Groucho Marx, Secret Agent

by Ron Goulart

  “I wouldn’t be if I had any choice,” he replied, slouching back to the costume party.

  During the misty ride to their Beverly Hills home Dinah tried, we later learned, to get her husband to tell her what actually had happened at the Seascape Pavilion.

  “Okay, who was that guy?” she’d asked him.

  Olmstead was leaning back on the seat, head turned away from her. “A fellow who wanted a cigarette,” he said, gazing out at the swirling night fog.

  “Bullshit,” the actress said. “A guy trying to bum a smoke isn’t likely to trigger a heart attack.”

  Smiling faintly, he reached over to pat her hand. “Honey, the doctor told you I didn’t have a heart attack.”

  “Well, I’d like a second opinion,” she said. “From somebody who isn’t dressed up like Douglas Fairbanks, Senior.”

  “Even though we haven’t formally announced it, Dinah, we’re separated now,” he reminded. “Have been for the past couple weeks. We went to this thing tonight so we wouldn’t have to explain to—”

  “And one of the main reasons for the breakup, kiddo, is this habit of yours of keeping a stiff upper lip and not ever telling me what’s bothering you,” she said, angry.

  “Nothing much is bothering me, truly, Dinah.”

  “Oh, so? Then how come you’ve been so jumpy the last few weeks, and how come—”

  “Look, honey, as soon as Lockwood closes the deal with MGM to borrow Bob Taylor and I get the directing assignment, we’ll announce our separation and bring in the lawyers,” he assured her. “Meantime, you don’t have to worry about me anymore. And when I’m officially your ex, you can forget me entirely.”

  “Maybe we can’t keep the lid on it that long, Eric. I had a telephone call today from Hedda Hopper’s legman,” the actress said. “He must have gotten wind that I’m staying at the beach house in Malibu while you’re holed up at our Beverly Hills joint. He wanted to know if we’d split.”

  Olmstead smiled again, faintly and briefly. “A great many Hollywood couples live apart. Nothing especially sinister in that.”

  “Tell it to Hedda Hopper—and eventually Louella Parsons and Johnny Whistler.”

  Sighing, the director leaned further back and shut his eyes. “Nothing happened this evening,” he told her. “And there’s no reason for you to worry.”

  “I’d better stay with you tonight. In case you have another dizzy spell.”

  He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “No, we’ll stick to the separation deal we worked out, Dinah,” he said. “Pearson is there, and since he’s the prefect valet, he can cope with any emergency. Not that I’m planning to swoon again anytime soon.”

  “Damn it, Eric, I know something’s going on wrong,” she insisted. “Has been for weeks, but you clam up on me. I really, you know, am concerned about you.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “Look, Dinah, I’ll see if I can postpone a couple of my meetings tomorrow, and we’ll have lunch. There’s supposed to be a great new Italian place on Rodeo Drive that—”

  “Screw Rodeo Drive,” she cut in. “Just tell me who the guy in the skull mask was.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he answered.

  Dinah tried to telephone Eric at the mansion early the next morning.

  She had awakened at a few minutes beyond seven—unusual for her when she wasn’t working at the studio.

  Sitting straight up in bed, she had the impression she’d just finished having a nightmare. She couldn’t remember a damned thing about it, except that maybe some gink in a skull mask had been threatening her with an axe.

  The drapes on her bedroom windows were shut tight. She could hear the surf brushing across the beach outside, hear gulls squawking and squabbling.

  Picking up the white bedside telephone, she called Eric’s number.

  After a moment the operator told her, “The line’s busy.”

  “You sure, hon?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Try again later.”

  Hanging up, Dinah swung out of bed. She’d slept in one of the satin nightgowns they’d given her when she starred in The Devil’s Kid Sister last year.

  After she showered and dressed, Dinah went into the kitchen. She never ate breakfast, but she usually needed a cup of coffee.

  Except for the chauffeur, who slept out over the garage, and a cleaning lady who came in twice a week, she’d been roughing it here in Malibu since she’d unofficially separated from her husband. So she had to fix her own coffee.

