Skeeks

as a nation mourns its favorite TV star, boy cartwright, ace reporter for the world's trashiest tabloid, gets the real story behind a mysterious death

The Jangle of the telephone eventually dragged the miserable Boy Cartwright up to the surface of the planet earth from his drug-induced sleep--the only kind of sleep he ever got--to find himself in his own rumpled bed in his own unspeakable room, with Florida sunlight like radiation poisoning at the edges of the thick, dark window shades. To one side of him sprawled in wanton stupor a reporter named Trixie, or so she claimed, while on the other side stood a half-empty--nothing in Boy's life was half-full--bottle of flat champagne and the squawking telephone. The phone could wait. First, Boy finished the champagne.

This must be a Saturday or a Sunday. Otherwise, he would have awakened at work with the sudden twitch-jump that told his co-workers at the world's most successful (and therefore most reprehensible) supermarket tabloid that the decayed Boy Cartwright brain had yet again chosen to rejoin the decaying Boy Cartwright body. So if this was a weekend, and if the telephone would not stop that noise, the Weekly Galaxy itself must be calling with news of the world. A task. Another opportunity for Boy Cartwright, maggot-infested Englishman, to prove himself the star on the Galaxy staff.

Champagne ingested, Boy at last picked up the phone: "Are you there?"

"Are you awake?"

"Ah, Mr. Scarpnafe," Boy said. "Delightful to hear your voice."

"Skeeks is dead," Scarpnafe announced. He had, in fact, a voice like a ferret with a hernia.

"Ah," said Boy, knowing that sooner or later someone would tell him what that sentence meant.

"In Los Angeles."

That was no help. "Ah," Boy said.

"We'll want the whole thing. Get there before the cremation."

"Yes, of course."

"And we'll definitely want the body in the box."

"Consider the matter done," Boy said and reached out to tug at Trixie's nether hair. "I'm assembling my team already."

"Good Boy," Scarpnafe said, and hung up the phone.

Trixie grumbled. She said, "Are you ever going to do anything pleasant with that hand?"

"Of course. Who is Skeeks?"

"A dog. A German shepherd. With a great big tongue, like yours."

•

The Galaxy stringer who met Boy and his team of four reporters at LAX was a personal trainer named Jim Jemmy, who would have been much more successful at his chosen career were it not for his insuppressible body odor, a personal tragedy that forced him to supplement his income with other less savory tasks, such as working for the Galaxy. "I got us a house in Venice," he announced as Boy and the team approached him and then stepped back. "Less than two miles from Skeeks' place in Santa Monica."

"Wonderful," said Boy. "Lead on."

On the plane coming out, Boy had been brought up to speed on the late Skeeks, who had been, it seemed, a lovable German shepherd, as if there could be such a thing. For three years Skeeks had portrayed the adorable pooch on an extremely successful sitcom, and when the human male lead of that show decided to throw it all in for the glories of failure as a motion picture star, the mail bemoaning the disappearance of Skeeks from the nation's screens (they're that stupid, and yet they can read and write, marveled Boy) was so overwhelming (the word avalanche was used in all press releases on the subject) that the network brought Skeeks back the next season with his very own sitcom, called Skeeks, in which he portrayed the dog in a man-and-dog vaudeville act. The idea at the heart of this series--that there is, at this moment, in the secondary cities of America, a thriving circuit of vaudeville theaters--was not the most outlandish suggestion ever made on television, and it was accepted without a murmur, as was Skeeks' partner on Skeeks, a comedian named Bill Terry, who when sober could juggle, sing, ride a unicycle and remember jokes.

Skeeks was now in its fifth year, its popularity through the roof and still climbing. Just this year a third regular had been added, little Tommy Little, a winsome child, already another audience darling. Skeeks himself was a robust nine-year-old with his own production company to handle the details of endorsements and other residual income. Away from the set, he lived quietly on an estate in Santa Monica just a few blocks from the sea. He was said to be the cast favorite among the writers.

