A Corpse in the Soup (25 page)

They lingered over a cup of cappuccino a while longer, but the magic of the evening was gone. Caesar helped Godiva up from the table, took her hands in his and kissed her fingertips.

“I am so happy to have you in my life.” They walked out arm in arm, but Godiva couldn’t shake the feeling that Caesar hadn’t told her everything.

CHAPTER 44

Lenny lived in an area known as South Bay, where the mish-mash of side-by-side architectural styles ranged from small vacation cottages built in the early 1900s to contemporary mansions that barely fit on the lot. Beach towns flow into one another seamlessly, the invisible city limits creating instant changes in street numbers. Small wonder that Goldie and Godiva got lost trying to find Lenny’s place. As they wove in and out of beachfront streets, Godiva said, “It’s really sort of sad to see all this development.”

Goldie agreed. “Yeah, I remember when we were in high school this was a really funky area...”

“Well that, too, Goldie. But that’s not why I’m sad, Sis. Years ago Max wanted to buy six or seven houses down here that were teetering on the brink of foreclosure and I talked him out of it. The most expensive one was twenty-five thousand dollars. Do you realize how much money we would have made if he’d ignored my stupid advice?”

Goldie mumbled, “I should have known it would be something like that.”

They pulled up in front of a duplex a few blocks from the waterfront, one of the old holdouts that hadn’t been gobbled up to make room for a multi-million dollar mansion. Lenny opened the door on the second ring, one hand holding a coffee mug, the other clutching a bath towel wrapped around his waist.

“Geez, I didn’t know there were two of you!” He stood there posing in the doorway, obviously flexing his muscles for their benefit. “You ladies are from the newspaper, aren’t you? Wow, look at the time, I’m so sorry!” He flexed again, clearly enjoying their discomfort as they stared at his physique. “Give me a minute, I’ll throw on some clothes. You can help yourself to coffee if you want. It’s over there on the counter.” He pointed toward the kitchen almost dislodging the towel.

Goldie shrugged and caught her sister’s eye.
California kook?

Godiva nodded.
Hmmm.
Not what I expected. Older, better looking, too bad he didn’t drop the towel.

Considering the filthy condition of Lenny’s kitchen, they passed on his offer of coffee. The picture window in the living room, with bits of spider webs clinging to its old-fashioned panes, offered a panoramic view of the hill leading down to the beach and the ocean beyond.

Goldie peered out at the sailboats on the horizon. “Kind of a charming little place, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but depending on his deal with Manicotti, this boy could be moving into one of those new houses down the street sometime soon. Well, that’s his business. I just hope he has a lead on Wesley.”

“Wesley?” They hadn’t heard him come up behind them and both jumped at the sound of his voice. His feet were bare and he was haphazardly dressed in drawstring pants and a Misfits tee shirt with a smiling skull on it. “I don’t know a Wesley, but I can tell you all about me for your story in the
Times.
” His eyes flashed back and forth between the sisters. “Which one of you is the entertainment reporter? Or do you work together, kind of tag team reporting?” A nervous giggle escaped his lips.

Goldie reached for her purse and withdrew her pad of paper and pen. “Lenny, first of all thanks for seeing us. We’re really hoping you can help us with something.”

“Help you? I thought you said you’re with the
Times
. Aren’t you here to interview me?”

Godiva jumped in. “Well yes—and no. You see, I am with the
Times.
Well, my column appears in the
Times..
.”

“Yeah, you write the
Ask G.O.D.
column, I recognized you right away.” He turned and pointed to Goldie. “So you must be the reporter, right?”

“Well...” Goldie hesitated. “...I’m afraid we weren’t exactly straight with you. You see we’re not reporters, but we do want to ask you a few questions.”

Lenny’s eyes opened wide and his dusky face turned three shades darker. “What! Why the Hell am I seeing you if it’s not for a newspaper story?
Bad Apple to Beefcake
is news, godammit. Big news.” He thumped his chest. “I want the world to know what a sack of shit he was. Waddah ya mean you’re not here to do a piece on me?”

Godiva diffused the situation in the best way she could. “Look, Lenny, I agree your movie is big news, but as you know I’m not an entertainment reporter and neither is my sister. Listen, I’ll make you a deal. I have lots of connections at the paper. If you help us out, I promise that I’ll personally ask the Entertainment Editor to send someone over to interview you. He’s a good friend of mine.”

