday. Right now this is Violet’s monster scoop and she’s not going to breathe a word because she’s terrified someone will beat her to it. So if you tell the police what you know tonight, then hold a press conference tomorrow to announce that you came forward in good conscience, for the safety of the city blah-blah-blah, you’ll beat her at her own game.”

“Except that after I do, I won’t have a career to go back to,” he said glumly. “I’ll be box office poison. Denounced from every pulpit in the country. Do you know the studio wanted me to marry a starlet? We’d share a house but lead separate lives. They said it wasn’t unusual. But it would kill me to live that way.”

Lily wondered if it was the booze talking, pumping him full of liquid courage.

“Then talk to the cops. Will you do it, Mr. Taylor?”

Rhett stood up. “There’s nothing to lose anymore.”

An hour later, Lily, Rhett Taylor, and the detectives sat in an interview room at LAPD headquarters. Magruder had protested Lily’s presence, but Rhett said he wanted a witness and wouldn’t talk unless she was allowed to stay. Pico depressed the start button on the tape recorder and they began.

“Mr. Taylor, where were you the evening of October seventh?”

“I was at a nightclub called the Crow’s Nest on Hollywood Boulevard,” the actor said.

When Magruder asked whether Taylor knew the Crow’s Nest was a hangout for homosexuals, the actor looked him in the eye and said that he did.

Magruder leaned forward intently.

“What time did you arrive?”

Taylor said he’d gone there alone around midnight and left around one-thirty a.m. with another man as the bar closed.

“What’s his name?” Magruder asked.

Taylor stared into the middle distance. “I don’t know.”

Lily thought Magruder would blow a gasket.

“You leave a bar with a man you’ve never met before, and you don’t even know his name?”

Slowly, Taylor met the older cop’s eyes. “We would have had plenty of time to get acquainted that night.”

Magruder looked like he’d sucked on a lime.

“And did you see or hear anything unusual that night, either in the bar or as you walked out?” Pico said, taking up the questioning.

The actor shook his head. “That’s just it. I was looking, but I wasn’t seeing. There was a disheveled girl running down the Boulevard. A man was chasing her. Claimed she was his wife. His mentally ill wife.”

“And you think the girl was Kitty?” Pico said.

Taylor nodded. His face was tragic and scared and very beautiful.

“We need you to say it aloud, sir, for the record,” Pico said.

“Yes, I believe it was Kitty.”

“And someone was chasing her?” Lily said.

Magruder gave her a look that said,
Butt out.

“Yes,” said Taylor. “But at the time, I had no reason to doubt the man. The girl did look crazy. Her eyes were wild. Her dress was torn. She’d lost a shoe.”

“So what did you do?” Magruder asked in a voice filled with scorn.

“You have to understand,” the actor pleaded, “the studio had warned me about indiscretions. It would have been the last straw, after the photos they’d already had to…I couldn’t afford to get involved.”

“Aren’t you the Good Samaritan.” Magruder’s voice dripped loathing. “What did you do then?”

“I ducked down a side street and disappeared like a good fruit,” he said angrily. “They’d seen me come out of the Crow’s Nest.” Rhett Taylor’s face scrunched up. “I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself.” His voice took on a beseeching tone. “I swear, it wasn’t until I saw her picture in the paper that I realized…”

Rhett Taylor blinked rapidly. “And now I can’t get her out of my mind. I see her terrified face. Her pleas for help. She haunts my dreams.”

“What about your friend?” Magruder asked.

“He disappeared at the first sign of trouble. I never saw him again.”

Pico leaned forward. “Describe the man chasing Lily.”

“Tall guy, maybe six-foot, broad-shouldered, big and beefy, clean-shaven, brown hair. Between thirty-five and fifty. Dark suit.”

“Would you be able to identify him?”

There was a long pause.

“Yes,” Taylor said.

Magruder went to a desk and returned with a photo, which he laid on the table. With shock, she saw it was Max.

“Is this the man who was chasing Kitty?”

Taylor examined the photo.

“No,” he said with certainty. “This guy’s face is different. And he’s skinny. And there’s something else.”