Murder among the Stars

by Adam Shankman

  When she was almost ready, there was a rap at the door, and a sharp yip. “I come bearing pooches!” Patricia announced as she let herself in.

  Charlie jumped onto Lulu’s lap and licked her frantically, undoing half the work she’d done on her makeup. She rubbed his ears and kissed his nose.

  “Now, I’m dying to know, what present did you get?” Patricia curled up on Lulu’s bed and looked around the room eagerly.

  “Present?” Lulu glanced at Veronica, who shrugged.

  “On special occasions, Marion and Uncle Will give all the guests presents each night,” Patricia explained. “The girls all get the same thing, and all the boys get something else. Emerald shoe clips or platinum cigarette cases. Mrs. Mortimer, the housekeeper, told me you’ll get something every night you’re here, and the gifts keep getting better as the days go on. So the girls who don’t get eliminated will probably end up with a whole sack of loot and a diamond tiara or something truly splendiferous. Oh, I hope it’s you!”

  “Glad to know I have someone in my corner,” Lulu said, laughing.

  “Glad to know it’s someone with Big Daddy’s ear,” Veronica said in a muted aside.

  “But it seems I’m on the outs with someone,” Lulu went on as she reapplied the makeup Charlie had so excitedly removed. “I didn’t get any present.”

  “That’s strange,” Patricia said. “Let’s check with the other girls.” And with much more self-possession than most girls her age, she marched into a couple of the other bedrooms to investigate. A few minutes later, with knitted brow and folded arms, she returned with her report: No one else had gotten anything, either.

  “Peculiar,” Patricia said. “They should have been put out while everyone was in the Assembly Room before dinner, so you’d all find them when you went to bed. I saw them all wrapped in one of the pantries, so pretty in silver and red.”

  Lulu drew a sharp breath and turned away from the mirror resolutely. “There was one in Juliette’s room—unwrapped. So she got her present.” Lulu frowned. “But we know she hadn’t gone to her room, because she wasn’t wet.”

  Patricia and Veronica just looked at her quizzically as Lulu’s investigative mind began to race again. “What could it possibly mean? I wonder . . .” And then her voice trailed off.

  Veronica winced. “Uh-oh. I’ve seen that crazy look before. This is going to take some time, and will definitely not end well,” she said, flopping onto the bed and grabbing an old copy of Photoplay to flip through.

  Lulu dashed out of the room and knocked on Boots’s bedroom door. Boots hadn’t gotten as far as Lulu in her beauty rituals, and her hair was still in curl papers. “That unwrapped present we saw in Juliette’s room—was it there, still wrapped, when you set the trap for her?”

  Boots yawned and said, “Yes, still wrapped so prettily, and I was dying to open it and see what it was.”

  “But you didn’t, right?”

  “ ’Course not! Though I did wonder how that sly coyote had sniffed out prey so quickly.”

  “I think it was from Hearst,” Lulu said.

  Boots’s eyes opened wide in shock. “He was her . . . ?”

  “No! Not that! I mean he gave a present to all the actresses. Only he didn’t. Or he did and they were taken away.” She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t really even know if it means anything, but something’s not right about it.”

  “Lulu, you need to stop focusing on Juliette,” Veronica said, coming up behind her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. “They caught the man who did it. Let it go.”

  “Yeah, kiddo, I know it’s terrible, but you can’t let it drive you bananas,” Boots said.

  Patricia came to her defense. “Lulu’s the only one here who has even an inkling what crime is all about. And her boyfriend is a private investigator. If she’s worried, I’m worried.”

  “No,” Lulu said, “they’re right. I feel like I’m going crazy. I can’t stop thinking about it. Poor Juliette.”

  “You want to do something,” Veronica said gently. “That’s just your way. You can’t help it. But there’s nothing left to do here.”

  “I know,” Lulu said, and tried to make herself stop thinking about the crime.

  The first item on the day’s agenda was a tour of La Casa Grande. Neither Hearst nor Marion made an appearance, but left it to the butler to guide them through the innumerable rooms and point out the many pillaged treasures of Europe. Patricia decided to tag along.

