Not a Girl Detective

by Susan Kandel

  Andrew lived above a mom-and-pop grocery store at the top of a terraced complex facing Echo Park Lake. Anywhere but L.A., Echo Park Lake would have qualified as a mirage—a shimmering body of water right in the middle of a working-class community. On sunny days you could find families picnicking along the shore, vendors selling blow-up toys and shaved ice, and lovers paddling among the lotuses. After dusk, however, the gangs owned the place. It had one of those stratospheric murder rates, which wasn’t exactly soothing my frayed nerves.

  We parked the car in the garage around the side, walked back to the front, which was decrepit by anybody’s standards, and up four short flights of stairs. We didn’t say a word to each other until we were at his front door. We looked at the peeling paint, beneath which was more peeling paint. Finally, Andrew turned to me.

  “Please don’t tell Bridget about this.”

  “Andrew, I can’t promise you anything.”

  “This has nothing to do with her. But I couldn’t turn my back on a friend.”

  “Let’s talk about it later, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We went inside.

  “Hey.” Jake was sitting on the couch, his hands folded in his lap. He looked suspiciously like a choir-boy, except for the shirt unbuttoned to his waist. Force of habit, I guess. A liar, I’d have no trouble believing; a murderer, I didn’t know. I didn’t think so.

  “So I’m here,” I said, crossing my arms. “What did you want to say to me?”

  “Andrew, shouldn’t we offer Cece something to drink?”

  “This isn’t a party.”

  “What about your dog?”

  “He’s fine, too.” Buster was uncharacteristically quiet. I picked him up. “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  “I haven’t been a model citizen. But everybody’s entitled to a past.”

  “True enough.” What exactly did Bridget know about Andrew’s past?

  “Please. Sit down.”

  I took a seat next to him and held Buster in my lap. “If you’re innocent, you shouldn’t have anything to hide.”

  “Don’t you have anything you want to hide?”

  “This isn’t about me, Jake.”

  “Tell her about Mitchell,” prompted Andrew.

  “I know he’s a hothead,” I interrupted. “I’ve been on the receiving end, and I’ve only met him once.”

  “He hates me,” Jake said. “He’s jealous of what I had with Edgar.”

  “Which was?”

  “A relationship, not that Mitchell would know anything about relationships. Also, Edgar was my patron, I guess you’d call it. I’m really a sculptor. I’ve been in two group shows. I’m trying to arrange another one. My work is really taking off.” Jake chewed on his lower lip. “We’d been fighting a lot.”

  “Who? You and Mitchell?”

  “That, too, but I meant me and Edgar.”

  “About what?”

  “Nothing. I don’t even remember what.”

  “Did Mitchell know?”

  “Mitchell thinks he knows everything.”

  That had the ring of truth.

  “I’m sorry, but I still don’t get it.”

  “Sleazy hustler kills older lover before gravy train runs out. I know that’s what he’s been telling the police.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. Why would you kill him if he was your meal ticket?”

  “He wasn’t my meal ticket. We loved each other.”

  “Well, can’t you just explain that to the police? Why should they believe the dirt Mitchell’s spewing?”

  “Mitchell doesn’t know this, but Edgar and I saw a lawyer together.”

  “So?”

  “The guy specializes in estate planning.”

  Then I got it.

  He let out a sigh. “I realize it looks bad.”

  “Did he leave you everything?”

  Jake was handsome all right, but Edgar was no fool. Still, love can mess you up.

  “I don’t know what he ultimately decided. But I know what everybody’s going to think.”

  What was I doing here? “Let’s say you didn’t kill him.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then who did?”

  He shrugged.

  “You must have seen something. You were there that night. I saw your pants.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Look, I was there earlier that morning. But like I said, Edgar and I were arguing, so I left. I went to see a friend. By the time I came back, the police were all over the house. I didn’t think. I just ran.”

  “Well, where’s your friend? He’s your alibi.”

