Night night sleep tight, p.16
Night Night, Sleep Tight, page 16
Could her fifteen-year-old self have driven off in her father’s car? Her gut said no way. Drive without a driver’s license? Not the good girl who’d detour a half block to avoid jaywalking. Who’d never been tardy to school, never ventured into the school hallway without a pass, never borrowed a library book she hadn’t returned. Not the girl who’d walked all the way back to J.J. Newberry in the rain to return a tube of Passionate Pink lipstick that her best friend had slipped into her pocket.
No. She’d never have taken off in her father’s car, not unless she’d been running from the devil himself. And no matter how drunk she’d been, she’d have remembered that.
By the time Deirdre was above Sunset her grip on the wheel had loosened. The mystique of Mulholland Drive had spawned urban legends: tales of a headless hitchhiker, of a depraved sex maniac with a hook for an arm who stalked couples necking in their cars at the overlooks, of a phantom Ferrari that led motorists off cliffs. As if the road’s twists and turns weren’t hairy enough, many a driver saw bodies hanging among the dangling boughs of willow trees that lined Mulholland’s edges. It didn’t help that the Mafia really had used the road’s steep banks to dispose of corpses.
It would take some of the fun out of it, driving an automatic. But with only one good leg, operating a stick shift was impossible. It was like trying to hitchhike without a thumb. She passed a grassy park and kept on going. There was the gate that her father told her led to what had once been Jimmy Cagney’s estate. A driveway that disappeared into the bushes led to the home of Mel Torme. Arborvitae lined the driveway to Charlton Heston’s estate.
By the time Deirdre reached the turn onto Mulholland she was calm. In the zone. She waited at the stop sign as a motorcycle flew past. Then another. Mulholland was dangerous for motorcycles, and yet this was where they all came to be challenged.
She flipped on the radio. As if summoned from the underworld, there was Mötley Crüe. Shout! Shout! Shout! The pounding beat filled the car. Deirdre’s heart kicked into gear as she turned and accelerated, her tires spitting gravel. She pictured the overlook where she was headed. Grasping the wheel with two hands, she eased into the first curve, the Valley rising before her. She accelerated past the entrance to Coldwater Canyon Park, then took the next curve a bit too fast and felt the rear wheels start to slide toward a rock face.
Adrenaline pulsed in her ears along with the Crüe’s sinister chant. She amped the volume until she could feel the bass drums and snares vibrating through the steering column. Under her, the road undulated and straightened, tilting and righting itself. Mentally she tracked her path as she beat the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. She sped past one overlook, then another. She knew she was getting near where Tyler had stuck the white pushpin in the map.
Belatedly, she registered the 10 mph hard right arrow and skid marks all over the road. She was already into the turn before she realized what was happening. The car slew sideways. Turn into it, turn into it! Her father’s voice rang in her head. Steer in the direction of the skid!
It was too late for a tidy recovery. The car slid backward, toward a cluster of motorcycles parked at the overlook. Deirdre pumped the brakes, praying that the tires would gain traction. In her rearview mirror, she watched the bikers leap out of the way, like fleas off a dog’s back, as the car fishtailed to a halt, a cloud of dust blooming around her.
Chapter 28
Thank God Deirdre had missed the bikers. Missed the bikes. Not to mention missed smashing into the guardrail and going over the edge. Heart hammering, she peeled her fingers off the steering wheel for the second time that day, bashed the radio into silence, and killed the engine. A green-and-white sign at the edge of the parking area read SUICIDE BEND OVERLOOK.
This was the spot where she’d crashed twenty-two years ago.
Emerging from the dust in front of her was a guy with a blue bandanna tied Indian style over his forehead. He had on a black leather jacket that might, in another lifetime, possibly have zipped over his paunch. He stomped over to her car until his presence filled the windshield, flicked a cigarette on the ground, and crushed it with the sole of a tooled black cowboy boot, then folded his arms across his chest and glared at her.