And now Skeeks was dead, unexpectedly, calamitously. A stunned nation mourned the dog it had taken to its heart. The president had been quoted on the morning news shows as saying, "Thank God my mom passed away before this happened. It would have killed her."

Celebrity deaths, along with celebrity weddings, celebrity hanky-panky, improbable diets, visits from outer space and dubious arthritis cures, were the bread and butter of the Galaxy. When a celeb went down, the entire career could be rehashed just one more time. Earlier sins and scandals could be evoked in order to express forgiveness at this time of grief, and a final photo of the departed, lying in a casket, would be featured on the front page of the next issue: seven days of waxy dead flesh, in color, next to the cough drops at the cash register.

Frequently, the selfish and narrowminded friends and relatives of the deceased didn't want that particular picture taken and might even take steps to prevent it. The pic of the body in the box was thus often a difficult and expensive proposition, with bribes to pay, bones to set, reporters to be bailed out of the slammer. Of all the Galaxy's talented and unscrupulous staff, Boy Cartwright was the most consistently successful in getting the body in the box. This time would be no exception.

A dog would be different. There would be no list of marriages to go through, no extramarital affairs or history of support for wimpy environmental causes, no statements on record to demonstrate the decedent's nobility or earthiness or Americanism. No stock photos of this celeb playing golf with Glen Campbell.

Nevertheless, Boy now understood that Skeeks was (a) beloved and (b) a star. The funeral, in Forest Lawn's Wee Kirk o' the Heather, would be the largest send-off there since that tramp what's-her-name. There would be a full day of viewing the body--what a challenge for the hairdresser that would be!--and then the flames. This was a major celebrity death, no matter the species of the celebrity, and Boy intended to give it the full treatment.

Beginning with the house. Whenever there was a top-of-the-line story like this, the Galaxy's first move was to send a local stringer out to rent a house, a modest, plain, ordinary house in a modest, plain, ordinary neighborhood. Eight to 12 phone lines would be put in, most of the furniture taken out, the local authorities reassured that this was not a bookie's office, and then the regular Galaxy staffers would fly in from Florida, ready to do battle: The morons of the world deserve the facts!

Why a house? Why not rooms in some hotel or motel? The Galaxy needs privacy, and the Galaxy well knows how easy hotel staffers are to bribe. Galaxy phone calls should not go through a hotel switchboard, the people the Galaxy interviews should not be seen in a hotel lobby. Believing in privacy for no one else, the Galaxy absolutely requires it for itself.

The house for the Skeeks offensive was a flea-bitten one-story stucco cottage near one of the nonexistent canals that give Venice, California its name. Occupied by an ever-shifting bevy of flight attendants, the house was always available for profitable short-term rental, since these young women never lacked entirely for alternate accommodations. Normally, the house looked exactly like a den of iniquity, but with its beds replaced by phones, fax machines and long tables bearing rows of telephones and notebook computers, with its largest bathroom converted to a darkroom, the place looked like no fun at all.

Here Boy assembled his team: Trixie and three other staffers, Jim Jemmy, three local photographers who often did piecework for the Galaxy, plus two more longtime stringers, one a bartender and the other a famous limousine driver. "At ease, ladies and gentlemen," Boy said unnecessarily. Gazing around with the slow insolent smile of command he said, "You are in good hands now. Boy will lead you. Trixie, did Skeeks ever father a child?"

"No idea." She appeared to be a bit hungover.

"Learn, dear," Boy said and went on to give the other peons their initial assignments: cause of death, disposition of the estate, friends and enemies, rivals (if any), ownership of the animal (even millionaire dogs, like senators, belong to somebody), future of the (continued on page 122)Skeeks(continued from page 96) program, future of Bill Terry.

When the reporters had scattered, leaving Boy with Jim Jemmy and the photographers, Boy rubbed his hands together in expectant satisfaction and said, "And now, the body in the box."

Jim came closer, lowering his voice. "There's a fellow at the vet, he's----"

"Tell you what, dear. Let's chat on the porch."

