Hoodwink

by Rhonda Roberts

  ‘What about the car? The Caddy seemed new. Have you seen it before?’

  ‘A lotta people drive luxury vehicles around here, lots of Cadillacs. But no, miss, I’ve never seen that one before.’

  Gilbert gazed over at the house. No one had even come out to investigate; the noise from the band had covered everything. ‘Should I go inside and call the police?’

  ‘No!’ Earl struggled to sit up, but kept one arm in an iron grip around my calves. ‘Take me home! I want to go home!’

  We bundled him into the limousine, with me in the back cradling him like a small child. He’d crumbled completely.

  What the hell had just happened?

  Okay, Earl had saved himself from being run over, but why on earth hadn’t Susan told me about this murder attempt?

  ‘What was that all about, Earl?’ I asked. ‘Who was it?’

  He just lay there and rocked.

  Earl’s face said he knew.

  Gilbert drove us down Summit Drive with his revolver on the seat next to him, but the sporty red Cadillac was nowhere in sight.

  Benedict Canyon Drive was sparsely populated now, though Earl still had neighbours to each side and two across the road; all four were opulent Spanish haciendas.

  Ceiba House was exactly the same but was sharper, without any crumbling edges.

  It was no longer enclosed by a high fence topped with security cameras, there was just open lawn. Sitting in amongst all the haciendas, Ceiba House made the neighbourhood look like Mayan territory just after the Conquistadors moved in.

  Gilbert and I hauled Earl out of the car, up the steep stairs and draped him over the C-shaped couch in the front lounge room. I was glad to see that damned babbling brook was turned off, though the stone skulls with their tongues poking out now seemed to be mocking me.

  It had to be at least two o’clock in the morning so it was no surprise that Susan wasn’t awake. I briefly wondered what it’d be like meeting her younger self — before all that bitterness and grief had ruined her.

  The house was exactly the same as before. Which was just pitiful. Had Susan changed nothing in all those years except for putting in the fence?

  Once we had Earl settled, Gilbert went back out to put the car away.

  ‘What’s the curse about, Earl?’

  He turned terror stricken eyes to me. ‘How do you know about it?’

  ‘You kept repeating, “But the curse was broken”, when you were lying on the lawn, Earl.’

  Earl searched my face like a frantic child. He desperately wanted to confide in someone … if I pushed the right buttons it could be me.

  ‘I just proved I’m trustworthy, Earl. If I meant you harm I would’ve pushed you under that car, not pulled you away from it. If you trust me I might be able to help you.’

  He took that in, nodded, then lurched to his feet.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘They’re in the Collection Room,’ said Earl.

  ‘What are? What are you talking about?’

  He refused to tell me so I followed him.

  As he led me into the red alcove I noticed the space where the surreal Dada portrait had hung was now filled by the famous photograph of Earl in Paris.

  It was the black-and-white shot of him standing under the Statue of Liberty in the Place de la Bastille. It was the same photo that the police had distributed after his disappearance, the one that every student hung on their walls as a sign of solidarity with a rebel.

  This was eerie. Ceiba House was already a graveyard of memories that stretched forward in time …

  I shivered.

  So this was what the marshals called time shock …

  The Collection Room was exactly the same … the statues … the Egyptian mummy … the double-headed battle axe of Attila the Hun … All in exactly the same places.

  Or that’s what I thought.

  Earl led me to the rear left corner where a massive antique desk sat up against the glass wall. In that position it must have a clear view out over the Mayan sculpture garden.

  The desk was a reddish brown wood with a fine straight grain; it had to be mahogany. The three drawers supporting either side were framed by fluted columns and the flat top was edged with decorative trim. The leg space was enclosed at the back with an intricate latticework.

  A Latin motto was inscribed across the top of the desk in a darker red wood inlay. It said ‘Nulli Secundus’.

  Second to None.

  I ran my appreciative fingers across the motto. From the sculptured detail to the smooth finish, the antique desk was a fine piece of work.

  But I was positive it hadn’t been here when I visited Susan.

  I scanned around, making sure I had my bearings.

