Silent Murders

by Mary Miley

  I had to admit they would.

  “Or the murderer, he could think we saw something, too. He killed Esther. He could think that we saw him or that Esther told us something about him.”

  More Spanish. I didn’t have to understand the words to figure out they were considering leaving town. Frankly, I thought it was a good idea.

  “Thank you for coming, miss,” said Miguel Cisneros, taking off his apron and showing me the door.

  “Check the newspapers until you read they caught the killer,” I suggested. “Then you’ll know when it’s safe to come home.”

  His eyes widened with surprise. “You speak Spanish?”

  “I speak common sense.”

  11

  When I got back to Pickford-Fairbanks with the camellias, my boss said Douglas Fairbanks wanted to see me in his dressing room, pronto. I scurried across the lot and rapped on his door.

  “Come!”

  Dressed in black, the Son of Zorro was pacing the small room like a caged panther. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and heavy with tension. I sat on the edge of the extra chair as bidden.

  “Lorna McCall’s dead.”

  “Oh, my God, she is? Um … who’s Lorna McCall?”

  “A very pretty, very talented actress. One of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1923.” I knew what he was referring to: Myrna aspired to this annual list of up-and-coming young actresses believed to be on the threshold of success. As the supposed next generation of film stars, Baby Stars were lavished with parties and attention—and parts.

  “I take it she was at Heilmann’s party, too?”

  “Yes.” He ground out the cigarette and lit another. “Her maid found her this morning, drowned. Her head in the toilet.”

  I winced. “Is she with Paramount?” Or, was she?

  He gave an affirmative grunt. “Zukor and the police are calling it an accidental drowning for the time being. Of course, they’re still holding off on Heilmann’s death announcement. Neighbors who saw the ambulance think he was taken to the hospital Sunday morning instead of to the morgue. And meanwhile, the police have started questioning a few party guests, asking who left when, so rumors are flying. It’s no use; I don’t know why Zukor’s so determined to delay the news. He has convinced the police to hold off until Heilmann’s relatives can be notified. That’s a laugh! The man doesn’t have any relatives except for a couple ex-wives. Zukor’s fooling himself if he thinks it will be less damaging to have an announcement of an arrest appear at the same time. This isn’t the Hungarian Empire, where you can order newspapers around.”

  “Maybe Lorna was the last to leave the party, except for the killer, and she could have identified him when the police reached her. Like Esther. So he had to silence her too. Or maybe Lorna was the killer and she committed suicide in remorse.” I thought of the guest list that the police were compiling, with approximate departure times on it so they could figure out who left early and who stayed till the end. Those at the end of the list might have seen something they didn’t realize was significant; they could be in danger without knowing it.

  “What if the killer isn’t finished?” said Douglas. “What if there are others who noticed something or figured something out?”

  I was already there. “If they saw or suspected anything, they’d go to the police, but not if they don’t know Bruno Heilmann was murdered.”

  A bell signaled the end of break. For once, Douglas ignored it.

  “I’m calling Zukor right now and telling him this has got to get in tomorrow’s papers, come what may. All of the party guests could be in danger and not realize it. I’ve got to protect Mary.”

  “You and Miss Pickford left so early, neither of you could have seen anything significant. I’m sure she’s in no danger. So did Jack and Marilyn. But Lottie was still there when I left around midnight.” I thought again of that guest list and how useful it could be. I thought of my erstwhile suitor, Carl Delaney, and said, “I think I know someone who’ll show me that guest list. And I sure would like to know more about Lorna McCall’s death.”

  “Have at it. I’ll tell Frank Richardson you’ll be doing some more work for me. Someone else can hold his megaphone today. Maybe you’ll learn something—anything—that will help end this nightmare.”

  “I’ll try. Tell me this: who would want to kill Bruno Heilmann?”

  “Who wouldn’t? The man bullied staff, insulted actors, and demanded sex from every actress he worked with. And I’ve always suspected he was the one who supplied the dope that killed Wallace Reid a couple years ago. Zukor put up with him because he was a brilliant director. The best in the business. But I’d guess half the people at the party would have cheerfully shot him if they thought they could get away with it.”

