The Twenty-Year Death (30 page)

Less than a minute later Rosenkrantz burst out the front door and bolted to his car. The screen banged shut behind him. I heard the engine catch and then he backed out of the driveway fast enough to make the wheels scream. I waited a minute to see if anyone would take notice of the noise. The neighborhood was silent.

I got out of my car and walked to the house. On the way, I shined the small pen flash I kept in my pocket into the Ford, looking for the license holder, but I couldn’t see it. I went up the walk, and pressed the doorbell. I could hear it buzz inside. Rosenkrantz had left the door wide open, and through the screen I had a dim view of the stairs to the second floor and a small entryway. No one answered the buzzer. I opened the screen door and went in.

I listened, but heard nothing. I swung the door closed and found a switch that turned on an overhead light. It lit the rooms to either side of the entrance enough for me to see old furniture in both, respectable but worn, and none of the pieces matching. I crossed into the living room and turned on one of the lamps on an end table. It was painted gold, but the gold had flecked in places revealing white ceramic beneath. There was a couch upholstered in tan, two chairs upholstered in different shades of blue. The floor was hardwood but a cord rug took up some of the space between the couch and the chairs. It had no
doubt been advertised as a furnished house, and maybe it even commanded a few extra dollars for that.

I continued through the living room towards the back of the house where an open door let into a bedroom. The smell hit me before I turned on the light. I felt for a light switch beside the door, but didn’t find any, so I got my pen flash again and waved it back and forth, painting the room with light. She was on the bed. The blood was from her neck and thighs. I forced myself to cross the room to the lamp on the bedside table. I turned it on, and recognized the face from that afternoon: Mandy Ehrhardt. A thin wool blanket had been pulled down to the foot of the bed and hung over onto the floor. She had bled out, and the sheets were sodden. This hadn’t happened in the last five minutes. Which left Rosenkrantz in the clear. The rest of the room was a mess, clothing on the floor trailing out of the closet, a pile of shoes beside the bed, drawers left slightly open in the dresser, but it was the mess of a careless woman living in a room. There hadn’t been any struggle. The room hadn’t been searched.

I opened the drawer of the bedside table. It contained a comb and a brush, both with hair clinging to them, a small green jewelry box with a few inexpensive pieces of jewelry, a compact, and a makeup kit. I checked the dresser and the closet, but there was nothing but clothes. Miss Ehrhardt might have been in pictures, but she wasn’t living the life of a star. I set everything as it had been before. When it looked right, I turned off the light. I went through the living room, past the front entrance into the dining room. The table was littered with movie magazines, some movie ticket stubs, used dishes, a glass with dark lipstick on the rim, bills, flyers. Her purse was there as well, but it contained nothing more interesting than her bedside table. Same with the kitchen.

I went upstairs. This room smelled dusty. There was a bed with a dropcloth over it. There was a stack of boxes, the lower ones caving in from the weight of the ones above. There was a roll-top desk and a swivel chair. There weren’t any lights that worked. I went back downstairs, and turned off the lights there. Back in the vestibule, I thought about what reason I could give for being here. There wasn’t any, except if you counted the truth. If I told it straight then I was Rosenkrantz’s alibi, and maybe this could all stay away from his wife. On the other hand, if I called it in anonymously, my name would probably come into it anyway and then the cops would want to know why I had called it in anonymously in the first place. They didn’t like an outside operator operating outside the role they gave to him. Knox wouldn’t like it either. I cursed myself for being curious. I could have been sleeping in my car ten minutes away. I picked up the phone and dialed the police.

The cop who got it was a Harbor City homicide detective named Samuels. I didn’t know him, but he took my story at face value and I liked him for it. He was a redheaded Irishman with piercing blue eyes and a spate of freckles from his hairline all the way down into his collar. His coat hung limp, like there wasn’t much for it to hang on, but from watching him move it was clear that there was a lot of wiry strength there. He smoked cheap cigars that came in cellophane which he cut open with a pocketknife, putting the cellophane back in his pocket. I liked him for that too. We stood in the dining room while the medical examiner and the photography boys took care of the body. He spoke quietly but forcefully.

