by Jenna Ryan
Madame or one of her cronies must have dropped a match or cigarette.
The subject of her interview was using both when Sam entered. She was also, Sam noticed, sitting in the least revealing spot in the room, opposite the shaded French doors in a high-backed chair with the light angled away from her carefully made-up face.
She was old, Sam could see that right off. She sensed a hard life, or perhaps “afterlife” was a better term. Some celebrities took the passing years in stride; others fought them to the bitter end. This woman looked to have fought and survived, little more.
Even expertly applied cosmetics and discreet lighting couldn’t conceal the skin that sagged on her neck and chin. Her eyes were less visible behind tinted lenses, but her hands, rheumatic and mottled with age spots, gave much away. Her appearance spoke of hard times, determination and too much sun in the glamorous post-war days of the forties.
Without preface, the woman stated, “I was considered beautiful once. Sit there. That will be all, Theo. Bring coffee and rum in fifteen minutes.”
Intrigued by a voice rusty from the affects of alcohol and smoke, Sam sat as directed. She chose the side of the sofa nearest her hostess, making no attempt to hide her curiosity. At closer range, the woman’s eyes were brown, red-rimmed but sharp enough to be called biting.
“Well?” the madame demanded, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. “Do I pass inspection?”
“I was trying to see if…I’m sorry, I’m being rude. Curiosity’s a failing of mine.”
“You’re in the billion-plus club in that regard.”
Sam dug out her old-fashioned notepad and pen. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”
“Not many. Never have. Do you recognize me yet?”
The dreaded question. Sam searched for a believable excuse then submitted to honesty and shook her head. “Sorry. All my editor said was that I should come out here. No explanation, no background, only an address. I’d have gone to the archives except…”
“You weren’t given a name.” Another drag, another cloud of smoke veiling her faded features. “I’m an old woman, Ms. Giancarlo. I don’t expect you to recognize me. Did your editor mention that I requested you specifically?”
“Me?” A small frown marred Sam’s forehead.
“No, I thought not. Odd, because it’s usually men who omit details. I often think how much better this world would be if run by women. No matter, you’re here, and you’ve no idea who I am. I shouldn’t expect you to, really. How old are you? Twenty-five?”
“Thirty.”
“You look younger. At any rate, my star disappeared from the Hollywood heavens more than a decade before you were born.”
“So you are like Garbo, then.”
“The comparison’s been drawn. Theo, in particular, enjoys it. A good man is my Theo. Been with me forever. We’ll probably die together.”
Sam strove for a discreetly clearer view of the woman whom she judged to be about five foot five or six. She was very thin, verging on frail. Her black dress, sequined and long-sleeved, revealed little of her bony frame. Her hair was a silver-streaked crown, combed and sprayed into a modified version of a late forties style. The effect jarred but was not unpleasant.
Recalling her remark about dying in tandem with Theo, Sam arched dubious brows. “That’s a morbid point of view, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
The woman shrugged. “Morbidity’s relative when you reach my age. My health’s only so-so, and I refuse to stop smoking. I’ll go the way of my dear colleague, Bette Davis, eventually, though not, I hope, for a few more years. Ah, there you are, Theo. Prompt as always.”
“Shall I pour, Madame?”
She waved him off with her cigarette. “I haven’t gotten to the shock, yet. Leave it here. The steadier of us can pour later.”
Sam eyed her warily. Patient to a point, she was tiring rapidly of this woman’s blunt nondisclosures.
“Who are you?” she asked the moment Theo departed.
“You’re a candid little thing.”
At five foot seven Sam was neither little, nor a thing. But candid, yes, she tended to be that. “I’m a journalist,” she said, preferring that to the less flattering “reporter.” “It’s my job to be candid.”
“Bull. It’s your job to be pigheaded. Mine is to be myste-rious.” A bony hand emerged from the dusty aureole of light. “Maybe you’ll recognize my name when you hear it. Someone, my dear Samantha, has learned of my whereabouts and fully intends to kill me. I’m Margaret Truesdale.”
