Dream a Little Death, page 21
It was an inflatable sex doll.
Now seemed like a good time to regroup.
The hunt for the elusive Big Fatty was not going particularly well. I was out of ideas. Getting a headache. Feeling cranky. Hoping to boost my morale and blood sugar, I repaired to the Ye Olde Shopping Plaza (not its real name). After putting my name down at the waffle house, I took a stroll around, past a variety of tchotchke shops, a Wells Fargo, and a Jockey outlet store, in case a person lacked an internet connection and wanted to load up on men’s underpants. Then I checked my phone. One text from Cat, who’d decided she was going to sleep with the Snapchat exec with the facial hair, as an experiment. She’d report back in the morning. Hurray for love. No, really.
I grabbed copies of the L.A. Times and the Mountain News as the hostess finally escorted me to my table. There were seventeen types of waffles to choose from. I decided on the Peanutty Belgian, which combined healthy fat, protein, and an anti-oxidant (chocolate). Then I paged through the newspapers. The Times was full of the usual fare: political corruption, real estate chicanery, morning fog clearing by midday. The Mountain News was a more exotic beast. The top story was the evacuation of the local Von’s due to a broken sprinkler head, which had leaked onto the wiring and set off the smoke alarms. I also enjoyed the headline reading, “Local high school’s septic system takes a dump.” Who said journalism is dead? Then I turned to the page with the classifieds. And something caught my eye.
I grabbed my phone, did some quick Googling.
Oh, yes.
A waffle can change everything.
I knew exactly where Fatty was going to be at 9 p.m. tonight.
And I was going to be waiting.
Chapter 39
The door to the quaint Tudor-style inn swung open.
Bracken Fern Manor.
The front desk clerk, who looked like he’d wandered in off the set of Twilight: Breaking Dawn, gave me a supercilious look.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I was wondering if you had a room available?”
“We’re fully committed.” A small black cat jumped up onto his paperwork. “Hello, pretty,” he murmured.
I propped my elbows on the desk, leaned in. “Listen, all I need is a broom closet.”
“Sorry.” He scratched the cat behind the ears. “Destination wedding.”
I’d surmised. The small lobby was festooned with pink and white balloons, pink and white honeycombed bells, and a glittery banner strung across the fireplace that read, “Sheena and Alasdair Forever.” However, I needed a nap before I faced Big Fatty tonight, and I’d tried every other motel and B&B in town. Plus, this place happened to be the most geographically desirable.
“Oh, man,” I said. “I’ve been out of the country, and didn’t have a chance to mail in my R.S.V.P., and now”—I mumbled something incoherent that could have been John, Jason, or Josh, having once read that a disproportionate number of names start with J—“.is going to be sooo disappointed.”
“Excuse me?” Sitting by the fireplace was a young woman who looked like Courtney Love circa Hole. “Sorry to eavesdrop, but did you say Jim?”
Worked like a charm.
I spun around, smiled. “That’s exactly what I said.”
The woman leapt to her feet. “I can’t believe it! You’re the famous Ellie!”
She said it. I didn’t.
“I’ve heard so much about you from my brother!” She ran over and enveloped me in a hug. “We didn’t think you could come! And with him out of phone contact in that village in Borneo.”
Borneo.
“Do not say another word.” She put her hands on my shoulders and gave me a little squeeze. “What you two lovebirds have been doing is amazing. Providing access to clean water and sanitation.” She blinked back a tear. “I’m like in awe.”
“Awe” was a big word.
She smiled coyly. “And I haven’t even had a chance to congratulate you on your engagement!”
“No worries,” I said wanly.
“Where’s your ring?” she asked.
I looked at the empty place on the fourth finger of my left hand. “There was no time.”
“Of course not,” she said. “You guys are saving the world!”
The woman—whom I now believed to be the bride, Sheena—turned to the front desk clerk, who was brushing large flakes of dandruff from the lapels of his Edwardian frock coat. “My bridesmaids will double up. You can give Ellie one of their rooms.”
