by Susan Kandel
I gave Bridget a big hug. I had come on a begging mission and was fully prepared to pay the ritual obeisance. But the woman had a nose on her that knew no rivals.
“Cece, what are you up to?”
She was like a lynx. She could see storm clouds before they rose above the horizon. She could feel the earth vibrate from a hundred miles away.
“I need to borrow a gown,” I said. “It’s for a party at the Oviatt Building on Sunday night. Forties theme. I wouldn’t ask, Bridget, but a handsome man is involved.”
“Say no more.” She turned to Justin. “Your moment has arrived. You are in charge until I come back. But don’t you dare try on a thing. I’ve seen you eyeing my Azzedine Alaias.”
Bridget grabbed her purse and ushered me out the door. “Oh, Cece, the most amazing shipment arrived this morning. Three Christian Dior New Look dresses! One of them is plum wool—plum wool!—with fifteen yards of fabric! Plus, matching Dior corsets, with taffeta underbodices and ruffles at the breasts and hips!”
“Where are we going, by the way?”
“Aaron Arden’s, of course.”
On the way over, Bridget filled me in. Aaron Arden had made his name twenty-five years ago as an award-winning costume designer for TV variety shows. A sketch about hay-seeds visiting the city? Aaron could whip up a pair of overalls and a red-and-white-checked shirt with shoulder pads that would make a porky guest star look positively soignée. A bit about space aliens confronting a New York City pretzel cart? You needed helmets that could accommodate three-inch false eyelashes, Aaron’s specialty. A Versailles parody? Marie Antoinette he could do in his sleep.
Aaron went on to design regrettable evening gowns for the occasional celebrity friend. These betrayed his overweening ambition—asymmetry, beading, starched ruffs, capelets, sometimes all in the same dress—and provided tabloid fodder for years to come. Bruised but undaunted, Aaron used his connections and back stock to open up a costume rental house the likes of which this town had never seen. At Aaron Arden’s, you could get everything from a Roman gladiator ensemble, cuffs and all, to an authentic Carnaby Street minidress with matching go-go boots and wig. The smaller studios and TV production companies unable to fund their own costume departments relied heavily on him.
“And so,” Bridget concluded, her eyes shining, “the schmata business paid off! It’s the stuff that dreams are made of!”
The girl at the front desk recognized Bridget and snapped to attention.
“I’ll get Mr. Arden right away, Miss Sugarhill.”
“Please tell him we’re interested in the 1940s. Evening wear.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you, dear.”
When Aaron entered the foyer, the girl pressed a can of Tab into his hand like an operating room nurse handing a scalpel to a surgeon. Bridget pushed me forward. I was her prizewinning cow.
“Cece here has met Meredith Allan!” she proclaimed by way of introduction.
“Get outta town!” Aaron said, leading us into the elevator. He was a short, compactly built man clad in black from head to toe. He had a graying Afro and a goatee.
“It’s true! Tell him, Cece.”
Knowing I was going to have to pry a gown out of this man, I nodded.
“Well, I’ll be. So, dish!”
I knew what he wanted to hear. “She looked like hell.”
“Appearances are never deceiving,” Aaron said thoughtfully. “Here we are, fourth floor. Everybody out.”
“You know, you look fabulous, Aaron,” Bridget interjected. “You’ve had work done, haven’t you?”
“No knife touches this face, doll. I’m skinny, that’s it! Look at these.” He ran behind a counter holding the most amazing selection of Bakelite jewelry I’d ever seen, organized by color from the reds, oranges, and ambers to the midnight blues and blacks, and pulled out a pair of wide-wale corduroys. “Look, look! My fatty pants! I use them as a sleeping bag now!” He started to crawl into one leg.
I looked at Bridget, but she shook her head. Aaron was now lying down in his fatty pants, waiting for us to say something. We nodded approvingly.
“I have something in mind for you, Cece,” he said at last, scrambling to his feet, “but, oh dear, you’re not exactly Barbara Stanwyck, are you?”
