Silent Murders

by Mary Miley

  “What have you learned?”

  Briefly, I told him.

  “Well, I’ve learned a few things myself. For one, the news will be in tomorrow’s papers. By the way, do you have plans for this evening?”

  “Plans? No.”

  “Good. Then you must come to dinner with us. Very informal. There will be a few others there. Mary enjoyed meeting you Saturday night and told me to invite you.”

  “I’d be delighted.” Giddy was more like it, although I knew very well the reason I was included. They wanted to talk about the murders. By tomorrow, all of Los Angeles would be talking about the murders and those immoral “movies” whose dissolute lives would have embarrassed the sober citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, for a while longer, I was one of the few who knew the score.

  “Good. Come at— Oh, you don’t have an automobile, of course. I’ll send my driver to get you at six.”

  13

  Frank Richardson kept us running long beyond the finish of the scene with the barefoot dancer in the cantina, and I barely had time to take a quick bath and change into the blue and gold frock I had decided to wear to Pickfair.

  To Pickfair! The utter impossibility of someone like me actually being invited to this legendary Hollywood mansion gave my preparations a dreamlike quality. I handled it as if I were preparing for the stage, choosing the appropriate makeup, costume, and hairdo for my role as a young woman going to dine with royalty. Since Douglas had assured me that the evening would be neither formal nor late—they liked to be in bed by ten—I took care not to overdress the part.

  On the stroke of six, Melva, Helen, and Lillian gave a collective whoop as the Fairbanks Rolls-Royce pulled alongside the curb. They hung shamelessly about the door, whistling as I minced my way along in my very high heels and allowed myself to be handed into the backseat by the same solemn-faced driver who had driven me home from the police station yesterday.

  We drove down Sunset Boulevard, a wide street split down the middle by a bridle path and lined on both sides with pepper trees. Turning right at the high school, we motored past the Moorish splendor of the Hollywood Hotel, continuing north on a route that afforded a glimpse of the great white HOLLYWOODLAND sign in the distant hills.

  “A real eyesore, isn’t it, miss?” said the driver, noticing the direction of my gaze. “Rich fella by the name of Chandler put up those letters a couple years back. You know who he is, don’t you? The Times publisher? I went up to see those letters when they had the dedication and lit up the whole thing for the first time, you know. They say there’s forty thousand lightbulbs in that sign, can you believe it? And those letters don’t look too big from down here, but each one of ’em is fifty feet tall, no fooling. And what’s it all for?”

  I admitted I had no idea. The far-off letters were part of the Hollywood landscape I had accepted without question.

  “Advertising. All that money to advertise his housing development there on the old Sherman and Clark Ranch. Well, there was a ruckus when he lit it up, I don’t mind telling you. Spoils the scenery, I say, and so did a lot of others. Chandler promised to take it down as soon as all the lots had sold, so the fussing went away. And when that happens, I’ll say ‘Good riddance!’”

  “Are the lots selling well?” From my vantage point, the scrubby hills looked pretty barren.

  “Well, they laid down some roads and brought over some Eye-talian masons to build stone walls. I think the first houses are going up now. They’ll cost a pretty penny, I’ll say that.”

  We motored along North Highland, passing the Hollywood Bowl, and continued into the hills until the macadam turned to a dirt road that led up San Ysidro Canyon. Winter rains had turned last fall’s drab landscape into a spring paradise with vast swaths of sand blossoms and desert gold. The rush of our tires frightened a few brown rabbits into showing us their white cottontails as they scampered away from the edge of the road. In the distance, several deer stopped grazing long enough to fix curious stares on our car before they returned to foraging.

  “Well, miss, here we are, safe and sound. That house across the way is Mr. Charlie Chaplin’s. It’s new.”

  I didn’t give Chaplin’s mansion a second glance. Who would, when Pickfair loomed ahead? There, at the road’s end sat Douglas Fairbanks’s wedding present to Mary Pickford, remodeled and expanded the year they married. Not a soul in these forty-eight states could fail to recognize the Tudor mansion, not after pictures of the house and gardens and swimming pool and stables and pond had been featured in every magazine on the newsstand, indeed, at newsstands all over the world. Pickfair was Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks’s retreat from the pressures of Hollywood—no one but cactuses lived in remote Beverly Hills, so they could ride their horses, run along desert paths, take walks, and live like normal people, away from prying eyes.

