Murder among the Stars

by Adam Shankman

  Abruptly, he wheeled around, finally putting aside thoughts of Lulu and Sal. Waters had summoned him, but that could wait. Right now he needed to find Marion and see if he could unearth any truth to his suspicions. If so, he’d just have to bite the bullet and tell Hearst. And likely get fired immediately afterward. But integrity was integrity, and for Assistant Investigator Freddie Van, at this moment particularly, integrity was of paramount importance.

  The servants were peculiarly evasive and no help in locating Marion. Neither the housemaids nor kitchen staff seemed to be able to offer even a clue as to where she might be or had last been seen. None of this made any sense to Freddie, having grown up in a similar environment where everyone in the house knew his every move. It was just how households worked, he thought. How could they have no idea unless . . . ? And then, acting on a hunch, he found her, and understood the staff’s behavior.

  Freddie knew that plenty of Hollywood types had drinking problems, and he’d seen Marion deeply in her cups often enough in their short acquaintance to gather that she was an alcoholic. He couldn’t count the number of relatives of his own and his private school friends who’d been whisked away for some “quiet time” at one exclusive sanitarium or another. Addiction was just another whispered-about, poorly kept secret that seemed to accompany a life soaked in excess.

  Like all addicts, Marion had constructed her own system of hiding her addiction, though in truth it was only a secret in her own mind. Hearst did his best to keep her sober, but the servants had been paid in bribes, gifts, and favors to facilitate her drinking on the sly. None of them would tell Freddie where Marion was concealed, but eventually he found her in the wine cellar, hiding her alcoholism in the most obvious place.

  She had a little notebook in her hand and pretended to be going over the wine list for that evening’s dinner. But it wasn’t wine in her grasp. Wine didn’t do the job efficiently enough. She sipped aggressively from a sweating highball glass of what looked like pure whiskey, and there was a half-empty bottle at her feet.

  She looked momentarily startled to be discovered in her hiding place, but she recovered quickly and said with a provocative smirk, “Well, hello, sailor!”

  Ah, thought Freddie, the blatant flirtations of a seasoned lush. He’d been accosted by plenty of party girls (and occasionally their mothers) back in New York and he knew how to handle them with kindness and tact. The trick was to deny them while preserving their dignity. You had to keep them happy by pretending they were irresistible . . . but still keep them at bay. It was even more important to walk that fine line here. Displeasing Marion could be disastrous to anyone’s career. So could pleasing her too much—if Hearst found out.

  “Looking for me?” she asked.

  He gave her his most charming smile. “All my life,” he said. “Though I know I’m too late.” He sat down on a cask.

  “Don’t be so sure about that. May I offer you a nip?” she slurred, inclining her body toward him.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Freddie said, offering her a half smile. Knowing full well that an alcoholic likes nothing more than to get others to join them, he pulled a cut-crystal glass from the nearest shelf and poured a finger of the dark amber liquor as Marion repositioned herself, her dress sleeve slipping down her pale shoulder.

  “But aren’t you taken?” Marion asked artlessly.

  “Aren’t you?” Freddie countered.

  “Ha! I’ll drink to that!” she said, hoisting her glass into the air and spilling half of it. Freddie gallantly snatched up the bottle and refilled it.

  “Mr. Hearst wanted me to tell you what happened,” Freddie said, steering the conversation to something slightly more benign than illicit tipsy seduction. Briefly, he told her about Dolores.

  All through the story, Marion sat frozen. The only movement Freddie could see was the gentle sloshing of her whiskey as her hand trembled. She didn’t even seem to be breathing, so that when Freddie finished his tale, she gave a sort of gasp and suddenly sat up straighter.

  “Another one,” she breathed, as if to herself. Freddie saw her lips twitch, and at first he thought it must, improbably, be a flickering ghost of a smile. But no, who could smile at such news? It was a pained grimace, he decided, gone the next second.

