Hollywood Stuff (9 page)

“I mean, here you are, from the Midwest, suspicious as hell of anyone out here anyway. You know we’re all glitter and bluff,” said Louise, looking closely at an ornate rhinestone sunflower brooch. Not Jane’s style, but whenever Jane saw someone look at something that closely, she started thinking maybe she did want it after all.

“And,” Louise continued,” you have a family and a life and when I saw that tape of you at Jeb’s, I told everyone it would be a coup just to get you out here, but you’d never sign.”

“Tape? At Jeb’s?” Sure, it was just a few minutes of her babbling away about her life, not exactly the Paris Hilton video, but she still felt violated. What were they doing? The entire B Room crowd having a pajama party and making fun of her, planning on making her wacky life fodder for their dirty business?

“Yeah.We always have meetings there. Best screening room. Best cook.” Louise paid for her pin. Jane noticed she didn’t even attempt bargaining. These were the people who drove prices up all over.

Louise shrugged. “It’s
Joseff—Hollywood
with the 1938 trademark and they only had three dollars on it. I don’t know how they missed it. It’s worth a lot more. Wouldn’t have been right to bargain on that one, would it?” she asked Jane.

Okay, so perhaps Jane had underestimated Louise.

“I’m not sure I understand. Does the B Room get together to vote on everyone’s individual projects?” asked Jane.

“It’s not a vote. We’re just close as writers and as friends and we got used to running things by each other. Then after Heck died…Can you sit for a minute?” Louise motioned to a couple of benches. “Sorry, but I get too distracted looking at the stuff.”

Jane nodded. She was beginning to feel like she was getting a fair trade for missing some of the stuff. Louise talked as if Jane knew a lot of what she was saying already and Jane, remembering Detective Oh’s admonition that silence brought more answers than questions, smiled encouragingly but didn’t say anything as they got comfortable on the bench, their bags between them.

“Did Jeb tell you about Heck?” Louise continued when Jane shook her head. “Henry Rule. We called him Heck because he wouldn’t swear. I mean, he wouldn’t say…well, you know…if he had a mouthful. That was out loud. But he
wrote
the foulest stuff. I mean, he would parody some of the scripts we wrote for
S and L,
you know, write the X-rated version, and it would be so bad. No one believed that sweet little Heck had it in him. We had to make him stop when Skye started coming to meetings.

She was grown up and everything, but still, it didn’t seem right since we had been writing for her when she was just a kid.

“ Any way, when
S and L
ended, we all started different projects. Heck was writing movie scripts, but none of them got made. He had invested all his money, hadn’t bought a thing, still lived in a little cottage in Los Feliz, so he wasn’t anxious to sign up for another series. He liked working alone. We all got together a couple times a month, but after six months or so, Heck started canceling on us. We should have gone over there, you know, checked on him more. We had always said we’d take care of each other.”

“What happened to him?” Jane asked.

“About six months ago, he called Bix and told her he was frightened. Thought somebody was out to get him. She went over there and said his place was really scary. Piled-up newspapers, garbage, wrappers from food, a giant ball of twist ties. Stacks of unopened mail. He told Bix he was afraid there was anthrax in it. Bix tried to contact his family, but she could only find one cousin. He lived out here, but didn’t want to get involved. Heck told Bix to make Jeb come and see him alone. Two days later, after Jeb told us Heck thought someone was trying to kill him, I got a call. There was an added second story on Heck’s little house. And the person before him had built an observation platform, up another story. It was a goofy little structure, but safe enough, I guess. Heck had climbed up on the roof of the observation tower and fallen off. Not really that high, two-and-a-half, three stories, but he landed facedown on the brick patio and broke his neck. Police called me because inside his house, taped up by the phone, was a list of phone numbers to call if anything happened to him. Jeb was first and Bix was second. They weren’t around and I was lucky number three. The cousin and I had to go identify the body.” Louise stopped talking for a moment. When she started again, her voice was lower and she spoke each word deliberately.

“The cousin said he hadn’t seen him in twenty years and had no idea what he looked like, so he would be no good at identifying the body. They made me go in. Later, after signing some papers, I left with the cousin, who asked me how he looked. I asked him what did he care since he was too busy to see him when he was alive, and this creep says, ‘I saw him last Wednesday. We had dinner once a week.’The weasel just couldn’t make himself go in there.”

