by Tim Ellis
‘Did you know about Katie going to a party last night?’
‘I’m a reporter. It’s a well-known fact that reporters admit to knowing nothing.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘I’m not a police informer.’
‘No, but you’re meant to be Katie’s friend. She was drugged and who knows what else happened to her last night.’
‘I did warn her.’
‘And that’s your get-out of jail free card, is it?’
‘She’s a big girl now. And even if I’d told you, what would you have done?’
‘Stopped her from going.’
‘I would like to have seen that. She was going to go to that party whether you knew she was going or not.’
‘I could have been there.’
‘I repeat: And done what? You’re in no physical condition to have done anything.’
He wasn’t going to win the argument. ‘Do you know the identity of the victim yet?’
‘No. What about you?’
‘I have people working on it. Any idea where I might find the relatives of Trent Duncan?’
‘The dead silent movie director?’
‘Yes.’
‘Apart from the fact that this is the Herald-Express, not central records at City Hall, why do you want to know?’
‘I’ll tell you on Monday night.’
‘You’d better.’
He heard shuffling, a long period of silence and then, ‘Erik?’
‘Yes?’
‘He left a wife and two adult children. His wife lives at 2105 West Shoreline Drive in Long Beach.’
‘Thanks. Also, a silent movie star called Jeanne Taylor was found dead in Harbour Regional Park on Sunday, February 10, 1916, she’d been raped and strangled.’
‘The original crime that Doctor Caplan was talking about?’
‘Yes. I tell you that in confidence to demonstrate that you can trust me. It’s not for public consumption yet.’
‘Understood.’
‘Also, I’d like a copy of the original newspaper report of the murder if you can find it. I’m hoping there’ll be pictures of her son Anthony, who was with his mother and saw what happened from his hiding place in the bushes; and the artist’s impression of the killer based on the boy’s detailed description that he provided to the police.’
‘This is not the newspaper archives either.’
‘If you could drop it off at Katie’s tonight, that would be great.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the party, Erik. Maybe I should have done, but she had Don Carroll with her, didn’t she?’
‘Sitting in his car outside. No one was keeping her safe inside the house.’
‘You couldn’t have done that either.’
‘I probably could have made arrangements had I known.’
‘That Sam Rich is a douche bag.’
‘On that we can both agree. You say you’re writing about this morning’s murder . . .?’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t include anything we’ve been discussing in our little cabal. But just remember that when we get to the end of this thing, I can make you appear as a hero or a villain, so don’t screw me over on the scoop.’
‘It’s always a pleasure talking to you, Mrs Linton.’
He put the phone down.
If the Lieutenant ever found out that he was part of a “little cabal” he wouldn’t stay a Sergeant – or for that matter a police officer – for very long.
On the board he wrote what Carl had discovered about Jeanne Taylor and her son Anthony; the possible link to Trent Duncan as Anthony’s father and the surviving Duncan family’s address in Long Beach.
Carl came off the phone.
‘Well?’ Erik said.
‘The woman on the switchboard is trying to find the number for me.’
Erik tapped the board. ‘I’m going to Long Beach to speak to Duncan’s wife.’
‘Have a nice trip. See you later.’
‘Yes.’
He made his way down to the lobby in the elevator and walked outside. The weather was warm. It would take him about an hour to reach Long Beach, so he folded down the roof of the Mercury and climbed into the driver’s seat. It’d be a good run out for the car after so long in mothballs.
***
Weekends had been good at the farm in Kettle River. Not so much after her mom had died, but once she’d got used to the mom-sized hole in her life it became bearable. She’d learned how to look after Annie, to clean and take care of the house, and to cook. Just like her mom, she loved to cook. Her mom had always wanted to be a teacher, but after marrying her dad when she was just fifteen years old she’d never got the chance. And then, when God had seen fit to give her mom brain cancer, she knew she’d never realise that ambition. It was the main reason why Katie had gone to university and become an elementary school teacher of history. Oh, she’d enjoyed her job all right, but it was her mother’s job, not hers. She’d fulfilled her mother’s ambition; she was living her mother’s life.
But what did Katie want to be? What did Katie really want to do with her life? She had no idea. She’d spent so long missing her mom that Katie’s dreams and ambitions had been swallowed up whole.
Well, now she had the opportunity to think about the rest of her life. It would be too easy to let life lead her along by the nose. She’d fall into marriage, have children, lead an unfulfilled life and then the next thing was she’d be regretting so many missed opportunities and her life would be over. No, she couldn’t let that happen. What did she want to do with the rest of her life?
Soon, she had no doubt, they’d catch Annie’s killer. What would she do with her life then? She was co-authoring an academic paper with Howard Caplan, but that was merely a notch on her gun. Being an academic wasn’t something she wanted to do. She’d had her taste of academic life and although she enjoyed it, she needed more. She certainly didn’t want to be an actress, but then the actress in her had failed to materialise when it’d had the opportunity, so maybe she just wasn’t cut out to be an actress.
