Nine Deadly Lives

by Livia J. Washburn

  She was nothing if not her father’s daughter, Beth thought. She took a deep breath and said, “I’ll come right out there.”

  “Thank you, sweetie,” Delores Banning said. “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Well, you hurry on out, Liz. I’ll be looking for you.”

  Beth hung up and looked at the phone for a long moment. Liz. That was what Lucas had called her mother, although he hardly ever talked about her. He had never called his daughter by that name, however. To him, she had always been either Elizabeth or Beth.

  Well, there would be time enough to set Delores Banning straight once she got there, Beth thought. For now, there were more important considerations.

  Like murder and somebody named Chester.

  o0o

  DeMille Drive was a narrow, winding street named after the director, whose mansion was located in the hills of Los Feliz, until recently one of the most exclusive residential areas in Los Angeles. Lately, many of the stars who lived in the neighborhood had been moving southwest to Beverly Hills, but there were still quite a few celebrity mansions in Los Feliz. Delores Banning’s was one of them. It was a sprawling pile of stone and white stucco perched atop one of the hills and surrounded by acres of lawn. Now, as night was settling down over the city, it was brightly lit. Beth wheeled her cream-colored Ford through an arched stone gate in the fence and started up the hill on a curving drive that led her to the house.

  As the car’s headlights swept over the lawn, she saw that it could use cutting. The flower beds dotting the lawn were unkempt and full of weeds. Beth frowned. Delores Banning wasn’t keeping the place up very well. Not only that, but the wrought-iron gate had been wide open, and the intercom set into one of the stone pillars at the entrance hadn’t seemed to be working at all. Beth hadn’t been able to get a squawk out of it.

  She brought the Ford to a stop in front of the house, and the double doors opened before Beth could get out of the car. A tall, rawboned woman with obviously dyed black hair swept out of the house and came toward the car carrying a cat in her arms. The woman wore an expensive silk gown that was as rumpled as if she’d slept in it for a week. She said, “That you, Liz?”

  “My friends call me Beth, Mrs. Banning. Or is it Miss Banning?”

  “Oh, it’s Missus, dearie. I was married to Hubert Banning for thirty-five years.”

  Beth recalled Hubert Banning’s name. He had been an executive at one of the studios, and her father had mentioned him several times over the years. Banning had died several years earlier, Beth seemed to remember.

  “Come on in, Beth,” Delores Banning said. “I don’t like standing out here in the light like this. You never know when somebody’s spying on you.”

  “Wait a minute,” Beth said, uncertain whether she wanted to go inside with this woman or not. “You said on the phone that someone named Chester was in danger?”

  “Well, of course he is. That’s why I want to get back inside the house. The poor dear’s already been bushwhacked once.” Delores Banning held up the cat. “See?”

  There was a bandage on the shoulder of the animal’s left front leg.

  o0o

  Chester was a big orange tomcat, nothing fancy about him. He sat in Delores Banning’s lap and licked the woman’s hand almost constantly, the rough tongue making a faint rasping sound against her skin. Beth thought that licking would have driven her crazy in a matter of minutes.

  “He got sick from the poison,” Delores said, “but the vet was able to save him. Then he came home with his hind leg all scratched up and Dr. Hubbell said it looked like somebody tried to catch him in a trap. And then there was the gunshot wound.” Delores shook her head, her strong but attractive features set in a mixture of sadness and anger. “Someone is definitely trying to kill Chester. And I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt him!”

  Beth sat in an overstuffed armchair with a lace doily over its back. The whole room was furnished like that, chintz and foofaraws everywhere you looked—except for the walls, which were covered with red velvet. Beth could almost imagine what her father’s reaction would have been to this place. He would have said it looked like a cross between a preacher’s parlor and a Kansas City whorehouse. Obviously, Delores Banning had rather eccentric tastes.

  Beth already regretted giving in to the impulse that had made her tell this woman she was a detective. She figured Delores Banning was a little off in the head.

  “Are you sure you’re a private eye, honey? You look awfully young to be doing work like that.”

