“Uh-huh. Maybe you might want to take a look at, I don’t know, who’s making the audio equipment for that op. But”—he takes a sip of his beer—“just a thought.”
Cornwell. Why would Roger Greaves give them a story about the chief of police, his boss? She knows some officers feed stories to the press, but it’s usually to stroke their own egos or to appeal to the public for help with an investigation. This she hasn’t come across before. Despite herself, she feels a dim beat of respect for Greaves for having the mettle to speak out against authority. She’s heard plenty of stories about Cornwell; she knows he’s not exactly a saint.
“Order us a couple more on your way out, won’t you, ladies?” Bale waggles his bottle in the air. Patti raises her middle finger defiantly as they depart.
Twenty-Three
Margot’s world burstsinto color.
The mansion writhes with slowly pulsing bodies; they move en masse to the music—the Byrds, “Eight Miles High”—heads lolled back, necks bare, arms to the ceiling. They fill every inch of space, draped and knotted around a huge open staircase. Its wide red carpet climbs up to an enormous chandelier glittering with a thousand tiny lights like a colossal flaming planet above.
People are in costume, doe-eyed women with angel wings strapped to their shoulders, men with devil horns or sly, insidious masks. She spots the actress from Kubrick’s latest picture, a plucky brunette, and a young starlet in a butter-colored silk dress who was recently disgraced in the papers because her husband had an affair with MGM’s leading man.
Margot can’t push herself three feet through the party without bumping into an actor or singer she recognizes from television. Long cigarette holders, dirty martinis and slicked-back hair. It’s intoxicating, really, to be among them. She has already clocked multiple meneyeing her legs and the curve of her bust. It feels like victory. She’s just as appealing to them as the models in diamond-encrusted corsets and tight shorts serving microscopic portions of food. A blond who must be barely out of his teens, his chest shimmering with oil, thrusts a plate of crescent rolls in her direction. She waves him away and makes for the staircase.
She has managed to ask enough questions to know that Clarke spends his own parties locked away upstairs.
As she climbs the steps she wonders, briefly, if she should be scared. If her theory is correct—well, if Barbie Cook’s theory is correct—and nothing comes of Elsie’s vigil guy, Clarke may have killed Diane Howard Murray. He may have strangled her, posed her body, dressed her. There’s nothing to suggest that he couldn’t be responsible for the other killings, too.
The stairs widen out into an open landing, off which streams a wide corridor with several doors lining it. She glances briefly back down at the party: a sea of reveling heads, the music segueing into “Wild Thing” by the Troggs. She doesn’t pause for long before she strikes out across the landing. If someone confronts her, she’ll tell them she’s looking for the bathroom.
She holds her ear to the first large door. Nothing, just dead air inside. She turns, continues down the corridor. Expensive paintings line the walls. She knows they’re expensive because they are ridiculous, and because Clarke could probably acquire the entire contents of the Whitney should he so choose. Although she notes that he still has that insipid TretchikoffChinese Girlprint that she’s seen on the wall of every unadventurous suburban living room over the past decade—including Beverley’s. If Margot could afford it, she’d get a Warhol—not those tacky soup cans, but a Marilyn diptych—pair it with a daring Gae Aulenti piece. She sucks her teeth. Why is it that those with money never have any taste?
Suddenly there’s a creak from a little farther down the hallway. Her head snaps around. Thin coils of cigar smoke spill out from a cracked doorway. Margot’s first impulse is to shrink into the walls, to hide herself, but something inside of herknowsthis is where Clarke has buried himself away, and she knows she cannot turn back now.
She steps toward the door and slowly pushes it open.
The room is dark, paneled with mahogany and swarming with smoke. There is a large projector screen at the far end, upon which a black-and-white movie is being cast. The film reel gives off a static sound that makes the room feel as if it is suspended in time.
In front of the screen is a plum velvet sofa that claims almost the entire width of the room. On it, with his arms outstretched, the muscles in the back of his neck piled up like a bulldog’s, is Mason Clarke.
She can tell that he’s sensed her presence, but he does not turn to look at her. Instead, he takes a puff of his cigar and calls out into the gloom, his voice entirely monotone, “Chadwick.”
From the shadows, a boulder of a man peels off the wall and makes for Margot.
She almost laughs. She hadn’t seen him there, and it strikes her as exactly the sort of thing you would see in one of Clarke’s own crummy movies—the “bad guy” emerging from the shadows, ready to manhandle a woman. She’d always thought his pictures were full of clichés.
“I’m not an actress.”
The words stop Chadwick in his tracks. He must be used to warding off aspiring starlets.
“Not a model, either. And I think your movies are kind of dull, Mr. Clarke.”
With this, Clarke turns on the couch, his arms still stretched wide, and he scours her up and down, his eyes lingering on her breasts, her hips. His eyes are small, lost in a meaty face, and the sides of his mouth tilt downward. His head is bald; he must wear a toupee when he goesout. His hands are the size of plates, his fingers long and thick. She imagines them gripping the handle of a hammer, ready to bludgeon.
She swallows but keeps her eyes on him. She knows the worst thing you can do while in the sights of a predator is to show your fear. She tries to make out whether he has any tattoos,LOVEandHATElooming large in her mind.
All of a sudden, Clarke’s shoulders begin to shake, and she wonders if he might have a burst aneurysm. She looks to Chadwick, who is watching Clarke, until a breathy, wheezing sound fills the air, and she realizes it is laughter.
“Dull,” he wheezes. “Is that right, sugarplum? Come. Tell me how you’d do it differently.”
This is how it starts, she supposes, this sort of meeting. He drops his shoulder from the back of the couch and pats the cushion next to him.
She glances at Chadwick again, his face blank, then makes her way around the side of the couch toward the director. His legs are spread wide, thick as a butcher’s hams. He taps the cushion beside him once more, as if she is a dog.
“Chadwick, you can go,” he calls behind him. His eyes return and linger on her bare thighs. Her skin suddenly feels very cold, and she wishes she’d worn the faux fur jacket she’d left in her closet.
“It’s okay. He can stay.”
