Silent Murders

by Mary Miley

  Wouldn’t Carl’s mouth drop when he heard what I’d learned in Bakersfield? I hoped he would handle the case now. I didn’t know how these things were done, perhaps he would go to Pipkin Drugs to see the poison book himself, perhaps they would send a detective. Or maybe it was more tactful to inform Bakersfield’s police and let them take over. I hoped to high heaven the drugstore evidence was enough to arrest Faye Gordon tonight. The idea of that lunatic strolling around Hollywood with a bottle of mercury bichloride in her handbag made me queasy. The evidence seemed sufficient to arrest her, if not for the murder of Lorna McCall then at least for the murder of Paul Corrigan. Maybe nabbing her for one would make her confess to the other.

  It wasn’t until I stepped outside that I remembered I had driven the studio’s Ford flivver to the depot. How had I forgotten that? It was parked in the lot behind the station. I didn’t need to take a taxi. I made my way around the station to the rear lot. At least half the cars parked there were flivvers, all of them black and boxy, but I had planned for that this morning by putting mine in the far corner where I would not mistake it for another.

  The merest fingernail of a moon hung in the sky. The air was chilly. My footsteps echoed on the pavement as if I were alone in the parking lot, and yet I wasn’t. A man started up his car one row over. Another turned on his headlamps and pulled out onto the main street. A Mexican couple with a baby passed me on their way toward the station. A dark-haired woman behind me headed down my row. Two men were struggling to fit all their luggage in the trunk.

  I paid none of them any attention. That was my mistake.

  The flivver was waiting for me where I had left it. I scrounged in my purse for the key. The dark-haired woman passed me and went to the car on my right. As I settled into the front seat, she wrenched open the door on the passenger’s side and climbed in beside me. Startled, I turned toward her thinking hazily that she wanted to ask directions.

  I was facing Faye Gordon.

  A dark wig covered her bleached hair, and a hat brim obscured part of her face, but I couldn’t miss those angry eyes burning with hate. I could also make out the small pistol in her right hand.

  “You little bitch. Drive or I’ll shoot you, and don’t think I won’t.”

  I didn’t think it for a second.

  “What’s wrong, Faye?” I asked, reacting automatically with an exaggerated calm as we always did onstage when a mishap occurred and we needed to keep the show moving forward at all costs.

  “You damn well know what’s wrong. Drive!”

  I shifted into reverse and eased out of the parking space, searching frantically for some explanation that would put her off, all the while knowing it was too late.

  “Maybe if you were to tell me—”

  “Shut up!”

  I had come to the main street. “Which way do you want me to turn?”

  “Back to Hollywood.”

  I pulled into traffic and headed west with a gun eighteen inches from my chest. I had to assume she knew I’d been to Bakersfield and why I’d gone, although for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how she had found out. Only Douglas knew, and he certainly wouldn’t have warned her. The only other person was the pharmacist at Pipkin Drugs and, unless he was Faye’s uncle in disguise, I couldn’t imagine him telephoning her. But I hadn’t time to ponder where I’d stumbled. I needed to figure a way out of this mess.

  “Douglas Fairbanks knows where I am, Faye, and he knows the whole story. He’s expecting me right now at his house. He’ll have the police out looking for me if I don’t show up at Pickfair in a few minutes.”

  “Shut up.”

  If she noticed I was taking a longer route, she didn’t object. I spent some time wondering if I could slow down, get my door open, and jump out before she could shoot me, and decided I couldn’t. Her eyes never left my face. Her little gun never wavered. I remembered David telling me how inaccurate those short-barrel handguns were, but it was cold comfort. At this distance, a monkey couldn’t miss.

  “Killing me will only make things worse, Faye. Everyone will know you did it.”

  “You stupid little bitch. Shut. The hell. Up!”