“Were the police satisfied that Heck’s death was an accident?” asked Jane.

“Sure. He was paranoid, his place was a death trap. He had almost stopped eating entirely because he thought his food was being poisoned. The cousin told me he changed his carry-out place every day so ‘they’ couldn’t find a pattern.”

“Anybody figure out why he was on the roof? I mean, if he was scared to come out of the house and all?” asked Jane, digging out a power bar from one of her vest pockets and breaking it in half. She gave half to Louise, wishing she had something more substantial to offer.

“A detective said they figured he thought someone was in the house trying to get him. He had climbed on stacks of newspapers to get out the attic window. They said there was no sign of foul play, but…” Louise studied the wrapper and read the carb count out loud. Then she shrugged and bit into it anyway. “If you ask me, the whole house reeked of foul play. Jeb is the main executor of the estate. Heck left everything to us. Every bit of garbage in that place belongs to the B Room.”

“Did you find anything of value there? Wa s there any reason to believe someone had broken in looking for something and frightened him out on the roof?”

“ We haven’t gone through the house yet. Most of us haven’t been past the entryway. We’re supposed to do it next week, before we sell it.…I don’t know if I can.…Look, all I know about mental illness is what I’ve learned from television and researched for scripts. I’m no expert. Heck was ill, no doubt about it, but he was also believable. Maybe I just want to believe this because he was part of the B Room, but I think something real was eating away at him.”

Jane asked Louise if the rest of the group agreed with her.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

Jane shook her head.

“At first no one agreed with me, but then Bix got a letter that said she’d be next. She might be able to help herself and save the rest of us, but she’d have to wait for instructions. Said if she called the police, she wouldn’t have a chance.

“She showed us the letter at Jeb’s. It was the same day you were on TV, I think. Jeb had recorded it. Played it for us. Bix said she thought your story would make a good movie.”

“And thought that if I was here, I might be able to figure out who sent the letter?” asked Jane. She hoped she didn’t sound as incredulous as she felt. These people had lived in a fantasy world so long it had addled their brains.

Louise nodded. “And who made Heck jump off the roof.”

“
If
someone made him jump,” said Jane, and Louise nodded. But Jane was only being careful. She had already decided that there was something fishy about Heck’s death. It was a tragic illustration of one of her core beliefs. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody out to get you. And then there was Bix’s note from yesterday that Jane had in her pocket. Someone had threatened that they all would go to hell. Or heck.

Jane was a few minutes late for her rendezvous with Tim. Louise had gone off in search of more costume jewelry and with a promise to find Jane later. Jane tried to fill him in on her conversation as fast as she could, but knew he was only half listening. He grabbed her bag filled with keys and flash cards and volunteered to make the first run to the car. He was carrying two small lamp bases, metal, maybe brass, accented with a deep orange ring, maybe Bakelite. He waved another bag—pointed out their next meeting place—and sprinted off.

She started down the next aisle, pausing at a table with old autograph books. Jane picked up one with a heavy blue cardboard cover, dated 1928, and paged through it, trying to focus on the rhymes and spidery signatures that usually delighted her.

May your cheeks retain their dimple,
May your heart be just as gay,
Until some manly voice shall whisper,
Dearest, will you name the day?

Manly voice? Why hadn’t Jeb just called her and asked her, point-blank, to come out to L.A. and work on this?

Once upon a time,
A chicken found a dime,
She gave it to the rooster
And the rooster said, “It’s mine.”

Isn’t that just like a rooster? Of course Jeb couldn’t ask for her help. He couldn’t even ask her why she walked out on him all those years ago. He had shrugged it off and acted all manly and roostery about it. So this was a perfect plan—let Bix ask Jane and Tim to come out here under the pretense of the movie deal, and while they were here, rope them into whatever was going on with the B Room. When Jane dated Jeb in college, he rarely said anything directly.
Do you know how to make grits?
he had asked her one night and she had answered,
No, how?
He told her it wasn’t a riddle, he just liked grits with eggs in the morning and he could handle scrambling the eggs. At the time, his convoluted proposal that she spend the night at his place seemed charming.

“Passive-aggressive bullshit,” she said out loud, recognizing it for what it was.

“Now are you talking on the phone?” asked Louise, who had once again come up behind her.