"Oh. OK."

Out on the tiny sagging porch, with its unimpeded view of the canal, Boy sat on the untrustworthy railing, some distance from Jim, and said, "Tell me about it, dear."

"I have a contact at the vet, but he's being a little funny. He wants money."

"They all do, dear, and that's why we're here. To provide money."

"I think he's got something else. He wants more, he wouldn't talk to me. He seems to want, you know, more money."

The body in the box was always a delicate task. Boy had sent photographers into funeral homes disguised as priests, as nuns, as firemen, as long-lost offspring of the deceased and, on one memorable occasion, as a process server determined to press divorce papers on the corpse. Each case was different, and to each case Boy responded with his usual grimy savoir faire.

The simplest way, in the present instance, would be to insert a photographer into the veterinary hospital after the late Skeeks had been arranged in his coffin, but before the dog and coffin had been transported to Forest Lawn. That would require no more than the suborning of one employee. Jim Jemmy had clearly done the first part of the job in finding a bribable employee, but now there was going to be some sort of problem.

Sighing, Boy saw he would have to deal with this veterinary lowlife himself. "How do I make contact?"

"I can call his home and leave him a message."

"Do, dear boy. And don't look so worried. Boy is here, and joy shall prevail."

•

They met at a small outdoor restaurant on the Malibu coast. Driftwood had been imported from as far away as Tierra del Fuego to construct this restaurant in which you were guaranteed to get splinters. Boy, with clip-on sunglasses clipped on his sunglasses and a dark blue Moon Mission cap pulled low over his pasty brow, remembered again just what it was he hated about Los Angeles: everything.

The outdoorness of the restaurant was necessary, given the redolence of both his companions. Jim Jemmy continued to smell like Jim Jemmy, and Carlo, the squat Incan from the vet, smelled like the vet. He was a janitor, a man who knew every scrubbed inch of the place as well as he knew his own toilet, and his news was not good. "Sports department," he announced, hunched over the hamburger with sprouts the Galaxy was buying him.

"Ah," said Boy, squinting behind all his dark glass.

"Dey got dese jackets, you know what I mean? Color like a raspberry. On da pocket, by da heart, dey got dis network sign----"

"Logo," Boy edited.

Carlo crumpled his face like a fender. "Huh? No, man, a logo's a wolf. Dis on da jacket, dis what you see on da TV."

"Understood," Boy assured him.

"Dey all useta be football players, now dey work da sports department at da network. Dey on guard, man."

"Guarding Skeeks?"

"For da pikchas, man. Dey know about you guys and your papers, dat you do da pikchas. Dey say, 'No way."

"You could slip past----"

But Carlo was shaking his woolly head, sending clouds of formaldehyde to compete across the table with essence of Jemmy. "Dey search me, man. Dey find da camera, dey dropkick my ass back to Peru."

Boy sighed. While he loved a challenge, of course, he preferred his challenges to be easier than they looked. He said, "Carlo, one understood you had something to sell, something more than the picture, not something less."

"Dis is more. But you gotta pay, man."

"We'll pay what it's worth," Boy assured him.

Carlo thought about that, then decided to risk it. Whispering so low that Boy could barely hear him, he said, "Somebody offed da dog."

More gibberish. But then Jim Jemmy, utterly shocked, cried, "Skeeks was murdered?" and all became clear.

To the entire restaurant. Bouncing in his chair, Carlo cried, "Cool it, man! Jesucristo!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" Jim covered his mouth with both hands.

Boy said, "Class. Students. Let us have order here. Carlo, what do you mean? Do you have proof?"

"I done da cleanup, man, I know what I'm cleanin'. Dat dog got poisoned. I heard da doctors, dey don't wanna tell nobody."

"Why not?"

"Couple scandals last year, man. Dat place, movie stars keep deir dogs and cats and gerbils and all deir pets dere while dey go away, make a movie, come back, it's dead, man, wrong food, wrong medicine. Dey afraid dey gonna get blamed."

