Death Gets a Time-Out (17 page)

Finally, she raised her head, sniffed loudly, and wiped her nose on her hand. “I’m okay,” she said.

I nodded. “I think it’s time for you to tell me what’s going on.”

Lilly inhaled with a shudder. “Jupiter killed Chloe to protect me,” she said.

“To protect
you
?”

She nodded.
“I’m
the one who wrote Chloe those checks. She was blackmailing me.”

Even though somewhere in the back of my mind I’d feared this very thing, even expected it, it still took me by surprise. I sat back heavily in my chair and stared at my friend. “Why? Why was she blackmailing you?”

Lilly laughed bitterly. “Why? Because she was a vile little bitch, that’s why.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” she said.

“What was she blackmailing you with, Lilly?” I said, my voice no more than a whisper.

Lilly’s eyes filled with tears again, and she took a deep breath. “She told me that if I didn’t pay her, she would go to the newspapers and tell them that I killed my mother.”

F
OR
once, Peter didn’t object when I called to tell him he was going to have to pick up the kids at school. He must have heard something in my voice—the distant echo, I suppose, of a shot fired in San Miguel de Allende thirty years before.

Her head bent over, her eyes on the table top, and her hands wrapped around her mug as if trying to squeeze some warmth from the cooling coffee, Lilly told me that when she was five, she had found a gun in her mother’s bedroom.

“My memories are very vague, almost wispy,” she said. “I can remember playing with Jupiter out in the courtyard of our house in San Miguel. There was this fountain, and Jupiter and I were dropping leaves into it. He was too small to really reach over the side, so I would pick him up under the arms and kind of haul him up high enough to toss his leaves in and look at them floating in the water. I remember we were pretending that they were boats. We put ants on the leaves—they were supposed to be the sailors. But we couldn’t pick the ants up without killing them.” She smiled faintly. “We
ended up floating these leaves dotted with dead, smushed ants around the fountain.” She shook her head, as if to remind herself that this childhood memory had no place in the story she was recounting. “Anyway, for years all I could remember was the leaves and the fountain, and then the screaming. I don’t know who was screaming. Probably one of the maids. Or maybe me. To this day those are my clearest memories. For a longtime I didn’t remember going into her room, or picking up the gun, or firing it. I completely repressed all that. I just remembered the leaves, and the fountain, and her . . . her . . .”

“Her body?” I whispered.

“Not even really clearly her body. Just her dress. She was wearing a long white dress. Like maybe a nightgown? Or one of those peasant dresses?” Lilly’s voice had a dreamy quality and her eyes were vague and unfocused. “I remember the white of the dress. And red. Red everywhere.” She shuddered. “The fountain, and then her white dress covered with blood. Those are still the clearest memories I have.”

“You repressed the rest?” I said.

She nodded. “It took years and years of therapy just to begin to remember what went on in that room.”

“Because of the trauma?” I said.

She leaned slightly against me. “For a little while after it happened I got sort of catatonic, or something. Overwhelmed by the guilt. I wouldn’t talk, would barely eat. After a while I got better, but it was as if I had just erased everything that happened from my mind. But I was lucky. I had a very good therapist. Over the years he helped me to remember most of what happened. With his help I recovered the memories of playing with the gun, and how it went off. And how she died.” Her voice trembled.

“And Chloe?” I asked. “What does she have to do with all of this?”

“About four months ago, she called. I’d never met her before, but she called my private line and told my assistant she was my stepfather’s wife. I happened to be around, so I got on the phone. She just said it flat out. She said she knew
I’d shot my mother, and that if I didn’t want everyone in the world to know, too, I’d have to hand over some serious change. That’s what she said, ‘some serious change.’”

This explained why Archer had been so protective of Lilly. He had been trying to keep me from discovering that she had a motive for killing Chloe Jones.

“How did Chloe find out about what happened to your mother?”

“I don’t know. Jupiter swears it wasn’t him. I was sure it was Polaris. I mean, who else could it be? I went there today to tell him that what happened was his fault. If he hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have blackmailed me, and I wouldn’t have gone to Jupiter for help. And then Chloe wouldn’t have died.”

