I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason Read online

  “I call this room the aviary,” she said, laughing.

  “Of course,” I replied, not getting it.

  “You know, the birds,” she explained.

  All I could think of at that moment was the Hitchcock movie. And the time in junior high when a pigeon relieved himself on my head.

  “Would you like to see what I’ve been working on? It’s this way, in the powder room. By the way, your skirt, Ms. Caruso, it’s wonderful. I love that it’s Pucci, but not jersey.”

  That was exactly what I loved about it, too.

  The powder room could have accommodated at least thirty-five women with shiny noses. Stained dropcloths covered the floor, along with squeezed tubes of oil paint in various hues, brushes of all sizes, smeared palettes, and dozens of preparatory sketches, lined up with near-military precision.

  “I’m just finishing a mural. I’ve been at it for months now. It’s a reproduction of one of my favorite Victorian fairy paintings, Richard Dadd’s The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke. Do you know it?”

  As a matter of fact, I did not.

  “It depicts a fairy feller, he’s the archmagician of the clan, splitting a hazelnut with his axe. All the fairies come out for the show. Fairy dandies making passes at nymphs, the keeper of the fairy inn, a dwarf fairy monk, a fairy dairymaid, Queen Mab riding in a car of state drawn by female centaurs and a gnat as coachman.”

  Whimsy, I have to say, usually makes me gag. The minute I found out the British designer Zandra Rhodes spent her formative years poring over Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairy books, I swore I’d never wear one of her dressses, perpendicular pleating or no. But this was something else. I had never seen anything like it. I walked up close to take in the details, the sharp folds of taffeta on a flower fairy’s bronze skirt, the iridescent wing of a trumpeting dragonfly. The surface of the mural had been covered with a scrim of twisted grasses, as if the scene were somehow forbidden. I felt like a voyeur. It was perfect. But who could possibly pee in this room?

  “I didn’t realize you were an artist,” I said.

  “Oh, hardly,” she demurred. “I was hopeless in art school. I lack the requisite imagination. I can copy anything, though. I’m good at getting inside other people’s heads, figuring out how they see the world. Dadd, you know, had been a promising student at the Royal Academy. But he lost an important competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament. He submitted a picture of St. George, but the dragon’s tail was too long. He went a little crazy, murdered his father, and wound up at Bedlam. That’s where his talents really flowered. He painted this work a short while later, while he was incarcerated at the asylum at Broadmoor.”

  Just a little crazy. She said it with that lilt. What would it be like, I wondered, to live in a world where the roses are always red and the sea is always warm and no one minds when you go just a little crazy?

  “But where are my manners? Let’s sit down and I’ll get you something cool to drink.”

  My resolution abandoned, I said, “That would be lovely, thank you.” Off in the distance, a bell rang. I wondered how she did that.

  As we made our way back into the living room, I watched her snaky curls. The silver strands sparkled in the dim light. Had Mrs. Flynn been right? Had Joe been in love with this woman? And if so, could she have been his alibi for that night, the person he swore he’d never betray? Maybe.

  Maybe he had fallen under the spell of her honeyed lilt and was powerless to reveal her name, even to save himself.

  Maybe he was the last good man, protecting the woman he loved from the indignity of testifying in open court. God knows the state prosecutor Hamilton Burger, Perry Mason’s nemesis, would have made mincemeat of a witness like her. Destroyed her reputation. Painted her as a fallen woman.

  But there was no Hamilton Burger. This was real life. And real people had scruples. If Meredith Allan had been with Joe the night Jean was killed, she would have stepped forward. What could have stopped her? Only someone without a heart could allow an innocent person to rot in jail.

  Then, speaking of fairies, I remembered J. M. Barrie’s description of Tinker Bell. She was a creature not wholly heartless, but so small she had room for only one feeling at a time.

  13

  My hostess gestured toward a plush red couch. Just as I was sinking into it, I caught sight of one of those owls glaring down at me. I felt like Snow White wandering alone through the dark forest. Disney had obviously hijacked my imagination.

