The next day, the cop came back, with a couple of his cop buddies in tow, and asked if they could get some more of those French-dipped sandwiches and a new taste sensation was born. Either that or it was something else entirely. I like this story, though, and I certainly love the dipped sandwiches. Philippe sold the place in the late twenties and has gone off to be thrifty someplace else, but the name and the sandwiches remain, and I’m glad.
On this evening, Dex and I got lucky and ended up with one of the trestle tables all to ourselves. This was practically unheard of at Philippe’s, where sharing the table with strangers is the norm. But it was late—nearly closing time—and the crowd had thinned somewhat. Philippe’s is an eatery, pure and simple. Not at all the sort of place you go for a festive evening out on the town. In case we were in doubt about that, a few of the people still in the restaurant looked me and Dex over pretty carefully when we came in. One man seemed especially taken with the sight of a woman in a beaded dress being escorted by a gentleman in an evening suit. “What’s a matter?” Dex said to the gawker. “Ya never saw a penguin on a date before?”
When the time came to order, I, of course, asked for a beef French-dipped sandwich with a slice of American cheese and a side order of macaroni salad. It just seemed too late at night for cabbage. Dex’s sandwich was either pork or lamb—I didn’t ask which—with a side order of coleslaw and a pickled egg. He was, I guess, undaunted by the thought of late night cabbage.
Once we’d secured our food, Dex didn’t waste any time.
“You learn anything useful?” he asked around his sandwich. I quelled the feeling of annoyance that rose when he dipped a mouthful of coleslaw into the little pot of au jus. Beef-dipped cabbage? But I let it go.
I nodded. And then I shrugged. And then I nodded again.
“I think so,” I said. “But it’s a little hard to tell.”
“How so?”
I told him what Baron had said about his relationship with Wyndham: how the older actor had been the bigger star until Wyndham supplanted him as Hollywood’s most significant leading man.
“So you think Baron Sutherland set this whole thing up?” Dex asked, clearly incredulous. “You think he made it look as though Wyndham killed someone because he was—what?— jealous of his old rival’s success?”
“When you put it that way, it does sound pretty lame. On the other hand… I don’t know, it seemed like it might be a theory worth exploring, is all. A jealous older actor, displaced by a young hotshot. It could spark things.”
“Say, I saw Baron leaving with that blonde.”
“Beatrice,” I supplied. Somewhat sourly, I’ll admit.
“She was gorgeous, kiddo. Legs on her all the way to here,” he made a chopping motion just under his chin.
“Stop it,” I didn’t raise my voice.
“I’m only saying.”
“I know what you’re saying. But it’s not like that, Dex. I’m not suggesting Baron did it because—what?—because he left the party with his girlfriend. I’m not even saying he did it at all. Just, I don’t know. When he was telling me about Wyndham—about what they’d been to each other—I thought I could hear something in his voice.”
“This was before whazzername, Beatrice, showed up?”
“It had nothing to do with any of that, Dex. Just stop it. It’s not even a feeling, really. Not even a hunch. Just a thought.”
“Well Kitty, all due respect? I don’t think it’s a thought that holds water. If jealousy were the motive—and I mean professional jealousy here, not just the kind with a broad—why, we’d be having to look at every actor in Hollywood. It seems to me that they’re all real willing to step on each other’s heads just to get to the top.”
“Even so,” I said.
“Even so,” Dex said back to me with a smirk.
“Is that what that redhead with the serpenty legs was doing with you in the garden? Trying to get ahead?”
“Ha! If so, she was barking up the wrong tree. But that Mildred,” he said with a low whistle. “She’s something, ain’t she?”
“Listen, Dex: I know sometimes it seems like I am one of the guys. But I am not one of the guys.” I let the thought go unfinished.
Dex continued as though I hadn’t interrupted. “Yeah, she’s something all right. I’ll be seeing her again.”
“Is it the quality of the sound in here?” I said. “Can you hear me? At all?”