  “I’m older than I look,” Beth said.

  “I was just the opposite. Looked older than I really was. The boys liked that just fine, though. I was playing supporting roles as grown women when I was barely seventeen. That’s how I met your boss; he was working on a Tom Mix picture I was in, back around ’28.” Delores shook her head. “A long time ago.”

  Beth nodded. She hadn’t told the woman that Lucas was her father, and it might be best to keep it that way. She said, “Let’s get back to Chester.”

  “I want you to find out who’s trying to kill him. Whatever your agency’s regular fee is, I’ll pay it. Money is no object.”

  That was another saying Beth had never heard anyone use in real life. But Delores had been an actress, and she was probably used to saying things like that in scripts. Beth glanced around at the room with its air of genteel poverty, and Delores went on, “Oh, don’t worry about how the place looks. I know it’s getting a little rundown. But I can pay you. I promise you that. I can give you cash—”

  “No, that’s all right,” Beth said. “A check made out to Mr. Hallam will be fine. Now, do you have any idea at all who might want to hurt your cat?”

  “Told you I didn’t. It doesn’t make sense. I—”

  The front door opened, and there was a quick patter of footsteps in the hallway. A woman’s voice called, “Aunt Delores! Are you here?”

  A blonde woman appeared in the doorway of the room where Beth and Delores Banning had been talking. She was in her early twenties, well dressed, and undeniably beautiful. She said, “Oh, there you are. I was worried about you.” Blue eyes flicked over to Beth. “And who is this?”

  The coolness in her tone betrayed dislike, and Beth figured she could learn to return the feeling pretty easily. Delores said, “She’s a detective, dear. She’s going to find out who’s been trying to hurt Chester.”

  The blonde looked away from Beth, already dismissing her in her mind. “I told you nobody’s trying to murder your cat, Aunt Delores. You’ve been imagining things, just like always.”

  Delores Banning flinched a little, as if somebody had struck her. Beth felt a quick surge of anger. She said, “That gunshot wound isn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination. And I want to know who you are.”

  Delores said, “This is my niece, Nicolette Banning. Nicky, please try to be polite to Elizabeth.”

  All of the aging actress’s previous self-assurance seemed to have drained away in the presence of the younger woman. Nicolette Banning gave Beth a haughty look and said icily, “How do you do.”

  “Pretty good most of the time,” Beth said, her own tone cool. “What do you know about the attempts on Chester’s life, Miss Banning?”

  Nicolette frowned. She was wearing an expensive gown and a fur stole, despite the warmth of the evening. She said, “I don’t like the sound of that. You don’t think I had anything to do with bothering the cat, do you?”

  The animal in question was curled up in Delores’s lap, purring and sleeping soundly, his claws working slightly back and forth. Delores said to Beth, “Nicky wouldn’t hurt Chester, Liz. She’s the only relative I have left. She takes care of me.”

  “I try,” Nicolette said, her self-appointed martyrdom apparent in her voice. “I called earlier and didn’t get any answer. That’s why I came over.”

  “I was up in the screening room, watching one of my old pictures. You know there’s
no phone up there, sweetie. Hubert never wanted to be disturbed when he was watching a picture.”

  Nicolette slipped off her stole and tossed it carelessly over the back of a sofa. “You could hire a servant to answer the phone when you’re busy. You could certainly afford that.”

  “I know. It just seems like there are so many better ways to spend my money.”

  The younger woman’s lips pressed together until her mouth was a thin line. Beth saw the reaction and figured she knew what Nicolette Banning was thinking. Delores had said that Nicolette was her only relative; that meant Nicolette stood to inherit whatever estate Delores left. Beth wondered just how much money they were talking about, but there was no way she could ask tactfully.

  Of course, tact had never been Lucas’s strong suit as a detective, and she had learned from him, after all...

  Nicolette opened her purse, took out a gold-plated case, and shook a cigarette from it. As she lit up, she said, “I’ve got to be going in a minute. If you want to waste your money on some sort of detective, Aunt Delores, that’s your business.”

