"Who was in the room that was standing?" I said, knowing the answer.
"Mrs. Pepper. Simeon, she'd been tied up. She was partially burned, but they could see that she'd been tied hand and foot. Like a heifer, Mrs. Sprunk said." He swallowed.
"With clothesline," I said.
Bernie flipped through his notes. "Gee," he said. "I didn't ask what kind of rope it was."
"It was clothesline," I said. "Take my word."
"Does that mean something? Obviously it does."
"Is there more? Are we finished, or is there more?"
"Sure there's more. If there weren't, your boy would be in jail. The house had been doused with gasoline. Halfway between the house and the garage, up to his shoulders in snow, they found Daddy Pepper. He was as frozen as most fresh fish. They had to break his fingers to get the gasoline can out of his hands. Mrs. Sprunk said he got lost in the snow in his own backyard. Whiteout or something. Case closed."
"The clothesline had been taken down," I said. "He needed it."
"What's all this about clothesline?"
"Skip it," I said. "After I leave, shut the door and forget about it." I stood up and reached into my pocket. Trying to keep my hands from shaking, I peeled off three hundred dollars of Stillman's and Toby's money. Then I added another hundred.
"What's that for?" Bernie asked. "It was only three hundred, actually two eighty-five. I had my watch running the whole time."
"Use it to clean your clothes. Clean your desk. Send the phone to the cleaner's, if you like. Clean everything you used or touched while you were working for me. I'm sorry, Bernie. I shouldn't have gotten you involved. Apologize to Joyce for me. Next time, we'll all go to Anna Maria's for Italian."
"Great," he said. "And what about you? What are you going to do?"
"Me?" I said. "I'm going for a run."
I ran six miles, maybe the fastest six miles of my life. The Sunset Boulevard uphill, about six-tenths of a mile at a grade of about roughly forty percent, was the hardest. I skipped the sauna but made up for it with an extra-long shower. Then, with a towel wrapped around my middle, I called the High Velocity set at Universal and talked to Dolly. Toby was there, she said. They'd been there since eight-thirty.
"Has he been out of your sight?"
"Not since last night."
"What about the big guy, the stand-in? John," I added, since Dolly's silence indicated a certain level of confusion.
"He's here. He's across the stage from me now. They're setting up a shot."
"Has he been there all day?"
"Gosh, Simeon, I don't know. You didn't say anything about watching him."
"Forget it. Try to talk Toby into keeping John with him for the rest of the day. Maybe even after work."
"Sure, but why? Has he got something to do with it?"
"Yes," I said. Dolly was asking another question when I hung up.
I dialed my house and got my answering machine. After my idiotic message was over, I said, "Nana, it's me. Pick up the phone, would you?"
"H'lo, Simeon," she said. She sounded drowsy. "What time is it?"
"A little after two. How are you doing?"
"I fell asleep in the sun. It's nice up here. Somebody named Eleanor called."
"Shit," I said. "Did you pick up the phone?"
She laughed. "You peckerhead. Of course not. I just listened after the machine picked up."
"Good. Keep doing that. I don't want you to talk to anybody but me, not even if somebody asks for you. Especially not if somebody asks for you."
"Nobody knows I'm here," she said a trifle anxiously.
"Don't be silly," I said to reassure her. "We're just being extra careful."
"Okay. What if there's a call for you that sounds important?"
"Listen to the machine and write down the name and number. I'll call in from time to time to check. Pick up the phone when you hear me."
"What are you going to do while I work on my tan lines?"
"I'll tell you after I do it."
"You're not going to be silly, are you? I mean, you're not going to stick out your big thick neck or anything."
"My neck is not thick."
"I'd like it even if it weren't. Take care of it for me."
"At last," I said. "A reason to live."
"What time will you be home? I could make something to eat."
"Don't plan on it. I'll be there when I get there, but I'll keep in touch. Go back into the sunshine."
"Maybe I'll work on getting rid of my tan lines instead. Nobody can see me."
"I like tan lines," I said, visualizing hers.
"Your kind always does. When you get back I'll model them for you. Front and back."
"Good-bye, Nana."
She kissed the mouthpiece and hung up. I readjusted my towel in front and strolled back through the locker room, hoping that no one would get the wrong idea. At any rate, no one whistled at me.
20
"What do you mean, another one?" Dixie said. "You mean dead?" He looked terrified. We were on the set, between shots. Toby was in his dressing room with Dolly and Big John. "Is Toby. ." He looked around and lowered his voice. "Is it possible Toby's involved?"
"He is and he isn't."
"That's very informative. That's what I need, right now, the Riddle of the Sphinx. Cryptic, that's what I need. You want to give me a straight answer, or do you want to go on being interesting?"
"Where were you late last night, early this morning?"
"What kind of question is that? What about Toby?"
"We'll get to Toby. What about Rebecca?" Dixie leaned against a prop wall, and it teetered. He straightened up and rubbed his face with both hands. "You know about Rebecca?" he asked in a spiritless voice. "How do you know?"
"No thanks to you," I said. "Northridge, my ass."
"I was ashamed of myself. I know I should have told you, but I was ashamed of myself. I acted like a putz after it happened. I've never acted worse in my life. So you talked to Charlene?"
"You mean Chantra."
"Chantra." He made the name sound like he was spitting. "Imagine, Chantra. A grown woman. Did she sell you any perfume? A crystal for your rearview mirror, keep you from getting rear-ended? Maybe a map to the lines on your palm? A lifetime subscription to the Harmonic Times?"
"Where were you late last night?"
"So now I'm a suspect? I don't tell you something, and that makes me a suspect? Oh, no, it doesn't. Don't give me that. We hired you, remember?" His voice had risen, and he waved his hands in front of him as if he were trying to shush himself. "Remember that?" he said in a half whisper. "We were the ones who hired you. Why would we have hired you if I were going around killing people? You think I could kill somebody? You haven't even told me who it was."
"You haven't asked."
He put a hand up and rubbed the back of his neck. "This is the kind of day they invented aspirin for. Who was she?"
"The girl who was with Toby when Amber got killed."
He transferred the hand from the back of his neck to the bridge of his nose and rubbed that for a while. "Swell," he said with his eyes closed. "Another naked dancer. This gets more Hearst papers every day. If Joanna Link ever figures it out, we'll all be on Sixty Minutes."
"That's what I meant when I said Toby was involved. What I meant when I said that he wasn't involved was that he didn't do it."
"You know that for sure?" He looked hopeful for the first time.
"Dolly was with him. She hasn't been more than ten feet from him since seven last night, and the lady was alive at seven last night because I saw her. So Dolly was with him. Who was with you, Dixie?"
"I'm a divorced man," he said testily. "I sleep alone."
"Do you own a camera?"
"Look," he said, "I own lots of cameras. So what, you know? So does Norman. So does Toby. So does everybody in the movie or TV business. We like cameras. We don't get enough of them grinding away during our ten-, twelve-hour workdays, so we run out and buy them before the stores close. Where do you think the pictures come from for all those Mommie Dearest books? This whole town is camera happy. Shake down the average film crew, you'll find more cameras than a busload of Japanese tourists. Betacams, too. Home movie cameras. Christ, Norman's got a thing that makes daguerreotypes like in the Civil War, ought to be in a museum. So what has this got to do with anything?"