  I had to ask. “Including Lottie?”

  He gave me a sharp stare. “Lottie was home with us.”

  “I hate to say it, but she was awfully upset that night, and I wasn’t the only one who heard her threaten to kill him.”

  “Just talk. Just an expression. We all use it without meaning it.”

  12

  Carl Delaney was sitting in a back booth facing the front door and stirring his coffee when I walked into Lucky’s, a rundown diner catty-corner to the Cahuenga police station. Spotting him before he could signal, I made my way past the counter and slid into the opposite bench. On the radio, a pianist was tearing through “Dizzy Fingers.” I ordered coffee. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, and the place was empty except for a few cops at the counter.

  “You said you wanted to swap,” he prompted me in a cold voice. There was no one near, but we kept the volume down.

  The stony stare from his once-warm brown eyes warned me off the approach I’d taken. My proposal to swap information had offended him. Carl Delaney had been helpful to me yesterday at the police station—at some risk to himself—and I was repaying him by trying to dicker. I couldn’t afford to lose his support, even if it meant showing all my cards without getting anything in return.

  “Only in a manner of speaking.” I beamed, purposely misinterpreting his frown. “I have some information I know you’ll like, and I was hoping you’d be able to share some things with me, but here’s my news: I remembered the name of the caterers who worked the Heilmann party. It was the Cisneros Brothers.”

  He visibly relaxed. “Oh, yeah? Cisneros Brothers. Swell. That’ll save lots of footwork. We’d have found them sooner or later but sooner’s better. You just wake up and remember?”

  “I was out early this morning buying flowers for the studio and a Cisneros truck happened to drive by. It sparked my gray cells. And, um, I may as well confess, I followed the truck to their kitchen and talked to the two brothers.”

  “And?” he asked warily.

  I squirmed a little. “I’m thinking they won’t be there when you arrive. I don’t speak Spanish, mind you, but I had the impression that … well, between the police taking them for suspects and the murderer taking them for witnesses, they decided they’d be better off out of town. The truth is, Esther said nothing to them on the ride home. They were shocked that she was dead. They don’t know a thing. They didn’t see anyone after the party. She was the one who cleaned up the living room and patio while they did the kitchen. I think the killer followed her home in the Cisneros truck after the party. The brother who was driving thought he might have been followed.”

  Carl played with his coffee before meeting my eye. “That’s good to know.”

  “They didn’t hear any gunshots.”

  “There was only one shot, far as we know. We’ll question the neighbors as soon as we get the go-ahead. Maybe they heard something. I’ll tell you one thing, the killer was a good shot. He put a single bullet right in the back of Heilmann’s head, and from a distance, according to the doctor. No powder burns. No stray bullets, either, not in the walls or anyplace.”

  “There isn’t any reason to suspect he was killed during a robbery attempt, is there?”

  Carl shook his h
ead. “Not with seventy-eight dollars in his wallet, an ivory toothpick and a Waltham pocket watch in his trousers, and a two-carat diamond ring on his hand.”

  And a truckload of dope upstairs. “There was hooch at the party. And dope.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Oh, so the detectives found the drugs when they searched the house?”

  “A couple opium pipes, some traces of dope. Several cases of hooch, although after they finished passing it around the precinct, the evidence turned into empties.”

  So they hadn’t noticed the huge stash in the bedroom? Inconceivable. Even a cursory search of the upstairs would have turned up that bedroom full of dope. There was only one explanation: the detectives themselves had stolen the stash and made no mention of it in their report. Can’t say I was shocked. Crooked cops far outnumbered honest ones. Or had the killer taken the dope? It made a darn good motive.

  I was right about one thing. The nothing-to-hide approach melted Carl’s defenses. I continued candidly, “I was wondering if you’ve finished compiling that guest list.”

