Odd Partners

by Mystery Writers of America

  I turned off the water, wrapped a towel around myself, and practically ran to get my phone. A few seconds later, I had the facts about Stander: He’d made a few more movies for Columbia, but had never really hit it big. He found more success in television, and had directed every show from Bonanza to MacGyver before retiring in 2008. He’d married his secretary, Nora Chilton, in 1962, and they lived now in the Cheviot Hills area of Los Angeles.

  Bob had a friend who worked in the office at the Directors Guild; one little white lie to his friend about wanting to film an interview with David Stander got us his phone number. I called it that afternoon.

  When a man answered on the first ring, I asked, “Is this David Stander?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Mr. Stander,” I began, hoping I sounded convincing, “my name is Jimmy Guerrero. I’m working on a documentary about Lorna Winters, and I was wondering if it might be possible to meet for a brief interview?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  No explanation, no excuse…but he also didn’t hang up, so I pressed on. “Oh, that’s too bad, because we’ve got some newly discovered footage of Miss Winters that we were hoping you could shed some light on.”

  “What kind of footage?”

  “Something filmed privately. It shows Ms. Winters on a boat, and…well, it looks like she gets shot.”

  There was a pause. Then Stander said, “Where did you find this footage?”

  “It belonged to a man named Vincent Gazzo.”

  Another long beat. When Stander finally spoke again, he said, “I can meet you at 5 P.M. today.”

  He gave me his address. I told him I’d be there and hung up.

  I got dressed, went into work, and asked Bob for the rest of the day off. When I told him why, he closed the door to his office, sat down behind his desk again, and said, “Jimmy, what if Stander watches the film and then tells you he doesn’t know anything about it?”

  I started to say, “So what if he does?” but I realized it would be a lie. Bob was right; David Stander was the dead end. If he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—supply an answer, it would hurt. Bad. “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “I think…” Bob trailed off, trying to find the words. “I think you might be counting on this too much.”

  It was true. The film was like a living thing for me; a partner that whispered promises, who offered the reward of giving me that shot in film history I hadn’t earned otherwise. I could be the one who brought one of Hollywood’s greatest secrets into the light. If my own talents—or lack thereof—as a filmmaker couldn’t give me fame, maybe this could.

  “Maybe,” I said to Bob, a guy who was me with twenty years added. “But don’t tell me you don’t want to know, too.”

  He shrugged. “ ’Course I do.”

  * * *

  —

  I left early, given traffic on the 10, and made Cheviot Hills by 4 P.M. I killed time just driving—past the massive 20th Century Fox lot, past what had once been the MGM lot, past the Westwood cemetery. I figured the last was the only one I might ever have a shot at getting into.

  Finally 5 P.M. approached, and I headed to the address David Stander had provided. I negotiated my way past manicured lawns and houses that had once been middle-class but were now homes to millionaires. I pulled up and parked before a lovely two-story Tudor-style, with a rose garden leading up to the front door. It was 4:55 P.M. I took my iPad and a copy of the disc—in case he wanted to see the film on his own TV—and walked up to the door.

  “Don’t let me down,” I whispered to the disc.

  My knock was met a few seconds later by a man in his eighties who was still straight and trim, wearing casual slacks and a polo shirt. Even with thin gray hair and lines in his face, I recognized him from the tabloid photos, when he’d been holding Lorna Winters’s hand.

  “Mr. Stander,” I said, extending a hand. “I’m Jimmy Guerrero.”

  He took the hand, but released it too quickly—he wasn’t comfortable with any of this. “Yes, Mr. Guerrero. Come in.”

  David Stander had kept himself in good shape; he still moved well, with only a slight slowness to his gait as he led us to an entertainment room. But he was tense—too tense for this to be a casual interview. He turned to me before a large television screen and said, “May I see the footage you mentioned?”

  I handed him the DVD. He put it into a player, turned it on, and stayed standing to watch.

