She shrugged and glanced over at Tony. “Why wouldn’t he lie?”
“But I saw you two. Surely you . . .”
“I’ll believe him once my boys have finished searching the trailer,” she announced.
I gaped at her. She looked back at me, impatient. “They followed us out here. You didn’t think I’d entrust something this important to a girl reporter from the back of beyond, did you?”
“The phone call to Archie Stemple,” I said, feeling gutted and betrayed. “From my room at the hotel.”
“Only it wasn’t Archie on the line. Don’t feel bad. I never would have found Tony without you.”
I wandered back toward the beach. She called after me, but I ignored her. Instead, I hooked an arm through Tony’s as I passed him and tugged him gently along with me. He was startled but came along without protest.
“She’s searching the trailer now,” I told him as we walked. “She lied to me. I’m sorry, Tony. This is all my fault.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Nothing,” said the bruiser whose back was turned to me. Something about him was familiar. He stood there in a suit, tall, athletic, towering over Dorothy about ten yards from Bo Hanson’s trailer. The voice rang a bell, too. Then the moonlight caught on his gold wristwatch, and I knew. He turned his head, showing me his face. I felt a kick in the gut and must have gasped. He glanced over at me for half a second, no more, before looking away. What a fool I’d been.
Chuck Porter, the music executive who’d tried to pick me up at Musso and Frank. The one who’d helped me reach Bobby Renfro through Rockin’ Johnny Bristol. Now, in the dark of a Malibu evening in February, he studiously refused to make eye contact with me.
“That can’t be,” said Dorothy to him. “Have your boys check again. Turn that tin can inside out.”
“We’ve done that already, Miss Fetterman. We found the dirty magazines the beach bum had squirreled away under the floor, and his stash of marijuana. Quite an impressive amount, by the way. Of both. What do you want me to do with the weed?”
“Smoke it. Sell it. I don’t care. I want the photographs.”
“Sorry,” he said.
Dorothy leaned against the fender of my car, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Tony, April, Mickey, and Bo Hanson stood nearby, surveying the jetsam that Chuck Porter’s boys had thrown from the trailer during their search. With the exception of Bo, who looked as if he’d just stumbled away from a plane crash, the others seemed resigned to clean up the mess, happy that no one had been beaten up or arrested.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t happy about any of this. I set out after Chuck Porter as he headed toward a dark sedan parked a short distance away. He didn’t respond when I called out to him to wait, but I caught up with him just as he reached the car.
“You work for Dorothy Fetterman,” I said to accuse. “You’re just a stooge.”
He stood there trapped against the door, frowning down at me. I couldn’t say in the dark which bothered him more, my presence or the insult I’d hurled at him, but he stared at me for a long moment searching for a rejoinder. Finally he spoke.
“I had a job to do and I did it.”
“You lied to me. From the moment you sidled up to me at the bar, you were just playing me for a chump.” He didn’t deny it. “I should have realized it when I met you at the hotel. You knew Tony Eberle’s name that day, didn’t you? Even though I’d never mentioned it to you. And the meeting with Bobby Renfro and Johnny Bristol? That was Dorothy pulling strings, wasn’t it?”
He blinked at me but remained otherwise as still as a statue. Why was I bothering to confront this man whom I barely knew? He’d done nothing but try to seduce me. He hadn’t befriended me. Hadn’t taken me to dinner or asked me about my family. I’d met him exactly twice. Why did I care? He was just one of Dorothy Fetterman’s minions. A henchman. Hired muscle. Not a music producer as he’d said. I thought what a pathetic specimen he was. Yet, somehow, he’d duped me. I prided myself on being sharper than my competition, whether it was on a story, a crossword puzzle, or a game of charades. And Chuck Porter—Alden—was the flesh-and-blood proof that I was a fraud. He and Dorothy had outsmarted me. I wanted to slap him but knew if I did I would collapse right there in a heap of shame and defeat. Instead I stared him in the eye until he had to look away.