  So maybe she didn’t plan to shoot me. She needed me dead; that was certain. How would she accomplish it? I keenly regretted not having telephoned ahead once I had the information. I should have told Carl Delaney to meet me at the station. I should have taken a taxi. I should have passed along the information to Douglas immediately. It dawned on me then that Faye would also need to kill Douglas. He’d be a lot harder to do in than me—he was never alone—and he’d be forewarned by my own disappearance. I thought longingly of Carl and his gruff partner. Any policeman would be a welcome sight about now.

  “Turn right up ahead,” she snapped. I turned on Cahuenga and headed north toward the Hollywood Hills. Toward the reservoir? Was she going to push me in and make it seem like a drowning accident? How did she know I couldn’t swim? Maybe I could make a break for it as we got out of the car. Or maybe the reservoir would provide a chance to get away. Faye would have to drag me in and hold my head under until my lungs filled with water, and to do that, she’d need two arms, which would necessitate laying aside the gun. Or maybe we were headed to a sheer drop somewhere in the desert where my death would look like an accidental fall. She’d find me hard to push over the side and here, too, she would need both arms free to do it. Faye had a good eight inches on me and a couple dozen pounds, but I throw a solid punch. And I don’t fight fair.

  “This will never work, Faye. If I disappear, Douglas will know it was you. If I drown or fall off a cliff, he and the police will know it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Play it smart. You can still get away. All you have to do is dump me here and keep on driving. I won’t tell a soul, I promise. Go east to some city where no one knows you. Change your name. No one will ever find you.”

  Her eyes blazed with the fury of a maniac insulted beyond all reason. “They know me everywhere in the whole country,” she hissed, spewing flecks of spittle on my arm. “In the whole world. I am famous. I am a star.”

  I kept driving.

  Until Faye ordered, “Turn here,” I was confident we were heading to the reservoir for an accidental drowning. This optimistic scenario vanished when she demanded I turn right, away from the reservoir, on an all-too-familiar road that led up into the hills. Last time I had traveled this road, I’d been handcuffed.

  The pavement meandered as if it had all the time in the world. I had very little so I drove slowly, following the turns by the light of my headlamps, trying to stretch the seconds and keep my wits about me as I figured out what this madwoman intended to do to me and, more urgently, how I was going to prevent it.

  The engine coughed once. Twice. It sputtered to a stop in the middle of the narrow road and choked again. “It’s out of gas,” I said.

  I knew what had happened. I hoped Faye didn’t.

  She did.

  “No it isn’t, you fool. Turn around.”

  I gestured helplessly, asking without words how I was supposed to accomplish such a feat without gasoline, hoping her disgust with my ineptitude would cause her to set down the gun and take the wheel herself. No such luck.

  “You don’t need gas. Roll backward and turn.”

  I released the brake and did as I was told, letting gravity pull the car downhill as I turned the wheel hard left and reversed direction.

  “Now start the car,” she ordered. “Drive backward.”

  The car started right up, as I knew it would once the fuel could slosh forward to reach the carburetor. Ford flivvers were notorious for having to be driven backward uphill when fuel was low.

  “You’ll run out of fuel before you can get away,” I told her as I twisted around to see the road behind me. Now her gun was pointing straight at my heart.

  She sent me a smug smile. “Never you worry about me, dear.”

  We stuck to the main road until Faye sa
id stop. It was almost exactly the same place Carl had left his police car Monday night, below the Hollywoodland letters but far enough away to be outside the light cast by all those bulbs.

  I thought of the caretaker, the one Carl said had a cottage behind the H. I had not seen it that night, nor could I tonight—all performers know that light in your face erases the audience, so anything that might have existed behind the letters was obscured from view. Carl had said that the caretaker wasn’t on duty all the time. I fervently hoped he was home tonight. He was my one chance.

  “Get out.”

  I slammed the door hard and began talking very loudly. “What are you planning to do, Faye? You can’t get away with killing me, you know. Everyone will know Faye Gordon did it.”

