Secrets (21 page)

“I think he thought it would betray Lillian, or maybe he was afraid that if he married again, someone would kill Cassie. I'm not sure even Jeff knows why he didn't declare his love. Truthfully, I think he thought he had all the time in the world. Cassie had been part of his life since she was a kid, and I think my son thought she would wait for him forever.”

“I've heard that that's happened before, but only in the olden days,” Althea said.

“If it did, it only happened when the woman was sure of the man's love. Poor Cassie had no idea Jeff was mad about her.”

“How could she not know?” Althea said with a sigh. “I remember seeing them together and Jeff hovered over her, as though he'd slay anyone who got too close.”

“When did you see them together?”

“I may be held prisoner in this place, but I do own a pair of binoculars. I saw them at the beach often.”

“Ah, yes. How I miss those days of the four of us together.”

“You miss Cassie's cooking and the way she fluffed your pillows. And you miss the sight of those knockers of hers.”

Thomas grinned. “Truly a beautiful girl. I miss all of her. So, tell me, what makes you think that Cassie won't go to Faulkener's, see Jeff, then turn around and walk out?”

“Women's intuition,” Althea said. “And besides, the idea of finding a diamond necklace under the floorboards is too much for any woman to resist. How could she not be dazzled by such a prospect?”

“So what happens when she pries up Faulkener's floorboards and sees that there aren't any diamonds there?”

“Oh, but, darling, there are.”

Thomas nearly spilled tea as he hastily set his cup down. “You mean there
are
diamonds under this man's floor?”

“Maybe not diamonds. I might have fudged on that a bit. Actually, I hid some letters inside a clock, and I'd like to get them back.”

Thomas frowned. “So why did you tell Cassie that there were diamonds under the floorboards?”

“Time,” Althea said. “If I told her there were letters—which are much less interesting than diamonds—in a clock in Charles's bedroom, she'd go there directly, get the letters, then leave. And, besides, there
is
something under the floorboards. I just don't know what it is.”

“You know, of course, that you're going to have to tell me this entire story.”

“It would be my pleasure,” she said, snuggling into the cushions of the couch. “Of course I can't tell you everything, because I don't know it all, but I can tell you what Hinton Landau and I saw. Do you remember him?”

“Of course I remember him. And so does all of the United States over a certain age. There was that great scandal over a murder. I even read a book about it a long time ago.”

“The dear man was accused of murdering a young woman, but no one could prove it. Hinton went free, but his career was ruined. Three years after the trial, he ran his car into a tree and died. But that was later. On the day of the murder, Hinton and I saw his wife hide something under a floorboard in their bedroom. I'm sure that whatever it was is still under Charles's floorboards.”

“Charles Faulkener,” Thomas said. “If I remember correctly, he was a no-talent actor, but he was rich.”

“Very much no-talent, but he had an almost magical ability to invest in the right stocks on the market. He made money on whatever he touched. But what he really wanted was to be a great actor, but he was too self-conscious, utterly unable to lose himself in a role. He made do by inviting any actor who had any success to his house to spend lavish weekends with him. We could eat our fill and be waited on hand and foot. I think Charles thought he could gain talent by osmosis. Or maybe he thought he could catch it like a disease. As I got to know him better, I thought he had plans for using black magic to steal talent from us.”

“So you were at Faulkener's house,” Thomas said, “and you saw Hinton Landau's wife hide something under a floorboard. I would think she would have done such a thing in privacy.”

“She thought she was alone, but Hinton and I were hiding under the bed.”

Thomas chuckled. “Althea, I do believe you are the most wicked woman I have ever met.”

“Why, thank you, Thomas, dear. I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“By the way, how far along are you on your memoirs?”

“I wrote ‘I was born,'” she said.

“But that—”

“Yes, I know,” she said with a sigh. “Some author stole the line from me. The story of my life.”

Thomas chuckled at the idea that Charles Dickens had stolen from Althea. “Okay, so what did his wife hide under the floorboard?”

