Murder in a Hot Flash

  Charlie discovered that nearly getting a man killed did nothing for a relationship. They were both aching, bruised, silent, and embarrassed. Charlie with her feet wrapped in bandages and her fingernails surgically trimmed to the quick. Mitch with both hands wrapped in bandages.

  Rita Latham must have clout to get two rooms like this. He’d probably sleep in Rita’s room tonight, which would be fine with Charlie. Men as a gender were okay at work, but in personal life they were a disaster.

  Both sets were tuned into CNN for godsake, not the little local cable, which would have been bad enough. And every gory embarrassing detail of Cabot’s murder, Edwina’s arrest, and Mitch Hilsten’s latest “affair” with the woman with whom he almost died.

  Charlie imagined Libby watching this with Lori Schantz and her traditional family, Edwina by herself in a jail cell.

  To have come within 99 percent of dying was bad enough, but to watch Dean Goodacre, the helicopter rescue cavalryman, who had seemed like a normal nice guy the day before, burlesque all their lives in front of the whole world …

  Charlie was not speaking to anyone and she tried to ignore Rita Latham, who appeared suddenly to sit beside her on the bed and proffer a small plate filled with delicacies—peeled shrimp, sliced boiled egg, raw veggies already dipped, and crackers already spread with herbed cheese.

  Rita’s expression of shrewd amusement was enough to make Charlie wish she still had fingernails. Gray streaked the attorney’s hair, cut short but with a stylish flair around a long bony face and eyes that saw more than they should. Small and slender, too old for Hollywood maybe—still, the woman was unquestionably striking.

  Rita wrapped her thin lips around her teeth and squinted. “The doctor thought you should eat if you could. The champagne was my idea.” And she raised the other hand with a glass of pale bubbling liquid.

  “So, what is it we’re celebrating? That?” Charlie pointed to the television screen but managed to snag the plate as she withdrew the gesture. There was even a slice of forbidden pickled beet.

  “No. Life. Your life, Charlie. Your mother and I need you so much, I, at least, am celebrating your survival.”

  “Yeah, but himself in there …” Charlie took the proffered glass before Rita could spill it all over the bed.

  “… is feeling embarrassed and guilty,” the lawyer finished for her.

  “Why should he feel guilty? I’m the one who nearly got us killed.”

  The phone rang and Rita picked it up. “No, this is Rita Latham and we have no statement on anything.” She hung up. “Reuters—wire service.”

  Charlie groaned and Rita went back to her room to return with the champagne bottle and top off Charlie’s glass. “He feels guilty because he didn’t save the two of you. Because his belief in UFOs is probably what frightened you into seeing one and backing off the cliff. Because he should have realized how serious your acrophobia was, how it would have affected your weakened state after the trauma of seeing Cabot’s mutilated body and having your mother arrested for murder.” Rita Latham could barely control her skepticism. “Funny, you do not strike me as weak. I think he’s reinventing Charlie Greene in a new form he can comprehend.”

  “You seen the size of the cliffs they got around here? It’s a miracle anybody saved us.”

  “Men solve problems, overcome obstacles. Men conquer, Charlie. Women cope.” The phone rang again and Rita said as she reached for it, “We’d better have the desk hold all calls until morning.”

  But Charlie took this one. It was Maggie.

  “You weren’t kidding about holing up in a hotel room with Mitch Hilsten. Did you really see a flying saucer?”

  “No. And how did you know where I was?”

  “Right now I’m watching a head shot of some chick ‘reporting from’ Moab, Utah, and standing in front of a sign that says, RIVER ROOST MOTEL NO VACANCY. I called information. Were you hurt?”

  “Mostly my pride. What’s Libby think of all this?”

  “Who knows? She’s coming over here to sleep but right now she, Lori, and Doug are supposedly studying over pizza and Cokes at your house. TV’s probably on, but that crowd doesn’t watch the news. Libby is worried about her grandmother. I had to tell her that much. Won’t be long before somebody tells her the rest. Larry’s worried about you. I’ll call and tell him you’re okay. And your boss wanted me to congratulate you on your new boyfriend. Is this going to be something serious, Charlie?”