  “Shout to heaven, fool. There’s no one around to hear.” She motioned toward the sign with her gun, a tiny pearl-handled pistol that looked familiar. A lady’s gun. I’d seen it before. Of course. It was the one David had pried from Lottie’s fingers that night at Pickfair and handed to Douglas, the one Douglas had set on the mantel. Faye must have picked it up later when no one was looking. And now Crazy Faye was going to shoot me with Lottie’s gun and pin my murder on Lottie Pickford.

  41

  “It will never work, Faye. You may have Lottie’s gun, but no one is going to believe Lottie shot me. For one thing, your fingerprints will be on the gun, and if you wipe them off, you’ll wipe off Lottie’s, too, and leave nothing to connect the crime to her. You still have time to get away. Leave now and you’ll have a huge head start.”

  “Shut up. You don’t know anything.”

  I picked my way over the rocky terrain toward the edge of the light. Faye stayed close behind me. By then, I’d decided on an escape plan, sadly predictable but the only one that came to mind. I would make a run for it, gambling on Faye’s poor marksmanship, the inaccuracy of Lottie’s stubby Belgian pistol, and my own agility. If I could dash out of this lighted area, I could disappear into the darkness behind the sign.

  Maybe she could read minds, or maybe it was the obvious move of a desperate person, but just as I tensed, preparing to spring to one side, a hard shove against my back sent me sprawling to the ground. Prickly scrub scraped my hands and elbows and thistles tore the sleeves of my blouse.

  “This is far enough.”

  Bleeding, I started to get to my feet but she kicked one leg out from under me. I fell forward, my skirt tangled in my legs. “Stay right there. You’re not going anywhere.” She reached into her large handbag and pulled out a thermos. Tossing it to me, she stepped back out of reach and sneered. “No more wasting time. Pour yourself a cocktail.”

  Faye’s beverage of choice. Bichloride of mercury. I was going to suffer the same fate as Paul Corrigan.

  Slowly I unscrewed the thermos. The lid made a cup with a thin handle. Slowly I poured a little liquid into the cup. I considered dumping it out, but then she’d use the gun, her ace up the sleeve. “Don’t stint yourself,” she taunted. “Fill it up.”

  I realized our position had not been chosen randomly. At the edge of the light, Faye could see what I was doing quite clearly. There was no cover of darkness to hide me, no spilling the poisonous brew without her noticing. And once I swallowed it, it wouldn’t matter if the caretaker were home or not. He could have telephoned for the whole U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hills, and it would be too late.

  Long experience with magic acts had taught me that the secret of most tricks was misdirection. There on that cold, scrubby hill in Hollywood, it came to me that misdirection was the only chance I had to see tomorrow. Carefully holding the full cup by its handle in my right hand, I set the thermos on the ground beside me and palmed a rock with my left. I rearranged my legs a bit so that the loose fabric of my skirt folded into my lap between my thighs. Positioning my cup hand inches above my lap, I held it rigid. When I was ready, I locked onto Faye’s glittering eyes for a long moment, then I looked pointedly over her shoulder and gave a stage gasp.

  “What’s that?” I cried and at the same instant, let fly the rock in that direction. It clattered harmlessly to the ground.

  Most people will instinctively follow motion and noise with their eyes, and Faye proved no exception to the rule. It was all I needed, one fleeting second when her attention flickered away from me; one blink of the eye when her head turned slightly. Then she was facing me again with a look of incredulity mixed with fury. The gun wavered in her hand. Clearly she wanted to shoot me, and holding back took a lot of effort.

  “Oh, that was clever!” she said in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “What an ass you are. Now drink up, and be quick about it.”

  During that moment of brief distraction, while her eyes left me for the time it took to blink, I had twisted my wrist a quarter turn, dumping the poison into my lap and righting the cup in the exact same position. The tiny movement went unnoticed. The cup was empty.

  I put it to my lips and pretended to drink, making my throat bobble as best I could by swallowing saliva. I took my time.

  “Let me see,” she demanded as I took the cup from my lips. I held it out so she could see it was empty. She gave a satisfied smile. “Now the rest.”