  Salvation took unexpected form. He was carrying two tall glasses of something pink, but he was no butler. Tall, dark, and handsome—I believe that’s how it’s usually put. He was wearing sleek Italian boots, narrow black pants, and a gray silk shirt cut close to his body. And what a body.

  “How sweet of you to bring us our drinks, dear. Raspberry iced tea, lovely. Ms. Caruso, may I introduce you to my son, Burnett Fowlkes? Burnett, this is Cece Caruso. She’s here to interview me for a book she’s writing on old Ventura.”

  His hair was curly, and his gaze was steely. In fact, the look he gave me was so intense I felt like I was being x-rayed. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant. I decided to look back and was pleased to see his color rise.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Caruso.”

  “Call me Cece.” I couldn’t remember if I had invited her to do the same. I didn’t think so. How humiliating. There was no way I was asking these people for sweetener.

  “Burnett is a restoration architect in L.A. He’s here helping me with some detail work upstairs.”

  “I could really use you in my bedroom,” I said. Idiot. “What I mean is, the molding is in shambles, and the fireplace has only one andiron and I’ve been looking for a good match for years.” Oh, man.

  “There are lots of antique shops in the area. I’d try along Main,” he said graciously. “For a good match.”

  Miss Allan was having a rollicking good time now. “Dear, tell Ms. Caruso something about this wonderful house.”

  “It was built in the 1920s, for the film star Norma Talmadge. It’s a replica of a seventeenth-century villa belonging to a duke in Florence. There’s only one false note in the whole of it. Miss Talmadge was out to impress Irving Thalberg, the head of the studio, so she had the fireplace in her bedroom decorated with marble reliefs resembling the MGM lion. At parties,” he said, laughing, “she would hire bit players to growl from the closets.”

  People growled at my parties without being asked. But I didn’t have to advertise this.

  I cleared my throat. “The lion is actually a well-known symbol of the Medici. Maybe your movie star knew more than you’re giving her credit for.”

  “I hadn’t considered that. You’re very astute, Ms. Caruso—Cece.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s just that I don’t like being underestimated, so I try never to underestimate others.”

  “I’ll remember that—the part about never underestimating you.”

  I blushed.

  “Mother, I’ve got to run some errands. I’ll be back in a few hours. Cece, I hope we have the opportunity to meet again.”

  A look passed between them as he leaned down to peck her cheek. She wanted him to stay, but he left without so much as a backward glance.

  “Ms. Caruso,” she said, the lilt now gone, “about your book.”

  This was the part I’d been dreading. I didn’t have any legitimate reason to be there except to find out what she did or didn’t know about the murder of her maybe-lover’s wife.

  “Yes, well, I think Mr. Wingate might have misunderstood me a little when we set up the appointment,” I said, which was not a total lie, but about as close as you can get. “My book isn’t about old Ventura, not per se.”

  She looked at me curiously. I smiled, trying not to show too much gum. Too much gum makes you look insincere. I learned that on the pageant circuit.

  “What I’m actually researching,” I continued, “is the author Erle Stanley Gardner. He spent fifteen y
ears in Ventura, back in the teens and twenties, and wrote the first Perry Mason books here.”

  “Mr. Wingate doesn’t make errors.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “He didn’t believe in fairies.”

  “Mr. Wingate?”

  “Erle Stanley Gardner. He was a plodder. Some people are. They play by the rules. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You know what I’m talking about.”

  You know what I’m talking about. That was exactly what Joseph Albacco had said to me.

  “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. He took up the cause of two young English girls in Yorkshire who claimed to have met a pair of pixies, seen them riding snails and jumping off toadstools and such. The girls had photographs to prove it. I’d love to own those. But I suppose I’m digressing.”

  She waited for me to contradict her. She was obviously used to having her every stray thought celebrated.

  “Oh, no,” I intoned dutifully. It was for the cause.

  She looked satisfied.

  “Shall we get on with it then, Ms. Caruso? What exactly might Erle Stanley Gardner have to do with me?”

