The Bone Yard and Other Stories

by John Moralee

  “Don’t do it,” Lana said. “You don’t want to make him angry. Maybe it’s best if I just keep paying the money? I can do that. It’s probably safer to just keep him happy.”

  “Listen. I won’t disturb anything. He won’t even know I’ve been there, I promise. I’ll just look for the tape. Without the tape – if there is a tape – he can’t blackmail you. It’s just his word against ours. You have an alibi for the night, remember? Me.”

  “No, Susan. I’ll pay the money. Forget about it. Don’t look for the tape.”

  Lana begged me not to do it until I agreed, but I lied. The thought of being blackmailed for the rest of our lives made me angry. I needed to know if the tape really existed.

  That morning I made discreet inquiries at the motel into the name of the night manager. His name was Gregor Arnoslov. He worked the nightshift from nine until nine the next morning. There was only one G Arnoslov listed in the telephone directory. He lived in a brownstone tenement building three blocks from the motel. His apartment was on the third of six floors, number 308. Anyone could enter the lobby by getting buzzed in, but getting into his apartment would be harder, despite what I’d told my sister.

  During the afternoon, I learnt how to use the tools necessary for committing my second crime – a set of lock picks. I practised opening the locks in my house until I was good at using them. My own house locks were quite easy to unlock once I’d practised. I promised myself I would buy some good deadlocks to replace them. I hoped Gregor Arnoslov had no better locks than my own as I headed for his apartment after it got dark.

  There was no light on in his apartment, which was a good sign. Just to be sure he was out, I buzzed his number. There was no answer. While I was standing there, a woman came up the steps with some shopping bags. As she entered the lobby, I sneaked in after her.

  I hurried up the stairs to the third floor rather than the elevator. The corridor looked empty. I approached apartment 308, taking out the picks. Luckily, the lock was cheap and unlocked in about a minute. I slipped on some surgical gloves, then entered the dark apartment. I closed the door behind me before switching on my flashlight.

  I didn’t have to look long. There was a TV and VCR beside a vast collection of videos and DVDs. I found a tape was already in the VCR, labelled “SEC TAPE TUE”. I pressed PLAY and watches as a grainy image appeared of the parking lot of the Two Hearts Motel. It had not even occurred to me there was a security camera there. The tape had been stopped a few seconds before I came outside, dragging the body towards the pickup truck. I’d thought I’d been so clever but had not considered looking for cameras.

  I sensed someone or something in the room. I spun around. There was someone standing in the darkness of the bedroom doorway. They turned on the light.

  “Lana?”

  My sister grimaced. “Susan! I’m so glad it’s you!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She hesitated. “I lied about losing him the other day. I followed him here, but I didn’t tell you because I thought I could talk to him myself. I wanted to explain how Ken died, hoping he’d stop the blackmail if he understood the truth. But things didn’t quite work out the way I wanted. I think ... I think you’d better come in here.”

  Slowly, Lana walked back into the bedroom.

  Reluctantly, I followed.

  “He didn’t care that it was an accident – or that Ken tried to rape me. He was just angry I’d found out where he lived. He said I’d have to pay extra. He wanted me to sleep with him. I refused. He slapped me and dragged me onto the bed. I grabbed the lamp. I hit him back. I think I smashed his skull because he rolled onto the floor and stopped breathing.”

  I looked at the body. A broken lamp was near him.

  “He’s been dead for a couple of hours,” Lana said. “I’ve been sitting on the bed, wondering what to do. I didn’t dare call you. I was too ashamed. But now you’re here, anyway, can you help me? One more big favour ... ”

  Starlight

  The man was waiting outside the lecture room when I came out with my film class. He was wearing an Armani suit and Rolex, holding a briefcase, smiling a little too hard. “Lawyer” was written all over him. They were the only people who wore ties in Los Angeles. As my students drifted away for their lunch, I was left alone in the hall with the stranger.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you Laura Kenyon?”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “I’ve been looking for you. My name’s Whitford. I’m a lawyer, but don’t hold that against me, please. I’m not here with a subpoena.”

  Whitford looked as old as my father, who had celebrated his fiftieth birthday in July, but he had kept himself in better fitness. His hair was peppered grey, cut short. His teeth looked straightened and capped. They were too white to be entirely natural. He reminded me of the actor Ian Holm in his seminal performance in Alien.

  “I’m here because I read your books. Your publisher told me you’d be here.” He offered his hand to shake. It was warm and smooth, the nails perfectly manicured. “My client wants to hire you to ghost-write her autobiography.”

  “Your client?” I said. “Who’s that?”

  “Claudia Besson.”

  He watched my stunned reaction. He had to be joking or mentally disturbed.

  I knew a lot about Claudia Besson. She had won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. During the 1940s, Claudia Besson had not only been a beautiful film star but a sublime actress. I loved all of her seventeen movies, even the badly scripted or poorly directed ones. Her on-screen talent had radiated out of every frame. In her time she had been as famous as Marilyn Monroe. Any film student would have heard of her. I had written a book on her life and career, but I had never met her for one very good reason.

  She had died before I was born.

