Design for Dying (6 page)

I veered to the parallel street, having no interest in being the buzzards' latest serving of carrion. A shortcut across the Gustafsons' neighboring property would let me slip to the house unnoticed.

Or so I thought until I spotted the sleek roadster in the drive, midnight blue against a wall of dingy lime. A figure reclined behind the wheel, the brim of his Panama hat resting on a pair of sunglasses. His hand hung over the car's door as if awaiting the return of a faithful hound. I inched past quietly, glancing at the man's hand. The dangling digits were freshly manicured. But the knuckles were swollen and scarred, as if he'd thrown a punch or two in the not-so-distant past.

“Sneaking in late or early, sweetheart?”

The man roused himself minimally, nudging the hat's brim with a finger. I wasn't worth sitting all the way up for. His honeyed voice was charged with insinuation. “I'd hate to see you land in trouble with Mother.”

“Just avoiding the reporters. Hello, Laurence. I haven't seen you since the wedding.”

Laurence Minot perked up, lowering the sunglasses enough for me to see additional cuts and bruises. A few scrapes near his temple, a near-miss black eye he sported like the wrong color necktie. Even without the battle scars, his face had the charismatic ugliness of a bulldog's. “Yes, of course. How have you been?” The space he left for my name, which he clearly couldn't remember, was large enough to drive his car through.

Deliverance came in the person of his wife, Lodestar Pictures' newest ingénue Diana Galway. When she'd done her time with us at the boardinghouse she'd been plain old Diane O'Roarke. At least they'd kept her Irish. “Lillian! You've come to pay your respects, too.”

“Yes, and to see how everyone is holding up.” Diana cantered toward me on high heels, arms wide. What hardhearted soul could not respond in kind? Diana then stopped short, forcing me to cover the last few inches on my own. A little trick ensuring she was the one embraced. As usual, I fell for it.

“You look great,” I said in blatant understatement. Always a beauty, Diana had spent time in dry dock getting the studio overhaul since signing her contract. Once thick eyebrows now perfectly shaped, brown hair turned a glossy chestnut and, if I wasn't mistaken, a well-padded brassiere under her printed crepe de chine frock. Lodestar had refurbished the SS
Galway
, cracked a bottle of champagne over her bow, and put her out to exotic ports of call.

“I'm a mess. The instant I heard about Ruby I had Laurence run me over from the lot.” She turned to the chastened man sitting ramrod straight behind the wheel, sunglasses still in place.

“Yes, dear. Lillian and I were catching up.” Laurence spoke with a borrowed aristocratic accent, part of the worldly image he'd constructed for himself; word was at birth, his name was spelled with a homely “W.” He'd started as a theater director with a flair for stagecraft. Now he was Lodestar's master of the middling musical with titles like
Larks A'Plenty
and
Pioneer Panic
to his credit. More importantly, he was Diana's husband of less than a year. I'd met him at their wedding, a gin-soaked shindig at which I had obviously made no impression. Ruby and I, along with some other girls from Diana's soon-to-be-forgotten past, had been corralled at a back table in a drafty hotel restaurant for the reception, where we ran down the rumors on the groom. Drinker? Heavy. Womanizer? Incorrigible. I wondered if we should have added brawler to his tally of vices.

“It's such a shock,” Diana said. “Ruby and I were to have lunch this week.”

“Ruby so enjoyed your lunches.” Even more, she relished parroting Diana's litany of complaints about her new life in luxury's lap. I hated Ruby for running down her alleged friend in this way, and I hated myself more for hanging on her every word when she did. At least Ruby got a free meal out of it.

“Perhaps you and I should get together, Lillian. I'd like that. And with Ruby gone…” I mustered a yes or three, and we exchanged telephone numbers. With an air kiss and a nod from Laurence, the Minots were off.

I found Mrs. Lindros muttering over what remained of her zinnias, the press hordes having laid waste to her flower beds. She wrapped her meaty arms around me while firing a black gaze at the remaining reporters. “Jackals,” she said grimly, then pushed me toward the house.

The familiar chintz curtains and tattered sofa greeted me in the parlor, the upright piano waiting contentedly in the corner. My stay at Mrs. Lindros's ended badly, but I had fond memories of the place as well.

