I stood up and extended my hand. I almost said, “Thanks for the dish, kid.” Andrea swatted my hand and skipped back inside the house.
It was midnight. The party was approaching its gesticulating and fawning nadir, and the guesthouse lights were still on. I walked to the door of the main house and peered in. Jean Staley was ardently occupied with Mr. Abromowitz and the Koenigs. Mr. Abromowitz snoozed while Jean gesticulated and fawned.
I took off my shoes and ran across wet grass to the guesthouse; rain plastered my dress and soaked me down to my skin. The shades were up and wind had blown the door all the way open. Careless Jean. Exhibitionist Jean. Sloppy Jean, ditto.
The front room was a jumble of tossed clothes and dumped cosmetics. I walked into the bedroom and left squished-stocking footprints. Jean would know there had been an intruder. An open suitcase sat on the bed. A stack of picture postcards was arrayed atop a pile of lingerie.
The cards displayed the Mississippi River and the low skyline of Des Moines. I turned the top card over and whooped audibly. It was addressed to Elmer V. Jackson. Elmer’s address was scrawled below.
Jean plied Sergeant Elmer with schmaltzy greetings from the American Midwest. The postmark caught my eye and stopped me cold.
It was postmarked Des Moines. But it wasn’t a canceled postmark. It was dated March 9. Today’s date was March 4.
I checked the rest of the cards. All four featured Des Moines pictorials and breezy greetings to Elmer; all four featured uncanceled Des Moines postmarks. The postmarks ran a full week ahead of today’s actual date. That meant the postal cancellations and forwarding would be accomplished in L.A.; that meant Comrade Jean was jobbing and/or sleeping with horndog Elmer. It meant that Elmer had become entangled with a material witness in his own brother’s probable arson death.
I left everything where it was and squished back across the wet grass to the party. I ignored the bloviators and gesticulators and squished upstairs to the conservatory. Otto kept spare blankets in a closet there. I grabbed one and swaddled myself. The couch by the piano supplied a cozy roost. I stretched out to think and/or doze.
Goofball Elmer and What Is This? fought the tug of my late-night exhaustion. My next-door neighbor’s cat jumped on the couch, but I knew he didn’t really. I saw picture postcards of Des Moines and heard Joan’s casket go thunk. A woman said, “Katherine?”
I opened my eyes. Claire De Haven was perched on the edge of the couch. Claire, the doomed poetess. Edna St. Vincent Millay for the poor.
Who had aged since the first time I saw her. Who had given herself to Dudley Smith. Who held a rosary and prayed for Dudley to survive my knife wounds. Who survived the idiot onslaught of Bill Parker and my dilettante self.
Her fingers were as tobacco-stained as Andrea Lesnick’s. I said the first thing that came to me. It was, “Oh shit. I’m sorry.”
Her voice was raw. “It’s not enough.”
“It has to be.”
“You gained my trust and betrayed me. It’s not within me to forgive you.”
“Ask Monsignor Hayes about forgiveness. Ask Bill Parker the next time you see him at Mass.”
“He’s a man. I expect less from them. I expect women of your caliber to behave more gallantly.”
I said, “Word travels, Claire. I’m a prairie slattern and a switchblade assailant, or so you believe. How could I behave gallantly?”
She said, “I admire your sense of risk, even as I despise you.”
I said, “I admire your ability to withstand Dudley Smith, even as your love for him confounds me.”
A single tear ran down her cheek. I reached up and brushed it away.
“Will you continue to crash the party, Katherine? Will you continue to bombard people who’ve done you no harm?”
“You threw the party, and I crashed it. You instilled the sense of risk that you see in me. I’ll repay the debt and nullify my meager apology.”
Claire took my hand and placed it back on her cheek. She kissed the palm and placed my fingers in her mouth. Her eyes flickered between hard and soft. She placed my hand on her breast. The nipple pebbled up at my touch.
“Sweet girl, you don’t know who you are.”
“Dear lady, you don’t know my resolve.”
Bill’s prowl sled was parked in front of my house. He tapped his headlights as I swung into the driveway; I got out of my car and got into his.
Joan’s diary was there on the seat. Bill turned on the roof light and illuminated the pages. I leafed through the stack. Bill had marked the full manuscript in red ink.
He handed me his flask; I took a sip and passed it back. Bill killed the roof light. Late-night shadows fell over us; light rain tapped the windshield.
“You’ve been to a party, and your dress took a beating.”
“I would have asked you to escort me, but I thought your wife might disapprove.”
Bill said, “Don’t get catty. We have things to discuss.”
I squared off the manuscript between us. The numbered pages ran to 324. Joan wrote them in one month’s time.
“You should hear this injunction first. I’ll expose any and all manufactured resolutions to the klubhaus case, regardless of how it affects the craven deals you’ve cut with Dudley Smith.”
Bill nipped on his flask and mumbled in Latin. He started to cross himself; I reached out and pinned his hand to the seat.
“Send one up for Joan, before you even think of the plight you’re in. Think of what your sweaty crush got her.”
Bill sighed. It was too dark to see his face. I pictured him rolling his eyes and thinking, For the love of God, WOMEN.
I hit him. I swung around and punched his face and knocked his glasses into the backseat. Bill wiped his mouth and reached for the flask; I grabbed it first and tossed it out my window.
“You killed her. Don’t put it off on Dudley for one instant. She killed six people in a drunken stupor worthy of you, and you robbed her of the dignity of paying a just price for her actions. You wanted her, and that was all that mattered. You swooped down on her and used her, and she couldn’t resist Dudley, because he was so unlike you in all the easy ways and so like you in his soul. You used her, and Dudley used her, and you didn’t have the kindness or decency to pull her out of this crazy world you forced her into.”
Bill said, “Yes. But I’m the one you trusted with her diary.”
85
(Los Angeles, 9:00 A.M., 3/5/42)
Thad Brown said, “We’re thirty-six days in. This job commenced back when Hitler was a corporal. It you’re as bored as I am, raise your hand.”
Ashida polled the room. Breuning and Carlisle raised their hands. Buzz Meeks raised his hand. Lee Blanchard raised two hands. Ray Pinker had assumed Joan’s lab slot. He Sieg Heil’d Thad and roused some laughs.
Captain Parker looked hungover. He disdained Crash Squad shtick and kept his hands down. His lip was split, like somebody had smacked him. Elmer J. was AWOL. Dudley was down in La Paz.
The back room looked worn-out and threadbare. The food and booze inducement felt thin. The blackboard hung loose. The bulletin board drooped. The tacked reports wilted.
Ashida sipped coffee. He wore his winter Class As and gun belt. He scrolled back to Joan’s place every half second. He’d betrayed Dudley there.
Thad said, “We’ve got collateral cases up the wazoo now. We’ve got the Lunceford snuff and that Hanamaka guy that Elmer ID’d. We’ve got the klubhaus arson, and the presence of that hideout crib down the block. And don’t tell me the proximity is a coincidence.”