Groucho Marx, Secret Agent

by Ron Goulart

  The police detective looked down at his hands, then beyond me. “I’ll tell you one more thing, and then we’ll change the subject,” he said. “We’ll talk about what we did on Halloween and perhaps how many papers Hollywood Molly has picked up since last we met.”

  “Win, you’re not the kind of cop who—”

  “One more thing. But if you say anything about this, I’ll deny it, and we’ll both be in a lot of trouble.”

  I made a resigned noise. “Okay, so tell me.”

  “They haven’t found the gun yet,” he said. “It wasn’t in the bedroom with the body.”

  I sat up. “He was shot in the head, and there’s no gun in the room? Jesus, Win, how can you write it off as a suicide?”

  “I can’t fool around with this business at all,” he said. “I told you the best thing you and Groucho can do is forget all about it. But maybe …”

  “But maybe what?”

  “I’m hoping you don’t,” he said.

  Nine

  Some of the reporters were the same ones who’d been gathered outside the Malibu house, but several more were new. About twenty of them were camped on the wide circular drive that led to and from Dinah Flanders’s Tudor-style Beverly Hills mansion.

  Norm Lenzer of the Herald-Examiner was wearing a tan trench coat and a tan fedora. “You still deny you’re having a fling with Dinah?” he called as Groucho eased out of his parked Cadillac into the misty afternoon.

  “Actually, Norman, I’ve become a professional gigolo, and this is the next stop on my route.” He went slouching along the white gravel drive, heading for the oaken brown door.

  Gil Lumbard of the Hollywood Citizen-News said, “Looks as though you are back in the amateur detective business, Groucho.”

  John Wilcox of the San Diego Union was standing under a black umbrella, sheltered from the drizzle. “Has Dinah asked you to help out?”

  Groucho stopped on the welcome mat and turned to face the newsmen. “Miss Flanders has asked me, as an old and dear friend, to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of her husband.”

  “The police have already done that,” Wilcox pointed out. “Or don’t you believe it was really a suicide, Groucho?”

  “I’m keeping an open mind.” He turned and knocked on the door.

  Lenzer asked, “Are the Marx Brothers going to make another movie?”

  “As a matter of fact, we’ve just signed to do A Night in a Bordello,” he said over his shoulder. “And I’m happy to announce that Louis B. Mayer himself has consented to play the madam.”

  The door inched open. “Come on in,” invited Dinah’s voice very quietly.

  “When are you going to talk to us, honey?” called out one of the other reporters.

  Groucho ducked inside, the actress slammed the door and bolted it. The hallway was shadowy, smelling of furniture polish and a pungent incense.

  After Groucho had bowed and kissed Dinah’s hand, he noticed someone standing in the parlor on his right. “Howdy,” he said, straightening.

  Ted Timberlake was wearing a black Western-style suit, fringed with black leather. His low-crown Stetson was black, too, as was his string tie. “I was just now telling Miss Dinah that I didn’t believe this was an appropriate time to have a clown in the house.”

  “Good idea,” Groucho said to the cowboy star. “So I guess you’ll be moseying on, eh?”

  “You know, Marx, I’ve never thought you, or your brothers, were especially funny.”

  “Coming from a man who chose Smiley Burnette to provide the comic relief in his films, I take it as a compliment.”

  Dinah said, “Ted, it turns out, was a longtime friend of Eric’s. He just dropped by to see if there was anything he could do to help.”

  “Maybe the barn needs cleaning out,” suggested Groucho.

  “I’ll be taking my leave, Miss Dinah.” Timberlake tipped his Stetson. “If you need something, just give us a ring. And Liza and I’ll be seeing you at the memorial service out at Warlock come next Tuesday night.” He stepped into the hallway.

  “Thanks, Ted, but I think I’ll be okay.”

  The cowboy actor frowned in Groucho’s direction. “Can I drop you anyplace, Marx?”

  “Such as into the Pacific Ocean perhaps? No, thanks, pardner, I only just got here.”

