Voices in the Wardrobe (2 page)

“Can't wait for the parking valet to get a load of it. Turn left at the next light. Libby wants you to call her.”

“Libby talked to you?” Charlie's daughter hated the superstar with convincing ferocity.

“Left a message on my machine. Probably on your cell too. Spa wouldn't bring you to the phone. No phone calls allowed. Why does Libby hate me so?”

“You're a heartthrob for women over thirty-five, Hilsten. She thinks you're gross.” Libby was eighteen.

“Even as a father figure?”

“Don't take it personally. She thinks I'm gross too. It's all the press we get.”

“We hardly ever see each other.”

“Yeah, but when we do at least one of us tends to get naked.” And wherever you are there's a camera lurking. “Tell me you didn't make the reservations in your name?”

An oncoming stoplight picked up the glint of his teeth as well the glow of his powder blues. “Keith Anderson.”

“Dammit, Mitch, that's one of your most famous roles. And the fact that you're in San Diego has been press for a week.” There were few superstars over forty these days.

“Hum, thought the name sounded familiar. But it's a very ordinary name. Turn right here and follow the road to the end. Why won't the Sea Spa allow you to a phone? Is that even legal?”

“I don't know but it's weird. Had to leave my cell in the truck. This jerk at the gate tried to keep me from leaving. Said I was an addict.”

“What kind of a spa is this?”

“It's lavish, elegant, and cruel. And incredibly expensive. Not at all what I thought it would be. But Maggie seems okay with it. We're all hoping for anything that will work.” It had taken sizable donations from friends, neighbors, and co-workers. “Dr. Judy is taping a segment there tonight.”

Charlie punched her cell pad for messages. Libby had left a voice message that Ed Esterhazie wanted to know if Maggie would be able to make it to the wedding. And that Kenny Cowper had called. And that she'd picked up Tuxedo at the vet's and he'd put the cat on Diazepam and Science Diet. Oh great, more medical bills. The only investments Charlie had that were going up instead of tanking were pharmaceuticals. And what that damn cat would do to the house if he didn't like the food was not worth contemplating. Bad enough when Charlie bought the wrong kitty litter. The critter came in his cat door to do his do-do, even use his box if the litter was right, otherwise any of a number of corners, preferably carpeted. Then went back out to cat.

When she tried to call Libby all she got was Libby's voice mail on
her
cellular. It was scary and lamentable but Charlie and her daughter communicated more by messages left on telephone voice mail and written notes left by magnets on the fridge than any other way these days.

Kenny Cowper had left a message too, but Charlie would put that off until tomorrow. One stud was more than enough in her life at the moment. The parking valet made no horrified response to her Dodge Ram with the cool hubcaps and horned ram on the hood and massive fake grill. He helped her, her split skirt, and killer heels down from the cab, nodded at Mitch with a wink, and roared off in the metallic blue bomber.

“What do you get in that, four miles to the gallon?” Her escort watched the spectacle and exhaust fade into the scenery. “Tell me you just leased that sucker.”

“Mitch, how can anyone who made
Bambo
and is now going to produce and direct
Jane of the Jungle
, possibly make fun of a pickup truck?”

He gave her that smile, took her elbow, and guided her to the also smiling maitre d' who awaited them on the steps of Crustacione de la Mer.

The tablecloths here were white linen, snooty waiters wore white and black. Most of the guests had dressed down in tourist attire. Maybe that's what made the waiters so snooty. The napkins, chairs, and floor tile were black. Charlie's lobster came on a black plate, Mitch's seared mahi on white. Charlie was sheathed in black. He wore white. If not for a chick in bright red at the next table and the superstar's powder blues, their corner of the room could have been in a pre-color film.

“You're going to get sick,” Mitch Hilsten warned her a couple of hours later. “I have never seen you finish off a plate of food before. And that was no small lobster. Your face is even red.”

Charlie nodded at the waiter offering more wine and her first cup of coffee in over twenty-four hours. She half-expected she'd be sick too, but her body at the moment was sending messages of ecstatic thank-yous, waves of them. And the coffee, strong and pungent, started right to work on a lingering headache. Okay, so she
was
an addict. At least she was off all the drugs prescribed after the accident on the 405. “My face is red because I had a granite rub this afternoon.”