  As the scene played out, his expression changed, or should I say opened—he moved from anxious and guarded to noticeably shaken. As Lorna Winters fell into the sea, he collapsed into a padded armchair.

  I asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Stander?”

  “Yes, I…” He broke off and looked up at me. “What is it you really want, Mr. Guerrero?”

  “Please, call me Jimmy.” I told him everything then: about BobsConversionMagic.com, about my sad attempt at a Hollywood career, about how much I loved Lorna Winters, about what those few minutes of film meant to me.

  When I finished, he nodded and rose. “Jimmy, my instincts tell me I can trust you. Besides, this has gone on long enough.”

  “What has, Mr. Stander?”

  He turned to leave. “Excuse me a moment.”

  Stander was gone only a few seconds. I heard soft conversation from another part of the house; after a minute, he returned with a woman. “Jimmy, I’d like you to meet my wife, Nora.”

  I started to extend a hand—and froze, too shocked to move.

  I was looking at Lorna Winters. Older, yes; aged, yes. But she was still beautiful, with those unmistakable high, broad cheekbones and chilled blue eyes. Her hair was silver, but she still wore it long. She reached out and grasped my hand, and when she spoke it was with Lorna Winters’s husky-around-the-edges voice. “Jimmy, I’m so pleased to meet you. David tells me you’ve brought us something quite special.”

  I was speechless as David started the DVD again. She watched it silently until the onscreen Lorna flipped over the railing, and then she laughed. “I still remember how cold that water was.”

  David said, “Probably my finest accomplishment as a filmmaker.”

  “You made this…?”

  Nodding, Stander said, “You see, Frank Linzetti had gotten his nasty hooks into Lorna. He was an evil, abusive son-of-a-bitch—when she showed up for our first meeting on Midnight Gun, she had to wear oversized sunglasses because of a black eye.”

  Lorna sat down nearby. “That was because I’d just tried to leave him.”

  David sat on the arm of Lorna’s chair and took her hand; the way she smiled at this simple motion was testament to not just their love but their care for each other. “We fell for each other,” David said, “and Frank found out. He threatened me first, but I told him I didn’t care. That was when he sent Vincent Gazzo. Fortunately, Gazzo liked Lorna, so we were able to buy him off.”

  I thought about that. “You bought him off…”

  “Not with money—I didn’t have enough of that. But I had my family’s house. We got creative with some paperwork and made it look as if Vincent had inherited a house from an uncle, but really it was what I gave him to help us make that movie.”

  “His daughter still lives in that house. So you convinced Linzetti that Lorna was dead.”

  Stander nodded. “Then it was just a matter of getting her a new identity and keeping her out of the limelight.”

  “Which,” Lorna said, “I was happy to do. I missed the acting, but not the rest of it.” She looked at me and frowned slightly, then handed me a tissue from a box on a nearby table.

  I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

  * * *

  —

  Because Linzetti was gone and it was safe at last, they let me reveal everything. Not long after the big news broke, the American Cinematheque held a tribut
e to Lorna, and she invited me as her special guest.

  I know this will all fade soon, that Lorna will get her privacy back and I’ll be just a guy making old movies into DVDs again. Still no Hollywood breakthrough for me, but that’s okay because I’ve got something better.

  And I’ve got a three-minute movie to thank for that.

  Oglethorpe’s Camera

  CLAIRE ORTALDA

  Oglethorpe is famous. He has a dedicated camera trained on the window he clambers into every night. He has his own Facebook page. He has Likes, hundreds of them. He has fans all over the world. The Dutch, especially, seem to favor him. I’m not sure why.

  He’s much more popular than I am. Admittedly, I don’t have long white whiskers and soft brindle-and-white fur. I just don’t. I’m a human, and other than the hank of reddish-brown hair the color of garden mulch on the top of my head, I’m pretty much naked under my clothes. I know Oglethorpe thinks I’m ugly, but he is a very tolerant cat.