  “God, no. And you can tell Richard to go to hell.”

  Mitch slept in Charlie’s room that night in the other bed. They shared the bathroom the next morning but weren’t really speaking. Charlie’s self-esteem was flatter than a rug. He just seemed embarrassed.

  The swelling in Charlie’s feet had gone down enough to get on the ugly black rubber cloglike things provided by the local medical clinic. But she limped as she walked the gamut of reporters, refusing to speak to them too, and slipped into Rita’s car.

  “Mitch has an added problem with all this,” the lawyer confided as she drove to the courthouse.

  “His image.”

  “Right. One of the nation’s most respected heroes ignominiously rescued by a helicopter pilot. Doesn’t seem to me the press is playing it that way. But he thinks that’s the way it must look, poor guy. He didn’t even save the girl.”

  Charlie couldn’t help asking, “How come he tells you all this?”

  “Mitch and I go back a long way, Charlie. Before I became a defense attorney, I handled divorces. I represented his ex in their divorce.”

  Edwina was gray and quiet again. She kept looking at Charlie as if she’d actually fallen to her death last night. There was no television in her cell but there are few secrets in a jail.

  “I’m going back out to the Point and stay in the tent trailer, ask questions before everybody leaves. Both films are wrapping.”

  “No, Charlie, he might kill you too.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever killed Cabot.”

  “I’ll be careful. But I need to know if you saw anybody near enough to your campsite to pick up your ax after I left to go to Drake’s motor home.”

  Edwina had not, her resignation tinged only with worry for Charlie.

  Chapter 19

  Charlie had hoped to avoid the press by going to the campground but that was not to be. No barricade guarded the road and several pushy guys wearing that telltale jaded/superior expression tried to engage her in conversation. They dogged her steps to the tent trailer where she left the side curtains zipped up and opened the roof vents for air, ignoring the taunts outside intended to provoke an answer.

  She found the milk still sweet in the little icebox and made a cheese sandwich to go with it from the white bread and Velveeta Sheriff Sumpter had distributed to the captive crews. Charlie’s first food of the day.

  She sat in the cramped space and looked around at signs of her mother as if for clues, fragmented emotions demanding priority and threatening to get out of hand.

  Charlie had been so stupid she’d almost gotten herself and someone else killed.

  The campground was already clearing out and the real murderer could be gone by now. A truck made a roaring sound over by the concrete toilets, either delivering water or cleaning out the sewage. By the faint smell on the air Charlie rather thought the latter.

  Mitch Hilsten was embarrassed and ashamed by what little they had shared. Charlie had put in her last pair of disposable contacts this morning.

  Leave it to Charlie to sleep with a man for one night and have it broadcast worldwide.

  And somewhere under all this was a bubble of joy that she still lived.

  Why hadn’t Edwina been furious about the coverage of her “affair” with Mitch?

  “Charlie, it’s me, Earl. Let me in?” Charlie opened to him and Tawny slipped in behind.

  “If you want to ask me a lot of dumb questions about UFOs and Mitch Hilsten, forget it.”

  “Nah, I just wanted to apol
ogize. You got any more of that?” He was looking at her unfinished sandwich.

  Tired of John B.’s gourmet deli food, Earl actually hungered for the sheriff’s offerings. “Hey, I grew up on Velveeta on Wonder Bread and Campbell’s Tomato Soup.”

  Then again he liked Cabot’s movies.

  Before the party was over Tawny had found two cans of the tomato soup, used up the rest of the milk with it, and Scrag Dickens had joined them.

  “Needs pickles,” Scrag decided and was soon back with a jar of dills.

  “And beer,” John B.’s voice said from outside and they let him in with some. The table seating was more than full already so he perched on the shelf bed across from them.

  Charlie totally lost interest in eating and wondered why her companions had rallied around her this way. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they had their own goose to fry, as Richard Morse might have put it, or fish to goose or some other corruption he’d pretend not to know was one.

