“Thanks, but no. I need to.”
The shed that held what was left of Francine’s life was thirty feet by thirty feet. Everything Francine possessed had been packed into a large cardboard box and two steamer trunks. One of them dated back to 1908, when Francine, pregnant with Kathryn, had made the long train trip to California. The other was an old sailor trunk that Francine had used as a coffee table.
The cardboard box held a few pots and pans, an electric toaster, and cooking utensils. Kathryn pushed it aside and told the girls to take whatever they wanted.
Francine’s clothes filled the steamer trunk, but it was all frumpy old-lady stuff that Kathryn wouldn’t wear—touching the familiar blouses and jackets was hard enough. She told the girls to help themselves to anything that tickled their fancy, but hoped they’d reject the lot. Kathryn dreaded the thought of seeing Arlene or Doris walk through the Garden wearing her mother’s clothes.
Kathryn felt a little foolish about getting worked up over a battered old chest. She knelt onto the cement and pulled open the lid.
The scent of Shalimar hit her like a slap in the face. She closed her eyes and drew back.
“How about you sit on the floor,” Gwendolyn pointed to an empty section of wall, “and we’ll hand you stuff.”
Kathryn kicked off her shoes and scooted backward until she felt the wall.
The girls pulled out dry cleaning bills, income tax returns, and letters from people whose names Kathryn didn’t know. She was starting to chide herself for getting worked up over an old sailor chest full of nothing when Arlene found a passbook for an account held with the Citizens National Trust and Savings Bank of Los Angeles.
Kathryn flipped to Francine’s final transactions. “Holy moly! She had over five grand stashed away.”
“That’s a lot of money for a telephone operator,” Doris said.
Francine had regularly deposited five dollars here, ten dollars there, right up to the week before her death.
Kathryn jumped to the first page, where Francine had written “RETIREMENT FUND.” They were the saddest two words Kathryn had ever seen. Francine had only been a couple of months shy of her sixty-fifth birthday when she’d suffered that heart attack. You spent your whole life saving for a retirement that you never got to enjoy.
Gwendolyn slotted herself in beside Kathryn. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get you through this.”
“I wouldn’t have picked her as the scrapbook type.” Arlene hauled out a large album from the bottom of the trunk. The cover was light blue with a gold border. She passed it over to Kathryn with a grunt. “There’s a whole pile of them in here.”
The word “EIGHT” was inked in black near the top right corner.
The first article inside the front cover was the one Kathryn had written about Judy Garland’s concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium when she’d made a triumphant return to LA following her record-breaking run in New York. Kathryn had taken Francine that night, and to the after-party at Romanoff’s. Beneath it, Francine had written April 21st 1952 - What a thrilling night!
Kathryn turned the page and let out a strangled cry. She shifted the album onto Gwendolyn’s lap and turned page after page. “The article I wrote about how more Americans go bowling than watch movies; the one about Howard Hughes suspending production at RKO to ferret out Communists; my column about the This Is Cinerama premiere.”
Gwendolyn tapped a sheet. “Here’s when you apologized for calling Audrey Hepburn a malnourished war waif with nothing to offer the movies but hip bones and a husky voice.”
Kathryn shook her head as she scanned each page. “Every column, every review, every interview, every photo published in every newspaper and magazine—it’s all here.”
Her breath grew shallow until a lightheadedness blurred her vision. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, hoping to staunch the tears, but they leaked from the corners, collected in her lashes, and dripped onto her cheeks.
She felt Gwendolyn’s hand grip hers. “My mother cared. All these years, through all those squabbles.”
Kathryn opened her eyes. Gwendolyn’s mouth gaped in astonishment, but that was all she could make out. The tears were flowing freely now, distorting everything. She nodded weakly.
“Who’d have guessed,” Gwendolyn said, “that disapproving old biddy genuinely gave a rat’s ass?”
