by Alice Duncan
What I said was, “Personally, I don’t think Miss de la Monica’s problem is temperament. I think it’s hysteria. With an extra dollop of extreme self-absorption thrown in for good measure.”
“Sounds like a great gal,” said Billy.
“Right,” said I.
Pa laughed.
Billy asked, “So what’s Mrs. Winkworth like? Does she appreciate her good fortune? I mean, if somebody bought me a fabulous mansion on San Pasqual, I’d appreciate it.”
After heaving a sigh, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to tell a little bit of the truth. “She deplores her good fortune, actually.”
“She what?” Billy lowered his paper, and his expression changed from one of disapproval—of me—to one of wonder.
I nodded. “She deplores everything about her life. Including her grandson.” Then I remembered something else. “Oh, Billy!”cried I, brightening momentarily. “She also deplores her daughter, and you’ll never in a million years guess who her daughter is!”
After blinking at me once, Billy said, “You’re right. I won’t. Who is she?”
“Mrs. Hanratty!”
Since Billy’s profession didn’t deny him the comfort of goggling, he goggled at me. “You’re pulling my leg!”
“Am not. It’s God’s honest truth. Pansy Hanratty is Lurlene Winkworth’s daughter. What’s more,” I continued, “Monty Mountjoy is Pansy Hanratty’s son!”
“Good Lord,” said Billy. “Lola de la Monica is from The Bronx, Mrs. Hanratty is from Mrs. Winkworth, and Monty Mountjoy is from Mrs. Hanratty. Sounds like one of those dog lines Mrs. Bissel and Mrs. Hanratty are so fond of telling us about.”
“It does, kind of. Mrs. Hanratty lives on one of the other houses on the Winkworth property with her pack of dogs.”
“What kinds of dogs does she have?” asked Pa.
It was a good question, but I didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know. I’ll ask her when I start working there.” The notion of my upcoming job made me grumpy again.
“Anybody know who the sires of all these people are?” Billy asked.
“What people?” asked Pa.
“Mrs. Hanratty and Monty Mountjoy,” Billy enlightened him.
I shook my head. “ ‘Fraid not. I mean, I’m sure Mrs. Winkworth and Mrs. Hanratty know, but I don’t.”
“And are they properly registered with the American Kennel Club?”
“Billy!” I said, only marginally shocked.
Billy grunted and lifted his paper again.
Pa laughed.
Fortunately for the state of my appetite that morning, Spike loved eggs and toast.
* * * * *
As luck would have it, filming for The Fire at Sunset was set to begin two Mondays following the séance, which meant that Billy, Spike and I got to attend another dog-training class before the fateful day. Pa decided to accompany us the next Saturday, which I appreciated, because Billy always behaved when other members of my family were with us. Spike pretty much behaved all the time by then, bless his heart.
Mrs. Hanratty rushed up to greet us as soon as she saw me pushing Billy’s chair up to the group gathered at the field designated for Pasanita’s use.
“Daisy!” she cried. “I’m so glad to know you’re going to be at Mother’s house during the filming of Monty’s picture. Monty is such a sweetheart and he never says anything at all unpleasant to his grandmother, but Mother is a very trying person to live with.”
Since I didn’t have a single clue what to say to that—one can’t very well agree that one of one’s clients is a selfish old biddy, now can one?—I only smiled and said, “I enjoyed meeting your mother very much. I had no idea you were related.”
“Yes, well, one can’t choose one’s relatives, can one?”
I couldn’t think of an answer to that question, either, so I introduced her to my father.
“So happy to meet you, Mr. Gumm,” said Mrs. Hanratty, shaking his hand with hearty vigor. From what I’d seen of her so far, just about everything Pansy Hanratty did was either hearty or vigorous or both. She was as unlike her mother as a daughter could be. “Your daughter and Mr. Majesty are doing an absolutely wonderful job training Spike.”
