by Ava Barry
In the back section of the satchel was a notebook, most of which was waterlogged and stuck with mold. I coughed as a few spores drifted up through the air, and then found a book stuffed in one of the pockets. It was Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
I turned the satchel over again to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything, and noticed that there was some writing on the inside flap. Theo is a big fat jerk! it read. The writing was faded and slightly blurred. It was only a small consolation to know that the satchel did, indeed, belong to Theo.
The notebook proved mostly worthless, since all the pages were fused together. They fell apart when I tried to unstick them. The writing was completely washed away by the years and whatever moisture had gotten to the satchel.
Disappointed, I turned my attention to the copy of Ethan Frome. The pages were stuck together there, too, but with the aid of a letter opener, I managed to slide some of them apart. A photograph fell onto my desk, and I picked it up.
In the photo were a man and a woman, dancing in front of a row of buildings. He was ducking his head and grinning, and her back was to the camera, but I could tell by their pose that they weren’t very good dancers; they were just doing it for fun. The buildings in the background were cream-colored Victorian terrace houses, with lace curtains in the windows and a rocking chair on each porch. Blue hydrangeas lined the sidewalk in front of the houses, and in the background, an old woman peered at the two dancers. They didn’t seem to know that their photograph was being taken.
The photo was old and square, faded, probably taken sometime in the ’60s. I made a mental note to ask Marty if he recognized the type of camera that had been used, and when it might have been taken. The lens must have been damaged; in the upper right-hand corner of the photograph, was a small mark like a crooked, backward J.
I turned the photo over and saw that someone had scrawled a quick phrase in blue ink: Lucy’s with Connie. Beneath that, a serial strip of letters and numbers that read 021664GFNVT. There was nothing else to elucidate the identity of the dancers, or where the photo might have been taken.
I flipped the photo over and stared hard at the man. With a shock, I realized that I was looking at Theo. He was much older than he had been in other photographs that I had seen, but then again, all the other pictures had been taken before the murder and resulting trial. His skin was tanned and lined, but the smile was unmistakable.
The woman was harder to make out, since I couldn’t see her face. She was as tall as Theo, but whether that was the result of genetics or high heels was impossible to say: the photo cut off the dancers at mid-thigh. Her dark hair was pinned at the base of her neck and she wore a multicolored dress.
Connie. Could have been short for Constance, or Consuela. Regardless, it was impossible to say if she had anything to do with Eleanor’s murder, because she could have been someone Theo had met after leaving Los Angeles.
The satchel and its contents had a mild amount of interest, but without a bloody murder weapon, as Thierry had suggested at Kent’s, I was no better off than I was before. I left everything on my desk, then turned off the lights in the office. After a moment’s hesitation, I went back and grabbed the photograph of Theo and Connie.
The dregs of a bottle of Jameson sat on my kitchen counter. I looked at the bottle for a long, hard moment, then grabbed it, too, and took it into my bedroom.
The first shot burned, and the second warmed my chest. I felt magnanimous and numb, the way I usually did with alcohol. After sitting on the edge of my bed for a moment and staring into space, I took out my phone.
I had looked at Leland’s phone number so many times that I had committed it to memory. If he ever did call me, I would probably be too wracked with anxiety to answer it, but now, edged toward comfortable alcoholic numbness, I wasn’t afraid. For a moment, I thought about emailing Theo directly, but he hadn’t responded to my last email, so I decided to text Leland, instead.
I want to talk about Connie, I typed. Tell Theo I know. I thought about sending him a picture of the photograph, but then decided against it.
The message sat there for a moment, innocuous and disposable, and then I hit “send.”
* * *
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because my dreams were gently interspersed with the sounds of harps, strings, and then a plaintive trumpet. Jerry Goldsmith’s theme from Chinatown; it was my ringtone. I blinked awake and rolled over and found my phone under my bed. The call was from a private number. My heart jumped. I knew it must be Leland. I picked up.
“Are you ready to talk?” I asked.
“Have you found him yet?” It was a woman’s voice, one that was vaguely familiar.
“Found who?” I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. The smell of mildew had crept into my bedroom, and the cold had seeped in under the door. “Who is this?”
“Have you found Theo yet?” the voice said impatiently. There was something pleasing about the way she spoke, husky with rounded sibilance. I couldn’t place it, but I knew that I had heard it somewhere, like seeing a bit actor in a film. “You are still looking for him, aren’t you?”
“Tell me how I know you.”
“Never mind about me,” she said. “Tell me if you’ve found Theo.”
“Is this Connie?”
“What?”
“I’m not in the mood for playing games,” I said. I glanced at my watch. “It’s past one in the morning. Good night.”
I hung up. A moment later, my phone began to ring again.
“Listen to me, Mr. Hailey,” the same woman said, and I could hear the taut wire in her voice. “This question happens to be worth a lot of money to me. I know that you’re about to lose your job, and your house is in a bad state of disrepair.”