  “Won’t you be bored?” Lulu asked. She must have been playing in the rooms and corridors all her life, privy to every hidden nook and secret passageway.

  “Not with you around!” Patricia said brightly. “Trouble always seems to find you, and I’m positively desperate for some trouble in my life. Did you really find the body yourself? Gosh, you have all the luck.”

  The butler led the twenty actresses through the house. The torturous task of playing Sherpa to this gaggle of nattering self-obsessed women seemed to shake even his unflappable dignity.

  Lulu, though, was enjoying herself immensely. The decor was confusing, lavish verging on garish, and little of it was what she would have chosen for herself. Still, it was beautiful, and gave her a glimpse of places she had never been, ages she had never seen. Most of the furniture was from Europe, some of it older than the United States itself. Parts of Spain and France seemed to have been ripped whole from their native lands and transplanted in California.

  Just as Lulu was about to ask the butler a question about a painting of a particularly cuddly looking Madonna and child, Patricia pulled her down a corridor.

  “What are you doing?” Lulu whispered, yearning for the art.

  “I know everyone wants you to let it drop, but I can see the gears still churning in your brain. Please, let me help you investigate. I never get to do anything exciting, and if I can help you catch a murderer, it will just be the bee’s knees!”

  “Everyone is sure they already caught the murderer,” Lulu said, discouraging the girl though she felt the prickings of renewed excitement.

  “Well, what if they have? I heard one of the maids gossiping in the kitchen, and she said he hasn’t said a lucid word yet, and she knows because one of the local policemen is sweet on her and told her so, so they don’t know anything about how or why he did it! You could surely whip together enough evidence to convict him before he’s even conscious.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Please? Pretty please?”

  “It isn’t exactly a suitable pastime for a young lady like yourself,” Lulu said, feeling unpleasantly like a prissy old governess as she spoke.

  “I’m not some baby!” Patricia almost shouted. She bit her lip, and then more calmly, whispered, “I won’t be seeing any bodies or blood, so what’s the harm?”

  “So, where are we going?” Lulu asked, giving in to the persuasive junior sleuth.

  “To find out what the present was,” Patricia said with a conspiratorial grin. “Come on—you know you’re dying to find out. Even if it had nothing to do with the murder, which would be unlikely because it simply reeks of a clue.”

  As she led Lulu through the house, they could hear the muted sound of the group of actresses through the walls. “Oh, before we do that, I want to show you something else,” Patricia said. “Hurry, before they get to the next room.”

  She pulled Lulu into a little alcove. “Stand up on that step. Now feel along the wall. Got it? Move that aside and you can see everything.”

  Lulu found the hinged cover and opened it, revealing a small breach in the wall. She put her eye to the peephole and saw a richly decorated room. Something glittered on the table. Lulu squinted. It was a slender diamond-encrusted watch, carelessly left behind by someone.

  “Now look across the room,” Patricia directed. “See that nook with the wooden saint? Look into the ironwork at the back and tell me what you see.”

  She stared for a long time without seeing anything in particular. Then she t
hought she saw a shadow pass behind the opening, and then . . .

  “Is that an eye?” she asked, pulling back from her own peephole.

  “Yes!” Patricia squealed. “That’s Uncle Will, or Marion, spying on the actresses to see how they behave. They’re judging all of you every moment you’re here.”

  Lulu was mortified. “Then I should be out there. What will he think if I’m not with the group?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll tell him I asked you specially to do something with me. He knows we’ve bonded, and I can see that he’s grateful, so we’ll be A-OK. Ask him a question about his Byzantine tilework later, and you’ll be golden. Quick, look again! Here come the others.”

  Lulu pressed her eye to the opening and watched as the embittered butler elucidated the room’s splendors to the dozen or so actresses who remained. They milled around the room, examining the finery or yawning outright.

  When the butler left the room, the actresses slowly trailed in his wake, but one lingered a bit behind the others. Lulu knew her only slightly, a girl named Gloria who worked for another studio. She watched Gloria scan the room furtively, then skillfully palm the diamond watch and slip it down the front of her dress.