“They practice all the time with him,” Pa said, preening under this glowing commendation from his daughter’s teacher. “But you could have knocked me down with a feather when Daisy told us you were Monty Mountjoy’s mother.”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” Mrs. Hanratty gave one of her hooting laughs. “You’d never know to look at the two of us that we were related. He takes after his father’s side of the family, fortunately for him.”
“I enjoyed meeting him last Saturday evening,” I said, not wanting to get into the looks issue. In truth, Mrs. Hanratty was a handsome woman—but she was right when she said nobody would ever connect her and Monty Mountjoy as belonging to the same family.
“Isn’t he a darling boy?” Mrs. Hanratty all but crooned.
For some reason, my mind’s eye pictured her holding out a treat to the infant Monty Mountjoy as an enticement to get him to sit up and beg. I shook my head to rid it of the silly image. “He’s a lovely young man. Um . . . did he choose the last name Mountjoy himself?” Was that a snoopy question? Well, too bad. I’d already asked it.
“Good Lord, no. The studio tacked that one on him. I don’t mind, though. Hanratty isn’t exactly a name you’d expect to see on a theater marquee, would you? Mountjoy is much more . . . romantic.”
“I suppose so,” I muttered, recalling where Monty Mountjoy’s romantic interests lay.
“And isn’t that Lola de la Monica a stitch?” Mrs. Hanratty went on. “Now you know somebody at the studio tacked that moniker on her. Lola de la Monica, my hind leg.”
Pa, Billy and I all laughed. “I told them about her phony Spanish accent and what she sounds like when she’s not putting it on.”
Mrs. Hanratty shook her head in good-natured wonder, Pa and Billy joined Billy’s war-injured friends, Spike and I walked with Mrs. Hanratty to join the circle of dog-obedience trainees, and then commenced the only truly good hour of my weekend.
Oh, very well, so life wasn’t all bad. At church the next day, we choir members produced a rousing rendition of “Come, Christians, Join to Sing,” and following that, we all partook of the covered-dish social in Fellowship Hall. Generally we only had cookies and coffee after church, but one Sunday each month was designated covered-dish Sunday. Aunt Vi had brought one of her more delicious chicken-in-cream-sauce dishes and a caramel cake. What with Vi’s contribution and the rest of the wonderful food the other women of the church brought, about all that went on in the Gumm-Majesty household that particular Sunday afternoon was a whole lot of napping.
And then it was Monday. Or Doomsday, if you were me.
Mind you, I’ve been in worse places and predicaments in my life. I was arrested in a speakeasy one time, for pity’s sake, and all I’d been doing there was conducting a séance, being too intelligent to drink my hard-earned money away or to break the law . . . well, not on purpose, anyway. And I’d darned near been killed by a couple of thieving anarchists a few months earlier, and I hadn’t done anything wrong that time except teach a cooking class for which I was totally unqualified. But except when Harold had been driving me to that wretched speakeasy, I can’t recall a single other time when I’d experienced such dread as when I headed to a job.
I didn’t mind so much being spiritual advisor to Lola de la Monica, although I can’t really say I liked the woman very much. But attempting to discover who was sending poisoned-pen letters to Monty Mountjoy—under Sam Rotondo’s nose, and without allowing Sam to find out what I was doing and why—was a prospect that thrilled me not at all. In fact, it made me want to run away and hide.
Also, why was Sam going to be there? He wouldn’t tell me. Did he know about the threatening letters? Why would the Pasadena Police Department deploy a detective and two uniformed outriders to seek out the author of threatening le
tters? I feared there was a deeper and far more sinister purpose for Sam’s attendance at the picture shoot, and he’d already let slip that it concerned Monty Mountjoy.
Was Monty Mountjoy a secret drug addict?
Was he a secret drug pusher?
Was he hand in glove with bootleggers?
Was he, God forbid, some kind of perverted person who enjoyed dallying with children? The mere thought made me sick.