“And I had a drink with this guy, Samuel Marcus. Do you know the name?”
I shook my head.
“He was pretty interesting. He was like us—kind of in disguise? But he’s a reporter with the Los Angeles Courier.”
“No kiddin’? Was he there because of Wyndham?”
“Naw. Near as I can figure, he just managed to wangle an invitation, like we did more or less. And he figured maybe there’d be a story to do: and then he found the free booze. And then I found him. Anyway, we got to talkin’. And I asked him about my theory. You know.”
I shook my head. “What theory?”
Dex polished off his pickled egg before he answered, carefully wiping his fingers on the cloth napkin while he spoke. “You remember, when the papers all seemed to get so nasty, so fast? I wondered if someone might have it out for Wyndham.”
I remembered. I also recalled that I’d felt Dex had sounded vaguely paranoid when he’d broached it, but I didn’t bring that up. “What did he think?”
“Well, like I said, he wasn’t working on a story about Wyndham, so he couldn’t say, per se—that was the way he put it. But he said he’d look into it even though he figured there was nothing to it. He’s gonna call and let me know if he finds anything.”
“That sounds promising. I guess,” I said.
“Well, it’s something and, other than that, I don’t figure I had as much luck as you.”
“Oh.”
“I did talk to this one guy. But that didn’t go so well.”
I sighed over the last of my beef dip. It had been that good. “How so?”
“Well, after Sam left the bar, I got to talking to this guy was in there said he was a friend of Wyndham’s.”
“That sounds like a good lead,” I said. “What happened?”
“Well, he said they’d worked on the clubhouse together.”
“Baron told me the same thing. I gather a bunch of those movie star types built the place with their own hands.”
“Yeah. Except I guess this one day it didn’t go so good. This guy said Wyndham near threw him off the roof. Said he managed to get down to the garden, but Wyndham followed him and laid into him pretty good: broke a couple of the guy’s ribs and blackened an eye.” Dex told me all of this without expression. I couldn’t tell if he believed the story or not.
“I heard something like that too,” I said. I told him about Rosalyn Steele and how Wyndham had encouraged her to go home. I figured there were elements in the story Dex had told me that Rosalyn would have recognized. “What was the fight about? Did the guy say?”
Dex shook his head. “Not really. That was the funny part. Or a bit of it, anyway. The guy sort of clammed up when I asked him. But I gather it was about a girl.”
“Geez. OK,” I said. “Well, that’s not good. It seems our gentle movie star has a bit of a temper.”
“Still,” Dex said loyally, “that doesn’t prove anything.”
“No, no, of course. You’re right. It doesn’t prove a damn thing. But it does kind of make you think.”
I could see he bought my point.
I told Dex about my talk with Joe, the guy I’d met on the second floor of the Masquers’ clubhouse. Dex listened closely while I spoke, then was quiet for a minute, considering all I’d said.
“All interesting enough,” he said finally, “but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with any of this. Do you?”
“I don’t know, Dex. I just don’t know at all anymore. Sometimes I hear something—like the thing Baron was saying?— and I feel a glim
mer of something. Then that feeling passes, too. So, is it connected? I don’t know. Everything’s connected I guess.”
Dex looked at me. Grinned. “Now who’s gettin’ philosophical?” he asked. But I knew the question was rhetorical and I didn’t reply.
“So what have we got?” Dex asked after a while.
“Got?”
“You know: we did all of this and we did all of that. Where are we now?”
“Well, we’re getting nowhere fast,” I said. There was a smile in my voice, but I knew I was only half kidding.
“You figure? I don’t know that’s so.” He held up one elegant index finger. “We got a good friend for a long time, says Wyndham’s got a streak in him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A darkness.”
“That too. Then we’ve got two old friends say he’s got a violent nature.”
“Rosalyn and your roof guy.”
“Right. We got an overworked ‘zecutive says the world is ending.”
“That’s not quite what he said.”
“And we got a newspaperman don’t know nothing, but will get back to us when he does.”
