The Actor's Guide To Murder

by Rick Copp

  Dr. Wilde sat across from me in an antique chair, and scribbled a few notes on his notepad. All the colors in the room—on the walls, in the paintings, even the bookbinders on his shelf—were all soft, muted and calming. On the wall was a framed diploma. He was a Doctor in Metaphysics. Okay, that didn’t mean much to me. But at least it sounded impressive.

  Finally, he stopped writing and stared at me.

  “So how are you?”

  That was all I needed to hear. I had spent the entire drive over trying to come up with what I would say. I needed to pretend I was there to talk about myself, which has never been a challenge for me. Again, my life as an actor was a marked advantage.

  For the next forty minutes, I rambled on about my years as a child star, my life with Charlie, our recent fight. I had to censor myself along the way. I couldn’t come out and say our fight was over my need to investigate the death of a man with whom I was once involved. And, oh, and by the way, he was one of your patients. So I was selective with the details.

  Every time Dr. Wilde tried to interject a point, I talked right over him. I wasn’t interested in what he had to say about me, I was focused on getting to Willard. With ten minutes left in the session, I finally worked up the nerve to steer the conversation in that direction.

  “And to make matters worse, a dear friend of mine died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve had a tough time dealing with it.”

  “How did your friend die?”

  “He was murdered.”

  Dr. Wilde dropped his pen. Without missing a beat, he reached down, picked it up, and tried acting as nonchalant as possible. He jotted a few words on his notepad, and then looked up at me.

  I never blinked, never took my eyes off him.

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What do the police say?”

  “They think it was an accident.”

  “But you don’t?”

  I shook my head.

  Dr. Wilde cleared his throat and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He was definitely intrigued. I decided it was time to put all my cards on the table, and gauge his reaction.

  I told him the story of Eli the tattooed hustler, how he had lied to me, and how he had tried to drown me in the lap pool at his sugar daddy’s estate. I spoke of how my friend’s mother was convinced her son was unhappy and had given up on his life, and how her young user husband had warned me to stop poking my nose where it didn’t belong. I also recounted how I had spotted the hustler and the mother’s husband conducting a mysterious business transaction in a darkened movie theatre at the Beverly Center.

  At this point, Dr. Wilde was sitting on the edge of his seat. He was undoubtedly a huge Dynasty fan in the eighties, because he was enthralled by my gripping, melodramatic storyline. If life was a television show, then the last few weeks of mine could have been a few heavily-promoted sweeps episodes.

  I sat back, hugged the pillow tighter, and worked up a few tears.

  I threw my hands over my face for effect and sobbed, “This is so embarrassing. I can’t believe I’m crying. It’s only my first session!”

  “It’s quite all right. That’s what you’re here for. Just let it all out.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Doctor. They say he was drunk and he just tripped and fell into the pool and that’s how he drowned. But I don’t believe it. I know there was more to it.”

  I opened my fingers just enough to see Dr. Wilde’s face. His mind was racing. The details suddenly seemed familiar. I had to strike now.

  “Someone’s hiding something. Someone doesn’t want me to get to the truth. My own boyfriend thinks I’m nuts. But I need to know what really happened. Willard deserves that much.”

  “Willard?”

  “Yes. My friend. Willard Ray Hornsby.”

  Dr. Wilde sat back in his chair. “How did you get my name?”

  “Willard used to talk about how much you helped him work through his issues. Of course that was before he . . .” I let my voice trail off. The tears kept streaming down my cheeks. But I wasn’t acting. Talking about Willard was heightening my emotions.

  Dr. Wilde gave me a concerned look. “If you’re here to discuss the problem Willard was having, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  So there was one specific problem. That was a start. I just had to manipulate the discussion a little more to my advantage.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I already know all about that. Willard confided everything to me.”

  “I see,” his eyes betraying a hint of suspicion.

  He wasn’t going to give me any more than that. My biggest beef with therapists was how they made you do all the talking.

  I had to keep fishing. “I felt so bad he was going through that whole mess. Sometimes he was so consumed by it and I felt so helpless because there was nothing I could do to fix it.”

  “You can’t blame yourself. It was Willard’s responsibility to remove himself from such a toxic situation.”

  I was getting close. I knew I was getting close. If he didn’t shut me down in the next few minutes and claim conflict of interest, I was confident I could at least get a few of the sordid details. I took a risk, hoping for a pay off.

  “I thought about talking to his mother at one point. I was hoping she might know what to do. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “Well, it probably wouldn’t have done much good. Willard was estranged from her at that point. And given the fact that her husband was the problem, I’m not sure how sympathetic she would have been.”

  It was Spiro! Willard had a problem with Spiro. But what kind of problem? It was the hardest acting job of my life to maintain my composure, to pretend I already knew everything Dr. Wilde was telling me. My mind was flooding with questions I wanted to fire at him about Willard and Spiro and Tamara, but I had to play it cool or he’d kick me out on my ass.

  “So you think there wasn’t anything I could do?”

  “No. You can’t blame yourself for not solving Willard’s troubles, particularly something as traumatic as what he was dealing with. Have you struggled with these feelings of helplessness before?”

