Now I lied. “I stopped her for a red light and one thing led to another.” My gut clenching, I asked casually, “What do you know about her?”
Jane stomped her foot at a crow eyeing the rose bushes just off the veranda. “What I know about the distaff Spragues is at least ten years old and quite strange. Baroque, almost.”
“I’m all ears.”
Jane said, “Some might say all teeth.” When I didn’t laugh, she looked across the dug-up yard to Muirfield Road and the boom baron’s estate. “When my girls and Maddy and Martha were little, Ramona directed pageants and ceremonies on that huge front lawn of theirs. Little enactments with the girls dressed up in pinafores and animal costumes. I let Linda and Carol participate, even though I knew Ramona was a disturbed woman. When the girls all got a bit older—in their teens—the pageants got stranger. Ramona and Maddy were very good at makeup, and Ramona staged these… epics, reenacting the things that happened to Emmett and his friend Georgie Tilden during World War I.
“So, she had children wearing soldier kilts and pancake faces, carrying toy muskets. Sometimes she smeared fake blood on them, and sometimes Georgie actually filmed it. It got so bizarre, so out of proportion, that I made Linda and Carol quit playing with the Sprague girls. Then one day Carol came home with some pictures Georgie took of her. She was playing dead, all smeared with red dye. That was the last straw. I stormed over to the Sprague house and berated Georgie, knowing Ramona wasn’t really responsible for her actions. The poor man just took my abuse, and I felt terrible about it later—he was disfigured in a car wreck, and it turned him into a bum. He used to manage property for Emmett, now he just does yard work and weeds lots for the city.”
“And what happened to Madeleine and Martha then?”
Jane shrugged. “Martha turned into some sort of art prodigy and Madeleine turned into a roundheels, which I guess you already know.”
I said, “Don’t be catty, Jane.”
Tapping the table with her ring, Jane said, “I apologize. Maybe I’m wishing I could pull it off. I certainly can’t spend the rest of my life gardening, and I’m too proud for gigolos. What do you think?”
“You’ll find yourself another millionaire.”
“Unlikely, and one was enough to last me a lifetime. You know what I keep thinking? That it’s almost 1950 and I was born in 1898. That floors me.”
I said what I’d been thinking for the past half hour. “You make me wish things were different. That time was different.”
Jane smiled and sighed. “Bucky, is that the best I can expect from you?”
I sighed back. “I think it’s the best anyone can.”
“You’re a bit of a voyeur, you know.”
“And you’re a bit of a gossip.”
“Touché. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
We held hands on the way to the door. In the entrance hall, the scar mouth clown painting grabbed me again. Pointing to it, I said, “God, that is spooky.”
“Valuable, too. Eldridge bought it for my forty-ninth birthday, but I hate it. Would you like to take it with you?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Thank you, then. You were my best condoler.”
“And you were mine.”
We embraced for a moment, then I took off.
Chapter 27
Bunsen burner jockey.
Couch sleeper.
Detective without a case.
I worked at all three throughout the spring of ‘49. Kay left for school early each morning; I pretended to sleep until she was gone. Alone in the fairy tale house, I touched my wife’s things—the cashmere sweaters Lee bought her, her essays to be graded, the books she had stacked up waiting to be read. I kept looking for a diary, but never found one. At the lab I pictured Kay prowling my belongings. I toyed with the idea of writing a journal and leaving it out for her to find—detailed accounts of my coupling with Madeleine Sprague—rubbing her nose in it to either gain forgiveness for my fix on the Dahlia or blow our marriage out of its stasis. I got as far as five pages scrawled in my cubicle—stopping when I smelled Madeleine’s perfume melding with the Lysol stench of the Red Arrow Motel. And wadding the pages up and throwing them away only fanned the brush fire into a blaze.
I kept the Muirfield Road mansion under surveillance for four nights running. Parked across the street, I watched lights go on and off, saw shadows flicker across leaded glass windows. I played with notions of crashing the Spragues’ family life, cashing in on being a hard boy to Emmett, coupling with Madeleine all over hot sheet row. None of the family left the manse during those nights—all four of their cars remained on the circular driveway. I kept wondering what they were doing, what shared history they were rehashing, what the odds were on someone mentioning the cop who came to dinner two years before.
On the fifth night, Madeleine, dressed in slacks and a pink sweater, walked to the corner to mail a letter. When she returned, I saw her notice my car, passing headlights illuminating the surprise on her face. I waited until she hurried back inside the Tudor fortress, then drove home, Jane Chambers’ voice taunting, “Voyeur, voyeur.”
Walking in, I heard the shower running; the bedroom door was open. Kay’s favorite Brahms quintet was on the phonograph. Remembering the first time I saw my wife naked, I undressed and lay down on the bed.
The shower went off; Brahms came on that much stronger. Kay appeared in the doorway wrapped in a towel. I said, “Babe,” she said, “Oh, Dwight,” and let the towel drop. We both began talking at once, apologies from both sides. I couldn’t quite make out her words, and I knew that she couldn’t unscramble mine. I started to get up to turn off the phonograph, but Kay moved to the bed first.
We fumbled at kisses. I went open-mouthed too fast, forgetting how Kay liked to be coaxed. Feeling her tongue, I pulled away, knowing she hated it. Closing my eyes, I trailed my lips down her neck; she moaned, and I knew it was a fake. The love sounds got worse—like something you’d expect from a stag film actress. Kay’s breasts were flaccid in my hands, her legs closed, but braced up against me. A knee nudge parted them—the response was jerky, spasmodic. Hard now, I made Kay wet with my mouth and went inside her.
I kept my eyes open and on hers so she would know it was just us; Kay turned away, and I knew she saw through it. I wanted to ease off and go slowly, softly, but the sight of a vein throbbing in Kay’s neck made me go as hard as I could. I came grunting, “I’m sorry goddamn you I’m sorry,” and whatever Kay said back was muffled by the pillow she was burying her head in.
Chapter 28
The following night I was parked across the street from the Sprague mansion, this time in the unmarked Ford I drove to SID field jobs. Time was lost on me, but I knew that every second was bringing me closer to knocking on the door or bolting outright.
My mind played with Madeleine nude; I wowed the other Spragues with killer repartee. Then light cut across the driveway, the door slammed and the Packard’s headbeams went on. It pulled out onto Muirfield, hung a quick left turn on Sixth Street and headed east. I waited a discreet three seconds and followed.
The Packard stayed in the middle lane; I dogged it from the right one, a good four car lengths behind. We traveled out of Hancock Park into the Wilshire District, south on Normandie and east on 8th Street. I saw glittery bar beacons stretching for a solid mile—and knew Madeleine was close to something.
The Packard stopped in front of the Zimba Room, a dive with crossed neon spears above the entrance. The only other parking space was right behind it, so I glided up, my headlights catching the driver locking the door, my brain wires unraveling when I saw who it wasn’t and was.