Come Back Dead (18 page)

“Then work fast.”

28

I passed on my planned walk to Clark's cabin. I was lucky to make it back to the farmhouse parlor. After stashing Atherley's film in the glass bookcase, I settled into the least uncomfortable chair with my back to a corner and my gun within reach. At dawn I pried myself from the chair and went upstairs to bed. I got up again around eight, dressed, and drove into town to a drugstore on the corner opposite the Roberts Hotel.

The drugstore had a lunch counter, which, a little after nine, was still doubling as a breakfast counter. At a tiny griddle squeezed between a soda fountain and the town's original refrigerator, a man in an apron and a white overseas cap was frying eggs. The cook found me more interesting than the eggs he dropped onto the hot, brown steel at my request. He kept looking from them to me over his rounded shoulder. I figured he saw a lot of eggs, so I didn't let the attention go to my head.

When he brought the victims over, he said, “You one of the reporters? 'Cause I didn't see you with that crowd yesterday.”

“Maybe I just got in,” I said.

“You're up early, too,” the man said. “The reporters were drinking till all hours in the hotel bar, from what I hear. Don't expect to see any of them till noon. Sure as you're born, I'll be stuck frying eggs and toasting bread until two at least.”

“Could be a story in that,” I said, but he didn't believe me.

After I'd eaten, I sat drinking coffee and reading real reporters' stories about the murder. The only out-of-town papers in so far were the state editions of the Indianapolis dailies, the
Star Republic
and the
Times
. You could tell which political party got the Traynors' financial support from the way the Indy papers played the story. The
Star Republic
gave the few facts everybody already knew without mentioning the Traynor family or speculating very hard about Carson Drury's business in Indiana. The
Times
, which was the Democratic paper, managed to mention the Traynors while speculating. It reported a rumor that Drury was in town to do research for a film on the Traynor family. That guess was truer than any of us could have imagined back in safe, quiet Hollywood.

Neither paper mentioned the results of the ballistics tests, but the
Times
, at least, knew that the tests had been ordered. It identified the owner of the suspect gun as “Thomas S. Elliott of Los Angeles,” without listing any of my film credits. Fame was fleeting after all.

At ten I crossed the street to the hotel and asked at the front desk for Drury. I asked quietly, but the question still caused several of the dozing fedoras in the Roberts' two-story lobby to tilt backward. Not all the reporters had drunk the night away. The clerk made a phone call on my behalf and then nodded to a man stationed near one of the elevators. That man relayed the message to the elevator operator and then nodded to me as I entered the car. I nodded to the operator to keep the string going, thinking as I did it that Gilbert Traynor must have been handing out sawbucks the way Paddy passed out cigars.

Gilbert had mentioned clearing the top floor of the hotel for Drury, but I'd passed it off as a figure of speech. That it hadn't been was conveyed to me by the elevator operator, a strawberry blond trainee who held the door open when we arrived and said, “Seventh floor, ladies hose, novelties, and movie stars. Watch your step.”

“Watch yours, kid,” I said, but it didn't lessen his smile by so much as a tooth.

The kid's warning came back to me when the door to Drury's suite opened to my knock. I found myself face-to-face with John Piers Whitehead. Seeing Hank Shepard would have been a little less of a shock. Whitehead had been transformed again. To the new clothes I'd noted yesterday he'd added a new face. That is, he wore an expression that transformed his patrician features: a look of perfect peace and happiness.

“My dear Elliott,” he said, taking me by the hand. “Sorry we didn't have a chance to speak yesterday. Wasn't the moment to speak, I'm sure you'll agree. Carson has made time to see you now, so you and I will have to save our visiting until later.”

He led me into the suite while I wondered in a dazed sort of way how Drury went about making time. With a magic wand, probably. There didn't seem to be any end to his talents.

Whitehead's remark turned out to have a much simpler explanation. The sitting room of the suite was being cleared of a small crowd as we entered. Still present were two stenographers, a barber, a manicurist, and a valet who made his exit carrying an armload of Drury's suits.

The man himself had traded in his wheelchair for a plush Queen Anne number with a matching hassock for his cast. The cast looked as though it had been freshly painted, but it might have been picking up a reflection of Drury's own glow. His long hair was carefully combed for once, and his lounging pajamas and dressing gown were hot from a presser.

