The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  CHAPTER 7

  LANA TURNER . . . bright spot of M-G-M’s We Who Are Young is a plaid-picker, turning to forest tones for a smart little green, rust, and brown wool frock that blouses softly above a snugly tied waist, then dips into a slimmish buttoned skirt.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  Stany said, “She’s been dead one to two weeks.”

  I traced my finger over little pigs in the wall tiles. They all played tiny flutes. Tile pigs at the Pig ’n Whistle. “One to two?”

  “You saw her on Halloween, right? Okay, then, the doctor said anywhere from ten days to two weeks. She must have been killed on Halloween or directly after, and that’s why she never came home.”

  “She liked to stay out sometimes. She wouldn’t come home for two or three days. If she did that, then she died way after Halloween.”

  “Yes, but—are you contradicting me? I’m trying to find out what happened. You eating that olive?” She reached across the table to my plate. “You want to hear everything, right? My memory’s excellent. I can repeat every word.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You want dialogue? Or the story line, or just the high dramatic points?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The whole thing.” Our waitress set extra napkins on our table. Stany smiled at her.

  “You know the room where I found you and the dead face? Our posting room was like that, but longer. More exam tables and a long counter across the back wall. You could lay out an entire feast on that counter. The whole room looked like the kitchen of a fancy restaurant. If we walked to the back of Chasen’s right now, we’d see a setup just like that autopsy room.”

  “But without Rosemary.”

  “Well, of course. And my room had two bodies, Rosemary and one other. I don’t know who the other was. I didn’t see the body, just the sheet over it.”

  “Nothing to do with our case?”

  “Not at all,” Stany said. “I mention the other body because it sets the scene. Conejos stood right by me. I’ve decided he’s definitely handsome. Then some secretary sitting next to the other body, she’s taking notes. So the surgeon, he’s a short guy with no eyebrows—looks like he lit his cigarette with the lighter too close to his face and the eyebrows burned clean off—his name’s Dr. Weiner, something like that. He pulls the sheet off Rosemary and she’s nude.”

  “Describe her to me.” I’d know my own Rosemary. This one could have been someone else’s.

  Stany cut her meat loaf and watched me. She seemed sad. “Beautiful, Penny. Dr. Weiner had her cleaned up, and except for the dead-looking parts, like her neck cut completely open, of course, you’d never know she was dead. Her skin fell apart a little. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth a little open—I could see her teeth, like this—and you already know she was strangled. Her neck’s cut all smooth on the outside. Her arms, they’re pretty cut up. And she had little cuts and dents up and down her body and arms and legs, too. Probably those happened when she got walked on.”

  Dents.

  “A bruise, size of a breakfast plate, on and below her ribs, here.” She pressed her left hand to her jacket, beneath her heart. “Dr. Weiner says she was alive then and got kicked or punched. He looked for needle marks, too. Used a magnifying glass. None found, you’ll be happy to know. So many come-and-gos get hopped up, I don’t know why. Thank God our Rosemary didn’t fall into that.

  “Then he opened her chest with a sharp little knife, and some ribs were broken so he lifted those out. Oh, don’t worry about the ribs—they got broken after death, when she got walked across. Pen, don’t chew with your mouth open. You’re not looking great. Why don’t I stop now and tell you stuff about Hank? I’m half in love with him, and I know he’s been dying for me for years. I’m not saying anything’s happened, but then I’m not telling you everything. You know that, right?”

  “Please tell me about Rosemary’s thumb.”

  “Cut off, that’s all. You know about Hank’s first wife, right? Tragedy.”

  My right hand wrapped my water glass, and inside the glass, water shook side to side. My anger, shaking inside a water glass. I lifted the glass off the table, then smashed it down. Lift and smash. Water flew and sprayed the table. Stany shut up.

