The Woman Who Fell From Grace (17 page)

“It sure is nice how everyone in the valley talks to everyone else.”

“He said you were trouble.” The old man looked me over with a practiced eye. “Don’t know. You look to me like about as much trouble as a tub of warm grits. Take off your jacket, son. You’ll sweat right through the material and stain it. Now what can I do for you? Something about this sequel to Alma’s book, you said?”

I stripped off my jacket. “Yes. The publisher wants me to write an introduction recalling the sensation it caused when it first came out. The making of the movie, Sterling Sloan’s death … ”

He puffed on his cigarette. “Ah, that business.”

“I understand you were there on the scene when he died.”

“I was.”

“I wondered if you could share some of your recollections with me.”

“Newspapers covered the hell out of it.” He moistened his thin lips. “You ought to go on over to the
News Leader
and go through their old issues. They give you any trouble, tell ’em I sent you. They’ll treat you right.”

“I’m not interested in what was reported,” I said. “I’m interested in what
happened
.”

He grinned at me. “Well, whatever you are you aren’t dumb.” He coughed, a deep, rumbling cough. “Okay. Sure. It’s the recent things I can’t remember, you know. Like what I had for dinner last night. But fifty years ago I can remember just fine. … Pork chops, mashed potatoes, and okra — that’s what I was eating at my desk the evening I got the call. Sent over from Joe’s Cafe across the street. They’re out of business now. Joe got himself killed in Korea. No wait, that was Joe Junior. Joe had a coronary and dropped dead.”

“The phone call … ?”

“Something about the movie folk over at the Woodrow Wilson,” he continued. “Quite some hotel in those days, it was. Fanciest place within fifty miles. Fine dining room, ballroom, orchestra. I headed on over there, none too happy about it. Those movie fellas, they’d been making my life miserable ever since they got here. I had no complaint with the performers. Or with all them boys and girls from the fan magazines and newsreels neither. They behaved themselves. It was the damned film crew, dozens of healthy young roughnecks with money in their pockets. Whole bunch were like sailors on leave, drinking, chasing local gals, getting in brawls with the local fellows over ’em. I was sick of the whole lot, even if they did bring money into the town. But I’d had no trouble with the actors, like I said. Until that evening. … The manager and house detective, fella called Lou Holt, met me right at the front door, all agitated, and said there was an emergency up in the Sloan-Barrett suite. Quite some suite it was, too. Living room. Two bedrooms. Very first thing I noticed when I got there was the beds in both rooms were mussed. Odd for a man and wife, I thought. What I mean is, I don’t believe the two of ’em slept together.” He coughed. “I don’t know if that’s the sort of recollection you’re interested in … ”

“Go right ahead.”

“Miss Barrett was standing there in some kind of flimsy dressing gown, without any makeup on. Or slippers. I remember she looked like a frail young girl standing there like that. She was a pretty thing, but no meat on her. Had the whitest little feet I’ve ever seen, like a baby girl’s. Seems they’d been dressing for some big party being thrown that night down in the ballroom to celebrate finishing up the filming. Seems he, Mr. Sloan that is, got himself a blinding headache while he was dressing. She had sent a bellhop out for some aspirins, but by the time he got up there with ’em the fella had collapsed.”

“Where was he?”

“On the sofa, unconscious. The doctor from the movie company, Dr. Toriello, was with him. Ambulance was on its way. But it was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to make it. He was breathing with great difficulty, huge gasps. Died just a minute or two after I got there.”

“Was anyone else in the room?”

Polk Two stubbed out his cigarette, thought it over. “The bellhop was still hanging around.”

“What was his name?”

“Don’t recall. Just some scrawny kid. I got rid of him.”

“Anyone else?”

“One other fellow came in, some sort of take-charge right-hand man of Mr. Goldwyn’s. Melnick. No, Melnitz. Seward Melnitz. One of those high-strung types, kept trying to boss me around. Telling me not to say a word to the press, not to let nobody in. Treated me like I was retarded or something.”

“He was probably just used to dealing with producers. No other witnesses?”

“If there were, they were gone by the time I got there.”

“I see. What happened then?”

