by Joan Hess
“I’m glad to hear you had a nice time,” Millicent said as she urged Earl into motion. “Real glad.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Heather said. She didn’t jab tongue-tied Traci in the ribs, but she thought about it.
Back on the porch, Kevin decided to risk it all. “That was kinda funny how they left like that, wasn’t it?”
“Funny as in ha-ha, or funny as in Mrs. Wockerman listening to aliens through her hearing aid?” Dahlia said with an ominous look. “What kind of funny are you referring to?”
Kevin wished he knew.
On another porch on the opposite side of town, Billy Dick MacNamara handed Willard Yarrow a bottle of grape soda pop and sat down on the top step beside him.
“My parents are going to the hospital tonight,” Willard said. “Trudi’s got a date with some jock. You want to come over and play the game? I’ll get some chips and stuff.”
“What’s his name?”
Willard blinked. “The jock? I dunno. He’s hairier than a summer groundhog, and his head kinda rests on his shoulders. I snuck up on ’em once when they were sitting in his car. Trudi’s darn lucky it was me instead of Pa, ’cause he would have whipped her silly and packed her off to reform school.”
“What were they doing?” Billy Dick asked.
“Oh, you know,” he said, taking a drink to hide his discomfort. “Hey, I worked half the night on my map, and I’ve got a real good idea how to get by the dragon and find the diamond mines of Exedor.”
He prattled on about magic potions and the sword bought from the gnomes with the last of the gold stolen from the griffin, but Billy Dick wasn’t listening.
“Listen, please,” I said after Plover and I’d agreed on the procedure, “all of you need to wait in your rooms out back. Sergeant Plover will station a man in the parking lot to make sure you’re not disturbed, and we’ll escort you one at a time to the police department just down the road.”
Hal slid off a stool and came across the room. “Arly, sweetheart, let me run this by you.”
He handed me a piece of paper. I scanned it quickly, then read it aloud for Plover’s edification. “Mrs. Katherine Meredith of Van Nuys, California, was found dead in a motel room during a vacation to the Ozarks. The police have determined that she slipped and fell while bathing. She is survived by her husband, B. Meredith. A private ceremony will be held in Van Nuys.”
Hal was waiting eagerly. “Not shabby, huh? No one’s going to make the leap from Mrs. Katherine Meredith to Miss Kitty Kaye, and B. Meredith’s hardly a household name. You just type this up for the local paper and run off copies in case someone comes snooping from outside.”
“Slipped and fell while bathing?” I said.
“I know, I know. It’s an understatement, but it’s still cinema verité, if you follow me. You’re not going to tell me she didn’t slip and fall at some point while this maniac was attacking her, are you?”
Carlotta joined us. “You don’t want a horde of reporters any more than we do. Unless something along the lines of World War III starts today, the media may decide to grab this one and run with it until they drop. Kitty was a very sexy leading lady in the fifties, and her films are in the classics section of every video rental store in the country. Her autobiography sold well ten years ago, and a few years back there was a Kitty Kaye festival at one of the theaters in L.A.”
“Kitty was a class act,” Hal cut in, wiping at more of those invisible tears. “You know, Carlotta, somewhere in the credits we ought to stick in a dedication. Figure something out and let me look at it.”
Plover found his voice. “You want us to say she slipped and fell in the bathroom?”
“It sounds better than saying she was attacked by a local psychotic,” Hal said, lighting a cigarette. “It’s your neck of the woods. You want everyone in the country to think you’re a bunch of murderers, feel free. It’s not going to do much for the tourist trade, though.”
I grabbed Plover’s arm and propelled him to a corner. “It’s not outrageous,” I muttered. “Carlotta may be right about the zillion reporters descending on us. We’re going to have a tough enough time sorting through this without television vans surrounding the PD and reporters screaming at us. At this point, only these people and the guys in the parking lot know what took place inside number five. I think we ought to hush it up, at least for a few days.”