  A butler met me at the top of the stairs and escorted me through a pale lime living room with lemon floor-to-ceiling curtains. To my left was a fireplace the size of a small cave; to my right, a gleaming white grand piano. “This way,” he said, indicating the open doors that led to the patio where, as I knew from publicity shots, you could see the Pacific Ocean on a clear day. Beyond the patio, lit by cheerful gaslights, lay the famous out-of-door swimming pool edged with white sand. The scene nearly took my breath away.

  “Welcome, Jessie.” Miss Pickford rose from her rattan chaise to greet me. I said hello to Stella DeLanti, who was playing the queen in our Zorro picture, and to Douglas’s brother Robert, the film’s general manager, both of whom I knew from the set, then I was introduced to Ernst Lubitsch. I had heard the name. Miss Pickford had brought him, and his wife, Helene, to Hollywood from Germany a couple years ago to be one of her directors, and he was well-known in film circles. Last, Miss Pickford turned to a plump girl with a round, pretty face whose baggy frock did little to disguise her fat stomach. She appeared to be about fifteen and was clearly bored by the adults around her. I assumed she was someone’s daughter.

  “Jessie, this is Lillita Chaplin. Lita, dear, Jessie Beckett works on the Zorro picture with Douglas. Charlie and Douglas will be along as soon as they finish their tennis game. Do have a seat and some lemonade, Jessie. I know it’s been a long day for you.”

  Geez Louise, the kid was Chaplin’s wife! His second, married just a few months ago in Mexico under somewhat mysterious circumstances. And she wasn’t fat. She was pregnant. Now I believed those rumors about Lita being underage. Even malicious gossip is true sometimes: Charlie Chaplin had an itch for young girls. His first wife, too, had been little more than a child. I felt sorry for Lita and tried without success to engage her in conversation.

  A shout from below signaled the end of the tennis match, and fifteen minutes later, Douglas Fairbanks and his best friend, Charlie Chaplin, sauntered up to the patio, no longer in tennis whites but wearing linen knickers, trim V-neck sweater vests, and matching bow ties, and still arguing amiably about the score. At that same moment, Jack Pickford and his wife, Marilyn Miller, arrived, and behind them came two seasoned performers I had seen at Heilmann’s party, Paul Corrigan and Faye Gordon, the woman who had lost her temper and slapped the young actress. I took a close look at Faye, Miss Pickford’s friend. Tonight she looked poised and confident, as if good news had come and carried her away.

  “And he was a fine director, too.” Ernst Lubitsch’s voice carried over the others. “Zukor asked me to finish the film he was working on but I had to refuse because I have already promised…”

  “… but do you really think the same person killed all three?” That was Marilyn Miller.

  “It could be three unrelated incidents, couldn’t it?” asked her husband, Jack Pickford. “I mean, one of Heilmann’s scorned lovers shoots him—or maybe a jealous husband, God knows, there were enough of them. Then Lorna McCall accidentally drowns in the toilet. And the other woman … some waitress, wasn’t she?… is killed during a robbery. I don’t understand all the fuss.”

  Stella DeLanti chimed in, “T
here wouldn’t be any fuss if all three hadn’t been at the same party. Both women must have seen something that could have identified the murderer. That means he was at the party. I was at the party, too, so maybe I talked to him! But I didn’t see anything suspicious.”

  “You’d better hope not!” Jack said, sneering. “You could be next!”

  She gave him a dirty look.

  “Jessie, tell us about poor Esther,” said Douglas in an effort to deflect a spat. “You found her body.”

  All eyes were on me. “Ooooo, how awful! Do tell,” gushed Helene Lubitsch, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw young Lita inch closer and tilt her head toward me.

  “Esther Frankel’s death was in today’s paper. At first, no one connected her with the caterers at the party. I had the misfortune to find her body when I visited her house on Sunday morning. She was a vaudeville friend of my mother’s, and I was just paying a call for old times’ sake. Her door was open a crack, so I let myself in.”