“Scotto,” he said while the extras were still milling about, collecting their props. “How are you?”

I didn't feel up to answering him. He smiled even more and said, “As you can see, I've availed myself of the hotel's marvelous staff. I haven't had this kind of attention since I arrived at RKO back in '40.”

The second stenographer smiled her good-bye, and we were three, Whitehead hovering by the door. Drury was still waiting for me to speak. When I didn't, he turned his radiance on Whitehead. “Scotty and I will need a few minutes, John.”

“Of course,” Whitehead said without losing his own beatific smile.

Drury tried waiting me out again, but his nerves weren't as starched as his loungewear. “Damn it, Scotty, say something. Give me one of those deadpan lines you like to use when you're pretending to be a hard case. I'll write one for you. How about, ‘Doesn't the hotel have a masseur?' Or ‘Wanting to look your best for the funeral?' Or you could stretch your character a little and paraphrase Milton: ‘Carson Drury would rather rule in Indiana than serve in Hollywood.'”

The last line was Hank Shepard's kind of material. Drury and I had that insight at the same second. I watched him sag under the weight of it.

Before he caved in completely, I asked, “What is all this?”

“A play, Scotty. A farce I'm improvising to get me through today. All those hirelings you chased out of here were intended to take the place of one man, my friend Hank Shepard.”

“Including John Piers Whitehead?”

“Most especially John. Why not?”

“Because you're supposed to hate Whitehead's guts. He's Judas, remember? The man who ruined your career. Or has anything you've told me been on the level?”

Drury had spent enough time in a wheelchair to react instinctively when he wanted to move. He reached for the wheels and came up with two handfuls of air. I was left to guess whether he'd have run me down or run away.

“Seems I'm staying put,” he said, his anger sliding into sheepishness so smoothly that I wanted to shake him by his silk lapels. “And I suppose I owe you an explanation. After you hear it, you'll owe me an apology.”

“After I hear it,” I said.

“John came by to see me last night. Called up from the front desk as though there'd never been a falling out between us. As though we were back in New York in the old days and he'd stopped by to discuss our next project.”

“And you let him up?”

“Yes. I was pretty low last night, Scotty. Low and lonely. Hank gone. You off somewhere.” He looked up to see how guilty I felt over that and let it drop. “I remembered Hank urging me to talk to John, to reconcile with him. I thought I owed it to Hank to try.

“I was shocked to see how John had aged, and flattered to realize how much my small gesture meant to him. I understood for the first time that his misjudgments at RKO had hurt him more than they'd hurt me, in part because I'd been too self-obsessed to forgive him.”

“Luckily for Whitehead you've grown out of that.”

Drury's professionally shaved cheeks flushed a little. “Luckily for John I haven't. I still need people around me to affirm my vision through their dedication, as Hank did, and to take me down a peg from time to time when I threaten to become bigger than the vision. Hank did that, too.”

“Whitehead's a lush. He's past providing witty byplay.”

“I'm aware of John's condition. It's what brought my whole inspiration into focus. I saw that any scheme for redeeming myself and my reputation was doomed to fail if it didn't include John. We were cast into the wilderness together. We have to come out together. We have to be together to recreate our brief time of success.”

We stared at each other for a while, Drury fidgety and expectant. I was remembering what Drury had called the morning: a play, a farce. That explained his impatience. He was anxious for his reviews.

“What are you thinking?” he finally asked.

“That your dialogue is better than your story.”

Drury pulled the open neck of his pajamas closed against a draft. “Did you stay at the farm last night as you planned?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you take that risk? Why did you wait alone in the dark for the killer to come back and try again? Don't say it was your job. It was no part of your job. And it wasn't out of fondness for Hank. You didn't even like him. His weakness was womanizing, and you couldn't forgive him for that. So why did you hold your vigil?”

“I promised him I'd watch his back. I let him down.”

“In other words, you did it because you felt you owed Hank and you wanted to make good your debt. There's no rational way to repay a dead man, so you did something irrational. I'm trying to resolve the same dilemma.”

