Bride of the Rat God (6 page)

“Good God.” Norah pressed her hand automatically to her lips. “The champagne bottle, you said. He bought four at Enyart’s.”

Brown sniffed. “He only brought two into my place. Charlie must have drunk the rest on the way over.”

Frank Brown hadn’t, Norah knew, been particularly thrilled when his mistress had brought an unscheduled sister-in-law home from her vacation in France, and for some weeks, whenever he arrived in his studio limousine to take Christine to the Cocoanut Grove or the Victor Hugo, he’d determinedly ignored the new housemate, as he’d ignored the dogs. This was the first time he’d spoken to her beyond a polite “Mrs. Blackstone” and a touch of his hat, though Mr. Fishbein had written a little squib for the fan magazines about Miss Flamande’s generosity in taking in her widowed—and highly respectable—sister-in-law.

“That’s right. There wasn’t any champagne mixed with the blood on the floor.” Fair, bespectacled, and nearly as obese as his boss, Conrad Fishbein had an engaging baby face and great charm. Perched on one of the sleek, modern chairs, strategically close to the black-lacquered coffee table with its ersatz Ming bowl of candy and nuts, he was alternately downing nuts and patting Chang Ming, who had barreled down the stairs at the first sound of the intruders’ voices and had promptly decided that they were his long-lost parents. Buttercreme, after a long stare of horrified indignation, had taken refuge in the kitchen.

Some watchdogs,
Norah thought wryly.

But in that case, what had they barked at the previous night?

There was a pause in which she guessed Brown was wondering how much she knew—or had deduced—about Mr. Sandringham’s relationship with Mr. Pelletier. Perhaps alone in Mrs. Pendergast’s household, she had been aware of the Pendergast butler’s proclivities in that direction, and poor Arbuthnot’s loneliness and fear had left her with nothing but pity for the impossibility of such a situation for any man. In consequence of that—and of Christine’s blasé letters concerning one of her early husbands and his assorted boyfriends—she had not been nearly as shocked as she knew she should have been when she’d seen Sandringham and Keith Pelletier together on the set of
She-Devil of Babylon,
Chrysanda Flamande’s newest opus.

At length she said, “And Mr. Sandringham has... disappeared?”

Brown’s bulging eyes narrowed for a moment; Fishbein glanced over at him, as if asking for advice on how to proceed. Then the producer gave himself a little shake, looked suitably indignant, and said, “Of course not! As I told you over the phone, Charlie’s left town. He was called out of town for a family emergency. I took him to the station myself from the party.”

“What?” Norah said.

“Huh?” said Fishbein. Then, making a lightning recovery, “Oh—oh, yes! Yes, of course!”

“You said on the phone he’d disappeared.”

“I said on the phone he’d left town,” Brown replied steadily. “You asked me if Charlie was there, and I said, ‘No, he’s left town.’ “

Norah opened her mouth to protest, but from the archway that led to the stairs came a low, husky whisper. “Oh, my God, is it true?” Framed in the dimness behind her and glowing like a flame in a crimson kimono, Chrysanda Flamande stood with her raven hair flowing down over her shoulders and a black Pekingese clutched in her arms.

The Peke is a nice touch,
thought Norah. Too small to negotiate the steps by himself, Black Jasmine would have stood at the top quacking indignantly until someone went up and bore him down, a piece of business that would have completely upstaged Christine’s lines.

“Let me know all!” Christine swept forward in a single graceful billow of ruby silk, handing off Black Jasmine to Norah like Red Grange passing the ball without a glance, and sank partially onto the divan and partially onto Frank Brown’s bulgy shoulder. “I was sick with shock when I heard!”

“Was she?”

Turning at the soft sound of the voice from the hallway arch, Norah saw Alec Mindelbaum slip in through the kitchen door. Chang Ming, plumed tail thrashing furiously, realized that here was yet another long-lost parent and dashed to his feet, bouncing slightly in his eagerness to be patted and admired, which Mr. Mindelbaum obligingly hunkered down to do; Black Jasmine, still in Norah’s arms, attempted to leap down to lick the newcomer’s face.

“Not nearly as sick with shock as Mr. Fishbein was when Mr. Brown said he’d taken Charlie Sandringham to the station last night,” murmured Norah. “You just missed that part.”