I grinned despite myself. “OK.”
“And we’ve got a redhead … man. You see the gams on her!”
“Dex. Please!”
“OK. So … what have we got?”
I just looked at him uncomprehending. He didn’t say anything, so I crossed my arms and looked at him some more.
“C’mon, Kitty: What. Have. We. Got?”
“A mess?” I tried. “A big, disconnected mess?”
“Naw. Geez! Didn’t they teach you the no quit spirit at that college in San Francisco?”
“It wasn’t college. It was high school. And … um … no quit spirit was not a part of the curriculum.”
“Oh fer cryin’ out loud. I gotta draw you a picture? OK then. Picture this, here’s what we’ve got: a foundation for various truths. A foundation on which we may build.”
“You sound like a daisy.”
“This isn’t like following some poor sap’s cheating wife, Kitty,” Dex said, suddenly serious. “It’s not even like tracking down an embezzler or some bum who’s hanging orphan checks. I hate to say this, Kitty, but this feels … it feels bigger than me. Bigger in a way than the both of us.”
I looked at him then. Looked at him closely to check for signs of another joke. What he’d said sounded like a line from a movie, a corny romantic movie at that. But he wasn’t smiling. It wasn’t any joke. And he was right: the thing we were dealing with was so large, I was beginning to get the idea we couldn’t see the whole thing in one glance, even if we had all the facts, which I was fairly certain we did not.
“So what are you saying?” I asked.
“Oh, Kitty, I dunno, you’re right. We got nothin’. Yet. But, hell: it’s a start.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DETECTIVE WORK IS a series of educated guesses ideally aided by good information from a paying client and resulting in the discovery of the desire of said client’s heart. That’s not a direct quote from my boss, but it’s close enough for the kind of jazz we play around here. Least, that’s the way Dexter Theroux puts things often enough when he feels like having all the answers and doesn’t actually have too many.
Me, I’d put it another way: Detective work is a series of fits and starts put together in moments of sobriety stolen from the demon drink. It comes together at the place where good, blind luck meets up with the angel who guards drunks and small children.
Now, all of that said, the day after the Masquers’ ball was filled from front to back with detective work—real detective work. You could take Dex’s definition or you could take mine and either would apply.
We had the list that Wyndham had made for us the previous day. It needed to be worked through. One of the theories Dex had decided to pursue was that all of this might have happened just because the actor was well known and at the top of his game in a visible profession. Another pet theory suggested that someone had a bone to pick. Either way, Dex figured that for someone to go to all the trouble of framing Wyndham up, there might just be a grudge or two swimming somewhere close by. That’s how he put it, too: “swimming.” And Dex figured there was enough of a chance that it was worth looking for.
So when he headed out to follow some in-person leads, he gave me Wyndham’s list. He told me to just go down it and call people up on the phone and ask those who were closest to Laird Wyndham what they really felt about him. Did anyone hate him? Had he done somebody wrong? Were there people who were jealous, for one reason or another? People he’d thrown over, passed over or somehow emotionally worked over? Or even, was there someone who would profit from Wyndham’s misfortune? Someone in whose way Wyndham had stood, even accidentally? Dex told me to pay close attention to the sound of their voices. He told me to listen as hard to the things they didn’t say as to the things they did. I wasn’t sure I totally understood him, but I told him I’d give it a try, even if it sounded pretty impossible to do all those things at once. It wasn’t like I had a lot else to do so I set to.
Dex instructed me on how to expand the list Wyndham had given us, asking the listed few if they knew of anyone I should talk to or could think of anyone Wyndham had done wrong and so on. Though these phone calls might not strictly speaking have fallen under my job description, I didn’t mind the extra work. In the first place, it was Laird Wyndham. He was a movie star. That made him interesting from the get-go. In the second place, it could get pretty quiet around the office. It was good to have something to fill the time. I welcomed anything that would let me put off righting all those mixed up files I’d stuffed into the file drawer. That was going to be no fun at all.