“You paid Chloe off, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But
why
, Lilly? Why did you care if anyone found out? I mean, it was an
accident.
You were practically a baby. No one would blame you.”

She shook her head. “I’d be a freak. The actress who killed her mother. Anytime anybody saw me, that’s what they’d see. It’s hard enough to get cast in this goddamn town when you’re a woman who’s over thirty. Do you really think a director is going to want to deal with all that? There are two hundred other actresses he could use instead—actresses who don’t come with the same horrible baggage.”

“But you won an Oscar!”

“Two women win Oscars every year. Two a year, Juliet. At least six more are nominated every year. And not a single one of those killed her mother.”

It was hard to argue with that. I knew how hard Lilly had worked to break out of the B movies that had launched her career. I knew, too, how ambitious she was. It was one of the things that had always impressed me the most about her. “How did you get the money without anyone finding out?” I asked. “I mean, don’t you have financial advisors, managers, that kind of thing? Didn’t they notice that the money was gone?”

“My business manager would definitely have noticed. I had to tell her.”

“You told her?”

“Sort of. I mean, I told her that I was being blackmailed, but I didn’t tell her what about. I just said that I had to pay the person off, and that I wasn’t going to go to the police. She wasn’t happy, but she got the money for me.” Lilly smiled bitterly. “I think she figured it was some creepy sex thing.”

“What happened after you gave Chloe the money?”

“She asked for another hundred thousand, and I couldn’t do it. I mean, I could afford it, but I just realized that it was never going to end, that she would milk me completely dry. So I refused.”

“But she didn’t go to the media?”

Lilly shook her head. “She didn’t have time. When she called asking for more money, I called Jupiter and told him that Chloe had found out about my mother. I asked him if he told her. He swore that he hadn’t.”

“Jupiter knew about what happened?”

“Of course. He was there.”

I wasn’t surprised that he’d lied to me. Clients lied to me all the time, with even less justification. I did wonder, however, if Jupiter had lied to protect Lilly, or to protect himself.

“I begged Jupiter to help me,” Lilly said. “I figured that since he knew Chloe so well, he might know something I could use, or be able to find something out. Then I could sort of . . . well . . . blackmail her back.”

“And did he? Did he find out anything that could help you?”

“You could say that. He told me about their relationship. Jupiter said that if Polaris found out that she was sleeping with him, he would throw her out. And she certainly wouldn’t want that. I could only give her so much. Polaris is worth tens of millions.”

“So why was she blackmailing you to begin with? If he had so much money?”

“Jupiter said Polaris had her on a strict allowance. He
didn’t give her that much more than he gave Jupiter. And that was barely anything.”

“But if he divorced her, she’d get half. At least half of whatever he earned while they were together.”

She shook her head. “His people had made her sign a prenup. Jupiter told me. She’d get basically nothing.”

I nodded. That made sense. Then something occurred to me. “But what about Jupiter? Wouldn’t Polaris have thrown him out, too?”

Lilly nodded, and the tears began streaming down her face again. “Yeah. But he said he didn’t care. That he cared more about me. And I would have taken care of him if Polaris had thrown him out. He’s my little brother—the only one I ever had. I would have taken care of him.”

I patted her on the back, and she inhaled raggedly.

“So what happened? Did you confront her with the information Jupiter gave you?”

Lilly dashed her tears away with her fist. “No,
he
did. He was just supposed to talk to her. He was supposed to threaten her that he’d go to Polaris if she didn’t lay off me. But I guess something went horribly wrong. The next thing I knew, she was dead.”

“Did he kill her?”

She shrugged. “He must have. I would never have thought he could do something like that. I still can’t believe it. The only thing I can think of was that he was trying to convince her to stop blackmailing me, and she wouldn’t, and then somehow it got violent. He’d never have planned to hurt her. He’s just not that kind of person.”

He hadn’t seemed capable of premeditated murder to me either, but the truth was neither Lilly nor I really knew what kind of person Jupiter was.