We argued for a while, but he finally relented and we left the barroom, content in the knowledge that no one else knew that Kitty Kaye had been murdered.
Chapter 9
“WILD CHERRY WINE” (REVISED 5/23)
24 CONTINUED:
LORETTA
O my Gawd … that was Preacher Pipkin! He must have seen everything! What if he says something?
BILLY JOE
He’s a filthy pervert, that preacher man! If he hadn’t run away like a yeller-striped skunk, I’d have punched him so hard he’d be harking the herald angels.
LORETTA
But what are we gonna do, Billy Joe? What are we gonna do?
BILLY JOE
(harshly)
We’re gonna get out of this town somehow. You just wait for that message, you hear?
CUT TO:
“My real name,” Gwenneth D’Amourre murmured, nibbling on her scarlet lipstick. “What if it is my real name?”
She was in the chair opposite my desk, and Plover, always a gentleman, had dragged in a chair from the other room and was straddling it, his arms on the top of the back and his chin resting on them. The attentive gleam in his eye was unnerving me, although its recipient seemed to be undisturbed by it.
I tapped my pencil. “I need your real name for the record. I may still clap when Tinkerbell nears death, but I have this sneaky suspicion that D’Amourre is a stage name.”
She glanced at Plover for help, but when he gazed back blandly, she took a last bite of lipstick and said, “Wanda Sue Thackett. It didn’t seem to ripple, you know; it gurgled like dirty old bathwater going down the drain. Hal thought up my new name, and I think it’s totally terrific.”
“Me, too,” I said as I wrote down the gurgly one. “Your current address?”
She rattled off an answer that included an apartment number. “It’s very close to Beverly Hills,” she added.
“And you’re originally from …?”
“Chicago.”
“Age?”
Apparently this was a bit of a poser. I waited silently while she decided how gullible I was. The remark about Tinkerbell was probably a factor. “Twenty-two,” she said with a hopeful look, then sighed. “Okay, twenty-four, but all my promo stuff says twenty, so don’t spread it around.”
“How long have you been associated with Glittertown Productions?”
She wiggled in the chair, then resorted to counting on her fingers. “Well, there was Satan’s Sisters, in which I played a whattaya call it—a novice, a beginner nun. Frederick was the handsome young priest. My father makes me join the convent, and at first I have to toil in the fields, but then—”
“We don’t need the plot,” I said quickly.
“It was very artistic, and one of the reviews said I looked celestial. Anyway, my second film was Tanya Makes the Team. In that one, I was a cheerleader who’s willing to do anything she can to help her team win the championship.”
Plover began to cough, and when he couldn’t stop, flapped his hand at us and stumbled into the back room. I was surprised when I heard the door slam, but he was old enough to come and go as he pleased. I looked at Gwenneth. “And then?”
“Frederick’s the quarterback, and Buddy’s the kindly old coach who’s lost his nerve. I decide to—”
“No, that’s not what I meant. You’ve done other films?”
She crossed her legs and gave me a pitying look. “I am becoming a major force in the genre, and I’m in demand all the time. Last spring we did Prickly Passion in Flagstaff. Now, there’s a nice town, with all kinds of shops and a great pool at the motel.
I just soaked in the sun with … Kitty.” She took a tissue from her purse, daintily blew her nose, and then took out a compact. Once she’d powdered her nose and carefully relined her lips in scarlet, she said, “I’m sorry, but I kinda had a crush on Kitty, if you know what I mean. She was real sweet to me and gave me a lot of advice about how to handle some of the animals in Hollywood. You would not believe the things that have been whispered in my ear about two seconds after I’ve been introduced to some guy in a silk shirt and alligator shoes.”
“And Prickly Passion was the last movie before this one? That was in the spring. You’ve done three movies with the company, and this was to be the fourth, right? I’m not clear how long you’ve been associated, though.”
“About a year,” she said.
“This is the fourth movie in a year?”
