by Jenna Ryan
Guido sent him an odd look but said only, “I think this case is getting to you. Am I right?”
“Dead-on,” Aidan agreed. “It’s a mess from top to bottom.”
Guido drew a philosophical breath and settled on a stack of bricks next to an antiquated aerial. “Do you see the fine sort of mist that hangs over the city most days? I see that mist and liken it to ghosts from another time, lingering in the city that was the birthplace of movie magic. Celluloid glamour got many of us through the Depression and the war that followed. We were even more hungry for glamour in the fifties, and Hollywood obliged willingly.”
“You don’t see stars like Margaret Truesdale these days,” Aidan noted.
Guido smiled sadly. “No more Lana Turners discovered at drugstore soda counters. The days of classy pinup girls like Betty Grable are long gone. But the memories live on in film, and maybe, as I said, in more than film. There’s a feeling that comes over me sometimes at night when I look out on the city. I’m transported and yet I’m still here. Maybe, then, it’s the old stars coming to visit me, reminding me of a lost age and a more civilized code of behavior.”
“People like to remember the old.”
“Exactly. We need to preserve the facade. Of course there were drugs and sex and dirty deals done in those days, too, but never in such a blatant fashion as today. Corruption lived behind the walls of the studio and the ‘in’ star’s home. We knew that, and yet it didn’t dampen our enthusiasm one bit.”
It had taken Aidan a few minutes to understand Guido’s point. Now at last he thought he grasped it. “You’re saying that this matter involving Margaret and Mary should be handled with discretion in order not to shatter anyone’s illusions, is that right?”
“In a sense. The secrecy surrounding Margaret Truesdale’s life is a mystery that many of us enjoy pondering. It gives us pleasure, takes us away from our everyday lives. I’d hate to see that mystery reduced to gritty reality on the front page of some trashy tabloid—which by the way the L.A. Break is not. Also, there is Sam to consider, as I’m sure you’ve already done several times.’
“As Margaret’s natural granddaughter and very likely only surviving descendant, the media attention she would receive would be untenable. She doesn’t want it and we shouldn’t want it for her.” He paused, nodded decisively, and continued, “This case requires a delicate hand, Aidan. Three delicate hands, in fact. Yours, mine and Sam’s. We must keep searching and slogging and digging, because as competent as they are, the police operate in a manner that is decidedly less than delicate. Mostly for Sam’s sake, Aidan, and partly for the sake of sentimental old fools like myself, please have patience with this case. The answers are there, all of them. We simply have to unearth them.”
“And if we can’t?”
The old man’s expression grew grave. “We must, Aidan, because the phrase ‘murder of necessity’ seems to have a very broad meaning for Mary. We could all of us wind up dead. And the monstrous thing is, we don’t know how many of ‘us’ that might entail.”
“FRANK DURWALD no longer exists,” Sam stated. “He dis-appeared the same time as Margaret and Anthea and hasn’t resurfaced since.”
She’d finally located Aidan in Guido’s office at the Break. That they seemed to be becoming good friends played no part, she vowed, in the scowl that settled upon her lips. However, the guarded look they exchanged caused her to wonder if she might not have been the subject of their conversation.
Was that a vain thought or a jealous one? Probably both. She dismissed all of it with an effort and focused on Guido’s apparent consternation.
“Have you spoken to Margaret?” he asked.
“First thing this morning. She says she’ll explain as best she can later today.”
“Which leaves us with many hours to fill. Sit, Minx, and have some coffee. You look as though you could use it.”
Not quite sure she felt up to meeting Aidan’s penetrating gaze, she cast him only a quick glance while she poured. He was half perched on Guido’s low filing cabinet, sipping coffee and looking incredibly sexy and rumpled in a pair of worn jeans, work boots and a white jersey shirt. His black eye was healing; his hair was messy—and she wanted very badly to kiss him. She swallowed a mouthful of scalding coffee instead.
“I called Margaret’s old studio this morning,” she said. Turning, she leaned against the stuffed bookshelves. “I was surprised to learn that a good one-quarter of the people who worked with Margaret, Mary and Anthea on The Three Fates are still active in the industry. In fact, Stan Hollister’s currently directing Thurman Wells in a midbudget thriller. Mr. Wells plays a psychotic killer, disguised as a conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.”