A muscle in his cheek jumped and the sisters cringed at the sound of his grinding teeth. “But you’ll get me the coverage I deserve? No compromise on that. I’ve waited too many years for the spotlight. I deserve it. Is that a deal?”

Without hesitation Godiva shot back, “Deal!”

“Okay. Whadda ya want to know?”

“We’re very interested in anything you can tell us about Wellington’s son Wesley. We know you researched quite a bit in Cotati, particularly at the
Clarion,
because we did that, too. Wesley’s trail runs cold in his early teens, so we really want to know if you found anything that could lead to him now.”

Lenny’s face lit up and he pointed to Goldie, “Oh, I get it, you must be some kind of insurance investigator or inheritance lawyer. If I help you find this guy so you can give him some money, I want to know what’s in it for me.” The statement was punctuated with another nervous giggle.

The sisters looked at each other.

A little deception couldn’t hurt,
thought Godiva.

Goldie’s eyes flashed.

The truth shall set you free!
echoed in Godiva’s head, so she acquiesced and gave an imperceptible nod.

“Well, Lenny,” Goldie replied, “you’ve got half of that right. We are investigating, but not because of any inheritance. You see, our friend has been accused of Wellington’s murder—”

Godiva jumped in. “—but we’re sure he didn’t do it. We’re just trying to help him out...”

“And you hit the nail on the head, Lenny, Wesley could inherit some major money. Enough to make us wonder if it was a motive for murder.”

Lenny opened his mouth to say more, but checked himself. He thought a moment and said, “Well, well, well. That’s an interesting idea you have there.” The incongruous giggle emerged again. This time he sounded less like a little girl and more like a rabid hyena.

“So do you know the guy? Where can we find him?” Goldie’s pen hovered over her notepad.

Lenny jerked his head in her direction. “Yeah, I’ve met him. He’s the one who gave me the idea for the screenplay.”

“Where did you meet him?”

Lenny started pacing in front of the picture window, clasping and unclasping his hands “Look. One night, I don’t know, probably about a year and a half ago. Maybe even two. I decide to go out for a drink. I was depressed, okay?” He glared as though they’d accused him of being a lush.

“Hollywood can chew a guy up and spit him out in little pieces, ya know? Here I was writing this great stuff and the studios told me it was crap. So I call this friend up, he lives near Hollywood, and he wants me to meet him at this bar near his house.” Lenny paused in his tracks.

Without thinking, Godiva blurted out, “That’s a long way to go for a drink...”

“Well, I wasn’t really that hot on driving all the way over there, but then I figure what the hell? It’ll give me a chance to blow off steam. Okay. So I get all the way across town and just as I’m walking into the Bottom of the Bottle, the guy calls on my cell to say something’s come up and he can’t make it. That really pissed me off. So I go in anyway and toss down a few.”

The twins looked at him in expectation.

“Well, there’s this forlorn kid sitting a few stools down from me. Looks like that character on
Just Shoot Me
.”

Goldie looked puzzled, but Godiva nodded, “David Spade?”

“Yeah, him. You know, small, skinny, shaggy blond hair, baby face. He really didn’t even look old enough to drink but he’s three sheets to the wind. Next thing I know he moves over and starts talking to me.”

Godiva whispered, “Wesley?”

“You got that one right, cutie. Wesley Wellington in the flesh. But I didn’t know it right then. Like, he’s almost crying. Says he just got to town and he had a plan to work out.”

The sisters looked at each other.

“First he tells me about how it was when he was young and growing up in this neat little town where his big whoop-de-do grandfather played the accordion in the music festival.” A glance at the hard rock CDs on his wall told them Lenny didn’t listen to polka music.

Goldie offered, “We did find out about Buck Wellington. What else did he tell you?”

“Well, then, like the flood gates opened. He starts to tell me about this rotten sonofabitch father who nearly beat his mother to death and then ran off. Pretty soon she died, his grandfather takes him in and in a year or so the old guy kicks the bucket, too. I’m really feeling sorry for the kid, ya see, but I know a good story when I hear it so I kept him talking.” Lenny resumed his pacing, and began cracking his knuckles as he walked.

