I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason (8 page)

A
s it turned out, Meredith Allan had left Ojai more than twenty years ago, on the death of her guru, Jiddhu Krishnamurti, to whom she was apparently devoted. And generous. She had finally figured her life out. Ojai was a place for people who had not.

For more than a century, the whole Ojai Valley had been home to a hodgepodge of religious, spiritual, metaphysical, occult, and self-help groups. The Ojai Hot Springs opened in 1887, promising to cure everything from rheumatism to tummy aches. David C. Cook built his “Second Garden of Eden” in Piru around the same time, with the express intention of saving souls. In the early 1920s, the Krotona Institute was established under the leadership of Albert P. Warrington, who moved his followers from the Hollywood Hills to a tranquil 115-acre hilltop in Ojai, where you could smell the orange blossoms from dawn to dusk. Theosophist Annie Besant, who spent time in India studying Hinduism, purchased several hundred acres near the Krotona Institute soon afterward and brought Krishnamurti with her there to
serve as in-house prophet. He eventually broke with the theosophists and cultivated his own band of acolytes, among whom could be counted Miss Meredith Allan.

But she was done with all that. She had lived longer than anyone thought she had a right to. She had sown her oats, conquered her demons, and found her way. Ready to attend to her responsibilities, she'd bid a fond adieu to her fellow seekers, left her thriving citrus farm, returned to her ancestral home in Ventura, packed up everything that wasn't nailed down, and bought a mansion in Montecito, just south of Santa Barbara. As it turned out, she hadn't really had that many responsibilities.

All this I learned from Miss Allan's longtime secretary, a lovely man named Mr. Wingate. About whom I learned from a librarian at the Ventura County Historical Society, another lovely man named Mr. Grandy. Both of whom were tickled pink with the idea they were helping me with deep background for my book. That was how I'd put it. They thought it sounded very cloak-and-dagger.

Miss Allan would grant me an hour, Mr. Wingate announced giddily. I was to meet her at her Montecito estate first thing Wednesday morning, and I was to be prompt.

I'd decided right away on an Eve Arden look—you know, the wisecracking sidekick, the one who doesn't get the guy but can expertly dissect his inadequacies. Eve Arden always had great clothes. And bags. I had no intention of competing with the leading lady, of course, but wanted her to know I appreciated her obsessions, and maybe shared one or two.

I put on a crisp white blouse, high-heeled black pumps, and a pink wool Pucci circle skirt I'd bought at Bridget's, covered with a politically incorrect pattern of African masks, totems,
and grass huts shaded by palm trees. I would not be accepting food or beverages in this particular garment. First of all, the waistband was so tight it precluded breathing, much less eating. And second of all, the skirt's yellowed label informed me it had to be commercially dry-cleaned with “cold perchloroethylene,” whatever the hell that was, and I hardly thought the professionals at Klean-E! Cleaners were up for the challenge.

Into my purse went my steno pad and the directions Mr. Wingate had faxed me, along with my cat's-eye glasses, should they be needed to accessorize my look. Buster tried to sneak into the car, poor thing, but I deposited him on the living room couch, which had become his bed when I banished him from mine due to his accelerating old-age stink. I tossed the new cashmere throw in the closet, just in case.

The drive felt long. I zoned out listening to reggae, then tuned in to talk radio around Oxnard when I needed to perk up. My favorite call of the afternoon was from a woman who was feeling guilty because her ex-father-in-law had left the bulk of his estate to her instead of his wife of forty years. It didn't stop her, though, from rushing right out and buying herself a diamond tennis bracelet and a sterling silver service for twenty-four.

My ex-father-in-law was a whole other can of worms. He taught his son everything he knew, which meant he was a miser and a cheat. Plus, he hated me, the big-haired girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Who has twenty-four people to dinner, anyway? Lael, I suppose. By the time you counted her kids and all their half brothers and sisters, you were up to a couple dozen easy.

Before I could start reproaching myself for having had
only one child, Montecito appeared, a mirage shimmering in the desert. Not exactly, I know, but it felt that way. Maybe it was all that hard money sparkling off the blue ocean.

Montecito
means “little mountain” in Spanish. But you didn't need cat's-eye glasses to see that “little” never went over big around here. Pleasure-seekers with names like Pillsbury, Fleischman, and du Pont came to Montecito in the early part of the twentieth century and built themselves a slew of mansions—big ones behind big gates. I followed the palm trees to Miss Allan's, a Mediterranean Revival number with Byzantine, Renaissance, and Moorish accents. In blush pink. I traipsed across the automobile entry court, through the terraced courtyard with its fountain dribbling turquoise beads of water, and rang the bell.

