business.
Being implicated in a homicide will kill every opportunity I have.“
Not to mention what it did to every opportunity Isabella had… but he neglected to mention that.
Now I was curious about what was a more current dilemma for Burrell.
“What sort of thing are you afraid the police will misinterpret?”
“Guns, for one thing. I’ve got guns.”
“What for? Like pistols, for protection?”
“No, like high-powered hunting rifles. I never had a gun when I was in Hollywood. I always had gophers to handle my drug transactions. I never carried. But I moved to Maine when I detoxed it was easier for me to stay dry in a new environment. Now I live on one of those primitive little islands off the coast no highways, no airports, no police department. Just beautiful vistas and lots of wild animals. The island is crawling with moose and deer and woodchucks and skunks. I started hunting with the guys who live around me not for sport, but when the animals got destructive or like the time a rabid woodchuck attacked my golden retriever. Anyone up there will tell you that I can draw a bead on a four-legged creature and hit it between the eyes like a trained sharpshooter.”
I shuddered at the tone of pride in his voice as he described the strike, since it jolted me abruptly back to the neon-taped crime scene that marked Isabella’s execution. Chapman, Flanders, and Waldron would certainly be interested in this piece of information.
Maybe Burrell would be stupid enough to give me more. Or was he playing me for the fool, so he could defuse this kind of fact by getting it on the table through me before his police interview later in the week.“Everyone involved with Isabella seems to know something about guns. That hardly makes you a prime suspect, Mr. Burrell.”
“Miss Cooper. I’m telling you this because I’m sure Iz mentioned to you when she got to your house that she had just seen me in Boston. I realize you must be aware of what went on between us, and I need to know what you’ve told the police about it, do you understand? I don’t plan to hide anything, I’d just like to walk into that interview with an idea of how much they know about me.”
He had made the mistaken assumption that Isabella had called me with confidences about her Boston rendezvous with Burrell when she arrived on the Vineyard. My lie of omission was simply to let him believe that, and my larger deceit was to bluff him about what I had learned in the I conversation we never had. From the cast he put on the revelation, it was easy to infer that their encounter had not gone well.
“I do know how much the weekend upset her. She was quite unhappy about it,” I baited him.
“Maybe angry is a better word.”
“You have to understand my frustration, Miss Cooper. I adored Isabella, I worshiped her from the first moment I met her. I helped create the Isabella Lascar the world fell in love with on the screen.”
Here we go, another Pygmalion story. Another man behind the woman, responsible for her success. You’re losing me now, Burrell.
“We were fabulous together, before anyone knew who Isabella was capable of becoming. Then I screwed it up, all my own fault. My addiction destroyed everything in my life, personally and professionally. But I’ve got it all together again, I can assure you. I’ve written a great property, something that would have been perfect for Isabella. She wanted to meet with me, to read it, to talk about it. For me, it was my foot in the door to ask her to take me back. The movie was secondary I wanted to be her husband again, I wanted her to let me love her.”
As far as I could tell about Lascar’s love life, it would be like standing on line at a bakery the night before Thanksgiving to buy a couple of pies. Take a number.
“Bottom line, Mr. Burrell? She told me it didn’t fly.”
“Bottom line, as you say, Miss Cooper. I realize I’m running over the five minutes you gave me, but you see the urgency of all this, I’m sure. Isabella wanted a script but had no use for me, other than as a friendly old shoulder to lean on.”
“So the two of you fought.”
“I don’t think either one of us meant to, really. But she got sloppy the combination of vodka followed by too much red wine and all the while I was sober. And as you know, she could have a pretty cruel tongue when she was liquored up, and I didn’t have the benefit of any alcoholic anesthesia to ease her blows.”
“Yes, I’ve heard her barbs, Mr. Burrell. They could be very painful, I’m sure. Is that why you put your hands on her? She’d always described you as such a gentle person.”
It worked.
“Iz was getting so loud, Miss Cooper. I had images of people in adjacent rooms calling the front desk and someone generating publicity about her drinking or her temper. I didn’t hit her, you know, she didn’t tell you that, did she?”
“No, no she didn’t.” “I just grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to shake her her a bit. Merely to quiet her down and bring her to her senses. That only made her angrier and raised her volume a pitch or two. Her glass fell to the floor and splintered. She screamed some more insults, called me some names, went into the bathroom, and locked herself in. I waited awhile. When she refused to come out, I eventually went back to my room.
“I was afraid you’d consider that some kind of domestic violence, you know? Especially if housekeeping reported the broken glass and guests complained about the screaming. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, Miss Cooper. Anyone who knows the two of us knows that all I ever wanted was to be together with Isabella again. I could never have hurt her.”
Haven’t I seen this scene in a thousand B-movies?
“Did you see her again, after that argument?”
“No, no. I wanted to, I really did. But I gave her the night to sober up, and when I called her room in the morning she had already checked out. I knew she was going to your place on the Vineyard. I didn’t know where your house was and, quite frankly, I didn’t even know your name. Iz talked about you a lot, but just by your first name I never paid close attention, then I saw your name in all the newspaper articles, of course. It never occurred to me that she was taking someone to the island with her. She let me think she was going to the Vineyard alone.”
Me too, pal.
“Did you hear from her after that?”
“No, that’s what I mean. I hung around for most of that day, then just drove myself back up the coast to home. It’s not a very helpful alibi, Miss Cooper. Eastport Harbor’s a pretty lonely place, and there aren’t any neighbors or deliverymen or camera crews to record my comings and goings.”
“Mr. Burrell, those things you’ve told me aren’t much to worry about. There’ll be hotel check-out records and garage receipts and a mini-paper trail to back you up, I’m sure.” He seemed much too frantic and concerned for the amount of information he had given me.
“Is that really all?”
“I swear to you, Miss Cooper, I swear on Isabella’s life…”
That oath had a rather empty ring to it.
“You’ve got to tell these things to the detectives, and you’ve got to do it yourself.” I didn’t want to be alone with this man a minute longer than I had to.“There’s no use pleading your case to me. I can’t help you with more than an introduction to the police, please believe me.”
He looked desperate, not evil, but my instincts had been wrong on more than one occasion and I was not in a good position to figure this one out tonight.
“Where are you staying in town?”
“The Peninsula.”
“Go back to your hotel. You’ll get a call from a detective named Chapman in the morning. Just tell him everything you’ve told me.” Only Mike will be able to play hardball with this guy and maybe we’ll be on our way to a confession.
Burrell tried to thank me as he slouched out of the office they and I noticed my hand was still trembling as I reached for the telephone to call for a cab. As the cab crawled up Center Street, which became Fourth Avenue, which became Park Avenue, I tried to think whether there had been anything memorable about the evening Jed and I had taken Isabella to dinner. It had been her just before the Labor Day weekend, which Jed was going to spend in California with his kids. We had planned to meet for dinner on Friday evening, and as I was dressing at my apartment, Iz called from her hotel room. She was cheerful and pleasant – the second stalker hadn’t started to