Doris burst out laughing; Arlene joined her. It was exactly what Kathryn needed, and she started laughing, too. It was the first time she’d done that in weeks. How incongruous that she should do it with a lifetime’s evidence that her distant, critical mother had taken the time and effort to document everything she’d done in eight enormous scrapbooks.
“What was her last entry?” Arlene asked.
The most recent pages were filled with variations of the magazine ads for the upcoming Suncrockerhouse stage extravaganza.
Doris hauled out the scrapbooks until she came to the bottom one and passed it over. “When did she start?”
Kathryn expected to see her debut Hollywood Reporter column, but found instead a set of twelve photographs of her three-year-old self.
“They look like the photo you came across on the Sunset Boulevard set,” Gwendolyn said.
“She told me my father only sent her that one photo.”
“It’s the same cutesy dress and oversized hair bow.”
Gwendolyn pointed to a shot of Danford trying to stand Kathryn on his knee. They wore identical strained smiles, their eyebrows angling toward the middle. “If you needed more evidence that Thomas Danford is your father, I think you’ve got it.” She pulled out a clipped newspaper article jammed into the folds of the scrapbook and handed it to Kathryn. It crinkled as she unfolded it.
“This is from the Charlotte Observer, dated 1912, reporting that a vagrant named Camden Caldecott had been arrested for framing the mayor for adultery and blackmailing him for a thousand dollars.”
“Did he get away with it?” Arlene asked.
“The mayor hatched a plan with his brother-in-law, the chief of police, and nearly nabbed him red-handed but—and I quote—‘the slick perpetrator evaded capture and absconded from town in a stolen pick-up truck.’” Kathryn laid the article onto her lap. “Sounds like Mister Voss has been at it for quite some time.”
Gwendolyn waved Francine’s passbook in Kathryn’s face. “How much did that private eye want to charge you?”
* * *
The lime-green neon sign of the Formosa Café blinked to life as Kathryn stopped to check her purse. She didn’t need to, but rifling through the papers helped settle her nerves.
“I really am so sorry that I couldn’t be there for you the other day,” Leo said. “It must have been tough going through your mother’s personal effects.”
She pulled off her glove and stroked his cheek. “It’s enough that you wanted to be there.”
The front door to Dudley Hartman’s office had a new sign out front.
Melrose Detective Agency
By appointment only
The door swung open to reveal Hartman’s smiling moonface. “I had a bet with myself that I’d see you again.”
Kathryn pointed to the sign. “Should I have called ahead?”
“We put that there to discourage time-wasters. Come on in.”
Hartman indicated two chairs in front of the desk as he took a seat behind it.
Kathryn had forgotten about the pine-scented Air Wick that pervaded his bungalow-turned-office. “Melrose Detective Agency, huh?”
“Business has been very good lately so I decided it was time I gave myself an official name. Please, how can I help?”
“You’ll remember that I came to see you about tracking down Sheldon Voss.”
“I thought of you when I heard he’d surfaced.”
Kathryn pulled out the article tucked into Francine’s scrapbook and flattened it out carefully. The paper was dry as an autumn leaf and liable to crack into pieces.
When Hartman was finished, his
genial face was a blank slate. “This article is forty years old.”
Kathryn handed over the copy of Look magazine that she’d come across at LA County General.
Hartman nodded thoughtfully. “Operation Pastorius has a bearing on this case?”
Kathryn took him through the conversation she’d had with Darryl Zanuck about his dinner with a well-sauced Winchell.
Hartman’s smile turned smug. “There’s nearly always a connection, a clue, some scrap of evidence waiting for someone to find it.”
Kathryn’s heart started thudding against her ribcage. “Enough to send you to Boston?”
He tapped her copy of Look. “You’ve already done half my work.”
“Will it cost me half as much as it would have when I saw you a year ago?”
“Grubby rags like Confidential have brought a flood of clients looking to bury facts from their past, or to get the dirt on wandering spouses in case Confidential does. I’ve got more work than I can handle so I’m taking on a partner. He starts on Monday. It’s good news for me because I can finally have a weekend off, and it’s good news for you because he can look after the office while I’m gone. Win/win all round.” He pressed his fingertips on top of the copy of Look. “Mind if I keep this?”
