Who Killed the Pinup Queen?

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  “Ms. Adams, this is Tilda Harper. I’m working on an article about guest stars on the show Cowtown for Entertain Me! and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions.”

  “Call me Frankie. And of course you can ask me some questions. My agent would disown me if I didn’t let you ask me questions. You’d think an old broad like me never got interviewed.” She cackled. “Just because I haven’t talked to a reporter in five years! That means you get five years’ worth of gossip!”

  Tilda liked her already. “I’ll have to take a rain check on the recent stuff because this article is just about your experiences on Cowtown, but there’s room for a plug about what you’re doing next.”

  “You’ll be missing out on some juicy stories about Sam Waterston.”

  “I’d fit it in if I could, but my editor is being pretty strict on this one.”

  “Her loss. So what do you need?”

  Tilda got a couple of mildly amusing anecdotes about Frankie’s Cowtown appearance. The actress had still been in her ingénue period then, and had played a shy young farmer’s daughter who tried to make herself over as a woman of the world to win the eye of a dashing cavalryman. The usual disaster ensued, followed by the usual happy ending. It had not been one of Tilda’s favorite episodes, and Frankie sounded bored about it, too.

  Since Tilda really didn’t want a boring article, she cast around for something to liven it up. “How was the regular cast to work with?”

  “They were fine, but they knew I was just passing through, so they didn’t waste much time with me. Tucker Ambrose hinted about taking me on as a regular, maybe killing off the husband so I could be a young widow, which would have been great because I looked terrific in black. But that might have just been pillow talk.”

  Tilda blinked. “So you and Tucker had a relationship?”

  “Just a one-night stand. Well, technically a one-night-and two-afternoon-quickies stand. It was one of the quickies that kept me from getting the regular job. Cynthia Barth walked in on us, and that put paid to the whole idea. Jealous bitch!”

  “You mean that she and Tucker were—”

  “God, no. She just didn’t want anybody having any fun, and when it’s done right, sex is a whole lot of fun. Barth went running to Hoyt, talking about how I wasn’t right for the show because I was such a tramp, and how the sponsors would leave in droves and people wouldn’t let their kids watch. Keeping me would probably have caused cancer, too! Anyway, Hoyt caved and Tucker never argued with him, so I was out. At least Tucker felt guilty about it—he bought me a nice diamond necklace, and made sure I got some work on one of their other shows later on.”

  “Miss Barth must really have disliked you.”

  “I never figured out why, either. I was no threat. She was as good an actress as I was, she was prettier, and she was the show’s female lead. She even got to spout the voice-over every week. But she sure wanted me gone. She even dragged in stuff about my modeling, and she must have done some digging to find out about that.”

  “Modeling?” Tilda said, wondering what was coming next. Usually she guided an interview—this time it was all she could do to keep up.

  “Pinup stuff. I know you’ve heard of Bettie Page. Well, I worked with her. Taught her everything she knew about modeling, too.”

  Clearly Bettie had had many teachers. “Did you work with the camera clubs?”

  “You know about that stuff? Yeah, I did camera club work, and a few magazines. That was when I was still trying to make it on Broadway. Eventually I figured out that wasn’t going to happen. I had the right look for musicals, but couldn’t sing or dance, and I was too wholesome for the serious stuff. So I switched coasts and went into television.”

  “And you don’t know how Miss Barth found out about the modeling?” Of course, Tilda had a hunch that it had had something to do with Barth having been Morning Glory.

  “I sure as hell didn’t tell her. She never spoke more than half a dozen words to me—the first day I showed up on set, she stuck her nose up so far in the air I’m surprised she didn’t trip over something. All I can figure is that she saw my pictures somewhere. For all I know she had a stack of back issues of Titter sitting under her bed to whack off to every night, though I didn’t really see her as a dyke.”