  “Go on out the back way, Ted,” advised the actress.

  “Yep, I’m as anxious to avoid that newspaper crowd as you are.” He patted Dinah on the shoulder and started off, spurs jingling faintly, for the rear door of the mansion.

  As the door closed, Groucho remarked, “I wasn’t aware that Timberlake was an old friend of the family.”

  “He’s not exactly,” she said. “Fact is, this is the first time he’s ever been here.”

  “Oh, so?”

  “But apparently he and Eric saw a lot of each other at their country club.”

  “How long was the guy here?”

  “A half hour or so.” She caught hold of Groucho’s arm. “But come with me—I want you to see Eric’s den.”

  He accompanied her along the shadowy hall. “By the way, what’s become of Pearson the valet?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” she answered.

  At first Jane didn’t pay much attention to our bloodhound. She heard him roaming nervously around the living room, snuffling, giving out a whimpering sort of bark every now and then. “Hush up, Dorgan,” she called from her studio. “You were just outside.”

  She was finishing up another Hollywood Molly Sunday page. Once a month she included a panel of paper-doll cutouts. This time she was using Molly’s starlet pal, Monica Mulholland, as the doll, and the costumes were all sarongs. Ever since Dorothy Lamour had turned up wearing one in The Jungle Princess and The Hurricane a couple of years before, the sarong had been a part of quite a few movie wardrobes.

  “Speaking of wardrobe,” said Jane, putting down her crow-quill pen and reaching for the phone on the taboret.

  Her friend Marlene Tobin at the Starlite Costumes warehouse in Hollywood answered on the third ring. “Starlite,” she said in her throaty, chain-smoker’s voice.

  “Hi, Marlene. I’m helping Frank with—”

  “You shouldn’t be helping that lug with anything, kid. Not in your condition. I sure hope it doesn’t involve any heavy lifting. When you went and married a writer, I warned you that they’re a lazy bunch and rarely lift a finger to do—”

  “So far, dear, all I’ve lifted is this telephone. What I want—”

  “Have you picked out one yet?”

  “One what?”

  “Name for the baby. It’s best to do it early; otherwise, you guys’ll be arguing all the way to the baptismal font and—”

  “Donald if it’s a boy, Daisy if it’s a girl. That’s because we’re both such fans of the Donald Duck cartoons that we—”

  “You’ve become even more of a wiseacre since you married that guy.”

  “Probably so,” agreed Jane. “I’m trying to track down a costume, Marlene.”

  “Something you have to draw in your comic strip?”

  “Not exactly. We want to find out who wore it at Warren Lockwood’s big Halloween bash the other—”

  “Frank’s at it again, huh?”

  “At what?”

  “He and that swaybacked comedian are pretending to be detectives.”

  “This does have to do with a case, yes. Now if—”

  “Geeze, everybody knows that Olmstead knocked himself off because that bimbo Flanders was sleeping around. I heard that when they were shooting Two-Fisted Lady over on Catalina, she—”

  “How many Grim Reaper costumes do you folks have in stock, and did—”

  “Just one.”

  Out in the living room Dorgan started barking.

  Putting her hand over the mouthpiece, she called, “Be quiet for a minute, okay?” To Marlene she said, “Can you tell me if it was rented on the thirtieth and to whom?”

  “That’s easy,
Jane. I don’t even have to look it up,” said her friend. “We did rent it for the Lockwood party, and the guy who took it was Andy Devine.”

  “Andy Devine, the big fat character actor with the gravel voice?”

  “That Andy Devine, yes,” said Marlene. “You don’t think he was the guy the papers said scared Olmstead at that party?”

  “No, he couldn’t be the one.” Jane had gotten a brief look at somebody in a Death costume, and she was certain it couldn’t have been anyone built like Andy Devine wearing that outfit. “Who else around town has any costumes like that to rent?”

  “This is important, huh?”

  “We think so, Marlene.”

  Her friend said, “I know people at the other big costume houses, kid. Let me check them for you.”