“We’re all professionals. Hal arranges the finances, Carlotta does the preproduction, Fuzzy rolls the camera, and we make the damn thing.” She took an emery board from her purse and began to file her nails.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing since you and the others arrived in Maggody two days ago,” I said, trying not to react to the scritchy sound that always makes my teeth ache.
“We got here in the afternoon. I didn’t notice what time because I don’t wear a watch. I used to wear one, but it left this horrid white mark on my wrist and I—” She realized I was not enthralled. “Anyway, Carlotta and I are sharing number three, the one on the end next to Hal’s room. We all had dinner in the barroom. Since there wasn’t anything for the cast to do yesterday, Kitty and I took our scripts and went out to the parking lot to sunbathe.”
“And last night?”
“Last night was the same. After the meeting, we had dinner in the barroom. I asked for a fresh shrimp salad with vinegar and oil on the side. I ended up with tuna fish.”
“Wait a minute—what meeting?” I asked. I noticed I’d penciled in her dinner order, and crossed it out.
“The production meeting. Hal, Carlotta, and Fuzzy confirmed all the sites yesterday, which is why there wasn’t anything for the rest of us to do except sunbathe,” she explained. Scritch, scritch.
“Buddy Meredith and Miss Kaye were at the meeting?” She nodded. “And then had dinner with the group at Ruby Bee’s, right?” She nodded again. I made a note, then gave her my full attention, wishing Plover were back to help me ascertain the veracity (or lack thereof) of her statement. “What happened after dinner, Miss D’Amourre?”
“I had a conversation with a gentleman named Jim Bob something. We discussed my career, of course, and he talked about some store he owns and how I could have a ten percent discount. I perked up until I realized he was talking paper towels and canned vegetables.”
“And Meredith and Kaye?” I persisted.
She blinked at me for a long while. I couldn’t tell if she was composing a lie or simply trying to remember what the two had done. “I think they stayed at the bar until about ten, but I may be wrong. Jim Bob was behaving like an octopus, if you catch my drift, and I had my hands full preventing him from having his hands full. I finally got tired of being mauled and went back to the room at eleven or so.”
“Did you glance at the window of number five?”
Once again I was treated to a series of blinks and a blank look. “I think it was dark. Yeah, it was dark.”
Plover reappeared before I could twist the thumbscrews any tighter. He studied Gwenneth for a minute, then shook his head slightly and said, “If Miss D’Amourre has finished, I’ll take her back to her room and pick up our next interviewee.”
“I am simply exhausted,” she said, on her feet more quickly than toast popping out of a toaster. “I had to get up really early to do my hair and makeup, and it took forever for Carlotta to help me squeeze into these shorts. I had to lie down on the bed and wiggle so hard I thought I’d pass out.”
Plover nodded like a benevolent father confessor. “And how did the filming go this morning?”
She took his arm and herded him toward the door. “Very well, actually. We wrapped the scene on the first take, although for a minute it looked like we’d have to do it again. It’s quite a strain for me to reflect genuine emotion over and over again, if you know what I mean.”
“I certainly do,” said Father Trooper.
The door closed.
I wasted a little time drawing little daggers that pierced Wanda Sue Thackett’s name, not a technique I’d learned at the police academy but nevertheless obscurely satisfying. I then had to recopy my notes on a clean sheet of paper, since I had no desire to be categorized as a possessive, immature, unprofessional chief of police.
Les Vernon, one of Harve’s deputies, parked out front. I hastily threw away the decorated (desecrated) paper and was busily scribbling notes when he came inside.
“Hey, Arly,” he said as he sat down in the seat previously occupied by the illustrious Wanda Sue Thackett.
“How’s it going, Les? Heard any dirty jokes lately?”
He had, and obligingly told them, but they weren’t worth repeating and I’d already heard them, anyway. “Harve says you want me to poke around on this arson case,” he said when the merriment died down.