  While sipping her second cup, Dinah telephoned Eric again.

  Again she was told the line was busy.

  “You sure there’s not something wrong with the phone, hon?”

  The operator assured her Eric’s telephone was working perfectly.

  At nine, after a third unsuccessful attempt to reach her husband, Dinah decided to head for the Beverly Hills place to find out what was going on.

  She drove herself, using the white Duesenberg convertible coupe she’d bought on her twenty-seventh birthday.

  Four

  The living room of the Tudor-style mansion was full of strangers.

  Stopping on the threshold after having let herself in, Dinah said, “Who the hell are you bozos? And what in God’s name are you doing in my house?”

  A large thickset man in a gray suit said, “You must be calm, Miss Flanders.”

  “Calm, my ass,” the actress told him, hands on hips. “Just tell me why I come home and find five morons milling around on my Persian carpet and—”

  “Take it easy, darling,” suggested Warren Lockwood. The millionaire had come downstairs and was striding toward her. “I’ll explain why we—”

  “What’s going on here, Warren?” she wanted to know. “What’s wrong, and who are these ginks?”

  “People from my Warlock studios, Dinah.” The tall man stopped beside her, putting an arm around her. “You’ve met Val Sharkey, one of my new troubleshooters.” He nodded toward the big thickset man.

  “Have I? All your flunkies look alike to me,” she said, pulling free of him. “Where’s Eric? Where is he, Warren?”

  Sighing, shaking his head, Lockwood said, “I hate to break it to you like this, Dinah, but Eric is dead.”

  She took a slow breath in and out. “He had a heart attack, and nobody called me? For Christ sake, I’m still his wife, and—”

  “He didn’t have a heart attack,” said the studio head quietly. “This is going to be tough to take, I know, but I don’t want to pull my punches with you. Eric killed himself.”

  “Bullshit.” She scowled at him. “Eric would never do anything like that.”

  Val Sharkey said, “He left a suicide note, Miss Flanders.”

  “Oh, yeah? Let me see the damn thing.”

  Lockwood put his hand on her arm. “We’re handling this now, Dinah. There’s no need for you to see the—”

  “You’re handling this? You and a bunch of goons from the studio,” she said, angry. “And how come you all knew about this before I did? Where the hell’s his valet, Pearson?”

  Pointing a thumb at the ceiling, Lockwood answered, “Upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms. Pearson was pretty shaken up when he found Eric.”

  She jerked free of his grasp. “Did Pearson telephone you?”

  “He did, yes.”

  “Before he called me? Why would he—”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Lockwood told her. “Right now we have to work out what you’re going to tell the press.”

  “I’ll tell them I’m damned pissed off. There isn’t anything in my goddamn contract with Warlock Pictures that gives you the right to come meddling in my life and—”

  Sharkey said, “Miss Flanders, in his suicide note Olmstead says that he killed himself because you’d left him and he didn’t want to go on without you.”

  “Like hell. Our splitting up was as much his idea as it was mine,” she said to the studio troubleshooter.

  “His final words certainly don’t gi
ve that impression,” said the heavyset Sharkey.

  Turning to Lockwood, she asked, “Listen, what do the cops say about this?”

  Lockwood told her, “We haven’t called the police as yet, Dinah.”

  Groucho didn’t find out about the suicide until around two o’clock that afternoon.

  He was slouching along Sunset Boulevard, he later told me, on the way to his office when he heard the newsboy on the corner mention it.

  The newsie was an overweight fellow in his middle thirties who always wore a long tan overcoat, even on warm, clear sunny days like this one. Since this was Halloween afternoon, he had added a bedraggled witch hat to his ensemble. “Extra, extra,” he was shouting in his raspy voice. “Bombshell’s spouse blows his brains out. Brit director does the dutch. Read all about it.”

  Slowing, halting, Groucho glanced at the front page the vendor was waving. “Hold it still, my good man,” he requested.

  “Fork over a nickel, pal. This isn’t the Christian Science Reading Room.”