“So happy to be able to accommodate you.” The clerk narrowed his dark-lidded gaze. “Ellie.”
I gathered up my things, and promised Sheena I’d try to make it to the wine tasting before everyone headed across the street for the big show at nine. Sheena also reminded me that immediate family—which now included me, her future sister-in-law—would be seated in the front.
On the way up to the second floor, the clerk gave me a potted history of Bracken Fern Manor. It was part of a large resort built in the 1920s by Bugsy Siegel, who created it as an escape for Hollywood stars looking for a place to indulge their vices unobserved. We were standing on the site of the former brothel. The wine cave around back was where they used to store the moonshine. Tudor House across the street—now a dinner theater—was the casino. All were connected by a network of long-defunct underground tunnels.
“Voilà.” The clerk opened the door to my room.
It was modest in scale, almost spartan. It reminded me of a college dorm, only for working girls. Like in that Tori Spelling movie.
“This room used to belong to Violet, who broke house rules by sleeping with the maintenance man.” The clerk wagged his finger. “Bugsy wasn’t happy so he had one of his goons toss the guy out the window. Violet was so upset she killed herself. And now she haunts the place.”
“Naturally,” I said.
“I’m detecting some skepticism,” the clerk said. “But there’s no denying the evidence. A few months ago we had a small flood and closed for the day. When I came back, there was a violet-scented candle mysteriously burning in here. Who do you suppose lit it? And how did it stay lit for so long?”
Sounded like the miracle of Hannukah, but I kept my mouth shut.
Several hours later, there was a knock at my door.
“Ellie. It’s me.”
I roused myself from bed and opened the door. Sheena was standing there, trembling.
“Come in. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Not that I believed in them.
She sat down on the bed next to me, plucking nervously at the hem of her blue satin baby doll dress.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Everything okay?”
“I guess.”
“You can tell me.”
“It’s probably just cold feet. I’m so afraid, you know?”
I totally knew.
She started pacing. “I mean, can we ever really know another person? For example, Alasdair. I thought he was over his ex-girlfriend, but then I find a text from her on his phone.”
“What did it say?”
She chewed on her lip. “She said that she was happy he was happy with me.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think that’s much to worry about.” This sister-in-law thing wasn’t so hard.
“That isn’t all. I always thought Alasdair was frugal, and I’m fine with that. I’m frugal, too. I mean, we’re lucky if we can make our bills. But then he goes and does this super-extravagant thing I told him not to.”
“What’s that?”
She walked over to the mirror and fussed with her hair. “He went behind my back and ordered a car to take us to the church tomorrow morning. And of all things, a black stretch Bentley. God knows how expensive that’s gonna be.”
A black stretch Bentley.
What was Miles doing here?
I guess the answer was pretty obvious.
“When did you see it?” I asked her.
“Like two hours ago. When I went downstairs to get an ice bucket.”
I rushed over to the window and peered out. “Where was it parked?”
“Right across the street.” She came and stood next to me, looked outside. “Huh. It’s gone. Maybe it wasn’t Alasdair after all.” She laughed. “Well, now I’m disappointed. Like, am I not worth it?”
“Listen, Sheena, I kind of wanted to . . .” I pushed her toward the door.
“I get it. No problem. I’m going.”
She opened the door, then turned around. “You know, I can’t believe my brother never told me how much you look like that girl from the song.”
“Dreama,” I said. “I get that all the time.”
Sheena laughed. “How embarrassing. I mean, that song is so cheesy.”
This girl was starting to irritate me. “Totally.”
After she left, I put on my jacket and hat and slipped down to the lobby. It was a cozy scene. There were grayish cookies on a tray, the player piano was plinking out the theme song from The Exorcist, and the cat was writhing frenetically in what I hoped was catnip.
“Just getting some stuff from my car,” I said breezily.
The clerk tucked some greasy strands behind his ears and shrugged.
