Silent Murders (11 page)

“Sunday.” She nodded. “Ze doctor say late afternoon.”

With some relief, I realized I had been in police custody during those hours. Finally, a death they couldn’t connect to me!

“But suicide?” Magda continued. “No. There are easy ways to do suicide. Miss McCall have bottles of pills in ze bathroom, rat poison in ze cupboard, gas in ze oven. If a girl want to do suicide, she never choose suicide in ze toilet.”

That made sense to me. “Were the coffee cups empty when you picked them up?” I asked.

Magda frowned. “One was empty. One was half full.”

“Was there any lipstick on either cup?”

“On one cup, yes.”

“Which one? The empty one or the half-full one?”

“Half-full.”

“And the plates?’

“One big plate with breakfast cake. I put it away. Two small plates with crumbs.”

There had been someone at Lorna’s apartment Sunday afternoon, someone she trusted enough to let in, someone she knew well enough to serve food and drink. It could have been a friend who had left after eating and didn’t know Lorna would accidentally pass out in the toilet. Then again, it could have been the same person who killed Bruno Heilmann and who realized Lorna, like Esther, knew too much to leave alive. If that were the case, though, he was disturbingly versatile, with a different manner of killing each time.

Eliminating suicide left two possibilities: accidental death and murder. I staged both in my head.

A friend—man or woman—drops in and finds Lorna suffering the effects of the previous night’s excesses. She is staggering about, confused and ill. The friend makes coffee, cuts some cake, urges Lorna to drink up and eat something, and advises her to go to bed. If the friend is a man, he empties his coffee cup, the one without lipstick, and Lorna sips a little from the other cup. If it is a woman, she drinks some from the lipstick cup and Lorna, who has not yet put on her face, empties the other one. The friend leaves. Lorna feels sick, goes to the toilet to vomit, passes out, and falls forward to her death. For this story to be true, the honest, innocent friend would step forward as soon as he or she heard about Lorna’s death and tell the police, “I was there moments before the accident, and Lorna was in a bad way,” or something like that. Lorna’s death was not yet widely known, but we would soon see if anyone stepped forward.

In the alternate version of my imaginary scenario, a person drops by and finds Lorna still woozy from the party. The person makes coffee and cuts some cake, or maybe Lorna is able to do it. The person is not a stranger to Lorna. The lipstick on only one cup could mean that the guest was male and Lorna had, indeed, put on her makeup that morning. If it is the man who killed Heilmann, he wants to find out how much Lorna saw or knows, and he will kill her if need be. Or he has come purposely to strangle her or hit her on the head with something heavy—surely he wouldn’t risk the noise of a gunshot on a Sunday in a busy apartment building. Too ill to be suspicious, Lorna goes into the bathroom. The person follows and seizes the unexpected opportunity to make her death look like an accident. If it is not the man who shot Heilmann, who else would want to kill Lorna? I’d have to ask around to see if Lorna had any serious enemies.

When I got back to Pickford-Fairbanks after lunch, I didn’t see Douglas Fairbanks—they were filming the scenes in Don Fabrique’s headquarters that didn’t include him, and he was somewhere rehearsing whip tricks with that Australian fella, Snowy Baker—so I slipped back into my role as assistant script girl, helping make the set exactly the same as it had been the last time we had worked on this sequence. Douglas reappeared in mid-afternoon and called me aside.

“What have you learned?”

Briefly, I told him.

“Well, I’ve learned a few things myself. For one, the news will be in tomorrow’s papers. By the way, do you have plans for this evening?”

“Plans? No.”

“Good. Then you must come to dinner with us. Very informal. There will be a few others there. Mary enjoyed meeting you Saturday night and told me to invite you.”

“I’d be delighted.” Giddy was more like it, although I knew very well the reason I was included. They wanted to talk about the murders. By tomorrow, all of Los Angeles would be talking about the murders and those immoral “movies” whose dissolute lives would have embarrassed the sober citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, for a while longer, I was one of the few who knew the score.

“Good. Come at— Oh, you don’t have an automobile, of course. I’ll send my driver to get you at six.”

13

Frank Richardson kept us running long beyond the finish of the scene with the barefoot dancer in the cantina, and I barely had time to take a quick bath and change into the blue and gold frock I had decided to wear to Pickfair.