“She was tiny,” Bridget whispered.
“I know that,” I snarled. I had spent a year on the New Jersey pageant circuit being told how gargantuan I was.
“You’re more of a Jane Russell type—oh, don’t get me wrong. What a babe! Most people know her from the bra ads, but there was so much more to Jane than that,” he said consolingly.
We sauntered past racks and racks of clothes, all of which were sheathed in heavy plastic and labeled. There was a group of young women gathered around a case filled with cloche hats. “A low-budget remake of The Great Gatsby,” Aaron murmured.
Bridget stopped to study a top hat sitting on a pedestal.
“Marlene Dietrich,” said Aaron with pride.
“Erle Stanley Gardner wanted her legs for the cover of The Case of the Lucky Legs,” I said.
“Good legs,” he confirmed, doing a little two-step.
“But too expensive. After discussing it with the people at Paramount, where she was under contract, the publishers decided on a less beautiful pair in their price range.”
“Compromise,” he proclaimed. “Story of my life. Ah, here we are.” He handed me an armful of bags. “Try this, this, this, and this.”
While I was in the dressing room, he chattered with Bridget.
“Are you still doing the thing?”
“I am. You?”
“The thing is perfection.”
“I’m so glad the guy told us about the thing.”
“What’s the thing?” I asked, poking my head out of the dressing room. They looked at each other and cracked up.
“I like bad girls. Meredith Allan has always been such a bad girl,” Aaron said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, needing help desperately now. I was stuck in the spiraling overskirt of a maroon satin cocktail dress with a nipped-in waist.
“Never mind,” he said in a singsong voice.
My curiousity was piqued.
The next dress I tried on had been worn by Ingrid Bergman in a publicity shot for Notorious—a black silk skirt and white wraparound top cinched at the waist with a thick suede belt with diamanté clips. It was simple and elegant, but I was going for va-va-voom.
“What about the sarong?” Aaron asked.
“The sarong!” Bridget exclaimed.
“Are sarongs forties?” I asked, slipping into what was perhaps the most divine dress ever.
Bridget launched into lecture mode. “Edith Head designed the first sarong in the movies for Dorothy Lamour in 1936. Jungle Princess, a Paramount film. That started a vogue for tropical fabrics and sarong draping that lasted through World War Two.”
I came out and there was a collective gasp.
“It’s perfect on you,” Bridget said.
“Somebody, put out the fire!” Aaron said.
“I can’t breathe! My ribs are being compressed into my lungs.”
I loved it.
The dress had a sweetheart neckline and a diamond-shaped cut-out over the stomach, and folds and puckers and sarong draping in all the right places.
“Do you think Rita Hayworth could breathe when she sang ‘Put the Blame on Mame’?” Aaron chided, patting my stomach meaningfully. “Think again.”
I stared at myself in the mirror. I was a sea siren. I was a symphony in fuschia and orange. I was the sun setting over the waves in Trinidad and Tobago, wherever they might be.
“It comes straight from the MGM costume department,” Aaron said, with a nod to Bridget. MGM was where her grandmother had worked. “It was worn by the singer in the nightclub scene, but I forget which movie. Nobody would actually wear a midriff-baring top in those days, but it was the movies! Bigger than life! You, Cece, are going to wear i
t with a hot pink orchid tucked behind one ear, and if your feet aren’t too big, I have ankle straps covered in iridescent copper beads, and yes, yes, yes! Carlos the genius is going to do your hair!”
Bridget nodded happily. If there was anyone she’d defer to, it was Aaron Arden.
Back downstairs, Aaron asked, “Do you have silk stockings and a garter belt?”
“I do.”
Bridget raised an eyebrow.
“So, Aaron, let me ask you something. What do you think silk stockings signify?” I was thinking of Della Street.