There was a delicate little nothing of a table within reach of Drury's throne. It was just big enough to hold a box of his cigars. He helped himself to one while I worked out what he'd tried to tell me.

“You can't save Hank Shepard,” I said, “so you're saving Whitehead instead.”

“It's a way of repaying a small part of my debt to Hank.”

I wondered if we'd finally arrived at the truth. I was tempted to say no sale, to see if Drury would produce yet another, more ingenious explanation, but I'd run out of time. There was a sound on the other side of the sitting room door like a dead branch tapping at a windowpane at midnight. It was Whitehead's knock.

“Your eleven o'clock appointment has arrived early, Carson,” he said. “Should I ask him to wait?”

“No, John. Send him in. I've learned the folly of keeping secrets from Mr. Elliott.”

Eric Faris entered, looking so much like a man being chased that I checked the doorway behind him for a pursuer. No one else came through it, not even the obsequious Whitehead.

“Eric,” Drury said in his familiar way. “What's the matter? Has the IRS caught up with Mr. Lockard?”

“I've come to ask for your help, Mr. Drury.” Faris glanced at me to indicate that he'd take my help, too, and the maid's, if one was handy. He had the same cornered look I'd seen in Casey Atherley the night before when Gustin had been towering over him. It turned out that the same man was towering over Faris, in a manner of speaking.

“You know Sheriff Gustin,” Faris said to Drury. “You could talk to him for me. He's asked me to stay in Indiana for the time being. I'd rather not stay. I mean, I can't stay. I haven't slept since I heard of the murder–or eaten. I never should have agreed to come out here in the first place. Mr. Lockard insisted that I look after your loan personally, but I'm not the man for the job. I'm an accountant by training, not a …”

He left us wondering what he wasn't. An enforcer? A spy? An agent provocateur?

“A field man?” Drury suggested helpfully. Faris's panic had brought back his high spirits. “What would Mr. Lockard say if you were to desert your post?”

“I intend to resign as soon as I can get back to Los Angeles. If you would just speak to the sheriff.”

“I'm afraid you're overestimating my influence with Sheriff Gustin,” Drury said. “I doubt I could get myself or Mr. Elliott or Mr. Whitehead out of Indiana right now. A chair for our guest, Scotty.”

I managed to get one under Faris before he collapsed. Drury was close to collapsing himself, into laughter.

“You're not the first man to lament a bargain he struck with the devil,” he said. “The only thing I can offer you is some advice that's helped me over the years: Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

29

When I left the suite, Drury was still consoling Faris and mocking him by turns. Neither project held much interest for me. I was hoping instead to get Whitehead's version of the Great Reconciliation of 1955, but the beneficiary of it had hidden himself away. I didn't feel up to searching the entire seventh floor for him, so I rode the elevator down and crossed the street to the drugstore where I'd had breakfast. I stopped in there long enough to place a collect call to Los Angeles.

It took the operator a while to get the call through, which gave me time to think about my sudden urge to talk to Ella. It was going on four days since I'd spoken to her, during which time I'd had plenty of telephones around and no desire to use one. I decided that my change of heart was due to Sigmund Drury's recent psycho-analysis. I had run an unnecessary, irrational risk by staying alone at the farm, and I owed my wife an apology for that. Then there was the little matter of my upcoming luncheon engagement with Linda Traynor. The call was my last chance to walk into that an honest man.

I could tell from Ella's hello and the way she answered my questions about the kids that my extended silence had bothered her. She asked if I'd caught Shepard's murderer yet and then laughed at herself ruefully.

“Listen to me,” she said. “I sound like I'm asking whether you caught your limit of trout or had a good time playing poker with the boys. Like I'm jealous of all the fun you're having. Sorry about that.”

“I'm the one who should be apologizing,” I said.

“For what? Sending your love through Paddy Maguire?”

I'd forgotten that particular offense. “Among other things.”

“Let's hear the latest transgression.”

“I'm having lunch with Gilbert Traynor's sister-in-law. She's a war widow, and she's in some kind of jam.”

“What does she look like?” Ella asked. She was suddenly as merry as Drury had been when Faris had come in groveling.

“A backwoods Gene Tierney. She kissed me the other night when I wasn't looking.”

“Where would that have been? And don't say down by the garden gate. Are we talking about lips, cheek, or the top of your curly head?”

