Everything and More (77 page)

NolaBee embroidered on this theme of personal incredulity until Roy said raggedly, “If you’ll wait a minute while I change my shoes, Charles, we can take a walk.”

She striped Band-Aids over her blistered feet, then went into the
back bedroom. Here, NolaBee, a pack rat, stored boxes and cartons of her children’s past. Roy found a pair of loafers from her college days.

Outside, in the smoggy sunlight, Charles took her arm. “About an hour ago I talked to a Captain Sullivan,” he said. “The police aren’t filing any criminal charges.”

Roy sighed with relief. During the long, wakeful night, she had conjured up scenes from the hundreds of detective novels she had read, movies, TV shows, envisioning herself as unjustly sent to trial, maybe even sentenced to life. “You’re sure, Charles? There was some talk of referring the case to the district attorney’s office.”

“Who told you that?”

“One of the reporters today.”

“Reporters,” Charles said coldly. “We’ve had to post guards outside Belvedere to keep them out.”

“Was it the gun being registered in your grandfather’s name that convinced the police?”

“Actually, when the detective took your statement, he had it evaluated an accident. But because of who Mother is . . . was, he didn’t want to seem negligent, so he referred the case to Captain Sullivan.”

“Charles, I could have handled it better. She was so shook-up, so obviously not herself.”

“She took Grandfather’s death very hard,” he said, then paused. “Since he died, she’s been behaving oddly. The family said those weeks I was in Sweden she stayed holed up in her apartment, not taking any calls. Then suddenly she made scores of dates. I can’t understand why. She was flying over to see me.” He paused again. “At Belvedere, she didn’t even say hello to Grandmother.”

“She only wanted the gun, I guess,” Roy said, wincing. She could still see that round circle of blood spreading on white French silk.

“That’s what I wanted to ask. Why should she want to hurt you?”

Roy’s steps faltered.

Here was her chance at a full and blessed confessional. He wants to know Althea’s motive, and what’s so wrong with telling him?

Is it so monstrous that he’s the son of my husband?

Okay, it might jolt him at first. Charles isn’t the type to be thrown, though. Later, maybe he’ll even accept me as a kind of surrogate mother.

His reddened eyes were fixed on her, calm with command.

Blinking confusedly, she looked down. She still felt that enduring, endearing schoolgirl loyalty as strongly as she had decades ago.

“Roy?” Charles prompted. “What did she say?”

“She was all upset.”

“She must have made
some
coherent remark.”

“Let me think,” said Roy, who since yesterday had traversed this mine-infested territory a hundred times. “First I offered her coffee. She refused. Then she rambled a bit about coming over to see me, although it was nothing so special. Whenever she came to town, we got together.”

“That doesn’t sound too distraught.”

“It really was. Her clothes were creased—all her life your mother was impeccable. I’d never seen her like this. Sari said she looked strange, too.”

“Sari?” Charles turned away, but not before Roy saw a muscle jump in his eyelid.

“She was staying over. We planned to have brunch at my sister’s, and she left right away. Althea asked whether she was gone or not. That’s how she was. A little off center, as if she couldn’t keep track of what was happening.”

“She seemed fine in Stockholm, but she was only there two days, workdays, so I didn’t have much time with her. We planned to go to Lake Siljan for the weekend. I’ve rented a place there. Then . . . she just left. No message to the servants or anything.
That
wasn’t like her, but I invented an excuse—she had met friends and would contact me any minute. I should have tried to find her.”

They walked half a block in silence.

“It’s so senseless!” Charles burst out.

“She was under a lot of stress.”

“I know, but why pick up a gun to see you? She must have intended to use it all along.”

Roy ducked her head. “Stop trying to find anything rational in this, Charles. A death in the family is a terrible trauma. Anybody can crack. Believe me, I know. She was out of it, she didn’t have any idea what she was doing, or why.”

Althea, old buddy, old enemy, other of the Big Two, even beyond the grave you can place your trust in Roy Wace Horak, also known as Miss Priss Trueheart, who keeps all secrets.
Then, to Roy’s shamed chagrin, her knees went weak. She clutched at the hard, lean masculine arm. “When’s the funeral.”

“We’re flying her back East to the family burial ground,” Charles said. “As soon as I get back to Belvedere, we’re leaving.”

“Have you talked to Sari?”

“I called. She was out,” he retorted in a detached tone.

Roy held on to his arm more tightly, halting them. A jacaranda tree bowed over the sidewalk and fallen purple blossoms strewed the
pavement blocks. “Probably she was up at the old adobe. She’ll be terribly disappointed not to . . . not to be able to express her sympathies.”

“To be honest, I don’t care to trade on this kind of situation.”

“I thought you two had quite a thing going.”

“Unilateral, I’m afraid,” Charles said brusquely. “She canceled her plans for Stockholm.”

“She told me she thought you wouldn’t be around.”

“My work does shift me from place to place—but she certainly realized I’d have made every effort to be with her and her cousin.”

