The group around the ambulance moved away. Inside, two paramedics hovered over her, administering oxygen and an IV. Her hand lifted, a weak gesture, and dropped onto her chest. She was alive at least. Then the back doors closed. The ambulance started up and pulled out of the driveway. The group drifted to the other side of the street, moving out of its way. The dome lights flicked on and the siren followed. Then the ambulance screamed down the road and disappeared into the night.
Piper felt sick to her stomach. Tragedy still had a firm grip on Sybil Squire.
Chapter 4
When a San Clemente High School drama teacher took in the abused and neglected Dolores Robles, the teenager’s life changed drastically. Abigail Lightfoot saw something more than extraordinary beauty in the white-haired sophomore. She saw sheer magnetism fueled by raw talent. “My mother sold me to Miss Lightfoot,“ Dolores Robles told an interviewer early in her career. “She hocked me for a hundred dollars, a broken down automobile, and a smelly fox stole.“
Annamaria would try unsuccessfully to reclaim her daughter through the court a year later when Dolores, now Sybil Squire, had begun to make her mark in show business.
— Excerpt from the biography of Sybil Squire: The Platinum Widow
by Russell Cassevantes.
On the morning after the fire, Piper stood on her deck in her robe, sipping coffee. She watched a stream of vehicles next door come and go, a glazier truck, a janitorial van, the housekeeper’s chartreuse VW bug, and wondered how Sybil was doing. Were her injuries serious? At her age, complications could prove fatal. Piper had no idea which hospital she had been taken to in a city with dozens of private clinics and several general hospitals. The housekeeper, she was sure, was the person to ask. Although she hurried with her shower, by the time she had dressed the green VW was gone.
At midmorning, she waited on the deck for Lee, who had their entire day planned. The first stop was Isadora’s, her favorite salon in Century City. Since leaving Gordon, weekly professional salon care seemed extravagant and time consuming to Piper. As the wife of a successful attorney, she was expected to be well groomed, to look the part. Doing it for Gordon had made it a chore. Today, doing it for herself seemed different, special even. She looked forward to the massage and sauna. The tension in the past week had her muscles knotted and achy.
Activity next door had stopped and all was quiet once again. Everyone gone, or so she thought until minutes later when she spotted someone in a second floor room.
She hurried down the staircase and had just passed the Vogt’s side door when Belle came out. “Piper, where’re you off to in such a rush?”
“There’s someone still inside the house,” she said, slowing. “Someone that might know which hospital Sybil was taken to.”
“Hold up, I’ll walk with you.”
A huge orange tomcat slipped out the bushes and joined them.
“Shoo, go away,” Belle said, pushing the cat away with a slippered foot.
“He looks hungry.”
“He’s the neighborhood scrounger, a stray, going from house to house. Don’t feed him. If you do, he’ll hang around. He makes Doc crazy. Shoo, you cheeky littl’ bugger.” She duck-walked with the cat between her furry feet, herding him down the driveway.
Piper heard Dr. J squawking inside the kitchen.
“This neighborhood’s filthy with cats. So many of them wild,” Belle said. “They live off the rodents in the brush and the unsuspecting birds that use the bird feeders. Half the neighborhood has a cat. The other half has a bird feeder.”
The cats preyed on the birds and rodents, the hawk in turn preyed on the cats. The coyotes preyed on them all. “Circle of life,” Piper said.
“Not if I can help it.”
At the mailbox, Belle collected the daily Variety then together they rounded the stone wall and walked up the path to the Squire house.
“I don’t see any vehicles,” Belle said.
“Well, somebody’s there.”
A sheet of bright new glass sparkled in the window frame. The janitorial service had cleaned up most of the yard, hauling away the burned chair and drapes. Smoke residue on the ochre stucco around the window, a thin layer of soot on everything nearby and puddles of brackish water, were all that remained to indicate the previous night’s fire.
Piper knocked on the wooden door. “Hello. Is anyone here! Hello!”
They waited in the shade of the arched porch. Belle rang the doorbell, a loud bell that went on and on. There was no way anyone inside the house could miss it.
“That’s odd. I saw someone in the upstairs rooms just a few minutes ago.”
“Man or woman?”
“Couldn’t tell. A person moving from room to room.”
“Check the backyard. It’s probably someone from the cleanup service.”
“I don’t know. Should we be wandering around? Someone might call the cops.”
“We’re concerned neighbors. Go. Look. I’ll wait here.” She rang the bell again.
Piper left Belle on the porch and walked along the driveway toward the back, the same route she’d taken yesterday. Something was different. Something was missing. The canaries. No sounds of singing. They sang every day as soon as the drapes opened. Canaries were delicate birds, easily traumatized. If last night’s fire and smoke hadn’t gotten to them, the commotion with the firefighters and trucks may have shocked them into silence. Or caused them to drop dead.
She rounded the back of the house to the sunroom. The drapes were closed. They wouldn’t sing in a dark room. It didn’t prove they were all right, but at least it explained their silence. She glanced around the rear yard. No sign of any workers. Turning, she headed back toward the front of the house.