  Astonished, Lulu stepped back and told Patricia what she’d seen. How could Gloria do something so despicable after Hearst had invited her into his home? “Shouldn’t I tell someone?” Lulu asked.

  “Oh, believe me, someone already knows,” Patricia answered, and winked at Lulu.

  Next Patricia led Lulu down some stairs to the cool basement area of the house. “The wine cellar and storage,” Patricia explained. “This is where I saw all the presents the other day.”

  Sure enough, there they were, wrapped in red and silver paper.

  “Hmm. Some of the bows are mussed, and the paper is torn in places,” Patricia noted pensively.

  “Almost like they were delivered . . . and then taken back again,” Lulu offered. “But why?”

  Patricia took one of the identical boxes off the shelf and tore open the paper.

  “Oh, pretty,” she said as she pulled out the gift.

  But Lulu gasped and fell backward, catching herself on the wall. Trailing through Patricia’s fingers was the same scarf whose swirling hues of sea-green silk had strangled the life out of Juliette Claire.

  Eight

  As he sat musing alone in his room, Freddie came to the disheartening realization that no case a private eye takes on is ever going to be completely clean, with one party totally innocent. Having been raised in a nest of corruption, he wasn’t inclined to think anyone was free and clear of sin anyway. Hearst was clearly withholding crucial information that would help apprehend the blackmailer and reveal his identity, and Freddie wanted to know why.

  And then there was the nagging feeling that Lulu might be right about the murderer of Juliette not being the man the police had in custody. Though he should have been wet from the prank, he could have killed her, gotten wet, and changed. But something was bothering Freddie about the motive. Mostly, that there wasn’t one. In a house full of precious jewelry, he couldn’t imagine that this well-dressed young man would have killed a young woman whom he could have so easily overpowered. Especially in what appeared to be a very calculated manner. No, something was wrong, but for now he would have to focus on the blackmail, and keeping his boss sober enough to not get fired.

  But first he needed to shower up and dress. He chose a particularly handsome navy chalk striped suit that Lulu had purchased for him for a party at Louis B. Mayer’s estate, but he had just paid her back, not interested in being perceived, mostly by himself, as a gigolo. As he splashed on some vetiver aftershave, he scolded himself again for succumbing to jealousy last night. Lulu and he were puzzle pieces that fit. When he thought about her, surely waiting for him now in the Assembly Room, he relaxed. Everything in the world felt calm and perfect, and serene.

  Lulu’s mind was spinning and her breath short. Her thoughts racing, she muttered the facts as she knew them. Patricia, now thinking herself a pint-sized Dr. Watson of sorts, tried to sift through Lulu’s rapid-fire speculation. “Juliette was strangled with a scarf that was given to all the actresses. Was it her own scarf, from the box in her room? Did anyone else open their present? Were they all identical scarves? Why were all of the gifts repossessed and stored?”

  Lulu pushed the boxes around, counting. “There are nineteen here, unopened.” She spun around to Patricia. “How many boxes were there last night?” she asked. “Did just the actresses get one? Or all the female guests? Were there extras?”

  Patricia’s mouth spread into a slow smile. “Does this mean I’m on the case?”

  “Of course! Well, wait . . . No! Er . . . maybe. Fine! Unless it gets dangerous.”

  “Deal! I don’t know, but I know who does.”

  She and Lulu hunted down the housekeeper, Mrs. Mortimer, who knew more about the ins and outs of the Ranch than anyone else, even Hearst himself.

  “Why, there was a scarf for every actress,” she said, not looking up from the accounts she was working on. The pencil looked tiny in Mrs. Mortimer’s large, competent hands. She dressed well for a housekeeper, and her makeup was impeccable, but her hands and muscled forearms showed that she’d worked hard in her life. “Twenty, exactly. The other guests got something else. Opera glasses for the ladies, silver clothes brushes for the gents.”

  A maid knocked and stood in the doorway, waiting for permission to enter. “Here are your shoes, Mrs. Mortimer,” the girl said with a bobbed curtsy. “I got every bit of mud off, and spit-polished the toes for you.”