I sat up.
“Do I have your attention now?”
“If you were trying to threaten me, you’d come directly to my house,” I said.
“I already did,” she said, then laughed. “I stopped by earlier, but you weren’t home. If I were trying to threaten you, believe me, you’d know it.”
“What do you want?”
“I can answer some of your questions,” she said. “Theo is back, for one. You’re not going to find him by buying up his old junk.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Have you been following me?”
“I can tell you how he’s connected to all those dead girls. Have you found out who Ben is?”
“Look, I’m done—”
“I can pay you for your time, but I need to know if you’re worth the investment. Now, have you found Theo?”
“What makes you think I’m interested in working for you?”
She cleared her throat. “Your house is falling apart,” she said. “And you’re about to lose your job. I believe I already mentioned that.”
“Good night,” I said again.
Before I could hang up, she said, “I have something you want. You’re certainly not going to find it by speaking to amateur collectors.”
“I’m about to hang up,” I said. “You’d better get to the point.”
“I have the journals,” she said. “The reason that Theo’s trial was thrown. You do remember them, don’t you? The prosecution broke into Theo’s house to find them. They can tell you everything you want to know.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, but I could feel my heart rate accelerating.
“Suit yourself,” she said. “Half-rate journalists are a dime a dozen in this city.”
She hung up.
* * *
The next morning, I woke up with a sour taste in my mouth. Weak daylight filtered in through the window, and I mentally replayed the conversation with the anonymous woman. I found my phone and checked to see if there were any messages from Leland, but there was nothing.
I dragged myself out of bed and padded into the kitchen, blinking sleep away. I pulled out the Atomic and scooped coffee into it, then put it on the stovetop and rubbed my eyes. When the coffee
was ready, I diluted it with cold milk, then drank it in one quick jolt. The vines creeping in through the ceiling looked healthier than they had the last time I had checked, and I briefly contemplated the merits of growing a garden in my attic.
When I was feeling more awake, I turned around to grab something from the fridge, and then I saw it sitting on the counter.
My kitchen was always tidy, roof deterioration aside. If anything had been sitting on my counter the previous evening, I certainly would have noticed it, especially if that something was an expensive bottle of whiskey.
I crossed the kitchen and picked up the bottle, turning it to examine the label. Macallan whiskey, aged twenty-five years, unopened. Underneath the bottle was an envelope of thick, expensive parchment, embossed with a return address in Pasadena. I slipped it open and found a single sheet of paper inside.
I know about the film you stole from that magician, Max. He’s planning to press charges, but I’ve convinced him to let me speak to you first. I have something else that you want instead.
We want the same thing. Meet me at my house on Tuesday, at 11 a.m.
Heather
I flipped the envelope and studied the return address, then turned on my computer and searched for it. The satellite image showed a sprawling Spanish mansion on about three acres, protected by a high, smooth wall.
After a moment of consideration, I went back to Google and searched for “Spanish colonial estates in Pasadena.” I scrolled through the results until I spotted the house from the satellite image, then clicked on the article.
Annesley presides over Sausalito Avenue in Pasadena, read the caption. “Built as a summer house for the DeMille family in 1914, the stately home has retained its original charm even as the town evolved around it.”
I assumed the bottle and note had come from the woman on the phone. Could she be a descendant of Cecil B. DeMille?
I was stumped for a minute, and then I had a different idea. I searched for “Annesley” and “Pasadena,” and this time, I hit pay dirt.
Heather Engel-Feeny hosts a black-tie gala at her estate, Annesley; Hollywood elite attend, began one article. I clicked on the link, which took me to Vanity Fair. The party was an exclusive affair to raise money for the J. Paul Getty Trust, of which Heather was an executive chair.
I couldn’t help feeling impressed, but the pictures gave me no indication of who Heather was, or why she might want to talk to me about Theo. All of her guests were the power brokers of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the top-tier financial executives, art dealers, influential architects, and movie producers.
I finally found a picture of Heather herself and stopped to study her face. She was an attractive redhead who looked like she might be in her early sixties, but she had an unnaturally smooth complexion. In one photo she spoke to Tim Roth; in another, she smiled and spoke to a man with silver hair, whom the caption identified as developer Linus Warren. I spent an hour reading up on some of the other guests who were at the party.
When I finished clicking through the Vanity Fair gallery, I went back to the search bar to see what else I could find out about Heather.
The next article showed some more of Heather’s humanitarian work, but the third article indicated that she had recently fought against a Los Angeles County proposition that prevented one person from buying multiple historic homes in a certain period.
Historic homes. Bingo. I picked up the phone and called Madeleine.
“It’s early,” she said.
“I know you don’t sleep. Have you ever heard of Heather Engel-Feeny?”
“Yes!” she said. “She’s a legend. Why do you ask?”
“What do you think of her? Dark and ominous? Vaguely threatening?”
