Of course. She’d seen the resemblance too. She’d felt that frisson of recognition when she first saw Jackie Hutchinson standing on the stairs. There had been something about him. The way he carried himself, his sardonic smile, his hair—all of them echoes of Henry.
“Jackie knows you’re his dad?”
“He thinks I’m a friend of the family, and that’s what I’ve tried to be. It’s the one good thing that came out of that mess. He’s a great kid, even if he is a little lost right now.”
That made two lost boys, Deirdre thought as she looked around the room. Henry’s prized electric guitars were once again lined up against the wall. Above them on the shelf stood the Battle of the Bands trophies he’d won. Best Band. Best Guitar. He and his buddies had taken top prizes. Henry had had real talent. Looks and charm, too. And he’d been on his way.
But by his senior year of high school, his grades had slipped. He’d stopped playing in the band. Never applied for summer jobs, just hung around, got high, and slept. Gloria and Arthur, distracted by their own unhappiness and Deirdre’s surgeries, had barely noticed. After a few months of college, he dropped out and moved home. And he was still there, lost on the way to a real life.
Now Deirdre understood why her father had kept the mysterious baby announcement that she’d found tucked in with his manuscript. Jackie Hutchinson had been the unnamed baby whose arrival was heralded in the card mailed in an envelope postmarked twenty-one years ago. Of course her father had saved it. He was the baby’s grandfather.
She also understood one of the notes that her father had jotted on the last page of the manuscript: Sy trust. Her father hadn’t been paying Bunny hush money. It had been child support. And Arthur had been bound and determined to write about it. He was going to blow the story wide open, and blow away Bunny’s reputation in the process.
WEDNESDAY,
May 28, 1985
Chapter 39
The next morning, the dull roar of a vacuum cleaner reached down and hauled Deirdre from a deep sleep. She lay in bed, listening to the nozzle bang against the baseboards in the hallway outside her bedroom. Sounded as if her mother still hated housekeeping and was taking it out on the house.
Deirdre propped herself up on her elbows. It was half past nine already. Rain beat steadily on the window. After her talk with Henry, she’d gone for a drive to clear her head and to find an all-night drugstore where she could buy a disposable camera. Even though she hadn’t gotten to sleep until well past midnight, it was the best night’s sleep she’d had since she found her father’s body floating in the pool.
All these years she’d blamed her father for crippling her when it was Henry who’d been driving. In the end, Henry had been crippled, too, in his own way. The two of them had more in common than she’d ever have imagined.
She got out of bed and took a quick shower. Toweled her hair dry and ran her fingers through it. Her new cut didn’t need more than that.
Beyond her trench coat, she hadn’t thought about what she had to wear to the funeral service. She couldn’t go swanning about the chapel in leggings and a long silk shirt. Her Xeno Art T-shirt was out, too. Ditto her father’s chambray shirt. Which left . . . she poked through the old clothes hanging in the closet and pulled out the navy blue, swingy tent dress that she’d worn in college before abandoning dresses for long paisley skirts or hip-hugging bell-bottoms with embroidered peasant blouses.
She slipped the dress on. It was a little tight on top but it would do. She draped her new scarf loosely around her neck and checked herself out in the full-length mirror. Innocuous. Unremarkable. Perhaps even a little retro chic. The skirt length was the only problem—it was ridiculous how short hems had been back then. But she could live with it. Besides, she’d be wearing a coat over it, so it hardly mattered.
She got her crutch and made her way out into the hall. Gloria was dusting the living room. She was wearing a dark straight skirt and matching shell she’d taken from Deirdre’s closet. Too small for Deirdre, they fit her mother with room to spare.
“Would you stop!” Deirdre said. “No one’s going to expect a perfectly clean house.”
Gloria gave Deirdre an appraising look. “We bought that dress at Robinsons. I like it with that scarf, but—” She came over and removed the scarf from around Deirdre’s neck, then redraped and tied it. “Better.”
Deirdre smiled. There was the shadow of the old Gloria Unger, the woman who had a subscription to Vogue and bought her shoes at Delman’s.
“Why don’t you go wake up your brother,” Gloria said.
Henry’s bedroom door was closed. Deirdre rapped on it. “Henry? Henry, wake up!”
“Go away.” Henry’s voice was a barely audible croak.
“The car is coming for us in an hour.”
“I’ll drive myself over.”
“You will not. Now get up!” She waited. Didn’t hear anything. “Henry, are you getting up?” She pushed the door open and looked in.
The covers heaved and she heard the bed creak. “All right, all right. I’m up. Now go away.”
“I’m not going until you’re up up.”
Henry picked up his head and glared at her. “I’m not getting up until you get out.”
By the time a dark limousine pulled up, Henry looked sober and handsome in a dark shirt and tie and pressed jeans. Gloria looked oddly chic, certainly striking. Her growing-in hair framed her face like a dark shadow, and she wore her turban unraveled and tied loosely like a cowl around her neck. A pair of Deirdre’s thick, red enameled hoop earrings gave her an exotic, Caribbean look. Her shoes were the only off note—battered black Birkenstock sandals.
Gloria stepped out into the rain, raising the cowl to loosely cover her head as she walked quickly to the car. Henry followed. Deirdre locked the door and carried a large envelope out to the black Cadillac limousine.
The driver in dark livery, the brim of his cap pulled low over a pair of wraparound sunglasses, held the door open for them. The dark interior of the car was cool and smelled of leather and Old Spice. As the car pulled away from the curb, Deirdre leaned forward and gave the driver Sy’s office address.
“I see you’re going incognito,” Henry cracked, a comment on Deirdre’s belted trench coat, head scarf, and dark glasses. Deirdre ignored him. Henry ignored her ignoring, instead practicing the informal tribute he planned to give, using notecards and talking about what Arthur had taught him to do. Play guitar, drive a car, mix drinks, pick up girls, and take all the fun out of TV movies by providing a running critique of the dialogue. By the time the limo turned into Westwood Village and pulled up in front of the three-story, pink stucco office building that housed Sy’s office, Deirdre was wiping away tears.
“That was perfect,” she told Henry. She was glad she’d had a chance to hear his speech.
“I don’t know why you have to take care of this right now,” Gloria said.
“Sy made me promise I’d leave Dad’s manuscript in his office this morning. It’ll just take me a minute.”
Deirdre got out and speed-walked—as fast as she could with her crutch—out of the rain and in through the arched doorway marked PUBLIC PARKING. The interior, with its gated entry and ramp to upper parking levels, smelled of rubber tires and warm, moist pavement. She wondered if this had been the spot where Sy was attacked.
She pushed through a door to the building’s lobby and made her way up a flight of tile-covered stairs, holding on to the wrought-iron railing. Sy’s office was halfway along a shadowy, second-floor corridor that was lit by metal sconces with orangey, flame-shaped glass shades. She took off her sunglasses and unlocked the door with the key Sy had given her.
The moment Deirdre pushed open the door and set her crutch in the dark room, an alarm started to beep. She’d known it would, but still the piercing sound rattled her. She turned on the overhead light and hurried over to the wall where Sy told her she’d find the security panel, though with its flashing lights, she’d have easily found it on her own. She punched in the code and the alarm fell silent.