‘Stop here,’ she called to the taxi driver as they approached Ralph’s General Store.
‘George Washington Heights is further along the road, lady.’
‘I need some groceries.’
‘Do you want me to wait?’
‘I’ll walk, it’s not far.’
‘That’ll be fifteen bucks then.’
She gave him a twenty. ‘Keep the change.’
‘Much obliged.’
She climbed out of the cab and walked into the store. Once she’d completed her shopping and paid the shopkeeper for the items, she made her way towards the door, but then a poster on the wall caught her eye:
WANTED
Women Police Officers
for the
Los Angeles Police Department
Interested?
Apply today!
A police officer! Is that what she was meant to be? It wouldn’t be easy. In fact, she had no doubt it would be extraordinarily hard, but it was something she hadn’t considered before.
‘You’re too pretty to be a police officer, lady,’ the rotund man who had served her said.
Her brow furrowed. ‘I can be ugly when I need to be.’
He looked her up and down. ‘No, I don’t believe that,’ he said, and walked away.
Surely, being ugly wasn’t a prerequisite for the job, was it?’
She recalled Eliza Linton asking her if they were letting women work as detectives now – were they? She could be a detective. She was proving that now. She’d have to ask Eric about the possibility of becoming a homicide detective the next time she saw him.
In her apartment she made herself a lunch of split pea soup with ham and a few slices of warm crusty bread. Her dad used to love her homemade country soups that she made with the vegetables they’d grown in her mum’s vegetable plot behind the house.
After she’d eaten and washed up, she sat on the sofa and st
ared at the pin boards. Offering herself up as bait hadn’t worked. In fact, with hindsight, it was a stupid idea. Erik had been right. She should have listened to him. How many times had she said that after she’d got herself into trouble? Lots of times. She always thought she knew best, and most of the time she did. Sometimes though, sometimes other people knew best, but recognising those times was a recurring problem.
Her teachers had called her “headstrong”, but that wasn’t even a word she understood. Her dad had said she was as “stubborn as a mule”, which she was. But she liked to think of herself as “determined”, “decisive” and “strong-willed”. Once she’d set her mind on a course of action, she was going to do it come hell or high water. Her mom had called her “pig-headed”, “obstinate” and “wilful”. She guessed she was all of those things. Hadn’t she taken the place of her mom by looking after Annie, her dad and the house? Hadn’t she finished school? Hadn’t she gone to university and got herself a degree? Hadn’t she become an elementary school teacher? Hadn’t she sold the farm and travelled here to Los Angeles to find Annie’s killer? And finding Annie’s killer was exactly what she was going to do regardless of what other people thought.
***
The Mediterranean-style house at 2105 West Shoreline Drive in Long Beach was painted beige on the outside, had arched windows with fan-like internal shutters and a double garage to the side. He was obviously in the wrong job.
He banged on the heavy wooden door with the heel of his right hand and waited.
Eventually, a woman in her late fifties with grey hair wearing a flowing exotically-coloured kaftan appeared.
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Isabelle Duncan?’
‘I am she.’
He showed her his gold badge. ‘Sergeant Urban from the Homicide Division.’
‘Has somebody been murdered?’
‘Do you mind if I come in and sit down?’
‘Are you ill?’
‘Have been, but I’m on the mend.’
‘It’s not catching, is it?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Go through to the patio and sit by the pool. Some of the hard stuff or lemonade?’
‘Lemonade,’ he said, shuffling along the hallway. ‘Never been much of a drinker.’
‘Unlike my late husband. Drank like a fish. That’s what killed him – liver failure.’
There was a table and chairs, a lounger and a large umbrella by a small pool. The patio was intimate but private, surrounded on three sides with walls that had ivy growing up them and lush overhanging baobab trees. He sat down on one of the chairs at the table, but he could just as easily have lay down on the lounger and fallen asleep. If he’d done that though, he guessed Mrs Duncan might have taken issue, because there was a little table by the side of the lounger with an upturned half-read book called Cannery Row by John Steinbeck and a tall half-filled glass sitting on it.
Mrs Duncan reappeared with a full glass in one hand and a jug in the other.
‘It’s warm today. I should imagine that being a homicide detective is thirsty work.’
‘Can be.’ He took a swallow of the cloudy lemonade. ‘Very nice.’
‘I make it myself. Help yourself to more if you want to.’
‘Thank you.’
She stretched herself out on the lounger. ‘So, Sergeant Urban from the Homicide Division, what brings you all the way out here?’
‘Jeanne Taylor.’
‘Mmmm! I guessed as much.’
‘Why?’
‘Because at one time, the police thought my husband had murdered her.’
‘I have one of my men trying to locate the original police file on her murder, so I’m not familiar with the contents of that file yet. Could you tell me what happened?’
