Natural Causes Page 14

  Once we’d landed and disembarked, I wandered out of the terminal to the long-term parking lot, where I’d left the Pinto, got the key out of my pocket, unlocked the door, chucked my bag in the back seat, and drove home.

  I woke up in a sweat at eight-thirty the next morning. It felt like August again in my tiny bedroom—hot, sticky, and windless. And there wasn’t a mirror in sight. Just the oriel window looking out on the Delores’ parking lot. I got out of bed, went into the john, and took a long cold shower—to wash the sweat and booze out of my system. After I’d towelled off, I walked back into the bedroom and pulled the white pages off the nightstand shelf. I had three and a half hours to kill before I met with Frank Glendora, so I decided to put them to use. I found Quentin Dover’s number and dialed it on the bedroom phone. A woman answered on the fourth ring.

  “Yeah?” she said sleepily. It was Marsha Dover. I recognized the nasal twang of her voice.

  “It’s Harry Stoner, Mrs. Dover. Remember me?”

  “No,” she said.

  I sighed. “I’m the guy who pulled you out of the pool on Tuesday.”

  “What pool?” Marsha Dover said. “What the hell time is it, anyway?”

  “It’s a little past nine.”

  “Jesus. Nine in the morning?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Jesus,” she said again. “Who’d you say you were?”

  “Harry Stoner. The detective? The guy that Jack Moon told you about? You know, I came over to see you on Tuesday. I pulled you out of the pool.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said dimly. “The good-looking one.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was me or not.

  I could hear the rustle of bedclothes. “So what can I do for you?” Marsha Dover said.

  “I’d like to come out and talk to you about your husband.”

  “Quentin?” she said as if she could barely place the name. “Quentin’s dead.”

  I stared at the phone for a second. “Yeah, I know. United hired me to look into his death.”

  “Why? It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe if I could come out there, I could explain it to you.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, why not? You can come out.”

  “When?”

  “I dunno—later. In the afternoon, all right?”

  “See you this afternoon.”

  “Right, bye.”

  I could hear her struggling with the phone. It took her three tries to hang up. It certainly hadn’t taken her long to hang up on old Quentin. Sober—or, at least, half-awake—Marsha Dover was a helluva lot less sentimental than she’d been when she was drunk. I wondered if that was why she drank—to put a little feeling in that beautiful body. Maybe Connie Dover had been right, about the girl being all shallows. She certainly didn’t sound like the same person who’d attempted to drown herself in a suicidal fit of grief.

  I scanned the phone book and came to Connie Dover’s name. She had an address on Camargo. It was a high-society address, just like Quentin’s. But that story had worn thin and needed mending. I dialed her number and she answered immediately—no mornings in bed for Connie.

  “Yes?” she said. “Who is it?”

  “Harry Stoner.”

  “Oh, yes? How are you, Stoner?”

  “Pretty well. I was wondering if I could come over and talk to you again.”

  “Of course, you can. I’d be interested in hearing what you’ve found out about my son’s death.”

  I wasn’t so sure she’d be interested in hearing what I’d found out about her son’s life, but I went ahead and arranged to meet with her anyway.

  “We can share another cup of coffee,” the woman said.

  ******

  Connie Dover lived in a condominium development called Indian Village. It was a nice place, as prefabricated communities go—chic, multilevel buildings, arranged in a semicircle like the pipes of an organ. The buildings were brick with cedar inserts and tall smoked-glass windows running from floor to roof. I figured the condos couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, which meant that Connie had probably moved in just about the time that Quentin married Marsha. The change from mansion house to condo living must have been traumatic.

  I parked on the street at ten sharp and walked up to the front stoop. Two smoked-glass windows flanked the entryway, with silver Levolor blinds hanging behind them. When I rang the bell, one of the blinds crinkled open for a second. It snapped shut and Connie Dover came to the door.

  “Hello, Stoner,” she said.

  I’d forgotten how deep and acerbic her voice was. It went well with her pale, blonde smart-looking face—like a dash of bitters in a Manhattan. Although she was wearing slacks and a casual shirt, Connie Dover still looked dressed-up—perhaps because she had gold bracelets on her wrists and a gold pendant around her neck. Like the last time I’d seen her, her face was powdered ivory white and her hair was tied back in a bun.

  She motioned to me to come in and I walked through the door. It was cool inside the condo and dark with the shades pulled. The parquet floor smelled of wax and air freshener—a heavy, manufactured, woodsy smell that reminded me of the Belle Vista’s gardens. We went down a hall, past doorways opening on beautifully furnished little rooms, to the kitchen at the back of the house. That seemed to be Connie’s idea of the proper place for me to be. This one was small and modern, with Poggenpohl cabinets and built-in appliances, gleaming spotlessly in the morning sunlight. I sat down at a white pine table, beside the rear window. Through the window, I could see the woven wooden fence that circled the development.

  Connie unplugged a percolator and brought it and two cups and saucers over to the table. She poured the coffee and sat down next to me.

  “It’s refreshing to see you in dry clothes,” she said with amusement. “You look like a different man.”