Bridget piped up. “By 1941, they were already the sacrificial lamb of the fashion industry. The war effort, you know. Thick wool legs at cocktail hour! What an affront!”
I looked at Aaron.
“Silk stockings mean you’re fuckable.”
There was no arguing with that.
27
And precisely what was I supposed to think when the doorbell rang at eight-thirty P.M., and it was Peter Gambino with a white box from my favorite bakery?
“I was in the neighborhood and remembered how much you loved the berry cake from Sweet Lady Jane.” What he didn’t mention was that he used to run out and get it for us after we had made love.
I went into the kitchen and came back with two forks. We sat on the couch and ate in silence, neither of us daring to so much as glance at the other. But we were thinking the same thing.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“How’s tricks?”
“Gambino, you can do better than that.”
“You’re heartless,” he said with a funny look, like maybe he meant it. “I finally got ahold of Detective Moriarty.”
“And?”
“The guy’s an idiot.”
“I told you.”
“Well, maybe not an idiot. But I will admit he’s not interested in this case.”
“How can that be? A woman is dead, for god’s sake! And he can’t even find her sons!”
“They found one of them, Damon. And he’s got an airtight alibi. He was caught robbing a convenience store that Friday and spent the day his mother was killed in county lockup. He’s in the clear.”
“What about the other one?”
“Don’t know. I don’t think he’s shown up.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. He didn’t do it.”
“Yeah, and who did?”
“I’m not sure yet. There’s this woman who was involved with Mrs. Flynn in high school who wants to keep her past quiet.”
“Involved how?”
“Involved involved.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know. I’m working on it.”
“You’re working on it.”
“Don’t worry so much about what I’m doing, okay?”
“Detective Moriarty also mentioned that someone was messing up his crime scene.”
I picked up the whipped-cream-smeared doily, put it in the box, and walked into the kitchen.
“Caruso.” He’d followed me in.
“I’m tidying up.”
“I don’t remember you being particularly tidy,” he said, picking up Mimi, who clawed at his arm. He dropped her like a hot potato.
“Baby,” I murmured, bending down to scratch her behind the ears. “Mean old cop hurting you?” She purred contentedly.
“What do you want me to say? Good for you, taking the law into your own hands?”
“Maybe give me a little credit for trying to do the right thing.”
“It isn’t the right thing if people are getting hurt.”
He was thinking of me, but I was thinking of Mrs. Flynn. It was my fault, her dying. I knew that even if no one else did.
He followed me back to the couch and sat directly on top of a heavily beaded Indian pillow. I have no idea why he did that. He was too big for a booster. He looked like Baby Huey. Plus, it couldn’t have been too comfortable.
“Gambino, can I ask you a hypothetical question?”
“Shoot.” He pulled the pillow out from under him and shoved it behind his back.
I was still working the Meredith Allan angle. “Why would a woman blackmail her husband’s mistress?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“C’mon.”
“Blackmail usually comes down to money. Defending the bottom line. Man cheats on his wife, he doesn’t give a damn if she finds out. Her feelings mean nothing to him, he just doesn’t want to pay the piper. Then there’s shame. People do things all the time that they don’t want to see the light of day. You’d be amazed. And they’ll do almost anything to protect themselves and everyone around them from who they really are.”
Meredith Allan knew very well who she was. Would she have been ashamed to have been sleeping with a married man? Not a chance. Like Jean, she’d never been innocent. But corruption is measured by degrees. Was she already married when she was sleeping with Joe, for example? I knew she married young, but I didn’t have the timing figured out. If she wasn’t married, maybe she was engaged at the time of the affair. Was she about to let her fiancé find out who she really was? Maybe, like Joe, he had a vision of her—beautiful, blameless Meredith Allan. That had to have been part of the deal. The guy had wanted an angel, but what he hadn’t understood was that angels don’t walk on this earth.
Jean. What didn’t make sense was Jean. She was supposed to have been crazy about Joe. He changed her life, he was going to be her ticket out. Was it possible that when it came down to it, she cared so little for him that she’d use the dissolution of her marriage as a cash-and-carry opportunity? Why the hell not?