Deirdre reached for her crutch, opened the door, and got out. “Sorry, sorry!” She held up a hand in surrender. “Is everyone okay?”
The big biker took off his mirrored aviator glasses. His hair was nearly all gray and pulled back into a long, thin ponytail. “You act as if you want to get killed,” he said, his voice a gravelly John Wayne imitation.
Deirdre relaxed a notch. It was a line from Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a movie John Wayne wasn’t in. She even knew Doc Holliday’s deadpan response: Maybe I do. But now was not the time to show off.
“Nice wheels,” the big biker went on, stepping over to her Mercedes and stroking its fender. “Can it do any other tricks?”
The other dudes who’d gathered around cracked up. Deirdre’s face burned.
“Hey, you okay?” one of them asked. “Maybe you’d better sit a spell.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m fine. Just stupid.”
That earned nods all around. Then, one by one, they got on their bikes and took off. Last to leave was the guy who’d greeted her, revving a whole lot louder than he needed to and shooting a cloud of soot out the tailpipe. “Let’s be careful out there,” he shouted to her over the din. Hill Street Blues. “I wouldn’t want to find your pretty little bumper hanging from one of these trees.” Sounded like that line he’d written all by himself. He put his glasses back on and roared off. Into the sunset, only it was well past high noon.
A skim of fine dust had settled over Deirdre’s car. With her finger, she wrote on the front fender: JERK. What she should have scrawled there was DAMNED LUCKY THIS TIME. Her rear wheels were just a few feet from a forty-five-degree drop. She leaned against the guardrail, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. Her mother’s string of prayer beads would have come in handy. Her white sneakers were streaked with dust and she felt ridiculous in her new outfit with her perfect hair.
Two cars sped past. Then a bike. The sweat coating Deirdre’s face cooled as she turned and gazed out past trees and scrub and into the omnipresent haze that settled over Sherman Oaks, turning landmarks, if there’d been any, into smudges.
A sharp smell wafted from the surrounding chaparral. For a moment it took her back to when she’d been carried from the underbrush. She remembered staring up at a moon that seemed to be caught in tree branches.
But she didn’t remember hearing the sounds that she heard now, thunks and clangs like dull wind chimes, from beyond the edge of the overlook. She stood and turned to get a better look. There really was a car bumper hanging from a branch of one of the trees growing on the embankment. Sunlight reflected off its dull chrome. The remnants of a bumper sticker, REAGAN in blue block letters under a wave of stars and stripes, came in and out of view as the bumper twisted in the breeze. Other branches were hung with hubcaps and license plates. One sagged under the weight of a car’s dented front grille with a Volkswagen W in the middle.
At the tree’s base, maybe fifteen feet down a scrubby incline, lay bouquets of flowers, one merely wilted, the rest virtually mummified, along with framed photographs and stuffed toys, including a teddy bear that looked like her Ollie. But not Ollie, of course.
As Tyler had said, there was a reason this spot was called Suicide Bend. Nailed to the tree’s thick trunk was a plank of wood hand-lettered in red paint: SLOW DOWN OR REST IN PEACE.
All the way back to the house, Deirdre seethed. She scolded herself for driving so stupidly and putting her own and others’ lives at risk. She was no longer fifteen years old. She was also furious that all these years she’d allowed herself to be convinced that there was no way to find out where she’d crashed. That she’d been blind to the fact that she’d been driving. What else didn’t she know?
She parked the car in front of the house and went inside, slamming the door behind her. “Mom? Henry?” she called out.
“Hello, dear! In here.” Her mother’s reedy voice came from the den.
Deirdre stomped in. “Did you know?” she said.
“Oh good. You’re back.” Gloria looked up from the legal pad on which she’d been writing. Scattered about at her feet were videocassettes of the movies she and Arthur had written. The VCR was going—Fred Astaire in top hat and tails danced his way across the tabletops of a French sidewalk café.