  “Yes,” Delores said, “it is.”

  “But I won’t be any part of it.” Nicolette picked up her stole and looked at Beth. “Don’t try to take advantage of my aunt.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Beth said.

  Nicolette gave a little ladylike snort of disbelief and walked out of the room. A moment later, the front door opened and shut.

  “I’m sorry, Liz,” Delores said. “I wouldn’t let anybody else run over me like that, but what the hell, she’s family. She and Chester are all I have left.”

  “I understand,” Beth said, although she really didn’t, not completely. “Can you keep Chester inside tonight?”

  “Well...I suppose so. He enjoys his roaming, of course, all cats do, but if you think it’s safer...”

  “I think it would be best. I’ll start asking some questions around the neighborhood tomorrow morning. Maybe I can find out something.”

  “All right. As long as you get results.”

  “Now, that’s something I intend to do,” Beth said.

  o0o

  Beth didn’t have any stunt work lined up for the next day. She probably could have scrounged up a gag if she had tried, but at the moment, she was more interested in helping Delores Banning. Beth liked the older woman. Like Lucas, Delores was a survivor of another era in Hollywood. This was a town that tended to forget anything older than last week, but Beth had never been that way. She knew that Hollywood never would have grown into what it was without the efforts of Lucas and Delores and thousands more like them.

  She figured it might be better to start by talking to the servants who worked in the neighborhood around the Banning house, rather than the owners of the other mansions. By the middle of the morning, she had learned that Chester was a far-ranging little varmint. More than one groundskeeper reacted angrily when Beth mentioned him, and she knew they would have cursed had she not been a woman. She supposed it was pretty annoying to labor over a flower bed for hours and then discover the next morning that not only had the plants been chewed up, but that Chester had left some other little presents to be cleaned up as well. The cooks looked on the cat more kindly, and a few of them admitted that they fed him scraps.

  None of which really helped Beth any, because everyone she talked to seemed surprised when she told them that someone was trying to get rid of Chester. No one had seen or heard anything unusual in the neighborhood. As far as Beth could tell, they were all being truthful. She wished she had her father’s ability to read people and know whether or not they were lying. That was something that might take years to develop, though, and she wasn’t sure she would ever be investigating another case. Lucas had always tried to keep her at a distance from this part of his work.

  She worked her way down one side of DeMille Drive and then back up the other. She was at the house directly opposite the Banning estate when she rang the bell at the servant’s entrance and found herself facing a woman who was definitely not a servant.

  The woman was wearing a dress that looked expensive enough to have come from one of those swanky shops springing up over on Rodeo Drive since movie stars had moved in droves to Beverly Hills. She was in her mid-forties, with chestnut hair. She was carrying a fluffy, extremely fat white Persian cat. The cat blinked stupidly at Beth.

  The woman was anything but stupid. She said, “Yes? Can I help you?”

  Beth didn’t know what the mistress of this mansion was doing answering the back door, but since she was here, she might as well go ahead and ask her questions. “My name is Elizabeth Hallam. I’m a private detective.” That little fib was beginning to sound like the truth to her. “One of your neighbors has been having some trouble, and I’ve been hired to help her find out about it. Do you know Delores Banning?”

  “Of course I do. Delores and I have been friends for years. My husband and I entertained her and Hubert many times. By the way, I’m Carolyn Hawes. Won’t you come in, Miss Hallam? I’m afraid it’s cook’s day off, but I was about to have some coffee. Would you like some?”

  “All right. That would be very nice.”

  Carolyn Hawes seemed like a nice woman, pretty down to earth for somebody who was obviously so rich. She put the cat down carefully on the highly polished floor of the kitchen and gestured for Beth to have a seat at a heavy wooden table.

  The coffee was already brewed, and it was quite good, Beth discovered as she sipped from a fine china cup that was probably worth more than what she got paid for jumping off cliffs.

  “What sort of trouble has Delores been having?” Carolyn Hawes asked as she sat down on the other side of the table with her own cup of coffee.