  The headline declared, “Famed Director a Suicide,” and the subhead added, “Eric Olmstead Found Dead.”

  “Did this start last night?” muttered Groucho, searching in a pocket of his umber-colored sport coat for a nickel.

  After buying himself a copy of the Los Angeles Times, he moved under the green-and-white awning of a cigar store and started to read the front-page story about the director’s death. Before he’d reached the second paragraph, someone coughed close beside him.

  A skinny young man, clutching a fat autograph album, was eyeing him from a distance of about two feet. “You look sort of like Groucho Marx.”

  “Why thank you, that’s very flattering.” Groucho folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. “Usually people tell me that I’m a dead ringer for some gangly actor named Tyrone Power.”

  After coughing again, the thin young man held out the autograph book. “I wonder if you’d mind signing my album.”

  “And I wonder if I’ll ever get that Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine mug I sent for just months and months ago.” He accepted the book, found a blank page, and scribbled on it for several minutes. “Here, my lad. I’ve given you not only my highly valued signature but also a prescription that’ll clear up that hacking cough of yours. And now, farewell.”

  He returned the book and hurried on to the building that housed his office. The structure had a sort of Southern-plantation look, but so did a lot of other buildings along the Sunset Strip. Groucho figured that was because too many local architects had been allowed to see Gone with the Wind.

  He ascended the wooden stairway that led to the second floor. “Olmstead fainted, then went home and killed himself,” he said aloud. “What the heck could the Grim Reaper have told him to prompt all that?”

  When he crossed the threshold of the reception room, his secretary inquired, “Are you and Frank planning to go back into the detective business?”

  “What makes you ask such a question, my child?”

  She answered, “Because a prospective client has been trying to get hold of you for the past hour.”

  “Of course kids like oranges,” said Jane.

  I said, “But candy bars are the traditional trick-or-treat—”

  “This is Southern California. They have to like oranges.”

  “Okay, but if they soap our windows and drop raw eggs in the mailbox, don’t blame me.”

  “Well, I don’t intend to hand out chocolate bars to any kids who come around to trick-or-treat tonight.”

  “How about candied apples? A combination of healthful fruit with some sugar and—”

  “No, nope,” my wife told me firmly. “If all the children in the neighborhood end up riddled with cavities, I don’t want to share the blame.”

  “Okay, I’ll go buy a sack of oranges.”

  “You were figuring you’d get to gobble up any leftover Baby Ruths and Tootsie Rolls. That’s your real motive for—”

  “I haven’t had a candy bar in months. Smell my breath if you doubt me.”

  Jane pushed back from her drawing board. “Want to go someplace for lunch?”

  I’d been leaning in the doorway of her studio, watching her work on a Hollywood Molly Sunday page. “Actually I’d better start rewriting the Groucho Marx, Secret Agent script.”

  “Okay, I’ll fix us a—”

  “I can whip up lunch. You rest and—”

  “Hey, I’m feeling fine today. I’m sure as heck capable of opening a can of tuna.”

  “I suppose so, but in recent taste tests my homemade tuna sandwiches were voted better than yours by a jury of my peers. Unfortunately, one member of the jury fell off the pier and—”

  “Grouchoitis,” she observed, getting up and away from the board.

  “You think so?” I started heading for our kitchen. “And I thought I was getting better.”

  As she passed the living-room sofa, she hesitated. She sat down, sighing faintly. “Maybe you’d better fix lunch after all,” she said.

  I hurried over to her. “You okay?”

  “Nothing serious, Frank, just feeling a little tired.”

  Dorgan, the bloodhound that Groucho had given us a couple of Christmases ago, came scooting over to the sofa. He squatted, gazing anxiously up at Jane.

  She patted the dog’s head. “I’m okay, Dorgan,” she assured him.

  “We really ought to think about getting you an assistant to help on the strip.” Sitting beside her, I took her hand.

  “Not unless we can find somebody who draws as well as Milton Caniff and looks a good deal like Jimmy Stewart.”