  “That’d be swell, Marlene. I’d appreciate that.”

  “Sure. You rest. Put your feet up and—”

  “Tough to draw in that position.”

  “Hey, what about the studios? Several of them have big costume departments.”

  “That’s true. I’m planning to—”

  “Nope, don’t wear yourself out. I can handle that, too.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I have to go now, kid. They just came in for the suits of armor. Call you soon as I find out anything. Bye.”

  As Jane hung up, Dorgan appeared in the doorway of the studio. He was making agitated noises in his chest, eyeing her.

  “What’s up? You sound worried about something.” She got up from her drawing board.

  Our dog ran, in his waddling way, through the living room to the front door. He was barking now.

  At the door he lowered his head and commenced sniffing loudly.

  “What’s wrong? Somebody out there?” Jane looked out through the peephole. The porch was empty.

  Up on his hind legs, Dorgan started scratching at the door.

  “Hey, Fido, I just repainted that thing. Down.”

  Reluctantly, the bloodhound obeyed. He was wiggling anxiously, making whimpering noises, glancing up at Jane.

  She moved to a window and looked out into the gray afternoon. “Nobody lurking around, fella.”

  After a moment Dorgan subsided. He gave her one of his forlorn looks, crossed the living room, and lifted himself up onto the sofa. Arranging himself in a comfortable position, he shut his eyes.

  “What was that all about?” Jane asked aloud, looking from the dog to the front door. “Leftover spooks from Halloween maybe?”

  Ten

  May Sankowitz was a redhead again, and her newest office at Hollywood Screen magazine was half again as large as the previous one. A small, slim woman approaching fifty, she was sitting at a stark Scandinavian sort of desk, legs resting across the opened middle drawer.

  Back when we both worked on the Los Angeles Times, May handled the advice-to-the-lovelorn column under the name of Dora Dayton. She used to claim she’d given Nathanael West the idea for Miss Lonelyhearts , but she eventually gave that up when she realized that very few people had ever heard of him or his novel.

  “Before you impose on my notorious good nature,” she said, swinging her legs off the drawer and sitting up straight, “let me tell you my good news.”

  “You’re going to be starting a radio show.”

  “You already knew.”

  “We’re putting together a new Groucho show for Lockwood’s network, and I heard—”

  “Johnny Whistler and Louella Parsons are supposedly waking up screaming,” May said. “I’ll be the only movieland gossip on the airwaves with a melodious voice. I don’t talk through my nose like Whistler or through my fanny like Louella.”

  “When do you start?”

  “Early next month. We’re calling it Inside Hollywood with May Sankowitz. How’s the title hit you?”

  I settled into a stark Scandinavian chair on my side of the desk. “How about The Adventures of Superman? That’s a lot catchier and implies—”

  “Nuts to you, buster,” she said. “Notice, Frank, that even now that I’m on the way to national stardom, I still have time for you. What are you working on, love? Another murder case?”

  “Groucho and I think so.”

  May snapped her fingers. “Ah ha, you must be poking your schnozzes into the Eric Olmstead suicide.”

  “We are, yeah. What I’d like to—”

  “If you must play detective, why don’t you join forces with someone more presentable than Groucho Marx?” she suggested. “Basil Rathbone’s a pain in the backside, but at least he’s dapper and his socks match. Or you might try Warren William. Sober the guy up, and he’s—”

  “Thanks for the advice. Now here’s what I want to find out,” I cut in. “As I recall, you know a lot about the people who work as servants to the stars.”

  “You bet.” She gestured at a row of old-fashioned non-Scandinavian filing cabinets along one wall of the big office. “I’ve got a whole drawer chock-full of stuff on butlers, valets, maids, chauffeurs. If you want inside dirt, there’s no better source.”

  “What do you have on this guy James Pearson, who—”

  “Olmstead’s valet,” May said. “That’s an interesting one.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, Pearson has no history,” she answered. “He was never a valet or any other sort of servant before he went to work for Olmstead. And that was exactly one month before Eric and Dinah tied the knot.”

