She turned over a page. ‘Oh, and Peggy told me that Anita Tempest over at Enterprise challenged Clara Bow to a chariot race! Not that Anita’s ever sober enough to drive, and Peggy says Mr DeMille refused to lend either of them any chariots.’
‘Good for Mr DeMille.’ Emma wondered whether any of the leading contenders for the title of Goddess of the Silver Screen would manage to get herself accused of a still-more-glamorous, mysterious crime before the fan votes were cast on the twenty-fifth.
‘And if she did,’ she added, when she encountered Zal later in the morning in the Imperial Box at the Coliseum, ‘would the Pettingers try to have Kitty arrested as Accessory Before the Fact? Or just suffer an apoplexy from sheer outrage?’
Zal considered the matter for a moment. ‘Myself,’ he said at last, ‘I’d vote for Clara, or Anita, getting kidnapped and taken out to some mysterious shack in the desert, and rescued by Ramon Navarro. Or Ford Sterling, if Navarro’s too expensive.’
‘You can have Colt Madison for twenty-five dollars and the rental of a tuxedo,’ Emma informed him helpfully. ‘Personally, I fully expect to see one of them fly an aeroplane to Cuba, to reunite with a lost love.’
‘That’s not bad.’ He craned to look over the carven balustrade to where the Christians were assembling below. ‘And if the girls don’t think of it, I bet you can sell that to Frank as the scenario of Kitty’s next picture.’
The emperor’s box overlooking the floor of the Coliseum for scene sixty-three was truly an impressive construction. A flight of thirty steps, of gold-latticed marble, led from the sand up to the terrace itself (‘Won’t the lions climb up them to eat the emperor?’ inquired Emma), and the throne at the top was, a little to Emma’s surprise, a handsome marble copy of an actual curule chair – ersatz marble, but still more or less Roman. While Doc Larousse and his minions shifted reflectors, Madge walked Kitty through her entrance through the great double doors at the top, slave-boys and priests following her and among them, head bowed in chains, poor (and still very scantly clad) Elmore Perkins, humbled and enslaved.
A little shyly, Emma went on, ‘Thank you for staying Thursday night.’
‘My pleasure. I’m only sorry I missed last night’s show. You all right?’
She nodded, and their hands briefly touched.
‘Duchess!’ yelled Madge. ‘You hear that? I’m gonna need a scene before this one, of Elmore in the dungeon with his mom. Get down here …’
His glance was like a smiling kiss, and her eyes received it like one, before she hurried down the thirty marble steps to the 2000 square feet of laboriously imported sand.
Frank visited the set just before lunch. Darlene Golden, in a flutter of discreetly placed rags, halted on the bottom step of the flight (up which it was her task run, to throw herself at Kitty’s feet) and instead flew to the producer’s side. As Madge’s exasperated ‘Cut!’ rent the air, Kitty turned her head and met Frank’s eyes with what novelists generally called a ‘speaking glance’: I adore you but I will not delay the filming … unlike SOME people I could name …
Frank evidently understood. He was noticeably short with Darlene and, when the blonde actress returned, a little chagrined, to the gaggle of nervous Christians in front of the lion cage (‘You’re not really going to let those lions out of the cage while we’re down here, are you, m’am?’ inquired one of the younger girls timidly), clearly had eyes for no one but the empress.
When at about four o’clock Madge finally yelled, ‘Print that one!’ and Mr Torley emerged from the lions’ cage to retrieve his food-stuffed and opium-drowsy pets, Darlene turned again to the producer, with some manufactured query. Pugh answered her, but his eye was on Kitty, descending the marble stair like an empress indeed, peacock cloak making iridescent wings around her and jewels glittering in the California sunlight. Emma could not keep from smiling at Darlene’s expression as Pugh strode to meet Kitty, hands outstretched.
‘You don’t really think Darlene actually had anything to do with Mr Festraw’s death, do you?’ Emma asked, as the lights crew began to dismantle set-ups and shift reflectors.