  “Well,” I said, talking as fast as I could, “you’re really the only other well-known person to come out of Ventura. I know what Ventura meant to Gardner. I want to find out about its impact on you. I suppose I’m trying to think through the significance of people’s hometowns, you know, how they figure into their accomplishments. Sense of place, that sort of thing. What I’m looking for is another perspective on Ventura, a feeling for what this particular town offered to a young person with talent and energy.”

  That was pathetic. Still, I kept going.

  “Let’s go back to your teenage years in Ventura, Miss Allan. Were you already interested in fashion then? Where did you buy your clothes? Were there other girls with similar tastes you spent time with? What was it like at Ventura City High for someone like you?”

  “I loathed Ventura,” she said. “Every single thing about it. But what I hated most of all was the smell of it, the stink of oil on my father’s fingers. As soon I was old enough, I went as far away from Ventura as I could, away from the derricks and the oil fields, somewhere I could breathe. Is that what you’re looking for, Ms. Caruso?”

  “Oh, that would certainly do it,” I answered. Had no one ever told this woman that discretion is the better part of valor? Not that I was complaining.

  “No one thought I would live past the age of ten, you realize.” She took a sip of iced tea, wrinkled her nose, and poured the rest into a nearby potted palm. “I had suffered a serious bout of rheumatic fever. When I recovered, everyone treated me like I was made of glass. It drove me mad. I became a ragamuffin. I refused to wash or comb my hair. I ran the hillsides with the butterflies. I swam with the toads. I was a freak, an untouchable with a rich daddy who stank of petroleum.”

  We were on her favorite subject now: the life and lore of Meredith Allan.

  “When I was fourteen, my mother died and my father began taking me places with him. London. Paris. Rome. My brothers were useless. They stayed home and ran wild while I became a lady. I brushed my hair. I put on perfume. I paid attention. I came home with getups nobody around here understood. Vionnet. Givenchy. Antique jewels worn by the daughters of maharajahs. Around here they thought everything you could ever want was in the Sears catalog. My father understood, though. He was only too happy to foot the bill. At school, the other girls were a little afraid of me. And the more outlandish my outfits, the more scared they were. I liked it. That’s how I developed my sense of style, Ms. Caruso. I wanted to scare people.”

  It was definitely working. She was the Colossus of Rhodes of scary. But I wasn’t a psychoanalyst. I had a mystery to solve. But before I could get a word in edgewise she rose from her chair.

  “You’ll have to go now. I’m very busy today.”

  I had only one chance left.

  I followed her to the door.

  “It was kind of you to see me,” I said, hoisting my purse on my shoulder. “You’ve been so generous with your time.”

  “Not at all.”

  “There is one last question I wanted to ask, though.”

  “Yes?” she asked distractedly. She’d turned her attention to something far more interesting than I’d turned out to be—a loose door hinge.

  “One of the things I’ve stumbled upon in the course of my research is an old Ventura murder case, one that Gardner took quite an interest in. You know what a plodder he was.” I had her attention now. “Well, he was going over the evidence and something just didn’t seem right to him. What’s curious is that the case involved a young couple that you must have known, Joseph Albacco and his wife, Jean. You went to high school with them, didn’t you?”

  It was as if I had clipped her wings. Her eyes filled with panic as she spiraled down to earth. She was quiet for a minute. Then she threw back her shoulders and wrapped her hauteur around her. Back where it belonged.

  “That was a long time ago,” she said. “Another life. But yes, I knew them both well. A dreadful story.”

  “Indeed. Two such wonderful young people, their lives destroyed.”

  “Wonderful people?” she repeated, trying to appear unmoved. But there were beads of sweat on her exquisite nose. “I won’t speak about Joe. But Jean Albacco—let me clear something up, Ms. Caruso. She was a nasty bit of goods. Don’t be so foolish as to romanticize her just because she was murdered.”

  “Well, her sister did say she had a difficult upbringing.”