  “So what was the guy doing before that?”

  “For one thing, he wasn’t James Pearson.”

  “Who then?”

  The gossip columnist shrugged. “I didn’t pursue it that far, Frank,” she admitted. “But one of my stringers did find out another interesting tidbit.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I hear this Pearson owns a place over on Santa Catalina Island. In an area where real estate is expensive.”

  “So maybe he has another source of income, huh?”

  “That’s for you to find out, dear.”

  “And it’s possible that somebody planted him with Olmstead.”

  “Somebody like Warren Lockwood? Could be, since he’s extremely protective of his stars, but at this point I’m not eager to go digging into the activities of my new boss,” she told me. “Maybe you should adopt a similar policy.”

  “Maybe, but I probably won’t,” I said. “What about Dinah’s marriage to Olmstead? Why’d they decide to separate?”

  “I hear the reason was the old familiar incompatibility.”

  “Incompatible how?”

  “In the sack, according to my sources. But that’s what they usually say.”

  “Did you know they were living separately?”

  May shook her head. “Not until after he was dead,” she replied. “I would’ve found out about it in another week or so probably, since you can’t keep something like that secret too long.”

  “Any ideas about who’d want Olmstead dead?”

  “Listen, the guy was a moody Limey with a bum ticker,” she said. “My guess is he really did bump himself off. These artsy types are doing that all the time, Frank.”

  “Anything in his background that looks odd?”

  “All that I have in my files on the guy is pretty tame,” she said. “He directed a few successful epics in England, got hired to come over here by Sam Goldwyn. Did The Loves of Christopher Columbus for him and then signed a contract with Lockwood’s Warlock outfit. Met the gorgeous Dinah, fell head over heels in love, married, and lived happily ever after until he put the gun to his coco.”

  I asked, “What about this director Jason Smollet, would he—”

  “Washed up in this town, finished,” May said. “He might even have to relinquish the title of Queen of Hollywood.”

  “I noticed him at Lockwood’s Halloween party. He sounded pretty angry with Olmstead.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “Jason would never kill anybody,” she assured me. “But if he did, he’d scratch the guy’s eyes out, not sh
oot him.”

  “Still, he had a good motive for wanting Olmstead dead.”

  “Even now that Eric is dead, Lockwood’s never going to hire Jason to direct that Bob Taylor movie,” she said. “Jason might as well retire and devote himself full-time to pursuing his hobby, which is picking up sweet young men at Muscle Beach.”

  “I guess I can cross him off our suspect list.”

  She stood up. “I’ve got an editorial meeting right about now, sweetheart. Any gossip you can pass along about Groucho?”

  “He’s going to star in Groucho Marx, Secret Agent, our new radio—”

  “That I already know,” said May, coming out from behind her desk and striding toward the door. “But, hey, if this does turn out to be a murder, let me know.”

  “When did this happen?” asked Groucho.

  “Sometime between last night and this morning,” answered Dinah.

  “And where were you at the time?”

  “I left here about eight to drive back to Malibu to gather up some of my things. Decided to spend the night there and got back here to Beverly Hills a little after seven this morning.”

  Slouching slightly, Groucho crossed the threshold.

  Eric Olmstead’s study was a large room, paneled in redwood. A claw-foot mahogany desk sat in the center of the room. All of its drawers had been yanked out and their contents dumped on the Persian carpet. Letters, memos, scripts, pencils, pens, paper clips, and several packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes were scattered all around the desk.

  Every book had been swept off the shelves, and they now lay in tumbled piles on the floor. On the back wall a painting that might have been a landscape by Turner had been swung aside, and the safe behind it stood open.

  “Did you alert the police about this?”

  “Hell no,” answered the actress. “I don’t have much faith in the cops. They’d only tell me I was imagining things or that I’d done this myself. So screw them.”

  He made his way through the debris and over to the emptied safe. “Tell me what’s become of Pearson.”

  “The bozo was here when I took off last night, Groucho. But he sure wasn’t here when I got home this morning.”