“An old plot but interesting,” Aidan noted.
Sam shrugged. “Stan Hollister’s good at twisting old plots. The Three Fates would have been a subtle thriller if it had been completed. Anyway, neither of them was available. I said we had some questions about Anthea Pennant and left messages for them to call you on your cell or home phone. I was glad to see you’re unlisted.”
Aidan’s forehead wrinkled. “Unlisted? Ah, the BBC exec.”
“Remember your role, Robert Brodie. Can’t have them finding you in the phone book.”
“If one of those studio people is involved with Mary, my cover’s already been blown.”
Sam had no response for that and so regarded Guido, a silent spectator slumped behind his desk. “What about other people who worked with them? Did Mary have any friends then who might be helping her now?”
“Few that are alive. Fewer still who would be in a position to offer assistance either physically or financially.”
Aidan left his perch and strolled to the window. “Mary has plenty of money,” he said, surveying the sultry hills beyond the city. “And access to it, if John’s guess is accurate. He told me the first day I spoke to him that Mary was a secretive creature. He never knew what surprise she might pull out of her hat next”
“So she’s a rich, crazy, homicidal woman,” Sam said with a sigh. She dropped into the nearest chair, tired suddenly down to her bones. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Because,” Guido said briskly, “your subconscious recognizes the truth of the situation even if your conscious mind prefers to ignore it”
“Psychology 103,” Sam remarked to Aidan. “He wanted to be the next Carl Jung.” Sweeping the dark hair she wished she’d braided from her face, she asked of no one in particular, “What’s next, then? I managed to get hold of Leo Rockland, but he had no comment. He said he was honeymooning bliss-fully with Freddie and had no desire to discuss either Anthea or an old thorn in his side at this time.”
From the window, Aidan said, “You read us an article, Guido, an interview given by a woman who seemed to feel sorry for Mary.”
Sam brightened. “That’s right. She sounded jealous of Margaret.”
Guido searched for the magazine. “She was talking about Margaret’s marriage to the vanishing ice-cream magnate. Mel-man, wasn’t it? No, here it is. Mesmyr, Evelyn Mesmyr. She was a studio makeup artist.”
“Is she alive?” Sam asked.
“I remember, I checked into that. Unless she’s died within the last six months, yes. She was in charge of makeup on a made-for-television production that aired two weeks ago. ‘Dark—Something.’”
Sam looked with renewed hope at Aidan who made an obscure go-ahead motion. “Can you get an address on her, Guido?”
He could and did. Five minutes later, Sam and Aidan were heading toward Brentwood and Evelyn Mesmyr’s fashionably situated home.
It was a typical posh neighborhood with wrought-iron gates, shrubbery-lined stone fences and swimming pools in every backyard. Kidney-shaped in Evelyn’s case, and a preferable setting, in Sam’s opinion, to the woman’s den, which was filled with an array of mounted animal head trophies so disgustingly popular in the Hollywood of the fifties.
“I’d rather see big game hunters�
�� heads up there,” she muttered, her anger ill-disguised despite the maid who hovered uncertainly in the doorway.
Aidan, naturally, revealed nothing of his feelings. He did, however, shoot the old woman who swept in with the panache of a famous movie queen a level look from under his lashes.
She wore something that Sam likened to a quilted silk lounging robe. It was floor-length, pale green and had wide-legged tea pants beneath it Both sash and pants were royal blue as was the thick satin band she’d wound around her up-swept blond hair. Her makeup was bold and applied with a liberal hand. She’d had at least four face-lifts, possibly more, the result being that her mouth appeared to have been stretched to twice its normal size. Her face as a whole shone like plastic. What sags remained had been meticulously powdered down.
Despite that, Sam’s attention was riveted to her eyes. Hadn’t peacock blue shadow died with the sixties? And those false lashes must take an hour apiece to apply.
