Martha’s body was coiled spring-tight. “Blanchard came back the next day. He demanded more money. Father turned him down, and he beat Father up and asked him all these questions about Elizabeth Short. Maddy and I heard it from the next room. I loved it and Maddy was wicked mad. She left when she couldn’t take any more of her beloved daddy-poo groveling, but I kept listening. Father was afraid that Blanchard would frame one of us for the killing, so he agreed to give him a hundred thousand dollars and told him what happened with Georgie and Elizabeth Short.”
Lee’s bruised knuckles; his lie: “Penance for Junior Nash.” Madeleine on the phone that day: “Don’t come over. Daddy’s having a business soiree.” Our desperate rutting at the Red Arrow an hour later. Lee filthy rich in Mexico. Lee letting Georgie Tilden go scot fucking free.
Martha dabbed at her eyes, saw that they were dry and put a hand on my arm. “The next day a woman came by and picked up the money. And that’s all of it.”
I took out my wallet snapshot of Kay and showed it to her. Martha said, “Yes. That’s the woman.”
I stood up, alone for the first time since the triad was formed. Martha said, “Don’t hurt my family anymore. Please.”
I said, “Get out, Martha. Don’t let them ruin you.”
I drove to West Hollywood Elementary School, sat in the car and kept an eyeball fix on Kay’s Plymouth in the faculty parking lot. Lee’s ghost buzzed in my head as I waited—bad company for close to two hours. The:00 bell rang right on time; Kay exited the building in a swarm of children and teachers a few minutes later. When she was alone by her car, I walked over.
She was arranging a load of books and papers in the trunk, her back to me. I said, “How much of the hundred grand did Lee let you keep?”
Kay froze, her hands on a stack of fingerpaintings. “Did Lee tell you about Madeleine Sprague and me back then? Is that why you’ve hated Betty Short all this time?”
Kay ran her fingers over the kiddie artwork, then turned and faced me. “You are so, so good at some things.”
It was another compliment I didn’t want to hear. “Answer my questions.”
Kay slammed the trunk, her eyes dead on mine. “I did not accept a cent of that money, and I didn’t know about you and Madeleine Sprague until those detectives I hired gave me her name. Lee was going to run away no matter what. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again, and I wanted him to be comfortable, if such a thing was possible. He didn’t trust himself to deal with Emmett Sprague again, so I picked up the money. Dwight, he knew I was in love with you, and he wanted us to be together. That was one of the reasons he left.”
I felt like I was sinking in a quicksand of all our old lies. “He didn’t leave, he ran from the Boulevard-Citizens job, from the frame on De Witt, from the trouble he was in with the Depart—”
“He loved us! Don’t take that away from him!”
I looked around the parking lot. Teachers were standing by their cars, eyeing the husband and wife spat. They were too far away to hear; I imagined them chalking up the fight to kids or mortgages or cheating. I said, “Kay, Lee knew who killed Elizabeth Short. Did you know that?”
Kay stared at the ground. “Yes.”
“He just let it go.”
“Things got crazy then. Lee went down to Mexico after Bobby, and he said he’d go after the killer when he got back. But he didn’t come back, and I didn’t want you going down there too.”
I grabbed my wife’s shoulders and squeezed them until she looked at me.
“And you didn’t tell me later? You didn’t tell anyone?”
Kay lowered her head again; I jerked it back up with both my hands. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”
In her calmest schoolteacher voice, Kay Lake Bleichert said, “I almost told you. But you started whoring again, collecting her pictures. I just wanted revenge on the woman who ruined the two men I loved.”
I raised a hand to hit her—but a flash of Georgie Tilden stopped me.
Chapter 34
I called in the last of my accumulated sick leave and spent a week killing time at the El Nido. I read and played the jazz stations, trying not to think about my future. I pored over the master file repeatedly, even though I knew the case was closed. Child versions of Martha Sprague and Lee racked my dreams; sometimes Jane Chambers’ slash-mouth clown joined them, hurling taunts, speaking through gaping holes in his face.
I bought all four LA papers every day, and read them cover to cover. The Hollywood sign hubbub had passed, there was no mention of Emmett Sprague, Grand Jury probes into faulty buildings or the torched house and stiff. I began to get a feeling that something was wrong.
It took a while—long hours spent staring at the four walls thinking of nothing—but finally I nailed it.
“It” was a tenuous hunch that Emmett Sprague set Lee and I up to kill Georgie Tilden. With me he was blatant: “Shall I tell you where Georgie can be found?”—perfectly in character for the man—I would have been more suspicious if he had tried a roundabout approach. He sent Lee after Georgie immediately after Lee beat him up. Was he hoping Lee’s anger would peak when he saw the Dahlia killer? Did he know of Georgie’s grave robbery treasure trove—and count on it making us killing mad? Did he count on Georgie to initiate a confrontation—one that would either eliminate him or the greedy/nosy cops who were creating such a nuisance? And why? For what motive? To protect himself?
The theory had one huge hole: namely, the incredible, almost suicidal audacity of Emmett, not the suicidal type.
And with Georgie Tilden—the Black Dahlia killer pure and clean—nailed—there was no logical reason to pursue it. But “It” was backstopped by a tenuous loose end:
When I first coupled with Madeleine in ‘47, she mentioned leaving notes for Betty Short at various bars: “Your lookalike would like to meet you.” I told her the act might come back to haunt her; she said, “I’ll take care of it.”
The most likely one to have “taken care of it” was a policeman—and I refused to. And, chronologically, Madeleine spoke those words right around the time Lee Blanchard made his initial blackmail demand.
It was tenuous, circumstantial and theoretical, probably just another lie or half truth or thread of useless information. A loose end unraveled by a coming-from-hunger cop whose life was built on a foundation of lies. Which was the only good reason I could think of to pursue the ghost of a chance. Without the case, I had nothing.
I borrowed Harry Sears’ civilian car and ran rolling skateouts on the Spragues for three days and nights. Martha drove to work and back home; Ramona stayed in; Emmett and Madeleine shopped and did other daytime errands. All four stuck to the manse on evenings one and two; on the third night Madeleine prowled as the Dahlia.
I tailed her to the 8th Street bar strip, to the Zimba Room, to a cadre of sailors and flyboys and ultimately the 9th and Irolo fuck pad with a navy ensign. I felt no jealously, no sex pull this time. I listened outside room twelve and heard KMPC; the venetian blinds were down, no visual access. The only departure from Madeleine’s previous MO was when she ditched her paramour at 2:00 A.M. and drove home—the light going on in Emmett’s bedroom a few moments after she walked in the door.
I gave day four a pass, and returned to my surveillance spot on Muirfield Road shortly after dark that night. I was getting out of the car to give my cramped legs a breather when I heard, “Bucky? Is that you?”
It was Jane Chambers, walking a brown and white spaniel. I felt like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. “Hello, Jane.”