"So no one knows this interesting news," Boy concluded, "except the veterinarians, and you, and us."

Carlo looked sullen. "And all dose people at d'udder tables."

"I am sorry," Jim said.

"I think we can ignore that," Boy decided. "This is a restaurant in Los Angeles, after all." Reaching into a side pocket, he brought out a wad of bills folded in half and held with a red rubber band. Removing the rubber band, he peeled off five $100 bills and handed them to Carlo. "This is for our exclusive use of your information."

"That's OK," Carlo agreed. The money disappeared.

Boy took a tiny camera that looked like a cigarette lighter from his other pocket. "If by chance you do happen to get Skeeks' final photo, there'll be another $1000 in it for you."

But Carlo wouldn't touch the camera. "Dem sports guys from da network, man," he said, "in dem raspberry coats, man, dey big. Big and mean."

Sneering, Boy said, "You're afraid of men in raspberry coats?"

"You look at 'em, man," Carlo said. "You'll never eat a raspberry again."

Back at the Galaxy nest in Venice, Boy debriefed his team, standing to demonstrate the quality of command and also because he had a long splinter in his bum. Trixie's news was that Skeeks had been rendered unfit for fatherhood as a youth, before his fame could protect him from such indignities; ergo, no progeny. The others had also been busy gleaning data, and this is what Boy learned:

Skeeks did have an owner, a holding company in Houston called Shunbec International. Several of the Shunbec principals were deeply involved in the S&L mess, and Skeeks had been just about their last viable asset. On the (continued on page 162)Skeeks(continued from page 122) other hand, the beast had been insured like the Hope diamond.

Closer to home, the comedian Bill Terry was known to be unhappy, in his sober moments, at playing second fiddle to a dog. Without the dog, of course, Bill Terry wasn't even dog meat, but actors have been known to have egos. Other news about Terry was said to be on its way from headquarters in Florida.

Keeping Terry comparatively calm and happy was his live-in girlfriend. Sherry Cohen, a co-producer of Skeeks who was credited with being most of the brains behind the show. She'd been a television professional for 15 years and had persuaded the network to hire Bill Terry despite his drinking problem. "I'll take care of that," she had reportedly told them, and so she had. If there was one reason the show had lasted five years, other than the pitiable state of the American mind, it was Sherry's control of Terry.

Another human close to Skeeks was his housekeeper, Mayjune Kent, a former Miss America runner-up who had a successful career as an auto show model, standing in long gowns on all those turntables, until a crazed fan threw acid in her face, reasoning that since he couldn't have her, no one else should. The fan received a very light sentence, since Mayjune publicly and often forgave him, saying, "He only did it for love."

However, when the fan was released from prison 17 months later, Mayjune ran over him in a rented automobile, explaining she'd been blinded by tears of joy at seeing him a free man. She was put on trial, nevertheless, for manslaughter and given probation and assistance in finding employment. Several human employers had agreed they could overlook her history, but when they met her they realized they'd never be able to overlook that face. Skeeks was the only employer in southern California able and willing to give the unfortunate young woman housing and a decent job, and Mayjune was said to be devoted to the animal.

"Well, children," Boy said, "you have done reasonably well. Material for several stories here, particularly if Bill Terry has been cheating on Sherry Cohen or vice versa. However, none of this matters if we don't get the body in the box, and I am assured that any number of homicidal ex-footballers stand between us and that goal. When the going gets tough, as you've heard, the tough proceed, and I do believe one has found the answer." Then he dropped his bombshell: "One has learned, through an unimpeachable source, that Skeeks was murdered."

"No!" everybody cried. "Who? Why? Are you sure?"

"Yes," Boy replied. "Don't know yet. Don't know yet. Yes. The veterinary hospital is keeping the fact quiet for its own reasons. We know and no one else."

Jim Jemmy blushed.