“Hello, stranger.” Kay Dambach strolled into the room. Dimples showing off plump cheeks, dark curls bouncing. She wiped her hands on her apron before giving me a hug. “You've heard the news. Did you and Ruby ever make up?”

I finessed the answer. “We had lunch a few weeks ago.”

“Good. I'm glad. You hungry? I just made a coffee cake.” I took off like Floyd Bennett and beat her to the kitchen.

Kay was a marvelous cook, helping Mrs. Lindros for a break on her rent. Her ambition was to become a writer, and she labored in obscurity as a gal Friday at
Modern Movie
magazine while awaiting her chance to prove she was the next Dorothy Parker. Dottie, I would wager, could not work Kay's magic with streusel. I inhaled the cake and chased it with a cup of coffee.

“I saw Diana on my way in,” I said.

“The new and improved model. Lodestar does good work. She still can't sing, though.”

“What gives with Laurence? Looked like he'd stepped in the ring with Jimmy Braddock.”

Kay pulled the plate of cake away from me so she'd have my full attention. “Specifics, if you please.” She detected a potential story. I gave her the one of my eventful day instead.

“Paramount sent over photos of Edith Head,” she said. “They want us to do a story on her. Girl designer to the stars or some such.”

“From what I saw she practically runs the place.”

“Somebody has to. Travis Banton's not around enough. The studio's been loaning him out a lot lately. You know what that means.” Kay pantomimed taking a slug from a bottle. “Banton's a genius. But what good's a genius if he's never at his drafting table? Word is he's on his way out. Paramount won't renew his contract. And when he goes, Edith goes.”

I pressed my fork into the last of the crumbs on my plate. “That's a pity. I liked Edith. She gave me a personal wardrobe consultation. A tip, anyway.”

“What is it?”

“I'm not telling until I experiment and see if anyone notices. Any chance of a second piece of cake?”

“After you stop putting off what you came here for.”

Kay knew me too well. “Is Vi around?”

“In her room,” Kay said. “She's been up there a lot since Ruby was killed. You know how close those two had gotten. Get her to come down. The cake should still be here.”

*   *   *

I FELT THE
tug on the second-story landing. My old floor. I walked to the door of the room I'd shared with Ruby. Knocking on it felt supremely odd. I was used to simply throwing it wide.

There was no answer. I stepped inside.

Ruby apparently hadn't had a roommate when she died. The cramped space was filled with only her clutter. A dressing gown tossed over a chair, an overflowing ashtray. The closet was half full of her clothes, a familiar assortment of blouses, day dresses and skirts plus a pair of slacks for around the house. Ruby, proud of her dancer's legs, didn't care for women's trousers.
You know why Garbo wears them, don't you? To hide those gunboats below her ankles.

I sat on my old bed. How many nights had Ruby and I lain here in the dark, sharing stories, tales of Uncle Danny, secret codes Ruby had invented during her childhood? On the other side of the wall behind me was the lemon tree in the garden, its fragrance filling the room. Ruby had always referred to it as hers.

“You can't even see it from in here,” I'd complain. “The window's in the wrong place.”

“Or the tree is. Doesn't matter, mermaid. I know it's out there, like the glorious future that's waiting for me. You, too.” I didn't mind being an afterthought. It was her fantasy.

I rested my head on the pillow and sought comfort in the pattern of water stains on the ceiling, feeling years older than the girl who had done the same thing months before.

*   *   *

PUTTING TINY AND
delicate Violet Webb in the attic room that once sheltered two household maids was akin to placing an angel atop a Christmas tree. Vi had come to Hollywood by way of Seattle, where she'd played Peter Pan in a musical production written by her vocal coach. I pegged her as more the Tinker Bell type, all golden hair and faraway eyes.

A scratchy baritone rendition of “Stardust” greeted me at the summit of the narrow stairs. Vi, always ready to belt out a tune, was letting others sing for her. She opened the door to my knock, blinked as if waking from a dream, then held me tight.

“I was going to call you,” she said.

“Now you don't have to. See? I saved you a nickel.”

The song ended and Vi turned off the phonograph. She wiped her eyes. “I was just thinking about that day Ruby called you mermaid and it gave me the idea we should go to the beach.”