“They rubbed granite on you? Or you on a hunk of granite?”

Charlie rolled her eyes in answer. She hadn't seen Mitch Hilsten for close to a year and, although they occasionally corresponded by phone or e-mail, there was much to catch up on. Unlike most Hollywood notables with whom she came in contact, it wasn't all about him. They talked about his daughters, both graduated from college and married now—no children. Libby's disinterest in applying for college.

“At least she's going to graduate from high school. She has this vague plan to live away from home for a year. Let's not talk about that, or I
will
get sick.”

So they talked about his reason for being in San Diego. He was going to direct and co-produce a major studio film, a not-so-rare event these days—but
Jane of the Jungle?
They'd be shooting some preliminary scenes in the marina below the Sea Spa, doing some interiors in a special yacht, and more in local studios and on local beaches to save money. “We'll shoot as few as possible in Belize and Arizona. I'm psyched.” That smile again.

Charlie had seen a treatment of that story somewhere. Thought it was awful—thought the published book,
Goddess of Glory
, even worse.
Jane of the Jungle
concerns a Bedouin princess captured by the Taliban who makes her escape by way of stuntmen and women, camels, and digital reality. By commandeering an Arabian prince's luxurious yacht, and with the help of a stud-city CIA agent, she sails to an undisclosed jungle where the story gets worse. Ought to offend three-fourths of the world, but that's Hollywood.

“Oh, Ed Esterhazie wants to know if you'd like to come to his wedding.”

“Esterhazie Cement?”

“Concrete.”

“You know Esterhazie Concrete?”

“Our kids attend Wilson High together in Long Beach.”

“Esterhazie Concrete sends his kid to public school?”

“No accounting for the whims of the rich. He's invested some money in film productions. Good man to know.”

“I know. When, where, which wife is this, and do I get to go with you?”

“Next Sunday, in his lovely garden, wife number three, and yes.” This was all interspersed with more coffee and with discreet menus, napkins, whatever for him to sign. They gave up and wandered out into the night, waited for the roar of the metallic blue Ram, Charlie enjoying the night and the freedom away from the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol. “Can't tell you how much I dread going back to that place.”

“How do you know they'll let you in?” Mitch asked as she drove him to his hotel. “They didn't want to let you out.”

“They have to. Maggie freaked when I left but I promised I'd be back. They have my money. They can't keep me out. Can they?”

He decided to follow in his rental to be sure she got in. “I want to see the marina below at night anyway.”

Charlie drove faster than he did so she waited for him at the wye where the street to the Sea Spa turned off to climb the cliff through a canyon of crowded homes with only one stop sign along the way. She didn't know the make of his car but she wouldn't want to be followed by one at night if she were out walking—black, dark windows, low, sinister. The headlights, sort of oval, blinked as he came up behind her and she gunned the Ram over the crest where the houses ended, onto an empty curving road to Maggie and the house of torture, thinking of two things at once.

One was admitting she took some comfort in the fact he was behind her and that no matter how she tried to see as little of Mitch Hilsten as possible, he was becoming like family. The other was, there seemed to be a lot of night lighting at the Spa. Everybody should be in bed now resting up for their enemas.

Charlie lowered her window to be swamped by the indescribably rich scent of the Pacific saturating the night, the sparkle of boat lights approaching the marina below and of aircraft in the heavens above. All eclipsed by the radiance of the Sea Spa. Every window dazzled with light from within, crystal glittering in most. Every patio and deck and garden walk was lit as well, sea breeze moving exotic vegetation to give a jiggling effect to the outdoor lighting. It would have been lovely if it weren't for all the flashing lights of emergency and official vehicles. Uniforms directed Charlie and Mitch where to park and walked them to the wrought gold-colored gate where a sheriff's deputy checked names on a clipboard.

“Ohgod, Mitch. Maggie pleaded with me not to leave her.”

“You don't know this is about Maggie. Could be a drug bust or something. Oh, sorry, I didn't—”

“Name?” the clipboard deputy asked Charlie but stared at Mitch. “And reason for your visit?”

