“Not a chance. Cops don’t give money to crooks. I’m the one person in the world who won’t get a sniff of the fifty thou. I’ll have to go steal some money in a hurry, though. I’m as broke as I’ve ever been.”
“Oh, Bernie. Look what happened the last time you tried to steal something.”
“That was stealing-to-order. From now on I’m strictly freelance.”
“Oh, you’re incorrigible.”
“That’s the term, all right. Rehabilitation is wasted on me.”
She put down her coffee cup, snuggled up close, nestled her little head on my shoulder. I breathed in her perfume. “What’s really amazing,” she said, “is that the box was empty all along.”
“Except for the hundred-dollar bill inside it.”
“But before you put the bill in the box was empty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wonder what happened to the pictures.”
“Maybe there never were any pictures,” I suggested. “Maybe he threatened Mrs. Sandoval but never actually showed her any pictures. Because in order to take photographs there would have had to be a third person there, wouldn’t there? And no extra person ever did turn up in this case.”
“That’s true. But I thought you said he showed the pictures to her.”
“That’s the impression I had, but maybe he just showed her the box and talked so smoothly that she was left with the impression he’d proved there were pictures in the box? That’s possible, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“So there probably were never any pictures or tapes in the first place. And if there were, it’s academic because they’re gone now.”
“Gone where?”
“Up in smoke-that would be my guess.”
“That’s amazing.”
“It certainly is.”
“And everything’s all cleared up? That’s the most amazing thing of all. The police don’t want to lock you up anymore?”
“Oh, there are a few charges they could bring,” I said. “But I talked to Ray about that and he’s going to get them quashed without any noise. They could charge me with resisting arrest and unlawful entry, but they’re not really interested in that and they’d probably have trouble making the charges stick. Besides, however they decide to wrap all this up, the last thing they want is my testimony getting in the way.”
“That makes sense.”
“Uh-huh.” I draped an arm around her, curled my fingers around her shoulder. “It all wound up nice and neat,” I said. “I didn’t even have to bring you into it. You’re completely in the clear.”
The silence was devastating. Her whole body went rigid under my hand. I kept that hand on her shoulder and reached into my back pocket for the book I’d found in Apartment 4-F. I had the page marked and flipped right to it.
I read, “ ‘I was divorced four years ago. Then I was working, not a very involving job, and then I quit, and now I’m on unemployment. I paint a little and I make jewelry and there’s a thing I’ve been doing lately with stained glass. Not what everybody else does but a form I sort of invented myself, these three-dimensional free-form sculptures I’ve been making. The thing is, I don’t know about any of these things, whether I’m good enough or not. I mean, maybe they’re just hobbies. And if that’s all they are, well, the hell with them. Because I don’t want hobbies. I want something to do and I don’t have it yet. Or at least I don’t think I do.’ ”
“Shit,” she said. “Where’d you get the script?”
“In your apartment.”
“Double shit.”
“Just one flight down. Fourth-floor front. Very conveniently located. I dropped in on my way up here. I thought your cats might be hungry but old Esther and Haman were nowhere to be found.”
“Esther and Mordecai.”
“Since you don’t have any cats it seems silly to argue about their names.” I tapped the little paper-bound book. “Two If By Sea,” I said. “The very play our mutual friend’s traveling around the country with. And the speech I read comes trippingly from the lips of a character named Ruth Hightower.”
“Who told you?”
“Wesley Brill told me which play Ruth Hightower’s a character in. But I thought to ask him the question in the first place. When I introduced you to him as Ruth Hightower he thought that was amusing. I suppose he thought it might be coincidental, but you were quick to switch the conversation around and give your real name. And the night before when we hit Peter Alan Martin’s office I was mumbling some doggerel about one if by land and two if by sea and Ruth Hightower on the opposite shore will be, some Paul Revere crap, and you got very edgy. You must have thought I had everything figured out and I was just babbling. Then this morning you decided to tell me your real name.”
“Well, it doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Her eyes met mine. “I just got into a role and it took me a little time to get back to being me.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Oh, it’s not so complicated.”
“Oh, I think it is. You got into a role, all right. And it was easy for you to get into a role because you’re an actress. That should have been obvious to me earlier than it was. Look how neatly you ran down Brill yesterday. You knew just who to call-first Channel 9, then the Academy in Hollywood, then SAG. I didn’t even know what SAG was, I thought it was something women tend to do after a certain age, and there you were on the phone with them, dropping little bits of shoptalk left and right.
“The thing is, the whole business was lousy with actors and theater buffs from the beginning. Flaxford dabbled as a producer and real estate operator while he made his money in less respectable areas. Rod’s an actor who talked about the great deal he had on an apartment because the landlord has a soft spot for actors. Darla Sandoval’s hobby is theater; that’s how Flaxford got his hooks into her in the first place, and that’s how she found Brill and used him to hire me. And you’re an actress, and that’s how you knew Rod.”
“That’s right.”
“But it’s only the beginning. It’s also how you happened to know Flaxford, and he was the one who introduced you to Darla. You didn’t meet her downtown or you would have known her last name. But you didn’t. It wasn’t until you heard her first name this afternoon at Brill’s hotel room that you realized how it all tied together. Once you knew that the Mrs. Sandoval we were talking about was a lady named Darla, then you decided you had a previous engagement and couldn’t tag along to her apartment. Because she would recognize you and you wouldn’t just be the nice young thing who dropped by to water the plants.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, honey.” I stroked her hair, smiled down at her. “The blue box wasn’t empty.”
“Oh.”
I reached into my pocket, took out the one photograph I’d kept. I looked at it for a moment, then showed it to Ellie. She took a quick look at it, shuddered and turned away.
“That’s Darla,” I said. “The one on the left. The other one is you.”
“God.”
“I burned the rest of the pictures. And the tapes. You don’t have to hold out on me, Ellie. I know you were involved with Flaxford. I don’t know whether you met him through the theater or because he was your landlord. He owned this building, didn’t he? He was the legendary landlord with the soft spot for actors?”
“Yes. He found me this apartment. I didn’t even realize at the time that it was his building.”
“And he had you on the hook one way or another. I don’t know what he had on you and I don’t care, but it was enough so that you cooperated with Darla. Then the other night you were over at his place. The night he was killed.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it is. Look, Ellie, Ray Kirschmann bought my explanation about how Flaxford locked himself in his apartment. But that doesn’t mean I bought it. I was the one selling it. You were in the apartment with him. You had a key to the place, and not because he wanted you to water his plants. You were sleeping with J. Francis often enough to have a key of your own.