Gloria paused the video and put the pad on the desk. “Just in time to help us put together a list of clips for a montage to show at the memorial service.”
Deirdre put her hands on her hips. “Did you know?”
Her mother blinked. Then frowned. “Goodness. What did you do to your hair?”
Immediately Deirdre felt twelve years old. She could just barely stop herself from shooting back, And what did you do to your hair? Since when is shaving your head a fashion statement? It was so aggravating that her mother still had the power to push her buttons.
Deirdre leaned forward on her crutch. “I just found out that everything I thought I knew about what happened to me the night of the car accident that did this to me”—she lifted the crutch—“is a lie.”
Her mother’s jaw dropped but she didn’t say anything.
“Deirdre? What is this all about?” Deirdre jerked around, recognizing the deep, gravelly voice with just a hint of an Eastern European accent. Sy Sterling rose from the wing chair.
“What about you? Did you know, too?” Deirdre threw the words at him. “Because you’re the one who kept telling me there was no way to find out where the accident happened. Turns out it’s ridiculously easy.”
“I did try to find out for you,” Sy said. “The record wasn’t there.”
“It was there. In the Los Angeles Police Department records.”
Gloria turned to Sy. “What on earth is she talking about?”
“See for yourself.” Deirdre tossed the report on the desk. “Since when is Mulholland Drive on the way from the Nichols’ house to ours? And who made up the fiction that it was Daddy driving—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Sy held up his hands. “Slow down. Sit.”
Deirdre didn’t want to sit but she did, perched on the edge of the chair opposite her father’s desk. Sy came around behind the desk and put his hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Okay, then. Let me see what you have here.” He slipped on reading glasses and picked up the report. As he read, his scowl darkened. At last he handed it to Gloria.
“See,” Deirdre said. “That’s the official report of my accident. One person in the car. Not two. I was driving, on Mulholland Drive. And all this time—”
“You were not driving that car.” Her mother’s hand trembled as she stared at the report. “I don’t care what this says.” She tossed the paper back on the desk.
“Then what happened? Dad drove up to Mulholland for a joyride? Crashed the car and then abandoned me?”
Gloria and Sy looked at each other, but neither of them spoke.
“The police thought I was driving. I didn’t have a driver’s license, I got into an accident, but charges against me were never filed. Was that your magic?” Deirdre stared at Sy. “Was that the trouble you said you kept me out of?”
Sy didn’t answer, just raised his eyebrows, allowing that there might be some truth to that.
“And there’s more,” Deirdre went on. “Yesterday, very early in the morning, around two A.M. or so, before you came over to read us the will, I woke up and found Henry dragging a bag out of my father’s bedroom. A bag of things that he said Dad would have wanted him to get rid of. There were snapshots of young women in there. Lots of them. One of the girls”—she stared hard at Sy—“and she was just a girl, was Joelen Nichol.”
“Christ,” Sy said. He seemed dismayed but not particularly surprised.
“Know what else I found in that bag?” The words came tumbling out. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop herself. “A dress. The dress I was wearing at the party earlier that night. The night Tito was killed. So here’s what I want to know: How did the dress get covered in blood? And how did my father end up with it?”
Sy hesitated, gazing out into space, his face blank. “This is news to me.” Deirdre remembered that her father always said Sy was a brilliant poker player, but a moment’s hesitation was his tell.
Well, if Sy wasn’t going to spill, Deirdre would. “I also found a knife.” Sy’s eyes widened. “A carving knife with a bone handle. Something else that Henry said Dad wanted him to get rid of.”
“And you think—” Sy started. Now he looked genuinely bewildered.
“I don’t know what to think.” Tears welled up behind Deirdre’s eyes. She clenched her jaw to keep them from spilling over. “But I’m starting to wonder. What if the police don’t have the real knife that killed Tito, and what if my father did? And what if I wasn’t asleep when it happened?” She looked from her mother to Sy and back again. “Why won’t anyone tell me the truth?”