Jane sighed and handed over three dollars for the autograph book without blinking. Its wisdom was priceless. And if Louise was back to chat, Jane figured this might be her last opportunity for a purchase. When she turned around, she was even more certain that she was done for the day. Rick and Greg were standing with Louise, who apparently had gone to gather them. She pointed to a group of tables and chairs near a refreshment stand.

“Jeb said he’d meet us over there,” she said.

“Cock-a-doodle-do,” Jane muttered under her breath.

Jane dropped the blue autograph book into her bag and spotted a table that looked like it had more of the small volumes. She said she’d be right over to the snack area and zigzagged across the aisle. She picked up a zippered brown leatherette journal with a fifteen-dollar price tag on it. Without even looking through it, she replaced it on the table and saw some battered cardboard-covered books in a small case on top of a trunk a few feet back. Stepping over to the shelves, she pulled out the stack of autograph books and found herself staring at a face. At first she thought it was someone looking at the same books from the other side; then she noticed that the eyes were not studying book titles. In fact, these eyes were not searching for any flea market treasures, since these eyes belonged to the face of a man no longer browsing, bargaining, or buying. This was the face of a dead man.

Jane opened her mouth, hoping she would be able to scream, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Just behind her, the B Room had gathered with their leader, Jeb Gleason. Jeb was so close behind her that Jane heard his statement as a low whisper in her ear.

“Look, gang, Lou Piccolo’s back from Ojai.”

Jane, realizing, if only for one lucid second, that this must be the “Pix” of Bix Pix Flix, Lou Piccolo, studied the face, her open mouth still poised for a scream. Lou Piccolo had brown straight hair, a bit shaggy, and what had been, she felt sure, a handsome tanned face, with perhaps just a touch of cosmetic work. Although features and faces might grow rigid without life, Lou’s eyes were stretched a bit more than even death called for. In that second of reflection, Jane was ashamed to admit that she was judging a dead man, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking,
How vain.

In the next second, the scream escaped and Jane yelled loud and louder. Even though Jane was familiar with the bodies that cropped up around her when bargain-hunting, she still felt woozy enough to turn and take Jeb’s arm for a moment. But there was no arm. No Jeb. Across the garage she could see the B Room scurrying away, cutting against the crowd coming in answer to Jane’s call for help, with Jeb following behind them, his arms outstretched, hurrying them along. Back, Jane guessed, to the henhouse.

Its not that everyone’s dishonest. Really. Its more like they’ve lived their own version of the truth so long that they now believe it
is
the truth. I mean, I’m guessing that most Hollywood showbiz types would pass a lie detector test. Until somebody invents a bona fide, fool-proof bullshit detector, the people in the “entertainment industry” are safe.

—
FROM
Hollywood Diary
BY
B
ELINDA
S
T
. G
ERMAINE

Jane was given a chair and a bottle of water and a cold towel and, from a kind anonymous soul, a vending machine package of cookies. In turn, she gave a police detective her name and address and described how she had pulled out the stack of autograph books and discovered the dead man. A few feet to her left, Jane could see the proprietor of this particular table, wringing her hands, answering another set of questions from another police officer, and, most probably, wondering if Jane was still interested in those autograph books and if she was going to be allowed to sell them.

Because a policeman reporting to the superior officer who was taking Jane’s statement announced he had found his wallet and ID, but not spoken Lou Piccolo’s name out loud, the police officer did not ask Jane if she had any connection to the dead man. He merely asked her if she had ever seen him before.

“No,” she answered honestly.

If the officer had asked her if she knew Lou Piccolo, she would have to explain who she was and how she happened to be in L.A. and how she was connected to the dead man in front of her. However, as long as the name was not spoken, she rationalized that she had no obligation to bring up any confusing and problematic connection to the man who, it now became sickeningly clear, had been stabbed to death with a classic daggerlike letter opener, flea market price tag still attached. Police had been dispatched throughout the flea market with elaborate descriptions of the weapon to see if any vendor recognized the dagger as one he or she had sold, and, if so, did they remember the purchaser well enough to give a description?

Jane was rather pleased to note that she was now being ignored. Had this been Kankakee, Illinois, where she was quite well recognized as someone with a penchant for uncovering bodies rolled up in Oriental rugs or walking into crime scenes littered with garage sale detritus, or had it been Evanston, Illinois, where she was known to walk into more than one murder plot, she might have garnered unwanted attention. Here in sunny Pasadena, she was just another hapless tourist at the flea market, who instead of cool bargains found the stuff of which nightmares are made.

