Voodoo Ltd by Ross Thomas

Author:Ross Thomas [Thomas, Ross]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

21

During what Georgia Blue later called the Colonel Sanders Seminar, Booth Stallings’s report on the old actor’s two sightings of Ione Gamble’s roadster caused what should have been a stunned silence.

And it would have been if a heavy surf hadn’t been hammering the beach just below the huge living room where Wu, Durant, Overby, Blue and Stallings were dining on $73 worth of Kentucky fried chicken.

Booth Stallings, the designated provisioner, had bought the chicken at the local franchise and served it without apology just before Wu and Durant reported on their hypnotism session with Ione Gamble.

This was followed by Georgia Blue and Otherguy Overby with reports on their respective meetings with Jack Broach, the agent, and Richard Brackeen, the dirty-movie man. Blue and Overby then spelled each other in the telling of their joint encounter with Colleen Cullen at her lie-low bed-and-breakfast inn.

Stallings made his report last, smiled at its effect, dipped a hand into a bucket of chicken, withdrew a drumstick and gnawed it while waiting to see who reacted first.

It turned out to be Artie Wu, who, after shifting around in the big dark red leather chair, cleared his throat and asked, “You say this Mr. Cleveland’s an actor?”

His mouth still full of drumstick, Stallings only nodded.

“How old is he?”

Stallings chewed some more, swallowed and said, “About ten years older than I am, which places him right on senility’s front stoop.”

“And you also say the sheriffs investigators weren’t as much interested in what Mr. Cleveland said as they were in how much he’d been drinking?”

“The guy’s a pacer, Artie. I’d guess he didn’t drink much more the night he saw Ione Gamble’s car twice, if he did, than he would any other night.”

“His memory’s unimpaired, then?”

“I didn’t say that. He admits he can’t exactly remember his one line to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. But he told me to an inch how high this house is and to a penny what it cost him to sue Rice because of it.”

Durant had been standing at the huge window, staring at the lights of Santa Monica. He turned, dropped a chicken bone into an empty KFC bucket and said, “Maybe you didn’t take Ione Gamble back far enough, Artie.”

“Maybe I didn’t,” Wu said.

“But maybe the Goodisons did,” said Georgia Blue, who again was seated on the long couch with Stallings, a bucket of chicken between them.

Wu looked at her, smiled slightly and said, “Is there more, Georgia?”

She first patted her mouth with a paper napkin, then said, “Pure speculation.”

Wu sighed. “Pure or impure, let’s have it.”

“Okay. Ione Gamble told you she didn’t let the Goodisons hypnotize her, right?”

Wu nodded.

“Did you find it difficult to put her into a deep trance?”

“No.”

“Let’s say the Goodisons are as adept as you are.”

“Let’s say they’re more so.”

“Then can we assume the Goodisons might’ve hypnotized Gamble during their second session with her—the one where nobody else was present—without her realizing or remembering it?”

Wu only nodded.

“And while in a deep trance could she have

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