“I know where the photographs are,” I said.
He gazed at me, eyes narrowing, but still he said nothing. My lie was nothing more than an attempt to win the battle after having lost the war. He’d report to Dorothy, and that would be my revenge: her coveting the pictures that I would refuse to give her.
Chuck climbed into his car, turned the ignition, and drove off. I trudged back to the others.
Poor Bo Hanson was reeling. I felt sorry for him, despite the threats he’d made against me earlier in the day. He was swimming against considerable disadvantages in life, after all. Sure, he was tall and handsome in an obvious way. But he was dim, with no spirit beyond a love for the surf and reefer. Now, stepping over his belongings strewn on the mud outside his Airstream trailer, Bo approached Dorothy as if she were an unexploded shell to be defused.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
“What is it?” she asked, nearly turning him to stone.
“I was wondering, well . . . I’d like to get my tobacco back.”
She stared at him for a full ten seconds before speaking. “Tobacco? Do you mean your marijuana?”
He nodded.
“No,” she said simply, and Bo—in defeat—shuffled back to his trailer like a condemned man to the gallows.
“Was that necessary?” I asked.
She didn’t answer me. Just pushed off the fender and said she wanted to go. I told her to find her own way home.
“Don’t be a child. Let’s go.”
“Ask Mr. Alden for a ride,” I said.
“You know very well that he just left.”
I shrugged. “Then perhaps Bo Hanson will give you a lift.”
Their sojourn at the beach at an end, Tony, April, and Mickey wanted to return to LA. April told me she was taking Tony in her car, which had been hidden under a tarpaulin behind the garbage cans not far away. She asked me to drive Mickey back to his place. I wondered what poor Bo was going to do all by himself in his smelly trailer. As we drove off, Papa Joe, the man on the motorbike I’d seen earlier, was helping him pick up his scattered possessions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1962
I stepped out into the rain and made my way to Hody’s, wondering how I was going to wrap up the Bertram Wallis murder. I’d found Tony, but that hadn’t cleared up anything. I still had nothing more than the story of how Tony Eberle had blown his big chance. I labored over my notes, working on a new article to dictate to Charlie Reese. With nothing else to report, I wrote that Tony had been traced to a trailer park in Malibu and that he’d denied any involvement in Wallis’s death. It was thin. Poor work on my part, and I knew it. I was debating whether to scrap it and wait until I had something more substantial, when a figure slipped into the seat opposite me in the booth.
“Good morning, Ellie.” It was Dorothy Fetterman.
The waitress arrived, and Dorothy ordered a cup of black coffee.
“I see you made it home last night,” I said.
“Yes. Bo Hanson was only too happy to oblige me once I promised him a role in an upcoming picture.” She paused. “And I gave him back his marijuana.”
“Then everything worked out,” I said, damning her silently for her ability to bribe people with promises of a job.
“I want the photographs.”
“I don’t have them.”
“You told Mr. Alden that you did.”
I shook my head. “I told him I knew where they were.”
“Stop splitting hairs. I want you to tell me where they are.”
I stared her down, and she received the message loud and clear. I was the one holding the cards, and th
ere was nothing she could do about it. Except perhaps to throw money at me, which was her next gambit.
“How much do you want?”
“For the photos? I’m sorry if you misunderstood. They’re not for sale,” I said, folding my papers as I prepared to leave.
Dorothy’s nostrils flared, but her face betrayed no other signs of anger. Then she attempted a friendlier tack.
“Let’s start over, shall we? Perhaps have dinner this evening? We can discuss your future at Paramount. I have some ideas.”
“No thanks.”
“I don’t know what I did to offend you, Ellie, but I apologize.”
I shrugged. “Come back and see me once you’ve figured it out.”
There was no sign of Tony or April at her North Edgemont apartment. No one answered the bell, and her car was gone, too. I figured the two of them were tooling around town, burning through the high test I’d pumped into her tank in Barstow. Mickey was nowhere to be found on Wilton Place where I’d dropped him the night before. Evelyn Maynard answered my knock.