  Who cared about me? I wasn’t there to talk about me. I wanted to know everything he knew about Willard’s conflict with Spiro. “Yes. Many times. Most of my life I’ve felt helpless. From the moment my mother pushed me into acting when I was four. I felt I had no choice. I was told what to say, how to act, who I should be.”

  We were moving away from Willard now, and honing in on me. Normally I would relish the attention, but not today, not when there was so much at stake.

  “Willard felt the same way, you know,” I said. “He felt helpless most of his life too, especially toward the end. Specifically over what was happening with Spiro.”

  Dr. Wilde opened his mouth to respond, but his eyes glanced at the clock and he closed his notepad.

  “I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

  He looked almost relieved as we both stood up. I could tell my session had rattled him. I had blindsided him with my relationship to Willard, and he struggled not to cross any ethical lines. But in the end, I got what I needed. Willard was grappling with a crisis, and Spiro was at the center of it.

  With each step, I was getting closer.

  I handed Dr. Wilde a check and shook his hand. Before I slipped out the door, he gently stopped me by the arm with his hand and said in his soft, soothing, feminine voice, “Would you like to make another appointment?”

  “Oh. Sure. I’ll call you tomorrow to set one up.”

  He knew I was lying. Therapists always knew.

  He nodded, and said, “I strongly suspect you were bluffing today about knowing what Willard was going through, and I may have crossed some lines with what I told you.”

  And here I thought I had been so sly tricking him.

  He patted me on the back as he steered me towards the exit. “But since Willard is no longer with us, I’m hoping it won’t come
back to haunt me.”

  “I won’t say a word, believe me.”

  “And if what I told you makes life harder for that son-of-a-bitch stepfather of his, then I won’t feel as bad for violating any confidentiality rules.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Wilde.”

  He ushered me out, and went to meet his next patient. And I was left to wonder if there was anyone in Willard’s life who didn’t despise Spiro with a furious passion.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sick cartoon image of a man lying prone in a coffin as the words “Happy Birthday . . . I hope it’s your last” danced in a line above him filled the computer screen in front of me. I had copied the animated greeting from Willard’s desktop and was now at my psychic Isis’s apartment.

  Besides being a dead-on clairvoyant, Isis was also a computer whiz, an expert hacker who could artfully break into any site or program with little effort. I was hoping Isis might be the key to uncovering the identity of the person who sent Willard this morbid, chilling sentiment.

  The deal I struck with Isis was beneficial to both of us. If she gave me a name, I would whisk her over the hill to Glendale for her weekly shopping excursion to Price Club since she detested driving her rickety old 1983 Toyota Corolla on the L.A. freeways. This Price Club fixation was lost on me. Her apartment was jammed with super sized paper towels, mammoth cans of Raid, and gargantuan bottles of 409 cleaning fluid. One might think Isis was shopping for a military base, but in fact, she lived alone. She just couldn’t pass up a good deal. I turned my attention back to Isis, who was wearing thick-rimmed glasses and making fast progress. She had already managed to break into the greeting card site’s secure server, and was now close to downloading the customer directory. Amazing. I was barely able to check my e-mail without a complete system crash.

  As I hovered over her shoulder, she scanned down the list of names and addresses. I was certain we would see Spiro’s name pop up any second. People often challenge me about Isis’s psychic abilities. If she’s so good, why can’t she just pull the name out of the air? Why go to all the trouble of illegally obtaining confidential information off a Website? Well, most psychics, though gifted, are not miracle workers. They can only relate what the spirit guides tell them. So in this case, I was damn lucky my psychic was an expert hacker who was not above breaking the law in exchange for a chauffeured trip to her favorite discount store.

  “Gladys Phelan,” Isis said, as she swiveled around in her office chair and flashed me a self-satisfied smile.

  “Who?”

  “That’s who sent the greeting to your friend Willard.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  I leaned over Isis’s shoulder, and stared at the name. Gladys Phelan was not the name expected. I was disappointed it wasn’t Spiro.

  Isis continued punching keys, hoping to turn up more information. She was all worked up, typing furiously. She loved a challenge. She suddenly stopped, the glow from the screen giving her bifocals a bluish hue.

  “Her credit card information has been automatically stored. She lives in Los Feliz. Got the address right here if you have a pen.” I grabbed a ballpoint and started writing. Whoever Gladys was, she probably thought a secure server meant no one would ever trace the card back to her. She was undoubtedly a relative newcomer to the cyber world.

  Los Feliz, with its trendy restaurants, alternative bookstores and kitschy nightclubs that were a throwback to another era, was fast becoming an artsy section of Los Angeles. A lot of hipster musicians and rising young actors populated the area, driving out the old guard. There was a melting pot feel to the small city pocket, especially since many young artists mingled with the multi-cultural families that lived on the side streets behind the bustling, tragically hip Vermont Avenue. There were also a sizable number of elderly residents who staked claim to the neighborhood decades earlier and were too stubborn to move out and make room for the youth brigade.