  People and air were too close with the windows zipped. Charlie reached for a pickle and thought better of it when she remembered Scrag Dickens scavenging in the dumpster for food.

  Scrub tree shadows stood still against the plastic windows and canvas walls under the glaring sun.

  “Nobody talks about UFOs or Mitch,” Tawny told her lover. They exchanged looks similar to Charlie’s and Mitch’s in the bathroom a few hours before.

  “Isn’t anybody working today?” Again? Charlie asked.

  Return of an Ecosystem had wrapped for location and would go into postproduction.

  “I’ve dispatched most of my crew. Going to scout another location for a project upriver before I leave the area. Sid’s got another major scene in Moab, which will be mostly second-unit stuff so his people are leaving in droves.” John B. wasn’t eating either and he too was watchful.

  “And the sheriff’s just letting them go?” Charlie asked accusingly.

  “And the sheriff’s just letting them go,” Earl Seabaugh said and dunked his sandwich in his soup.

  “This is your apology?”

  “Jeeze, I didn’t mean you should jump off a cliff. I just thought you needed to know … about things.” He said this with a hint of condescension Charlie found puzzling.

  “What things? Apology for what? You guys got secrets you’re not letting me in on?” John B. pulled a sardonically hurt face that didn’t fool anybody. He was really searching theirs and something in his tone set the rest of them glancing quickly at him and then at each other.

  Or was it something they weren’t letting Charlie in on?

  “I didn’t jump off a cliff,” she told Earl. “I lost my footing and fell off one. People have stupid accidents all the time.”

  Earl nodded and winked a bright green eye. “That one was a doozy.”

  “We came here to make her feel better,” Tawny reminded him. Her eyes were almond-shaped and almond-colored. Her lashes long and lightly mascaraed. The unfriendly flashes between her and the producer/director were like electrical charges in the crowded space.

  Yeah, John B. would wear thin after a while—one of those guys who need constant attention.

  Charlie, that’s not why you’re here. People are leaving. Time is running out.

  Earl studied Charlie, a dribble of sweat slipping down in front of one ear from under his stained Rockies cap. “Oh, I think Charlie knows what she’s doing. She’ll work things out. Just be sure you don’t trust anybody, Charlie, till you know who killed Gordon Cabot.”

  “Not even my mother.”

  “Not even me or John B. here.”

  “You can trust me, Charlie.” Scrag was sitting beside her and he scooted a little closer—there really wasn’t any closer left. He smelted faintly of sweat, mostly of Velveeta. “I wouldn’t kill anybody, darlin’.”

  Okay, boys, let’s put our money where our mouths are. “Will you guys help me then?”

  Much to her surprise, and probably theirs, Scrag and Earl shepherded her around what was left of the Aliens crew campsite, introducing her to everyone they knew, helping her introduce herself to everyone they didn’t, and sidetracking reporters as if it was all a game.

  Eventually, despite the press and her aching feet, Charlie managed to question a gaffer, two gofers, a half-dozen assistant everythings, three stuntmen, two makeup artists, and a driver in what was now Sid’s RV, all with the help of the production manager, Stan Lowenthall.

  He went out of his way to be helpful. Gaunt, handsome, in that petrified-scraped look people take on when they begin to fight nature with plastic surgeons. His hair was thick and cut short around the ears leaving a bouffant wave in front set rock solid with setting gel. Even his eyebrows were dyed.

  And what did she learn from an entire afternoon of such sleuthing? Everyone was anxious to get back to California or excited about the climactic scene in preparation in Moab. They knew who Charlie was, and at least a fourth of them had seen an unidentified flying object at some point in their lives. Seventy-five percent were psychic too.

  Everybody was packing up to leave Dead Horse Point. Nobody mourned Gordon Cabot. Two wanted to know if the problem at Congdon and Morse was so bad that the agency might take on untried clients. Three were writing screenplays and would she just look at them? And four had novels in progress and needed an agent. One of the latter was Stan Lowenthall, the helpful PM.