  “I don’t know.” He looked sheepish. “We’re not all that well acquainted.”

  Oh, god. “So what can I do?”

  “You can figure it out.”

  I shook my head.

  “For Edgar, Cece.”

  I turned to Andrew, who had pretty much said nothing since bringing me here. “I don’t have the slightest idea how to figure it out, Andrew. I’m sorry.”

  “Cece,” said Jake, “listen to me. There was something going on these last couple of weeks. Something Edgar was worried about. And it had to do with Nancy Drew.”

  I laughed. “Please.”

  “I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true. Nancy Drew has something to do with what happened to him. And who knows more about Nancy Drew than you?”

  About a million people. Clarissa. Tabby Cat. Rita. Big Bad Sebastien, probably.

  Andrew knelt in front of me and took my hands. “Bad shit happens to good people every day. Most of us keep our heads down, or run the other way. We’re too busy trying to keep our own lives from falling apart. But there are some people, maybe you’ll meet one in a lifetime, who don’t cut and run. There are some people who stay.”

  “The ones who can’t keep their noses out of other people’s business.”

  “Bullshit. Edgar knew right away what kind of person you were. Jake told me.”

  “A person in over her head. A person who should know better. A person who should get a grip.”

  “Stop.” He reached out to touch my cheek. “I can’t believe you don’t get it, that you don’t see who you are. Look in the mirror sometime, Cece. Everybody sees it but you.”

  No wonder Bridget was smitten. This guy barely talked, but when he did, he knew exactly what to say.

  13

  Andrew was persuasive, but no match for me. I was too smart. I could see a snow job from fifty paces. I was going to leave it to the police. They were experts. Trained professionals. They knew what they were doing. Forensics, ballistics, profiling, they had their methods. And I would have stuck to my guns, I swear I would have, if the mailman hadn’t chosen that afternoon to bring me a letter from 1111 Carroll Avenue.

  My hands started to tremble when I saw the return address. Mitchell could have sent me something, or Jake. But even before I ripped the envelope open and pulled out the note, scrawled in felt-tip pen on a sheet of lined paper, I knew exactly who had written it.

  Dear Cece,

  Every girl should have a collection. Especially girls like us, who made it out of Jersey unscathed. So consider this a start. I’ll see you in Palm Springs. Oh, yes! Surprise!

  Love, Edgar

  Surprise.

  Inside the envelope was a small black-and-white photograph of a woman wearing some kind of white shift dress. The image was faded, bent at the top, and utterly indistinctive. A dark-haired woman in a dark, old room. I didn’t understand. I looked inside the envelope again. There was nothing else there. I looked at the picture again. What kind of a collection? Who was this? What was this?

  It was Edgar, trying to tell me that he and I weren’t through.

  I believe in signs, like I said. So I took the photograph into my bedroom and tucked it safe and sound between the folds of my Lanvin cape. Then I pulled out the scrap of paper Andrew had given me with his phone number on it, and I called h
im. Jake got on the phone, too. This time I talked and they listened. I said I’d see what I could do. End of story. I’d see.

  Which is how I found myself, three hours later, wading through wet grass in search of Jayne Mansfield’s grave.

  Edgar’s memorial service. It had seemed the logical place to start. But I was too early and too morbid for my own good. Still, who could possibly resist the annotated maps to the stars’ graves on sale in the Hollywood Forever gift shop?

  The woman behind the counter, dressed for success in a maroon gabardine suit and floppy tie, gave me the hard sell.

  In the twenties and thirties Hollywood Memorial Park, as it was then known, was the premier burial spot for the showbiz elite: Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolf Valentino, Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Tyrone Power, Nelson Eddy. By the forties, however, as Forest Lawn in nearby Glendale grew in popularity, it had already slipped into decline. Weeds crawled over the tombstones, graffiti covered the crypts, and the reflecting pools were dull and murky. The family of legendary makeup artist Max Factor even had his remains moved elsewhere. In the nineties the cemetery hit the auction block and things looked dire until a last-minute reprieve by somebody from St. Louis with big money and big ideas.