  The image of Esther’s body was so vivid I had to pause. Here I was, talking about her like she was the entertainment at a party. I hardly knew the woman, but this seemed callous and gossipy. In that instant I decided to leave off the details of her death out of respect for her life. But when I remembered what a vaudeville stalwart she had been, I figured maybe she wouldn’t mind being the center of entertainment once more. I cleared my throat and continued.

  “She was dead. I called the police, of course. It seems to me that she must have seen Heilmann’s killer while she was cleaning up, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Maybe he shot Heilmann and then followed the caterer’s truck to Esther’s apartment, picked the lock, and surprised her. If he hadn’t killed her, she would have remembered him the moment she learned of Heilmann’s death.”

  Stella DeLanti said, “Then the killer murdered poor Lorna McCall for the same reason, I’m sure. What if he’s not finished? What if others at the party saw him and could figure out who he was?”

  “Oh, there you are, David,” Miss Pickford said, looking past me into the house where I saw the outline of another guest standing in the doorway overlooking the patio, methodically surveying the gathering before joining it. “How good of you to come tonight. Come in, or should I say, come out!” Her pleasant laughter made me think of a melody. “Everyone, this is David Carr.”

  My stomach lurched at the name. It couldn’t be. I looked closer. It was.

  The newcomer stepped out of the shadows onto the flagstone with the confidence of a man who had seen the world and found it everywhere agreeable. He was not tall, but he carried himself in a way that added several inches to his height. A cool gust of wind coming off the ridge tousled his hair. He carelessly pushed it back off his forehead and smiled. It took every ounce of my theatrical training to keep from gasping with surprise. Different but familiar last name, and a face I would never forget.

  “You’ve met Douglas already, of course, but you haven’t met the others, I think,” Miss Pickford was saying to the group. Her gentle voice sounded miles away, drowned out by the blood drumming in my ears. “David is new to Hollywood, and he’s collaborating with my current film, Little Annie Rooney.”

  David’s eyes swept the guests’ faces until they found me. They crinkled in recognition. Then he winked as if we shared some private joke. He wasn’t at all surprised to see me.

  David. The man who had rescued me after my terrible injury in Oregon last fall and saved my life at great risk to his own. The man who possessed more good looks, charm, and money than a fairy-tale prince. The man who was kind to children, attentive to old ladies, and beloved by dogs.

  The man who was certainly not a film collaborator, but Portland’s king of crime, a gangster boss with ties to bootlegging, gambling, prostitution, bribery, and probably worse. The man whose every word to me so far had been a lie.

  14

  “You’re a hard person to find,” said David, drawing me aside at the first opportunity. “Hey, you’re covered in goose bumps. Want my jacket?”

  “No, thank you.” It was not the cool night air that made me shiver.

  “You changed your name, Jessie Beckett,” he said, pointedly emphasizing the last name.

  “So did you, David Carr.” It had taken only seconds to steel myself to play this cautiously. I would be cool but polite, treating him like a new acquaintance until I figured out what he was up to.

  “I needed to be hard to find. I decided to take my real father’s name. So did you, I see.”

  “At the risk of sounding dramatic, I should thank you for saving my life. You left before I could say it.”

  “Aw, shucks, ma’am,” he drawled in his best cowboy lingo, “’twarn’t nothing.” Then he dropped the show and stepped back a little. “Let me look at you good and proper. How’s the leg?”

  “All mended, good as new. The arm, too.” In spite of my resolve, his concern made me feel warm inside.

  “You look like a million bucks. Ten million. I don’t mind saying, though, you had me scared stiff. Honest, you were beat up pretty bad back there, and I was afraid I would never see those turquoise eyes sparkle up at me again. It tore me up leaving right after I’d found you, not being able to stay and make sure you were going to make it, but I had about twelve hours before the cops would be on me. Did you get my message?”

  “Your mother’s locket? Yes, it’s safe, back at my house.”