Mr. Mindelbaum’s eyebrows shot up until they nearly lost themselves in his curly hair. He straightened up even as Fishbein said, “There’s nothing to be shocked about, Christine. Charlie got an emergency telephone call at Mr. Brown’s party, sent Keith Pelletier home with his car, and Frank took him to the train station. His mother was taken ill, you see.”

Christine raised her head from Frank Brown’s shoulder, where Brown had been self-consciously comforting her. “I thought Charlie’s mother was dead.”

Brown cupped a hand over her artfully disarrayed hair. “His father,” he said, and glared at Fishbein. “His father was taken ill at his farm in Vermont. The call reached him at my party.”

“How did they know he was
at
your party?” inquired Christine, sitting up and reaching confidingly into Brown’s jacket for a cigarette, which she carefully fitted into the amber and diamond holder she withdrew from her kimono pocket and permitted him to light.

“Oh, come, Christine, his father’s housekeeper would have known he’d be at the premiere,” Norah pointed out helpfully. “Of course she’d have deduced there’d be a party at Mr. Brown’s house afterward.”

“Oh...oh, of course.” She exhaled a long stream of smoke. “God, and
what
a party, Frank, simply too divine for words.” Her voice slipped out of the throaty, Chrysanda Flamande tones into her usual breathless baby coo. “Though I thought it terribly unfair that you’d have all those dancing girls from the Cocoanut Grove for the men to look at and not one single dancing boy for us girls. Tell me, darling, does that seem right to you?”

She turned to Norah, gesturing with her cigarette. There was a nervous brightness to her eyes, a restlessness to her movements that told Norah she’d resorted to the little ivory box of white “pick-me-up” powder that lived in her top right-hand dresser drawer. “All those girls in pink tights and not
one
pair of masculine thighs upon which to feast my attention.”

“And Charlie sent Keith back to
his
house with the car?” Mr. Mindelbaum, standing behind Norah’s chair, reached down to scratch Black Jasmine’s head. His brown eyes rested on Brown with a sharp, calculating watchfulness.

“Keith’s apartment is only around the corner on Redondo,” Fishbein said. “He must have gone into Charlie’s house to leave the car keys and empty champagne bottles. From the looks of it, Ch...er...someone attacked him in the living room with a broken bottle, probably cut his throat there. Keith stumbled or crawled down the hallway to the bedroom, the attacker cutting him all the way. The body was on the bed. Most of it, anyway.”

Norah shut her eyes and put her hand over her mouth again, trying not to think about the scene.

“Charlie’s cleaning woman called us,” Brown went on after a moment, his eyes on Mindelbaum’s. “We told her to wait for us in the foyer and not go farther into the house for fear of mixing up her prints and having the police think she knew something about it but not to stir outside, either.”

“Oh, my God,” whispered Christine again, and passed a theatrical hand over her forehead. “Frank! How dreadful!” She was, Norah could see, sincerely shocked, but Christine was never one to let even genuine horror interfere with a chance to show how sensitive she was. “I will never, never get over this! Oh, my God.”

“What a lucky thing Charlie was called out of town,” murmured Mr. Mindelbaum.

“Has anyone telegraphed him?” Christine turned immense brown eyes on the studio head. “He’ll be destroyed by the news! He was so fond of Keith; they were so happy together!”

“It
was
lucky Charlie was called out of town,” Brown replied heavily, continuing to glare at Mindelbaum. “Because in two weeks
The Midnight Cavalier
comes out, and we don’t want another Arbuckle scandal on our hands.”

“Not to mention the fact that he himself might have been killed by the unknown assailant,” added Norah.

Fishbein nodded eagerly. “That’s good. We’ll put that in the press release,
SCREEN IDOL’S NARROW ESCAPE
...”

“I guess we’ll never know
how
narrow,” Mindelbaum remarked cynically.

“No,” said Brown, “we won’t. Now, he didn’t happen to say anything to you, Alec, about plans for the evening other than coming to my place? Just so we can find anyone he was intending to meet and let them know what happened to him.”

The cameraman smiled a little and shook his head. “As far as I know, we were the only ones he talked to at Enyart’s, but all the regulars were there and saw him. Doc LaRousse, the two Neds, Hans Schweibler, Alice and the Rothstein boys, Dale Wilmer, a couple of stunters, I think, from Universal, and Jack himself. Doc and Hans talked to Keith; God knows who they ran into in the back room.”

“Damn,” Fishbein muttered, and shot Brown an anguished glance.

Brown shook his head regretfully. “Well, when they read in the paper about his mother—father—they’ll know it was an emergency. How was he acting?”