MARGARET TRUESDALE.
Sam recognized the name instantly. Her mother was an old movie buff. According to her, Margaret Truesdale had been a star of the highest caliber in her day. Tough, fair, beautiful, only mildly temperamental and one of the best actresses the Hollywood studio system had ever produced. Her final movie, The Three Fates, had never been completed. Nor had any excerpts ever been shown. All copies of that film had vanished shortly after its leading lady. Studio executives apparently had no idea where the canisters had gotten to…unless, as a few of them had speculated, Margaret herself had stolen them.
Triumph flashed in Margaret’s dark eyes as she regarded Sam. “You do know me, then. How wonderful.”
“You disappeared,” Sam said unnecessarily. “Why?”
Margaret leaned forward. “For reasons I am not prepared to disclose.”
“Then why did you contact—”
“I’m getting to that.” Margaret’s finger stabbed the air in front of her. “For the moment, you must accept that my reasons for going into seclusion are private and personal. They have nothing to do with the fact that someone wants me dead.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Certainly. I know who’s behind it Do you see that box in front of you on the table? It’s a music box. Open the lid.”
Sam hesitated, then complied. Delicate strains of Chopin’s “Polanaise” filled the air.
“It’s Italian,” Margaret revealed, lighting another cigarette. “It appeared on my doorstep yesterday. It belonged to one of my co-stars in The Three Fates. I’ll be honest and tell you that she and I were not friends. In fact, the term ‘rivals’ can’t begin to convey the feeling of animosity that existed between us. We made numerous movies together, I in the starring role, she invariably in a secondary capacity. That’s how it was in the beginning and how it remained until the bitter end.”
“What was her name?” Sam asked, jotting notes.
“Mary Lamont. There was a third Fate, of course, but we had no quarrels. Only Mary and I were at constant odds.”
“And you think—what? That Mary sent you this music box as some kind of warning? A death threat?”
“It would be Mary’s style,” Margaret said dryly. “She always had a flair for the melodramatic. It got the better of her more often than was healthy—her imagination, I mean. She was forever in trouble with the studio. She spent half of the last five years of her career on a psychiatrist’s couch. In nineteen fifty-three, shortly after I left Hollywood, her ex-husband, Thurman, finally had her committed. According to my sources, she’s been in and out of institutions ever since.”
Sam winced at the thought. “I assume she’s out now.”
“Absolutely.” Margaret tapped an ash into a silver bowl. “She escaped from Oakhaven last week. The story’s been hushed up, as you can imagine, but the bald truth is she’s out and she wants me dead. She’s made no bones about that over the years. Her doctors will tell you. I’m her obsession. Her sole aim in life is to destroy me. Thus—” she indicated the music box “—her little gift. She wants me to know that she has found me at last. The rest…” Margaret gave a fatalistic shrug. “The rest is anyone’s guess. All I’m sure of is that she will try to kill me. And she will go on trying until either she succeeds or she herself is dead.”
Sam had stopped writing long ago. “You need the police, Ms. Truesdale, not a repor—a journalist.”
“It’s Margaret, and
there will be no police. I want no publicity. None. This must be a private investigation by someone I can trust completely. I’d ask Theo, but he’s too old, his son’s dead and his daughter’s married to some fanatical religious man from New England.”
Uneasiness crawled over Sam’s lightly tanned skin like a swarm of red ants. “You need a detective agency.”
“I need you.”
Damn, she’d just known Margaret was going to say that. “I don’t do murder investigations,” she said, flipping her notebook closed. “Stories, yes, but I have no training in investigative work. I’ll interview a murderer once he or she’s behind bars, not before.”
Margaret emitted an unladylike snort and sat back. “This from the young woman who sent a would-be mugger to hospital last year with three cracked ribs and very sore private parts? I’ll bet you kept that baseball bat as a memento.”