* * *
It was a long walk to the Garden of Allah, but Kathryn felt like she could skip home. “Can you imagine if he finds enough evidence to overturn my father’s conviction?”
“Probably not as straightforward as it happens in the movies,” Leo cautioned.
“I know it’ll be complicated and drawn out, and chances are more remote than Siberia, but oh! The possibility!”
Leo squeezed her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Even if it comes to nothing, at least you’ll have tried.”
Forget skipping. I feel like dancing up Sunset like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. “I wonder how Mom would feel if she knew I was using her retirement money to clear Thomas’s name.”
Leo halted in front of a jewelry store; the golden glow of its window presentation filled his face. The usual assortment of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and bangles packed the display, and to one side sat a collection of men’s watches and cufflinks. One pair in shiny chrome featured a lowercase ‘b’ in the style of an old-fashioned typewriter.
Leo clasped her hand. “When you’re up on stage in rehearsals with Betty and Adelaide, I can’t help but notice how they’re dripping in jewelry.”
“They have exquisite taste.” Kathryn wondered if this jeweler also had a pair of ‘m’ cufflinks. It wasn’t Marcus’s birthday for months and months, but with his passport still confiscated, she figured he could do with a cheerful gift.
Leo said, “It’s just that when you stand next to them, by contrast, you look like the poor country cousin who can’t afford sparkling baubles.”
“Anything more than a string of pearls and a brooch is too much for me. But you know that, so why would you think I’d want to start decking myself out?”
He pointed out a rack of diamond rings in the center of the window. “Do any of those appeal?”
“You silly goose! Those are engagement rings.”
The words thudded like rocks onto the sidewalk. She felt his hand loosen its grip around hers. She pulled it away. A guy doesn’t lead a girl to a jewelry store and point to engagement rings just to mention how nicely they twinkle. “What are you saying?” Seconds crawled by, dense with apprehension. “We’ve already had this discussion,” she said.
“What discussion?” He kept his eyes on the contents of the window.
“I know very few people who are genuinely happily married.”
“You live in Hollywood, where the divorce rate is artificially high—”
“On one of our first dates you told me that you’d tried marriage twice and both times it was a disaster, so you had no intention of putting yourself through that again.”
“Yeah, but then . . .”
“But then what?” A feeling washed over her that maybe she shouldn’t have asked.
“I met you.”
“Oh, Leo.”
“Your mother’s passing reminded me that life can be short and death can be random.”
Kathryn pressed her hand to the glass. It was warm from the heat of the lights. She’d had much the same thoughts. Not those exact words, but a meandering version circling in an endless loop.
The only family you have is Sheldon Voss, whom you hate, and Thomas Danford, whom you’ve never met. Francine was only sixty-five when she died. Your death could come fast and unexpected, too. Do you want to get to your deathbed with regrets—
“So, anyway,” he said, slicing into her torment, “food for thought.”
He turned from the store and walked away from her toward the late-summer dusk purpling the sky. The streetlamps stippled the deserted sidewalk with dots of light that made the boulevard resemble a reel of film that went on forever and ever.
CHAPTER 27
Marcus laid down Kathryn’s letter and surveyed a statue of Triton shooting a plume of water out of his head.
The opening of Kathryn’s letter startled him: “This summer has been hell!” Whenever Kathryn had wailed about what a pain in the ass her mother was, Marcus had thought, She’s the only family you’ve got. Wait till she goes. But he always assumed that he’d be there to help Scotch tape her life back together.
The authorities had confiscated his passport in June, and here it was October and he was no closer to knowing why or what he needed to do to get it back.
His first visit to the US embassy had generated enough red tape to choke Hannibal’s elephant. But he’d swallowed his frustration and filled out the forms.
He’d returned a month later and argued his way up to the office manager, who looked more like an Indiana cornfield escapee than a diplomat. “We’re not sure why they’re stonewalling us,” he drawled. “You’re not FBI, are you? CIA? On the lam?”