In any case, if he was any of those things, I didn’t want to know. My initial impression of Monty was that he was a kind and gentle and genuinely nice man. I didn’t want him to be a crook.
And I really and truly didn’t want to have to hang out anywhere near Sam Rotondo for a job that might well last for weeks and weeks.
Chapter Five
As soon as I entered the drive and stopped the Chevrolet before the grand iron gateway separating Mrs. Winkworth’s estate from the vulgar world, I understood why at least one of the Pasadena coppers had been sent to this so-called set. In all his uniformed glory, he stood guard at the gate. I guess the regular gatekeeper wasn’t tough enough for the job. Or perhaps the picture-makers expected violence to erupt on the set and needed men with guns to quell it. Ghastly thought.
The policeman, whose badge said his name was Thomas J. Doan, approached the driver’s side of the machine. “Name please?” he snapped. It didn’t sound to me as if he much wanted to be there. I understood completely, as I shared his sentiment.
“Mrs. Majesty,” said I, similarly snappish.
He lifted a clipboard I hadn’t noticed before and scanned what seemed to be a list of typewritten names. Then he squinted at me again. “Mrs. Desdemona Majesty?”
Swallowing a sigh—my advice to anyone who might be reading this journal is never to make a life-altering decision when you’re ten years old—I said, “Yes.”
“Identification?”
“Identification? What do you mean?”
“Do you have some form of identification on you? I’ll need to see confirmation that you are who you say you are.”
My jaw dropped. “You need to see identification to allow me on to a picture set?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good heavens, why?”
Officer Doan’s complexion had begun to deepen to a slightly mauve hue, and I decided to ask somebody else why armed guards were needed at Mrs. Winkworth’s gates. This man clearly didn’t care to be questioned about his duties by little old me.
“Just a minute.” I fumbled in my handbag and eventually found my California State driving license, which said I was Mrs. William “Daisy” Majesty. No mention of anyone named Desdemona, but how many Majestys were there in this particular policeman’s world? I shoved the license at him and said, “Here.”
He squinted at my license for what seemed like eons. Mind you, the sun that day was glorious, but I think he only squinted because he thought it made him look rugged. Maybe he wanted to get a part in the next western picture the studio made. Stupid man. Then he looked at me again. “Daisy is a nickname? Short for Desdemona?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . .”
All right, here’s the thing. I didn’t want to be there. I was already in a bad mood. If this wretched policeman kept me waiting much longer, I’d jolly well snatch my license from his brutish grip and drive back home. I could always telephone Monty and tell him I’d been turned away at the gate.
No such luck.
Officer Doan handed back my license and said, “Go on in.” Not a smile did the man crack. He might have been made of stone, except that he could move his limbs.
I guess the regular gate guard pressed the button from inside the gatehouse at a signal from Doan, because the big gates swung open, and there was no escape. I drove through them.
The day only got better when the first person I saw after I’d driven onto the Winkworth grounds was Sam Rotondo. I’m being sarcastic, in case you didn’t notice. Anyhow, Sam was just walking down the wide marble steps of the front entrance, which led to the drive over which the portico arched. Therefore, he saw me coming.
Naturally, Sam being who he was, scowled at me. I pulled the Chevrolet to a stop beside him. “This isn’t my idea, Sam Rotondo, so don’t you start in on me. I practically had to be fingerprinted by one of your policeman pals in order to gain access to this stupid picture set.”
“I wasn’t going to start in on you. Officer Doan was only doing his job.”
We frowned at each other for another second or two.
Then Sam said, “You’re in a good mood today, aren’t you?”
“I’m not the one who frowned first,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes and muttered something I didn’t catch. It was probably just as well.
So, Officer Doan having proved such a dud, I asked Sam, “What’s the reason for the tight security, Sam? Do you expect a mob of respectable Pasadenans to storm the palace in revolt against the moving-picture industry or something?”
“Of course not,” Sam said, as if my question had been utterly ridiculous.