She was almost laughing at me now. I felt a lot better myself. “I'll call again soon.”

“Take care of yourself, Scotty. At lunch especially. I don't know about the Hoosier Elliott, but the Hollywood version has always been a sucker for a lady in distress.”

Gilbert had given me vague directions to the Traynor plant on our first day in Indiana. I drove west out of town, past the rail yard. From there I was able to follow my nose. I'd recognized the aroma of good old Indiana coal burning by the ton, coal that had so much sulfur in it you could smell its soft, yellow smoke for miles.

The actual plant reminded me of one of the middle-of-the-pack Hollywood studios–Paramount, maybe, or Universal. It had a fancy front gate like Paramount's, this one done up in wrought-iron scroll-work and crowned with the inevitable winged T. The gate also had the inevitable guard. He wore the same navy blue uniform as the guy who'd escorted me from Traynor House, but today's model was friendlier–especially after I'd told him about my appointment with Linda Traynor.

He directed me to a modest but modern office building whose windows were continuous bands of glass encircling each floor. Once again I ended up on the top floor, this time in a waiting room that made Drury's borrowed office back at RKO seem Spartan.

For company I had the Traynor portrait gallery. There were life-size portraits of Gilbert's grandfather, a heavyset gentleman with a Snub Pollard moustache; Gilbert's father, painted so late in his life that the artist had captured traces of his failing heart; and Gilbert's brother, Mark. He was in civilian attire and looked older than he did in the service portrait that hung in Traynor House, which didn't make sense. I considered the possibility that the painter came back every year to add a gray hair or two or a wrinkle, anything to keep up the illusion that Mark was still alive and running things. I wouldn't have put that past Marvella.

“You're standing in my favorite spot.” It was Linda, in a tailored navy suit and very quiet shoes. The suit's jacket had a white collar and three-quarter-length sleeves that ended in white cuffs.

“I didn't mean to startle you,” she said. “And I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. I forgot that I was meeting with the board this morning.”

“You make it sound pretty routine.”

She shrugged with her eyebrows. “It is nowadays. Not so many years ago, the prospect scared me to death. I'd stand where you're standing now, trying to figure out what Mark would do about some problem if he were here. The answer always came to me sooner or later. Feel like a drive?”

We took Linda's Studebaker Speedster, which I drove. The coupé had a small-block V8 that didn't have as many horses as the one in my Fireflite. But those horses were hauling a smaller, lighter car. It certainly felt like a rocket after the milk wagon I'd been driving around Indiana. When I looked down at the black-on-white instrument panel, we were doing seventy. We were out in the country by then, on 236, the state road Linda had told me to take.

I started to rein the coupé in, but Linda said, “Have fun. It's strange, but none of our family cars has ever been stopped for speeding.”

That wry comment was the last thing she said except for “left” and “right” until we arrived in a little place called Middletown. When we reached its half-block business district, Linda said, “Park anywhere.”

She'd thrown off her suit jacket back at the Traynor parking lot, revealing a sleeveless white blouse. Now she unpinned her auburn hair and shook it out until it lay across her wide shoulders, the hair almost red in the noonday sun.

She led me down the street to a place called the Old Post Tavern. “Nobody knows who I am in here. Do you think you can go an hour without saying the word Traynor?”

“I've gone years without saying it.”

Until we'd arrived in Middletown, I'd been hoping for some country club or at least a secluded restaurant with a bartender who knew his way around a Gibson. The Old Post was neither of those. The front door was propped open to let the heat circulate, and it was guarded by a sleeping yellow dog. Linda scratched its ear before stepping over it. I just stepped. Beyond the dog was a long bar, dimly lit but well manned. I took one look at the bartender's straw hat and mentally changed my drink order to cold beer. Several of the customers greeted Linda, calling her “little lady” and “darling.”

Beyond the bar was a section of tables, most of them occupied. We found an empty one in a corner. Three of the table's four legs were the same length.

Linda had brightened up enough to grin at me as we sat down. “Were you expecting the Stork Club?”

“No,” I lied.

“I like this place. I feel at home here. And they make a good tenderloin sandwich. Order it deluxe if you want tomato and lettuce.”