  “Which one was Dolores?” Marion asked. “The pale Polish girl?”

  Poor Marion must be even more upset than she looks, Freddie thought, because he distinctly remembered her calling Dolores by name during the practical joke hijinks the first night. He caught her looking at him sidelong out of eyes that showed no trace of tears. In her deeply tipsy state he would have expected more feminine emotion. Wait. Could she be pretending to not remember who Dolores was? But why?

  “No. Dolores was the tall, black-haired one,” Freddie said, and watched her narrowly.

  There was no look of dawning comprehension in her eyes, though she said, “Oh yes, I remember now. Nothing at all like me. Still, some like that type, I suppose.” She picked up the whiskey bottle and looked at her own faint reflection in the smoky glass before sloshing in a little more. She smiled to herself. “I’ve still got it,” she said softly. “Those others can’t hold a candle.”

  Freddie wasn’t sure if the alcohol was keeping Marion from fully realizing what had happened, or if there was something else going on.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” he asked.

  Marion shrugged. “I don’t pay attention to most of the girls that come around here. They come, they go. Mostly they go.” She giggled. “Dolores went.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, did I just say that? Bad me! Oh well, what’s a girl to do?”

  Marion gave a careless shrug, sending the other sleeve down to her elbow. Freddie began to feel increasingly uncomfortable about the amount of skin she was showing. If someone were to walk in . . .

  “Dolores wasn’t the worst of the lot, even if she did almost get . . .” She interrupted herself with a deep swig. “Much better than some, anyway. Not like that slut Juliette. You know . . .” Marion dipped her heavily jeweled index finger into her glass, slowly swirling the thick dark liquid. “She had it coming but good.”

  Freddie hid his surprise. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “That—creature—had the nerve to tell me I’m yesterday’s news. Can you believe it? That bleached-blond little travesty of an actress positively got into my face and told me I’m washed up! And Frances told me she’d been saying all kinds of horrible things about me behind my back.”

  “Frances?” Freddie asked.

  “Mrs. Mortimer, our housekeeper. Now, there’s loyalty. She’s been with me since the beginning and always has my back. Without her bringing information to me, I might actually believe all of those sweetly smiling little tramps like and respect me.”

  “Some of them certainly do,” Freddie said, thinking of Lulu. “But no one seemed to like Juliette much.”

  “One person liked her. She and John Emerson had a thing, you know.” She leaned in close, exhaling boozily. “The part should be mine, you know. Anita is my friend. She should be writing the part for me. Not that horrible Juliette or that tramp Dolores, or . . .” She caught herself sharply and gave a little laugh. “Oh, what am I saying? You’ll forgive me if my head’s all muddled, won’t you, dear boy? Poor, sweet Dolores. Such tragic times!”

  Was she really so self-centered and conceited that she was thinking about a role she thought she deserved when two young women were dead? He supposed that kind of attitude wasn’t too uncommon here in Hollywood, though most would have to be as deeply into their cups as Marion before they were so blatant. It made him grateful he had a girl like Lulu. He had to smooth things out with her, and soon.

  But for now he tried to keep Marion’s attention. She liked to talk about herself, so he encouraged her to do that. Maybe eventually he could steer the conversation to a point where he could get a clue about the blackmail.

  “You hoped to get the part Anita is writing, then?” he asked,
full of sympathy.

  She nodded, and the movement almost made her fall off her chair. “But when I went to Pops and told him I wanted the part, he said I was too . . . too . . .”

  “Sophisticated?” Freddie ventured with calculation.

  Marion threw back her head and laughed grimly. “How clever you are. So sweet and soooo very handsome. That Lulu Kelly is a lucky girl. Too lucky, maybe. No, you silly! He suggested I might be just a tad too old to play a teenage ingenue. Even though Anita hasn’t written the part, we all know the lead character will be young. I didn’t push it after that. The world wants youth. Juliette had the absolute gall to corner me and tell me to stop trying to get Emerson and Anita and Paul Raleigh to tailor the part for me!” She tossed her messy waves. “God, how I hate these smart young things who think anyone over thirty doesn’t count anymore.” She leered drunkenly. “I’m glad some people, at least, can see the allure of a mature woman.”