  “She doesn’t seem that way to me, either,” Tilda said, “just very proper.” Other than her pinup pictures, of course. She was starting to think that every actress in Hollywood back then had pinup pictures in her past. “You know, Frankie, I’ve recently run into several actresses of your generation who did pinups. Was it that common?”

  “Hard to say. Nobody talked about it—once you were out of it, you kept your mouth shut if you wanted to get acting work. Look at what happened to Bettie. What was that movie they made about her?”

  “The Notorious Bettie Page.”

  “That’s the one. It was hard enough getting work—being notorious would destroy your career.”

  “But there have always been vamps.”

  “Yeah, but they only allowed a few at a time, and you had to look like a bad girl—sultry, dark-eyed, that whole style. I had big brown eyes and freckles—I looked like a good girl, so I had to be a good girl, whether I liked it or not. These days, nobody cares what you do. Hell, the more of a mess you get into, the better the press coverage.”

  “It must be frustrating.”

  “Yeah, it is. Then again, I didn’t have to starve myself to a size zero either. I had some hips on me, baby. Still do!”

  Tilda looked down at her notes, not sure what else to ask. She had plenty of material, and while a lot of it would never make it into the Cowtown series, she’d find a place for it somewhere, and would have to wrangle some sort of assignment to find out the dirt about Sam Waterston.

  One last question occurred to her, since Frankie had been part of the camera club scene. “This has nothing to do with the Cowtown article, but I’ve got a photo of a guy I’m trying to identify. He was a member of one of the old New York camera clubs. He shows up in the pictures taken by another amateur, but that guy never knew his name, and I’m having a hard time finding anybody who was around back then.”

  “You mean anybody who’s still alive.”

  “Something like that,” Tilda said, not wanting to mention how recently at least one of the people had died. “If I e-mail you some photos, could you look and see if you know who the guy was?”

  “Tilda, I’d be happy to help you, but I wouldn’t be able to recognize anybody. You see, my eyesight never was much good, and this was long before contacts were sold in every shopping mall. I wore glasses, and I’m talking ugly horn-rims with Coke-bottle-bottom lenses. Me being as vain as the next gal, and of course not wanting to blow the pinup image, I always took them off before I went to a photo shoot. That meant I was going by voices and shapes, not faces, and I don’t think I could identify any of the photographers then, let alone now.”

  “It was a long shot, anyway,” Tilda said philosophically. She asked a few questions about Frankie’s next project, which turned out to be another bag lady, this time on CSI, then thanked her for her time.

  After a break to get a glass of Dr Pepper, she called Aaron Stemfel, the character actor who’d been on Star Trek. There was no answer, but since he lived in California, there was a chance she could get him later in her evening, which wouldn’t be late for him, so she left a message and started writing the article about Frankie. The timing gods must have been pleased with her, because just as she finished the first draft, Aaron Stemfel called back.

  They exchanged greetings and the requisite amount of small talk for a previous interviewer and interviewee, and then Tilda started in on her Cowtown questions.

  “That’s a show I don’t get asked about very often,” Aaron said. “I’ve probably been interviewed at least once for every second of airtime on Star Trek, but there’s not much interest in the old TV Westerns.”

  “The new resort might change that.”

&nbs
p; “Could be, but I’ve been around this business far too long to count on anything.”

  Stemfel had appeared on four episodes, each time playing the unimaginatively named Cookie, who drove a chuck wagon during cattle drives. It hadn’t been much of a part at first, just a bit of comic relief, but he’d been colorful enough that they kept bringing him back, with more and more of a story each time, until he finally died in a truly heart-wrenching scene where he bravely placed himself and his chuck wagon in the middle of a pass to block a stampede that would have destroyed Cowtown.

  He had plenty of tales to tell about the show, enough for Tilda to write an article two or three times longer than she’d been asked for. She almost didn’t bother to ask about working with the Ambrose brothers and Miss Barth, but threw it in on the off chance that she’d get an even better batch of quotes.