  Beth decided to try a slightly different tack this time. “Do you know anyone who might want to harass or frighten Mrs. Banning?”

  “Certainly not. Delores is a lovely person. A bit...strange, perhaps, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to cause problems for her.”

  “Strange?”

  “Well...she let all her servants go after Hubert died, and there’s simply no way she can keep that place up by herself. If you’ve been there, you’ve seen for yourself what it’s like.”

  “Maybe she can’t afford to pay servants anymore.”

  Carolyn Hawes shook her head. “I happen to know that Hubert left her very, very well-off. My husband and I use the same law firm, and well, one hears things.” She bent down to pet the white Persian, which was rubbing around her ankles and purring. A frown appeared on her face as she went on, “You know, I can think of someone who might not be happy with Delores. That niece of hers.”

  “Nicolette Banning?”

  “That’s right. Have you met her?”

  “Briefly,” Beth said.

  “That was probably enough for you to know that she’s not a very pleasant person. I remember Delores told me she was upset about the provisions of the will Delores had drawn up.”

  Beth tried not to look excited as she said, “Will?”

  “Yes, that business with Chester.” As she spoke the cat’s name, Carolyn Hawes grimaced slightly.

  “You’re talking about Mrs. Banning’s cat?”

  “Of course. Delores’s will leaves—”

  Beth jumped the gun. “Everything to the cat!”

  Carolyn Hawes stared at her. “Certainly not. That would be ridiculous, and Delores...well, she’s a bit dotty, yes, but she’s not insane.”

  Beth felt a little ridiculous herself for having leapt to the wrong conclusion. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Delores’s will does leave a sizable bequest to be used for Chester’s care as long as he lives. That responsibility falls to Nicolette, of course.”

  “How sizable a bequest are we talking about?”

  “A hundred thousand dollars,” Carolyn Hawes said offhandedly. “The rest of her estate will be placed in a trust, and Nicolette will earn the income from it until Chester dies, then inherit the entire
amount, providing that, in the judgment of Delores’s executor, she has taken good care of the cat.” Carolyn smiled and shook her head. “Perhaps dotty isn’t quite strong enough. Now that I’ve explained the situation, I’m afraid Delores does sound a bit more than eccentric.”

  “A bit,” Beth said. “But what if something happens to Chester before Delores dies?”

  “Then everything goes to Nicolette immediately.” Carolyn leaned forward and went on in a conspiratorial tone, “Please don’t tell Delores that I’ve been discussing her affairs. I shouldn’t even know these things, of course, but my husband hears gossip from his attorney and from other men at the studio. He and Hubert worked together for years, you know.”

  Beth nodded. “I won’t say anything.”

  “You never did tell me what sort of trouble Delores has been having. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “No, probably not. She was worried enough to hire the agency I work for to check out a few things.”

  “I understand. You have to be cryptic about the details, of course. Client privilege and all that.”

  Absently, Beth nodded again. Actually, she was anxious to get out of here now that she had stumbled onto a possible motive for somebody to want Chester dead.

  She was about to stand up when the Persian suddenly sprang up into her lap. Beth leaned back in surprise as the cat stuck its face up to hers and sniffed.

  Carolyn Hawes beamed. “She likes you,” she said. “And you must like cats.”

  Beth scratched the Persian behind the ears. “Sure.”

  “Edwina can tell that. All cats can tell when someone likes them. They’re quite intelligent, you know. They can tell when someone doesn’t like them, too.”

  Now that Beth thought about it, she supposed Carolyn was right. She had owned a few cats over the years, and all of them had taken to her without any trouble. On the other hand, she remembered having friends over who didn’t like cats, and the animals had always reacted with either aloofness or outright hostility.

  That had nothing to do with her present problem, though. She wanted to talk to Delores Banning again as soon as possible and find out if Nicolette had been around any of the times when Chester’s near-fatal mishaps had occurred. Beth would have been willing to bet that Nicolette had been there, all right.