  Freddie just forced a knowing laugh and ignored her insinuation. “With Juliette . . . or even Dolores now out of the picture, do you think the part might go to you?”

  Marion made a rude noise. “With all these sweet young things swinging their hips and pouting their lips at the men who make all the decisions in Hollywood? Not bloody likely I’m getting any parts, unless someone decides to strangle every last one of ’em.” She laughed uproariously at the idea. “If only that were possible,” she said. “Oh, darling boy, you make me say the most foolish things! What must you think of me?” She raised her glass and took a long, purposeful drink.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I do have to get back to work. Miss Davies, I do not understate when I say that this has been fascinating.” And with that, amid her drunken protests and giggles, Freddie left her to her bottle, consumed with a new idea.

  It seemed ludicrous at first consideration. But the access that made it conceivable that Marion was the blackmailer also made it possible she could be the killer. She could go anywhere on the Ranch unobserved. She could have gotten the scarf. In fact, she selected them! Where had she been just before Juliette was discovered? She and Hearst had arrived late to the Assembly Room before dinner. Had they been together?

  No, this was an insane idea. Marion Davies was a great movie star. Even more telling, she was a small, slender woman, not in her first youth. Juliette was bigger, younger, and no doubt stronger than Marion, and Dolores, who everyone compared to an Amazon warrior woman, was tall, sporty, and strong. It was almost impossible to imagine little Marion manhandling the two murdered starlets.

  And yet, as Freddie climbed up from the wine cellar, it stuck in his mind. Her drunken admission of her hatred for Juliette was telling, though apparently almost every actress hated Juliette, and with good reason. But that offhand comment about strangling her competition revealed a hard streak in Marion that piqued his interest. She had shown Freddie a darkness and desperation that made him wonder how far down the rabbit hole she could go. In this state, what was she capable of?

  But why talk so openly with him about her jealousies? Why confess? In vino veritas, most likely. When he’d first started working for Mr. Waters, the investigator had told him not to be surprised when people confessed. Especially Hollywood types. Show people are in love with their own stories, he said in a sober moment. They’ll confess just because they crave an audience. How can they prove how interesting and important they are if they don’t tell their darkest secrets?

  And then, Mr. Waters had taught him, even those who don’t confess will give you hints. I didn’t kill him, a suspect might say, but he stole my wife, my dog, and my job, so I’m glad he’s dead. Not a confession, but enough motive to warrant digging deeper.

  When he met with Hearst and Waters later, he was still uncertain as to what he might say and how to introduce the subject. He had no idea how he could tactfully suggest that Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress and great love, might be involved with either the blackmail or the murders. Perhaps he could find some way to make Waters suggest it. Or best yet, put Hearst in a position where he couldn’t help but think of it himself.

  “Mr. Hearst, I know that we’re here to concentrate on getting to the bottom of the blackmail situation, but I think it’s important to consider the very distinct possibility that the unfortunate incident in the tiger cage may not have been an accident.”

  “W-wh-what are you saying, Freddie?” Waters stuttered.

  “Are you suggesting that that poor girl was murdered? You too?” Hearst barked. “I’ve heard enough cockamamie theories to last a lifetime. I suppose that a private investigator has a vested interest in making everything seem inexplicable and dire. But the truth is, any man of reasonable intelligence can solve most crimes. Do you know why? Because the right answer is always the most obvious one! There’s no conspiracy. That colored man in the garden murdered Juliette. Dolores’s death was an unfortunate accident. Stop looking for a boogeyman.”

  “Or woman,” Freddie muttered inaudibly under his breath.

  “What was that? Did I hear you contradict me?”

  “No, sir. I was just clearing my throat.”

