American Blonde (26 page)

“That remains to be seen. Did you know Felix Roland and Ophelia are having an affair?”

“The mystery man from her bedroom?”

“I guess so.” I told him about seeing them at Rockhaven.

He whistled. “We need to figure out who up there not only had a motive but the ability to poison her. They’re not necessarily one and the same.”

“I doubt Felix will talk to me, and I didn’t get very far with Tauby.”

“Maybe they’ll talk to me.” He smiled. “Want me to see what I can get?”

“If you don’t mind. Did you—when you worked with her, did she ever mention someone named Rebecca?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, no. Why?”

“It was the last thing she said to me before she died.”

He took my hand and nodded up at the wall again. “Have you thought about what will happen once you figure this out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Say you catch the killer, find the evidence, prove that he or she did it. What then? If what you say is true, the studio’s never going to let you put this out there. They’ll kill it as fast as someone killed Barbara Fanning.”

“I’m still working on that part of it.”

“Let’s not worry about it tonight.” He kissed me lightly on the nose. “Shall we get some more sleep? Unless, of course, you can think of something else to do.”

When I made a show of yawning, he reached over me to switch off the lamp. As he looked down, his face half in light, half in shadow, there was something in his eyes that made me ask, “What is it?”

“I don’t know. But I’m thinking there’s more on your mind than suspects and poison and murder. Am I right, Pipes?”

I reached up and kissed him. His lips were warm. My head still pounded. It hurt too much to think clearly. “The only thing I’m thinking about right now is sleep.”

When I opened my eyes again, it was morning and he was gone. A note lay on the pillow next to mine along with a bottle of aspirin.
You’re utter hell on a man’s ego, Pipes. It’s a good thing I have ego enough to spare. Gone to the studio, but will be thinking lasciviously about you the entire time. (Lascivious
adjective [of a person, manner, or gesture] feeling or revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire.) Take two of these as soon as you wake up and call me. P.S. I don’t know how I’ll concentrate now that I can picture you in bed.

I sat up, stretched, opened the curtains. I padded over to the evidence wall and studied the faces. Nigel Gray and Pia Palmer smiled out at me as if to say,
You can’t get us. We’re safe. There’s nothing you can do.

And there, below them, was a newer, better photo of Sam—torn from the page of a movie magazine—which he’d tacked over the old one.

E
arly Thursday, Helen found Mudge’s will folded and tucked inside a book of Shakespeare’s plays. In it, Mudge remembered her bunkmates at Avenger Field. She made sure that I received all her dresses since, as she noted, I could “certainly use them.” She left money to the families of the thirty-eight WASP who died and to a flying school for girls, started by Shirley Bingham, a pilot two years ahead of us. She left her house, car, minks, jewelry, and several thousand dollars to Flora, and everything else—including the bulk of her money—went to John Henry Briggs of Dell Rapids Orphanage and Industrial School in Dell Rapids, South Dakota.

I took the document from Helen to read the date. “December 15, 1946. It was updated two weeks before she died.”

“Do you think Redd Deeley knows he was cut out?”

“I don’t know.”

“So he might have expected to still get everything.” When I nodded, she said, “That looks bad for him, doesn’t it? I mean, in mystery books, that’s usually the motive of the killer.”

I thought about this as I got dressed and ready for work. Before I walked out the door, I put in a call to Redd, asking him to meet me for lunch. Outside the house, a man with a hat was sitting behind the wheel of his car, the engine running. He was the same man I’d seen parked on the street before. When he saw me coming down the walk, he touched the brim of his hat and drove away.

At eleven fifteen that morning, I sat down at the piano in Rosie’s studio and played what I’d written of the song for Butch’s record. I only had a half dozen sheets of paper filled with lines, most of them crossed out. The only line I really liked was: “Home to me.”

I’d written it because it sounded hopeful, and I remembered what Butch had said about hope. I knew people in this world who’d never been through a single sad thing, and they didn’t have any more hope than a grasshopper. But somehow I’d held on to mine—through Mama’s death and everything sad or terrible that had followed. But what if hope had a threshold? What if there was a limit to it? What if each of us was only given a certain amount and mine was used up?

The thing I did have was the melody, so mostly I played while Rosie listened, and afterward he sat beside me on the bench and said, “Good. This is good. What if you also add in something here?” He did a little flourish up and down the keys. “And what if you change it to a minor key?”

My first instinct was that this would make the tune too sad, that it was sad enough already, but Rosie said, “Try it. There’s no harm in experimenting. Nothing’s set in stone. You can go right back to the way it was if you don’t like it.”

So I played it again. This time through, I could feel it in a way I hadn’t before. I played it once more the same way. Then Rosie and I talked about words, and about what I wanted to say. Just as I was starting to hear the lyrics forming in my mind, a messenger boy appeared and said I was wanted in Billy Taub’s office.

My first thought was that he looked like a madman again. He sat shuffling through papers at a wild pace, fielding phone calls, making notes, shirt untucked, glasses askew. The white streak of hair had grown to several white streaks of hair, so that you could barely see the original brown. His desk was heaped with scripts and notes and pictures—no more
Home of the Brave
. He was on to
Latimer
now. A cigar burned in the ashtray.

When I walked in, he barely looked up. He waved me to a chair, finished his telephone conversation, jotted something down, then threw the pen onto the desk and fixed his eyes on me. “I’ll make this quick, Kit. I know you went to visit Ophelia. I know you were asking questions. I’m telling you this as a favor—let it be.”

I wondered if he knew I hadn’t been her only visitor that day. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“But you do. We didn’t send her there so that she could be upset.”

“The papers are reporting that she checked herself in.”