  No. The desk definitely hadn’t been in Susan’s Collection Room.

  Earl plonked himself down in the matching chair and reached for the half-drunk bottle of bourbon that sat on the desk, along with a script, some pens, a letter opener and an antique wooden box. Earl poured a shot into the dirty glass next to the bottle and skolled it. The glass had already made a ring on the smooth honey finish. He filled it again and sank that one too.

  ‘This is the Redbud desk,’ bragged Earl, patting the inscribed motto like it was a good dog. The alcohol had given him courage.

  Earl saw that I didn’t recognise the name and condescended to enlighten me. ‘It was General George Monfort’s desk, the hero of the Confederacy … he almost brought the Northern army to its knees.’ He poured a shot, downed that and poured another. ‘It’s been lost since the Civil War, but I found it.’ His patting turned into a clutching motion. ‘They all want the Redbud desk, but I’m going to keep it. It’s my new trophy.’

  His gloating pride of possession was difficult to watch.

  ‘I’m going to use it in Gone with the Wind and then I’ll have embedded another jewel of history in a setting of my own creation.’

  ‘What’s going on, Earl? First you’re talking about curses and then you show me this old desk. What am I supposed to be looking at?’

  Earl shot me a glance eloquent with contempt. ‘Are you sure you can take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Earl pulled the antique wooden box closer to him, then opened the top right-hand desk drawer and, in amongst an assortment of empty and full bourbon bottles, he found a silver key.

  It unlocked the antique box.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Earl couldn’t stand to look at them.

  I didn’t blame him.

  The box was full of dolls. Crudely made but terrifying.

  Each had a tiny skull as its head. They had long fangs, so my guess was that they were snake skulls.

  Each face was painted with a chalky white substance and the eye sockets filled with black pebbles glued into place.

  Each skull wore a coarse black wig with a steel-grey widow’s peak painted on it.

  Earl touched his steel-grey widow’s peak self-consciously. ‘Yes, they’re all meant to be me.’

  The dolls had been mutilated … their black material limbs torn off, their torsos ripped open. One had its groin stabbed through with a steel pin.

  The message was plain.

  Earl picked one up gingerly. ‘This was the last one, it arrived yesterday.’ He drained his glass as he stared down at it. There was a steel pin driven through the skull.

  ‘Have you told anyone about this, Earl? The police? The studio?’

  ‘Of course not, moron!’ The alcohol was inciting the old Earl to rise. ‘How could I? The studio’s thinking about getting rid of me as it is. Someone’s been spreading malicious rumours about me.’

  ‘What sort of rumours?’

  ‘That I can’t direct. That I’m incompetent.’

  I didn’t comment. That bit of news could’ve come from anyone.

  Earl didn’t notice my reticence. ‘This kind of bad publicity could finish me with Selznick,’ he said, pouring another shot. ‘He’s so protective of Gone with the Wi
nd. He hates bad publicity!’

  ‘Could this all be about Lewis Renfrow? The murder attempt tonight, these dolls …?’

  He jerked at the mention of Renfrow. ‘How do you know …?’

  ‘If you’re going to do it with his wife in the pool cabana, Earl, then people are going to find out.’

  That terrified him. ‘No! It can’t be Renfrow.’ Then he seemed to settle. ‘It can’t be him anyway. These dolls started coming before I got together with Ruby.’

  Hmm. That meant there could be two people after him …

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the dolls are separate, but are you sure Lewis Renfrow didn’t send that red Cadillac to get you tonight?’

  Malignant dolls can scare you but they don’t necessarily mean the sender’s trying to do away with you and there were a lot of people who’d like to see Earl squirm. But someone tried to kill Earl tonight and it was just after he screwed Renfrow’s wife. I studied the malignant black dolls; they didn’t seem to fit with an angry Mob boss.

  Earl shook his head. ‘Renfrow can’t know.’

  ‘Why, Earl? How could you know that for sure?’

  ‘Because Renfrow can’t know.’ He took another long glug of bourbon. The bottle was nearly empty. ‘He’d kill me.’