The lawyer that Arlene’s boss had recommended was tied to the Conti brothers so he’d asked Doris if Columbia had a Rome office. They did, so Marcus had burned through a sizable chunk of cash to dig deeper. The guy had come up against brick wall after brick wall and eventually sat Marcus down for the “there’s nothing more I can do for you” conversation.
His mind kept turning to Emilio. But wasn’t he just a hotheaded twerp who took pictures of big-chested starlets and European jet setters? He didn’t seem like the sort of guy with connections to high levels of government.
“No,” Domenico commented, “but I bet his brothers do.”
The thought took root like an aggressive fungus eating away at his innards.
When it got too crazy-making, Marcus would take refuge at Café Barberini, where he’d order the fluffiest gnocchi in town. When he could find an LA Times, he’d catch up on news from America: the first live color TV broadcast; the Supreme Court’s ban on racial segregation in public schools; Monroe’s divorce from DiMaggio; Joseph Breen leaving the Hays Office.
He felt as though he was standing on the bank of a wide river watching the parade of his life march along the other shore.
But only on the bad days.
On all the others, he had Domenico: “A glass of wine; a bowl of melt-in-the-mouth pasta, someone playing ‘Quanto sie Bella Roma’ on the violin. What else do you need?”
He was right, too, in his observation that Marcus wasn’t ready to leave Rome. He still dreamed of Oliver, but Oliver could be in Timbuktu, so there wasn’t much Marcus could do about it. In his dreams, they were always near water: the Garden of Allah pool, Santa Monica beach, the Trevi Fountain. At the start of summer, the thought of Oliver had been a dull ache. As the full force of Rome’s heat scorched the city, the ache had evolved into a throbbing timpani until Marcus reached a breaking point.
He’d kept telling himself to get out of bed, but couldn’t summon the will power. He’d thrash around the sheets like a caged panther until he exhausted himself into a fitful sleep that
afforded him little rest and no respite from the fixations that preoccupied his waking hours: Emilio Conti . . . passports . . . Kathryn, Gwendolyn, Francine, Zanuck . . . travelers cheques . . . gold bars. If he forced down some food, he’d have three spoons of minestrone and couldn’t stomach another bite.
After a couple of weeks, Domenico had demanded to know what was going on.
Marcus’s explanation soon degenerated into an incoherent string of words that stumbled over each other like a clutter of cats scrambling to escape firecrackers. Perhaps, Domenico suggested, he should fill his days with a different activity: shooting scattino photographs.
Metropolitana had opened to enormous box office, provoking rumors that Marcus’s photos had been a publicity stunt. In the press, Melody was playing coy, and Marcus wanted to distance himself from the whole episode. He had a better idea.
His frustration stemmed from knowing that his opportunity to work on Carmen Jones and The Virgin Queen had come and gone, so the next day, he started work on a new project that he had full control over.
Nearly every original screenplay Marcus had ever worked on started with a pebble dropped into the pond of his imagination—an image, a comment, a headline. He knew he was on the right track when he felt a euphoric flurry stir his guts.
The success of Quo Vadis had triggered an avalanche of doppelgängers: The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, The Egyptian, Julius Caesar, Androcles and the Lion. Paramount had sent Cecil B. DeMille to Egypt to remake The Ten Commandments, and the big rumor at Cinecittà was a new Fratelli di Conti film called The Gates of Rome.
If Hollywood couldn’t get enough of togas and sandals and chariots and pagans, who was in a better position than he to give them what they wanted? Especially now that he’d uncovered a valiant hero forced to face a malevolent villain in the cinematic climax of a spectacular bridge collapsing into a river. The entry in Domenico’s Compendium of Roman Heroes was only two sentences:
“Horatius Cocles was a foot soldier from the sixth century BC who became a hero when he chopped down a bridge across the Tiber to prevent an Etruscan invasion. Without him, Rome might never have evolved into a mighty republic that lasted 500 years.”
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