She had a cigarette smoldering in an ivory holder—another blot against her, Sam thought, her doubts growing steadily—and enough perfume on to choke the elephant who’d undoubtedly been killed to give her an implement into which she could shove the filtered tip. Sam disliked her on sight
“You must be Robert Brodie,” Evelyn said in a practiced voice that oozed false charm and condescension like honey. She acknowledged Sam with a measuring stare and a slight sucking in of her cheeks. “Sit, please,” she bade them, and proceeded to arrange herself artfully on the antique settee.
“Ms. Mesmyr—” Aidan began, but she cut him off with a contrived laugh.
“Evelyn, please, or Miss Mesmyr if you must. I’ve never been married, and I’m proud of it I always thought Kate had the right idea.”
“Katharine Hepburn.” Aidan’s demin-covered knee brushed Sam’s as he shifted on the low sofa. She fought a tremor and got right to the point “We were wondering, Miss Mesmyr, if you’ve had contact recently with Mary Lamont.”
This time Evelyn’s laugh sounded a trifle stiff. “Good Lord, no. Mary? She’s locked up, isn’t she?” Her black-rimmed eyes narrowed. “What’s your interest in Mary Lamont? I thought you were researching a book for someone’s wife.”
“She is,” Aidan said blandly. “We’re intrigued by the feud between Mary Lamont and Margaret Truesdale. Do you recall the time when it reached its peak?”
“Recall it? Heavens, I was in the thick of it. Margaret outshone Mary, Mary fought back tooth and nail, and Anthea, poor little mouse that she was, stood meekly on the sidelines and watched. Well, she rooted for Margaret, but I think deep down her feelings weren’t all that different from mine.”
“And those were?” Aidan prompted.
Evelyn gave a small shrug. “That it could just as easily have been one of us in Margaret’s shoes under different cir-cumstances. I considered acting once, you know, but decided it was too vicious and went to work backstage instead.”
In other words, she had no performing talent. Sam summoned a polite smile. “No one could blame you for that decision, Miss Mesmyr. How did you feel about Margaret, Mary and Anthea?”
The woman had lipstick on her teeth when she laughed. “Cool,” she replied. “Except to Anthea. Although I understood Mary, that’s not to say I liked her. No, I don’t think I’d have minded one bit if Mary had followed through on one of her screaming threats to kill Margaret. Then Margaret would have been gone, Mary’d have been in jail for murder and I—I mean, Anthea would have had the spotlight all to herself.”
One of Aidan’s brows rose in a vague challenge. “And you’d have had Frank Durwald?”
Eveyln jerked back as if slapped. Hand clasped to her throat, she managed an incredulous, “What on earth makes you think I had designs on Frank Durwald?”
Sam reminded her about the old magazine article.
Evelyn blinked, then offered a shaky chuckle. “I may have wanted him once, it’s true, but whether I did or not, he chose Margaret. Truth to tell—” a bitter edge crept into her voice “—I doubt if he even knew I existed. He was besotted with Margaret, so much so that he actually stopped gambling for a time. Perhaps not for good, but certainly at the outset of their courtship.”
Gambling? Sam straightened, her interest renewed. “What form of gambling? Poker? Blackjack?”
“Horses.” She drew heavily on her cigarette. “He owned one once. Sold it before he married Margaret.”
“To whom?” Aidan inquired.
It puzzled Sam that Evelyn should start at such a simple question, but she did. Her answer, after a few noticeable stutters, contained all the warmth of a poked rattlesnake.
“I have no idea,” she said, her tone flat and final. “Ask Frank, if you can find him. He took to the shadows with his wife and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Yes, what is it, Elizabeth?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the maid who was eighteen at best apologized from the doorway. “There’s a man on the tele-phone. Says he’s from a collection—”
Evelyn cut in. “Tell him I’ll return his call within the hour.” A smile, phoney from top to bottom, curved her mouth. “Collection for charity,” she said breezily. “Once the re-quests take hold, they never stop.”
Sam and Aidan exchanged skeptical glances. Opulence, it seemed, was more facade than fact in Evelyn’s case. She might, Sam reflected with a renewed surge of resentment, be forced to sell some of her prized animal heads.
The woman puffed several times on her cigarette, then shocked Sam by demanding, “Have we met before?”