“These Hollywood investigations are a farce. The studio will shut it down when they get wind of it tomorrow. Today, I guess.”

“There are still a few hours before they have to hear of it,” I said. “And it is murder. There’s only so much that can be kept under wraps in a murder.”

“Yeah, just who was murdered, and who did the murdering.”

“The studio really has that much on you boys? I thought the law was untouchable in this town.”

“Go on and laugh. Of course the studios can’t order us to stop our investigation, but it seems that the bosses have a way of making it so that it should be a low priority with even a lower profile.”

“The bosses,” I said.

“The bosses.” He smoked his cigar as the medical examiner, a young man with an expression of sobriety twice his age, went towards the front door with his bag. “You got anything for me, Doc?” Samuels said.

“She’s dead,” the ME said with his hand on the screen door’s latch.

“That your professional opinion?”

The doc made a straight line of his mouth. “It was within the last six to eight hours. The cuts are all deep and inelegant.”

“So this guy didn’t know how to use a knife?” Samuels said.

“No, it looks more like he didn’t know his own strength. The cuts are deliberate, no hesitation.”

Samuels nodded and blew a plume of smoke.

“I’ll have the rest once I get her on the table.” And with that he went outside.

The sky might have been brighter out there or maybe I just hoped it was. “She have any family?” I said.

“An aunt and a grandma out in Wichita,” Samuels said, flat.

“Isn’t it always Wichita?”

“It always is.” He paused. “You got any ideas you might be thinking of looking into on your own?”

“I was thinking of looking into a shower and then into my bed, but maybe into a liquor store first if I can find one that’s open this early.”

“Cut that and tell it to me straight, like you’ve been doing up until now.”

I sighed and shook my head. “I’ve barely been on this thing longer than you have. This is just on the side of my job.”

“The job that is why you were following Rosenkrantz.”

“Yeah.”

“So it must have been a divorce job?”

I smiled but didn’t say anything.

“You sure you can’t tell me?”

“Not unless you can make me understand what it has to do with this murder.”

“How can I do that unless I know what the job was?”

“I guess you can’t.”

He squinted at me then and bit down on his cigar. “The tech get your prints?”

“You’ve got them on file.”

He nodded. “You can go then. Just don’t leave town, the usual story.”

“I’ll be right where you expect to find me.”

“Yeah, well. Good night.”

“Good morning, detective.” We shook hands. I went out the screen door into the chill of the morning. The sky was starting to show purple at the edges, like a bruise. I’d be able to see the sunrise if I could find a place to watch it from.

My car had the bottled-up smell of sweat and stale smoke. I rolled down the windows to let in the cool air while it lasted, and started the engine. I had been hired to babysit a paranoid prima donna, and I had ended up finding a dead woman cut almost to pieces. For some reason, I felt as though I hadn’t done a very good job.

I could at least try to make up for it. I pulled away from the curb and instead of heading back to Hollywood I took the turn at Montgomery.

The Rosenkrantz house looked undisturbed. I parked in the same spot I had the night before and killed the engine. The police would have to make a stop here later to get Rosenkrantz’s testimony, but they weren’t here yet. I got out of my car and walked up the middle of the road to the house. At the end of the drive, the garage doors were open and both the tan Buick and the maroon LaSalle were in their spots. I could check the house for signs of forced entry, but I didn’t see the need. It was just a sleeping house in a sleeping neighborhood. There was nothing to see and no one had missed me. I went back to my car and leaned against the hood as I lit a cigarette. It took three tries to get the match going.

The Mexican arrived on foot just before seven wearing the same ill-fitting hand-me-down jacket of the day before. He saw me and came over.

“How was your night?” he said.

“Hot.”

“Mine too.”

We both let the silence take a turn. “My name’s Miguel, by the way.” He nodded toward the house. “I’ve got the dayshift now. You don’t have to wait around.”

“I’m just finishing my cigarette,” I said, and took a drag.