“Well, since Toriello was from California, I had to get a local man up to sign the certificate of death. It was Doc Landis I called. Discreet, professional man. He got right over, came to the same diagnosis as Toriello — that some kind of bubble had burst in Sloan’s brain. After that the body was —”

“How?”

“Excuse me, son?”

“How did he arrive at his diagnosis?”

“Ah. Well, he asked Toriello a lot of questions. Don’t recall what they were. I do remember they talked about Sloan’s blood pressure. … ”

“What about it?”

“It dropped dramatically after he collapsed, Toriello said. Apparently that told them something. And they discussed Sloan’s symptoms of the previous few days. His headaches, way he’d been behaving … ”

“Did you get the feeling Landis thought Toriello was negligent?”

“No, sir,” replied Polk Two firmly. “Not at all.”

“Did he examine the body?”

“His eyeballs. He looked at Sloan’s eyeballs. Don’t ask me why.”

“To see if a pupil had dilated,” I said. “A brain aneurysm would compress the optic nerve of one eye, possibly both. Was there an autopsy?”

“No, sir, there wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“No reason to. The man died of natural causes. Medical men were satisfied.”

“How long had you been sheriff at the time?”

“Three, four years.”

“You’d been to a lot of death scenes, filed a lot of reports.”

“My share of ’em,” he acknowledged. “Yessir.”

“Did you get any sense that something funny was going on in that hotel room?”

He frowned. “Funny? I’m not following you, son.”

“That it wasn’t what they said it was.”

Polk Two reached for his cigarettes and lit one. “I’m still not following you, son,” he said, a little chillier this time.

“Sloan’s headaches, drowsiness, disorientation … And the collapse itself — loss of consciousness, severe drop in blood pressure, difficulty in breathing — all of it could point to an entirely different cause of death.”

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“Sloan was heavy into morphine. I think he died of an overdose.”

Polk Two didn’t react much. Just looked at the ash on his cigarette and tapped it carefully into an ashtray and took a puff and blew out the smoke. His blue eyes gave away nothing. “Doctors said it was an aneurysm,” he said quietly.

“Of course they did. Sloan was a major star. Ugly things like drug overdoses had a way of being prettied up for people like him. Is that what happened, Polk?”

Polk Two shook his head. “No offense, son, but I genuinely don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Was there a cover-up, Polk?”

“There was no such thing!” he fired back angrily. “I didn’t run this county that way. Or my district when I sat in Richmond. And I don’t like you coming here to my home and suggesting I did!”

“I’m trying to get at the truth.”

“You
got
the truth, boy. The man died there on the sofa from an aneurysm. I don’t know how I can make it any plainer.”

“Okay,” I said, backing off. “What happened then?”

“Body was removed to Hamrick’s funeral parlor over on Frederick Street. He was cremated there next day.”

“Quick, wasn’t it?”

He shrugged. “There was a certain desire on everyone’s part to get it over with. Town was so damned full of reporters, radio people, newsreel cameras — a real carnival-like atmosphere. Pretty ghoulish, you ask me. Miss Barrett, she took the ashes home to England for burial. Funeral service was held over there a few days later.”

I took my linen handkerchief out of my pocket and mopped my forehead and neck with it. “I understand your father was Alma Glaze’s lawyer.”

He scratched his chin. “That’s right.”

“Shortly before her death she had him draw up a codicil to her will that sealed her notes for
Sweet Land of Liberty
for fifty years. Any idea why she did it?”

“Daddy said she was getting pressured by Goldwyn. He wanted her to hurry up and write it so he could get himself another movie. She didn’t like the idea of being rushed, particularly by him. She detested the man.”

“Isn’t fifty years a little excessive?”

Polk Two chuckled. “Not if you knew Alma. That woman, she was
ornery
. Mavis is a pure pleasure compared to her mammy. It was about control, son. Alma was showing Goldwyn she was boss, not him, and she was rubbing his nose in it for good measure. That man simply was not going to make more millions off of her creation. Not as long as she was around, and not in the event of her death, either.”

“In the event of her death — meaning she expected to die?”

“We all expect to die, son.”

“But she was a relatively young woman. It seems like an extreme form of insurance to take, unless of course she had reason to believe she would the soon. Was she ill?”