  And giving. He is a most giving cat. In he comes nightly, through the upstairs bedroom window left just ajar. He comes bearing posters, slippers, lottery tickets, box tops, leaves, advertising circulars, candy boxes. Camellia blossoms, socks, Starbucks cups. I am awakened by their soft click or muted thud as each item is deposited on my hardwood floor from the height of the window. Small paper bags, mittens, Styrofoam plates. Flags on sticks. A ketchup packet, slightly punctured. Business cards, sandpaper. More leaves. Lots of leaves. Parking tickets. A hand-printed essay on blue-lined paper. “B-. Very interesting, Tanika, but please learn to proofread!” A Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlet. “Is Hell hot?” A drooping rosebud. A knit cap soaked in blood.

  I shriek from my bed. Oglethorpe, lit in the electronic glow of my alarm clock, looks up from between hunched shoulders.

  I can tell he is rather miffed by my reaction. Oglethorpe selects carefully and conveys his items, sometimes for blocks, in his mouth and then must leap from car hood to fence to wisteria loggia to reach the window, never losing his grip on his treasure. It’s a lot of work, it requires doggedness—excuse the expression—and discrimination. All Oglethorpe asks in return is appreciation of a positive nature.

  Shrieking, screaming, flinching away, and expressions of horror are not, in his book, positive.

  I switch on my lamp. My feet find my pink slippers. I extract a Kleenex from my bedside box. I advance on the horrid thing, over which Oglethorpe crouches.

  “Oglethorpe,” I say. “Let me see it.”

  Oglethorpe does not stand down. I must reach under his chin with the tissue to pull the knit cap away from him. Squatting, I examine it.

  Blood. A lot of blood. The thing is saturated. Could one sustain that amount of blood loss and survive? Especially if the blood loss was from the head? Perhaps, though, the blood loss was not from a head. Perhaps the hapless victim had been carrying the cap and used it to staunch a flesh wound.

  Tentatively, I lift the cap, using the tissue to protect my fingers. It feels heavy with its gruesome cargo. With it dangling from my fingertips, I turn it around to view the other side. A hole around which there is blood turned almost black. Bits of white slivers. Other stuff. I shudder and drop the thing. There can be no doubt. The wearer of this hat has been murdered.

  Oglethorpe eyes me balefully, then creeps forward to extend his chin over the stiffening cap again.

  “Oglethorpe,” I say. “Where did you find this?”

  He fails to respond. His expression deepens to real annoyance. I imagine this is one of the heavier items he has had to convey, and this is the appreciation he gets? I stifle the urge to grab him and wash his mouth out.

  I carry the tissue to the bathroom and toss it into the toilet. I wash my hands about a million times. All the while, I am thinking. Could this have occurred tonight? It must have. The blood was stiffening on the ribbed wool but had not completely dried. Yet, I had heard no sirens. Does that mean…? I grab the bowl of my pedestal sink. Does that mean someone is lying out in the dark streets right now?

  I emerge from the bathroom, leaving the light on, and sit on my bed, staring at Oglethorpe and…that thing. What can I do? Call the police and say my cat brought home a bloody cap? Go out into the night, when there is a murderer on the loose, and try to locate the body? Not likely. I wonder how far Oglethorpe ranges in a night, anyway.

  I stare at my cat and he at me; both, I imagine, wondering how much we really know about the other’s secret lives.

  I go into the bathroom and remove the plastic bag lining my wastebasket. There are only a few tissues in the bottom. These I throw into the toilet. I find the glove I wear when dyeing my hair and put it on my right hand. In my left, I carry the bag. I advance upon my cat.

  He stiffens and hunkers lower over his prize.

  “Oglethorpe,” I say in a firm but reasonable voice, that of parent to loved child, boss to respected employee. “I am going to take that cap.”

  Oglethorpe slits his eyes.

  I grab for it. Oglethorpe’s claw slashes out. I feel a sting on my arm above the rubber sleeve of the glove. “Ow!” He makes a low, yowling, vibrating sound. His tail switches. His eyes look mad. But the thing is in the bag.