“We don’t have time to sit here and go back and forth. I know what you’re trying to do, and you need to stop doing it. Let this go.” There was something in his voice that chilled me. He stood. We were done. “It’s best for everyone, especially you.”

“You meant a lot to Barbara Fanning.”

“She was a good actress. I enjoyed working with her.”

“You were more than that to her. If you cared about her at all, and I’m guessing you did once upon a time, you’ll help me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t bother walking me out. At his door, I turned. He still stood behind his desk, sorting through papers. “Who is Rebecca?”

He stopped what he was doing. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. “Why are you asking about Rebecca?” His voice broke.

I was filled with a sudden breathless feeling, but I told myself to stay cool. “Who is she?”

He cleared his throat. “She was my daughter. Our daughter.” His voice broke again. He glanced at Ophelia’s picture. “We adopted her when she was two.”

“I didn’t see her at Broad Water.”

“Rebecca died five years ago. She was ten. It was a heart defect, something we couldn’t have known about, even though it was hereditary. Maybe it could have been attended to if they’d told us. But we didn’t know. They didn’t tell us.”

“Did Barbara ever meet her?”

“Once. She came to . . . visit me at the house when Ophelia was away. Rebecca was with the nanny, but Barbara ran into them on the beach. Rebecca had seen all her films and so she recognized her. Instead of spending the day with me, Barbara spent it with my daughter. They played in the water and built things in the sand. I knew I shouldn’t let them, that Ophelia would have my head, but it was good to see both of them enjoying themselves like that. Barbara told me afterward it was one of the nicest days she’d ever had.” His eyes had gone misty and faraway. “Rebecca said the same thing. She didn’t have many nice days left. She died three months later.”

When I left him, Billy Taub was sitting quietly, hands folded, staring at his desk. I was late to meet Redd, and I hurried across Washington Boulevard to Frances Edwards’ Bar and Grill, which everyone at the studio called “the Hangout.” I was trying to process the conversation I’d just had—was Rebecca Taub the Rebecca Mudge had meant? And, if so, why had this been her last word?

Redd was seated in a booth and had already ordered for both of us. As I sat, he said, “Congratulations. You’ve been named
Photoplay
’s Rising Star of 1947.” He talked about what a big deal this was—my picture on the cover, a full-length article accompanied by more photographs. “Metro’s bringing out the second
Flyin’ Jenny
ahead of schedule in order to capitalize on the publicity.”

“Do they want an interview?”

“Not necessary. They have enough information for the story without talking to you.”

I was distracted, but I hoped he couldn’t tell. “That’s wonderful.”

“What’s up, Kit? Why did you want to meet me?”

“Did you know Mudge changed her will in December?”

Redd was slick, but he wasn’t an actor, and his entire expression shifted. I could see genuine shock followed by wariness, which told me he hadn’t known. “December?”

“That’s right. Do you have any idea why she would have changed it?”

“No. Except maybe to cut me out of it. Is that what she did? I suppose she left everything to Nigel.”

“She did cut you out, but she didn’t leave anything to Nigel.”

“When you say ‘cut out,’ you mean I’m nowhere in it? Not even a tie clip? Not even the goddamn car I bought her for a goddamn wedding present?”

I glanced around, catching the eyes of the people nearby, who were now looking in our direction. “Nowhere and nothing.”

He threw his napkin on the table and glared at the ceiling. When he spoke again, he was quieter and calmer, as if he’d forced himself to count to ten. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, right? I mean, she was done with me the moment she met Nigel.”

“You represent Nigel.” The fact had just dawned on me.

“That’s right.” He was staring off across the restaurant.

“How did you do that after what happened?”

“You mean after she divorced me to marry him?” He shrugged. “I’m a businessman. She used to say I was an agent before I was a man, and that was the problem with me. She always loved telling me the problem with me.”

“She said you wanted Barbara Fanning, not Eloise Mudge.”

“I know she thought that, but it wasn’t true.” He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I loved her—Barbara, Eloise. I still do.” He was talking to the table now, where his hands rested, empty, helpless. And then, for the first time I saw it—the wedding ring he still wore, a year and a half later.

“Redd, who is John Henry Briggs?”

He made himself look up, but I could see the effort it took. “Who?”

“She left the bulk of her estate to a boy named John Henry Briggs. A ten-year-old orphan living in Dell Rapids, South Dakota. She hired a private investigator to find him not long before she died.” I opened my bag, took out the picture of the boy, and slid it across the table. “I think he’s her son.”

Redd stared at the photo for a minute, as if he didn’t want to touch it, and then he picked it up, running his finger up and down one corner, over and over. He took a good, hard look before setting the photo down and pushing it toward me. “He’s not her son.”

“But she wanted to find him. And she left him all that money. It would have been before you, maybe with Cray Cordova.” I was trying to remember the name of her first husband. Maybe the boy belonged to him.

Redd shook his head and smiled sadly, the corners of his mouth barely lifting. “I assumed you knew. Barbara wasn’t able to have children.”

“But she always talked about having them.”

“Because she wanted a kid more than anything. We tried before we got married, after we got married. We were always trying. She was never able to have one with Cray, but she thought that was because he smacked her around. Her body was just anxious, in a state of stress, she said. But with me she was safe. We argued, but I’d never hit her, and she knew that. When it didn’t happen—when she didn’t get pregnant—she went to her doctor. Not the studio quack, but a regular doctor. He was the one who told her. She didn’t believe him, and so she went to see another doctor and another, until finally I told her to stop it because eventually someone was going to spill it to the gossip columnists. All the doctors told her the same thing: She would never have a child of her own.” He picked up the photo again. “Maybe this was a kid she wanted to adopt.”

He handed me the picture and I looked at the boy’s face. “But who was he? And why him?”