“I have wanted to know since it happened in 1941.”

“So you and Hinton were hiding under the bed and his wife came in and put something under a floorboard. I assume that something happened after that, so you didn't have time to retrieve it.”

“That's right. As soon as she left, Hinton pushed me out of the room and I never went back.”

“My goodness,” Thomas said. “It's been so long since I read that book about the murder that I don't remember the details. I assume
this
is the murder Charles Faulkener is re-creating this weekend, the one you've arranged for both Cassie and Jeff to attend?”

“And Skylar,” Althea said.

“Oh, yes. I can't forget that. Did I tell you that Jeff now refuses to see her?”

“Yes,” Althea said, smiling.

“So tell me about Faulkener and this unsolved murder mystery and why he's still interested in it after all these years.”

“Did you ever read that paperback that came out in the 1960s that said Charles was the murderer? Badly written, but it gathered enough believers that Charles has made it a lifelong quest to clear his name. All in all, it was a very bad weekend for him. You see, Charles and I had been living together—discreetly, of course, no publicity—for about two years. He was madly in love with me.”

“Aren't we all?”

Althea smiled. “I didn't love Charles and he knew it, but we understood each other. He was fairly good in bed, and of course there was all that money. I was quite poor at the time, and I had what he craved: the ability to act.” She shrugged. “The problem was that Charles was insanely jealous of one man.”

“May I guess? Hinton Landau.”

“Yes. Charles and I often had great, blazing rows over my costar.”

“And that was because you and Hinton were lovers?”

“No! The irony is that Hinton and I weren't lovers until the day of the murder.”

Thomas frowned. “Was jealousy the reason that poor young woman was killed? What was her name?”

“Florence Myers,” Althea said. “I will never forget that name. The truth is that we all had a motive for killing her. She was a slimy little snake of a thing. She had no talent for acting, but a great talent for lying and stealing other women's men. When you get down to it, I had a motive for killing her, since I'd seen her in bed with Charles.”

Thomas put his hand on Althea's. “Why don't you tell me all of it in order?”

Althea took a deep breath. “I've had years to go over this and none of it makes sense. It was a Saturday, the second day of the weekend, and there were a lot of people there—as there always were when Charles was at home. Hinton and I had just finished our third movie together, but other than in our scenes, we'd never touched each other, not even kissed in private. Although we'd done a lot of kissing, it was always with a camera aimed at us.”

She gave Thomas a crooked grin. “It wasn't because we were so strong and upright, it was because Hinton's vulture of a wife, Ruth, never left his side. He'd married her when he was just a kid, a nobody back in Texas, and he was fairly faithful to her.”

“Fairly,” Thomas said, smiling.

“What can I say? It was Hollywood. But, anyway, Ruth knew that he and I were in love.” Althea sighed. “But it was a chaste love. When we were off the set, we never touched, but she knew how we felt, so she waited until the right moment to get her revenge. That Saturday morning, Ruth came to me and said there was something I should see. She showed me that Charles and that woman, that Florence Myers, were lovers. When I saw what that slut and Charles were doing, I—”

“You
saw
them?”

“Charles's old house has peepholes everywhere. He was, and I'm sure
is
, the quintessential dirty old man. Ruth led me upstairs into the attic where I could look through one of the peepholes. I saw straight into Charles's bedroom, the one he and I often shared, and there he was with that little harlot, going at it like rabbits.”

Thomas put his hand on Althea's. Even after all these years she was still angry at the betrayal. “What happened after you saw Charles and Florence together?” Thomas asked quietly.

“Hell hath no fury…,” she said, then shrugged. “I have never been so angry in my life. There I was, in love with another man, but denying myself everything out of a sense of loyalty to Charles, and there he was in bed with that dreadful girl. And to add insult, she had on
my
new negligee, the one I'd bought in Paris.”

“So you went to Hinton.”