“Haven’t seen you in a couple of days,” she said, inviting me in.
“I’ve been on Tony Eberle’s heels. Caught up with him last night in Malibu.”
“Congrats, angel. That’s good news.”
“Not entirely. He’s disappeared again.”
“When are you going to forget about him and let yourself go with me?”
I laughed. And Evelyn did too. Then I caught myself and worried that I’d insulted her again. But, no. She’d been kidding.
“Let’s plan an evening out when this thing is over,” I said. “I’d like to thank you for your help.”
Evelyn smiled weakly and puffed on her cigarette holder.
“Sure thing,” she said. “I’m all yours, Ellie darling.”
I gulped. And I scolded myself. And I felt like a fraud.
I was out of ideas. Whatever my next move was, it was eluding me. I returned to the hotel to call Charlie with the uninspired story I’d put together. He agreed that we should wait until something brighter emerged. At least give Tony a chance to resurrect his career before pronouncing it over.
“I’ve hit a dead end with the principals,” I said. “I’m going to take a step back and speak to Wallis’s cleaning lady. She might have some information on his enemies.”
Charlie agreed it was as good a place as any to start.
Patricia Gormley lived on the second floor in a one-bedroom apartment on Lexington Avenue. The place was loud—traffic noise from the nearby freeway through open windows—and smelled of wet leaves and mud from the rain. My heels clacked on the old tile floors of the darkened corridors, echoing off the high-gloss paint of the walls and ceiling. The lights were either switched off or broken. I reached her door and knocked. A small dog inside barked like a doorbell.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak to me,” I said, once she’d let me inside.
I reached down to pet the small Chinese pug that had met me at the door. He took a sniff of my hand, found nothing that piqued his interest, and waddled away to sit leaning against the sofa leg.
“That’s Leon,” said Mrs. Gormley, a tall, thin woman in her fifties. Her inflections, occasional odd turns of phrase, and rolled Rs betrayed a stubborn Irish accent. “Mr. Wallis’s dog. I took him in when Mr. Wallis died.”
“That was good of you. He looks like a nice little fellow.”
She shrugged. “He’s all right. I live here with my daughter and my grandson. She’s workin’. He’s at school.”
The apartment was small and crowded with furniture and boxes of belongings piled against the walls. The moist air had permeated the cardboard, creating a musty smell that dominated the room.
“As I told you over the phone, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Mr. Wallis and what happened that night.”
“He always asked me to work parties, to pass the trays of food and drink and clean up after. He liked having me around to serve the guests. Said he didn’t want no Coloreds or Spanish. Didn’t give the right impression, he said.”
“What time did you leave that night?” I asked, thinking what an odious man he must have been.
She didn’t need to search her memory. “I left at two thirty after I did the washing up in the kitchen and hauled the rubbish out to the bins. I rang for a taxicab. Mr. Wallis always paid for carfare when I stayed late.”
“Did you see anyone in the house after the guests left?” I asked.
“A man showed up while I was mopping the kitchen floor. Mr. Wallis took him into the study.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“I didn’t see him, did I? But I heard voices in the hall.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Just the couple that showed as I was getting into my cab. Pulled up real fast in a station wagon and nearly ran into the dustbins.”
“Did you get a look at them?”
“Sure. And I told the police, too. A young couple. A man and a girl. They legged it inside. I was worried something was off, so I told the driver to wait. But he said to find another taxi if I wanted to admire the view.”
“Did you recognize either of them?”
She nodded smartly. “I didn’t know their names, but I’ve seen both of them there at Mr. Wallis’s parties. The boy was tall and handsome. An actor, I think. And the girl was pretty. I told the cops, and they showed me photographs to identify them.”
The description was enough to convince me. “Did the police say what their names were?”
She shook her head. “They didn’t tell me nothing. They just thanked me and sent me home.”
