“No. Eventually he got around to everybody. Keech, Evelyn, even Sylvia Ashton.”
“Sylvia?”
“My God,” Donna said.
Dr. Kern’s face flushed. “The bastard. If I had known what he was doing to her, I might have killed him myself. Her grip on reality is tentative enough as it is — but to play with Sodium Pentothal —” I believed his threat. He seemed young and strong suddenly. “Under the influence of the drug, he had no difficulty finding things out about people. Evelyn and Keech, both of whom were very much in his grasp at the time, took the drug willingly, as part of their ‘search for truth,’ as part of learning all about ‘real acting.’ You can ask Reverend Jim Jones about how all that works.”
“How about Sylvia Ashton?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t take it willingly. She took it because she knew that Reeves had started to blackmail Evelyn.”
“How did you know that?”
He looked surprised that I didn’t know. “Why, Evelyn herself told me. After she realized what sort of person Reeves was, and what he was doing to her, she came to me in a real panic.”
Now Lockhart’s position in all this was coming clear, too. As Reeves’s closest cohort, Lockhart knew that Reeves had very profitable blackmail material stashed someplace. That’s why Lockhart had asked Stan if he could look in Reeves’s office, and why Lockhart had come to the acting class the night of his death — to search for the blackmail material.
“What about Keech? Why was he with Evelyn the other day?”
“I encouraged Evelyn to see him. Keech is in love with her, much as neither of them is willing to admit it. At this point in her life, that’s a very good thing.” He frowned. “Plus, they have one other thing in common — Reeves was blackmailing Keech, too.”
“What did he have on Evelyn?”
He cleared his throat. “Evelyn told Reeves all about a hit-and-run accident she’d had as a teenager — this was under the influence of the Sodium Pentothal, of course. The man she hit wasn’t killed, but he was injured badly. It’s just the sort of story Evelyn’s grandmother would pay a lot of money to keep out of the papers. Reeves knew she’d be willing to pay.” He shrugged. “As for Keech, he revealed that he’d been involved with a seventeen-year-old girl shortly after getting out of prison. Technically, that’s not against the law in this state, but it could help an unsympathetic parole officer send you back to prison. So he had to start paying Reeves whatever he could, too.”
“God, Reeves was really into power,” Donna said.
“Reeves knew Sylvia pretty well — knew that she was weak,” Kerns said. “He may even have seduced her. There are times when Sylvia feels very lonely — sometimes even when she’s surrounded by people she loves — and then she’s very vulnerable to seduction. Much more so than most women.”
“You’re making a very strong case against her,” I said.
He nodded glumly. “I know.”
“If I was a police detective, I would call her in for questioning — at the very least. Especially if I knew about the incident with the knife when she was in her early twenties.”
“You really have been looking into this.”
I watched his face. “Do you think she killed him?”
“I’ll repeat what I said before.”
“Which is what?”
“That I think it’s a possibility.”
“There’s at least one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“The way David Ashton has been so careful to cover for his wife.”
“You think David Ashton did it?”
“That’s another possibility. But I think there’s an even better one,” I told him.
“You’ve lost me.”
“What if he knew that it was his daughter and not his wife who killed Reeves? By being so protective of his wife, he makes her appear all the guiltier. He might be thinking that Sylvia could get off with an insanity plea. But Evelyn — well, she’s mentally sound, and she is his daughter.”
Something tightened his eyes, and he looked for a moment as if he were going to tell me something terrible. But all he said was, “As you say, there are a lot of possibilities.”
I studied him. Something I’d said had troubled him. But what? He stood up. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to Evelyn. She needs calming down.”
Donna frowned at me. She must have noticed Dr. Kern’s sudden strange attitude, too.
He held out a hand and we shook. He contrived a smile. “Now I know why people pay to see psychiatrists. Just by talking this through, I feel better.” But he sure didn’t look better or sound better.
Marsha appeared as if by magic and showed us to the door. She hadn’t wiped the chocolate smidgen off her mouth. I’d expected more from a girl like her.
19
“What a way to spend your birthday,” Donna said an hour later.
“What?” I’d alternated my time between reading the sports page (the Cubs had lost again) and looking at the playbills we’d taken from the cabin, the one featuring Stephen Wade, Sylvia Bridges Ashton, and David Ashton, the other featuring Ashton alone.
We were sitting in Denny’s. We’d just finished the breakfast of eggs and hash browns that Donna liked so much. There was a drunk guy sitting at the counter. I was going to feel a little safer when he got back on the road.
“I was just thinking of Evelyn,” Donna said. “Today is her birthday. I mean, given everything that’s going on, what a lousy birthday.”
“Yeah.”
“You look like you’re trying to levitate those playbills,” she said.
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“Why do you keep staring at them?”
“I suppose because I’m trying to learn something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
She raised one eyebrow — she knows how to do such things. “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you, Dwyer?”
“I wish I was.”
“You look sort of cute, with your hair all frizzy from the rain, I mean.”
“Thanks.”
“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.” She leaned across to whisper to me. “I’m down to my last Tampax. We’ll have to stop at a Seven-Eleven.”
“Hell, we’ll just go to your place.”
“If we do, we’ll be tempted to sleep, and I can tell from the way you’re acting that you don’t want to sleep.”
“No, I guess I don’t.”
“What’re we going to do, then?”
“See what Evelyn is up to now.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Evelyn’s car wasn’t in back of the theater, so we drove over by the halfway house. Traffic was thinning. The rain had become a fine mist. Evelyn’s car was parked in front of the halfway house, and Evelyn and Keech were sitting in it. We went down the street and parked at the far end where we could see Evelyn but she wouldn’t notice us.
“He was a spooky guy, when you think of it,” Donna said as we sat there.
“Who?”
“Michael Reeves.”
“Yeah, he was.”
“He even got to Sylvia Ashton. You would think he would have been scared of pushing her over the edge.”
“He thought he was on to something.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t think he would have toyed with Sylvia unless he thought he could get something very specific and useful from her.”
For a time we said nothing. We sat and watched the black trees shine with rain.
There was a moment of light as Keech opened the car door and got out. He waved good-bye to Evelyn and went inside the halfway house. Evelyn pulled away. I waited half a minute and went after her.
“You have any idea where she’s going?”