“This one says The Colonel’s Widow, and it’s registered to Bertram Wallis,” she said.
“What’s the date on it?”
“November fourteenth, 1961.”
“And the other one?”
“It says Twilight in the Summer Capital by Eugene Duerson. Dated February ninth, 1962. Oh, it’s a new one.” She smiled.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Then he turned to one of the patrolmen and instructed him to open both parcels.
“Neatly,” he said. “No ripping. This isn’t Christmas Day.”
Once the scripts had been opened, Millard shuffled through them, glancing back and forth between them for about a minute. At length he held out some pages from the middle of both piles for the two officers to see. One of them drew a sharp whistle.
“Yeah,” said Millard with a knowing nod. “Except for the titles, they’re identical to the last word.”
He ordered the men to rewrap the scripts and take them in as evidence. Then he told them to radio the precinct to send a couple of black-and-whites to pick up Gene Duerson.
“That was some fine guesswork, Miss Stone,” said Millard, extending a hand in congratulations.
I must have blushed.
“What tipped you off?”
“It was Bobby Renfro.”
“Bobby Renfro? The lousy actor Bobby Renfro?”
“Yes, him,” I said, realizing I was impugning poor Bobby’s career. It was one of those when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife questions. “He mentioned Wallis’s next film. The script you just saw. The Colonel’s Widow.”
“What of it?”
“It got me thinking. Actually, it hit me like a bolt from the blue. I remembered something I’d read in Wallis’s biographical sketch, right here at the Writers Guild. It said he came from a distinguished military family. His grandfather was a colonel in the British Army and served on the personal staff of the viceroy of India after that.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Somehow I never connected the dots of his next film, The Colonel’s Widow. But during the war, British children were shipped off to the colonies, Canada, Australia, and even India, to keep them safe from the Blitz. Bertram Wallis’s family sent him to India to stay with his grandmother, the colonel’s widow, in a place called Simla.”
“You’ve lost me. How does that connect Wallis’s movie to Duerson’s?”
“I studied history in college. And one course I particularly enjoyed was on the decline of British colonialism.”
“And?”
“And I remembered one chapter about the British administration in India that sounded so romantic to me. Each year, they would pack up everything—offices, families, horses, everything—and move from Delhi to a summer capital in the foothills of the Himalayas to escape the heat.”
“Let me guess,” said Millard. “It was that place you just mentioned. Simla.”
“The summer capital. Where Bertram Wallis spent the war years with his grandmother.”
“The colonel’s widow.”
We sat in one of the meeting rooms for several minutes more, discussing the development. Thanks to Andy Blaine’s photographs and Gene’s own admission to me, we knew Gene had been outside Wallis’s house the night of the murder. It was a short step from there to conclude that Gene might well have been the man in the other room whom Mrs. Gormley had described to me. What was missing was a motive. But with the appearance of identical scripts under both men’s names, a powerful motive was coming into focus.
“So what do you think?” asked Millard. “Duerson wanted the script and stole it from Wallis? Killed him to get it?”
“No,” I said. “I think Gene Duerson wrote the script and Wallis stole it from him.”
“How do you figure?”
“I believe Wallis hired Duerson to write this script then stiffed him or refused to give him writing credit or something along those lines. Gene once told me that the lowest thing you can do to a writer is steal his work. He had a very strong opinion about it. And once he called Wallis a plagiarist, though he gave no explanation. I think Gene considered it his property, even if it was Wallis’s grandmother’s story.”
“How can you be sure? Wallis made quite a few pictures. Duerson hasn’t made one.”
“Take a look at this,” I said, retrieving the photo I’d dug out of my suitcase the night before.
Millard squinted but couldn’t see it. I handed him my loupe and pointed to the bookshelf in the photo. He scanned the image closely for several seconds before he saw it.
“‘Twilight in the Summer Capital,’” he read. “Duerson’s script. It’s right there on his shelf.”
“I’m glad you let us take pictures of the study.”
“Me too.”
