Behind the flats I heard the elevator taking the Ashtons to the top floor of the theater. There was a sprawling penthouse up there where they lived along with the matriarch of the clan, Mrs. Bridges. A nervous disorder had confined her to bed. I had never met her. Everybody assured me that I was lucky. I was told that her servants called her “Benito,” after Mussolini.
My footsteps rang hollow as I left the stage and headed for the wings.
I was going to look up Stan and say good night and see if Donna was still awake enough to let me come over. It’s fun to be in your forties and still live essentially the way you did in high school.
I was walking past the dressing rooms when I heard something at the top of the winding metal stairs that led to more dressing rooms and Michael Reeves’s office. As the resident director here, he had been given space to conduct all his business affairs, including the commercials he directed for various ad agencies.
I raised my head. The lights upstairs were out.
Somebody tiptoed through the gloom above my head. A door yawned open. The tiptoeing stopped.
I thought of locating Stan and borrowing a flashlight. But maybe the visitor would be gone and I wouldn’t find out who it was and what the person wanted. If I wanted to believe that Stephen Wade was innocent — and I did — then it was up to me to prove it.
I went up the stairs on tiptoes myself, cursing myself at each step for being such a water buffalo. The damp night caused me to sweat and the darkness made me stumble. I reached the stairway with almost no pride left. Light from the window at the east end of the hail showed me a corridor with four doors. I stood absolutely still. My heart sounded as if it needed a tune-up. My feet felt damp. I needed a shower; I needed help.
When the door opened, I leaned back into the shadows.
She stuck her lovely head out and looked first one way and then the other, and then she slowly came out. She must have thought I was gone. After checking the corridor for signs of life, she walked past me to the stairs and descended with utter grace and without making a sound. The police force could have used her.
After a few minutes I heard her saying good night to Stan, and then I heard the big metal side door squeak open. I ran to the window and watched as Anne Stewart got into her Mercedes and drove off.
What the hell had she been doing in Michael Reeves’s office, I wondered as I went downstairs.
I was nearing the stage door when I heard the phone ring and Stan answer it. He said, “I don’t know, Mr. Ashton. I think he may already have gone. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Good night, sir.”
He hung up just as I reached him. “Oh, Dwyer. You are here, huh?”
“Unless I’m a ghost.”
“That was Mr. Ashton.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he said he thought you might still be down here. He said he wants you to come up to the penthouse.”
“You’re kidding?”
He shrugged. “That’s what he said.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“Nope.”
“You think there’s an emergency or something?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I wonder what the hell’s going on.”
“There’s a good way to find out.” He smiled; nodding toward the elevator. “Get on the damn thing and go up there.”
I smiled at him. “Good point.”
I got on the elevator and went up. I was still wondering about Anne Stewart and what she’d been doing in Reeves’s office.
6
Even before the elevator doors had opened completely I saw a chandelier that cast an almost blinding light over a reception area nearly as large as the theater’s. A fleshy man with sleek white hair and wearing a blue jumpsuit nodded hello. When he spoke it was in good English with a Latin American accent. “You are Mr. Dwyer.”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Bridges would like to see you.”
I looked around. Three hallways angled off from the reception area. Somewhere down the corridors lived the three Ashtons. The place seemed to be divided into three apartments.
“I’m not going to see David or Sylvia?” I asked.
“Mrs. Bridges did not mention them.” He pointed to the second hallway. “She’ll be most happy.”
I followed him down a corridor so broad that it was almost a room itself. Discreetly lit lithographs by Klee and Picasso lined the north wall. On the other wall were photographs of the Bridges family, usually posed outside a factory or a store or a building that the family owned. For a family from a small Midwestern town they were exceptionally wealthy. Two presidents had selected family members to be foreign ambassadors; one president had even taken a Bridges into his cabinet.
The closer we got to the end of the hall, the sweeter the air became. Cloyingly sweet. When the servant in the blue jumpsuit stopped, I paused and sniffed the air.
“Flowers,” he explained with a smile. “Many, many flowers.”
The smell reminded me of a funeral parlor. When I got inside the room, I understood why.
Before my eyes settled on the banked rows of flowers, I saw the frail, almost cute little woman propped up in a huge bed covered with a pink brocaded bedspread. Amid all the flowers, the tiny woman reminded me of an illustration from Alice in Wonderland.
When I reached her, she stuck out a slip of a hand and put it in mine. It was like shaking with a kitten. She glanced at the man in the blue jumpsuit, and for the first time I saw the power of the Bridges family: he left the room instantly.
Before I devoted more attention to her, I finished inspecting the room. The flowers, roses and gardenias and mums, literally filled the room. With the thick gold drapes drawn and the door closed behind the servant, I felt as if we were out of time, existing on some altered plane between death and life — particularly when I saw the collage of old photographs next to her bed.
Calvin Coolidge doffed a derby; Ike smiled baldly; Nixon grinned nervously. Each was pictured with an arm around Hughton Bridges, who would have been this woman’s husband. But that was not all. There was Ronald Reagan, Celeste Holm, Caesar Romero; there was Frank Sinatra and Satchmo and Dinah Shore — each with both of the Bridges, Hughton and the woman before me, Lenora.
“I’m afraid I don’t know many of the celebrities today,” she said, drawing back my attention.
I smiled. “I’m afraid I don’t, either.”
“I noticed your nose.”
“Pardon me?”
“Your nose.” She giggled. “It wiggled. Like a rabbit’s. It’s the flowers. Not everybody likes them. I love them. But you don’t.” Her little blue eyes were flirtatious. In her pink silk nightgown it was still possible to see what a beauty she’d once been, the beauty she was still in the fading photographs. She said, “You’re wondering how old I am.”
I felt myself flush.
“Perfectly natural and perfectly understandable,” she said. “I’m eighty-three.”
“You look wonderful.”
“Would I sound vain if I said I know I did?”
“Not at all.”