“Yes, I did. I'd been holding back out of respect for Charles and Hinton's wife, but after his betrayal and her nasty little trick of making sure that I saw what Charles was doing, I had no more respect for either of them. I went to Hinton, and let's just say that I didn't allow him to say no to me.” Althea smiled in memory. “It was the most wonderful afternoon of my life. Sex with love is much better than sex without it.”

“Yes, it is,” Thomas said, smiling. “So while you were with Hinton, that girl was murdered.”

“Yes. It happened sometime during the afternoon while Hinton and I were in the bedroom he shared with his wife. I know,” she said, putting up her hand. “That was a stupid thing to do, but neither of us was thinking clearly that day. It was pure, blind passion. Oh! How I miss that!”

“And at one point you and Hinton ended up under the bed.”

“We heard noises in the house and had no idea what was going on, but we'd been at it for about four hours, so by then we could hear them. An hour earlier and we wouldn't have been able to hear anything. When we heard the voices outside the bedroom door, we rolled under the bed.”

“And that's when Hinton's wife came into the room and put whatever under the floorboard?”

“Yes.”

“But she must have seen that the bed was messed up.” Thomas raised his eyebrows.

“Well,” Althea said slowly, “we didn't actually make it to the bed. It was more floor, desk, wall—”

“I remember those days,” Thomas said, smiling. “So you were hiding under the bed when she pried up the floorboard.”

“Actually, she lifted the board with her fingernails, so it must have been loose.”

“Interesting,” Thomas said. “But you didn't see what she put into the hole?”

“No, and after she left the room, Hinton and I got dressed in a hurry. He shoved me out the door that led into the bathroom, and he only had time to get his pants on before the cops burst into the room and put handcuffs on him.”

“Ah, yes. There was something of his at the crime scene.”

“The murder weapon, the knife, was his. It was a souvenir from the last movie he'd done. The whole country could identify that knife as his.”

Thomas was quiet for a moment. “Do you think that if Charles killed the poor girl that he'd put on a mystery weekend to try to find her murderer?”

“Why not? What if they did find out the truth? Do you think the police would believe what a house party guest told them about a very old murder? Besides, only Charles and I are still alive, so there'd be no one to prosecute. His guests are the ages of the original participants, and they wear period clothes.”

“And you're sending Cassie into this? Sweet, innocent Cassie?”

“Don't forget that Jeff will be with her,” Althea said.

“If she doesn't walk out the minute she sees him.”

“She won't,” Althea said. “Trust me.”

Thomas sipped his tea and thought for a moment. “So Cassie will be in period costume and she'll be…Who?”

“Me, of course.”

“And my son will be?”

“Hinton.”

“Ah, yes, the murderer.”

“Hinton is the only person besides me who I'm sure didn't kill anyone. He was in bed with me when the girl was stabbed.”

Thomas looked at her. “I don't remember reading about you in the book.”

“I wasn't in the book. Back then men were gentlemen and Hinton refused to sully my reputation. Besides, I was the only one who had enough money to pay for his lawyers. Minutes after Hinton was arrested, his wife cleaned out his bank accounts and moved back to Texas. That she didn't attend his trial hurt him a lot in the eyes of the American people. And Charles certainly wasn't going to help with the expenses, even though he used to tell the press that he was Hinton's best friend.”

“I can see why Charles wouldn't help. So you paid for everything. It must have cost you a lot.”

Althea shrugged. “Everything I had at the time. But Hinton didn't tell on me, so the least I could do was pay his fees. Poor man. He told me—through his lawyer—that he thought the publicity would make him a bigger star. I've always wondered if he actually believed that. No one outside the business knew it, and they somehow managed to keep it out of the papers, but the studio had just fired him.”

“I'm almost afraid to ask. Why did they fire him?”

“All I could find out was that Hinton had something in his past that was about to be exposed by a girl from his hometown. Whatever someone knew about him, the studio knew that if it made the press, his reputation as a lead actor would be destroyed.”