Sam controlled a spurt of panic. “I—don’t think so.”
“I think she looks like Gene Tierney,” Aidan drawled, broadening his Irish accent for effect.
Evelyn tipped her head to one side. “You know, she does a little at that. Gene had a lovely bone structure. Exquisitely delicate.”
“Maybe we should go,” Sam murmured, but Aidan re-strained her with a discreet hand around her wrist
“One or two more things,” he said, and gave his full, charming attention to Evelyn. “The Three Fates, you worked on that movie, didn’t you?”
“For months in open production,” she agreed. The bitter edge returned full force. “It was a good script, and a wonderful challenge for any makeup artist. None of the effects could be obvious. I had to. soften Margaret progressively and at the same time create a more evil look for Mary. Anthea stayed about the same—which was, in a way, reflective of her life. Theirs, too, I suppose. Margaret went from a nothing in the chorus to a superstar on the silver screen. Mary went from exuberant chorus girl to impatient starlet to bitter hag.”
“In other words,” Sam translated, “Mary’s hatred grew in direct proportion to Margaret’s fame. And Anthea played referee from the sidelines.”
“Not a bad assessment…Are you sure we’ve never met?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” She buttered her tone deliberately. “I’d remember you if we had, Miss Mesmyr. You were the Edith Head of the makeup department in the nineteen fifties.”
Her ego stroked, Evelyn beamed. “Why, thank you. I was rather good, wasn’t I? Oh, I still do the odd bit of work here and there, but only when sorely pressed. I’m mostly retired these days. By choice, of course.”
Sam smiled. She would have tried leaving again if Aidan hadn’t inserted Thurman Wells’s name into the conversation.
“A talented actor,” he observed shrewdly. “I hear he was married to both Margaret and Mary.”
“Yes, though not so happily to Mary as it turns out. Shrews make poor wives. Not that Margaret was any better in that sense. Granted, she didn’t rant and rave like Mary, but she was terribly career oriented at the time.”
This woman loved to gossip, Sam realized. She also enjoyed finding fault. So far, the only mildly interesting thing she’d told them was that Frank Durwald had been a gambler—which probably wouldn’t be overly useful in their endeavor to track Mary down.
“Thurman was another of Margaret’s castoffs by the time Mary snared
him,” Evelyn disclosed. “She only wanted him to prove that she was as good as Margaret at getting what she wanted. It was during that time that the sh—I mean, the dirt really hit the fan. Margaret told the studio execs that she was pregnant. Unmarried and pregnant, I might add. That was taboo in those days for reigning movie queens.”
“Did she ever name the father?” Aidan asked when Sam didn’t.
“Nope.” Evelyn stuck a fresh cigarette into her holder and lit it. “Which says to me that it was no one who mattered.”
“Everyone matters, Miss Mesmyr,” Sam said firmly.
“Not in those days. Only fame mattered, and hushing up secrets best not disclosed to a gossip-hungry public.”
Speaking of gossips…Sam folded her hands demurely in her lap, avoided Aidan’s eyes and said clearly, “Is it possible that Stan Hollister was the father of Margaret’s child?”
Instead of appearing shocked, Evelyn pursed her lips and considered the notion. “That’s a thought, isn’t it?” she agreed at length.
“An unexpected one,” Aidan murmured, studying Sam through veiled eyes.
Sam moved a slender shoulder. “Not so unexpected if you think about it We know—we heard—that Mary was having an affair with Hollister. We also know that Mary usually ran second to Margaret It’s possible, even probable, that any relationship between Mary and Stan Hollister came on the heels of a breakup between him and Margaret.”
Aidan’s expression remained dubious. Evelyn’s transformed into one of calculating speculation.
“That does make sense.” She warmed rapidly to the idea. “I’m sure Stan had no intention of marrying Mary. He told her to go home to Thurman and dumped her like a hot potato. To be honest, I don’t think there was much to the relationship. It was more like a fast fling. A few nights in the sack, possibly to compensate for losing Margaret, and that was it”
Sam wondered distantly if Mary’s baby had gone to term. It seemed unlikely in the face of Evelyn’s remarks. Not that any of this was going to help them locate Mary.