“Charlie Greene. I have a room here. Is Maggie all right?”

“Mitch Hilsten—”

“I know.”

“I had dinner with Ms. Greene and escorted her back here.”

Charlie could have pulled out a rapid fire whatever and shot up half the parking lot before the deputy took her eyes off Mitch. Until he said, “Please tell me there hasn't been another murder.”

Now Charlie got the deputy's full attention. She even checked her clipboard, “Charlie Greene. Well, there goes that theory. Last one unaccounted for. What do you mean by ‘another murder?'”

“Well, wherever Charlie goes there always seem to be a lot of—oh, sorry Charlie.”

“Thanks a whole lot, Hilsten. I owe you one.”

Three

Maggie Stutzman had thick black hair and lovely pale skin and eyes that had once snapped with intelligence, good humor, curiosity, verve. “Nobody didn't like” Margaret Mildred Stutzman. But gradually over maybe a year, maybe longer, Charlie's best friend began to withdraw, grow solemn, gain weight. Her gynecologist prescribed hormones to even out the early onset of menopause, her therapist Prozac to even out her moods, her dentist Vicodin for a root canal gone wrong. One night when Maggie didn't show for a potluck, Charlie crossed the courtyard to find her neighbor passed out next to a wine glass half full and the bottle half empty.

Betty Beesom, eighty-four, who lived on another corner of the courtyard, declared that Maggie should stop drinking alcohol. Charlie's mother, back in Boulder, who'd undergone a mastectomy, thought she should get off the hormones. Charlie, who'd felt so much better when off the painkillers after injuries in an automobile accident, thought Maggie should get off the Vicodin. Jacob Forney, who occupied the last corner of the courtyard, warned that Maggie had a classic case of depression and thought she should see a shrink. Poor Maggie, who was already seeing a shrink, didn't know what to do. So she started baking rich desserts and putting on weight which only made her more depressed. And then her massage therapist recommended a week at the Sea Spa at the Marina del Sol.

Right now, Maggie Stutzman wore that scary empty look which could be replaced by a nervous terror or, just as easily, sudden but still nervous rashes of surprising humor. She scared the hell out of Charlie and herself too.

She stood between Charlie and Mitch at the foot of one of the black kidney-shaped tubs on the enclosed deck where they did ghastly procedures and then wrapped people in gag-awful seaweed and left them nearly immobile to listen to birdies tweet and thunder roll over mountain streams while the biggest ocean in the world pounded a beach below.

At the head of the pool, surrounded in potted plants that towered above him, the bald jerk who'd tried to keep her from leaving tonight glared at Charlie Greene. Even though the phony “eddies” had been turned off, there was water splashed all around this particular pool and yellow crime-scene tape too.

On the other side of Mitch, a patient plainclothes asked, “You have witnesses to corroborate that Ms. Greene was with you all evening?”

“Andre Lyon, the Maitre d' at Crustacione de la Mer. You have to admit she is rather distinctive. And the waiter, soaked in disdain when she insisted her lobster be simply boiled and served with drawn butter. And the parking valet who was duly impressed someone in that outfit would drive up in a pickup truck.”

“She drives a pickup?” Warren VanZant, the Spa's owner, said on the other side of Charlie and peered down at her lack of cleavage through some pretty racy eyeglasses. His hair a gray fringe, he was tall, lean, muscular, and his voice came up from somewhere down around his navel. If she'd had any cleavage worth staring at she'd have penetrated one of his tennis shoes with a killer heel.

Maggie giggled suddenly.

“Maggie,” Charlie warned, but too late.

“Well, there goes your case, Detective. Guess you'll just have to settle for me.” And she held out her wrists for handcuffs. “That's okay, Charlie, I want to die.”

“What do you mean, you want to die? Jesus.”

“Detective Solomon,” Caroline VanZant leaned around her husband to address the other side of the row, “Ms. Stutzman has been through a rigorous day of herbal cleansing and needs much rest before anything she says can be taken seriously.”

“She's an addict,” announced the jerk under the potted palms at the head of the eddy pool. “Just like Ms. Greene. Just like everybody here. Very probably including yourself, sir.”