Deirdre read on. Her father had helped Bunny wrap Tito in the quilt. They’d pulled him off the bed and dragged him down the hall to the master bedroom, where they’d rolled him over onto the floor. That must have been where the news photographers later snapped pictures of what was supposedly the crime scene. Deirdre clearly remembered a shot of a cop sitting at the edge of Bunny’s satin-covered bed, staring down at the dead man.
What happened? Who killed him? When I asked Bunny Nichol, she showed me a knife. “Recognize this?” she wanted to know.
Of course I recognized it. The last time I’d seen it was in a drawer in the buffet in my own dining room. It had been a wedding present. So what was it doing here?
I was desperate to take the knife from her. At the same time, I was afraid to touch it. The thought of how it had been used made me sick to my stomach. I know I’ve seen too many cop shows, but I was worried about leaving my fingerprints on top of those of the killer. At the same time, I realized it was too late to worry about fine points like that. The arms of my jacket and my trousers were already stained with Tito’s blood.
Bunny said not to worry. She’d get rid of the quilt from her daughter’s bedroom that we’d just dragged Tito in on. And she’d “take care” of the knife. Then she showed me a dress she said my daughter had worn to the party earlier that night. It was covered in blood too. I stared at it, too stunned and frankly afraid to ask the obvious question. Bunny promised me she’d take care of the dress, too. That the police would never know.
Know what? I wanted to ask.
If I didn’t tell, she said, she wouldn’t tell, and she’d keep these items somewhere safe. She called them her “little insurance policy.”
I asked her what in God’s name she meant by that. She blew up. What happened was my fault as much as it was hers. If I’d been a better father, and so on and so on. I had no idea what she was going on about.
Finally she calmed down and said, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget we had this little talk.”
Even at the time it sounded like a line of dialogue from one of her movies. But then, the whole situation felt like it was out of a movie. Everything except for Tito Acevedo, who was not pretending to be dead. And my daughter, who was somewhere in the house, needing me to get her out of there.
I asked Bunny where Deirdre was. Her answer stunned me to my core: “Shouldn’t you be asking, where’s Henry?”
Deirdre felt her jaw drop. What on earth had Henry had to do with what happened that night?
Apparently Arthur had had the same reaction.
I was about to ask what my son had to do with any of this when I heard a car outside on the gravel. I looked out the window. Headlights. Taillights. Then I realized I was looking at my own car driving away.
Bunny was beside me, looking out, too. “If you want to protect our children,” she said, coming down hard on our, “you’ll go home and never breathe a word of this to anyone.”
I thought about that as I walked home, hoping the police wouldn’t stop me for loitering even though I was moving as fast as I could. I was praying that when I got back to the house I’d find Deirdre safe and sound, asleep in bed.
Fortunately, it was not very far. Unfortunately, my daughter was not there. Neither was Henry.
That was the end, the very last typed line. Below it were handwritten notes, scrawled at the bottom of the manuscript’s final text and on the back of the page.
Gloria New Age. Deirdre knew what that would be about.
Talk That Talk. Deirdre recognized the title of the movie that had been her father’s one and only attempt at directing.
Baby boy. She had no idea what that referred to.
Sy trust. That was underlined twice.
Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Maximilian Schell.
The list made Deirdre smile. Arthur was considering A-list actors to play himself.
Deirdre gathered up the manuscript pages and was about to slide them back into the folder when she realized something was stuck in one of its pockets. A small envelope. She slipped from it a greeting card. The front was printed with a ring of flowers circling a baby-carrying stork. Inside was a handwritten message:
Congratulations! It’s a baby.
That’s all. No name. No date. No six pounds eleven ounces. No return address on the envelope. Just a postmark: Beverly Hills, May 11, 1964. Six months after Deirdre’s accident. Six months after Antonio Acevedo was killed.
TUESDAY,
May 27, 1985
Chapter 32
At four thirty in the morning, Deirdre lay awake in the dark, mulling over what her father had written. There was some comfort in knowing that she had not, after all, been at the wheel of her father’s car when it crashed. But her father hadn’t been driving either. It was Henry who’d led her from the house. Henry who’d driven her up to Mulholland and crashed the car into the guardrail. For some reason he’d been at the Nichols’ house, too, the night Tito was killed.
And what about the dress and the knife? What kind of “insurance” was Bunny buying for herself by holding on to them, and how did her father end up getting them back?
Deirdre got out of bed, pulled out the torn plastic bag she’d stashed in the closet, and took out the dress. Unwrapped the knife. Examined the flourishy initial engraved in the silver cap at the end of the bone handle. Was it n for Nichol? Or—she rotated the knife 180 degrees—u for Unger?
And what about the dress? As she smoothed it out on the floor, brittle bits of netting broke away. Were the brownish stains on it blood? They could as easily be cocktail sauce or red wine. She and Joelen had gorged on both after the party, then thrown up.
Deirdre sniffed at the stains, but after all these years the only smell was of dust and decay. There was no telling what had made them. Or was there? Would Tyler, with his chemistry lab, be able to identify the stains? He’d offered to help. Urged her to call on him “anytime.” Did that mean it was okay to call at five in the morning? Would he write her off as a crazy nut job? She hoped not.
She crept into the kitchen, where she’d left her bag by the back door. In it was the report of her accident on which Tyler had written his phone numbers. She dialed the one marked “Home” and held her breath.
“Corrigan,” Tyler said, picking up on the third ring. His voice was thick.
“Tyler? I’m sorry, it’s—”
Before she could give her name, he said, “Deirdre! Hang on.” She heard muffled sounds on the other end, then he came back on the line. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
It didn’t sound as if he was writing her off. “I’m sorry to call at this ridiculous time, but you did say that if I needed anything it was okay to call anytime.”
He yawned. “Said it and meant it.”
“The thing is, I’m not sure this is something you’re allowed to do. I found a very old dress and was hoping that you might examine it and tell me whether the stains on it are blood. Off the record, of course. Just as a favor.”
“So you think the stains could be blood?” He said it in what sounded like a cop voice: Just the facts, ma’am.