It was dark outside. There were no streetlamps, and the crescent moon was shrouded in mist. I walked down the steps, careful not to slip on the wet asphalt, and took a quick look around. There were three or four compact cars in the lot, plus one van (not white) parked at the rear. No black stretch Bentley. I wrapped my coat tighter around my body and dashed across the street.
The Tudor House, like Bracken Fern, was calculated to ingratiate, with its cutesy half-timbers and dormer windows. The parking lot had more handicapped spots than I’d ever seen in one place. Maybe they got an older clientele. Aside from one blue truck, however, the lot was empty.
I turned on the flashlight on my phone, then climbed a short flight of steps. When I got to the top, the door swung open and out came a workman carrying a ladder.
“We open in another hour, miss,” he said.
“Were you in there setting up?”
“Fixing the lights,” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”
I gave him a smile. “Just looking for my ride.”
“What kind of car?”
“A black stretch Bentley,” I said. “Seen it around here?”
He shook his head. “Flashy car like that I’d have noticed. Not too much going on around here.”
I was hoping it would stay that way.
There was still an hour to go before the show. I supposed I had no choice but to drop in on Sheena and Alasdair’s wine tasting. Whatever. After everything that had happened I probably deserved a free glass of Chardonnay.
The door to the wine cave was closed. I knocked a couple of times, then pushed it open.
It was dark in there. I couldn’t see a thing. I felt around for a light switch, but couldn’t find one.
“Where is everybody?” I called out.
I half expected the lights to go on and my friends and family to pop out of the woodwork, but my birthday was months away, not to mention nobody I knew had the vaguest inkling I was here in Lake Arrowhead, which was kind of a problem, now that I’d thought about it. Anyway, I’d obviously missed the wine tasting. Oh, well. Maybe there was some sherry in the lobby.
I turned to go, and then, all at once, I felt a rush of air, I tripped over something, I fell onto the stone floor, and something very heavy, very wet, and very sharp came crashing down on top of me.
After that, all I saw was stars.
Chapter 40
“Ellie! Wake up!” a voice pleaded.
Who was Ellie? I wondered.
“Just do it,” said another voice.
Suddenly, I felt a stinging sensation. My eyes blinked open and my hand flew up to my cheek.
“Sorry, Ellie.” Sheena was crouched beside me, her brows knit in concern. “It was either slap you, or dump cold water on you.”
I turned my head, looked around. “Where am I? What happened?”
“Can you sit up?” She put her arm around my shoulder.
As I sat up, a shower of glass rained down onto my lap.
“Oh, my god,” she said. “You’re lucky you’re not dead.”
I looked down at my clothes. “Is that . . . blood?”
“Cabernet Sauvignon,” said the bespectacled young man standing with Sheena, whom I was presuming to be Alasdair, the fiancé. “We’re in the wine cave. A shelf fell over. It was filled with dozens of bottles.”
“Expensive bottles,” the clerk added, his pale face slick with sweat. “Pinot Noirs. Syrahs. Malbecs.”
“No whites?” I asked.
The clerk fixed his gaze on me. “Somebody’s got to pay for them.”
Alasdair and Sheena exchanged worried glances.
This vampire had a lot of chutzpah. I picked a couple of shards of glass off my legs, then struggled to my feet. My head was pounding, and I had a small cut on my hand, but aside from that, I appeared to be fine.
“Isn’t that what insurance is for?” I asked him. “To cover property damage, yes, but also in case an unsecured piece of furniture falls over and someone gets hurt, then takes you for everything you’re worth, leaving your small business in shambles?”
That shut him up.
Alisdair said, “I think maybe you tripped. Simple accident. No one’s to blame.”
Sheena pointed mutely to a pink and white noisemaker on the floor.
So I’d tripped on a plastic party favor, then tumbled headlong into a massive piece of wood cabinetry twenty feet away, causing it to topple to the ground, missing me by mere inches? I’m no Einstein, but I didn’t think the physics was going to pencil out.