  “Just getting started. We got about a hundred names from you and your friend, the Pickfords, and a couple others Mr. Fairbanks mentioned, but we haven’t been allowed to work the list yet. It’s kinda awkward asking people when they left a party and not telling them why we want to know, but … officially, Heilmann’s murder isn’t public information. Someone thinks keeping quiet for a while will help catch the killer. Not sure why. Anyway, as soon as we get the go-ahead, Chief wants us to question every single person who was there, and that’ll take a few days. We’ll work the list backward, since the important names are the ones who left last—the ones who might have seen something—and we’ve got that much pretty firm. We’ll start with them.”

  “Could I see the list?”

  He gave it some thought. “I don’t know why not. You provided some of those names yourself. There’s a copy across the street. Order me another coffee when the gal comes by. I’ll be right back.”

  A few minutes later he handed me a four-page typed list. It was a carbon, probably the bottom of seven with letters like fuzzy caterpillars, but still legible.

  “Mind if I copy the last page?”

  “Suit yourself. Maybe you’ll think of some more to add.”

  I used his pencil and the back of a Lucky’s menu, and finished in a few minutes. As I suspected, Lorna McCall fell toward the end of the list. So did Lottie Pickford, despite what Douglas had said about her being with them that night, and several others I knew. They had been among the last to leave. Among the last to see Bruno Heilmann alive. Among the ones who saw his killer? Had one of them killed him?

  “Did you answer the call to Lorna McCall’s apartment?” I asked, handing him back his pencil.

  Carl shook his head. “Bates and Marconi did. They brought in the maid. The detectives are questioning her now.” He saw me grimace and said, “They won’t be hard on her. They don’t suspect her of anything, like they did you. She’s just some middle-aged foreigner who had the bad luck to walk into the girl’s apartment first. She’ll be released shortly.”

  That gave me an idea. A few pointed glances at the clock on the wall and hints that I needed to return to work eased Carl out of the booth and back to his beat. But instead of catching the next streetcar to the studio, I settled down on a bench in the full morning sun where I could see the front door of the police station, and I waited.

  It was only a half hour or so before she came down the steps, a brown-haired woman dressed in the gray garb of a domestic. She came across the street and headed for the bus stop. I fell in behind her.

  “Oh, they let you go, too?” I said to her as I caught up. Naturally, she looked puzzled, and I quickly gave her the impression that I had just come from the police station. “I saw you inside. They were questioning me, too. These murders are so horrible!”

  After a few minutes of comparing stories—Carl was right; they treated her much better than they had treated me yesterday—I noticed aloud that it was nearly lunchtime and wondered if she was as hungry as I was. I said I’d be honored to treat her at Lucky’s.

  Her name was Magda Szabo. A solid woman and big-boned, she had the appearance of a sturdy Old World peasant that needed only a scarf tied under her chin to complete the image. She asked me where I worked. Turns out her husband was a cameraman for Vitagraph Studios. Their children were grown; she had been working as a domestic for young actresses for five years, ever since she and her family came to Hollywood from Hungary. Same country as Adolph Zukor, and no, they didn’t know him. Hungary is a big place, it turns out. Her English was pretty good … better than my Hungarian anyway. By the time our meat loaf and potatoes arrived, we were old friends.

  Food is a good antidote for shock, and Magda had been quite shocked to find her young employer dead in the bathroom that morning. She needed little encouragement to spill the beans.

  “Only three months and one week I work there,” she said, shaking her head in sorrow. “Such a pretty girl and so kind. Like angel she was to look at, but…” She made tsk-tsk sounds with her tongue and sighed. “Too much men, too much hooch, too much dope, too much party, but I am so sad for her to die like that, her head in the toilet.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “First I think it is accident—that too much hooch make her sick after ze party, so she go to throw up in ze toilet and pass out, fall front face into ze toilet and drown. Because when I come this morning, there is no broken lock, no looking like a fight, no broken things all over. Looks nice everywhere.”

  “So you found her body in the bathroom?”