  “I broke those ribs. I did it. I walked on her and dented her body. I broke her ribs and look at me, look at me, Stany. Should I look great? I don’t know, should I? She’s my best friend, and now her skin’s falling apart. You knew her half a day. You’ve only known me two weeks. Why do you like me, Stany? Why do you care that Rose is dead, and maybe I did kill her, what do you know about it? Why me? Why help me?” People across the Pig ’n Whistle turned to watch me bang the glass on our table.

  Stany lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. She waited for quiet, and it was hard to give it to her. I wanted to keep yelling and then turn those yells into screams and spill all the plates on our table. She waited.

  “You done now? You done? I can wait. Okay? Then listen. I have three friends. I work all the time. When can I see friends? Oh, and four, my husband. But it seems he’d rather fuck Lana Turner than come home, so let’s say I’m lonely, okay? Let’s say it’s good to stay busy.”

  “You have a son,” I said.

  “Yeah. Huh. What do you know about kids. Oh, Pen—I forgot—I have to tell you, about Rosemary—”

  My Rosemary.

  “She’d been pregnant. Dr. Weiner said at some point she was pregnant. Did you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Oh, here’s a surprise.”

  “No surprise to me. I knew about it.”

  “Are you going to tell me about Rosemary’s pregnancy?”

  “It was two years ago.”

  “Did she keep the kid? Is it your brother’s?”

  I wouldn’t answer her. She kept trying: My brother’s? Was that why I wouldn’t talk?

  She tried everything. She tried to tie Rose’s kid to what happened on Halloween, she blamed my brother, she nearly called Rose a whore. I wouldn’t tell her about Rose’s pregnancy. Rose had mentioned the child to me once, the day I told her I was moving to Hollywood. Even Will didn’t know she’d been pregnant. I wouldn’t bring it up now. Besides, her pregnancy had nothing to do with her murder. How could it have? She’d had that child two years before her death, had held her baby once, and now someone else called that child daughter. I knew part of what happened to Rose on Halloween, and it didn’t have anything to do with a child. Not Rose’s child, anyway.

  “Your brother, was he at the Palladium on Halloween?”

  “No.”

  “Was he at the Palladium?”

  “Stany, he wasn’t there.”

  “Ten thousand people, crowds at the door, are you sure?”

  I stared her down. She must have seen the Amazon in me.

  “Fine, but use logic. Did she meet anyone new at the Palladium?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She danced with them all.”

  “Anyone special?”

  “No.”

  “Whatever happened to her happened on that night. On Halloween.”

  “She wasn’t buried on Halloween. I don’t know when she was buried, but I would have noticed.”

  “You walked across the grave and didn’t notice,” Stany said. She pulled an ashtray toward her and ground out her cigarette. “She could have been buried from the first of November. But she wasn’t buried that deep. Since she got so much traffic someone was bound to kick her loose. Are you going to eat at all?” She reached across the table again. “I’ll just eat half of this. I don’t usually like egg salad, but I skipped breakfast. And then . . .” She bit the sandwich. “And then there’s the neck wound. Whoever did it had to be strong, stand at the back of her, hold the wire like this.” My egg salad became Rose’s neck, and Stany circled her thumb and forefinger around the eggy middle. “Strong. A guy, taller than her.”

  “Did the doctor say that?”

  “No, but I saw her neck. I w
as standing toward the top of the autopsy table by her head. The cut goes in, and then about half an inch inward it curves up. I figure someone had to be taller than her, because pulling his arms back he’d naturally lift them a bit, and the wire would pull up, too.”

  I looked at her: Barbara Stanwyck, across from me at the Pig ’n Whistle, where nobody noticed her because she ate there a lot. “You figured that out, and the doctor didn’t? Does Conejos know? Stany, how smart are you?”

  She grinned. “Not smart enough to divorce my husband. The bastard.”

  She’d married Robert Taylor, not a bastard. I’d never seen him except in the movies, and I loved him, too. Every girl loved him.

  “It’s easy,” she said. “Strong, to pull that wire through. Tall, to make the cut angle up. It’s a guy. That’s what I’m telling Conejos. We’ll take you off the suspect list, and that’ll give us more time to look for the real killer. Next we look for a guy who has cut hands, because pulling the wire would make his hands bleed.”

