Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy (12 page)

“Tell me what you know about Miss Lascar’s latest threats.”

“Well, that’s just it, Luther,” I said sheepishly.

“I’m afraid I didn’t ask her much about them I thought they were mostly an excuse to ask me to use the house and to come up here for some privacy.”

He frowned and I knew he was telling himself how unprofessional of me that had been. He was right.

“She told me that she had gotten some messages at the hotel and even some callers who got through the operator, but then hung up on her. She didn’t save any of the slips of paper. Isabella attracted attention wherever she went, Luther, and she was used to dealing with it. She did tell me she was annoyed about a shrink her words and some letters she had gotten. I don’t know if it was her psychiatrist or just someone she met who happened to be a shrink.”

“Yeah, we had that information yesterday. Her agent’s getting the information on all her doctors for us. She’s been through six or seven therapists in the last few years.

And we’ve got the agent and the cousin taking the LAPD through her house on Sunday the funeral’s tomorrow…“

“Yes, I know.”

“They’ll be looking for that correspondence plus notes, love letters, business deals. Perhaps we’ll fax you copies of any papers that might be connected to things she talked to you about you can tell us if they relate to the problems she discussed with you.”

“Of course, anything I can do.”

“Have you ever met her ex-husband, Richard Burrell?”

“No, no I never met him. She had told me a lot about him, and Nina Baum our mutual friend knew him quite well.” I waited to see where Luther was going with this before I offered the information that Isabella and Nina had gossiped about so freely when we first met.

“They’d been divorced for some time, I understand.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’re giving him a close look, Alex. The reason she went to Boston was to meet with him last Saturday.”

“What?” That information really came as a surprise to me. Richard Burrell had produced a few of Isabella’s first movie projects and she had eloped with him one weekend when she was still an unknown. He had been a big deal in the business once, but just as she started to emerge, his cocaine problem engulfed him and cost him most of his money as well as his short-lived marriage. She dropped him instantly, accepting the advice that she would be poison in Hollywood if anyone suspected that she was as deeply into the white powder as Burrell was.

“I’d keep it under your hat, Alex, but it’s a fact. They were both at the Ritz-Carlton last weekend. Separate rooms, arrived and departed at different times but it was a planned meeting. Her agent thinks he’s been trying to reconcile wanted to meet with her to show her he’s off the coke, clean. He’s been living on one of those small islands off the coast of Maine for the past year, trying to write.”

“You ought to talk to my friend Nina about Richard Burrell. I’ll give you her number. I think Isabella always had a soft spot for him, but reconciliation was out of the question.”

“Did she ever tell you he was violent to her, or abusive?

You know, confide in you because of what you do, what your job is?“

”With a couple of drinks she’d have confided in anyone, Luther.
Isabella was quite open about her personal life.

Much too open. No, she had a lot of complaints about Richard, and how much it cost her to keep him out of trouble, but he never hurt or threatened her. He was wild when he was coked up vulgar and coarse and unfaithful but he didn’t direct it at her.“

“How about guns? Did she ever mention he had guns?”

“No, not specifically. But when I listened to Isabella and Nina, I used to think that everybody in L.A. had guns.

It always seemed so different than New York. Everyone in the Hollywood Hills, in the Valley, in town they all seem to have guns. Not necessarily to carry, but at home or to keep in their cars. Weird. The more upscale they are, the more guns, the more automatics. You know, Luther, when the revolution comes… they’ll be ready.“ I don’t think Luther followed me, but he was probably a gun freak, too.

“Do you have a gun? I mean, a handgun, for protection?”

“Luther, with my temper that would be a real mistake.

No, I hate guns.“

“Oh. Well, that’s about all I can think of for now. We’ll be able to pick up some speed on this investigation next week.

A lot of the West Coast friends and business associates will be more available to us once the funeral is over.“

We got up from the table and I glanced at the clock on the wall to see that it was almost two in the afternoon.

Mike and Wally were sitting in the sunshine on the deck off the kitchen, feet up on the railing, keeping themselves out of our way.
Wally probably hadn’t had a fresh, captive audience like Mike in years and was undoubtedly telling him all the local news and island crime stories.