‘The stakes for her are pretty high.’ Zal polished his glasses with one of his clean handkerchiefs, following her gaze. ‘Darlene claims twenty-five but she’s closer to thirty-five. She worked for Christie Studios just before the War, and before that was doing one-reelers for Polyscope in ’09. She called herself Mary Freedom back then and her hair was brown. If she doesn’t hit it big this year or next it’s gonna start to show.’
Down below, Madge was herding Christians into position for what would be – until sundown and probably far beyond – a succession of close-ups and reaction shots. ‘Zal!’ she shouted. ‘You think we can get scene sixty tonight, while we got all the Christians here? It’ll save us half a day tomorrow—’
He raised his hand in assent, turned back to Emma. ‘Is that worth killing a man for?’ he asked quietly. ‘You tell me.’
‘You tell me if she makes enough to hire someone to do the shooting,’ said Emma slowly. ‘She’d certainly have had access to Kitty’s dressing room, to get the gun and the stationery. Although …’ She hesitated, not sure how to express her thought that something, somewhere didn’t fit. ‘In a way,’ she added, ‘it would make things simpler if she was behind it.’
‘Zally!’ yelled Madge again, as Elmore’s unfortunate mother and sisters took their places amid the reset reflectors which would immortalize their terror and agony in close-up.
Zal raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean, now at least we know which way to look?’
Emma drew breath to say, Maybe, and then let it out. For the third or fourth time that morning, she wondered if she had indeed seen a second car, gliding without lights down Ivarene Street in the moonlight last night. And if so, if it had meant anything …
Prior to her tender encounter with Mr Pugh at the foot of the marble staircase, Kitty had spoken of exhaustion and looking forward to another night of sleep. But Emma wasn’t in the least surprised when, at five – the Christians being disposed of – Kitty scampered to her dressing room and reemerged made-up, hair dressed, and exquisite in a black-and-emerald street frock just as Frank Pugh had his long black Pierce-Arrow brought up to the Hacienda’s front door.
‘I’ll be home before ten, I promise!’ Kitty squeezed Emma’s hands, and Mr Pugh smiled benignly. ‘I’m absolutely ruined … but I can’t pass up steak at the Brass Rail!’ She turned her head, raised eyes brimming with adoration upon her escort.
Personally, Emma doubted she’d see her errant sister-in-law much before midnight. She packed up dogs, astrology magazines, make-up, kimonos, and stray earrings in the grateful expectation of (at last!) a quiet evening, and was indeed able to complete scene sixty-five A (the saintly Demetrius whispering words of comfort to his mother and sisters in the dungeon) before Kitty returned at ten.
‘Honestly, it’s Darlene I’m going to murder one of these days, not Rex.’ Kitty unpinned her hat, shook out the storm cloud of her dark hair. ‘Filling Frank’s head with lies about me – after he let Darlene positively hang on him this afternoon, too! So unfair … Yes, darling, Mama’s home!’ She stooped to cuddle Black Jasmine, standing on his shaky little hind legs to gaze up in adoration into her face. ‘And did you see that gorgeous boy they’ve got working Wardrobe now? He must have eyelashes an inch long …’
After Kitty went up to bed, Emma stepped out onto the porch – for the third time that evening – thinking she had heard some sound in the street. Nothing stirred in the velvety darkness. In the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, the reflection of Kitty’s bedroom light went out. Silvery above the hills, the moon cast the street, and the yard, in blackest shadow. An army of bootleggers – or disgruntled cinema goddesses – could be hiding near the house …
Except, of course, the dogs would bark.
Emma smiled at the thought of them. Faithful little guardians …
She still checked every door and window three times, before sh
e went to bed herself.
Lying in the darkness, she could not put from her mind the image of Rex Festraw’s body, lying on the dressing-room floor with rose petals strewn about him.
It’s no accident, she thought. No random event.
A man was killed, and killed for a reason. Brought out here from New York – specifically – and killed …
And Kitty knows more than she’s saying. Unless she really WAS with that saxophone player from the Grove …
But why not say so? Not to Mr Pugh or Mr Fishbein, of course, but …
A door creaked in the hall and she nearly startled out of her skin.