“I know what deluxe means. I'm a Hoosier, too, remember?”

“You're a city boy,” Linda said. “Like Mark. You should have seen him down at Camp Atterbury learning to be a soldier. I'd never imagined a grown man could be so lost out of doors. And him going off to war. I think I fell in love with him because he was so lost and because he stood for a world I'd only seen in a movie or two, a world where men didn't all farm and hunt and spit for no reason. Mark offered me a way out of the simple, little world I knew. I was thrilled to leave it behind. I'd be even more thrilled now if I could get it back.”

She fell into a brown study until the waitress came to take our order. Over lunch Linda asked me questions about the army, short questions that required long answers. I played along until we'd turned down the peach cobbler and the waitress had taken away our plates.

Then I said, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I need your advice. I should just go to Sheriff Gustin and get it over with, but I thought I'd ask you first. It's about the murder.”

“What about it?”

“I'd arranged to meet Hank Shepard the night he died.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? He was a man, and I hadn't been with a man in one hell of a long time. Don't get any more genteel on me, Scotty. I couldn't stand it. Shepard came by Traynor House on Saturday afternoon to pick up Gilbert's suitcase. I offered him a drink while he waited. Just a drink. I didn't know his reputation then, but I found out what he was like soon enough. Before I knew what was happening, we were going at it pretty seriously.

“It wasn't like the other night with you, Scotty. I wasn't the aggressor, and Shepard wasn't a gentleman. Or maybe I did lead him on without realizing it. Maybe I'm looking for another man to step in and change my life for me. That would be sad and pathetic, wouldn't it?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, really. Not when Marvella could have walked in at any moment. He asked me to come by the farm on Sunday night. He said you'd be away in Indianapolis, so I agreed.”

That explained a lot: Shepard's chipper mood on Saturday afternoon, his crack about how sending me after Gilbert's bag would have been a wasted opportunity, his eagerness for me to make the drive to Indy on Sunday.

But it didn't explain everything. “Shepard couldn't have known that Drury was going to send the sheriff's men away. Weren't you afraid they'd see you?”

Linda echoed the photo hound, Casey Atherley. “Anyone who wasn't born in a city could find a quiet way on and off that farm. I wasn't worried about them or about Drury, stuck in that wheelchair of his.”

She fell silent again. I said, “So?”

“So nothing. I didn't go. I lost my nerve. And I couldn't be disloyal to Mark.”

Glad as I was that she hadn't gone, I couldn't understand her reasoning. “You speak of your husband as though he's still alive.”

“Living with Marvella, it's easy for me to think of Mark that way. I have to make an effort sometimes to remember he's dead. On the night I promised to see Shepard, I felt like one of those wives who played around while their husbands were overseas. God help any woman in Traynorville who did that. We had two or three, and we shunned them worse than any lepers, shunned them until they moved away. Somebody did even more than that.”

“Like what?”

“Do you remember Sheriff Gustin telling you yesterday about barn burnings during the war? They were connected to the cheating wives. I never knew who was behind the burnings–they happened just after word had come about Mark, and I was in shock–but the farms involved belonged to men who were known to be taking advantage of other men's war service. The men had their barns taken away, and the women had everything taken away.

“Last Sunday night I felt like one of those poor souls myself. I still feel that way.”

“You didn't go.”

“No. But Hank Shepard died. I can't help feeling that he died because I'd promised to meet him, because I wanted to meet him so badly.”

It wasn't an idea that required a rebuttal. I waited for it to fall apart on its own.

“I know,” Linda said. “It doesn't make sense. It's just my guilt getting to me. Maybe I'll feel better after I talk to Frank Gustin. I've wanted to talk to him, but I've been afraid of its getting back to Gilbert and Marvella. When I heard yesterday that your wife had had her own run-in with Shepard, I thought I'd talk to you first. I thought you'd understand.”

That made sense in an oddball way. She couldn't confess to Mark, so she'd picked another wounded husband as a stand-in. I didn't mind. And I didn't see what good Linda's story would do Gustin. It explained why Shepard had remained alone at the farm, but not who had taken advantage of the opportunity.

“Why don't you wait and see if telling me helps,” I said. “Maybe you've gotten it out of your system already.”