  A trick like that was not going to work twice. I clumsily tipped over the thermos, spilling the remaining poison in the dirt.

  She merely shrugged. “So what? You’ve already drunk twice as much as Paul. But just in case, I’ll wait right here till the stuff works like it’s supposed to.” She lowered herself onto a flat rock, her elbow resting on her knees and the gun pointed square at my face. “I’d hate to have to shoot you after all this trouble. I’d planned this to be another sad case of suicide.”

  “Suicide? Like Lorna McCall’s supposed suicide?”

  “No, not at all like hers. That was an impulse. I gave her the poison, too, you know, the same mercury stuff you just drank. There’s no harm in telling you now. You’re already dead. Poor Lorna. So very, very dumb. She actually believed me when I came to her door, begging her pardon for my behavior at the party. I said we should be like sisters from now on. It was a stellar performance on my part, if I do say so myself. She was still suffering from a hangover, but the nitwit invited me in and served coffee and cake. I poured the poison in the coffeepot, and the little slut gulped it down. So there we were, getting along famously, when she was taken with a sudden stomach cramp. I followed her into the bathroom where she got violently sick, and as she sat there retching, her head hanging over the toilet, I got the idea to hold it down. It was a kindness really—a faster death, putting her out of her misery. And it meant that no one looked in her stomach for poison. They just figured the same person killed Lorna as killed Bruno and that waitress.”

  “Just like you planned.” Once Faye thought I’d swallowed the poison, her whole demeanor changed. Eager to demonstrate her own cleverness, she became downright chatty, confiding in me as if I were an old friend. An occasional prompt from me was all it took to keep her going.

  “Not like I’d planned at all. I’d been thinking about how to get rid of her for months, and I’d already bought the poison when Bruno conveniently got himself murdered. And when that waitress who had seen his murderer got herself killed, it gave me a better idea, to make it look like Lorna was another witness being bumped off.”

  “Lorna took parts away from you?”

  “That little piece of trash went around telling people I was responsible for her Big Break … that my lousy screen test got her hired. It was humiliating. And she told everyone I was thirty-five, when I’m only twenty-nine.”

  “Why kill Paul?”

  Her lips curled. “That has-been?” She switched the gun from hand to hand as she thought about something. “You know, I really didn’t want to kill Paul. We were lovers once. He forced my hand. I was afraid he would figure out what I’d done to Lorna, and he did. He was threatening to go to the police. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  I recalled Paul’s odd behavior at the Fairbanks’ din
ner table. “He figured it out at Pickfair that night, didn’t he?”

  She nodded. “He telephoned me after we got home and accused me of killing Lorna. I denied it, of course. But he remembered that I was with him when Lottie called to tell him about Bruno and the waitress being killed. Lottie was all atwitter about the unmentionables she had left at Bruno’s house, worried her husband and the press would find out and cause a ruckus. Paul and I talked about Lottie afterward, and that’s when I got my idea. I went straight to Lorna’s house with the poison I’d bought the week before. Well, Paul said he was taking his suspicions to the police in the morning. I told him I was innocent and that I could show him proof if he’d stop by Paramount first. He walked right into my trap, the poor old fool.” She smiled and shook her head.

  “You poisoned the coffee.”

  “Luckily no one came by while he was writhing on the floor. He almost got out of the room to get help, so I bashed him over the head with the chair.”

  “No one noticed his head?”

  “I told the police it was from when he fell. Once he was down, he lay still, gasping and blinking at me something fierce and turning purple and so ugly I had to look at the ceiling. By the time Sophie came in for Rudy’s coffee, he couldn’t speak. Do you know, he wasn’t dead for hours. People thought he was dead when they carried him out on the stretcher, but it takes longer than that. I know. I was at the hospital with him. He died hours later in the hospital. It took hours and hours to finally kill him.” Reminded of the time, she looked at her watch, probably gauging how much longer before the poison began working on me. I thought it prudent to clutch my stomach and make a face. No doubt poor Lorna had done the same.