The soft tread of stockinged feet. A faint clatter of doggy toe-nails. Kitty’s whisper, ‘No, darlings, you can’t come with me – be good little cream cakes for Mama …’
Emma looked at her clock. Twelve thirty.
Moving soundlessly to the door, Emma saw her in the moonlight, in slip, stockings, and a softly-gleaming kimono. She almost stepped into the hall herself – What on EARTH are you doing up at this hour?
And the next second: She’ll lie.
And if she knows I know she’ll take more care next time …
Kitty tiptoed back into her room, carrying the lipstick and powder-box which she must have left in the smaller bathroom at the top of the stairs.
Emma swept her robe from across the foot of her bed, slipped it over her nightdress and padded in swift silence down the stairs to the telephone-niche in the lower hall.
She’s meeting him again. Whoever he is.
And if I can catch them, at least I’ll be able to make sure that she isn’t convicted of shooting Mr Festraw. And maybe I’ll learn something of who she’s screening. And why.
Kitty’s bedroom door had been left ajar, and by the faint trickle of light she could see to dial. Zal’s voice was sleepy but unsurprised. Presumably he got calls at this hour from the studio as well. ‘Yeah?’
‘Zal, it’s Emma,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry to wake you, but … Kitty’s going out. Secretly, without waking me. She came home early and pretended to go to sleep. I suspect she’s going to meet whoever it was she met Wednesday. She’s putting on her make-up now.’
‘The woman never disappoints me.’ The drowsiness vanished from Zal’s voice at once. ‘Don’t stop her. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
It was a good fifteen miles to Venice, where Zal lived, and in the daytimes, with automobile traffic and streetcars impeding one another at every intersection, Emma knew it could take upwards of twice that in Zal’s rickety Model-T.
But even before Kitty crept downstairs, shoes in hand, oblivious to her hastily-dressed sister-in-law sitting in the dark of the living room, Emma saw the flicker of headlights on Ivarene Street. A moment later she glimpsed the dark gleam as the Model-T turned itself around at the top of the drive: carefully. Ivarene was a narrow street, and without headlights it was little more than a slot of darkness between the close-crowding hills. A moment later she heard the slight rustle of silk and drew back further into the darkness of the curtains, as Kitty passed through the hall and into the kitchen, dressed again in emerald and black, diamonds winking on her heels.
The door of the kitchen clicked very softly. Emma at the same moment slipped through the front door, and made haste to cross the scruffy grass patch which Californians considered a lawn – though she knew it would take Kitty several minutes to get the garage open, and more if Mr Shang heard her and came out to inquire. Zal met her halfway down the rough, pebbly slope that led up to the road, and helped her up with surprising strength.
In the stillness, the sound of the Packard starting up sounded like a salvo of cannon-fire.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered as he opened the Tin Lizzie’s door for her in the darkness of a neighboring drive.
‘Don’t thank me, I’m dying to find out what the hell she’s really up to. If we can track down the forged notes, that’s the only thing Meyer really has on her, you know.’
‘I know,’ Emma whispered. ‘And it’s one of the things that keeps me from thinking this is all just some plot of Miss Golden’s, you know. Not that she was lured away – but that she won’t say where she was. You don’t think she could be mixed up in something like … like smuggling, do you? Trafficking in opium or something?’
‘If I was running dope I wouldn’t trust Kitty to hang onto so much as a reefer. She’d either lose it in her handbag, or give it away to one of her mah jong buddies. Besides, this is Los Angeles. Meyer himself may be bringing in hop by the wheelbarrow load. There she goes.’ He let in the clutch, but didn’t turn on the lights. It was a half-mile down Ivarene Street to Vine, the moon sufficiently bright (Emma hoped) to keep Zal from driving over the steep side of the road. The streets were deserted at this hour, and the big yellow Packard was easy to follow, up through the rough-pelted dark bulk of the hills, then along Ventura Boulevard past small shops and a golf course, the indigo emptiness of the orchards and bean fields and the far-off glitter of lights where a housing development huddled in the darkness.