Lilly drained the last of her coffee from her mug. I looked down at my own cup. I hadn’t touched it. I took a tentative sip and grimaced at the tepid bitterness. At that moment, a shrill voice screeched in my ear.

“Ohmigod! It
is
her! It’s Lilly Green!”

I looked over my shoulder and saw a small woman bearing
down on us. She dodged the bank of plants and flung herself at our table, calling out, “It’s Lilly Green. It’s Lilly Green!”

I looked at Lilly. She had carefully wiped her face of any expression. The woman skidded to a stop at our table. She was wearing a pair of turquoise hip-hugger jeans and a matching top that left her midriff bare. She was very thin, and the wrinkled skin around her pierced belly button betrayed her age.

Lilly assumed a facsimile of the wide, unpretentious smile for which she was famous, and said, “Hi.”

“Ohmigod! Ohmigod. Your hair! What happened to your beautiful hair?” Lilly didn’t answer, just raised her eyebrows. The woman didn’t seem to notice. “I am such a fan, Lilly. I’ve seen all your movies. Every one. Even that weird foreign one.”

“Thank you,” Lilly said. “It’s so nice to meet you. I wish we could stay, but I’m afraid my friend has to be somewhere.” She gently kicked me under the table as she rose to her feet.

I leapt up, a forced smile plastered to my face, and said, “Right! We’ve got to go pick up the kids.”

“Ohmigod!” the woman said. “You
do
drive carpool! Just like it said in
People
magazine! That’s so great!”

We beat a hasty retreat to the parking lot. “Where’s your car?” Lilly said.

I pointed to my squalid Bratmobile.

“Can you drive me?”

“Why? Your car’s right there.” I lifted my hand but she grabbed it before I could indicate her car.

“Don’t. I don’t want her to know which is mine. Let’s just take your car, okay?”

“Okay.” We walked quickly over to my station wagon, and I opened the door for her. I tried to sweep the passenger seat clean of debris, but she pushed me aside impatiently, got in, and slammed the door. I walked around the car, got inside, and closed my own door. I looked over at her. She was leaning back against the headrest, her eyes closed, and her face pale and drawn.

“Just drive,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I’m not being paranoid,” she said. “It’s just that if she saw my license plate, she could find out my address.”

I pulled out of the parking lot and into the stream of traffic. “Lilly, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are guys on half the street corners in L.A. selling maps to the stars’ homes.”

She shrugged. “I just couldn’t bear the idea of that woman knowing anything about me. Even what kind of car I drive.”

“How will you get it home?”

“I’ll have someone pick it up.”

I sighed, trying to imagine a life in which there was someone available at your beck and call to pick up a car you left in a random strip mall out in Pasadena. But then, that was the same life that left you open to being accosted by strangers in cafés. I thought about the price my friend had paid for her privacy, and the price Jupiter might have to pay for it. I sighed deeply. There was nothing about poor Lilly’s life to envy. Nothing at all.

“I talked to Archer,” Lilly said suddenly.

“Oh?” I kept my voice purposefully neutral.

“At first he denied going to your house.”

“What?” I sputtered.

“Don’t worry, I told him I believed you,” she said.

“You did?” I was somewhat mollified, but still irritated.

“Yeah. And he admitted it, but said it was because he was trying to protect me.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She said, “I’m sorry, Juliet.”

“That’s okay.”

We sat for a while in a silence that grew slowly thicker and more uncomfortable. Finally, more to make conversation than anything else, I asked, “So, how did you and your mother end up in Mexico?”

“Now that’s a story,” Lilly said. She pushed her shoes off and put her feet up, resting her chin on her knees.

Her mother and father grew up together in Lubbock,
Texas, where the soil was so arid that the flower of sixties activism withered and died before it had a chance to bloom into anything more than macramé and marijuana. When Trudy-Ann Nutt found herself pregnant at age eighteen, her boyfriend agreed to stay with her on one condition—that they exchange the passions of drag racing and high school football for VW buses and communal hot tubs. They hitched their way to L.A., and Lilly was born in a commune in Topanga Canyon, the same commune where Artie Jones had been living with his girlfriend, who would later give birth to Jupiter and abandon him to his father’s dubious care.