Mystery (22 page)

Leona Suss said, “They’re hiring babies nowadays.” A limp-wristed, bangled arm dangled toward Milo. “Hello, fellas.”

“Lieutenant Sturgis, ma’am. And this is Alex Delaware.”

“Leona. But you already know that.”

Her smile was so wide it threatened to split her face, sacrificing the lower half to gravity. She’d been tucked, but a while ago and with a light touch. The stretch-lines punctuating her jaw and her mouth and her forehead had begun to relent. The end result wasn’t unpleasant, hinting of what she’d been at thirty.

A nice-looking woman for any age. When she removed her shades and exposed almond-shaped, purple-blue eyes, that got upgraded to beautiful.

Angular, porcelain-skinned, finely boned, she reminded me of someone … Singer Sargent’s Madame X.

Milo said, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”

“Oh, you’re not bothering me, not at all.” A sunny, plummy voice fought the severe image. “I wouldn’t have even known you were here but Manfred grew alarmed.” Hefting the cat. “He’s better than any dog and considerably cleaner. The bonus is, I never had to buy him, he just showed up one morning meowing like the little panhandler he is. I gave him fresh albacore and cream from Whole Foods and we’ve had a wonderful relationship ever since. I don’t like dogs. Too clingy. How long have you fellas been here—what do you call it, surveilling?”

“We just got here, ma’am.”

“Then Manfred was at the top of his game. He began mewling and when I wouldn’t put down my Candace Bushnell, he commenced worrying the front drapes like a little maniac. When
that
didn’t work, he raced clear over to the side drapes, then back to the front. Finally I put down my book. Right in the middle of a juicy chapter. I checked the closed-circuit monitor and there you were in your charming old car. We owned one just like it, back in … seventy-six.” She stroked Manfred. He turned his head toward the mansion.

“With that car,” said Leona Suss, “there was no way to know you were police. They tell us to call when something’s out of the ordinary, so I called.”

“You did the right thing, ma’am.”

“Of course I did,” said Leona Suss. “Now let me guess, you’re here about her.”

“Who, ma’am?”

“Tara.” Cross-continental smile. “My late husband’s final bit of senior-citizen recreation.”

“You know her.”

“I know
about
her.”

“And you know we’re here about her because—”

“Because I saw her on TV,” said Leona Suss. “That drawing. I mean I wasn’t certain, but the resemblance was striking. I didn’t call about it because, really, what could I offer? Mark’s been gone nearly a year, what connection could there be?”

I said, “You knew what she looked like.”

“Mark showed me her picture. Bragging, the poor idiot. She gave him several pictures. Swimsuits and such. He was quite proud of his accomplishment.” Leona Suss offered another bifurcating grin. “As if it had to do with anything other than money.” Laughter. “You two look rather shocked. I didn’t know policemen were shockable.”

Milo said, “Well, ma’am, you managed.”

Leona Suss guffawed. The cat shivered. “Mark and I had a rather open relationship, Lieutenant Sturgis. Not in any smarmy sense—it’s complicated. I suppose you should come in. What do you think, Manfred? Shall we entertain the shockable Los Angeles police even though we’re Beverly Hills folk?”

The animal remained impassive.

“Manfred doesn’t appear to object. Come on in, fellas.”

The house opened to a white marble rotunda backed by a double staircase of the same glossy stone that Leona crossed at racewalk pace. She led us to a collection of cavernous, antiques-filled areas, any of which could be characterized as living rooms, chose to seat us in a hectagonal space painted delft-blue with contrasting cream moldings.

Gold-braided apricot upholstery was printed with scenes from ancient China. Blue-and-white porcelain abounded. Despite the warmth of the day, a gold onyx fireplace glowed electrically. All the case goods were deep mahogany. What looked to be genuine Georgian and Regency. Three large paintings framed in carved gilt graced the walls. Two depicted nineteenth-century, filmy-gowned women sitting in exuberant gardens. Over the mantel was a pastel-hued landscape of an imaginary English countryside. I looked for signatures, found them.

Soft music—something new age, maybe an imitation of whale calls—streamed from unseen speakers. A pair of maids in white nylon pantsuits stopped their tidying as we entered. One was gray-haired and Slavic, the other African.