The market was a tricky place to close down. Although the police had spread out through the perimeter of the flea market area and set up checkpoints at the exits to the parking garage, so many shoppers had strolled through and come and gone throughout the morning, the giant roster of names and addresses and phone numbers seemed like so much make-work to Jane. It had to be done. Of course. But Jane thought she ought to at least try to make their work a bit more efficient.

“Officer?” Jane asked.

“It’s Detective Dooley, Mrs. Wheel,” he said, not looking up from his notepad.

“I believe the dagger is actually a letter opener,” said Jane. “It’s hand-crafted sterling, arts and crafts, early twentieth century, looks like it might have been made by Kalo, although I’d have to check to see if they made such a piece. There’d be a signature.” Jane stopped as she realized the mark, if there was one, was probably covered in Lou Piccolo’s blood.

“Mrs. Wheel, whoa,” said Dooley, who was trying to smile, although Jane knew he was the type who never did, had never known how. He forced the corners of his mouth upward as if he had studied the steps in a how-to manual. “We’re looking for a killer here, who probably grabbed the closest weapon from a nearby junk stall. Smart, too, since there’d be no connection to the murderer. Got it here and left it here.”

“Yes, of course,” said Jane, practicing her own version of condescension for those who didn’t appreciate the history of the objects in their lives. “But there are two things,” she began. “First, since this is a very fine and expensive piece, it probably would have been kept by the dealer in a locked case. It couldn’t have been easily grabbed without notice. It was probably purchased. And if the murderer didn’t know he or she was going to run into this person, it might have just been a purchase, you know, by a collector. So you know that the murderer had a lot of cash on hand to pay for it, and might be a collector of Kalo or Kalo-style silver.”

Dooley had looked up from his pad and was staring at Jane, but she wasn’t sure she was making herself clear.

“Look, for example, I collect vintage sewing items—knitting things, too, as a matter of fact. If I came across a really great pair of vintage sterling silver scissors here, I might buy them and put them in my purse. Then, if I ran into someone I got angry at or that I just wanted to kill, I would just have those scissors handy. Of course, then I’d have to leave them. But when I purchased them, I would have assumed I was going to be taking them home. If I wanted to kill someone, there are any number of rusty old letter openers and scissors and knives here.”

Dooley didn’t bother to put on his paint-by-number smile. He just continued to stare at Jane.

“It means it probably wasn’t premeditated,” Jane explained. “No one would buy a Kalo letter opener and plan to leave it in someone’s back.”

“You said two things, Mrs. Wheel. What’s number two?”

“The tag on the dagger. Looked to me like it had a small stamp of a four-leaf clover on it. There’s a dealer table in the next aisle called Lucky Finds and I noticed their tags had four-leaf clovers on them, so…”

“News I can use, Mrs. Wheel,” said Dooley. He sent an officer in the direction Jane had pointed.

“You’re an extremely observant person. Not a licensed PI working security for the market, are you?” Dooley asked, his tone clearly indicating that he was straining to make a joke.

“Nope,” said Jane. “Not a licensed anything, I’m afraid.” She rarely got a chance to behave in such a scrupulously honest fashion. She had never seen the dead man. She wasn’t a licensed PI. It made her giddy. When she heard a noise like a Swiss bell-ringers’ choir, she wondered if her giddiness had fast-forwarded into delusion, then she traced the sound to her bag. How had Tim gotten to it to change the ring this morning? It hadn’t been out of her possession, had it?

“May I answer my phone?”

Dooley nodded. He was looking over his shoulder at the young officer he had dispatched to Lucky Finds, now sprinting back toward them.

“Four or five people were looking at the opener, passing it around and oohing and ahing, and one of them bought it. No description. Said he’d had a busy morning and he couldn’t even say if it was a man or woman who ended up buying the thing. Didn’t think the group who had been looking at stuff in the case were even together. Buyer paid cash.” The officer lowered his voice and nodded in Jane’s direction. “She was right about it being a pricey blade. Five hundred bucks. The dealer said the purchaser told him to take the price tag off because it was a gift, and he did, but he left the Lucky store tag on it when he wrapped it up for them.”