  “How’s Marsha been doing since Tuesday?” I asked.

  “She is, as they say, ‘bearing up.’ In fact, she was bearing up the phone man when last I saw her. She thought he needed a drink. Marsha thinks the world needs a drink and a warm, tight place to rest its penis. That’s her philosophy of life.”

  “Glendora told me that you buried Quentin on Thursday.”

  “Had to,” the woman said dryly. “He died. I guess someone should have told Marsha.”

  “She didn’t go to the funeral?”

  The woman shook her head. “Miss was so overcome with grief that she drank a couple bottles of gin that morning. Her feet hurt her, you see. I told her to stay in bed. Better than having her whoops on the coffin. It was a simple and refreshingly dignified ceremony without her. Frank was there. And a few others. I thought you might show up.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I didn’t know your son.”

  “Something about you, Stoner. You look like a joiner.”

  I laughed. “You seem to be ‘bearing up’ yourself.”

  She smiled sadly. “It’s just the makeup, believe me. On the whole, I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse in my life.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Are you? I would have thought, after all the dirt you’ve been told, that you wouldn’t care one way or another about Quentin.”

  “How do you know what I’ve been told?”

  She smiled again. “Don’t kid a kidder, Stoner. I know the people you’ve been talking to—almost as well as Quentin did.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about him,” I said honestly.

  “A diplomatic answer.” She picked up her cup of coffee and took a sip.

  “How do you feel about answering a few more questions?” I asked.

  She thought about it. “I will, if you’ll answer a few of mine.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what specifically did you hear about my son? I think he’s owed the chance to defend himself, even if it is by proxy.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Opinion was divided. Helen Rose and Harris Sugarman liked him
. Walt Mack and Jack Moon didn’t.”

  “Harris is O.K.,” Connie said. “He was honest with Quentin.”

  “And the other three?”

  “Various species of crocodiles,” she said. “Not Jack as much as the other two. Jack’s just hatched. But Walt and Helen are fully matured reptiles.”

  “Helen liked Quentin,” I said.

  “Haven’t you ever had a pet?” the woman said. “Helen was Quentin’s pet croc, until she started snapping at him. Helen Rose doesn’t like anyone for very long. It’s just not her nature.”

  “And Walt?”

  “I think I would pay to see him die. He is a viperous little faggot with a forked tongue and a malicious temper. He did everything he could to thwart Quentin, often successfully.”

  “He claimed he had his reasons,” I said.

  The woman frowned at me. “If you’re alluding to the Russ Leonard thing, you probably don’t know the whole story.”

  “I’m willing to listen,” I said.

  “All right.” Connie laid her hand sideways on the table, as if she were exposing a poker hand. The gold bracelet jangled against the wood. “Quentin was originally hired on ‘Phoenix’ as a consultant, which in the paltry code of televisionese is the nice word for ‘heir apparent.’ He would have preferred to take over after Leonard had been formally fired. But Helen Rose is not the kind of woman to make a tough decision gracefully. She told my son—on the day she hired him—that Leonard was out and Quentin was in. Then she spent three months trying to get Russ to cut his own throat publicly and spare her the embarrassment of canning him. That three-month transition period was the kiss of death for Quentin. He made enemies just by showing up. Russ’s whole team was against him. Quentin wanted to quit right away, but he’d signed one of United’s goddamn contracts. By the time he’d goaded Harris into trying to break the deal, Leonard had cut his wrists and the show had gone into limbo. Helen begged him to stay on at that point, promising him anything and everything. What choice did he have? He stayed.”

  “I was under the impression that Helen tried to help Leonard,” I said. “And that Quentin was originally hired strictly to consult.”

  The woman laughed. “If feeding Russ Leonard cocaine was helping him, then Helen did all she could.”

  “Are you saying she was his connection?”

  “She told Quentin that it was safer than letting Leonard hustle it on the streets. It’s not at all unusual, by the way. Cocaine is a form of legal tender out there.”

  “For Quentin, too?”

  “Certainly not,” she said. “My son had too many health problems to make cocaine into a habit, although he might have tried it at one point or another. They all do.”

  “Do you think he might have tried it at the last point?”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” she confessed. “But what with the new project in the works and things looking up on ‘Phoenix,’ I can’t see him dicing with death—because that’s what it would have amounted to in his condition.”

  “What makes you say that things were looking up on ‘Phoenix’?” I asked.

  She gave me a funny look. “You heard differently?”

  “I heard that your son was having problems, yes. Serious problems. Walt Mack claimed that he’d been carrying Quentin for some time. And it’s a fact that he hadn’t produced any material since his heart surgery.”

  “He was working on a story line,” Connie said defensively. “He told me so three weeks ago. And as for Mack, it was just the other way around. Quentin had been carrying him. Part of the deal that Quentin made when he agreed to stay on the show specified that he would have complete control over his team. Naturally, everyone assumed, under the circumstances, that he would let Walt go. But he didn’t. He kept him on, drying his eyes for months after Leonard’s suicide and cleaning up his sordid little messes for him whenever Walt fell into the sack with Mr. Wrong. Which was every other week. Between Walt and Russ and his own wife, Quentin was kept rather busy in the scandal-snuffing department.”