  “What if he wore gloves?”

  “Hmm.”

  “I need to go. I can’t miss Indian practice.”

  A waiter stopped at our table and held out a caramel sundae. “Miss Stanwyck, your usual dessert?”

  “I love it here,” she said.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lucille Ball will make you sit up and take notice as the burlesque queen of doubtful virtue. Maureen O’Hara is the “good girl” dancer and Louis Hayward a millionaire playboy.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  I called my brother Will from the dorm phone. He usually woke early, and I woke early on Thursday to catch him.

  “She’s dead, Will.”

  “No.”

  “We found her body two nights ago. Oh, Will, I’m sorry.”

  “No, if she were dead, you would have told me right away. If she died, you wouldn’t have waited. You’d call me. Why didn’t you call? Don’t you go telling me she’s dead, Pen. Don’t you tell me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t cry, couldn’t do anything but hold the receiver in two hands and keep it pressed to my ear. I heard my brother breathing, long breaths, then fast breaths, and then his breathing stopped.

  “Oh, my God,” Will said. He hung up.

  Will didn’t want to give us a ride, me and dead Rose, but he couldn’t afford a hearse trip from Los Angeles to Buena Park. Neither could I, but Conejos released Rose’s body and she had to go somewhere.

  Will arrived at ten a.m. with a long, wood box already in the bed of his pickup. He looked straight out the windshield until I climbed in and shut the door. His face had the profile of old concrete, hard and grimy.

  “Don’t talk to me about it, don’t talk to me,” he said. Rose’s casket slid each time he shifted a gear. Inside Rose’s casket her sewed-together body shifted, too, must have slid front to back.

  Will loved her, but different than I loved her. He’d proposed until we’d stopped counting, and that’s a lot of proposals, when they begin in third grade. When we grow big we’ll get married. Why not marry me now, before prom? Don’t go to Hollywood, Rose. Stay. She loved him, too, loved his proposals. Yeah, love: We all loved each other.

  I sat in the pickup with Will and said nothing, not at all. I didn’t talk, and we listened to Rose slide for a good fifty miles.

  * * *

  I had two mothers, both in the same body. The first mother grew Will and me. She laughed when the orange pickers told nasty border jokes she didn’t understand, or she brought them johnnycake and cold city water. And sometimes, with work done, she’d play cat’s cradle with me, using long colored yarn from old sweaters. I hardly remember that mom.

  The second mother came in 1938, after the Santa Ana River pushed water two feet high over Buena Park. This is the mom I remember: She sets my dad’s ashes on our mantel but won’t let me dust the urn. She steals Mrs. Knott’s chickens. She hugs Daisy and won’t let her play. The second mom thought Rose a tramp but let her move in with us. Rose had just moved back from Pomona. She had nowhere to go. Will and I told Rose how sorry we were, her old Aunt Lou dead, her only family. But the second mom said to Rose, “If the old whore had charged for it instead of giving it away all these years, you’d be rich.”

  True, but not what you tell a girl whose last family just died.

  The second mom stood on the bottom porch step when Will and I parked by the barn. We let Rose’s casket wait in the pickup.

  “Don’t you talk about her,” Will said.

  Mom snapped a rose hip from the bush by the steps. “I wasn’t saying a goddamned thing. She looks better than last time I saw her.”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “I didn’t say a goddamned thing.”

  The second mom talked that way. She didn’t talk to me at all because I’d moved to Hollywood. All tramps live in Hollywood, or end up there. If I wanted proof, Mom said, look at that tramp Shirley Temple. What kind of parents let a girl dance with a colored man?