"How," Boy asked rhetorically, "may we use this information? One is glad you asked. We shall find the murderer, in the next 24 hours. Anyone close enough to poison the beast can get close enough to take his picture. We shall confront the murderer and demand the photo as our price for silence."

Trixie's jaw dropped. "You mean, we won't print the story about the murder?"

"Of course we will. But the photo first. I didn't say we wouldn't publish, I said we'd say we wouldn't publish."

"Oh, that's all right, then," Trixie said.

"This is a manhunt," Boy told his team, "or possibly a womanhunt. Go, seek, find. And, Trixie?"

"Yes?"

"I'll want you in my office. You do have tweezers, one hopes?"

•

The voice of Don Grove, a Floridabased member of the team, murmured in Boy's ear, and Boy took notes as he rode along in the backseat of the limo steered randomly around Santa Monica by their driver-stringer, Portnikuff. "I'm going over the wall now," murmured Don, and some blocks away he was doing it, slipping into Dungowrie, half a square block of expensive Santa Monica real estate, residence of the late Skeeks.

As Boy rode and listened, Don penetrated deeper into the place, describing what he saw. Within the tall tan stucco walls stood a modest two-story Mission-design house, a U-shàped swimming pool, a number of short specimen palm trees and a space Don described as looking like a miniature golf course, actually Skeeks' exercise area, with bouncing balls on strings, sticks that threw and returned themselves and a small sandbox of carrion for the star to roll in, replenished weekly.

The main point here was description, so communication was one-way and Don didn't have too much to carry--just the microphone clipped to his turned-up collar and the power pack in his pocket. Forward he went, murmuring, to a pair of French doors, and on into the house.

"Freeze!"

Boy had written Fr before he got his wits about him. That was a different voice, female and harsh. Mayjune, the housekeeper?

"Don't move! Don't turn around! You don't want to see me!"

The housekeeper, check. And Don was caught.

When Don spoke in a normal voice, as he did now--"I'll go quietly"--it about took Boy's head off. He scrabbled at his ear to remove the tiny speaker but stopped when he heard the woman say, "You won't go anywhere. Not till the police get here. You hit an electric eye on top of that wall, and I'm holding a gun on you. So it isn't that easy, is it?"

"I'm just a reporter!" Don bellowed into Boy's quaking ear.

"Don't lie to me! Don't you think I know what you're up to? You can tell her, you can tell all of them----"

Yes? Yes? Boy waited, pencil poised. A siren sounded, separately, in both his ears.

The woman spoke again: "Hear that siren?"

"Yes," Boy said. "Home, James," he told the driver.

"The name's Hubert."

Don's voice roared through Boy's head: "I'm turning around. I want to explain----"

"Don't! You'll be sorry!"

"I just want you to know I'm----Aaakkk!"

A police car hurtled by, siren roaring, but the bug-eyed Boy couldn't hear it. By the time his ears recovered from that last shriek, the limo was halfway to Venice, and from the speaker embedded in Boy's ear came only a gurgle, a grumble, a rush, a slosh.

Mayjune. Don Grove, with one look at her, had swallowed the microphone.

•

Armed response, said the hexagonal sign mounted on the brick wall just above the front doorbell. But why offer a doorbell if you then threaten to shoot anyone who uses it? "America," Boy decided. He pressed his pale, fat thumb to the button and, of course, nothing happened. All bluster, these people.

"What?"

Bending to speak into the grid from which that aggressive word had rocketed, Boy, at his most British, plummily answered, "Alasdair Smythe here, of Lloyd's."

"Don't want any."

"Afraid it's not your choice, old bean. The insured has passed over."

A brief silence and then, "What?"

"Are we going back to square one, old crumpet? The animal Skeeks, insured by Lloyd's of London, is no more. I am the claims examiner."

A longer pause this time and then, "Wait."

Boy waited. The sleepy hills of Bel Air reposed around him, the curving roads dotted with grubby gardeners' trucks, the residents presumably all within, on their Stair Masters. Behind this high brick wall, with its wide electric gate, a gleaming blacktop drive angled up a grassy slope toward a lesser Tara. And down the drive, in an electric cart, came a burly, sullen fellow in tan uniform and dark sunglasses, pistol in holster on hip. The armed response, at last.