Leona Suss said, “Would you ladies mind shifting to another room, please—the library hasn’t been dusted in far too long.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Certainly, ma’am.”

The cat leaped from her arms, landed silently, scooted away.

“Ooh, Manfred’s hungry, please see to his brunch.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Certainly, ma’am.”

Leona motioned us to a ten-foot sofa adorned by silk shantung pillows. The facing Chippendale table bore a collection of black-and-white photos in gold easel-frames.

Two dozen or so glamour shots and stills from old movies, each featuring the same raven-haired beauty. In most she wore western clothes, in a few she posed on horseback.

Decades had passed, but no mistaking the subject. Leona Suss at her prime.

I said, “George Hurrell?”

She settled in an armchair, drew her legs to the side, folding like origami the way very lean people are able to do. “You knew Hurrell?”

“I know of him.”

“George was the greatest as well as a darling person,” she said. “He could make anyone look spectacular. Combine that with the raw material they gave him—Jane, Joan, Maureen, then the young ones—Sharon Stone. My God, the result was earth-stopping. George and I discussed several times doing a sitting but something always came up, so no, unfortunately these are the work of lesser talents. The studios had their own in-house people and, of course, there were always legions of journeymen eager to freelance.”

She played with her big white sunglasses. Diamonds or rhinestones studded the joints of the sidepieces. Similar but not identical to the shades Mystery had worn at the Fauborg.

A silver-nailed fingertip pinged the rim of a frame. “These are just your run-of-the-mill publicity nonsense.”

I said, “Did you act for a while?”

She smiled. “Some would say I’ve never stopped. Mark, for one. He enjoyed what he called my sense of drama, said I was his Little Movie Star, which, of course, is utter fooferaw. I made a grand total of eleven pictures, each a Grade C oater. Most typically, they used me as the brunette foil for the beautiful blond heroine. After that, I did oodles of episodic TV—you don’t want to know about me, you’re interested in Tara.”

She repeated the name, let out a low, breathy laugh. “Tara is a house, not a name, right fellas? A couple of times, Mark called her Tiara, which is even tackier, right? Perhaps the old fool’s memory was slipping. Either way I didn’t care, it reeked of trailer park.”

Milo said, “Do you know her last name?”

“No, sorry. Anything I know about her is limited to what Mark chose to tell me. Which was mercifully little.”

“Would you mind sharing what you do know?”

She studied a silver fingernail. “You’re thinking how bizarre, this woman is faking serenity or she’s crazy. But you need to understand the relationship that Mark and I shared for forty-two years. He plucked me from the throes of Hollywood desperation when I was barely twenty-four. He was twenty-six but seemed oh so worldly to a girl from Kansas. We were inseparable. Then he had the nerve to die on me.” Brittle laughter. “Even beautiful relationships have their ups and downs, fellas. Mark and I chose to endure the downs in order to luxuriate in the ups. That necessitated a certain degree of tolerance.”

Both of us nodded.

“Don’t pretend,” said Leona Suss. “You people are paid to judge.”

Milo said, “We don’t judge that kind of thing, Mrs. Suss.”

“
Missus
. I still like the sound of that. I was Mark’s
only
missus.” Waving a languid hand around the immense room. “If the poor, benighted boy needed to cut loose from time to time, so be it. We were in the rag trade, I learned to be realistic.”

“About …”

“The trollops who model bras and panties and nighties happen to possess the most spectacular bodies on the planet. We ran a high-volume business, meaning new panties and bras and nighties three times a year. Meaning a new crop of trollops three times a year. Can you imagine the temptation Mark faced on a daily basis? I never went to college, fellas, but I’m not stupid. As long as Mark remained faithful to me, he was free to engage in little bits of recreation.”

I said, “Adventures.”

“No, recreation. Mark was
not
an adventurous person. Didn’t like to travel, didn’t like to expand his comfort zone, it was all I could do to get him to take a Crystal cruise once a year. If you need me to be specific, what I’m referring to is inserting his little you-know-what into a variety of young, moist you-know-whats.”

“So Tara was just another chapter in a long book.”

She favored me with a solemn stare that slid into amusement. “You do have a way with words. Yes, that’s as good a way to put it as any.”