  The housekeeper took them without a word or a glance, while her other hand kept scribbling figures in a ledger.

  “And you collected them after the . . . the incident?” Lulu asked.

  The housekeeper erased a miscalculation and said, “When Mr. Hearst saw that his gift had been used in the crime, he had them recalled immediately.”

  “And you got them all except Juliette’s?” Patricia asked.

  The housekeeper eyed the girl briefly but was apparently used to her meddling in adult affairs. Mrs. Mortimer bobbed her head. “Hers was already open when the maid got there.”

  So Juliette had definitely been strangled with her own scarf, Lulu thought. But her dry clothes and shoes showed that she hadn’t gone into her room. Who had gotten the scarf? Surely that was the person who used it to kill Juliette.

  At the end of her calculations now, the housekeeper took off her rather stylish tortoiseshell reading glasses and looked at them directly for the first time. Lulu noticed with some surprise that she was wearing false eyelashes.

  “Why so many questions? Ah, wait, I know you. You’re Lulu Kelly. That explains it. Actresses usually stick to their first starring role, and Ruby Godfrey’s shooting certainly made you a star. Of course you want to meddle in every morbid scene you stumble across now.”

  Lulu, feeling both chagrined and defensive, wasn’t sure how to respond. Mrs. Mortimer didn’t seem to be making accusations. In fact, she spoke as if she had a deep and resigned understanding of humanity. She cast no blame, only commented.

  “Something’s off about the whole thing,” Lulu said cautiously. “I don’t think they arrested the right man. Or woman.”

  Mrs. Mortimer looked at her sharply. “Do you have evidence to support your wild assertion?”

  None that Lulu cared to share. “Just a feeling. Do you know anything about what happened?” She turned on a bit of flattery. “I’m sure you know more about what goes on in the Ranch than anyone. From what they say, this place couldn’t function without you.”

  Mrs. Mortimer looked pleased, and settled more comfortably into her chair . . . though she did ask, “Who is ‘they’?”

  “Oh . . . Marion, of course.” Lulu waved her hand airily. She usually didn’t lie, but this obviously pleased the housekeeper, and after all, Marion might have said it. It was almost certainly true, whether she’d said it or not.

&nb
sp; “I didn’t hear anything myself,” Mrs. Mortimer confessed. Her entire attitude seemed changed. She unbent, became confiding and somehow softer. Amazing what a little judicious flattery can do, Lulu thought.

  “But Ginnie told me about the ruckus she heard, right after it happened last night,” Mrs. Mortimer went on. “I didn’t pay it much attention, to my regret. I never dreamed it would amount to anything like this. Mr. Hearst’s guests are usually much better behaved.”

  Lulu’s eyes widened. “Someone actually heard what happened?”

  The housekeeper nodded. “Ginnie’s my niece, one of the maids. Last night when she was taking out the rubbish from dinner, she heard a man and woman arguing. The woman said something like ‘No, you can’t do that to me,’ and he said ‘Watch me.’ But she didn’t hear anyone scream or anything, so she came in. I feel just terrible I didn’t tell anyone about it, but at the time it didn’t appear that there was anything much to report, and gossip is strictly discouraged here at the Ranch.”

  “Can I talk to Ginnie?”

  “She had to stay home in bed today with a sick headache.”

  “Did she tell the police?” Lulu asked.

  “Heavens, no! Junior maids don’t talk to the police!” the housekeeper said, aghast. “They tell senior maids, who tell me, who tells Mr. Hearst, who then tells the police.” She huffed at the very idea of anyone so gauchely violating the servants’ chain of command. “Who would listen to a fifteen-year-old maid, anyway?”

  “I would,” Lulu said firmly. “I’d like to talk to her. Can you call her in?”

  “If it’s entirely necessary.”

  “It is.”

  “Of course, ma’am.” Her congenial softness evaporated, and she became the rigid housekeeper again. She stood, and Lulu took an inadvertent step back. Mrs. Mortimer was so much taller than she remembered. She loomed over Lulu, majestic and dignified. Like a great ship pulling little boats in her wake, she ushered them out of her private office and locked the door behind her.