How had she learned that? Sam shrugged. “The guy tried to grab me when I was loading my gear into the trunk of my car after a game. I didn’t think ramming the bat into his midsection would break ribs, but I guess he didn’t tense properly. The rest was instinctive. It has nothing to do with—”
“You were adopted, weren’t you?”
Sam stopped dead. “How…”
“I checked. Do you know your real parents?”
Her equanimity, one of Sam’s better qualities, slipped several notches. “My real parents,” she said coldly, “are Carlos and Anna Giancarlo. I don’t know or care who my birth parents were.”
“You never looked for them?”
“Until I was about seventeen, yes. Then I realized it didn’t matter.”
“You simply gave your curiosity the boot, hmm?”
“I dealt with it. I can be strong-minded when I want to be.”
“Of course you can. It runs in the family.”
“What family?” Sam demanded.
“Mine. Yours.” Margaret’s chin angled upward in a direct challenge. “Ours.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not related.” Sam hesitated, her fingers freezing on the zipper of her shoulder bag. “Are we?”
Margaret let out a cackle that would have done Broom Hilda proud. “We most certainly are, young Samantha Giancarlo. I had one child in my life, a daughter. That daughter was your birth mother. By blood and birth and enough digging to have burrowed halfway to China by now, I’m your grandmother.”
“YOU POUR,” Margaret instructed. “Put rum in mine. I’m not as steady-handed as I was once. I was involved in an accident many years ago.”
Sam’s head swam. She poured automatically, managing not to rattle the bone-china cup and saucer. Her grandmother? Margaret Truesdale? But if not the truth, then why would Margaret have brought her here? Asked Sally specifically to send her here?
“You’re in shock,” Margaret chortled with something akin to glee. She sobered at Sam’s skeptical expression. “And you don’t trust me. I have the necessary documents, all the genuine articles. Theo will bring them before you leave.”
Unable to marshal her thoughts, Sam handed her the coffee. “When did you find out?”
“Three years ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because as you said before, you already had a life. I saw no reason to intrude upon it. I, above all, understand the need for privacy. I respect it. I brought the subject up today for the simple, selfish reason that I require your help. You’re the only person, aside from Theo, that I can turn to.”
Her gnarled fingers touched Sam’s knee, sending an appre-hensive shiver through her body. “Will you help me? I have nowhere else to go.”
Sam knew herself well enough to understand that her conscience would shoot down any objection her mind might raise. Better to accept that she was going to help the woman and deal instead with the shock.
“I’ll…” She cleared her throat. “Yes, all right. I will help you. If I can, that is.”
“But first you want more information,” Margaret finished for her. “In a nutshell, or the encyclopedic version?”
“A nutshell’s fine for now. My mind’s too numb to absorb the details.”
Margaret stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. Resting her head against the chair back, she said, “Your mother’s name was Delores. That’s the name she grew up with, I didn’t give it to her.
“The timing was bad—impossible, really. I was unwed and I owed my soul to the studio in any event. They decided I should go through with the pregnancy then give the child up for adoption. Naturally, I went along with them. That was an end to it for over twenty years. Then I got curious and did some digging. I discovered that, like me, Delores had become pregnant at a young age. And like me, she gave her child—you—up for adoption.”
She raised a forestalling hand as Sam opened her mouth. “I don’t know who your father is if that’s your next question. Your mother never named him. From your coloring, however, I’d guess that he was Italian, as your adoptive parents must also be.” Her eyes scanned Sam’s slender features. “You’re quite beautiful, my dear. Indeed, I might go so far as to say exquisite. I would have killed for skin like yours fifty years ago. Golden brown eyes—almond-shaped, black hair, skin like honey, and fine-boned to boot. I could circle that wrist of yours with one arthritic hand. But I’m getting off track, aren’t I? Tell me, do you have children?”
“No.”
“Spoken in such a judgmental tone. You think Delores and I are heartless monsters, don’t you?”
Sam was in. no fit state to be tactful. “I think you at least were in a position to be stronger.”
“You don’t know the studio system if you believe that”
“Other women did it”
“Ingrid, for example?”