“No one is trying to torture you,” Sy said. “We would all like to know exactly what happened. Maybe if your father had written about it, we would know.” He paused for a moment, looking directly at Deirdre, so intently that she wondered if he knew about her father’s memoir.
Gloria got up from the desk and came around to Deirdre. She took her hand and held it between hers. “I’m so sorry that you’ve had to go through so much pain and confusion. And it’s so unfair that it’s all getting dredged up again.”
“I didn’t kill Tito,” Deirdre said in a small voice.
Her mother stood back. “Of course you didn’t.”
“Did I?” Deirdre asked Sy.
This time there was no hesitation. “You did not. Of that you can be absolutely certain.”
“How do you know?” Deirdre said.
“Because I was there,” Sy said.
Chapter 29
Sy returned to the wing chair and sank into it, his face receding into shadows. He closed his eyes for a moment and tented his fingers over his belt buckle. Then his eyes opened and he glanced across at Gloria, who was still standing behind Deirdre with her arms around her. Some kind of message seemed to pass between them.
“All right,” Sy said. “Well then. I was hoping it would never come to this, but here we are and so it is. As you know, I have for a very long time been Elenor Nichol’s personal attorney. I am also her friend. She called me that night. Very late. She called and asked me”—he gave a tired smile and shook his head—“make that commanded me to come over right away. She said something terrible had happened to Tito.
“I told her to call an ambulance. She said it was too late for that. She needed me to be there when she called the police. So of course I dressed and went right over. As I was driving up the driveway to the house, I passed a car pulling out. It was dark, and I could not see who was driving. But it was a sports car with the top down. Naturally I assumed it was your father. And when I learned what had happened, and that you had been in the house, I further assumed that he had come to get you out of there before all hell broke loose. That is what I thought until just now when you showed me the accident report. I still find it difficult to believe that you were driving that car.”
“The dress? The knife? Why did my father have them?”
“I’m afraid that is something I do not know. This is what I do know. When I got there, Bunny took me up to her bedroom. Tito was on the floor. Dead, of course. Bunny said they had had a terrible fight. Worse than usual. Trying to placate him, she had told him that she was pregnant. She thought that would make him happy. Instead, he exploded. Punched her in the stomach. Tried to choke her. Tito knew it could not be his child. He was sterile.”
“Elenor Nichol killed Tito?” Deirdre asked.
“That is what she told me. And right away I thought, ‘self-defense.’ I did not doubt it for a moment, and I am sure I could have persuaded a jury. Police had been called to the house before. Newspapers had printed photographs of them fighting in a nightclub. On top of that, Antonio Acevedo had a long, well-documented history of violence. If Bunny had been charged, I would have tried to make the jury aware of the rumors that he had his last girlfriend disposed of. Elenor Nichol would have come across as a sympathetic victim. Desperate. And—”
Gloria said, “And an accomplished actress.” The bitterness in her tone took Deirdre aback.
“Of course she is,” Sy said. “But this did not seem like an act. She was agitated. In acute distress, emotionally and physically. Her neck was red and her vocal cords were so badly bruised that she could barely speak.”
A chill ran down Deirdre’s back. Why on earth had she and Joelen been allowed to hang out all those long afternoons with just Tito in the house?
“I placed the call to the police,” Sy went on. “While we waited for them to get there, I prepared Bunny for the questions they would ask. I told her that I had seen your father’s car pulling out when I arrived. She said she had called Arthur to come get you. That you had been sound asleep and knew nothing about what happened. We agreed, the police didn’t need to know that you’d been there.
“The police came. Examined the body. They were about to start questioning Bunny when Joelen made a rather dramatic appearance. She staggered into the room, unsteady on her feet, slurring her words. Bunny told me later that she had given Joelen a sedative, but apparently it had not knocked her out. Slurred speech or not, there was no question about what she said. ‘I did not mean to kill him.’ The police took it as a confession.”