Then hills again, and deeper dark. Kitty put her car full-pelt up swooping curves of backbone ridges, heading towards the sea. Now and then the headlights of another car flashed in the Ford’s rear-vision mirror, or glared yellow coming toward them – traveling every bit as fast as Kitty was, Emma thought – and then roaring past them and zooming away to the east.
It was faster than she’d ever traveled in a car before – and felt faster still with the lights off. But the full moon was bright, and she felt no fear. Zal was a good driver – better than she’d known, having only ridden with him in the streets of Hollywood and Los Angeles. And the moonlight on the hills, silver where it stippled the chaparral and cosmos-deep Prussian blue before it graded into the velvet of shadow in the gullies, had a magic for her, a sort of heart-shaking amazement that such a place, such a rolling wildness, existed only a few miles from places like Frannie’s drugstore.
The silence was like the breath of the universe, overlaid with the muted road noise of the tires. The red lights of Kitty’s car ran before them, fugitive willy-wisps. The smell of the sage-brush was like song.
And then the sea. She’d seen it in daytime, never at night. Sapphire endlessness, threaded white where the moon was going over from zenith. Black islands floated in a blue-black world indescribable. Peace seized her heart and made her want to weep.
She looked north where the road wound to infinity along the ocean’s hem and said, ‘There …’
Gold lights, tiny with distance, following the road.
Zal said, ‘Sycamore Canyon’s a couple miles up. There’s a roadhouse about a mile in. The City Hall Gang used to run it as a speakeasy, but it got flooded out last year – it’s right on top of the wash there. Bet me that’s where she’s headed.’ He slowed, and steered the little car carefully now down the twists of the road as it descended to the highway. ‘Must be some affaire,’ he added.
They passed one or two turn-offs into other canyons, moon-drenched for their first hundred yards and then black with shadow. Headlights overtook them, roared past and were gone. The world was an emptiness of hills and sea, waves running up to the drop just beyond the western edge of the road. A thread of starlight touched the side of Zal’s glasses. It crossed Emma’s mind to say, Can we just keep driving? Kitty can find her own way home … and she wondered where those words had come from, or where they might have gone, had they been uttered. Whoever Kitty was shielding – or whatever Kitty had been up to last Wednesday afternoon for two hours – unless that was cleared, there was no telling what a jury would think.
Particularly if members of the jury listened to the Pettingers’ radio program on Friday evenings.
Or if Frank Pugh happened to have read that rumor-column in Photo Play last month …
Just before the road crossed the outlet of a stream on a white-painted wooden bridge, a dirt road turned off into a canyon. The stream didn’t look like much – certainly not p
owerful enough to destroy a speakeasy, Emma thought – but her father had often spoken of how inconspicuous little watercourses like that one could swell unexpectedly to deadly torrents.
Moonlight glinted on flowing silk, smooth round stones. Zal guided the car with slow care over the unpaved surface. Pewter moonlight edged shadows deeper than death.
And there, sitting in the middle of the road, was the Packard. On the other side of the stream, where the shadows of the hills lay black, a broken sprawl of timbers spewed down the hillside into the stream, beside the remains of a rickety wooden stair.
At the top, in the cock-eyed remains of half a building, lantern-light gleamed.
TWELVE
When Zal helped Emma down the shallow bank to cross the stream, Emma could see, parked ahead of Kitty’s yellow Packard, another car, sleek and new and flashy and black, nearly hidden by the shadows of the canyon and the trees. The stream ran noisily over a succession of small waterfalls to her right, where the canyon wound inland. Rocks ranging in size from that of an orange to that of a washtub cluttered the stream-bed, and by the moonlight Emma picked her way across more or less dry-shod, guided by Zal’s steadying grip. With a hand on her waist as they approached the ruined house, he moved her gently to one side, so that she climbed the wooden steps close to the beam that supported them, almost in silence. They crossed the broken boards of what had been a sort of terrace above the stream – it still contained a couple of dilapidated tables and a kitchen chair, much the worse for weather – and she heard Kitty’s sweet, almost childlike voice inside the house.
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