The body lay spreadeagled on a rock just beyond the shoreline, like Prometheus, or one of those Greek guys who got caught out doing something they shouldn’t have done. Seabirds were even circling, probably eyeing his liver – I’ve always thought myths like that were based on the truth. I figured I better call someone before too much damage was done, but before I did that I had to think. I lit a cigarette and stood back from the cliff edge, reviewing what I knew.
He’d been staying at the Highlands Inn, a fancy hotel just down the road a piece. The Inn pretends it’s rustic, but what it is really is discrete. Wooden cabins tucked into the mountain side make it the perfect place for movie stars to meet privately with their lovers, and the amenities are top notch. The chef was renowned for his boeuf bourguignon and the bartender, Al, makes a martini so mean that it’s worth the six hour drive north from Hollywood. Plus, the view of the rocky shores of the Pacific that you see from the terrace is romantic. If you like that kind of thing.
I’d seen the John there last night, nursing a highball and looking out at the sea. He might even have been thinking romantic thoughts, since he was with one of the best looking dames I’ve ever had the pleasure to eyeball. She was talking to him, fast and low, but I noticed he wasn’t responding. Verbally at least. She must have had a lot to say, because they were still at it after the sun went down and I went inside to be served. They still were there when I returned to smoke a cigarette, a few hours later. It was cold as Canada out on that veranda, and they didn’t even have drinks in front of them, that was what shocked me most. As I eyed them from the alcove, she glanced at me. Suddenly, she swept up her purse and her wrap and some papers she had nearby and rose to go. “I’m warning you,” I heard her say. “This is the last time.” Then she scrammed. He looked like he’d been slapped.
When I saw him next, he was on the rocks. It was in a spot on the coast about a mile or so from the Inn, within the national wildlife preserve known as Point Lobos. I’d gone there for the view. There are paths for hiking along the cliffs with lots of warning signs. But you don’t really need a skull and cross bones to know that to fall off those ledges would be certain death. Not only are the rocks, well, rocky, but the ocean is mad right there, a constant confusion of roiling surf, rising and falling and crashing into the cliffs. It is a very angry place.
It was clear enough how he’d died. The question was, did he jump or was he murdered? It wasn’t any of my business, and I would have loved to have left the scene no questions asked. But those peckish looking seabirds bothered me. As I said, I remembered what happened to Prometheus. I finished my cigarette and went to look for a way to report it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They kept me in the police station in Carmel By the Sea for over three hours making my report. Tiny place, white stucco like all the fake Spanish style buildings along there, right off the main drag. Cops there don’t know anything about crime: worst thing that’s happened to them was the occasional bum loitering too long near one of the fancy restaurants, or a teenager stealing a relic out of the Mission.
When I mentioned murder, they thought I was out of my mind. And maybe I was, for getting involved, but the whole scene was bothering me. The body was so dramatic. So obvious. So…romantic, almost. It called to mind ridiculous novels I read when I was young, “Captain Blood” and “Wuthering Heights” and “High Wind Over Jamaica.” It seemed set up, somehow. Theatrical.
The dead man’s name was John Benjamin Walters, and he was a famous film director. And after they let me go, it took all of no time for me to find out that the woman was Flora Fernandez, the famous actress, although she’d been registered as his wife, and that she’d already checked out. The Highland Inn was going to be overrun with the press soon enough, but in the meantime, I went back to the cliffs, looking for clues.
It took a couple of hours, but eventually I found what I was looking for: a cigarette stub, a broken shoelace, and a single diamond earring that could only belong to a film star.
Walters hadn’t come out to the cliff alone, and no one commits suicide with a witness. That final exit line she’d uttered was clearly a set-up, to make onlookers think he had a reason to off himself, but back in L.A. I did some digging and found out that the person who had reason to cliff jump was Flora herself. She was head over heels in debt to the Mob, and what do you know, he’d taken out a life insurance policy that named her as the legatee.
It seems they were at the Highland Inn on their honeymoon. My best guess is that she led that sap to the cliff later that night, and then a third party – some thug she knew from her days as a moll -- came and pushed him over. Seemed like a hard way to go – but unlike Prometheus, at least they could only murder him once.
great story