“Drunk,” Norah replied, a little surprised at the question.

“Not that it has any bearing...”

“At the party he was so gay, so devil-may-care, laughing and telling jokes,” Christine provided, languishing once again and drawing on her cigarette as if only nicotine stood between her and collapse from grief.

“Hadn’t drunk himself melancholy yet,” Mindelbaum said.

“You can’t drink yourself melancholy on champagne,” said Norah. “You fall asleep first.”

“Well, God knows what was in that champagne, darling.” Christine raised her head and picked aside a stray thread of Pekingese fur that had adhered itself to her crimson, pouting lips.

“It was Enyart’s champagne,” Mindelbaum said, “so it probably actually
was
champagne. Oleson ran it in last night. I think he talked to Wilmer, but Wilmer was so coked, he probably doesn’t remember anything about it. Like Chris says, Charlie seemed pretty chipper, but considering how much he’d had to drink, if he hadn’t been chipper, he should sue his bootlegger. So if they had a quarrel, it would have been on the way over to your place or on the way back.”

“Who said anything about a quarrel?” Brown demanded fiercely. “Charlie walked Keith out to the car, Keith drove off, then I took Charlie to the train station. I was with him the whole time.”

“And he didn’t go home to pack a toothbrush?” the cameraman asked. “When did all this take place? The police are gonna want to know. It’s...how far from your place down to the station? Fifteen miles? Seventeen miles?”

“At a guess,” Norah said firmly, “it took place within fifteen minutes of Mr. Fairbanks leaving the party. He left early, didn’t he? Before midnight?”

“Before the dancing girls came out, and that was midnight, wasn’t it, Frank, dearest?” Christine sat up and pushed straight the egret-feathered bandeau that bound the dark cascades of her hair. “Of course, if you’re married to Mary Pickford, I suppose you
have
to leave early.”

Brown and Fishbein both glanced inquiringly at Norah.

“It stands to reason,” she said innocently. “Meeting Mr. Fairbanks was the main attraction for Mr. Pelletier at the party, so of course he wouldn’t have consented to leave if Mr. Fairbanks were still there, would he?”

“Yes, it was just a few minutes after that when I got the phone call,” Brown said thoughtfully. “In fact,” he expanded, “I was called away from seeing Doug and Mary out the door.”

“Yes, but you and I were together in the library while the dancing girls were still doing their act,” protested Christine, grinding out her cigarette in a gleaming brass ashtray.

“That was later,” Brown said firmly.

“It wasn’t, because you came right in from the foyer and pulled me down off the table just as I was showing that skinny redhead how to—”

“It was later,” Brown said again. “It was after I got back. And
you”
he added, turning suddenly. “All of you. Since Charlie’s going to be in Vermont for the indefinite future, I’m moving up the location shooting. Day after tomorrow, Santa Fe station, seven-thirty—”

“Oh, no!” wailed Christine, sitting up in horror and forgetting all about who had been where when. “Seven-
thirty!
Isn’t there a train that leaves later than that?”

“Not if we want to get ourselves out to Red Bluff in time to get set up. If Hearst or the
Times
can get reporters out
there
for questions, they’ll be doing better than I think they can. Is Norah coming with you?”

“Of course!” Christine shifted her position on the couch to lean across and grasp Norah’s hand protectively. Like all her gestures, the movement combined glowing theatricality with genuine warmth. Everything Christine did was fifty percent sham, but the other fifty percent, Norah reflected, was pure gold.

“I wouldn’t stick poor Norah here all by herself, and besides,” she added, reaching up to stroke Black Jasmine’s little round head and have her fingers chewed, “I couldn’t be without my celestial cream cakes for ten days, could I, Jazz darling?”

“Good,” grunted Brown. “We’ll shoot the courtyard and balcony scenes between you and Blake Fallon in Edendale Monday night. We’d do it tomorrow if I could locate Blake, but God knows which of those gold diggers he’s spending the weekend with. So in the meantime, all of you—not a word to anyone.” He glared around with pale eyes. “Reporters are going to be phoning you, so you tell them the police have forbidden you to disclose anything. Did you remember to call the police, Conrad? Just tell them what you know.” He ticked off the points on fingers like Polish sausages. “Charlie was Keith’s mentor in acting, they were friends, Charlie was happy and cheerful earlier that evening—before, of course, he got that terrible news about his mother—”