  ‘Gee, Earl.’ I couldn’t keep the disgust out of my voice. ‘Isn’t this something you could’ve foreseen?’

  His answer was to knock back yet another slug.

  And that was the end of any logical conversation.

  When Earl finished the first bottle he just started on the next one. He passed out, face-down on the motto on top of the Redbud desk.

  Gilbert came in with my parcel of clothes, took one unsurprised glance at Earl and asked if he should drive me home. I declined and said I’d camp out on the lounge.

  Just in case …

  20

  LEWIS RENFROW

  At just past 7 am, a truck pulled up outside Ceiba House and a heavily built man in a khaki uniform knocked on the front door. I’d already found a downstairs bathroom, showered and changed into my clean work gear so I answered it. He was from the Selznick studios and said he and his crew had come to take the Redbud desk in for the Life magazine photo session.

  He was talking about the Open Day that Selznick had pushed Daniel Devereaux to attend last night.

  Phyllis had briefed me on it. It was intended to manage the heavy flack David O. Selznick had copped from two opposing community groups. An African-American organisation had attacked Gone with the Wind as racist propaganda and when given the opportunity had talked it up a storm in the press. They loathed the book by Margaret Mitchell and were eagle-keen to keep tabs on the way the film version would turn out.

  On the opposite side of the barrage of criticism was a coalition of Southern leagues and associations who worshipped the book and publicly proclaimed that decadent Hollywood would profane their holy text. The not-so-subtle subtext was that someone like Selznick — Jewish and Yankee — shouldn’t be in charge of portraying the glorious Southern struggle.

  So Bernie Jennings had planned the event with military precision, priming his guns to blow the critics out of the water and wow the media in general. Life magazine had even been invited to record the event for posterity.

  The Southern coalition would meet the stars and management on the lot in the morning and have some pretty pictures taken and favourable press releases produced. The African-American group would arrive in the afternoon and have tea with Selznick, the stars and the black supporting actors.

  Jennings was relying on sheer star power and fast-talking to shut everyone up.

  It sounded like a recipe for disaster to me.

  Even worse, Earl was due to give a speech this morning.

  He was still lying across the desk, not asleep but not really awake either. He had a page from the script stuck to one side of his face and a deep indentation cutting across his brow from the blade of the letter opener.

  I perched on the corner of the desk, looking down at his puffy face.

  ‘Earl, the men from the studio have arrived and they want to take the desk. Anyway, you need to get ready for the studio Open Day.’

  Earl’s reply was to put his head back down on the desk again, right on the letter opener.

  ‘Earl, Susan will be down soon. You’re going to have to work out what to tell her.’

  He moved his head slightly and hissed out of the side of his mouth, ‘She’s not here.’

  I jerked back. Damn, his breath stank!

  ‘Susan’s not here?’ She hadn’t told me she was away for any part of this crucial week.

  I wanted to ask where she was, but needed to use what little brainpower Earl had available on other things. ‘Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to call the police? They can find out what’s going on. They can look into the death threats and what happened last night.’

  That could be one way to get my answers quickly.

  ‘Nooo!’ Earl started the syllable with a roar then it turned into a croak. He clutched his forehead. ‘Nothing to do with the cops.’

  ‘Surely you can’t be willing to die for Gone with the Wind?’

  Earl lifted his head to stare at me with bloodshot eyes. ‘You stupid bitch … if that was one of Renfrow’s hoodlums in that car, then the police are the last ones I’d go to with this problem.’

  ‘Oh.’ I caught his inference with a gulp.

  So there were LAPD – Mob connections to factor in?

  Hmm. If Renfrow was the murderer then that could be why the police had insisted it was suicide. That could be why they’d never started a proper murder investigation. It had all been a huge cover-up.

  That’s if it was Renfrow …

  Could a Mob boss really sit by while his wife screwed another man just a few feet away? That just didn’t feel right.

  And what about those bizarre black dolls?

  Earl lurched to his feet, then staggered towards the door. ‘I’m going to the set. At least I’m safe there.’

  I grimaced at that but followed him out into the hall.

  I told the movers to take the desk and then had to help Earl up the spiral staircase to his bedroom. Earl pushed a buzzer on his bedside table and collapsed across the king-size mattress.