  *

  The strange man’s words left me speechless and wondering what to do. He was clearly deranged in some way, perhaps schizophrenic. I wanted to get away from him before he did something dangerous. I looked around hoping to see someone – anyone - but the corridor was deserted. The building was utterly silent. There was probably nobody else in the building during the lunch hour. He had chosen the perfect time to approach me without witnesses.

  Whitford was smiling even harder now. I thought I glimpsed something crazy behind his eyes. I decided to humour him. “So, she’s your client?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “That’s ... interesting.”

  “I’m not mad,” he said abruptly. “You’re thinking Claudia Besson died in a car crash in 1951. I know that. That’s what she wanted the rest of the world to think, but she’s alive. She’s a good friend of mine. A very good friend. I would do anything for her, which is why I am here today.”

  I nodded while thinking of ways to escape him. The exit doors were at least thirty feet away.

  “She wants to meet you, to discuss writing her autobiography,” Whitford said. “I’m to bring you to her – if you are interested. Everything will be explained after you meet her, I promise.”

  “You want me to go with you now?”

  “No, no. I couldn’t expect that. You have a busy life, I know. I’ll give you some time to consider my offer – say, until Saturday?”

  “Why Saturday?”

  “You can spend the whole weekend getting to know her. In the meantime, I’ll leave you my card. I hope you will call me back.”

  He handed me a white business card with his name and telephone number on it:

  Whitford Reece

  Attorney-at-law

  90210-555-3710

  The area code was familiar to anyone who had watched TV: it was the code for Beverly Hills.

  “Oh, one little thing. Miss Besson doesn’t want her privacy invaded by the media knowing she is still alive – not yet, anyway. That’s a secret she would rather keep between us for now. She would really appreciate your discretion. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  Whitford bowed politely like a Japanese b
usinessman, then he walked out of the building, leaving me dumbfounded.

  Was she really alive? I had so many questions, questions I had not asked Whitford because I was only thinking of them now. The whole encounter felt surreal. Was it a sick joke? Everyone who knew me knew how much I would have loved to have met Claudia Besson. I was probably her biggest fan. I had a website dedicated to her memory. Was one of my ex-boyfriends setting me up?

  I looked at the card. Whitford Reece? Come on! That didn’t sound like a real name. There was no address on the card, which made me more suspicious. I needed to ask him some questions before he was gone. I quickly followed him out into the bright sunshine, but he was nowhere in sight.

  *

  For the next few days, I kept the card but did not call the number.

  I had become obsessed with the work of Claudia Besson when I was a little girl. My grandmother first introduced me to her films. She had been a makeup artist during the 1940s. She had met the movie stars and liked to tell me what Hollywood was like back then. As a hobby after her retirement, she had collected thousands of classic movies from that era, Hollywood’s Golden Age. She screened movies in her basement, which she had converted into a small theatre, complete with red velvet seats and a projector. My grandmother had bought the projector from a closing down cinema. When she was babysitting me, we would watch her movies and eat popcorn like we were in a real cinema. There was something magical about sitting in the dark, watching black and white movies being projected onto a big screen. Her favourite actress had been Claudia Besson, whom she had known personally, having done her makeup on two movies. “I felt redundant doing her,” my grandmother used to say. “She was already perfect when she came in. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” We had watched her films over and over, each time experiencing something new. Her characters had all been memorable, vivid, real. Sometimes I had dressed up my grandmother’s old clothes, pretending to be her. My grandmother and I had acted out many of her famous scenes until I knew the lines by heart.

  My grandmother died when I was nine, but I never forgot how exciting it was to be watching those old movies and pretending to be Claudia Besson.

  Later, I often wished I had been born in those days, but the closest I could be was to write my doctoral thesis on the subject and have it adapted into a book. Claudia Besson had been born in 1922, the third child of two poor Swedish immigrants. Her original name was Lena Nordenberg. Lena had been a startlingly beautiful child, inheriting her mother’s natural blonde hair and teal blue eyes. She had grown into a tall and graceful teenager, the star of several high-school plays, much to her mother’s delight, though her father had not approved of her acting. He was an alcoholic who had often beaten her. She ran away when she was fifteen. She came to Hollywood, where she got a job as a waitress at a restaurant across the street from a studio. A director noticed her and offered her a small part in a film. He changed her name to Claudia Besson because it sounded French and sensual. That first role led to others, more substantial. She made over twenty films, some of which were underrated classics. She won her Academy Award for her role in an adaptation of an Arthur Miller play. Then, just as her star was rising, she had the fatal car crash on a lonely desert road. Of course, all of her biographies ended in 1952 with the crash – including my own. There was a lot of speculation about what caused the accident – but as wild as the conspiracy theories were, none suggested she might have survived.

  The story of her death was as famous as the story of her life, if not more famous. It had happened on the night of the wrap party for what turned out to be her final film, The Blue Echo. The producer Maxwell Greenberg had invited everyone involved to a party at his Beverly Hills home. There she was seen drinking several glasses of champagne before slipping out of the party long after midnight. Despite being drunk, she drove herself home in her new MG, a vehicle she had only owned for two weeks. The MG careered off a narrow road, smashing fifty feet below on rocks.

