“Arthur’s memoir would have soured everything,” Deirdre said. “Except for Walters. She’d have wanted her even more. What’s more fun than a public shaming?”
“You understand. I tried to convince him of his folly. What she would do if she found out what he was up to.”
“And she did find out, didn’t she?”
Sy didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
“So what happens now?”
“If I’m writing it, then you give me the last copy of your father’s memoir and I fix it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Ah. Then Susanna comes forward and challenges your timeline. She tells the police that you left the gallery early and she finished the installation alone. Susanna, not Shoshanna, by the way.”
“Susanna? You . . . ?”
“Didn’t you think it was just a bit far-fetched that a prominent Israeli artist would want his work shown in a third-rate San Diego art gallery? So desperate, in fact, that he would pay for the privilege? I yem Avram Sigismund,” Sy said, affecting a thick accent. “I yem very well known in Israel, but I hev to show my verk in the United States. . . . Lucky for me, your partner cannot tell a Russian from an Israeli accent. And you still were not suspicious when, right after that, an arts reporter you never heard of calls and wants to feature your gallery in an article?”
“You bastard.”
Sy looked genuinely wounded. He sat back in his chair. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. When your father told me you were going to help him get ready to move, I needed to make sure he would be alone the night Bunny and I came over to reason with him. It was a conversation I could not afford to have interrupted. I had no idea Susanna would get creative and have you paper over the gallery’s windows. Or that Bunny would want to come back . . .” Sy’s face fell.
“Or that I’d pick up the shovel on my way up the driveway the next morning.”
“Yes. I do wish you had not done that. But let’s not dwell on missteps.”
The scary thing was, the scenario Sy was spinning sounded entirely plausible. Whether Deirdre had gotten to the house in time to kill her father would come down to her word against Susanna’s, and her fingerprints on the murder weapon sealed it.
On the other hand, Susanna wasn’t real. “How hard do you think it will be for me to discredit someone who’s not even a real artist’s assistant?”
“She is not. She is a rather mediocre actress. A good detective could demolish her story, and a defense attorney worth his salt could poke holes in it. But it will never come to that because after she comes forward and it becomes clear that you will be arrested and charged, you will find a quicker, cleaner way to extricate yourself.” Sy paused and thought for a moment, his gaze snagging on the umbrella she was using for a cane. “A car accident, I think.”
Deirdre felt as if ice water were trickling down her back. “You’d kill me?” she said, though she could see from his expression that he was dead serious.
“I am very fond of you, and it will make me very sad. So let’s not find out. But there is a great deal at stake. Millions this year. More millions for years to come. Not to mention the legacy of a great actress who is far more ruthless than I. Surely we can come up with a better ending.”
A better ending. As if her father could spring back to life like TV’s Bobby Ewing in Dallas. Instead this would be the ending in which someone gets away with her father’s murder.
“Step one is not negotiable,” Sy said. “You give me the last copy of Arthur’s memoir. In return, Susanna backs your story that you left the gallery late. And I do everything that I can to make sure you are not indicted for your father’s murder. As you know, I am very good at my job.” Sy picked up a chewed-on cigar from the ashtray on his desk and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. “Then we discover your father’s memoir among his papers. Finished, of course. And edited slightly. But basically his life with a never-before-revealed, eyewitness account of the events surrounding Tito Acevedo’s murder.
“Most of the story will be a familiar to you. The glamorous party. You were sleeping over. Your father came back to get you. Wonderful stuff, how he comforts Bunny in her distress. She practices the confession she plans to deliver when the police get there. We take out the part where they move Tito’s body from Joelen’s bedroom. It just makes things more complicated than they need to be.”
“Is that where Tito was killed?”
“According to Bunny”—Sy raised his eyebrows—“and on this I take her at her word, Henry burst into her bedroom, yelling at Tito to leave her alone and brandishing a knife. But he did not have the nerve to use it. Tito chased him. Henry hid in Joelen’s bedroom, but Tito came after him. It was pure chance that Tito was the one who ended up dead. Pure chance that you were not there. Tito died in the bed you had been sleeping in.”
Deirdre closed her eyes and for a moment she was back in Joelen’s bedroom, smelling hairspray and feet and ripe pungent sawdust in the cage where Joelen’s pet guinea pigs lived. I thought I was protecting my mother. That’s why Joelen said she’d confessed. In the end, her confession had protected Bunny and Henry both.
“Like I said, we leave all that out,” Sy went on. “Before the police arrive, your father drives off with you. Next thing he knows is the morning headlines: Joelen’s confession and arrest for murder. We add a third act. The trial. Bunny’s triumph in court. Happy ending: Justice is served. In its way.”
“And Henry? Is he in the movie?”
“Who’s Henry?” Sy chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest.
“What about Jackie?”
“A mere footnote. Bunny will endorse the book. Publishers will be crawling all over one another to get their hands on it. Movie rights will go at auction. You and Henry will cash in. And Bunny will go back to her favorite private clinic, Beverly Medical Center, for more plastic surgery in preparation for her product launch and a starring role in the feature film. Arthur will be dancing in his grave. The changes to his story will seem minor. Believe me, he would not have cared.”
“If he didn’t care, then why are we here talking about this? Why is he dead?”
“Because he would not bend. Do not make the same mistake, Deirdre.” Sy’s jaw stiffened. “So, which will it be?” He raised his index finger. “Susanna goes to the police and tells them you had plenty of time to drive to Beverly Hills and kill your father?” He raised another finger. “Or I get the last copy of your father’s memoir and turn it into a bestselling book and blockbuster movie. Arthur, played by”—he thought for a moment—“Dustin Hoffman. You? What’s her name, the blonde in Footloose. Joelen? Maybe they’ll cast an unknown. Cameos by famous aging stars, all of them publicity whores.”
Deirdre held up three fingers. “Or I go through his papers, the way he asked me to. Sort. Cull. Inventory. Preserve. Certainly his memoir, even if it’s unfinished, gets preserved.”
“I’m running out of patience,” Sy said, reaching into the desk drawer and pulling out a small silver handgun. “Do I get the manuscript or don’t I?”
It wasn’t the gun that scared Deirdre. It was the cold expression on Sy’s face as he looked her squarely in the eye.
Chapter 43
I cannot believe you tossed it over the side of the road into the canyon,” Sy said from the passenger seat as Deirdre pulled her car out of the parking garage. It was all she could do to keep her sweaty hands anchored on the wheel. “You did not think someone would take it?”
“Not where I left it.” After her talk with Henry the night before, she’d driven around for an hour looking for somewhere to hide the manuscript. It had been much harder than she’d thought it would be to find a secure spot. Finally it had come to her: people didn’t mess with roadside shrines.