“You said you’d seen the girl before. Are you sure?”
“She was fairly regular at Mr. Wallis’s parties. Always with a different gentleman.” She pursed her lips. “A shame when a young girl like that goes wrong.”
I’d had my doubts about April, but she’d denied ever having attended Bertram Wallis’s parties. I remembered the man in the diner in Barstow. The one who’d told me that April would do anything to get what she wanted. And I knew that Tony had decked Wallis during the confrontation that took place shortly after he and April stormed the house. He’d told me as much. But what was April’s involvement? Tony claimed she’d stopped him from beating Wallis, perhaps even saved his life. Or were the lovers covering for each other? Had Tony perhaps rushed outside while April shoved the drunken man over the railing and down the ravine? All were possible scenarios, but I had already known of their presence in the house after the party. What I wanted to dig into was the identity of the man in Wallis’s study. Might he have emerged from the other room to finish the job Tony had started? Or, if he was an innocent bystander, he could have seen or heard something to corroborate or debunk Tony and April’s shared alibi. But Mrs. Gormley insisted she neither saw nor heard anything that might identify the man.
“Can you tell me what you found on Thursday morning when you arrived at the house?”
“A holy mess. Not like I left it Monday night after the party. Overturned chairs, vomit and blood on the carpet, and the bedroom was turned upside down, like someone tore it apart looking for something.”
“The bedroom? Not the study?”
She shrugged. “The study was like always. It was the bedroom.”
“What else did you see?”
“Little Leon was locked out on the terrace in the pouring rain.”
“How do you suppose he got out there?”
“He was always trying to slip out that door. Learnt his lesson, I’ll wager. He won’t be trying to escape no more.”
“But who would have left him out there?” I asked.
She opined that whoever pushed Mr. Wallis over the railing would have had no qualms about leaving a dog out in the cold for two days and nights.
“Surely not,” I agreed. “But why risk a barking dog where the neighbors might hear him?”
“It’s a mystery to me.”
As it was after four,
Mrs. Gormley announced tea and biscuits and disappeared into the kitchen to put the kettle on to boil. I waited in the cluttered parlor staring at little Leon, who was still sitting against the sofa leg, panting as if he’d just broken a four-minute mile. I thought about him trapped on the terrace with Wallis dead three hundred feet below. Poor thing. No food, and it had been quite chilly, at least at night. And I asked myself again why anyone—even a confirmed dog hater—would leave a dog outside where his barking might attract attention. As things turned out, Leon didn’t summon anyone with his barking. But the murderer wouldn’t have known that. And I could only conclude that Leon had slipped out onto the terrace while the murderer was dragging Wallis to the railing. Whoever that was must not have noticed the dog had escaped. Then, the deed done, he—or she—probably slid the door closed again with the little pug on the other side.
Mrs. Gormley returned with a tray. Leon perked up and shadowed her across the room. “You’ll have some tea?” she asked me.
“Thank you,” I said.
I’d noticed a bottle of Irish whisky on the sideboard that would have been more to my liking, but I behaved myself, sipping the tea and nibbling on a digestive biscuit. Little Leon waited at my ankle, eyes fixed on my right hand, following its every move, especially when a biscuit was in play.
“Could you tell if anything was missing from the bedroom?” I asked.
“Can’t say for certain. But there was books and papers everywhere. Pulled off the shelves and strewn about.”
“Did you see any photographs?”
“There were plenty on the floor. I picked them up and put them back in their boxes.”
I felt awkward asking her the next question, but there was no avoiding it. Were they dirty photographs? Mrs. Gormley regarded me down her long nose.
“Artistic photos, they were. I was used to seeing such things at Mr. Wallis’s place.”
“Nothing pornographic?”
She shifted in her seat, then sipped her tea. “Like I said, they were artistic photos. Some of them might have been a little naughty. Nudes. But that’s the way it is with art, isn’t it?”
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