  “I always liked working with Hoyt and Tucker,” Stemfel said. “A lot of producers spent most of their time in the office, but those two were hands-on. Tucker was good with people, keeping everybody happy, and Hoyt had a real eye for camera angles, what would look good on film. Not something I’d have expected from a couple of cowboys.”

  Tilda bit her tongue for what seemed like the millionth time since she’d found out the truth about the Ambrose brothers. “What about Miss Barth?”

  He hesitated long enough to get Tilda interested, but all he said was, “Cynthia wasn’t always an easy person to work with.”

  “I’ve heard she could be standoffish,” Tilda prompted.

  “I don’t think she meant to be. She was always focused on the show, and the message we were presenting. Now, my character was just there for laughs, which was fine. Even Shakespeare put in characters to keep the groundlings happy. But Miss Barth wasn’t satisfied with that. She wanted him to mean something, to set some kind of example. That’s where the idea for Cookie turning hero came from. I shouldn’t complain—it gave me a hell of an exit. On the other hand, I didn’t get any more work on the show.”

  “Do you think she was trying to get rid of you?”

  “No, Cynthia just thought it set a better moral tone for the show. She was wound tight as a drum, which is probably why she had her problems later on.”

  “What problems do you mean?”

  “The drinking.” He hesitated again. “You hadn’t heard about that before, had you?”

  “No, I hadn’t,” she admitted.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Tilda, can we keep that part off the record?”

  “Of course, if that’s what you want,” Tilda said, stifling a sigh at having yet another juicy bit of information that she couldn’t use. “But if you wouldn’t mind telling me a bit more just for my own curiosity . . .”

  “It would be cruel to leave you hanging. Here’s the thing. Cynthia was typecast as Arabella, which happens a lot. Sometimes I regret I never got a series lead, or even a good supporting role, but all in all I think I’ve had a better life for being a nomad. I’ve worked more than a lot of people—I could be working now, if I wanted to. Cynthia didn’t have that option. And it wasn’t just the typecasting. Her having been so formal didn’t help her when it came to getting more work—she hadn’t made many friends. The Ambrose brothers had gone on to other things, and I think they tried to use her, but they had to answer to studio bosses who wanted fresh faces, so all they could do was give her the occasional guest shot. After a while, Cynthia’s own agent wouldn’t return her calls, and well, she dove into a bottle and stayed there a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Years,” he said sadly. “It’s not like now, when everybody and his brother goes into rehab and there’s an AA meeting in every church basement. Cynthia had to pull herself out, and it took her a lot of hard nights, but she did it. Word is that she’s been sober ten years or more now, and I respect that, which is why I don’t want you bringing it up now.”

  “I’ll be interviewing her tomorrow,” Tilda said, “but if she doesn’t mention it, neither will I.” She asked him about attending the fund-raiser, purely out of habit, since she didn’t think the Ambrose brothers would spring for a trip from California, but it turned out that Stemfel was going to be at a collectibles fair in New Hampshire the day after the event, and since he was planning to fly into Boston anyway, they could have him for the cost of a hotel room for the night.

  They wound up the call, and Tilda had to laugh when before hanging up, Stemfel said, “You live long and prosper now.”

  After getting a refill on her Dr Pepper, Tilda put together an e-mail with contact information for all the guest stars who were willing to attend the fund-raiser, and shot it off to Jillian. With less than a week to go, there wouldn’t be time to arrange any more, so she hoped the trio she had would pass muster.

  Then she flipped through her notes, picking out the tidbits about Cynthia Barth. The woman was a mass of contradictions, and it seemed incredible that she’d kept her secrets for so many years.

  On one hand, there was Miss Barth’s past as a pinup model. Tilda had no idea how she’d ended up in that line of work, and if she’d liked it or hated it. She thought about asking Louise Silberblatt or Frankie, but didn’t want to rouse suspicions, especially when Louise had seen Glory herself. Come to think of it, wasn’t it odd that neither woman had recognized Barth when working with her on Cowtown?