‘Jeanne Taylor was sixteen and very beautiful, and I was well aware of the rumours about her and my husband when I met him, but he swore to me that they were completely untrue. He’d directed her in two or three of the early silent movies in Fort Lee, New Jersey and she’d become infatuated and obsessed with him. He explained to her that he didn’t feel the same way and she seemed to accept that. However, shortly afterwards, when Hollywood began to be recognised as the movie capital of America, Trent came to Los Angeles. Jeanne Taylor followed him here with a young boy in tow saying that Trent was the boy’s father. Of course he denied it, said he’d never even slept with her, but she was adamant the boy was his. Then, she was raped and strangled in Harbour Regional Park. The police arrested Trent for her murder because according to them he had the most to gain from her death, but even though he didn’t have an alibi, there wasn’t a shred of evidence he’d killed her either, so they had no choice but to release him.’
‘What did you think?’
She shrugged. ‘I met Trent about six months later. If he was carrying around the guilt of murdering the mother of his child, I think I would have known, but they say that the wife is always the last to find out, don’t they? In all the years we were together he never laid a hand on me, and as far as I know he never strayed.’
‘Were you an actress?’
She laughed. ‘No, I haven’t got an acting bone in my body. I was a waitress in a restaurant. He said he fell in love with me while I was serving the canapes. What girl could refuse such a confession. Within nine months we were married and eighteen months later I had the twins.’
‘Did you know that Jeanne Taylor’s son saw his mother being murdered?’
‘Yes, it was in all the papers at the time.’
‘He also provided the police sketch artist with a detailed description of her killer as well – did you ever see that?’
‘No. I’d heard that there was a picture, but I never saw it.’
‘It wasn’t in the newspapers?’
‘Not that I ever saw.’
‘How strange.’
‘What I can say is this: If the description had resembled my husband, then the police would have had justification to charge him with murder, but instead they released him. To me, that proved he was innocent.’
‘Do you have a photograph of your husband from around that time?’
‘Well look, if I go and find a photograph and then come back, will you want to ask me any more questions? I only ask, because all this getting up and sitting back down again is not good for my grumbling lumbago.’
‘No, I don’t think I have any more questions.’
‘Okay, well you can come with me, wait at the front door while I get the photograph and then I’ll see you out.’
He finished his second glass of lemonade, pushed himself up, followed Mrs Duncan through the house and waited by the front door as instructed.
She came back after a handful of minutes and held out a black and white photograph of a stern looking man in his early thirties with dark hair, thin lips and a thick neck. ‘That’s Trent.’
‘Thank you. And thank you for agreeing to see me.’
‘You never said why you wanted to know about Jeanne Taylor’s murder, Sergeant.’
‘We’re trying to find her son.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking why, is there?’
‘No.’
‘Goodbye, Sergeant.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Duncan.’
She closed the door behind him even before he’d walked two paces towards the car.
If the police were searching for a killer, then the only witness’s description of that killer should have been in every LA newspaper asking if anyone knew who the person might be – why wasn’t it? Was the killer Trent Duncan? Had he paid people to lose that description, which would have tied him inexorably to the crime?
Chapter Nineteen
The drug they’d put in her champagne at the party had ruined her beauty sleep. As soon as she stopped moving and sat down on the sofa to stare at the pin-boards, her eyelids became as heavy as lead weights and she fell asleep.
It was only the sound of someone knocking on the door that
forced her to open her eyes.
The clock on the wall displayed four-thirty. She’d been asleep for over an hour.
‘Who is it?’ she called when she reached the door.
‘Eliza.’
Katie let the journalist in. Her head was still a bit woolly. ‘We don’t have a meeting planned for tonight, do we?’
Eliza took off her coat and hung it up on a wall peg. ‘Erik wanted me to drop something off for him.’
‘What’s wrong with you dropping it off at Ruby’s? That is where he lives now.’
‘He said to drop it off here.’
‘So, he’ll be coming here, will he? Is that what you mean?’
‘That’s my understanding. Oh, and he knows you went to the party last night and what happened.’
‘How did he find out?’
‘I don’t know, but he is a detective.’
‘What did he say?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Oh well! It’s not as if he’s my father or my husband, is it? He has no control over what I do and don’t do. I’ll tell him he was right about everything anyway. Acting as bait was a stupid idea. I know nothing about being an actress.’
‘Was last night bad?’
‘I was nearly raped – front and back. I was lucky to get out of there with my honour intact.’
‘Goodness. Well, I don’t want to say, “I told you so”, but . . .’
‘Yes, I know. Well, I’ve learned my lesson, so Erik will be preaching to the converted when he gets here. Where are my manners? Can I get you a drink?’
‘No, I’m fine thanks.’
‘What did Erik want you to bring over for him?’
‘An old newspaper article from February, 1916, about the murder of silent movie star Jeanne Taylor in Harbour Regional Park.’
‘He found the original murder?’
‘Yes. And her six year-old son Anthony was there with her hiding in the bushes and saw his mother being raped and murdered. He was able to provide a police sketch artist a description of the killer.’