  “And I call ze police right away. Two police come fast. They bring me here to ask questions. Then I understand maybe it is not accident that she is dead. The police say she maybe kill herself”—and she made the sign of the cross at the thought—“or maybe someone kill her. Then I remember—oh, no! Two cups with coffee and two plates on ze coffee table were there! But I wash them first thing this morning and clean kitchen. Then I go to clean bathroom, and then I see Miss McCall. Too late.”

  Magda’s efficiency had robbed the police of their chance to find fingerprints that might have identified who had been visiting Lorna.

  “Zey very angry at me but…” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “I just come in today and do my job. I never think Miss McCall is dead in ze bathroom. Ze doctor say she is dead ze day before.”

  “Since Sunday?”

  “Sunday.” She nodded. “Ze doctor say late afternoon.”

  With some relief, I realized I had been in police custody during those hours. Finally, a death they couldn’t connect to me!

  “But suicide?” Magda continued. “No. There are easy ways to do suicide. Miss McCall have bottles of pills in ze bathroom, rat poison in ze cupboard, gas in ze oven. If a girl want to do suicide, she never choose suicide in ze toilet.”

  That made sense to me. “Were the coffee cups empty when you picked them up?” I asked.

  Magda frowned. “One was empty. One was half full.”

  “Was there any lipstick on either cup?”

  “On one cup, yes.”

  “Which one? The empty one or the half-full one?”

  “Half-full.”

  “And the plates?’

  “One big plate with breakfast cake. I put it away. Two small plates with crumbs.”

  There had been someone at Lorna’s apartment Sunday afternoon, someone she trusted enough to let in, someone she knew well enough to serve food and drink. It could have been a friend who had left after eating and didn’t know Lorna would accidentally pass out in the toilet. Then again, it could have been the same person who killed Bruno Heilmann and who realized Lorna, like Esther, knew too much to leave alive. If that were the case, though, he was disturbingly versatile, with a different manner of killing each time.

  Eliminating suicide left two possibilities: accidental death and murder. I staged both in
my head.

  A friend—man or woman—drops in and finds Lorna suffering the effects of the previous night’s excesses. She is staggering about, confused and ill. The friend makes coffee, cuts some cake, urges Lorna to drink up and eat something, and advises her to go to bed. If the friend is a man, he empties his coffee cup, the one without lipstick, and Lorna sips a little from the other cup. If it is a woman, she drinks some from the lipstick cup and Lorna, who has not yet put on her face, empties the other one. The friend leaves. Lorna feels sick, goes to the toilet to vomit, passes out, and falls forward to her death. For this story to be true, the honest, innocent friend would step forward as soon as he or she heard about Lorna’s death and tell the police, “I was there moments before the accident, and Lorna was in a bad way,” or something like that. Lorna’s death was not yet widely known, but we would soon see if anyone stepped forward.

  In the alternate version of my imaginary scenario, a person drops by and finds Lorna still woozy from the party. The person makes coffee and cuts some cake, or maybe Lorna is able to do it. The person is not a stranger to Lorna. The lipstick on only one cup could mean that the guest was male and Lorna had, indeed, put on her makeup that morning. If it is the man who killed Heilmann, he wants to find out how much Lorna saw or knows, and he will kill her if need be. Or he has come purposely to strangle her or hit her on the head with something heavy—surely he wouldn’t risk the noise of a gunshot on a Sunday in a busy apartment building. Too ill to be suspicious, Lorna goes into the bathroom. The person follows and seizes the unexpected opportunity to make her death look like an accident. If it is not the man who shot Heilmann, who else would want to kill Lorna? I’d have to ask around to see if Lorna had any serious enemies.

  When I got back to Pickford-Fairbanks after lunch, I didn’t see Douglas Fairbanks—they were filming the scenes in Don Fabrique’s headquarters that didn’t include him, and he was somewhere rehearsing whip tricks with that Australian fella, Snowy Baker—so I slipped back into my role as assistant script girl, helping make the set exactly the same as it had been the last time we had worked on this sequence. Douglas reappeared in mid-afternoon and called me aside.