  “You listen, and you listen good,” Hearst snapped. “There is no murder investigation! We have the murderer incarcerated!” He glared at Freddie. “If you don’t stop this nonsense, you will be asked to leave the premises, and no doubt your job with Mr. Waters will be terminated forthwith.”

  Freddie had no choice but to bite his tongue.

  But he wondered why Hearst was so adamant about refusing to allow even the possibility of a real murder investigation. Was it just to keep fuss and publicity to a minimum? Or did he have a deeper, more personal motivation? Was he trying to protect someone?

  Was he trying to cover for Marion?

  Fifteen

  Lulu set Charlie down on the bed and furiously began throwing clothes and sundries into her bags.

  Veronica knocked on the half-open door and came in before Lulu could tell her to butt out. “What in the name of Louis B. Mayer do you think you’re doing? You can’t leave.”

  “Watch me,” Lulu snapped as she shoved a sparkling pair of diamanté hair combs—last night’s gift to all remaining actresses—into her cosmetics case. “This whole event is a bloody nightmare. The competition is insane, and Hearst does nothing but lie, lie, lie to everyone—tricking us into thinking we’re being arrested, or that someone’s drowning—just so he can sit back and watch our reactions for his own amusement.” Her face twisted in disgust. “And now there are two murders and no one seems interested in investigating any of it.”

  “What do you mean—two murders?” Veronica asked.

  “I’m certain that Dolores was tied up when she went into the tiger’s cage,” Lulu said. “She had bruises and what looked like rope burns on her wrists. Someone forced her in there, but nobody will listen to me.” She shook her head. “So I say fine, let them clean up their own mess and catch their own murderers, and oh! In the meantime, make young talented women demean themselves so that they can get a hypothetical part in a movie that may never materialize! I’m telling you, Veronica, I’m leaving.”

  “Lulu Kelly! I forbid it! I know you’re frustrated, but I don’t think you know what you may be walking away from. It’s my job to save you from yourself, and I’m not going to let you throw away this—”

  “Veronica Imrie!” interrupted Lulu, mocking her relentless publicist. “Does Mr. Hearst really think any of us are showing our ‘true character’ here? We’re all acting, as always, and scrambling for the part and trying to impress. Never mind that there has been at least one bona fide murder in the last forty-eight hours on the property—a fact that everyone is blithely happy to ignore because if we actually dealt with the horror of it, it would ruin everyone’s ferociously desperate and egomaniacal plans! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving. Kindly send the rest of my things to the station.” With Charlie in one hand and a bag in the other, she tried to shove her way past her friend.

  “Lulu,
listen to me. It’s been a nutty day. You’re exhausted and . . .”

  Lulu looked at Veronica levelly.

  “Nutty? I just found a girl I had dinner with last night in a wild animal’s cage, strewn about like she’d been separated into the four food groups!”

  “I know. I know,” Veronica said soothingly. “You’ve been through so much. First Ruby, and now all this?” She spread her hands. “No wonder you’re a mess. But you know what our slogan is out here. The show must go on, come hell or high water.”

  “Veronica, you’re not listening to me. Some things are more important than getting a part.” Or catching a murderer? Lulu’s better nature asked accusingly. What if another girl gets killed and you could have stopped it, but you ran away with your tail between your legs, whining like a little kid just because men don’t listen to you and your boyfriend dismissed you? “High water is here, and I’m catching the next boat out.”

  Veronica threw her hands up in the air. “Then think about me,” she implored. “You’re Lux Studios’ one and only hope for this. Isn’t this why you came to Hollywood? This is the golden ticket! If you win this competition, you will be the biggest star Lux has, and just so you know, the publicity will be beyond our realm of understanding. That’s why every studio wants their girl to get this part. Lulu, I’ll get down on my hands and knobby knees, but I’m begging you to not run away from this.”

  “I’m not running away,” Lulu started uncertainly.