“No, not at all,” she said, perplexed. “She’s kind of a hero around the office. I’ve never met her, but she does some great stuff. Lots of preservation work.”
I thought for a minute. “You think she’s the type of person to pick a number from the phone book at random, and fuck with whoever picked up?”
“I’m at work. Is there something you need?”
“You said Heather’s a legend,” I said. “How’d you like to meet her?”
“Are you interviewing her for the Lens?” Madeleine sounded dubious. “That seems… beneath her.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. But no. One more question—does she have any connections to the film industry?”
“She’s the head of a huge charity,” Madeleine said. “She works with a lot of celebrities.”
“Anything else?”
“She might have gotten her start working in film,” she said. “No idea. Hey, I have to go. Call me when you meet up with her.”
“Will do.”
After hanging up with Madeleine, I went to the J. Paul Getty Trust website and found a page with Heather’s biography and background information. Descended from Hollywood royalty, Heather is intimately familiar with the history and rich cultural background of Los Angeles. Her family was one of the first families to arrive in Los Angeles, back in the days when Hollywood was nothing more than a cluster of farmhouses among the orange groves…
The pieces were starting to fall into place, and I had a feeling that I knew what I was going to find before I got there. It only took a few more minutes of searching through websites for me to find the name of her parents: “Heather Engel-Feeny was born to Norma Lisbon and Reuben Engel.”
I stopped reading, because I had made the last connection between Heather and Theodore Langley. Reuben Engel had been the producer in charge of Last Train to Avalon, and he had worked with Theo on a number of other movies, as well. His name hadn’t endured in the way of Lang or Hitchcock, but I had always been a fan. He and Theo had been a team for years, like Wilder and Diamond, making a slew of successful films.
Most people who remembered Engel’s name in the present day remembered him for something else, though: in the end, he had stood on the witness stand for the prosecution, declaring that Theo was absolutely, irrevocably guilty.
As I studied Heather’s image and wondered where I might have heard her voice before, it came back to me. Her voice had been the one I heard on the radio, weighing in about how Theodore Langley had killed those girls.
EIGHT
It was Monday morning, which used to be reserved for our weekly pitch meetings. When Ford was still editor in chief, pitch meetings had been a lot of fun. The Lens staff would sit around and debate conspiracy theories for hours, talking about unsolved murders and weird mysteries. Ever since Brian had taken over, however, things had soured a bit. Instead of listening to writers pitch their stories, we’d all sit around and listen to Brian detail his weekend activities, and then there would be a fifteen-minute freestyle session (Brian versus Brian), where he would try to remember the names of various people he had partied with.
“We ended up at a mansion in Venice,” Brian had said during the last week’s meeting. “There was a hot tub on the roof. The place was massive—the guy who owned it was one of the founders of Yahoo! I was so wasted, I spent the whole night throwing up over the side of the roof. Thank God Venice is built along canals, right?”
After confirming Heather’s identity, I had grabbed the stack of notes that I had already compiled on Theo, then got in my car and drove to Hollywood. When I got to the office, I ran up the stairs to the second floor, then burst through the door, into the office.
Petra looked up from the secretary desk, and her eyes widened.
“They’re waiting for you.”
“Wait, what? Who’s waiting for me?”
“Alexa and Brian,” she said. “Ford’s here, too. They’re all in Brian’s office.”
“Do you know what it’s about?”
“No idea.”
I made my way down the hallway, and knocked on Brian’s door but didn’t wait for a response. I opened the door and stepped inside to find Brian and Ford, and across from them, the one and only Alexa Levine.
“Fo
rd,” I said, catching my breath. I was sweating from my run up the stairs. “What are you doing here?”
“Hailey,” Ford said, smiling. “Take a seat.”
Alexa turned to look at me, her expression neutral. It was unreal to see her sitting ten feet away from me, the same high cheekbones and hooked nose, the sharp eyes I had seen in all of her photos. Her dark hair was pinned back, but I could see a few streaks of gray. She wore no makeup, and she looked just as distinguished and fierce as I had always imagined her to be.
“Ms. Levine, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, walking across the room and offering her my hand. “My name is Max Hailey.”
There was an awkward moment, and I realized that they were all waiting for me to sit down. I took a chair next to Brian.
“I want to talk about Theodore Langley,” Alexa said. “Brian said you have some information about him.”
I tried to remember everything I had told Brian.
“Is Theo back in town?” Alexa prompted.
“I have reason to believe so.”
“What reason is that?”
I didn’t want to mention the fact that I had stolen Leland’s phone. “His lawyer is in town,” I said.
“Leland Bates?” Ford asked.
“Yes,” I said, perplexed. “How did you know that?”
“Brian has been doing some research on his own,” Ford said. “He’s put together a few theories.”
“I’m going to write about the dead girls,” Brian said. “I’ve already met with the father of the dead art student. He’s pissed off, as you can imagine. He wants Windhall to be torn to the ground.”
“Alexa,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’d like to write about Theo.”