Luther and Wally thanked us for our help and we made arrangements to be in contact during the week. I saw them to the front door and waved good-bye as each car headed out the gate.

“Don’t tell me you’re leaving me for Luther,” Mike said as I headed back out onto the deck. That is one huge blast of hot air.“

“How come you didn’t ask me if I did him? You left me alone in there with him for almost two hours.”

“Nah. I figure Wally’s more your type. You got a real thing for those sweet old guys. I can see you living up here, married to Wally, running the local jailhouse, or maybe a saloon like Miss Kitty while he rids the island of all the vermin who sail in from the mainland.”

“You guessed it, Chapman. C’mon, I’ve got to call the office and check my messages. I’m sure you do, too.”

“Then you have to buy me some lunch I’m starving.

I’m dying to hear what you got from J. Edgar Waldron Wally was easy as pie.“

Laura answered my phone on the first ring. She expressed her usual concern for me and told me that it had been a relatively quiet Friday.

All calls from police officers and witnesses had been transferred to Sarah Brenner. My mother had phoned to get Laura’s opinion about how I was holding up (just fine) and whether I was really in any danger (of course not). Nina wanted me to call her when I got back to the city.
Dinner invitations from Joan Stafford and another friend, Ann Moore (Tell them thanks but I’ll be exhausted. Rain checks). And Jed called from Paris see you tomorrow.

Mike checked in with his office and then turned back to me.

“Okay, Coop, I’m ready. Who’s got the best fried clams on the island?
I’ve got a craving.”

“That’s simp lethe Bite. Grab a couple of cold beers and let’s go.”

A seven-minute car ride from my door was the best joint for fried clams in the world. It’s a tiny wooden shack on the side of the road in Menemsha - a stone’s throw from the commercial fishing dock with only two picnic tables next to it. But Karen and Jackie Quinn turned out thousands of the most lightly fried clams from late morning through late night in season, which was only from the Memorial Day weekend through Columbus Day.

I turned the ignition key on in our rented car as Mike asked, “Who’s Luther wound up about?”

“He’s so rigid, he didn’t give a lot away. He’s got Richard Burrell, the ex-husband, in his sights.”

“Sound right to you?”

“Not really, especially if he’s off the coke. But there’s no question she was with him in Boston last weekend, so who knows if he followed her here. And Wally?”

“Wally says they’re trying to find an old boyfriend who was sort of a loose cannon. An actor or stunt guy named Johnny Garelli. Ever hear of him?”

“Shit, I should have thought of him, too. Isabella used to call him Johnny Gorilla. Remember when she did one of those Tom Clancy movies, about gun runners and dope dealers in some Central American country?
Johnny was a great-looking, brain-dead ex-Marine who had a bit part in the movie, and they had an affair during the filming. Hit all the tabloids and supermarket magazines.”

“I must have missed it.”

“It worked fine for three weeks in the jungles of Guatemala, but once she got him back to Bel Air, he had trouble holding up his end of the conversation.

“Anyway, she came to New York for a shopping trip without the gorilla and we met for brunch at Mortimer’s on Sunday morning. The place was packed, everyone there knew who she was, and in the door comes this wild-eyed, oversized madman who’d gone straight from the red-eye to her hotel, where the concierge who had put Isabella in a cab directed him to the restaurant.”

“What did he want?” Mike asked.

“He just raged at her for leaving him behind. The usual stuff of a B-movie she thought she was too good for him, she thought she could buy him off, comments about her sexual interests.
I was halfway under the table and he wasn’t talking about me but she just took it in great style, put down her bloody mary, rose to her full height, told me she’d be right back, and walked him out to the sidewalk. The people in the front half of the restaurant the ones who count watched as she hailed a yellow cab and put him inside, then left the taxi door open as she came back in to whisper an apology to me. As she started for the door again, she turned and smiled at ten or twelve of us within hearing range and announced, ”Let this be a lesson to you, girls always fuck your own rank.“ I sat there dumbfounded until my friends Joan and Louise, who were at the next table, stopped laughing long enough to invite me to finish my salad with them.”