“She coped.”
Margaret set her somewhat angular jaw. “So did I. You don’t have all the facts, Samantha.”
Sam’s saucer clattered onto the table. “That’s because you won’t give them to me.”
“You’re snapping.”
“I’m upset. You’ve just turned a life I thought I knew upside down.”
Margaret gurgled a smoke-congested laugh. “Would you rather I’d kept the truth to myself? No, I thought not You have my streak of curiosity, tempered perhaps by love and logic, but present inside you nonetheless.”
Finishing her coffee, she sent Sam a speculative look. “That’s it, the nutshell version.” Faintly bloodshot eyes shifted to the ornate music box. “As for the more dangerous matter, Mary must be caught. You will need to start your search immediately. I suggest you do it at her last known place of residence, the Oakhaven Sanatorium twenty miles farther into the Canyon.” Her expression became grim. “I warn you, Samantha,” she said gravely. “Mary is out for blood. My blood, but she’ll kill anyone who gets in her way. She’s insane. And she would derive extreme pleasure from murdering my one and only descendant”
A ZOMBIE-LIKE STUPOR settled over Sam’s mind for the next six hours. The first three were spent on a jam-packed Los Angeles freeway.
She didn’t call her parents in Stockton when she got back; not a chance would she hurt them by explaining that her maternal grandmother had walked—no, be honest—bulldozed her way into her only granddaughter’s life. This, Sam reflected, was her problem to handle, and handle it she would.
“You got guts, I’ll give you that.”
“Bag it, Guido.” Sam swirled the dregs of her old friend and mentor’s favorite red wine, family wine from his home fifty years ago in Truro, Italy. Guido Bocce was sixty-seven years old. He ran the newspaper archives, or news morgue as he jokingly called it, lived above an Italian grocery store and still called her Minx twenty years after their first meeting.
Now he gave her his best Gepetto smile—a not especially convincing thing, considering his scrawny build—fingered his shaggy white mustache and refilled her glass. “I’ll see what I can turn up for you tomorrow,” he promised, uncustomarily solemn. “I hope you’re dealing with a crack
pot, but I think you probably aren’t.”
Sam grunted. “If you mean Margaret, she’s the genuine article. I saw the documents, Guido. I’m her granddaughter, all right. She even had a copy of the adoption papers.”
Guido took a contemplative sip. “Too sweet,” he said. “You’re sure she’s Margaret Truesdale?”
“Sure enough. I saw a picture in her front hall. A younger version, but I’d guess it’s her.”
“Did you see Betty Grable?”
“No. But Agnes Moorehead was there. I liked Endora.”
“Your mom liked Samantha better.”
“I know. Named for a television witch. Too bad I didn’t inherit her television powers, as well.” She drank for a moment in thoughtful silence. Then, holding the glass in front of her, she asked slowly, “Would you do it, Guido? Would you help her?”
“Yes, but then I’m a fan. And I’m older than you. Less to lose if Mad Mary gets me in her sights. Did you ever see Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte?”
“A long time ago. Was Mary Lamont in it?”
“No. She’d have been good in the lead, though. She’d have made a great crazy woman.”
Sam frowned. “If she was such a basket case, why did the studio hire her?”
Guido sat back and considered. “She could have been a great actress. That was the tragedy of it. She had the talent. It was the focus she got wrong. She hated Margaret more than she loved acting. If she could have forgotten that hatred even for a moment, one wonders what might have been.”
“I’m starting to wonder if I’m not the crazy one instead of her. I don’t know the first thing about detective work. I’ll start at Oakhaven, but after that, I have no idea.”
Guido pursed his lips. “Could be I have an in at Oakhaven. I’ll see what I can do. Margaret can’t guess where Mary might be?”
Sam sighed. “If she could, Mary wouldn’t be there for long, would she? I wonder how she found Margaret?”
“I have a better question.” Guido topped his own glass. “What’s Margaret Truesdale doing living so close by in Laurel Canyon?”