  “I knew you’d take my meaning. I wanted to tell you that I’d find you after life settled down, but I was afraid anything written would find its way to the cops, and they’d know to watch you until I showed up. Then your old granny wouldn’t say where you’d gone, so I had to run down some of your vaudeville friends and worm it out of them.”

  “Who?”

  “Zeppo Marx.”

  “How long have you been in Hollywood?”

  “A few weeks. I wanted to get established before I looked you up. Jessie,” he said, lifting my chin with his fingers and looking anxiously into my eyes, “I had feelings about you from the first time we met. I can’t—”

  “I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” said Miss Pickford, joining us, her eyes gleaming with matchmaking ambition.

  David beamed and saved me the reply. “Jessie and I met last fall in Oregon. It’s a pure pleasure to find her here and renew the acquaintance.”

  But she was looking past us both. “Oh, Lottie, I’m so glad you decided to come downstairs tonight,” she said, turning toward the house where her sister had appeared. Lottie seemed not to hear her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, attention please. I have a request!” Everyone turned. Framed in the doorway and swaying gently on her feet, Lottie Pickford stood in her gauzy white frock as if she were on a stage waiting for silence from her audience before she continued with her act. “I don’t want to hear any talk tonight of … of … him.” Tears squeezed from her big brown eyes and she motioned with her hands that she was too choked up to continue.

  The tightening around Douglas Fairbanks’s mouth told me he wasn’t pleased to see his sister-in-law at dinner, and far less so to have her dictate the scope of the conversation. Mary Pickford, however, couldn’t have been more solicitous.

  “Of course not, dearest,” she crooned. “I’m so pleased you’re feeling well enough to join us. Perfect timing. We are going into the dining room in a few moments.” And she linked her arm through her sister’s and led her onto the patio.

  I surveyed the guests with mounting anxiety. Was David to be my dinner partner? And sit beside me all evening? If he did, would I be able to keep my wits about me and swallow my food?

  I’d’ve bet money that even the king of England didn’t eat every night like we ate at Pickfair that night. I had to pinch myself as I looked about the room. Here I was, seated at the table with the three most famous people in the entire civilized world. We sat according to place cards, Mary Pickford presiding and Douglas at her right. I was at her left, with Paul Corrigan on my other si
de and Helene Lubitsch nearby. Relief battled disappointment when I saw that David had been positioned at the other end with Lottie Pickford and the Chaplins. Right away I noticed his efforts to draw out young Lita Chaplin. If anyone could do it, he could. Give the devil his due; he was charming.

  Dinner began with printed menus at each place, and it included things I had never before experienced, like rose-water finger bowls, lace-trimmed napkins, and flavored ice between courses. The china and glassware gleamed in light cast by three crystal chandeliers. Instead of an overgrown centerpiece that would have blocked conversation with people on the opposite side of the table, there was a small bouquet of violets in front of every place. Alcohol was conspicuously absent. Douglas’s well-known aversion to liquor meant all Pickfair dinners were dry—not even wine was served.

  “No, I couldn’t be there,” Faye Gordon was saying to Marilyn Miller, and I dragged my attention back to my own end of the table. “But I heard his yacht was lovely. I had to be in Bakersfield last weekend to see my sick mother and so, sadly, I couldn’t attend.”

  Next to me, Paul hissed, “The only reason she went to Bakersfield was to cover up the fact that she wasn’t invited to Hearst’s party.” His rudeness made me wonder as to their relationship. Had they come together, or merely arrived at the same time? He wasn’t finished. “You were at Heilmann’s that night. When did you leave?”

  I glanced in Lottie’s direction, but she was too far away to hear us mention the painful name. “My girlfriend and I left early. Shortly after midnight.”

  “What did you think of Lorna McCall’s final performance?”

  “Excuse me? I wasn’t introduced to her, and I guess I didn’t see whatever it was—”

  “Sure you did. Everyone saw. She and Faye here practically had a knock-down-drag-out.”

  “Oh, so she was the girl who was slapped. I didn’t make the connection until now.” So Lorna had been the girl in the fountain, minus her undergarments and wet to the skin. Now that the dead actress had a face, her loss seemed more real.