  “Why did he do it?” I asked.

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t know. You would have thought that he’d have tired of them after a point. But he didn’t. When I asked him why, he laughed and said he’d grown used to other people’s troubles. I suppose helping out made him feel valuable. Quentin was always playing father or son to friends and enemies alike. Perhaps because his own father was such a failure.”

  “Would you care to elaborate on that?” I said.

  “What’s the point?” she said bluntly. “Just take my word for it—Jim didn’t measure up in the guts department.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  “I think I should tell you that I’ve heard some confusing things about Quentin’s background. Harris Sugarman told me that your son was down and out when he first met him. And Jack Moon said that he seemed desperate for the job on ‘Phoenix.’ But you gave me the impression that he was born to wealth.”

  “I never said that,” the woman said after a moment. “I just said that he came from an old family. The money part was your idea.”

  She said “the money part” with a touch of scorn, as if money didn’t enter into her idea of a pedigree.

  “Then he was hard up for money?”

  “He was when he started out,” she said coolly. “No one ever handed him anything, either.”

  “So Sugarman said.”

  “Sugarman made his ten percent. Don’t let the hype fool you.” She stared at the oil spots drifting on the surface of her coffee. “Everyone got his share of Quentin Dover,” she said in a way that made me think she was including herself as well. She’d started to look sad, for the first time since I’d arrived.

  “He had a bad time?” I said.

  “He had to do...certain things on the way up. They stayed with him.” She blinked and a tear ran down her cheek, turning white with powder, like a tiny ball of snow. “And then he didn’t pick the easiest row to hoe. But he had guts, Quentin did. I don’t think you know how much.” She wiped the tear from her face and rubbed it between her fingers, leaving a white, glistening smudge on their tips. She stared at the powder for a second. “You know, they say that cocaine is the drug of choice in Hollywood. But they’re wrong. Money is the drug they’re high on. It always has been. The getting and spending of money. It does things to your mind.”

  “To Quentin’s, too?”

  “To everyone’s,” the woman said.

  “Sugarman said that Quentin was having financial problems.”

  Connie Dover drew herself up in the chair and shook her head slightly, as if she were still thinking about the things that Quentin had had to do to make it into life’s charmed circle. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”

  “Was he having some financial problems?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Keeping Marsha in booze and stomach pumps was always an expensive proposition. And he’d had some unexpected outlays. His house in New Mexico was damaged by a flash flood and that cost him a bundle to repair. In fact, Jorge Ramirez, his overseer, was here last Wednesday to give him an accounting. Also to drink a lot of Quentin’s beer. I’m sure the New Mexican thing was costly, judging from the way they carried on. But Quentin had things under control.”

  “Then the new project wasn’t crucial to him financially?” I said.

  “No.”

  “If, as you say, things were looking up on ‘Phoenix’ and his financial situation wasn’t desperate, then why was he looking for another job at all?”

  “I said things were looking up. I didn’t say they were satisfactory. When Quentin Dover took over on ‘Phoenix,’ the show had a seventeen rating and a fourteen share. In less than a year, he built that up to a twenty-one rating and a seventeen share. The only reason that ‘Phoenix’ started to slip was because Helen Rose capriciously changed her mind about Quentin’s last document and decided to try out some fantastic hoo-doo of her own.
The results speak for themselves. Just as in the case of Russ Leonard, Helen had to find a fall guy to take the blame for her mistake. Quentin was the obvious choice. And he deserved better than that, after two hard years of work. That’s what I told him on Friday, and he knew that I was right. Why should he have shown any loyalty to a woman who had wrecked two years of work and then tried to fob the disaster off on him? Of course, he had a right to look for another job. A perfect right.”

  I began to wonder whether we were talking about the same man. But, of course, we were. I was just getting a different slant on him. Something, perhaps, closer to his own view of himself—or the view that he wanted his mother to take in. It was kind of interesting.

  “The project he mentioned—you thought it was another TV deal?”

  “That was my conclusion, yes. Quentin didn’t say so specifically.”

  “Did he say anything, specifically? At lunch or when he called you that night?”

  “Only what I have told you. That it was something new, something he found more exciting than ‘Phoenix.’”

  “He said that?”

  “No. I said it for him, and he agreed.”

  “During the preceding week, do you know if he talked to anyone in the industry?”

  “I believe he talked with Frank Glendora on Thursday. That was one of the reasons I assumed it was a TV project.”

  “United claims that they didn’t offer him anything.”

  Connie Dover bit lightly at her lip. “It could have been with someone else, couldn’t it? He had other friends in the business. Did you talk to Harris?”

  I nodded. “He didn’t know anything about any TV project outside of ‘Phoenix.’”

  “That’s surprising,” she admitted. “Quentin generally depended on Harris for all of his television contracts.”

  I looked at her and she looked at me.

  “He didn’t actually say it was a television project,” she said guardedly. “It could have been something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “A movie. A play. A novelization. There are many possibilities.”