  After secreting the bag with its cargo in the antique cabinet where I keep my soaps, I grab cleanser and tissues and attack the place on the hardwood floor where the thing had lain. Oglethorpe has retreated to the windowsill where he sits with that flat, wild look in his eyes, twitching his tail, watching me. I flush the tissues down the toilet, scrub my hand with soap, first in the glove then bereft of it, and finally return to sit on the edge of the bed.

  Cold air comes in through the open window. I shiver. Oglethorpe glares, seeming, somehow, to no longer be my cat, as if a wildness, even a murderousness, has invaded him. I wish he would go out the window and find me a nice camellia, something to erase this bad blood between us. But he does not go. He stares, as if remembering some past life when he was a hundred times bigger than he is now and ate my ancestor.

  After a while, I fall over on my side onto the pillow. A while after that, my eyes close in that drifting reverie that precedes sleep.

  * * *

  —

  The first thing I do this morning is to check to see if the bloody knit cap is still there. Absurd. Where would it have got to? Oglethorpe, skilled as he is, can’t open securely closed cabinets. By the way, where is Oglethorpe?

  He does not come home for breakfast. I get ready for work, drink my morning smoothie, and call Jen. Jen is my friend who set up the whole camera/Facebook thing documenting Oglethorpe’s nighttime raids. I am a bit of a Luddite—well, a lot of a Luddite. She gets the raw footage from the window camera sent to her computer, where she edits the images so it looks like Oglethorpe is coming through the window with a new find every two seconds or so, raising his chin in that characteristic way so his found object clears the windowsill. Sometimes she adds commentary. Sometimes, when I am over there when she’s doing the edits, I do the commentary, which consists of wry statements regarding the objects, such as “Woo! That completes the pair,” if he brings in the second sock, et cetera. Not that witty, but Oglethorpe’s fans, as mentioned above, are international and legion.

  Incidentally, yes, there is a way to turn the camera off when I (or we, if the situation warrants, rare as that eventuality is lately) desire privacy. After all, it is mounted in my bedroom window, but pointed at the aperture itself, not toward the bed or where I dress or anything. In case you are wondering what kind of person I am.

  “Jen,” I say, gulping pulverized kale. “I need you to edit something out of Oglethorpe’s feed.”

  “What?” she says. She sounds sulky this morning, not usual for her. She is the crisply competent type.

  I explain in rather gruesome detail about the bloody stocking cap Oglethorpe brought home. I tend to repeat myself when I am excited so when I la
unch into “I mean…he just dragged this thing in, right over the sill, ew, I better clean that sill, I did clean the floor—”

  She interrupts me. “I’m still finishing the website for my client from hell. I don’t have time to be dealing with frivolous stuff like this.”

  “Jen,” I say, slightly wounded. “You know I can’t do this myself, or I would. It was your idea to do the Facebook page—”

  “I do this as a favor, you know, Blaire?” she breaks in. “On my own very valuable time. I do it because you are so nuts about Oglethorpe, and I use that word in both senses. Admittedly, Oglethorpe is an outstanding cat, but maybe if you had given Hugh a fraction of the attention you pay that demon fur ball, you and he would still have a thing going, and I wouldn’t have to listen to you whining about your love life or lack thereof.”

  “Jen!” I feel betrayed. Her portrayal of me shocks. I fancied we were exchanging female confidences and all along she’s been thinking I am crazy, whiny, and a lousy love partner.

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” she says grouchily. “We don’t want people in the Lesser Antilles choking on their papayas when they see Oglethorpe’s feed. Done. Don’t worry. Bye.”

  * * *

  —

  Jen painted the situation as if Hugh had broken up with me, but in fact I had initiated the breakup, tired of his blend of passivity and aggression. I had met him right here on Delaware Street in Berkeley. He was walking his dog and I was on my way to the BART train. He told me not to get near his dog as she was “very nervous,” though I had no intention of getting near his dog. As she passed, he tightly reined in the animal—a mild-looking, slightly confused black-and-tan shepherd mix—as if I might lunge at her.