  We went in the house because there wasn’t anything else to do. Will couldn’t work in the orchard, not with Rose’s body parked between house and trees, pickup at an angle so we could see the box. Will and I sat on the couch. He scratched fingernails on his blue jeans, scratch scratch, his foot kicking the underside of a hacked-up stool my dad had said was a coffee table. Will’s nose, his half-closed eyes staring through the living room window, the dot-to-dot stubble on his chin and cheeks—he should have cried. I wished he’d cry. We’d stopped at Rancho Los Coyotes Mortuary on the way into town, and we’d both climbed from the pickup to introduce Rose and take her box inside. I pressed on the back buzzer, and we looked at the squat stucco building, up at the tile overhang, then around by two failing magnolias in a sand yard, and the note taped to the door that read:

  Closed until 4 PM.

  We value your business!!!

  I started to cry, but Will didn’t. We both climbed back into the pickup and Will drove Rose down Second Street to Manchester, past Buena Park High, where we’d all graduated but Rose nearly didn’t, past Godding’s, where Tim Godding took a rowboat from his store to paddle me and Rose home in the flood, past the Blue & White, Lily Creamery, Mitchell Brothers garage. We passed everything. Every fucking thing in that town, we passed: oil derricks, Buena Park Woman’s Club, and I really cried now, past the Masonic Lodge, Wilkerson’s Grill and the sheriff’s station beside it, me slurping tears and Will driving a steady twenty-five, on to Grand Avenue stretched forever with eucalyptus each side, sky cloudy but hot, the Knotts’ fields, their new ghost town and restaurant, into our dirt-and-gravel drive to the barn, home to our bungalow and the second mom.

  Rose’s casket sat in the pickup, and from our couch we watched her out the window. Will watched her. I watched him, and cried and thought, Now, is now the time to confront him? But it wasn’t.

  I knew I’d seen Will on Halloween. I’d seen him run by me. In the dark, sure, but I saw my brother. I’d crouched on a gravel path waiting for Rose, but she didn’t come. Then glass breaking, then two men running by me. I knew what I saw. I couldn’t tell Stany and I wouldn’t tell anyone else, and I had to ask Will if he cut Rose’s neck with a wire. Only not now.

  Will wore his cement face, and mine was all snotty beside him. In the kitchen our mother banged cupboards and sang: “Before you left, I had hope, I had love.” Through the picture window Rose baked under clouds that broke and mended. The mortuary opened at four, but it was only 11:30 when we got home, and clouds broke again. The sun hit a board on Rose’s box so the board looked solid purple for a long time.

  * * *

  Backstage that night I powdered and feathered. Beside me the orange Chippewa suit wasn’t Rosemary’s anymore, Madge wore it now. She spread her arms, and Cree came alphabetically behind her. I spread my arms, too, and the orchestra at the Gardens built the horns until we moved in one line through the Zanzibar Room.

  Applause, hail the Indians, step-touch, step-touch. Dinner
served on round tablecloths to a roomful of clapping hands and heads that wavered in front of me. My head grew hot under the feather hat. I stepped, dizzy, out of line, Madge and Cherokee stared and then closed the Cree gap, and I sat on the bandstand with the revue in front. Our headline girl sang: “Tomahawk and deerskin shawl, we love them all.” I couldn’t move. Our manager, Nils Granlund—Granny—at last came and helped me to the greenroom.

  CHAPTER 9

  If you can close your eyes for a few seconds without missing any action on the screen, do so once or twice.

  —Photoplay, October 1940

  On Halloween, in Stany’s backyard, shards of glass balanced on ladder rungs and twinkled. More glass scattered the lawn. I crunched some when I ran. Up the ladder, top rung, I saw glass shards lean out from the window frame. I had sturdy shoes, closed-toe Woolworth’s flat-sole shoes that could climb a ladder, but not this ladder. Tiny glistening glass shards lay on each step.

  My hands shook, and my arms, and I held each side of the ladder as hard as I could, and the shaking passed through my arms to the ladder. I climbed and swayed, climbed and swayed, felt shards cut through my shoes and feet, looked up at the window that kept stretching farther, looked down, and then closed my eyes because looking down was a mistake, climbed, and at the high window, the ladder stopped shaking.

  “Rose?”

  Something rustled far in the room.