To Pickfair!
The utter impossibility of someone like me actually being invited to this legendary Hollywood mansion gave my preparations a dreamlike quality. I handled it as if I were preparing for the stage, choosing the appropriate makeup, costume, and hairdo for my role as a young woman going to dine with royalty. Since Douglas had assured me that the evening would be neither formal nor late—they liked to be in bed by ten—I took care not to overdress the part.

On the stroke of six, Melva, Helen, and Lillian gave a collective whoop as the Fairbanks Rolls-Royce pulled alongside the curb. They hung shamelessly about the door, whistling as I minced my way along in my very high heels and allowed myself to be handed into the backseat by the same solemn-faced driver who had driven me home from the police station yesterday.

We drove down Sunset Boulevard, a wide street split down the middle by a bridle path and lined on both sides with pepper trees. Turning right at the high school, we motored past the Moorish splendor of the Hollywood Hotel, continuing north on a route that afforded a glimpse of the great white
HOLLYWOODLAND
sign in the distant hills.

“A real eyesore, isn’t it, miss?” said the driver, noticing the direction of my gaze. “Rich fella by the name of Chandler put up those letters a couple years back. You know who he is, don’t you? The
Times
publisher? I went up to see those letters when they had the dedication and lit up the whole thing for the first time, you know. They say there’s forty thousand lightbulbs in that sign, can you believe it? And those letters don’t look too big from down here, but each one of ’em is fifty feet tall, no fooling. And what’s it all for?”

I admitted I had no idea. The far-off letters were part of the Hollywood landscape I had accepted without question.

“Advertising. All that money to advertise his housing development there on the old Sherman and Clark Ranch. Well, there was a ruckus when he lit it up, I don’t mind telling you. Spoils the scenery, I say, and so did a lot of others. Chandler promised to take it down as soon as all the lots had sold, so the fussing went away. And when that happens, I’ll say ‘Good riddance!’”

“Are the lots selling well?” From my vantage point, the scrubby hills looked pretty barren.

“Well, they laid down some roads and brought over some Eye-talian masons to build stone walls. I think the first houses are going up now. They’ll cost a pretty penny, I’ll say that.”

We motored along North Highland, passing the Hollywood Bowl, and continued into the hills until the macadam turned to a dirt road that led up San Ysidro Canyon. Winter rains had turned last fall’s drab landscape into a spring paradise with vast swaths of sand blossoms and desert gold. The rush of our tires frightened a few brown rabbits into showing us their white cottontails as they scampered away from the edge of the road. In the distance, several deer stopped grazing long enough to fix curious stares on our car before they returned to foraging.

“Well, miss, here we are, safe and sound. That house across the way is Mr. Charlie Chaplin’s. It’s new.”

I didn’t give Chaplin’s mansion a second glance. Who would, when Pickfair loomed ahead? There, at the road’s end sat Douglas Fairbanks’s wedding present to Mary Pickford, remodeled and expanded the year they married. Not a soul in these forty-eight states could fail to recognize the Tudor mansion, not after pictures of the house and gardens and swimming pool and stables and pond had been featured in every magazine on the newsstand, indeed, at newsstands all over the world. Pickfair was Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks’s retreat from the pressures of Hollywood—no one but cactuses lived in remote Beverly Hills, so they could ride their horses, run along desert paths, take walks, and live like normal people, away from prying eyes.

A butler met me at the top of the stairs and escorted me through a pale lime living room with lemon floor-to-ceiling curtains. To my left was a fireplace the size of a small cave; to my right, a gleaming white grand piano. “This way,” he said, indicating the open doors that led to the patio where, as I knew from publicity shots, you could see the Pacific Ocean on a clear day. Beyond the patio, lit by cheerful gaslights, lay the famous out-of-door swimming pool edged with white sand. The scene nearly took my breath away.

“Welcome, Jessie.” Miss Pickford rose from her rattan chaise to greet me. I said hello to Stella DeLanti, who was playing the queen in our Zorro picture, and to Douglas’s brother Robert, the film’s general manager, both of whom I knew from the set, then I was introduced to Ernst Lubitsch. I had heard the name. Miss Pickford had brought him, and his wife, Helene, to Hollywood from Germany a couple years ago to be one of her directors, and he was well-known in film circles. Last, Miss Pickford turned to a plump girl with a round, pretty face whose baggy frock did little to disguise her fat stomach. She appeared to be about fifteen and was clearly bored by the adults around her. I assumed she was someone’s daughter.