Sheena said, “C’mon, everybody. All’s well that ends well.” She looked at her watch, then at me. “The show’s going to start in half an hour. We should get you cleaned up. Your clothes are ruined.”
“I don’t have anything to change into.” All I had in the back of my car were my wet boots and my Bunny Lebowski bikini, and the latter wasn’t going to cut it in temperatures well below freezing.
“What are sisters for?” asked Sheena.
Twenty minutes later, I was posing for pictures with the happy couple’s nearest and dearest, decked out in a wrinkled white slip dress, Mary Jane pumps, and a rhinestone tiara on loan from Sheena’s seemingly vast archive of kinderwhore classics. I looked like I’d been beamed down from 1994.
“Can I get everybody in front of the fireplace for one last shot?” asked the photographer.
We were gathered in the front half of the former casino, which had been transformed into a supper club, with vaulted ceilings, a stage on one end, and against the near wall a seventy-ton rock fireplace that wouldn’t have been out of place in a medieval castle. Above it was a mural depicting the local flora and fauna—a bear, an elk, a wolf, and an eagle soaring over a lake with a wintry little cabin. Which looked exactly like my uncle Ray’s.
It was important to remember why I’d taken this road trip.
People were dead, relationships had been broken, lives destroyed.
And it wasn’t over.
“Here’s the head table,” Sheena said. “Let’s sit. I’m so excited about the show.”
“Last month, we saw True Willie here,” said Alasdair. “They’re a Willie Nelson tribute band.”
“My parents heard the real Willie Nelson once,” Sheena said. “Not so great.”
“We do, however, support his marijuana entrepreneurialism,” said Alasdair. “What Paul Newman did for salad dressing, Willie Nelson’s going to do for weed.”
I was more interested in tonight’s headliner.
Wilby Goodrich.
The name had jumped out at me when I was at the waffle house, flipping through the Mountain News, and I’d stumbled upon Tudor House’s calendar of events. I’d typed the name into Google. The singer Wilby Goodrich did not have a website. But several other things had popped up.
A Wilby Goodrich who worked in P.R. in New Mexico.
A Wilby Goodrich who’d won a golf tournament in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Several BFGoodrich tire dealers.
But none of those was what I was after so I searched alternate spellings.
Nothing came up for Willby Goodrich with two ls. Nothing for Wilbur Goodrich either. Finally, I tried Will B. Goodrich. And that was when I hit pay dirt.
Will B. Goodrich was the alias taken by the disgraced silent film actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.
How clever he was.
I’m not talking about Fatty Arbuckle.
I’m talking about Big Fatty.
He’d taken the exact same alias.
But here’s the interesting part.
In 1921, Fatty Arbuckle was accused of raping and killing starlet Virginia Rappe after a two-day bacchanal at a hotel in San Francisco. It destroyed his career. He was shamed by the press, heckled in the street, blacklisted by the studio, bled dry by the lawyers. But after two mistrials, he was found innocent of all crimes. In fact, the jury went so far as to offer an apology for besmirching his good name.
That’s right.
It was a smear job.
Fatty Arbuckle hadn’t raped anyone.
Was Big Fatty trying to let the world know he hadn’t raped anyone either?
And was Miles here to stop him?
Chapter 41
I’d never have recognized him.
The man who swaggered onto the Tudor House stage, grinning behind his dark-tinted aviators, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the pictures I’d seen of Big Fatty.
This man was in phenomenal shape, and not particularly modest about it. He was wearing a black, form-fitting T-shirt that showed off his well-developed pecs, and dark denims that were baggy enough to be street, but not so baggy they weren’t sexy. “Sexy” was the operative word.
“Good evening.” His voice was low, equal parts gravel and cream. “Y’all ready to have a good time?”
They were. Especially the ladies. I looked over at Sheena and her bridesmaids and they were slack-jawed. He had them eating out of his hand before he sang a single note.