“Not in the least. You had to know her. It was just Alma being Alma, sticking it to that Hollywood fella.”

“She was run over soon after that on Beverley Street.”

“That’s right. Just after the movie came out. Biggest money-maker in history, you know, until all those damned spaceship movies come along.” He coughed and shifted in his chair with no little effort. “It happened on a Saturday night, about eight o’clock.”

“Any idea what she was doing in town?”

“Kids said she told ’em she had some business to do. The three of them were home alone when it happened.”

“She was meeting someone on business at that hour?”

“I never did buy that myself,” he confessed. “I figured maybe she had herself a fella in town. Didn’t much matter. She was dead was all that mattered. Run down while she crossed the street. Some fool ran the traffic light.”

“You never found out who?”

He got defensive. “I made some progress. Had the make and color of the car from a witness. A car matching it turned up ditched on the outskirts of town next morning, blood on the fender, seats and floorboard reeking of cheap whiskey. Had been reported stolen from an old lady’s driveway an hour or so before Alma was hit. I figured it was a couple of local boys having themselves a toot before they headed off to the Pacific to get their poor dumb asses shot off. I followed up. Had my eye on a particular pair of young hotheads, but they’d gone overseas by the time I got on to ’em. And they never made it back. So I reckon justice was done, in its own way.”

“There must have been a lot of pressure on you to catch them.”

“There was indeed. Alma was an institution here.”

“Any chance her death was something other than an accident?”

He peered at me intently from behind his heavy glasses. Then he chuckled and shook his head in amazement. “Son, you’re not interested in the truth one bit. You’re looking to spin wild yarns for the funny papers.”

“I’m looking to figure out why Fern O’Baugh died the other day.”

“Fell down a flight of stairs, I heard,” he said mildly.

“Yeah. Lots of accidents seem to happen in this place.”

“It’s a place like any other,” he said, grinning. “A little nicer, if you ask me.”

A car pulled up outside, and someone got out. Lulu started barking from the porch. She has a mighty big bark for someone with no legs.

“That’ll be Polk Four, I reckon.” Polk Two lifted the window shade and glanced outside. “Making friends with your pup. Always has been good with animals. Yessir, that boy’s just naturally likable.”

“So I’m told.” I got to my feet. “I won’t keep you any longer, sir.”

He started to struggle up out of his chair.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” I insisted. “Thank you for your time.”

“My pleasure, son,” he said, easing back down. “Helped fill the day. Retirement’s a lousy deal. Better off if you die young.”

“I’ll do my best.” I went outside, closed the front door, and stood there on the porch inhaling the fresh air and watching Lulu and Polk Four. I counted to ten before I hurried back inside.

The old man was on the phone. He panicked when he saw me, slammed it down, red-faced.

“Sorry,” I said. “Forgot my hat.” I plucked my cap off the arm of the easy chair and grinned at him. “Like I said, it sure is nice how everyone in the valley talks to everyone else.”

Polk Four was scratching Lulus tummy out on the thick grass by the mailbox. She was on her back, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. She’d fallen for him. What can I say — she happened to be vulnerable right now.

When Polk Four saw me, he stood to his full height and smoothed the wrinkles in his khaki trousers — not that there were any. “Pretty car,” he said, gazing at the Jag.

“It is,” I agreed.

“Yours?”

“My ex-wife’s.”

“So you’re divorced?”

“We are but we aren’t.”

He frowned, puzzled. “What does that mean exactly?”

“It means we’re both mad as hatters,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”

He adjusted his troopers hat. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re attempting to ruin my life.”

“I wasn’t aware that’s what I was doing, Sheriff.”

“Mercy called me first thing this morning,” he revealed darkly.

“Oh?”

“Said she had something very important to tell me.” He narrowed his alert blue eyes at me. “Any idea what it was?”

I tugged at my ear. “None.”

“She’s decided to go to Europe for a year when she graduates in June. She said she wants to experience life on her own.

“No kidding.”

“No kidding.” He clenched and unclenched his jaw. “She said it was your idea.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Sheriff. I simply told her that’s what I did when I was her age.”

He crossed his arms. “I don’t appreciate this at all, Mr. Hoag, you filling her head with crazy ideas.”