“Cece, I’ve lost you. Come back.”
“Do you want me back?”
“Maybe I do,” he said, looking at me. That was the thing about Gambino. It could have been the police training, I don’t know, but when he looked at you, you got the feeling he really saw you.
It started to get hot, so I unzipped my sweatshirt jacket. Just because Gambino and I had been a mistake once didn’t mean we’d be a mistake now.
“Lael’s having her Labor Day barbecue on Saturday,” I said.
I exasperated him, that much was obvious. He was chewing his lip. “I remember her Cesar Chavez cake. How’s she doing?”
“Good. Her kids are so grown-up, you wouldn’t believe it. Nina gets straight A’s. Tommy’s an amazing surfer. Zoe can jump rope. And she’s got a baby now, little August. He’s adorable.”
“Nice woman.”
“Yeah, well, she always liked you.” I shook my head. “I mean, for me.”
“I had no idea.” He gave me a little smile.
“So,” I said, zipping up my jacket, then unzipping it again, “would you like to come with me, to the barbecue?”
“Sure.”
“Is that all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want to say anything else to me?”
He had come here with that cake. I wanted him to tell me why.
“That’s one silly pillow you got there,” he said, getting up. “They’re expecting me back at the station house.” He stretched his arms over his head. The fabric of his white shirt strained across his broad chest. I took it as a mating signal, but my mind was obviously in the gutter.
“See you Saturday, Caruso.”
He opened the front door, and the knob came off in his hand.
“I guess you must want to keep me here,” he said.
So maybe I did.
28
Given my recalcitrant technophobia, my spending the morning on the Internet amounted to a victory of sorts. My search on Lisette Peterson Johnson yielded some interesting results. The woman had run for school board five different times in the last fifteen years, which told me she was either oblivious, a fatalist, or some kind of megalomaniac. She was definitely a press hound. I scrolled through no less than twenty-five interviews she’d done with the local papers over the years, promoting herself and her pet causes, one of which see
med to be something called “reorientation therapy” for unhappy homosexuals. How hideous.
The woman was canny, I’ll give her that. All that talking and she never let anything of a personal nature slip out, except for the fact that she’d gone to Hollywood after high school to try to become an actress (!), but had come back home after a couple of depressing years. I was about to launch a search on reorientation therapy when I reminded myself of why I had started all this in the first place, that being the urgent need to resuscitate my dead-in-the-water book on ESG.
I had enough on Perry Mason. I’d done the literary analysis. I’d done the political and social context. I’d even devoted a chapter to the merchandising philosophy, which involved deemphasizing individual books in favor of the lengthy list of titles available through a constant stream of reissues. What I needed was a more extensive discussion of Gardner’s travel books, which were not as well known.
Back in his Ventura days, Gardner had joined a sailing party to Cabo San Lucas, a lark that had ended prematurely when the boat tipped over in the shallows off the coast and marooned itself, along with the entire group of revelers. ESG was not one to be discouraged, however. In 1947, he’d made his first trip to the peninsula and on his return began a series of thirteen travel books. These documented his Baja explorations, as well as his adventures in the desert, blimp expeditions, and treacherous journeys deeper into Mexico. What I really wanted to check on, however, was the story Gardner recounted in The Hidden Heart of Baja about making a find of prehistoric cave paintings. Even more interesting was that two years afterward he’d been barred from Baja, accused of stealing archeological treasures and taking them back across the border. It was a trumped-up charge, everyone acknowledged, but I wanted the details.
That investigation, however, was on hold while I waited to hear back from the helicopter pilot who’d accompanied Gardner on the trip in question. But I needed to keep busy. I jotted down some inconsequential factoids from the Baja California Tourist Bureau site, knowing full well I’d never use them, and then I sat there for a while. And sat there, thumbing through my books in despair.