Dismounting from his trusty cart, this hollow threat approached the gate, gazed through it at Boy and said, "You got ID?"

"Of course."

Of course. Boy could prove himself to be anybody you wanted. After brooding over the impressive Smythe ID, the armed responder wordlessly opened the gate, then offered Boy a lift to the house several feet away.

In front, on the lawn, a man in shorts and Gold's Gym sweatshirt juggled Indian clubs, not very well; as Boy watched the man hit himself on the head. "Stop," bade Boy, and he stepped off the cart before it halted. Ignoring the indignant words from behind him, he approached the juggler. "William Kampledown, I believe."

The man hit himself again with several clubs, which then fell to the ground. He stared openmouthed at Boy. "What did you say?"

The background information on Bill Terry, long known but not previously found useful, had arrived from Florida. Boy said, "Wanted for manslaughter in Canada. The plastic surgeon who made you comical instead of recognizable is now a well-paid consultant for a television network."

"It was all a mistake," the man said, kicking the fallen clubs in his agitation. "I was drunk. Somebody else was driving. It wasn't me anyway. I never heard that name before."

"And now you're Bill Terry, drinking to forget, a TV star beloved by millions, though not as beloved as Skeeks."

"What the hell is going on out there?"

Boy turned in the direction of that squawk and saw, on the rose-trellised porch of the pocket Tara, an apparition: Atop a slender body, a perfectly ordinary cheerleader's face had been given to South American tribesmen to shrink. Then it had been shellacked and had zircons placed in its eye sockets. Scary but sexy. "Ah, madam," Boy began, approaching her, "I am----"

"Not selling insurance, I hope."

"Of course not, madam, I am----"

But she was glaring past him at the man on the lawn, snarling at him. "What are you standing around for? You have to be able to keep those goddamn things in the air by next Wednesday, when The Bill and Tommy Show starts to tape!"

"Maybe we can get some with helium in them," the man suggested.

"All the helium we need," she answered, "is in your head." Switching her glare to Boy, she demanded, "What does Lloyd's of London want from us?"

"We are the insurers of---"

"Well, we're not the owners. We're not putting in any claims."

On the lawn, Bill Terry once again flung Indian clubs about. Boy said, "I take it I am addressing Ms. Sherry Cohen. Ms. Cohen, Lloyd's would like to extend its condolences at----"

"Save them," she suggested.

Something short in bib overalls that was either a depraved cherub or the Nicaraguan bantamweight champion now came out onto the porch and whined, "Well, are we playing Scrabble or not?"

"Be right there, Tommy," Sherry Cohen said, her irritation at once deliquescing. She couldn't have gazed on the tiny tot with more ardor if he'd been a T-bone steak. "We're just saying goodbye to the insurance man." The zircon eyes swung around in the snake head. "Goodbye."

"Madam, if I could----"

"I'll ride you to the gate," offered the armed responder as woman and child swept into the house and Bill Terry continued to bean himself.

"I believe I can find it," Boy said.

•

Back at the Galaxy nest, Boy went over what had been learned. None of the businessmen of Shunbec International had been in Los Angeles at the key moment, all being under subpoena in Texas for something or other to do with business legality. Bill Terry, Sherry Cohen and Mayjune Kent were all without alibis, and no one else could have been close enough to the animal at the appropriate moment to do him in. (A trainer normally accompanied Skeeks between Dungowrie and the studio, but Skeeks had been on a two-month hiatus in filming, so the trainer had been gone for a week on safari in Tanzania.)

"These are our suspects," Boy announced to his motley crew. "We want to know where they were, minute by minute, over the past three days. We want to know what stores they went to, whom they visited, what doctors are their friends. We want their credit card receipts. We want to know which of these three dispatched the lovable pooch, and we want it by nine tomorrow morning, because the cadaver will be limoing Kirk-ward by 11."