“Wallis made silly teen romps. Now suddenly he pulls a brilliant art film out of his hat? No. That’s Gene Duerson’s work.”
“Sounds like you and Duerson are friendly. Don’t you feel bad about turning him in?”
“Of course I do,” I said, thinking of how he’d comforted me two nights before.
One of the patrolmen knocked on the door and entered.
“Just talked to the captain,” he told Millard. “Told him about Duerson.”
“And?”
“The captain said thanks, but no need. Duerson turned himself in twenty minutes ago. Strolled into the station and said he wanted to make a confession.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Monday afternoon I tried to visit Gene at the Wilcox station. He sent word through his public defender that he didn’t want to see anyone except his youngest sister, who was on her way from Texas on a bus.
“He hates me, doesn’t he?” I asked the lawyer, a young man who looked as if he’d just passed the bar that morning.
“Why? He turned himself in and confessed, didn’t he? Made my job a little easier doing that. Not as much fun, though.” He tucked his briefcase under his arm and walked off down the corridor.
Millard showed up with a cup of coffee for me.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“Not too bad. Probably feels better now that he’s got it off his chest. That’s the way it is with most killers. At least the amateurs like him. Now Andrew Blaine is another story. Not a big fan of yours right now. But don’t worry. He won’t be bothering you anytime soon.”
Mickey, Evelyn, and I had all signed sworn statements detailing Andy’s attack. The police thought I might have to return to California at the time of the trial to testify.
“And how’s he doing?”
“He’ll live. He’ll be in the hospital for a while, though. That dyke clubbed him good with the bat. Nearly killed him. She should bat cleanup for the Dodgers.”
“Did Gene say why he did it?” I asked, ignoring Millard’s musings on Evelyn’s baseball prowess.
“He said he went there to talk things over with Wallis. He hadn’t heard from him in weeks about the script he wrote. He was waiting for Wallis in the study when there was a ruckus in the next room.”
“Tony beating up Wallis?”
“That’s right. Duerson saw Tony and his girl running from the place. Wallis was on the floor, covered in his own blood and vomit. Duerson helped him up, gave him a drink. Then he brought up the script. The chat turned ugly, and they argued. Wallis said it was his idea. Said he paid Duerson to write the script and now it was his. He was going to make the picture, and Duerson sure as hell wasn’t getting his name on it.”
“And that’s when Gene lost his temper and killed him?”
“You’d think so, but no. He said he was about to drag his sorry self out of there. Go home and lick his wounds when all of a sudden Wallis offered him a new deal to write another script. And this time he’d let him keep the writing credit.”
“And? He didn’t take the offer?”
“No. Something snapped. Your boy went ape. He says he knew Wallis would just take advantage of him again, so he slugged him. It felt good, so he s
lugged him again. Then he kept punching him even after he fell to the floor. When he regained his wits, he thought he killed him. Must have hit him hard or banged his head on the floor, because he was sure he was dead.”
“And that’s when he tossed him over the railing?”
Millard nodded. “Locked the dog out on the terrace by accident, I figure. He never even noticed him. Then he jumped into his car and drove off.”
“By any chance, did he knock over a neighbor’s garbage cans?” I asked.
Millard wasn’t sure. I guessed it didn’t matter, but that might have explained Gene’s twisted bumper and Trudy Hirshland’s dented trash cans.
We talked a few minutes more, and I realized my opinion about Sergeant John Millard had changed. He was coarse, possibly on the take, but a damn good cop. And deep down inside there was a grain of decency in his soul. Our brief acquaintance was at an end. We might see each other again if I returned to Los Angeles for Andy’s trial, but who knew? Fiddling with my crippled umbrella—the same one I’d borrowed from Marty the bellhop—I apologized again for the way I’d treated him on our dinner date. He shrugged but said nothing. Then I thanked him for his help, and he thanked me for mine.
“You be more careful in the future,” he said before I took my leave. “There are a lot of bad guys out there. They’re not all sweethearts like me.”