The rich don't open their own doors. Especially ones hewn out of solid mahogany and inlaid with hand-painted Turkish tiles. They have butlers who sneer and make you wait in musty drawing rooms. When Philip Marlowe went calling on four million bucks, it happened to him. But I was not calling on your typical millionairess. And she had a lot more millions than four.

No butler. No drawing room. And no dramatic entrance, though the sweeping staircase was made for it. I was greeted by the lady of the house herself, Meredith Allan, and she looked a lot like Cinderella, before the Fairy Godmother got to her.

She had kept her figure, but the rest was mystifying. She was wearing dungarees, with smudges of what looked to be paint on her chin. There was hair everywhere, tangled ropes of it, silvery gray and auburn, spilling onto a torn flannel shirt. And wrinkles, not that they detracted from her beauty.
Even at sea level, the woman's cheekbones were high enough to give a person altitude sickness.

“Ms. Caruso?” she asked, a pleasing lilt in her voice. “Please come in, and excuse the mess, will you? I've been doing a little redecorating.”

I hoped she was kidding. This was a house William Randolph Hearst would have approved of. The foyer was close to thirty feet high, with a crystal chandelier, a rococo dome fresco ceiling, stained-glass windows, and a terrazzo floor. And that was just for starters. She led me through an arched doorway flanked by gold-leaf fluted columns and a wraparound terra-cotta frieze depicting a vulture enjoying his evening meal. We stepped down into the sunken living room. Among its marvels were four gigantic fireplaces, each guarded by a trio of marble phoenixes, and overhead, hand-stenciled wooden beams embellished with dozens of carvings of owls.

“I call this room the aviary,” she said, laughing.

“Of course,” I replied, not getting it.

“You know, the birds,” she explained.

All I could think of at that moment was the Hitchcock movie. And the time in junior high when a pigeon relieved himself on my head.

“Would you like to see what I've been working on? It's this way, in the powder room. By the way, your skirt, Ms. Caruso, it's wonderful. I love that it's Pucci, but not jersey.”

That was exactly what I loved about it, too.

The powder room could have accommodated at least thirty-five women with shiny noses. Stained dropcloths covered the floor, along with squeezed tubes of oil paint in various hues, brushes of all sizes, smeared palettes, and dozens of preparatory sketches, lined up with near-military precision.

“I'm just finishing a mural. I've been at it for months now. It's a reproduction of one of my favorite Victorian fairy paintings, Richard Dadd's
The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke
. Do you know it?”

As a matter of fact, I did not.

“It depicts a fairy feller, he's the archmagician of the clan, splitting a hazelnut with his axe. All the fairies come out for the show. Fairy dandies making passes at nymphs, the keeper of the fairy inn, a dwarf fairy monk, a fairy dairymaid, Queen Mab riding in a car of state drawn by female centaurs and a gnat as coachman.”

Whimsy, I have to say, usually makes me gag. The minute I found out the British designer Zandra Rhodes spent her formative years poring over Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairy books, I swore I'd never wear one of her dressses, perpendicular pleating or no. But this was something else. I had never seen anything like it. I walked up close to take in the details, the sharp folds of taffeta on a flower fairy's bronze skirt, the iridescent wing of a trumpeting dragonfly. The surface of the mural had been covered with a scrim of twisted grasses, as if the scene were somehow forbidden. I felt like a voyeur. It was perfect. But who could possibly pee in this room?

“I didn't realize you were an artist,” I said.

“Oh, hardly,” she demurred. “I was hopeless in art school. I lack the requisite imagination. I can copy anything, though. I'm good at getting inside other people's heads, figuring out how they see the world. Dadd, you know, had been a promising student at the Royal Academy. But he lost an important competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament. He submitted a picture of St. George, but the dragon's tail was
too long. He went a little crazy, murdered his father, and wound up at Bedlam. That's where his talents really flowered. He painted this work a short while later, while he was incarcerated at the asylum at Broadmoor.”

Just a little crazy. She said it with that lilt. What would it be like, I wondered, to live in a world where the roses are always red and the sea is always warm and no one minds when you go just a little crazy?

“But where are my manners? Let's sit down and I'll get you something cool to drink.”

My resolution abandoned, I said, “That would be lovely, thank you.” Off in the distance, a bell rang. I wondered how she did that.

As we made our way back into the living room, I watched her snaky curls. The silver strands sparkled in the dim light. Had Mrs. Flynn been right? Had Joe been in love with this woman? And if so, could she have been his alibi for that night, the person he swore he'd never betray? Maybe.

Maybe he had fallen under the spell of her honeyed lilt and was powerless to reveal her name, even to save himself.

