“Did he talk to you about the show, or the other writers?”
“Not much.” Janice paused. “As you can tell, I wasn’t a big fan of Hollywood. He didn’t want to hear me tell him yet again that he should get out, so he didn’t talk about it much. But of course, he did tell me when that man stole his screenplay.”
“So he didn’t complain to you about the other writers stealing his lines or anything?”
“No. He called them untalented hacks, but he didn’t say anything about stealing from him.”
I hadn’t considered the possibility before, but now I wondered whether those stories of Tommy’s constant accusations were just hype generated after the fact to explain his suicide.
“Had you ever known him to be suicidal before?”
“Never. Oh, he could be morose. He certainly had his moods. But suicidal? Not even a hint of it. That’s why I had an investigator look into his death. I thought it might be a homicide that’d been covered up to look like a suicide.”
I thought people read too much crime fiction. Then it occurred to me that Janice might be a thriller writer, so I kept that thought to myself.
“What happened?”
Janice gave another heavy sigh. “He couldn’t find any evidence of homicide.”
“So you have no doubts?”
“He did a very thorough job. Trust me, I made sure of it.” Janice gave a short, dry bark of a laugh. “I wish I did have doubts. But, no, I don’t.”
Neither did I. I’d read the reports on Tommy’s death and there was no indication that it was anything but a suicide.
“Did Brian know the story?”
Janice sighed again. “Not while his mother was alive. She refused to discuss it. Estelle considered the whole business of that script a sickness, and after Tommy died she was too angry to discuss it. All she wanted to do was get away from it all. She didn’t care anymore whether Tommy was right or wrong. In my opinion, she was profoundly resentful-watching him unravel month by month, and then in the end…well, you know. The truth was, she hated everything and everyone associated with that script. And that meant Hollywood. Her way of dealing with that was to move them out to Arizona and never speak of it.”
I don’t know whether I’d have done the same thing. But I sure didn’t blame her. “And after Brian moved in with you, did you tell him about his father?”
“Eventually, yes. Brian was a little guy when Tommy died. Barely nine years old. All he knew was that mommy seemed angry all the time and he believed it was his responsibility to make her happy. A task doomed to failure. Add that to his confusion over why daddy had abandoned them and you have a very sad child. Estelle was smart enough to get him therapy, and heaven knows she loved him dearly, so in spite of it all, he grew up into a sweet boy. But I could tell he was still confused about what had happened to Tommy. So I had to tell him the truth. I explained to him how and why it all happened, that his father was just too sad to go on living and his mother was angry about losing him because she loved him.”