  Tilda opened the notebook with her notes on the interview with Louise to check something. The episodes she’d worked on were flashbacks, and she said she’d never been on set with the main cast. Then Tilda checked the episode list in her copy of Cowtown Companion, and saw that the only work Miss Barth did on those shows was the voice-over of the Cowtown Code. Louise might never have seen Miss Barth.

  But wouldn’t Louise have recognized Miss Barth from watching the show? Tilda called up more files on her computer, one of the pictures of Morning Glory and one of the publicity stills from Cowtown. Even knowing that they were the same woman, she could just barely see it. Glory was thinner than Arabella, which showed in her face, and of course, the women were dressed very differently. Arabella wore a high-necked dress, which only hinted at the bosom that Glory displayed in all its, well, glory. Then there was the body language. Though she felt sexist even thinking such a thing, to her, Morning Glory looked like a tart, and Arabella looked like a virgin, or at least chaste.

  But the most obvious difference was the hair. At some point, Miss Barth had either dyed hers or she’d worn a wig like Louise. Whichever it was, Arabella Newman had had jet black hair while Glory’s was glossy blond. In retrospect, Tilda realized that if it weren’t for the hair, she wouldn’t have made the connection. Blond Glory didn’t resemble brunette Arabella, but she did look like silver-haired Miss Barth.

  So it wasn’t completely bizarre that Louise had recognized Miss Barth, but not Arabella. As for Frankie, with her eyesight, it was no wonder she hadn’t recognized Miss Barth as a fellow pinup.

  So that gave her a successful actress who was hiding her past no matter what it took, and clinging to the values that she’d spouted each week in the Cowtown Code voice-over. Wound tight didn’t begin to cover it, and it was no wonder that she’d turned to drink once the show went to that big roundup in the sky. All these years later, she still wouldn’t admit that she’d been Morning Glory—somebody had gone to the trouble of telling Joe’s Lost Pinups site that Glory was dead, and Tilda wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to find out that it was Miss Barth herself who spread that rumor, just to keep her secret.

  It still seemed odd that nobody knew. Unless . . . Why had Miss Barth gone to Sandra’s funeral? How had she known about her death? They must have known one another back in the day, and presumably since then as well. Sandra had told Tilda that she knew where some of her former colleagues were, but that she was keeping their names to herself. Could Miss Barth have been one of the models Sandra knew about? Could Sandra have been the only one who knew about Morning Glory?

  Except that now Sandra was dead, and Miss
Barth was safe. At least she had been until she spotted Tilda looking at pictures of Morning Glory. Less than an hour later, somebody had pushed Tilda into the middle of traffic, where she could easily have been killed.

  Could Miss Barth have killed Sandra, and tried to kill Tilda?

  Physically? Without a doubt. She seemed to be in good health, and neither act had required much strength. Emotionally? Anybody who’d held herself that much in check for so many years was probably capable of just about anything.

  Miss Barth had motive, means, and opportunity. And tomorrow, Tilda was going to be alone with her in a hotel room.

  This time she wouldn’t have to wait until bedtime to start having nightmares.

  Chapter 27

  You can’t have a Western without pretty gals. Hell, look

  at Brokeback Mountain! Those cowboys didn’t even like

  women, and they gave ’em Michelle Williams and Anne

  Hathaway. My brother and me always hired the prettiest gals

  we could find for Cowtown, and Cynthia Barth was the prettiest

  one of all.

  —TUCKER AMBROSE, QUOTED IN COWTOWN COMPANION BY RUBEN TIMMONS

  TILDA’S first celebrity interview had been with James Doohan, the man who’d played Scotty on Star Trek, and she still remembered how nervous she’d been. He’d been in town to speak, and she was ecstatic about the assignment to interview him for her college newspaper, right up until the morning they were supposed to meet. Then her stomach had shriveled to a lump, making breakfast unthinkable, and she seemed to forget how to speak, leaving her wondering if it would be okay to give him pieces of paper with the questions and write down his responses.