He turned and crossed the street, on his way to his little castle
where he got to protect the princess and there was trouble around every corner. I watched him go around to the back of the house. I waited another ten minutes to make sure he didn’t come back out again with news of some tragedy, or at least a tragedy I didn’t already know about. He didn’t. The cops still hadn’t shown up either. I finished my cigarette, got in my car, and pulled away.

In Hollywood, I stopped outside of the Olmstead without putting my car away in the garage. My apartment was just one big room with a private bathroom and a small kitchenette in a closet. I had done what I could to give each corner of the room its own purpose. There was a Formica table with two chrome chairs just outside the open kitchenette closet. There was a twin bed with a standing lamp and a night table just outside of the bathroom. There was my one good reading chair with another standing lamp and a stack of books on the floor over in the third corner. The only window was in the bathroom and it was made of pebbled glass.

I took three fingers of bourbon before my shower and another three after. I looked at the time and thought I ought to be hungry, so I went out again and stopped at a counter diner I liked and ordered a couple of scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, some well-burnt toast, and coffee, but the whole time I was working on it, I was thinking of a girl with her neck open and her thighs gouged out. I got down about half of my breakfast and left a good tip. I picked up the morning papers outside, but there was nothing in either of them about the Ehrhardt killing. It must have gotten called in too late.

The lobby of the Blackstone Building was empty. I took the automatic elevator up to the third floor. The hallway there was empty, too, and I was willing to bet that my office’s unlocked
waiting room would be empty as well. I was wrong. It had two too many people in it.

Benny Sturgeon stood as I came in, his hat held in both hands in front of his stomach like a shield. He was tall, but no taller than me. Up close there were flecks of white in his hair that made him look distinguished instead of aged. He wore a pair of glasses with circular frames that I had not seen on the set the day before. He was in shirtsleeves and a vest, and there were deep lines across his forehead and at the corners of his mouth.

Al Knox was already on his feet, pacing, a lit cigarette in one hand. His eyelids were heavy and his shoulders tilted forward as though his back couldn’t support the weight of his stomach. He looked exactly like a man who had been woken early in the morning with bad news. I looked over at the standing ashtray covered in a fine layer of dust and saw that there was only one new butt. He hadn’t been there too long.

“Now, Mr. Foster—” Sturgeon began.

“Dennis,” Knox said.

“Mr. Foster, I must insist on seeing you first,” Sturgeon started in again. He spoke with the conviction of a man used to giving orders that are obeyed. Only the way he held his hat ruined the effect. “I’ve come with a job of the utmost importance. It’s imperative that we act right away.”

I quieted him with a look I only took out on special occasions. “Al first, then you.”

I stepped across to the inner door, unlocked it, and let Al into my office. I went around to my side of the desk and he sat down on one of the two straight-backed chairs on the other side. His lip curled.

“You’re a bastard, you know that?”

I raised both my hands. “Al, I was following a legitimate lead...”

“They want Rose for it.”

“What?” I felt as though someone had cut the cables on the elevator I was riding in.

“They want Chloë Rose for Mandy Ehrhardt’s murder.”

“Who do?”

“The cops. Who do you think?”

I leaned forward in my chair. “Al, I was at the scene. That was no woman’s killing. Certainly not a woman of Chloë Rose’s size. Can’t the studio quash it?”

Al shook his head and ran a hand along his cheek, letting it slide off his chin. “She had the motive. Ehrhardt was sleeping with her husband. And thanks to you she doesn’t have an alibi, but her husband does. The mayor doesn’t like that the press says the SAPD turns a blind eye to the movie people. They don’t like it in Harbor City much either. They’re going to make an example of this one. There’s no way they would convict a woman with Rose’s looks, or one as famous as her—she’s not even a citizen, for Christ’s sake. So the press will feel they can ride it as hard as they want without anybody getting seriously hurt.”

“Except for Mandy Ehrhardt, whose real killer walks away.”

“And Chloë Rose’s career, and the studio’s bank account.”

I sat back in my chair and lit a cigarette. “What do you mean she’s not a citizen? She’s married to Rosenkrantz, isn’t she?”