This was a unique position in which the Galaxians found themselves; they were turning their talents to good. The same rapacious tenacity with which they tracked star adultery, UFO sightings and arthritis cures would now be lasered into solving a fiendish, not to say heinous, crime. Is it any wonder their sallow cheeks glowed with something similar to health, their dead eyes came to life, or something very like life?

Yoicks and away; Nemesis has nothing on the Weekly Galaxy.

•

Palindrome Productions occupied the upper floor of a two-story building in downtown Santa Monica. Here were the offices of all the company members except Skeeks, who never had much involved himself in decision making at his firm. And outside, at four that afternoon, the fellow up the telephone pole, with the telephone company hard hat and the telephone equipment dangling from his utility belt and the telephone company identification clipped to his work shirt, had, of course, nothing to do with the phone company at all but was Chauncey Chapperrell of the Weekly Galaxy. Other Galaxians, in California and Florida, were busily rooting into the suspects' lives, records and garbage cans, but Chauncey hit pay dirt with this conversation:

"Palindrome Productions."

"Sherry, please."

"Who shall I say is calling?"

"Mayjune."

"One moment, please."

Chauncey, whose usual assignment for the Galaxy was outer space, took the opportunity here to survey the world from a second-story level and found it good. No wonder that UFO aliens come here so often; it's a fun place when seen from above.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Kent, but Ms. Cohen is unavailable at the moment."

"She'd better be available. Or should I call the district attorney?"

"One moment, please."

Chauncey was taping this conversation but he wasn't listening to it. He was grooving on reality instead, as seen from 15 feet up. It had been a while since he had concentrated so totally on the mother planet.

"Mayjune? What the hell is all this about?"

"I want you to come right over here, Sherry."

"I'm busy here. Do you have any idea what a mess we have on our hands?"

"It's nothing next to the mess you will have. Be here in half an hour." And Mayjune Kent hung up.

So did Chauncey.

•

After Don Grove's experience at Dungowrie--the fellow was still in jail, have to do something about that eventually--Boy knew that over the wall was not the way to enter the estate. Not that he was much of a wall-scaler anyway. He was lucky if he could scale a curb.

Fortunately, money makes a fine substitute for muscle. Having hired a burglar known as Rack, Boy now sat comfortably in the rear of the limo piloted by Hubert Portnikuff and waited. Yonder, Rack, shielded from passing curious eyes by Chauncey and Trixie, who were engaged in long and sprightly conversation on the sidewalk in front of him, was dismantling the burglar alarm. Next he would unlock the ornamental iron front gate, override the call-the-police secondary alarm system by the inner door and finally snick open that last barrier.

There, done it. Having repacked his tools into his capaciously pocketed jacket, Rack sauntered away, a tune and a cigarette on his lips, while Trixie and Chauncey strode off in the opposite direction. Boy at last clambered stiffly out of the limo, strolled over to the estate entrance and eased on inside.

Everything in here was familiar from Don Grove's description. Boy moved past the pool, the palms, the exercise area--phew, carrion--and around to the French doors at the right side, one pair of which stood open to the evening air. Boy inserted himself into the house.

Voices. Female voices, some distance off. Were the servants at home or away? (None lived in, only Mayjune and Skeeks ever actually being in residence here.) Following that peremptory summons from Mayjune, Sherry Cohen had been in here for 20 minutes now. What could they be talking about? Boy needed to know. He filtered through the house like a bad case of tar and nicotine, and the voices gradually grew louder.

There. A sort of Moorish living room, with arches and pillars everywhere, a few low couches and low tables, hanging lamps and a big round doggy bed in the middle of the floor. Peering from the semidarkness behind a pillar, Boy beheld the two women seated near each other, on sofas at right angles, with a low table between them. Boy blinked; they were drinking tea and eating cookies.