  “You’ve spoken to Theresa? Oh, she has plenty of stories to tell. Ask her about Lisette Johnson, Ms. Caruso, and watch her blanch. And don’t blame their childhood. Jean was never a child. Children don’t—”

  “Don’t what?”

  “You know about Jean’s little sideline, of course?”

  “Actually, no.”

  That may have been one digression too many.

  “Never mind. It’s just that my dearest friend was hurt. Ellie thought Jean could be trusted, so she confided in her about an affair with the gym teacher at the high school. And what a mistake that turned out to be.”

  “What else can you tell me about Jean?”

  “There isn’t enough time. All I’ll say is I think you’re writing the wrong book. Good day.”

  Her voice was honey all over again.

  14

  I heaved a sigh of relief to be out of there, and promptly popped the snap right off my Pucci skirt. It served me right for drinking that woman’s tea.

  I found a safety pin in the glove compartment and fixed myself up, without drawing blood. A good sign, I thought. Of what, harder to say. That success comes to those who don’t self-mutilate? That she who does not expose her ratty undies to strangers will be lucky in love? Though I’m loath to admit it, I believe in all that stuff—signs, omens, astrology. Where I draw the line, though, is fairies.

  Fairies. The stink of oil. And blackmail? Was that what Meredith Allan had meant by Jean’s little sideline? I wasn’t prepared to make sense of what had just happened. Not until I got home and had a pen in one hand and a glass of Pinot Noir in the other. I pulled onto the 101 and tried to empty my mind. But Scorpios are notoriously uncooperative. I focused on a splat on the windshield that used to be a bug. I opened the window a smidge, then closed it, diverted by the staccato blast of air. All right, that was it. Plus, I was hungry. I dug around in my purse for something to eat and found a Snickers bar that was only slightly mashed. I washed it down with the remains of a bottle of Diet Coke that had been rolling around the floor of my car for a week or so. It was warm and flat, but at least it wasn’t raspberry iced tea.

  Working the caramel out of my molars took a while. Start with the little things and the big things will follow. I think it was Perry Mason who said that. Ellie and the gym teacher. It sounded like the name of a Sandra Dee movie. Only Sandra Dee never got mixed up in anything as sordid as blackmail. The worst it e
ver got for her was probably a tardy slip. Then I had a great idea. But I had to get off the freeway that second or I’d blow it. Honking the horn like a she-devil, I maneuvered my Camry across three lanes to exit.

  Schools often look like prisons, but Ventura City High looked like a mausoleum. I parked outside the front entrance, which had the monumental geometry of a Pharaonic tomb. The graffiti on the facade heightened the effect; like hieroglyphics, it anointed a doomed power elite. Even the GO COUGARS banner draped across the chain-link fence seemed vaguely funereal. Maybe it was the missing exclamation point.

  The student stationed at the front desk couldn’t be bothered to look up. She jerked a beautifully manicured thumb in the direction of the library. As I walked down the hall, my eyes darted nervously about. I felt like I was about to be busted. High school will do that to you. The air reeked of french fries, B.O., and benzoyl peroxide.

  The librarian was absorbed in a book. I couldn’t make out the title, just the chapter heading “Retribution as Ritual.” She didn’t seem to like being interrupted and was discombobulated by my request. Her tiny, wizened head alternated between bobbing up and down and shaking back and forth—yes, no, yes, no. I thought she was going to pass out or, worse yet, put a hex on me, but she disappeared into the back and tottered out with a foot-high stack of dusty yearbooks.

  I promised to be careful with them and settled down at a desk in the back. There was a kid behind me, smoking. Though it was a fire hazard, I decided not to turn him in.

  I opened the 1954–55 volume. That year’s theme, printed in florid, Old English letters at the top of the first page, was “Quo Vadis?” Talk about lofty. That was just the question to ponder if you were eighteen, unqualified for everything, and staggering around under the weight of postadolescent hormones. I would’ve killed myself. When I graduated from high school in 1981, the yearbook editors picked the rainbow as our theme. Very profound. You can be blinded by its colors or confront the spectrum.