Lucy and David went out onto the veranda. Danced despite the cold. Phil glowered at me and went to the bathroom. That left us alone with Carla.
“One thing, Dwyer,” she said. “I’ve got to give you your balls. You got real guts to be here.”
“Kind of an odd little group, isn’t it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that I’m wondering what you have in common. Why did you decide to have a party together?”
“Maybe we’re friends.”
“I don’t think so.”
She knocked back the rest of her drink and staggered over to the bar for another. She looked fat and sad in her prom-like formal. And old.
“Maybe I should take some guesses about what you have in common,” I said.
“Maybe you should just get the hell out of here.”
“Stephen Elliot.”
“What?”
“That’s the only thing you people could possibly have in common.”
“Yeah, that’s what this is, a wake.”
I walked over to the veranda. Donna sat on the couch, staring at her hands. This embarrassed her, the subtle, social violence of the confrontation.
“Probably not a wake,” I said, “maybe more like a meeting.”
Phil Davies appeared again. Carla Travers shot him a warning look.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Dwyer here is trying to figure out why we got together.”
“It’s none of his damn business,” Davies said. He went to the bar. Refilled. Nat Cole played on. Beautifully. It could have been 1956. I wanted to forget about all this nonsense, dance with Donna. Only an image of Jane in the hospital kept me pushing.
The song ended and the Baxters came back in. They were flushed from the cold night. Lucy said, “Looks like the party came to an abrupt halt.”
“Uninvited guests,” David Baxter said. He still looked like Paul McCartney, but a malevolent version. He had the swagger you get from walking the deck of a yacht. “Probably time they leave.”
“One of you killed Stephen Elliot,” I said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” David Baxter said.
“One of you killed Elliot. And a motel clerk and a hooker named Jackie. You also hired two punks to work me over last night.”
Davies laughed. “You’re real good at trying to pin things on people. The other night I was your prime suspect.”
“Maybe you still are,” I said.
“Why the hell did you come here?”
“To serve notice,” I said. “One of you is a killer and you’re not going to get away with it. There’s some reason you came together here tonight, some reason I don’t know yet. Maybe when I figure it out everything will make more sense.”
David Baxter stepped forward. “Go figure it out somewhere else, asshole.”
Lucy put a hand on his arm.
There was no point in pushing further. I had done what I’d wanted to do. Whoever of them was the killer would be rattled enough to respond somehow, all I had to do was wait. I planned to call Edelman the next day and tell him all about it and have the police keep tight scrutiny on every one of them.
“Get out of here,” Baxter said again.
Donna was up. Pulling me away.
For a moment they froze — like a photograph — the four of them. They did not work at the same agency; they obviously came from widely divergent social backgrounds; they didn’t even have age in common. What could have brought them to this room together tonight?
“Come on,” Donna said.
As we left the snapshot stayed in my mind. Why were they together tonight?
Near the ballroom, on our way out, several small groups of people stood finishing nightcaps and comparing notes on the now concluded awards ceremony.
“You know,” Donna said, squeezing my arm, “I kind of miss being in advertising. I knew a lot of nice people, actually.”
This was the first thing she’d said to me since we’d left Davies’s room.
“You could always get an agency job again,” I said.
She pulled on my arm, stopping me. “I’m just scared, is all. I mean, up there in that room— One of those people probably is a murderer, right?”
“Right.”
“God, I just can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, but think what a great story it will make for Ad World.”
But her wine-buzzy senses were still reeling. “It’s sort of biblical. Cain and Abel. A real murder, I mean.”
“Land o’goshin’.” I smiled.
“Oh, don’t be so smug.”
I was about to say that I’d leave that to her first husband, but a hand gripped my biceps and turned me partially around.
In his black dinner jacket and black tie, his white mane of hair contrasting with his tanned face, Bryce Hammond was an impressive man. He even knew how to carry a drink just so, like in whiskey ads.
“Your lot seems to be improving these days,” Hammond smiled.
“Hi, Mr. Hammond,” Donna said. She sounded as if she were about ten.
“‘Mr. Hammond’?” he said. “How about Bryce?”
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, young lady, but I’m certain I’ve never met you. I wouldn’t have forgotten you.”
“Well, actually, you did meet me, Mr. Hammond.”
“Outrageous. I don’t believe it.” He was trying out for Cary Grant.
“I applied for a copywriting job right out of college. You met me in the hall one day and said I should calm down or I’d never get a job. It was really sweet of you.”
“Well,” he said, “I guess at my age being sweet is about the best you can do.”
“Oh, Mr. Hammond.”
I was about to throw up. I didn’t know who was worse, Hammond for fishing for compliments or Donna for feeding them to him.
A portly, bearded man in a cutaway walked past carrying several Addy awards.
Hammond raised his drink to the man in salute. “Reeves. Good art director. Worked a lot with Stephen Elliot.” He shook his head, seeming suddenly unhappy. “With Elliot dead, this will be the last year we win any major awards, I’m afraid.”
Donna went at it again. “Oh, but you’re a famous copywriter, Mr. Hammond.”
“Was, my dear, was.”
The portly man was about to have his picture taken and was waving for Hammond to join him.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
“Nice to meet you,” he said to Donna.
She looked thrilled.
When he left she said, “He was really a legend a long time ago. In my advertising classes in college we studied his commercials.”
“Then Stephen Elliot came along.”
“Don’t you think Mr. Hammond ever got jealous?”
“I’m sure he did. But what could he do? He’s a realist. His time had passed. Elliot paid the bills.”
She shook her head. “The poor man.”
“Come on,” I said, “or I’m the one who’s going to get jealous.”
She stopped me as I tugged her toward the door. She touched her head. “Guess what I’ve got?”
She looked like the “before” part in an Anacin commercial.
“This much alcohol always gives me a headache. I guess I should’ve told you, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, “huh.”
25
On the way to the hospital in the morning I called the security firm I worked for and asked one of the younger people if they’d do me a favor and run a credit check on all the people who’d been in Phil Davies’s hotel room the night before. Credit checks lead in all kinds of interesting directions sometimes.
“Hello.”
She wore a beige outfit with a mink wrap thrown formally over her shoulders. In the hard, gray, winter light from the window in the waiting room her makeup was caked and her jaw a tad too grim to be pretty.