  “What a shame. I found a guy who draws like Jimmy Stewart and looks like Milton Caniff.”

  “Won’t do.”

  Our doorbell rang.

  I went to the door, followed by Dorgan, and saw our friend Enery McBride on the porch, a newspaper under his arm.

  “You folks busy?” the actor inquired.

  “Just going to fix lunch. C’mon in.”

  Enery grinned at Jane. “You’re looking especially radiant.”

  “It’s the company I keep. How’re you?”

  “I’m doing well enough with my movie acting to be able to quit working nights at the Bayside Diner.” He crouched, and the dog rolled over on his back. Enery rubbed Dorgan’s belly with his free hand, and the dog produced gratified noises.

  “Great. When’re you going to quit?”

  “Did already, this past weekend.”

  I said, “I read in the trades that you signed to do three more Mr. Woo movies.”

  Enery shrugged. “Yeah, we start shooting the new one, Mr. Woo in Panama, next Monday,” he said. “I’m hoping I’ll get nominated for an Oscar for Best Performance as a Chauffeur.”

  “You’re going to stay for lunch,” said Jane.

  “Sure, thanks.” He unfolded the newspaper and held it out. “Seen this?” he asked, pointing to the headline.

  “Jesus, Olmstead killed himself,” I said. That news hadn’t been in our edition of the L.A. Times.

  Jane stood up, frowning. “He was at that Halloween party last night, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Along with his devoted wife, Dinah Flanders.”

  “Not that devoted,” said Enery. “According to the paper, they were separated, and she was living in their beach house in Malibu while Olmstead resided up in Beverly Hills.”

  “Everybody’s sure it’s a suicide?” asked Jane.

  “Apparently the police are,” answered Enery. “Plus which, the guy left a suicide note.” He handed over the paper, pointing to the copy of the note Olmstead had written.

  Typed actually. There was a Photostat of the note next to a photo of the director. Typewritten on a sheet of Olmstead’s stationery, it said: “Dinah, I’ve tried, but I just can’t make it without you. I really don’t want to live now that you’re gone. Forgive me, my love. Eric.

  “All typed,” I mentioned. “Even his name. And typed by somebody who was ha
ndy with a typewriter—no mistakes.”

  “Maybe he was in too much of a hurry to take time to find his fountain pen,” suggested Enery.

  I scanned the accompanying story. “So Dinah wasn’t there when it happened,” I said.

  “He was alone, except for his valet. And that guy sleeps in servants’ quarters at the back of the mansion and didn’t hear anything.”

  Jane said, “What was there to hear?”

  “A gunshot when Olmstead killed himself.”

  Jane shook her head slowly, frowning at me. “I told you something spooky was going to happen.”

  Five

  Perched on the edge of his secretary’s desk, left leg swinging idly, Groucho lit his cigar. “So Dinah Flanders wants to avail herself of my deductive abilities, eh?”

  “And she mentioned she was willing to pay a substantial fee,” said Nan Sommerville.

  “Alas, we never charge for our crime busting,” he said with a sigh. “It would go against the generous and altruistic Groucho Marx nature to—”

  “Wait, let me find my diary,” she cut in. “This is a special occasion, and I want to make a note of it. The very first time I’ve ever heard anybody use the words generous and Groucho Marx in the same sentence.”

  Groucho eyed her. “If you’ll consult your contract, Nanette, you’ll note that I’m the one who’s supposed to deliver the snide remarks around here.”

  “Excuse it.” Nan was a cynical, muscular woman in her late thirties. She’d been a circus acrobat and then a stuntwoman at MGM. Although Groucho often claimed she’d doubled for Wallace Beery, Nan denied that. She was an expert typist and office manager, and her circus background made her an ideal person to cope with Groucho.

  “Outside of the fact that she’s always had a schoolgirl crush on me, why does Dinah want to hire me?”

  “She’s convinced Olmstead didn’t commit suicide.”

  “The most obvious alternative, then, is murder.”

  “Unless the poor sap shot himself by accident.”