“Jessie, this is Lillita Chaplin. Lita, dear, Jessie Beckett works on the Zorro picture with Douglas. Charlie and Douglas will be along as soon as they finish their tennis game. Do have a seat and some lemonade, Jessie. I know it’s been a long day for you.”

Geez Louise, the kid was Chaplin’s
wife
! His second, married just a few months ago in Mexico under somewhat mysterious circumstances. And she wasn’t fat. She was pregnant. Now I believed those rumors about Lita being underage. Even malicious gossip is true sometimes: Charlie Chaplin had an itch for young girls. His first wife, too, had been little more than a child. I felt sorry for Lita and tried without success to engage her in conversation.

A shout from below signaled the end of the tennis match, and fifteen minutes later, Douglas Fairbanks and his best friend, Charlie Chaplin, sauntered up to the patio, no longer in tennis whites but wearing linen knickers, trim
V
-neck sweater vests, and matching bow ties, and still arguing amiably about the score. At that same moment, Jack Pickford and his wife, Marilyn Miller, arrived, and behind them came two seasoned performers I had seen at Heilmann’s party, Paul Corrigan and Faye Gordon, the woman who had lost her temper and slapped the young actress. I took a close look at Faye, Miss Pickford’s friend. Tonight she looked poised and confident, as if good news had come and carried her away.

“And he was a fine director, too.” Ernst Lubitsch’s voice carried over the others. “Zukor asked me to finish the film he was working on but I had to refuse because I have already promised…”

“… but do you really think the same person killed all three?” That was Marilyn Miller.

“It could be three unrelated incidents, couldn’t it?” asked her husband, Jack Pickford. “I mean, one of Heilmann’s scorned lovers shoots him—or maybe a jealous husband, God knows, there were enough of them. Then Lorna McCall accidentally drowns in the toilet. And the other woman … some waitress, wasn’t she?… is killed during a robbery. I don’t understand all the fuss.”

Stella DeLanti chimed in, “There wouldn’t be any fuss if all three hadn’t been at the same party. Both women must have seen something that could have identified the murderer. That means he was at the party. I was at the party, too, so maybe I talked to him! But I didn’t see anything suspicious.”

“You’d better hope not!” Jack said, sneering. “You could be next!”

She gave him a dirty look.

“Jessie, tell us about poor Esther,” said Douglas in an effort to deflect a spat. “You found her body.”

All eyes were on me. “Ooooo, how awful! Do tell,” gushed Helene Lubitsch, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw young Lita inch closer and tilt her head toward me.

“Esther Frankel’s death was in today’s paper. At first, no one connected her with the caterers at the party. I had the misfortune to find her body when I visited her house on Sunday morning. She was a vaudeville friend of my mother’s, and I was just paying a call for old times’ sake. Her door was open a crack, so I let myself in.”

The image of Esther’s body was so vivid I had to pause. Here I was, talking about her like she was the entertainment at a party. I hardly knew the woman, but this seemed callous and gossipy. In that instant I decided to leave off the details of her death out of respect for her life. But when I remembered what a vaudeville stalwart she had been, I figured maybe she wouldn’t mind being the center of entertainment once more. I cleared my throat and continued.

“She was dead. I called the police, of course. It seems to me that she must have seen Heilmann’s killer while she was cleaning up, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Maybe he shot Heilmann and then followed the caterer’s truck to Esther’s apartment, picked the lock, and surprised her. If he hadn’t killed her, she would have remembered him the moment she learned of Heilmann’s death.”

Stella DeLanti said, “Then the killer murdered poor Lorna McCall for the same reason, I’m sure. What if he’s not finished? What if others at the party saw him and could figure out who he was?”

“Oh, there you are, David,” Miss Pickford said, looking past me into the house where I saw the outline of another guest standing in the doorway overlooking the patio, methodically surveying the gathering before joining it. “How good of you to come tonight. Come in, or should I say, come out!” Her pleasant laughter made me think of a melody. “Everyone, this is David Carr.”