Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

celebrate. He tried to be convivial, though it didn’t come naturally, laughed at the jokes and sometimes even tried one of his own. Afterward, he went his way. She’d heard he lived near Echo Park somewhere. If anyone ever inquired about his personal life, he never did it again.

She sat down without being invited, and they stared at each other a moment. Lizzie was never sure why, but there was something about McManus that always made her want to cry, something in the look—caring, trusting, longing, personal—something she’d never seen in the eyes of any other man except Joe, which was why she married him. With Larry it had always been there for her, more pronounced after her uncle’s murder, indelible after her father’s.

“I know why you’re here,” he said, exhaling as he spoke.

She crossed her legs and waited.

“I don’t know, Lizzie, I really don’t. You have a child now.”

“Robby adores his Daddy, who works at home.”

He nodded. “Joe’s a good man, hated to lose him.”

“Thank you.”

“I like you on the metro desk—where I can keep an eye on you.”

He was fighting it out with himself, and she had no intention of interrupting.

“On the other hand . . .”

“The front-page notebook.”

“Right. The notebook. We’re in a spot . . .”

He swiveled to look out the windows, a habit he had, do his thinking without being observed.

At length, he turned back. “Can I put someone with you?”

She shook her head. “Too soon.”

He fumbled with a pencil and stubbed out his cigarette. Then he actually smiled. Maggie, who’d never met him, called him a faux dur.

“Okay, so let’s get on it. Send Teddy in here. He can run metro while you’re away.”

Chapter 26

Cal phoned Lizzie from his downtown office after taking the call from Sammy Milstein, Henry Callender’s lawyer. Callender was in Folsom Prison for Eddie Mull’s murder, and Milstein’s call came out of the blue. “He has some interesting news,” Cal said, refusing to say anything more on the phone. He was taking Nelly to dinner the following night, and they agreed to meet afterward at Lizzie’s house in Brentwood. Joe was in New York trying to raise money for a movie, but Maggie would be there “with news of her own,” Lizzie informed him. He took Nelly to Jack’s at the Beach on the pier in Ocean Park, her favorite place, a stone’s throw from where she’d met Eddie in her bathing suit in the story they all knew by heart. She wouldn’t let him pay for dinner. “I can’t spend it all on dance lessons,” she said. Though Eddie’s estate was still in probate—he hadn’t counted on dying and left no will—Nelly had already slipped comfortably into the part of the wealthy widow.

The Mortons owned a bougainvillea-covered Spanish stucco on South Barrington, halfway between Sunset and San Vicente. He saw Maggie’s red Ford coupé in the driveway as he pulled in, the first time he’d been back to Brentwood since soon after the wedding. Lizzie hadn’t told anyone, just slipped off to a chapel in Westwood so Miss Adelaide wouldn’t find out. Ten years older than his wife, Joe Morton had spent the thirties covering Europe for UPI, mostly in Germany, coming home after Pearl Harbor and missing the draft by a year—though his eyes would have kept him out if his age hadn’t. He’d worked for the Times until selling his first movie script, a B thriller filmed in the sewers of Los Angeles. He was pudgy and balding and couldn’t see his feet without his glasses but was as passionate about writing as was Lizzie and just as passionate about her. He liked to cook and didn’t mind babysitting while Lizzie was at work. The baby, Robby, was Cal’s godson.

Lizzie wore glasses now, had the perfect face for them, Cal thought, the dark hornrims accenting her light skin and inquisitive bright eyes. A good marriage had helped her, so had success, so had motherhood. His girls had become successful women. They looked on him as a brother, but he’d been more like a father, six years older than one, seven more than the other. He’d had been there when Eddie was not, which was most of the time. Maggie had needed him more, the rotor of her gyroscope. Lizzie had her own rotor.

“Callender?” she asked, handing him a beer.

“Milstein asked if I remembered the trial. Of course, I did, I said. I was in the Pacific, but you’re talking about my uncle. I read the trial transcript. He said his client might have some information for the Reverend Willie Mull’s son. That’s exactly how he put it—‘for the Reverend Willie Mull’s son.’ Odd, no?”

“I remember Milstein,” she said. “I didn’t cover the trial, but I was there every day. Callender was acting crazy, talking about Willie and chess and cats and the law of the trail, things no one understood. Milstein didn’t want him declared incompetent, said he was just a little ‘teched’ from a long, hard life. The jury was not impressed.”

“He wouldn’t be angling for a new trial, would he?” said Maggie, lighting a cigarette.

She looked smart, he thought. Back to the days at the stables she’d worn Levi’s and now wore beige slacks, though there was nothing slack about how they fit her. She had on a long-sleeved white silk blouse with gold chains. She wore her dark hair shorter than before, better to fit into flight helmets, he supposed. Since helping to found the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) during the war she’d become famous. There’d been talk of a fling with Howard Hughes, but her steady was a Hughes pilot named Terry Heyward, an air ace who’d somehow survived the war in the Pacific. Cal met him at Robby’s christening. He liked him.

“No chance,” said Lizzie. “He’s up there for good.”

“Might want to get his sentence cut,” he said.

“How?”

“That’s for us to find out.”

“Come on, Cal, give! You’re holding something back.”

“Milstein wouldn’t say exactly—not on the telephone. Just hints.