“And the gorilla?” Mike asked.

“He hung on for a while. Could still be an occasional one-nighter for all I know. I don’t think she’d brag it about to me after the episode I witnessed. She’s made a lot of mistakes like that with her personal life. Whilethey’re looking for Johnny they’ll find ten more just like him. Isabella desperately wanted respectability a man who was solid, not show biz, not drug-involved there just weren’t a lot of them in her orbit. She never stopped searching for one, though.”

I nosed the car onto the dirt shoulder of the road just before we reached the Bite. Karen saw me first and practically squealed with excitement.

“Alex, what are you doing here? You told us you wouldn’t be back till the weekend we close.” She realized as soon as the words were out that she knew the connection.

“Oh,

I’m sorry. Isabella Lascar was staying at your place. I’m so sorry.“

“Thanks, Karen. We’re up here trying to help Wally. This is my friend Mike Chapman.”

“She was here, Alex. She was here on Wednesday.”

“Isabella?” I should have known I could get a pretty good scouting report from the Quinn sisters. They were enthusiastic, hardworking young women who loved celebrities, and if they trusted you with the information, they could tell you when Vernon Jordan or Billy Joel or Mike Wallace or Princess Di had his or her last order of clams and oysters.

“Yeah, did you send her to us?”

“Well, of course, you’re on the top of my list, Karen, and I would have sent her here, but I actually never got to speak with her on Wednesday.”

Mike casually began to ask for more details.

“Do you remember what time she was here?” was how he started, and when he found out it was between two and three in the afternoon, he moved on to whether or not she was alone.

Jackie had joined in the conversation, too, and both were quick to respond that Isabella had been with a man. No, he didn’t seem at all familiar to them, and yes, they had both checked him out, simply because they assumed he might also be a movie star.

“He was a looker,” Jackie offered. Taller than Mike, also with dark hair, and probably in his forties.

“They had a medium order of clams with some fries, and both of them had bottled water.”

“Did you happen to hear anything about where they were coming from or what they were up to?” I knew from lots of experience here that the deep-fryers were against the windows, right over the picnic table. My father once came close to bringing the girls to tears, unintentionally, by sitting below that window and grousing that there were too many potatoes and too few clams in the chowder. So I tried to make it easier for them to admit an overheard by urging, “It’s really important, girls. It could really help us a lot.”

Karen was eager to be useful.

“It sounded to me like they were on their way to the ferry. He had to be somewhere else and she was going to stay on the island. I’m telling you, she was all over him. I’m pretty sure she was driving him to the ferry, or maybe it was the airport. But they were in a hurry and they ate pretty fast.”

“Thanks, Karen. I’m going to ask Wally to come up and take some more details from you, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Meanwhile,” Mike smiled at the sisters, ‘let’s have a large order of clams, some Bite fries, and two cups of chowder.“

Whilethe order was cooking I walked Mike around the bend to show him the fishing dock and the remains of the ever-shrinking fleet of commercial boats that worked off the coastline. The Quitsa Strider and the Unicorn were both moored in the picturesque harbor, but no sign of their two island captains, brothers who are descendants of original Vineyard settlers, who still caught their swordfish by harpooning them rather than dragging a gill net at sea for days.

We came back, picked up our food, and sat at one of the tables, barely talking as we devoured our late lunch. Mike inhaled the soup and ate two-thirds of the clams before he came up for air.

“You’re right, Coop, this is great stuff.”

“We may have stumbled on an important bit of evidence.

Was Isabella killed before her lover left the island… or just after? Thank goodness you wanted fried clams.“

“As Mae West would say, ”Goodness had nothing to do with it,“ Mike responded.

I reached for another clam belly as I asked Mike what he meant.

“I was all set to eat your friend Prime’s pizza for lunch.

Then Wally told me about the autopsy report. Looks like Isabella got knocked off within an hour or so of her last meal…“

I gagged on the delicious morsel as Mike finished his sentence.

“Fried clams undigested, sitting in her stomach big, juicy ones, with a little batter on them. I knew I could count on you to tell me who served the best ones on the island.”