Looking over Wyndham’s list, I saw one glaring omission: Wyndham’s wife, Lorena Duvall. I wondered how we were expected to get a full and proper picture of Wyndham’s life if we couldn’t talk to her. But we hadn’t been given a contact number. It was something I was sure belonged at the top of the list.
Meanwhile, I’d work with what I had.
Before I could get started, Mustard came in with a lot of noise and plunked himself into the waiting room chair. He looked at me without saying anything.
“What’s up?” I asked when it became obvious Mustard wasn’t about to volunteer anything.
“Been following up on those thugs what roughed Dex up yesterday.”
“It was a bit more than a roughing, I’d say, Mustard. You make it sound like he got a light sandpapering.”
“OK, so he had a whole carpentry team work on him,” he said a bit hotly. “I didn’t say they were teaching him the Lindy Hop.”
“More like they were fittin’ him for a pine overcoat. So no luck, huh?”
Mustard shook his head. “At this point I’m not even sure Xander Dean is the guy’s real name.”
“Who makes up ‘Xander Dean’ though? It’s not like Joe Blow or something.”
“Either way,” Mustard said, “I can’t find him. He just seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Come from nowhere, gone back to nowhere. Dean seemed on the level, though. I would never have sent him to Dex if he didn’t.”
“I know that, Mustard. Dex knows it, too. These things happen that way sometimes.”
“Not to me, they don’t,” he shook his head as though trying to clear it, then headed down a different track. “I’m going to get to the bottom of it, though. I’ll talk to the Chicago contacts what sent him to me. I’ve got a hunch something’s going on, Kitty. Something I don’t know about. But it stinks like last week’s catch of the day.”
“But why would he do that, Mustard? Why would he hire Dex, rough him up when Dex quit on him, then disappear? It doesn’t add up.”
Mustard shook his head. “Whatever it is, we’ll get to the bottom of it. You’ll see.”
After Mustard left I forced my mind off his business and onto my own. I had a list of people that needed phoning and lots of questions to ask them, though I so
on discovered that just being on a list wasn’t enough to ensure participation. Despite the things that had been said about him in the newspapers since his arrest, the people on the list that Laird Wyndham had supplied to Dex were disinclined to be completely candid about him, at least to me. I could feel them holding back. This made sense, though. It was Wyndham’s list. So I ended up talking with his immediate support people—the girl who did his hair, the man who captained his boat, the woman who attended to his wardrobe. These were people fairly close to Wyndham who depended on him for their living. Talking to them you got the idea that people as famous as Wyndham didn’t have friends so much as they had people they employed, only maybe they’d forgotten the difference.
On the other hand, the man who looked after Wyndham’s horses sounded a little dodgy.
“Things isn’t always what they seems to be. I’m not sayin’ it’s agin the law, mind. Not of man, though perhaps of God,” was all he’d say in his smoke-stained voice. But he said it several times in similar ways.
When I couldn’t budge him to say more, I made a note. If things didn’t go well for Wyndham, this was someone we’d be able to talk to when more time had passed. I’d sensed that there were moments the man had been close to telling me something and I figured maybe Dex or even Mustard could have pushed it all the way home. But I lacked the experience—and probably the necessary weight—to move him.
I had more luck with people whose contact information I got from those on the original list when I’d asked, “Do you know anyone close to Mr. Wyndham I could talk to? Someone who might have the kind of information I’m looking for?” Maybe because this next layer weren’t in Wyndham’s inner circle—less loyal, further from the warmth of his direct sun—a few of them were quite willing to speak their minds.
“I never really thought he was all he said he was,” sniffed a thin-voiced woman who had been employed by Wyndham’s wife when she still lived in the city. She was now working as a nanny in Hancock Park. “I always felt he had the potential for violence.”
My ears perked up at that. “You did? Did you see him … Did you ever see him shouting at Mrs. Wyndham? Or threatening her? Perhaps you saw him threaten her?”
Death Was in the Picture Page 13