Maybe he was the last good man, protecting the woman he loved from the indignity of testifying in open court. God knows the state prosecutor Hamilton Burger, Perry Mason's nemesis, would have made mincemeat of a witness like her. Destroyed her reputation. Painted her as a fallen woman.

But there was no Hamilton Burger. This was real life. And real people had scruples. If Meredith Allan had been with Joe the night Jean was killed, she would have stepped forward.
What could have stopped her? Only someone without a heart could allow an innocent person to rot in jail.

Then, speaking of fairies, I remembered J. M. Barrie's description of Tinker Bell. She was a creature not wholly heartless, but so small she had room for only one feeling at a time.

M
y hostess gestured toward a plush red couch. Just as I was sinking into it, I caught sight of one of those owls glaring down at me. I felt like Snow White wandering alone through the dark forest. Disney had obviously hijacked my imagination.

Salvation took unexpected form. He was carrying two tall glasses of something pink, but he was no butler. Tall, dark, and handsome—I believe that's how it's usually put. He was wearing sleek Italian boots, narrow black pants, and a gray silk shirt cut close to his body. And what a body.

“How sweet of you to bring us our drinks, dear. Raspberry iced tea, lovely. Ms. Caruso, may I introduce you to my son, Burnett Fowlkes? Burnett, this is Cece Caruso. She's here to interview me for a book she's writing on old Ventura.”

His hair was curly, and his gaze was steely. In fact, the look he gave me was so intense I felt like I was being x-rayed. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant. I decided to look back and was pleased to see his color rise.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Caruso.”

“Call me Cece.” I couldn't remember if I had invited her to do the same. I didn't think so. How humiliating. There was no way I was asking these people for sweetener.

“Burnett is a restoration architect in L.A. He's here helping me with some detail work upstairs.”

“I could really use you in my bedroom,” I said. Idiot. “What I mean is, the molding is in shambles, and the fireplace has only one andiron and I've been looking for a good match for years.” Oh, man.

“There are lots of antique shops in the area. I'd try along Main,” he said graciously. “For a good match.”

Miss Allan was having a rollicking good time now. “Dear, tell Ms. Caruso something about this wonderful house.”

“It was built in the 1920s, for the film star Norma Talmadge. It's a replica of a seventeenth-century villa belonging to a duke in Florence. There's only one false note in the whole of it. Miss Talmadge was out to impress Irving Thalberg, the head of the studio, so she had the fireplace in her bedroom decorated with marble reliefs resembling the MGM lion. At parties,” he said, laughing, “she would hire bit players to growl from the closets.”

People growled at my parties without being asked. But I didn't have to advertise this.

I cleared my throat. “The lion is actually a well-known symbol of the Medici. Maybe your movie star knew more than you're giving her credit for.”

“I hadn't considered that. You're very astute, Ms. Caruso—Cece.”

“Oh, I don't know about that. It's just that I don't like
being underestimated, so I try never to underestimate others.”

“I'll remember that—the part about never underestimating you.”

I blushed.

“Mother, I've got to run some errands. I'll be back in a few hours. Cece, I hope we have the opportunity to meet again.”

A look passed between them as he leaned down to peck her cheek. She wanted him to stay, but he left without so much as a backward glance.

“Ms. Caruso,” she said, the lilt now gone, “about your book.”

This was the part I'd been dreading. I didn't have any legitimate reason to be there except to find out what she did or didn't know about the murder of her maybe-lover's wife.

“Yes, well, I think Mr. Wingate might have misunderstood me a little when we set up the appointment,” I said, which was not a total lie, but about as close as you can get. “My book isn't about old Ventura, not per se.”

She looked at me curiously. I smiled, trying not to show too much gum. Too much gum makes you look insincere. I learned that on the pageant circuit.

“What I'm actually researching,” I continued, “is the author Erle Stanley Gardner. He spent fifteen years in Ventura, back in the teens and twenties, and wrote the first Perry Mason books here.”

“Mr. Wingate doesn't make errors.”

“No, of course not.”

“He didn't believe in fairies.”

“Mr. Wingate?”

“Erle Stanley Gardner. He was a plodder. Some people
are. They play by the rules. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You know what I'm talking about.”

You know what I'm talking about.
That was exactly what Joseph Albacco had said to me.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. He took up the cause of two young English girls in Yorkshire who claimed to have met a pair of pixies, seen them riding snails and jumping off toadstools and such. The girls had photographs to prove it. I'd love to own those. But I suppose I'm digressing.”

She waited for me to contradict her. She was obviously used to having her every stray thought celebrated.