“You know what I remember about that day? The handsome fellow who followed you around all afternoon.”

“Edward! He wore me out with his stories. At least we got something from him.” She went to her bureau and her face fell anew.

“What's wrong?”

“That picture Edward took of the three of us at the beach. I forgot I gave it to a policeman. He stopped me outside and said he needed a picture of Ruby. It was the only one I had.” She stared mournfully at the spot where the photograph had been, framed by scraps of yellowing tape.

“How did Ruby seem lately?”

“Strange. One day last month we were planning to go to Warners for a call. When it was time to leave, she was in the parlor reading a magazine, not even dressed! She wasn't going, said she was beyond that. Can you imagine? Beyond Warner Brothers?” Her eyes widened in cartoonish amazement. “A few days later I found her in the garden staring at Mrs. Lindros's roses. I could see she'd been crying, but she wouldn't say why.”

“Crying? I never once saw Ruby cry.”

“It wasn't in her nature. She was so stubborn. ‘I'm not stopping until everyone knows my name.'” Vi's voice couldn't do justice to Ruby's timbre, but she nailed the intensity. More impressively she captured some of Ruby's spirit in the set of her shoulders, the casual toss of her head. “I wish I could be like that and not get down in the dumps when things don't pan out. Which is a lot. Maybe I should be like you and get a regular job.”

“You forget that as an actress I'm a terrific salesgirl. You're too talented to give up. And you're still pulling down good money at the Midnight Room.” Ruby had strong-armed Tommy Carpa into giving Vi a cocktail waitress spot at his club back when she and Tommy were still an item. “How's your boss?”

“Tommy took the news about Ruby real bad. After she threw him over he made like he didn't care and had forgotten all about her. But every couple of nights he'd track me down on the floor and ask what she was up to. ‘How's Ruby? She seeing anybody?'”

“Did Ruby ask about Tommy?”

“Not as much as Tommy asked after her, but sometimes. It got confusing, like I was carrying messages they weren't actually sending. I'm not Western Union.”

“The detectives thought it was odd nobody had mentioned Tommy's name.”

“Why would anybody? Tommy and Ruby hadn't been going together for months.”

“He was still pining for her. You're not a little suspicious?”

“Of Tommy? Everybody thinks he's some kind of tough guy. A gangster. But it's not true.”

Right,
I thought.
And the cops call him Tommy the Shark because he was born with too many teeth.

Vi's fingers worried a tissue. “You told the detectives about Tommy, then?”

“They're interested in anyone who knew Ruby.”

“They should talk to her new friends while they're at it.”

“What new friends?”

“Armando something or other. And Natalie. Ruby said he was rolling in it and Natalie was the most elegant lady she'd ever seen.”

“Did you tell Detective Morrow about them?”

“I told one of the detectives everything I could remember. Which wasn't much. Ruby never even mentioned their last names. But she was seeing a lot of them lately.”

I could tell Vi was tired of talking about Ruby, so I babbled about work, my trip to Paramount and my subsequent encounter with Edith Head. I pitched hard for her to come have cake with me and Kay.

“Maybe later.”

I kissed the crown of her head. As I shut the door the phonograph started up again. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” drifted down the stairs behind me as my mind turned over the question I couldn't bring myself to put to Vi:
Did Ruby ever mention me?

*   *   *

“VI JUST NEEDS
time,” Kay said as I demolished a second piece of cake. “It can't help seeing Tommy every night. You know she secretly loved being caught in the middle of their twisted little romance.”

“Tell me, Scoop, what do you hear about these new flush friends of Ruby's?”

“Not a thing. I got tired of Ruby, flitting around like she was already a movie star. I paid no mind to her stories even when Vi repeated them. What friends are these?”

“Vi mentioned Armando and Natalie. He's rich, she's beautiful, the three of them are the best of pals. It could be Ruby stole that gown from Paramount so she could take a spin in their social circle.”

Kay's brow furrowed as her fearsome brain set to work. “I doubt they're movie people. I'd recognize the names. Armando sounds south of the border. There are so many South Americans around with pesos to spare. Tell you what, I'll ask around the
Modern Movie
office, thumb through the clippings.”