  Today, the woman in the suit concluded, they were industry leaders. Did I know they were building a brand-new 60,000-square-foot mausoleum, and that I could have my funeral simulcast live on the Web, and might I be ready to pick out my plot, with a view of the Hollywood sign perhaps?

  I was not.

  Back to Jayne Mansfield. I wandered around for half an hour with my map until I found Lot 218 by the edge of a large pond with a mini Greek temple floating in the middle of it. Only it turned out she wasn’t in Lot 218. She was buried in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, though I suppose this was as nice a place as any for her fans to pay their respects. I wished I’d brought flowers. I consulted the official directory. She’d hit it big in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and lived in a pink mansion with Mr. Universe before biting the dust outside Biloxi. I’d always liked Jayne Mansfield.

  From the pond I made my way over to the freshly dug mound of dirt. It was pretty conspicuous. With a big hole right next to it. Some white folding chairs lined up in neat rows. Still nobody around but me. And Edgar, of course. He was somewhere in the vicinity. In a back room of the Court of the Apostles? Propped up in the Abbey of the Psalms? Cruising around in a hearse?

  Stop. This was not productive.

  I decided to check on Edgar’s new neighbors.

  Lady Sylvia Ashley to the left. I checked the directory. She was a regal dark-haired beauty whose first marriage to Lord Anthony Ashley ended when Douglas Fairbanks Jr. divorced America’s Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, for her. Another titled marriage came and went before she married Clark Gable, whom she left for a Russian, Prince Djorjadze.

  I think Edgar would’ve liked Lady Ashley. She was a true femme fatale.

  Virginia Rappe to the right. She was the young actress who’d had the misfortune to catch the attention of former Keystone comedian Fatty Arbuckle, who’d invited her to a party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in 1921 to celebrate the signing of his new contract with Paramount Pictures. What happened to her in Fatty’s three-room suite on the twelfth floor of the hotel will never be known, but within a few days she was dead, and he was charged with her murder. Though he was acquitted, Paramount canceled his contract and the Hays Office banned him from making films.

  According to the directory, Virginia Rappe’s grave was one of two at Hollywood Forever said to be haunted.

  I wrapped my sweater tighter around me. The sun was about to set and it was getting cold. Finally, the others were arriving. They had that slow gait mourners do. Mitchell Honey stepped out of a small white car, on the arm of a tall man in dark glasses. He looked shaken. When I’d pictured this moment, I’d imagined I’d sort of blend into the crowd. No such luck. Mitchell looked past dozens of people straight at me. I thought I saw something like regret in his eyes. But maybe it was the light. I nodded at him and to my surprise he came over and gave me a hug. His face was wet.

  “Thanks for coming. Edgar was genuinely taken with you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mitchell,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Please join us afterward at the house.”

  He shook some hands and exchanged some hugs. Then he sat down in the front row of seats, next to the tall man in dark glasses. I stood in the back. The minister started talking. My mind wandered. I remembered the flag that had been draped around my father’s casket. My brothers had carried it home, all folded up into a neat triangle. My mother wouldn’t let me attend the funeral. She thought I couldn’t handle it. I’d always held it against her. But deep down I knew she was right.

  Edgar’s service lasted about thirty minutes. I don’t remember anything anybody said. I only remember thinking about my father—that, and a strange feeling of foreboding.

  I hoped Edgar’s grave wouldn’t be the third haunted one at Hollywood Forever.

  Detectives Lasarow and Dunphy intercepted me on my way out.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said.

  “Ms. Caruso, how are you?” Lasarow asked courteously, a stretch for her.

  “I’ve been better, thanks.”

  “Thought you barely knew the man,” she said.

  “Do you have a specific question for me, or may I go?”

  “A couple of things. Do you own a gun?”

  “Of course I don’t own a gun.”