“Was she one of your lingerie models?”

“No, Mark found her after he retired.
Online
. Which I find hilarious because the entire time we were in business, you couldn’t get him near a computer and we were forced to hire strange little autistic men to attend to our technical needs. So what does he do? Buys himself a
laptop
that he doesn’t even know how to turn on. Sets it up in his
den
and begins spending more and more time with it. It got to a point where he’d disappear for hours. I suppose you could call it an addiction.”

Milo said, “What else did he tell you about Tara?”

“Cut to the chase, eh? Well, good for you, it’s refreshing to see civil servants who care about doing a good job. What else did he tell me … that he’d found some late-in-life amusement and promised not to spend too much on her upkeep.”

“By upkeep—”

“Her apartment, her living expenses,” said Leona Suss.

“That didn’t bother you?”

“I said, ‘You old fool, if you’re going to do it, do it right, just keep a lid on the budget.’ I couldn’t have him gallivanting all over town and ending up in a ditch somewhere. Mark had the most atrocious sense of direction. The way I saw it, his being aboveboard about wanting to you-know-what gave me the chance to exert some proper judgment over his Viagra-induced enthusiasm. Besides, if he wanted to live out his last days being ridiculous, who was I to stop him?”

“He was ill?”

“Not in any formal sense but he was always talking about dying, his cholesterol was horrid and he refused to moderate his diet. Meat, meat, meat. Then more meat. Then cheese and sweet desserts. The last thing I wanted was for him to keel over and leave me with guilt over having denied him his fun.”

Milo said, “I see your point, ma’am, but that’s awfully tolerant.”

“Only if I allowed myself to see her as anything more than a toy. Mark loved me deeply and exclusively, he was emotionally faithful, we raised two wonderful boys, built a glorious life together. If he felt like swallowing little blue pills and ripping off some cheap tail, why should it bother me?”

I said, “So you set the upkeep budget.”

“I suggested an upper limit,” said Leona Suss, grinning wider than ever. “Six thousand a month, and that was far too generous. Not that I was in a position to dictate, Mark had put aside a little personal retirement fund—some tax thing on the advice of our accountant. Everything else was in the family trust with both of us as trustees. He was free to crack his little piggy bank at will but he told me my figure was appropriate.”

Milo said, “To some people six thousand a month would be huge money.”

She gestured around the room again. “To some people, all this would be a big deal but one gets used to everything and to me this is just a house.”

“Everything’s relative,” I said.

“Precisely.”

“A Frieseke, a Hassam, and a Thomas Moran isn’t sidewalk art.”

Lavender eyes narrowed. “A policeman who knows his paintings? How refreshing. Yes, those pictures are pricey by today’s standards but you’d be amazed at how little we paid for them thirty years ago. The secret to being a successful collector, fellas, is have exquisite taste then grow old.”

I said, “So six grand was a drop in the bucket.”

She placed the sunglasses next to one of her photos. Moved the frame so that we could see the image better.

Beautiful brunette with long, wavy, windswept hair peering up at a cloudless sky. A smile that could be interpreted a thousand ways.

“I’m going to say something that’s going to sound disgustingly snobby but it’s the truth: I can easily spend more than that on a single excursion to Chanel.”

“So all things considered, Tara was a cheap date.”

“She was cheap in
every
sense of the word. Liked to talk to Mark in a phony British accent. Like she was Princess Di. He laughed at her.”

Milo said, “Do you know where her apartment is?”

“West Hollywood, Mark didn’t want to drive far. If you wait here, I’ll fetch the address.”

She was gone less than a minute, returned carrying a three-by-five card that matched the apricot couches. The cat padded several paces behind her, tail up, ears perked, eyes unreadable.

“Here you go.” After copying the information on a scrap of paper, she handed it to me.

From the Desk of Leona Suss

An address on Lloyd Place written in elegant fountain-pen cursive.

“I drove by exactly once,” she said. “Not to stalk the old fool, to make sure he was getting his money’s worth. Nice place, at least from the outside.”

Milo said, “How much of the six went for rent?”

“I couldn’t tell you. One thing I did insist should come out of the total was testing her for diseases. I couldn’t have Mark infecting me with some gawdawful plague.”