Midway down the driveway, she looked up at the windows on the second story and stopped. The skin at the nape of her neck tightened. Returning was that creepy feeling from the day before, that same eerie sense of being watched. She held her breath and listened. A pair of doves cooed, calling out to one another. A dog barked in a yard beyond the Vogt’s back wall. Normal, everyday sounds, yet the dark feeling pressed down on her. She glanced from window to window. So many windows. Was someone watching her from behind one of them? Her chest felt tight, as if a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around her torso and was squeezing the air out of her. She realized she was holding her breath.
A shadow slid over her from above.
She instinctively ducked, looking up at the same time.
The hawk circled overhead. She sucked in air, filling her lungs, trying to control her pounding heart.
Dammit, she was scaring herself, giving into her own silly fears. No sooner had the beating of her heart begun to slow, when from the front of the house Belle cried out, sending it into overdrive again. She ran to her.
Piper pulled up short when she saw Belle gingerly step over a puddle to peer into the front window. She held her furry slippers in one hand.
“What? What is it…are you okay?” Piper’s voice cracked.
“I can’t believe this. Those are genuine Letecs on that shelf. Q. Letecs.” She motioned for Piper to come closer.
“My god, I thought you were being attacked.”
“Don’t be a ninny. You watch far too many cloak and dagger films. Letecs,” she repeated. “Come look. I wanted to start a collection of his figurines, but they were much too pricey. Way out of my league, not to mention impossible to get these days unless you know a collector. She must have two dozen or more. Oh, I hate her.”
Piper exhaled, relieved. Belle leaped back and pulled Piper toward the window. Piper held onto a branch of an evergreen tree, its sap sticky on her palm, the sharp scent of pine filling her head. She tried to step over the puddle and slid into it. Mud squished between the toes of her sandals. “Damn.” she merely glanced at the figurines, which held little interest for her, and instead scanned the room. Her gaze stopped on the blackened patch of carpet on the other side of the room. “That must be where Dr. Oates
found her.” Piper pointed.
“Ummm. Probably. She’s damn lucky he happened to be driving by and saw the smoke,” Belle said. “With the park across the street and the way this house is situated on the corner behind all these trees, this front part is hidden from both neighboring houses. Even if you’d been home, Piper, I doubt you would have spotted the smoke in time.”
“What’s lucky is that a doctor pulled her out of the house.”
“Well, he’s not that kind of doctor. Oates is a plastic surgeon. He has a swank office in Brentwood. However, let me tell you, if I were looking to go under the knife, I’d look elsewhere. He cut the nerve in Paula Wintrie’s eyelid and now it droops, which is criminal because Paula’s eyes were her one and only good feature and —”
“Belle, we were talking about the doctor saving Sybil,” Piper cut in.
“Oh. Right. She was unconscious, but breathing. I overheard Oates telling the paramedics he thought she passed out from excessive alcohol consumption, and not the smoke. He smelled it on her breath. In other words, the ol’ gal was three sheets to the wind. Drinking and smoking, followed by loss of consciousness…quite a lethal combination, that. The firefighters lifted a cigarette butt from the smoldering chair.”
She gave Piper a hand and pulled her from the puddle.
“You know, it’s not the first time she’s had too much to drink and suffered the consequences. Emily Crammer, her neighbor on the other side, said she fell down the stairs early this year. Sybil’s housekeeper found her the next morning lying on the bottom step with a nasty bump on her head. Ambulance carted her off to hospital. She was fortunate to get only bumps and bruises. Drunks are resilient, you know? Like cats, nine lives and all that.”
“A drinker.” It was not a question. Sybil had kept the drapes open late into the night. For the past week she’d seen her roam the house every night, cigarette in one hand, glass in the other.
“Drinker? Ha! Your shining star is a stumbling calamity.”
Before leaving the grounds, they called out and knocked several more times. No one answered.
*
While Sybil recovered in the hospital, the housekeeper came everyday to air out the house, collect the mail and, Piper assumed, to care for the canaries. Their sweet singing resumed the following day, though not as spirited as before. The housekeeper came early and left before Piper rolled out of bed, the sound of the VW waking her as she drove away. Piper learned from Dr. Oates that Sybil had been taken to a small private hospital in West Hollywood. When she called the nurse’s station to inquire about her condition, she was told the patient was recovering well, but was not taking calls or visitors.
Late one balmy evening, unable to sleep, she went out onto the deck. From there she caught a glimpse of a flashlight beam moving around in the sunroom, the only room in the house next door where the drapes now remained open around the clock. She called the police and reported a possible breakin and burglary. A police cruiser responded within twenty minutes but found no sign of an intruder. If the person with the flashlight had returned in the subsequent days, he was careful to keep his nighttime roaming a secret from prying eyes.
Chapter 5
The Star Tattler — January 1942 [Archive]
Sources report the estranged mother of sixteen-year-old Sybil Squire was forcefully escorted off the RKO lot yesterday after causing a scene outside of the actress’s dressing room. Annamaria Robles, drunk, cursing, and destroying props on Stage 54, threatened to kill herself if she couldn’t talk to her daughter. “I don’t have a mother,“ Miss Squire told our source.