“Well, after that the kid says he was shuffled from one abusive foster home to another. Then finally, when he’s about fifteen, he’s placed with a nice old couple and they want to adopt him. So whadda ya think happens?”

Always the optimist, Goldie said, “They adopted him?”

He giggled and shook his head. “Guess again. Family Services says the couple’s too old and yanks him out of their house, he runs away and heads for L.A. to make it on his own. Now, he’s sixteen, broke, living on the street with a coupla scumbags offering to pimp for him.”

Godiva barely suppressed a shudder imagining her own son on the streets at that age.

“Anyway, he’s living in some alley, sleeping in a refrigerator box, when a caring person takes him to a teen shelter someplace in the valley. He says he stayed there until he was twenty-one. First they helped him and then he helped other kids as a counselor. I guess he moved to Hollywood a few months before I ran into him in that bar.”

“Poor Wesley. That’s probably why we couldn’t find him. Homeless people don’t have public records.” Goldie was scribbling like mad.

Lenny scowled at her. “Ya wanna hear all of this or not? If you do, button up.”

“Please continue...”

“So, the kid is really getting drunk and I’m not even sure he can make it out of there, but he’s getting ready to leave. Then, as this little twerp is stumbling out the door, he turns around, eyes burning with hatred and says something like, ‘Oh yeah, forgot to tell you about my plan. Daddy’s the famous TV Chef, Biff Wellington. And it’s payback time.’ And then he’s gone.”

Lenny reached out for a chair and jerked it to him. He sat down but popped up again to do more pacing. “Now I’m thinkin’ to myself: Lenny. This is it. There’s a story in that sonofabitch and you can write it! I’m picturing the big bucks. One of America’s new idols turns out to be a piece of shit. Got it? Can’t you picture rags like the
Enquirer
and shows like
60 Minutes
giving me free publicity? Americans love a scandal.”

“They sure do. What happened next?”

“Well, that’s it. I tried to find Wesley again after that, but no soap. No telephone listing, nothing. So I tracked down every bit of information I could, wrote a killer screenplay and started to pitch it around town.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Aw, I don’t know. Probably a little less than a year ago. I wasn’t getting any bites, so finally I decide to take it to Manny Manicotti. I heard some inside information that his boy Wellington was talking to another network about a different kind of show. I figured maybe Manicotti would option my screenplay to get even.”

“I guess you figured right and he did. But wasn’t that a while back?” Godiva’s brow was furrowed from trying to absorb Wesley’s story and Lenny’s actions.

“Yeah. I gave him a two-year option for peanuts up front and a big percentage of gross. After that, the bastard just sat on it!”

Goldie tapped her teeth with her pen. “So, in a way it was your good fortune that Biff got knocked off.”

Lenny’s nervous cackle returned. “Good fortune? Yeah, you might say that. Anything else I can help you ladies with in exchange for that interview you promised to get me?”

Godiva stood up and pumped his hand. “No, Lenny, you’ve been more help than you know. I promise to call the Entertainment Editor today.” They left him standing in the doorway rubbing his hands and tapping his foot on the threshold.

After they got in the car, Godiva pulled out her cell phone and called Angel, who answered on the first ring. “Hi, it’s Godiva. How are you doing on your search?”

“Well, I didn’t find much. He really has dropped from sight. I did come across his birth certificate and the possibility of one relative we might be able to contact. Not much else, I’m afraid.” She gave Godiva Wesley’s full legal name but had no information yet on the supposed relative.

“That’s great, Angel. We just got a tip of our own that might help. I want you to start a search of teen shelters in the Valley. It seems that he lived in one for a couple of years.”

“Right on, boss. You got it. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.” The line went dead.

“Well, what did she say?”

“Not much. The possibility of some distant relative, and a birth certificate for Wesley Christopher Wellington.” She turned onto Manhattan Beach Boulevard.

“Did you say Wesley Christopher?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Something’s been driving me crazy, Sis, and I think I’m on the verge of connecting the dots. Remember the antique silver picture frame in Chris Cross’ apartment?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Well, the blond woman in the picture has been haunting me. I could almost swear it was the same shot of Lucy McWharter Wellington we saw in her obituary.”