I spent the rest of Monday evening writing three new articles on the Bertram Wallis murder, one focusing on the victim and his history, another on the murder itself, and a third on my friend Gene Duerson. Tony more or less faded into the background of those stories since he’d ended up a mere footnote, a temporary suspect who’d been cleared.
I phoned Charlie Reese in the middle of the night, his time, and got his wife, Edith, again on the line. She screeched at me until Charlie wrestled the phone away from her. I apologized for the late hour and told him the big news. He was giddy, promising he would serve up some humble pie for Artie Short in the morning. I dictated my stories to him, and he congratulated me on my fine work.
“I never doubted you, Ellie,” he said.
I’d learned to resist the urge to rub men’s noses in their own mistakes, so I didn’t contradict him. Charlie was a good egg, after all. He’d hired me when no one else would, and had shielded me from Artie Short’s wrath on many occasions. Probably saved my job just as many times. But I knew that my reputation at the New Holland Republic was only as strong as my most recent day of work. That was the price I paid for wearing a skirt in a man’s job.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1962
“Do you have an appointment?” asked the guard at the Bronson Gate.
“No, but I’m sure she’ll want to see me.”
He picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. After a moment he announced that Miss Eleonora Stone was there to see her.
“She says she doesn’t have an appointment.” He listened for a moment then nodded. “Yes, Miss Fetterman. I’ll drive her over right away.”
The guard invited me to sit in a small motorized car, and he took the wheel.
“Are we going golfing?” I asked.
“Funny,” he said and drove off.
Dorothy met me in the alleyway below her office bungalow. She’d thrown her coat over her shoulders and waited in the light misty rain with no umbrella.
“Thank you, Thomas,” she said to the guard.
She didn’t say a word to me until we were seated opposite each other in her office. “I understand the police have arrested Gene Duerson for Bertie’s murder.”
I nodded.
“And you figured it out. Have you come to gloat? Or have you reconsidered my offer of a position?”
“No, I haven’t come for a job.”
She pursed her perfectly painted lips. “Then it’s to gloat.”
I reached into my purse, retrieved a sealed brown envelope, and placed it on the desk between us. She eyed it with ill-concealed avidity.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Open it.”
“You don’t want Tony’s contracts before I take it?”
I shrugged my indifference. “Tony’s gone. He might come back, but I doubt it.”
Dorothy stared at me for a long moment. I fancied she was trying to look into my soul again. I was sure she couldn’t fathom why I would fold my hand when I held all the best cards.
“You know I’ve already sent the signed contracts to his agent,” she said, perhaps trying to score points on some invisible integrity meter. Perhaps she was trying to prove something to me. “The deal is his if he wants it. I can’t rescind the offer.”
“Good luck and congratulations to him,” I said.
Dorothy sliced the envelope open with a painted fingernail and reached inside. She retrieved six three-and-a-half-by-five photographs.
“Oh, God,” she said after the briefest peek, and slipped them back into the envelope, which she closed with some tape. Then she scrawled her signature over the seal and drew a cleansing breath.
“Thank you, Miss Stone. Some very important people will be pleased that this has been resolved at last.”
“I’ll be going then.”
She watched me closely as I rose from the chair.
“It hasn’t been easy, you know,” she said.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You asked me once why I never married, and I didn’t answer you. It hasn’t been easy.”
Purse in hand, ready to leave, I stood there above her and stared.
“I made a decision long ago,” she continued. “I chose the life I wanted, and I’ve stuck with my choice. For better or worse. And I’ve been happy for the most part.”
She paused, and I waited. I wasn’t going to interrupt her.
“You think me heartless,” she said. “Ruthless, especially where someone like Tony is concerned. But you’re wrong. I have feelings, you know. Feelings for Tony. More than you know. And there’ve been others besides him. Such beautiful men. Young and talented with great futures before them and absolutely no interest in falling in love with me. I know my talents and my limitations. Yes, I’m sure they enjoy the wicked secrecy of a clandestine affair with an older woman. What young man wouldn’t? A little adventure they’ll recall fondly, deliciously perhaps, as they grow older. But not one of them ever considered me anything more than a lark.” She snickered with a hint of melancholy. “And that includes Tony. I was a pleasant stop on his journey to manhood. Perhaps I taught him something about love or about himself.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “I’m not judging you.”