I ran through what we had, then told him I was pretty much convinced Billy Dick MacNamara was our firebug, either alone or with Willard Yarrow as his apprentice. He agreed to check out the latter and to talk to the elusive people who lived on the road near the scene of the fire. When I suggested he tail Billy Dick when it got dark, he politely countered that he was off at six and planning to be at the bowling alley at six-thirty for a tournament.
I doubted I could cajole Harve into assigning me a second man. I sent Les on his errands and idled away a solid five minutes wondering why it was taking Plover so long to walk Wanda Sue Thackett a short way down the road. She sure as hell hadn’t shown any signs of any sort of physical handicap; she was bursting out all over with health, especially in the T-shirt area.
However, when he finally showed up with Carlotta, I gave him a cool smile and settled her across from me. We ran through the preliminary stuff: Carlotta Lowenstein, aged twenty-five, from Oakland, a degree in film production and a year with Glittertown Productions. Her residence may or may not have been near Beverly Hills. Her account of their time in Maggody concurred with Gwenneth’s: the first evening in the barroom, the next day inspecting sites, another evening drinking with the locals, and the attempt that morning to get down to business at Raz Buchanon’s place.
“This is so bizarre,” she said, shaking her head. “First Anderson’s wife, then poor Kitty. It’s like there’s a curse on the company.”
I gave Plover a brief explanation of her reference to Anderson’s wife’s murder, then chewed on my pencil while I formulated questions. “While they were in Maggody, Meredith and Miss Kay never said or did anything that seemed odd?”
“Nothing. They were having a grand time, as far as I could see. The script’s less than demanding, and both of them are pros. Were pros, I guess.”
“What do you know about their relationship?”
“They’ve been married at least twenty years. According to her autobiography, they met right after Meredith moved to the Coast. Eyes locked across the room, hearts beating as one, the whole thing straight out of one of Kitty’s early movies. But I’ve never heard any dirt about either of them, and I certainly don’t think Buddy would tweak her nose, much less do something so vicious.”
“And you don’t have any idea where he might be now?” Plover inserted, most likely just to hear his own voice.
“No,” she began, then stopped and frowned at a fly splat on the wall above my head.
I gave her a minute, but she finally shrugged and looked down at her clipboard. Before I could continue, Plover said, “If Kitty Kaye was so revered, why did she choose to work for Glittertown?”
“Was so revered thirty years ago,” Carlotta corrected him. “Once actresses reach a certain age—and it’s not much—they
’re offered only minor character roles. A few remain big names, but women like Kitty are replaced with women like Gwenneth, who will fizzle out in the same fashion. That’s why I opted for the production end of the industry. It’s safer, and although the money’s not as astounding, the work’s steady and the potential is there.”
“Why did you choose Glittertown?” Plover said before I could jump in.
The two of them seemed to be communicating in the same way she had with Anderson, and once again I was excluded. I was not amused.
“For several reasons,” she said thoughtfully. “The experience is good. I do almost all of the preproduction chores, except for financing and distribution. Hal’s version of his reputation exceeds him, but he can bully himself into the right places to kiss the right asses.”
“You actually wrote Tanya Makes the Team?” Plover said, sounding oddly awed.
She nodded. “To the last touchdown. Hal claims he does the writing, but I do most of it and allow him to take the screen credit. When I’ve pulled together enough cash, I’ll start my own company and try another genre.”
“Other than sports stories?” I said, admittedly to hear the sound of my own voice in my own office.
“Something a bit more noir,” she answered smoothly.
I decided to get back to the task at hand. “Have there been any problems within the group? Squabbles or bad feelings?”
Carlotta returned her attention to the fly splat on the wall. “Well, this is the fourth film with Frederick and Gwenneth. She’s beginning to annoy him, and he needles her whenever he can simply to retaliate. He knows he has to put up with her because of his share of the profit, which is more lucrative than you’d suspect, and she does whatever Hal tells her to do. They’re both new and, for the most part, unknown. Gwenneth’s limited by a lack of talent, but Frederick’s career might take off before too long.”
I made a notation about Gwenneth’s lack of talent. “What about Fuzzy?”