Really? The tape Boy had heard of Mayjune's phone call hadn't sounded like an invitation to tea. But here they were, just the two of them, murmuring together, munching cookies, sipping tea. Sherry Cohen, on the left, looked softer than when Boy had last seen her, at the house she shared with Bill Terry--and Tommy Little?--in Bel Air. Or if not softer, at least less sure of herself.

And then there was Mayjune. Oh my. The Phantom of the Opera's sister. If Boy Cartwright had a painting in his attic, that's what it would look like. How could she be sure where to insert that cookie?

Firmly watching Sherry and not Mayjune, Boy listened:

"More tea?"

"Thank you."

"Cookie?"

"I shouldn't." Pause. "Mayjune?"

"Yes?"

"Why?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You were pretty tough on the phone, but now you just want to sit and have girl talk. I don't get it."

"I didn't want to rush into things. You and I never really got to know each other, Sherry."

"I always felt you didn't want to know people."

"I suppose so. Because of my face."

An uncomfortable silence; uncomfortable for Boy, anyway.

"Mayjune? Would you come to the point?"

"I suppose, really, that Skeeks was all I needed, not people at all. I took this picture of him at the vet, after they put him in the coffin."

Boy started, and stood up as straight as it was possible for him to stand. Mayjune handed a color 8x10 to Sherry.

"Oh, look at that. He looks, um, like he's asleep, doesn't he?"

"Dreaming," Mayjune said with her version of a poignant smile. "Chasing rabbits."

"Chasing Nielsen households, you mean."

"When I saw he'd been poisoned----"

"What?"

"Oh, come on, Sherry, you can't hide anything from me. Skeeks was murdered, and you did it."

"That's--that's ridiculous!"

"Of course it is. You wouldn't get what you wanted, anyway."

"What I wanted?" Guardedly: "What was that?"

"For Tommy Little to take Skeeks' place. Then Bill would get star billing, and he might stop drinking himself to death. Of course, it would never work. You love Bill too much. You can't see he really isn't up to carrying the show."

"This is crazy!"

"Sherry, I watched you maneuver Tommy Little into place, and I knew you wanted Skeeks off the program. But I never thought you'd resort to murder."

"Mayjune, he was an animal! You can't say he--besides, why say it was me? I mean, if it even happened."

"I didn't do it, and Bill doesn't have the guts, and who else is there? You did it for love, Sherry, I know you did, for the love of Bill. But I loved Skeeks, and that's why you're going to die now."

Jumping to her feet, Sherry cried, "What are you talking about? I'm not going to die!"

"We both are, Sherry. Skeeks was the only one in my life. You took him away from me. I have no reason to live."

"Mayjune! For God's sake, what have you done?"

"The same poison you used," Mayjune said, as calm as voice mail. "It's in the cookies, and the tea. We both have less than half an hour to live."

"No!" Sherry turned away, stumbling, arms out as though to push open a lot of doors.

But Mayjune said, "I waited, Sherry, until it was too late before I told you."

"Stomach pumps! Antidotes!"

"Too late. Too late, Sherry. Sit down, dear, be calm. We'll wait together."

Sherry turned back, to stare with her zircon eyes at the placid Mayjune. "You did this? You did this for a dog?"

"My only friend, Sherry."

Sherry dropped into her seat, despair shriveling her features even more. The two women sat gazing at each other.

Boy looked at his watch. Half an hour, eh? Fine. He tiptoed away, found the kitchen and the cold chicken and white wine in the refrigerator. Mayjune had struck him as being a thrifty little gargoyle. She wouldn't poison everything in the house, just the stuff she meant to feed Sherry.

He would phone the police, of course, once he had collected the photo and was well away from the house, and after he'd called in his story to the Galaxy. In the meantime, snack on the kitchen table at his elbow, women expiring at the other end of the house, he pulled out notebook and pen and began the lead for this week's story:

"They did it for love."

Boy, with a cap pulled over his brow, remembered what it was he hated about Los Angeles: everything.

When the fan was released from prison 17 months later, Mayjune ran over him in a rented automobile.