—Cricket Summers: Columnist to the Stars
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*
Julia Crane
Moving to the Middle East
Separation was normal in my marriage. My husband was in the military, and usually gone six months a year. We had adapted quite well to the schedule. Of course, we had the normal period of adjustment when he would return, but that was part of the lifestyle. We were looking forward to his retirement, and being able to spend more time together as a family. That didn’t work out quite as we expected. My husband was offered a job in Afghanistan that would set us up to really retire. The kicker? It would last a year. We thought the sacrifice would be worth it, so off he went. One year became a year and a half.
While he was gone I took care of our small business, running a gym. I loved it. It was very time-consuming, but it was also very rewarding. It started to wear on me only when my pre-teen children complained that I was always at the gym, and never had time for them. Finally, I told my husband that it was time for him to come home.
He put in his notice and started a stateside job. Though the new job still required him to be gone for six months of the year, the absences were in manageable blocks of two weeks. When he was home, he would take care of the gym and I would have time off. It was perfect.
Then he got a call from a friend, with a job offer that was just too good to turn down…in Dubai. We discussed it, and decided he should take the job, even though we had a new one-year-old.
Not long after my husband left for Dubai, I was at the breaking point. I felt trapped with the business, our teens, and a one-year-old always needing my attention. I had no personal space, and I’m a person that requires time alone, or else I get cranky.
As luck would have it, the new job offered to bring family members over to live in Dubai. My first thought about moving to the Middle East? “Yeah, right.” However, I researched Dubai and was surprised at what I found. The country seemed very modern, and the schools sounded good.
So I told my husband, “Ok, we’re coming.” While I was both nervous and excited, I was ready for a change, and moving to the Middle East sounded like just the adventure I needed.
When we got off the plane in October, the hot air hit my face and it felt like I had walked into a sauna. I thought, “Uh oh, what have I agreed to?” Yes, the heat is hard to handle, but you learn to live your life around it. We do most things early in the morning or after the sun sets. It is very much a nighttime culture. The city is beautiful and the Arabian Sea is breathtaking. I have grown comfortable living here, and easily call it my home. Though I can now see myself here for a few years, there are of course many things that I miss about America, and most of them involve food. Some things are just impossible to find: I’ve searched high and low for a Butterfinger, with no luck.
After a couple of months of enjoying my newfound free time, I eventually started to twiddle my thumbs. I was used to being busy, and with all the free time I needed to find something to fill the void. I saw an article that went into detail about how e-books had flung open many doors for writers. I thought that was interesting, and I mentioned it to my husband and he said he had also seen many articles saying much the same thing. I jokingly said that I was going to write a novel. My husband, who believes I can do anything, thought it was a great idea. I have always enjoyed writing even though I had not written much since having children. As a teen, I used to mail short stories to magazines and such, and like most avid readers, I always dreamed of someday writing a novel. Now I had my chance.
That same night I sat down to write, and the story quickly formed in my mind. I knew I wanted to write a young adult novel that would involve my Irish roots. The story just seemed to form itself: I would get ideas at random times and rush to write them down. It was frustrating at times, because I need relative quiet to focus. As you can imagine, with two teens and a two-year-old, finding quiet time is not easy. I wrote most of “Coexist” late at night when everyone was asleep. It took approximately three months to write the first draft, while the revision and editing process lasted longer than the initial writing.
A great part of the writing process for me has been interacting with other writers. I have met some amazing people from online writing groups and chat rooms. I learned a great
deal in a short amount of time. I don’t think this undertaking would have been nearly as fun without the community I have found. Moving halfway across the world has allowed me to have both more time with family, and the ability to pursue a dream I’ve had since a child.
About the Chick
Julia Crane is the author of the Coexist and Conflicted, Books 1 and 2 of Keegan’s Chronicles. She has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. Julia has believed in magical creatures since the day her grandmother first told her an Irish tale. Growing up her mother greatly encouraged reading and using your imagination. Although she’s spent most of her life on the US east coast, she currently lives in Dubai with her husband and three children.
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Coexist
Julia Crane
An Excerpt
Chapter 1
Keegan’s call echoed in Rourk’s mind as he was finishing his set. She always came to him when he least expected her, after which he was unable to focus on little else but her. His hands gripped the bar tightly and he tried to ignore the pull of her thoughts. He tried to focus on training, on the cold steel and the smell of sweat in the room—anything that could take his mind off of the one girl who owned it.
Taking a deep breath, he shook his head and unclenched his jaw, quickly finishing up the set. He had to force his hands to uncurl from the bar; it was almost painful. The tips of his fingers were bloodless; a fine metaphor for how Keegan usually made him feel. He wiped his face and tossed the towel in the bin—the rest of the workout would have to wait for tonight.
Using one of his secondary gifts, he closed his eyes and visualized her face. It was nothing for him to picture her, to bring her into focus like a high-powered lens. Rourk smiled. She was at her favorite spot; a private corner of paradise on her parents’ land.
Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories Page 66