“I think I’ve wanted to tell someone for a long time. Just tell someone. I have no close friends, Miss Stone. Just young men for brief, exhilarating periods at a time. Oh, I’m not looking for pity. As I said, I chose this life and I like it. It has its many perks.” She managed a weak smile. Then it faded on her lips. “But it hasn’t been easy. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
“Thank you for answering my question,” I said and turned to reach for the doorknob. I looked back at her. “Good-bye, Miss Fetterman.”
Dorothy’s confession inspired me to right one last wrong. I was still in possession of an object that did not rightly belong to me. So to expunge any possible recrimination one might lay at my feet, I returned to the McCadden Hotel to give back the crippled umbrella.
Mr. Cromartie nearly fell off his chair when he saw me enter the lobby. But I approached him without hostility. I laid Marty’s umbrella on the desk and told him we were square. In truth, I don’t believe he remembered the tattered old thing or what I was talking about. But I felt noble, self-righteous at having settled my debt. Of course I was aware that I hadn’t paid the bill, but that was technically a problem for Artie Short’s conscience, not mine. I wished the old man good day, turned on my heel, and walked out into the street with head held high.
As I stood on the stoop, pulling my gloves onto my hands, a taxi rolled to a stop at the curb. My old pal Marty
the bellhop sprang into action. He avoided my eyes as he yanked open the rear passenger door and welcomed the arriving guest. A man struggled to extricate from the cab, spilling a jumble of papers into the gutter as he did.
“Let me help you with that, sir,” said Marty, bending over to gather the wayward documents.
A man in his forties wearing a Hawaiian shirt climbed out of the taxi. No overcoat or umbrella for the wintry California weather. Greenhorn, I thought. Then my heart skipped with joy. It was George Walsh. He’d arrived just in time to close the barn door after the horse had run off.
EPILOGUE
Andy Blaine copped a plea for a lesser sentence, thereby sparing me a return trip to sunny California. The judge took pity on him, as it was his first offense, but ordered him to stay away from Mickey Harper and Evelyn Maynard. And me.
Gene Duerson took a deal on a manslaughter charge and was sentenced to twenty years, according to Millard. He’d kept me apprised of the situation after I left California. And Gene wrote to me years later to say he was sorry for what he’d done. That he’d never intended to kill Wallis. And that he’d written a novel, The Wrong Side of Luck. I don’t believe he ever found a publisher, which, I suppose, could have been predicted by the book’s title.
I did see Mickey again down the line in much different circumstances. But that’s a story for another day.
Tony Eberle never returned to Hollywood. At least not that I ever knew. He never appeared in any movies, that much is certain. New Holland’s golden boy must have boarded that train for oblivion, the depot Gene Duerson had written was reserved for broken dreams.
Upon my return to New Holland, Charlie insisted I close the chapter on Tony Eberle. We had to publish something about what had happened, he reasoned. So I wrote a brief summary of his decision to leave the movie business once Twistin’ on the Beach was shelved.
“Local Actor Walks Away from Hollywood” was the headline of my two-paragraph story. No, I didn’t tell the hometown folks how I’d found him. I gave him a break to make up in a small way for the break he’d thrown away. I debated whether to write about the offer he’d refused, the one for a two-picture deal that Dorothy Fetterman had extended to him like a farewell kiss. In the end, I decided to leave it out. It would only have invited more gossip and recrimination against him among the local populace. As it was, I tried to make his departure sound almost heroic in my piece. But, in truth, I failed. I gave so few details, no quotes, no description of Tony’s life or state of mind—respecting his last plea to me—that his “brave” decision to leave the dirty world of Hollywood rang false, as if I’d tacked it onto the story.
Cast the First Stone Page 30