  I had seen the notorious black and white photographs of her crushed, burnt-out vehicle. Her charred body had been behind the wheel, a blackened skeleton with grinning teeth staring out of an eyeless skull. Strands of her long, platinum blonde hair, stuck to her scalp, had been the only part of her not destroyed in the fire. The gruesome nature of her death had guaranteed her a place in Hollywood Legend as much as Jane Mansfield’s decapitation, James Dean’s crash and Marilyn Monroe’s mysterious overdose. Claudia Besson was remembered as much for her demise as her brilliant but tragically short acting career.

  There had been a thorough investigation into her death, which had been ruled an accident. The local police had checked the dead woman’s dental records against Claudia’s before pronouncing her dead. Her relatives had also confirmed her identity. There had never been a single rumour about her being alive.

  I had always believed she was dead.

  But now?

  Now I was having doubts.

  Dental records could be swapped. Witnesses could be paid off. Photographs could be faked.

  There was only one way to know the truth.

  *

  Early on Saturday morning, a black BMW with tinted windows drew up at my house. The driver was Whitford Reece. Like a chauffeur, he insisted on carrying my bags to the car and putting them in the trunk. Then he opened a rear door for me. It looked awfully dark inside. I felt nervous about getting in the car with him, having told nobody where I was going. He had not even told me where we were going! I hoped I was not doing something incredibly stupid. Getting into a car with a complete stranger seemed like something only an idiot would do in a horror movie like The Hitcher. I would never hitch-hike for that reason ... but I was willingly allowing a stranger drive me somewhere. For all I knew, he could be planning to take me out into the desert to be raped and murdered. I hesitated.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” I lied. I climbed in. The BMW was cool. The tinted windows made it look like twilight outside. He closed the door after me. It made a hefty clunk. I wondered if had locked automatically, trapping me. I was now in his car exactly where he wanted me. I deserved to be killed for being so naïve.

  Whitford went around and climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the engine. I looked back at my house as we pulled away. I prayed I would see it again.

  We were soon on the freeway.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “Miss Besson values her anonymity. If you knew where she lived, you might be tempted to reveal it to others. Speaking of which, do you have a cell phone?”

  “Yes – why?”

  “I must insist on taking it temporarily.” He turned around with his hand out. “I’ve been instructed to take you back home if you refuse.”

  I did not like it, but I opened my handbag and gave him my Nokia. “Don’t damage it.”

  “I’m only turning it off,” he said. I watched him place it in the glove compartment. The next thing he said was polite but alarming. “Now, if you don’t mind, please slip this over your eyes.”

  It was a blindfold.

  *

  “We’re here,” he announced, hours later.

  I had spent the time in darkness, listening to music on the BMW’s CD player. At first I had been scared about wearing the blindfold, but when nothing happened after ten minutes I’d managed to relax (a little) sufficiently to let myself (almost) fall asleep. The BMW provided a comfortable ride. I was glad the ride was over, though. Tears stung my eyes as I removed the blindfold and looked at my surroundings.

  The BMW had parked on a cliff in front of a large white-painted house. The wild ocean roared against the cliff, huge breakers exploding against the rocks along the coastline. There were no other houses, cars or people anywhere in sight. There was only the white house, gleaming in the sunlight. I was no expert in geography, but I suspected we were somewhere near Big Sur. There were miles and miles of beautiful coastline j
ust like this along Highway 1.

  Whitford stepped out and opened the door for me. It was good stretching my legs and breathing in the salty air. Whitford led the way up to the front porch while I looked for some indication of the address. There was a mailbox but I could see no name nor number on it. The front door was the same. Whitford opened it with a key, inviting me inside.

  We entered a hall lined with vivid oil paintings of the Big Sur cliffs and ocean. They were by an accomplished painter.

  “Miss Besson did those,” Whitford informed me, with some pride. “Painting is a hobby of hers.”

  Whitford led me to a broad staircase sweeping up to the second floor. We stopped at a door. He knocked gently.

  “Come in!” a woman called out.

  We stepped into a light and airy bedroom. It smelled of strawberries. Large windows revealed a stunning ocean view. An old woman was lying in a four-poster bed, propped up by several plump and luxurious pillows. I had been wondering how I would know if the woman really was genuine who she claimed – until she turned to face me. Her eyes were teal blue, eyes that had captivated audiences across the world. They radiated a special light, drawing me to stare dumbstruck. An echo of the young film star remained in her despite her hair being pure white.

  I was meeting the Claudia Besson.

  “Don’t stand on ceremony,” she said in a voice I recognised. It was lyrical, sensuous, deep. It was a voice demanding attention, as powerful as the most gifted singer’s. “Come in, my dear. Sit down next to me.” An Edwardian chair was by the bed. “Whitty, be a dear, bring our guest something to drink.”

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  “Just coffee,” I said.

  Whitford backed out of the room, leaving us alone. I sat down, not knowing what to say. She was studying me. It made me more self-conscious than usual. I smiled awkwardly and looked down, but could still feel her eyes on me. I forced myself to look at her. She had a copy of my book her hands.