  In other words Charlie had discovered nothing this afternoon. Zippo. She could feel the noose tightening around her mother’s neck.

  Charlie sat cross-legged, Indian style, on Edwina’s concrete picnic table watching the Aliens crew depart in a caravan passing behind Howard’s Jeep and the rented Corsica, now heavily overdue at the airport in Grand Junction, Colorado. Her new jeans were too tight and she’d lost all circulation from the knees down, but she didn’t give a shit. The press had apparently given up and left too.

  The murderer was probably long gone.

  What if Edwina really is the murderer?

  I’m not speaking to you.

  What if somebody was trying to get at Edwina by framing her for Cabot’s murder? What if Cabot was simply a convenient vehicle because she’d slugged him that very day in front of so many witnesses? But is Edwina the real target here?

  Oh now, that is totally stupid. Edwina’s not important enough for anyone to get that worked up at.

  How do you know? How much time have you actually spent with her in the last ten years?

  Edwina is not capable of murder.

  Everybody’s capable of murder. Even you. You very nearly killed Mitch Hilsten by not ordering him to let go of your sweatshirt.

  Charlie never knew if her internal dialogues were between her right brain and her left, her conscience and her guilt, or her anxieties and her phobias. She did know there were times when she’d gladly crawl inside her own head and strangle one of them though.

  And if Edwina was really the target here, Cabot’s killer could still be around. The murderer could be a member of the Return of an Ecosystem crew. And some of them were still here.

  As if summoned, Earl, Tawny, John B., and Scrag suddenly clustered around her table. They’d decided Scrag would drive Howard’s Jeep and pull the tent trailer into Moab, after Tawny and Earl helped her pack it up and fold it down. They all wanted to get into town for Sid’s big power station scene.

  Charlie limped beside Rita Latham through Moab’s darkening streets. They passed commercial structures with such names as the Energy Building, the Uranium Building, the Atomic Motel, and the Yellow Cake Bar and Grill, which spoke of Moab’s vanished glory days of uranium prospecting and mining.

  Frame houses and double-wides mingled on their own full lots. All had square “swamp” coolers on their roofs, the larger ones had two. The coolers sent up a mantralike hum to replace the absent background noise of traffic.

  Charlie’s feet hurt and she wished she could have driven but city police and sheriff department flyers had been stuck on every windshield, motel room door, and st
ore window in town pleading there be no driving during the evening except for emergency vehicles. Schoolkids had raced around on bikes distributing the flyers that afternoon.

  Above the treetops on a rise at the end of the side street ahead of them, where the canyon wall swung around to stop the town, lights flashed and dimmed, arced and snapped already. Mighty Hollywood flexing its muscles. People walked in quiet groups up to the electrical substation to watch the show that would make the show.

  The town’s power would be shut down selectively and accidents could happen because streetlights and stoplights would be going out for brief periods. Everyone was invited to view the shoot but asked to walk to the site, to stay behind the barricades, and to keep quiet. A civil defense siren would announce when the shoot was over for those who did not attend.

  There was a good crowd when they reached the barricades but Rita took Charlie’s wrist and wound their way through one end of it to a spot up front with taller men behind. Charlie could see only one TV reporter working the crowd, flanked by his faithful midget cam, lighting, and makeup lackeys.

  Charlie had reported her lack of investigative success to the attorney and now she added, “Could we be looking at this from the wrong angle? Could Edwina have been the intended victim? I know it sounds savage, but could someone have been trying to get even with Edwina by killing Cabot and laying the blame on her?”

  Rita Latham stared long and hard into Charlie’s face, her own expression serious for once. “Murder is savage, Charlie. An ax murder, violently savage. We are faced with, as I see it now, four choices. Someone hated Gordon Cabot enough to do this thing, using your mother’s ax because it was handy. Someone hated him enough to do this thing but used your mother’s ax to protect himself and to implicate her. Someone hated Edwina enough to kill Cabot with her ax so that she would be tried and sentenced for murder and Cabot merely used to ensure her humiliation.”