  A few minutes later a middle-aged African-American woman in a black dress and white apron and cap tapped on his half-open bedroom door.

  She took one look at me and gave a loud sniff.

  Earl was still sprawled out on the bed. He opened one eye and said, ‘Beulah, get Moorehouse up here.’ Then shut it again.

  By now I was panting for some caffeine, so I said to Earl, ‘I’ll go downstairs and make some coffee.’

  Earl moaned and pulled one of the pillows over his eyes.

  I followed Beulah downstairs to the kitchen. She ignored me the whole way and her back was stiffer than a wooden chair.

  She picked up the counter phone. ‘Gilbert? You’d better come up. Yup. Yup. No, he’s hung over. Okay.’

  Beulah dropped the phone back in the cradle with a heavy clang. She refused to look at me. This was her kitchen and I was an intruder. She pulled a heavy iron skillet out of the cupboard and sat it on the stove, then got out some milk, eggs and flour. She was going to keep me standing here while she made breakfast.

  I glanced around.

  There was a kettle sitting on the gas stove next to the skillet.

  ‘If you’ll just tell me where the coffee and the cups are, Beulah, I’ll make myself a hot drink.’

  Beulah struggled with how to reply, breaking eggs into a bowl with more force than was needed while she thought. Good girls just didn’t stand around in married men’s bedrooms first thing in the morning, fully clothed or not.

  Mouth tight she said, ‘Coffee,’ jabbing her index finger at a low cupboard near the stove. ‘Cups.’ She jabbed again at the cupboard above the stove.

  ‘Would you like a cup?’ I asked.

  Without looking at
me, she gave her head a quick jerk. No.

  I filled the kettle, put it on the stove, lit the burner and got a cup and the coffee tin out.

  ‘My name is Kay Dupree. I’m replacing Phyllis Pettigrew as Earl’s assistant for a few days.’

  Beulah shot me a glance as if to say, ‘Phyllis never slept with the boss’.

  ‘Look, Beulah, I brought Mr Curtis home and stayed here because someone tried to kill him last night.’

  She gave me a look of total disbelief. In this era I guess women made up excuses for having illicit sex.

  ‘Yessum.’

  She’d said ‘yup’ to Gilbert so I was getting the other kind of treatment.

  Gilbert came through the back door. In the daylight he was a big man, with a boxer’s build. He was probably in his mid-thirties with brown hair and grey eyes.

  He took in the body language at a glance and said with concern, ‘Miss Dupree, didn’t Beulah get you some food to eat?’

  Beulah swung around at that and darted a glance from him to me. She stuck her hands on her hips. ‘What went on last night, Gilbert? Is this house getting crazy again?’

  Gilbert told her about the car and how I’d helped settle Earl down.

  Beulah’s response was to tell him to get up the stairs and put Earl in the shower. It seemed even dire straits were no excuse for my overnight presence.

  Gilbert shot me a sympathetic look. ‘At least make Miss Dupree breakfast, Beulah. She’s going to help me get the boss into work today.’

  Beulah’s response was another sniff.

  Gilbert gave up and left.

  Meanwhile the kettle had boiled so I made my coffee. I leant back against the counter and sipped it slowly.

  ‘Beulah, where is Susan Curtis?’

  ‘As far as possible as she can get from this house of Satan …’

  ‘What do you mean? Where is she?’

  ‘Mrs Curtis doesn’t even live here any more. She’s moved back to her family home on Long Island.’

  ‘What!’ My head started pounding. ‘But when did this happen?’

  ‘About a month ago. No one here knows about it yet though.’

  My jaw must’ve sagged open an inch.

  Beulah saw my confusion and reconsidered my possible guilt. ‘Girl, don’t you know that Beelzebub upstairs tries to seduce every woman he meets?’ She sniffed. ‘Mrs Curtis done found him out. Good thing too. So she took little Justine and moved back to her family.’ Beulah frowned into the sizzling skillet. ‘I just wish she’d taken me with her, instead of leaving me here in this devil’s playground.’