  “We’re looking for a twenty-two. Edgar Edwards was killed with a twenty-two.”

  “I do not own a twenty-two, nor have I ever owned a twenty-two. Or any other kind of firearm.”

  “No, I didn’t much think you were the type. But I had to try. Another thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “We’re looking for Jake Waite. We have reason to believe he’s in town. Somebody tried to get some of Edgar Edwards’s money out of an ATM on Wilshire and Vermont last night.”

  Idiots.

  “Have you seen him, Ms. Caruso?”

  They couldn’t possibly know where I’d been. “No, of course not. I told you, I don’t even know him.”

  She looked at me through that shock of gray hair. “And you don’t know Edgar Edwards. And you don’t know Mitchell Honey. And you don’t know anything. You just happened to find the body.”

  “That’s the way it is,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I’m sorry I can’t make it any easier for you.”

  “Don’t worry about making it easier for us,” Dunphy said, jumping in. “Just call if you see Jake, all right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Wait.” Something had occurred to me.

  “What is it?” Dunphy asked.

  “When you went through Edgar’s house, in Palm Springs, did you happen to find a painting?”

  “What kind of painting?” Dunphy glanced at her partner.

  “A small painting of a nude woman.”

  Dunphy cleared her throat. She had put on lipstick today and looked almost fetching.

  “We didn’t see anything like that hanging on the wall, Ms. Caruso,” she said, carefully choosing her words.

  “How about in a closet, or the garage, or under the bed, or someplace like that?”

  “No,” said Dunphy.

  “Is there something you want to tell us, Ms. Caruso?” Lasarow asked. “About that painting or anything else?”

  “No. Nothing. It just relates to some work I’m doing. I’m sorry to bother you with something so silly.” Maybe Edgar hadn’t brought the painting with him to Palm Springs, after all. Or maybe the surprise he’d planned for Clarissa was something else entirely.

  I got into my Camry—which, by the way, Maynard had successfully resuscitated, cup holder and all—and sped through the wrought iron gates.

  It felt better leaving than arriving.

  14

  The gather
ing on Carroll Avenue was under way by the time I got there. A pretty young Latina opened the door and directed me to a guest book. I signed my name but didn’t feel right about sharing a memory. My last memory of Edgar wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you wanted to share.

  In the living room a jazz combo was playing and waitresses were passing hors d’oeuvres. It should’ve been lovely but the house smelled like rot. I had the overwhelming desire to throw open the curtains and steam-clean the rugs, not that I’d ever steam-cleaned anything. How could Edgar have tolerated it? Maybe he’d had a split personality: dark Edgar lived in the shadows and dust, while light Edgar craved the desert sun and Fantastik.

  I hung out for a while in the library with a tubby friend of Edgar’s from the Chicago days, who shared a heartfelt memory about the time they’d wired an exlover’s bed so he’d receive an electric shock every time he lay down.

  Then I joined a group of Edgar’s neighbors, who were complaining about the difficulties of owning a home in a designated historic preservation zone. One man spent an entire year trying to get a permit to install a built-in dishwasher, and Edgar, apparently, had spent two years trying to get permission to turn his attic into a third-floor bedroom only to give up entirely. Emboldened, I launched into a defense of illegal garage conversions, but when they realized I lived in unprotected West Hollywood, they tuned me out like yesterday’s news.

  From there, I headed into the dining room, where I hung out with a petite lawyer who consumed a prodigious amount of cheese. She told me she had once done some real estate work for Edgar and had found him to be an excellent negotiator. He was someone who always got exactly what he wanted, without you even realizing it. I nodded. I could believe it. But what had Edgar wanted from me?

  After that, I was party to a failed seduction.

  “I’m a Sagittarius,” said a pear-shaped man, sidling over to a short woman stationed by the table. She was carrying a New York Times crossword puzzle tote bag. “That’s the sign of the hunter. I am spiritual and sensual. I don’t hold grudges and I’m disarmingly happy. What sign were you born under?”