“Well then, why’d I have to show my identification? I felt as though I were being allowed into the presence of a royal personage.”
“Where are you going now?” Sam asked, completely ignoring my question.
I held on to my temper with some effort. “Mr. Mountjoy told me to drive through the portico and head out to what he called the north forty. I guess there’s a big field somewhere on these massive grounds that they’re using to build the set.”
“There is. There are signs tacked up to point people in the right direction. Will you drive me out there so I don’t have to walk? It’s getting hot.”
I considered Sam’s question. Which was a heck of a lot more than he’d done to mine.
He must have realized that, because he said, I presume as an inducement, “I’ll tell you why security’s so tight.”
I thought I already knew why security was tight but didn’t let on. Anyway, I kind of hoped I was wrong. Not that I thought the Pasadena Police Department would blab about Monty Mountjoy’s sexual preferences, but news had a tendency to leak out. However, I was kind of surprised that Sam was breaking his silence on the issue, and I definitely wanted to know what he knew.
“All right, then. Get in.” I lifted my handbag off the passenger’s seat, threw it in the back, and Sam opened the door and entered the Chevrolet. I thought I was being pretty darned nice, all things considered.
As soon as Sam had settled into the machine and shut the door, I put my foot on the gas pedal, let up on the choke, and we putted off to the north forty, which Monty had told me was somewhere beyond the rose gardens. He’d said all I needed to do was follow the first right-hand road I got to, and continue to be guided by the arrows tacked up on trees along the way. Except for the prior year when I’d visited the gigantic Castleton estate in San Marino, I’d never seen such extensive grounds. They looked as if they were manicured by a herd of professional gardeners every single day, too.
In spite of myself, I said before Sam could satisfy my curiosity about the security question, “Boy, this place is the cat’s pajamas, isn’t it? It’s positively gorgeous. It must take a staff of hundreds to keep it in trim.”
“It does,” grumbled Sam.
I got the feeling he shared Billy’s opinion of picture stars who made monstrous amounts of money while the rest of us common folk plodded along, scraping by from week to week whilst working every bit as hard, if not harder, than the rich picture stars. I’d learned in my tenth year that worth and wealth have nothing to do with each other, so I was used to it.
Lawns rolled on forever, and flowers grew positively everywhere. Sure enough, we soon came to a road that bisected the one we were on. A big white arrow pointed to the right-hand path. This place was as big as a village all by itself. In actual fact, it had some out buildings that looked like they might house permanent staff. And all for the sake of one little, old woman who didn’t appreciate her goo
d luck. I tried not to be bitter.
“So tell me about the security,” I said as soon as I’d turned onto the appropriate road.
“New invention,” said Sam, as if that explained everything there was to know about the security question.
I’d have stared at him balefully if I weren’t driving. “What do you mean, new invention, Sam Rotondo? People are inventing new things all the time, and they don’t all require armed guards and detectives to keep people away from them. Darn you! What’s going on?”
“All right, all right,” Sam said with a deep sigh. “Some guy named Homer Fellowes—he’s one of those scientific geniuses at Caltech—has invented a new motion-picture device. From what I’ve been told, you put the camera on it, strap it down—the camera, I mean—and this special devise is supposed to hold the camera steady, so the picture doesn’t wobble. The thing rolls, which, naturally, allows the camera to be moved around from place to place. It’s supposed to make the pictures look more realistic.”
I chewed on that notion for a while. “Heck, the only reason I go to the pictures is to escape from reality. I don’t particularly want them to look more realistic.”
Sam grunted, which was no more than I’d come to expect of him.
“So why was this supposed to be such a big secret that you couldn’t tell my family about it?” I asked. I thought the question a reasonable one.
Sam glanced at me, his lips compressed into a tight line for a minute. Then he let out a chuff of breath. “I just mainly didn’t want to talk about it. It’s such a stupid assignment. A detective and two uniforms on a picture set. God!”