Jane tried to listen to Dooley and his officer discuss their own lucky find, but it was difficult, since Tim was describing the items he was surrounded by, trapped by police officers on the west side of the parking lot.

“Unfriggingbelievable. Across the aisle, there’s an entire table full of hotel silver. I could have gone over it and given the guy pocket change, since he’s dying to sell something, anything, since the whole day is a bust for him. I can see it in his eyes from here. And where do I get trapped? I wander in here because I think I see an old Steiff bear, one of those tiny brown ones with the articulated limbs? In a pile of sock monkeys, I see this thing peeking out, but it turns out to be a piece of crap when I get close up, and what else is in this booth? Beanie Babies out the ass. I am trapped in Beanie Baby world. Who thought this crap up?
Weenie the Dachsund? Cheesy the Mouse? Nutsy the Squirrel?
Holy shit! Did you know there’s a Princess Diana bear? Who knew? I was the only florist in Illinois to refuse to carry them in the shop. Could have made a bundle, sure, but I had my pride, oh shit, here’s—”

“Timmy, calm down. I can’t talk. I’m with the police. I was looking at some autograph books when I—”

“You found the dead guy? Of course. What was I thinking, bringing you to a perfectly fine flea market? What is it with you? Ask the cop how soon I’ll be released from the Cuddle Town Jail,” said Tim. “Are you okay?” he added, almost sincerely.

“I’m okay. Be productive while you’re there. There’s a blue elephant that’s worth a lot of money. Look for that one.”

“Yeah, right. Oh look, here’s
Lymey the Tick
—”

Jane clicked off her phone, hoping to hear more news about the group who purchased the letter opener. Since she couldn’t ask a question without arousing Detective Dooley’s suspicions about what questions she herself might be able to answer, she tried to conjure up Detective Oh. He would advise her to listen, as she was doing, but he also had told her once that occasionally drawing a random conclusion might prove irresistible to someone who always thought himself to be right. If she was wrong, he would have to correct her, and that would give her the information she sought.

“When I browsed the Lucky Finds booth, I didn’t see any Kalo or look-alike pieces in the display case, and that was probably around eight
A.M
., so she must have purchased it first thing when the market opened.”

The young detective nodded. “Yup, first thing when he opened this morning. At first he said it was a guy, then he changed his mind to a woman, then back to a guy,” he said. “Then he said he just couldn’t say for sure.” The policeman looked like he wanted to continue hashing out the time with Jane, who had, after all, given him his lead, which made him forget that she was a nonlicensed nobody who just happened to find a dead man.

Dooley held up his hand and told him to go back to the dealer, where he would join them both in a minute. “We’re going to allow people to leave, Mrs. Wheel, and you’re free to go as well. We have your hotel information, yes?”

Jane nodded. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be at the W. We might relocate to a friend’s…do you want me to…?”

“ We have your cell phone. We would like it if—”

A female uniformed officer came over to Dooley and apologized for interrupting. “There’s a man over there with his wife. Out-of-towners, wife’s a dealer on a buying trip. Guy’s bored and starts roaming. He says he saw two pickpockets working the market. Following people who were buying high-end stuff and plucking it right out of their bags. He was looking for someone on duty to call in a detail for the collar. Guy in a baseball cap, jeans, and a T-shirt and a woman with silvery gray hair and glasses…a pair that blended right into the crowd. Probably had a third or fourth that they were handing off merch to. He saw the two actives work this aisle and one over.” She pointed in the direction of Lucky Finds. “Might not mean anything, but somebody could have set up another layer of smoke between them and their victim if they stole the weapon and used it on our boy here.”

“But a pickpocket?” said Jane, immediately wishing she had said this silently, to herself. Had she? Maybe she had….

No. Dooley turned back, surprised to see that she was still standing there, more surprised to hear her offer a comment.

“We’ll call you, Mrs. Wheel, if we need to speak with you again.”

Dooley’s dismissal of Mrs. Jane Wheel, duty-performing citizen, did not stop Detective Jane Wheel from finishing her thought. Pickpockets are thieves. Whoever stabbed Lou Piccolo in the back with a handcrafted letter opener was a murderer. Jane could hear Detective Oh’s voice in her head. Why would a formal operation like a pickpocket ring spoil their plans with a murder? Suppose one of the thieves had been spotted and in a panic wanted to get rid of the witness? Even then, he or she would never use such an expensive prize to do the deed.