“Niece,” Roy corrected without thinking, stifling an off-kilter inner laugh.
She
thinks he doesn’t want her,
he
thinks she doesn’t want him. What masters we all are when it comes to screwing up our lives!

“Charles, she thinks you’re evading her.”

“She told you that?”

“I tried to argue her out of it, but does she ever listen to common sense?”

“She
is
pretty much all feelings,” Charles replied noncommittally.

“Charles, listen, I’m going to talk out of turn, and if you’re angry, blame it on a buttinsky aunt. Sari’s so wild for you that she’s positive it’s unfair pressure on you to tell you that she’s pregnant.”

For a moment Charles’s tear-reddened eyes stared blankly at her.

“She’s pregnant,” Roy repeated.

“And never told me?”

“Something about not wanting to tie you down.”

“She hasn’t done anything?”

“Oh, Charles, you know Sari.”

“No, she wouldn’t, would she? Roy, she really
believed
I didn’t want to see her?” he asked, his voice sounding softer, younger.

“What’s so odd? You thought the same thing.”

His lips pressed together, an expression of relentless concentration. Roy smiled, her eyes misting. This was how Gerry had looked when he painted.

“Let’s get back,” he said, taking her arm and abruptly turning around.

He forgot his manners enough not to see her to the door. He did not say good-bye. He got into the nondescript coupe—it must be one that the Belvedere servants drove.

Roy shifted her weight on her blistered feet, watching him speed northward on Crescent Drive. She smiled as the car swerved west on Santa Monica Boulevard in the direction of Mandeville Canyon and Sari.

Granddaughter of Grover T. Coyne, Althea Stoltz, slain under mysterious circumstances.

—
Reuters bulletin, June 21, 1970

COYNE HEIRESS SHOT TO DEATH

—Chicago Sun Times,
June 22, 1970

The question on everyone’s lips is why American police have hushed up the murder aspects of the recent death of Althea Stoltz? Londoners remember her kindly as the ever-so-young Mrs. Carlo Firelli and then as Mrs. Aubrey Wimborne, a member of the small, closed royal circle. (Sources close to Princess Margaret report that she is greatly saddened by her friend’s death.)

The rumors surrounding this mysterious death were increased by the sudden marriage of Carlo Firelli II, son of the heiress by her first husband, to Sara Fernauld, daughter of Rain Fairburn—and niece of Roy Horak, who wielded the murder gun! Conjectures have been made that the victim’s vastly wealthy family has squashed the case to avoid scandal.

There has been no news from California about reopening the investigations.

—
Women’s News,
London Daily Telegraph,
August 3, 1970

The case has all the glamour and mystery of a best-selling novel. A beautiful, youngish, much-married heiress to incalculable wealth, a famous and beautiful longtime star of the movies and television, a successful businesswoman, whose lives were intertwined from early youth in the glamour capital of Beverly Hills.

—
Mike Wallace,
Sixty Minutes,
December 6, 1970

RAIN FAIRBURN SHOW EMMIES IT FOURTH TIME

—Hollywood Reporter,
April 14, 1972

One of the decade’s biggest news stories broke in a quiet West Los Angeles neighborhood on Sunday, June 21, 1970. During a struggle, a bullet fired by Roy Horak, widow of the artist Gerrold Horak and sister of Rain Fairburn, killed Coyne heiress Althea Stoltz. The mysteries of the case, not to mention the glimpses into the lives of jet-setters, kept the Golden Girls slaying in the news for months.

—
Voice-over accompanied by clips of Roy Horak, Rain Fairburn, Althea Stoltz, and Jacqueline Onassis, from
The Decade in Review,
NBC, December 31, 1979.

  
73
  

On a drizzly January day in 1972, the planning conference for the following day’s
Rain Fairburn Show
was canceled, so Marylin started home a good hour earlier than usual.

A hundred feet before her driveway she slowed nearly to a standstill to peer apprehensively at the dripping shrubbery that concealed chain-link fencing. After Althea’s death, reporters, photographers, thrill seekers, ardent fans had lurked in these bushes ready to sprint when the automatic gates swung open. Joshua, to ward off trespassers, had hired a guard service: for nearly a year, shifts of two armed men had sat here in a parked car. Marylin, despondent over the absence of both children, had found a wan ray of sunshine that Sari (with Thea, the baby, and Charles) was escaping the harassment by living in London. Finally the ferrets and groupies had given up, sparing the Fernaulds a monumental expense.

Though it had been months since Marylin had spied an interloper in the bushes, her finger shook on the remote control, and she had to press the button twice before the gates swung open.

On the patio she halted as she saw Joshua coming down the path from his cottage-office. She hadn’t honked, so he was unaware of her early arrival. His head was hunched like a turtle’s and his umbrella bobbled whenever he lurchingly descended one of the shallow steps. His slowness was due to the agony that wet weather kicked up in his arthritic left hip joint. An old, crippled warrior, Marylin thought, her chest aching with pity—pity that had Joshua suspected would have spurred him into furious revilements of her.