  After I dropped Isis off at Price Club in Glendale, just a few minutes east of Los Feliz, I double-checked the address I had jotted down from the computer screen, and turned left onto Russell, a small street sandwiched between the much larger, busier, and built up Vermont and Hillhurst Avenues. There were rows of one-story houses on Russell, most with chipping paint and rusty security bars over the windows.

  I parked the car in front of an unassuming beige structure that had a giant blue tarp over the leaky roof, probably to protect it from the heavy rains, probably last winter. No one had bothered to take it down. Maybe they figured the splash of color gave the house more of a personality.

  I walked up the small, muddy yard with overgrown dull grass and rang the bell. I waited a minute, and then rang it again. I could hear someone stirring inside, but it took another full minute for the door to creak open.

  “Gladys Phelan?”

  A diminutive woman in her early seventies, white hair tied up in a bun and granny glasses resting on the tip of her nose, raised her hunched back as high as she could to get a good look at me.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Jarrod Jarvis. I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time.”

  I didn’t expect her to be accommodating. After all, we lived in a city with all sorts of kooks and criminals, but Gladys apparently didn’t care anymore. She had seen it all, and was able to judge someone’s character with a cursory glance.

  “Come on in. Judge Judy’s just wrapping up.”

  I followed her through the unkempt house with its stained wallpaper and scuffed furniture. She led me into the living room where I heard the final pounding notes of The Judge Judy Show theme blaring out of her twenty-three inch Sony color television set. It was the only new item in the whole house and all the chairs and tables were angled to make it the centerpiece of the room. Gladys was, from my estimation, an avid TV watcher.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she said.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Phelan. I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.”

  Gladys, with one eye on the TV set, scooped up her remote and switched channels. “Maury is a rerun. So it’s between Jerry Springer and Montel Williams. Frankly, both boys tend to get on my nerves. God, I miss Phil Donahue, don’t you?”

  I decided to humor her. “Oh, yes. Phil was a pioneer.”

  “I can take or leave Oprah,” she said. “One day she’s fat, one day she’s thin. Make up your mind, I say. I used to think there was something wrong with my television set. Do you mind if I eat my crackers?”

  Before I could answer, Gladys plopped down on her couch, and began to pick over a small plate of Ritz crackers on a TV tray. She carefully chose one, dipped it into a small jar of Jiffy peanut butter, and then swallowed it whole. There was a small glob of peanut butter left on the corner of her mouth, but I decided to keep quiet.

  “Mrs. Phelan, are you aware of a Website called Greetings for You dot com?”

  “Web for you dot what?”

  “It’s a website. On the Internet. You do have a computer, don’t you?”

  “In the back room. It was my husband’s. I never get near it. Don’t have any use for it.”

  Her eyes wandered back over to the TV set. She was caught up in a small screen real life family drama on The Jerry Springer Show. I was amazed he was still on the air. I tried to bring her back.

  “Do you happen to know a Willard Ray Hornsby?”

  “Don’t think so.” Her eyes never left the TV.

  “He was the recipient of an on-line greeting card. It came from your computer account about a week and a half ago.”

  She shook her head, her eyes still glued to Jerry. “Wasn’t me.”

  “What about your husband? Could he have sent it?”

  “Harry died last February. I don’t think that thing’s been turned on once since he’s been gone.”

  “Well, someone used it. Your credit card was charged and the e-mail address matches your AOL account.”

  This finally got her attention. She looked
at me, a bit confused. She kept shaking her head. “Wasn’t me. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to send something over the computer.”

  “Does anyone else have access to your husband’s computer?”

  “Couldn’t imagine who. I live alone.”

  I believed her. Maybe someone broke in while she was napping, accessed her AOL account, used her credit card, and sent Willard the greeting. But that made no sense. At this point, Gladys was down to her last cracker, and a commercial break from Jerry prompted her to pad down to the kitchen to refurbish her plate.

  I pulled a card from my wallet and placed it down on the beat up coffee table. “If you think of anybody, could you give me a call?”

  “Uh huh.” Gladys’s mind was on what show she was going to watch after Jerry Springer, not my little unimportant mystery. I left the house, got back in my car, and drove towards the Price Club to retrieve Isis.

  After dropping Isis and a trunk full of purchases off at her apartment in West Hollywood, I got trapped in rush hour traffic that kept me at a crawl towards Beachwood Canyon for a full forty-five minutes. By the time I wound my way up into the hills, the sun had set and darkness enveloped the Hollywood sign.

  I pulled into the garage, got out and stopped as I clicked the car locks down with my remote. There was a quick high-pitched beep. Something was different tonight. I didn’t hear the familiar jangling of Snickers’s collar. This was strange. Our devoted dog never once failed to race into the kitchen and wait by the door to greet Charlie or me whenever she heard the rumble of the garage door opening. It didn’t bother me at first. I figured she had probably just scurried out to the backyard through the doggy door to take care of her business and hadn’t heard me arrive home.

  As I entered through the kitchen, I flipped on the wall switch next to the refrigerator. No lights came on. I attributed this to the rolling black out scares the whole state had been experiencing over the last few months, and assumed it was our turn. But a quick glance out the window disproved this theory. The neighbors’ lights were working.