“Oh, no,” I intoned dutifully. It was for the cause.

She looked satisfied.

“Shall we get on with it then, Ms. Caruso? What exactly might Erle Stanley Gardner have to do with me?”

“Well,” I said, talking as fast as I could, “you're really the only other well-known person to come out of Ventura. I know what Ventura meant to Gardner. I want to find out about its impact on you. I suppose I'm trying to think through the significance of people's hometowns, you know, how they figure into their accomplishments. Sense of place, that sort of thing. What I'm looking for is another perspective on Ventura, a feeling for what this particular town offered to a young person with talent and energy.”

That was pathetic. Still, I kept going.

“Let's go back to your teenage years in Ventura, Miss Allan. Were you already interested in fashion then? Where did you buy your clothes? Were there other girls with similar tastes you spent time with? What was it like at Ventura City High for someone like you?”

“I loathed Ventura,” she said. “Every single thing about it. But what I hated most of all was the smell of it, the stink of oil on my father's fingers. As soon I was old enough, I went as far away from Ventura as I could, away from the derricks and the oil fields, somewhere I could breathe. Is that what you're looking for, Ms. Caruso?”

“Oh, that would certainly do it,” I answered. Had no one ever told this woman that discretion is the better part of valor? Not that I was complaining.

“No one thought I would live past the age of ten, you realize.” She took a sip of iced tea, wrinkled her nose, and poured the rest into a nearby potted palm. “I had suffered a serious bout of rheumatic fever. When I recovered, everyone treated me like I was made of glass. It drove me mad. I became a ragamuffin. I refused to wash or comb my hair. I ran the hillsides with the butterflies. I swam with the toads. I was a freak, an untouchable with a rich daddy who stank of petroleum.”

We were on her favorite subject now: the life and lore of Meredith Allan.

“When I was fourteen, my mother died and my father began taking me places with him. London. Paris. Rome. My brothers were useless. They stayed home and ran wild while I became a lady. I brushed my hair. I put on perfume. I paid attention. I came home with getups nobody around here understood. Vionnet. Givenchy. Antique jewels worn by the daughters of maharajahs. Around here they thought everything you could ever want was in the Sears catalog. My father understood, though. He was only too happy to foot the bill. At school, the other girls were a little afraid of me. And the more outlandish my outfits, the more scared they
were. I liked it. That's how I developed my sense of style, Ms. Caruso. I wanted to scare people.”

It was definitely working. She was the Colossus of Rhodes of scary. But I wasn't a psychoanalyst. I had a mystery to solve. But before I could get a word in edgewise she rose from her chair.

“You'll have to go now. I'm very busy today.”

I had only one chance left.

I followed her to the door.

“It was kind of you to see me,” I said, hoisting my purse on my shoulder. “You've been so generous with your time.”

“Not at all.”

“There is one last question I wanted to ask, though.”

“Yes?” she asked distractedly. She'd turned her attention to something far more interesting than I'd turned out to be—a loose door hinge.

“One of the things I've stumbled upon in the course of my research is an old Ventura murder case, one that Gardner took quite an interest in. You know what a plodder he was.” I had her attention now. “Well, he was going over the evidence and something just didn't seem right to him. What's curious is that the case involved a young couple that you must have known, Joseph Albacco and his wife, Jean. You went to high school with them, didn't you?”

It was as if I had clipped her wings. Her eyes filled with panic as she spiraled down to earth. She was quiet for a minute. Then she threw back her shoulders and wrapped her hauteur around her. Back where it belonged.

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “Another life. But yes, I knew them both well. A dreadful story.”

“Indeed. Two such wonderful young people, their lives destroyed.”

“Wonderful people?” she repeated, trying to appear unmoved. But there were beads of sweat on her exquisite nose. “I won't speak about Joe. But Jean Albacco—let me clear something up, Ms. Caruso. She was a nasty bit of goods. Don't be so foolish as to romanticize her just because she was murdered.”

“Well, her sister did say she had a difficult upbringing.”

“You've spoken to Theresa? Oh, she has plenty of stories to tell. Ask her about Lisette Johnson, Ms. Caruso, and watch her blanch. And don't blame their childhood. Jean was never a child. Children don't—”

“Don't what?”

“You know about Jean's little sideline, of course?”

“Actually, no.”

That may have been one digression too many.

“Never mind. It's just that my dearest friend was hurt. Ellie thought Jean could be trusted, so she confided in her about an affair with the gym teacher at the high school. And what a mistake that turned out to be.”

“What else can you tell me about Jean?”

“There isn't enough time. All I'll say is I think you're writing the wrong book. Good day.”

Her voice was honey all over again.