The Jean Harlow Bombshell

by Mollie Cox Bryan

  “Are you okay?” Den asked.

  I nodded. “I’ll be fine.” But my voice came out as a strangled whisper. Who was I trying to convince—him or me?

  “Sergeant Brophy, we’ve been expecting you,” Alfredo said. “Madam Donovan.”

  “Nice to see you.”

  He led us to Justine’s private booth, where a pot of mint tea and honey cakes awaited.

  “This is lovely,” Kate said. “Thank you.”

  I stood dumbfounded, strange emotions pulling at me. This was the table, and that was the tea and that was the cake. The same thing served to me on the day Justine was murdered.

  “I need to interview a few of the staff and I’ll be right back to talk with you,” Den said, then turned to Alfredo and said, “Thanks for the list of members who were here. I appreciate it.”

  The two of them walked into the back room, and I flashed to a memory of waking up there.

  “Sit down, girl,” Kate said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” She was sitting in the exact same spot Justine had sat.

  “This is the exact table we sat at. Where she died.” Where I’d held her until the paramedics pulled her from me. Where, I swear, I’d felt the cold like never before.

  Kate grimaced. “I didn’t know that. But look. They’ve laid such a lovely table for us. I’m sorry. The memory of this place and this table must be awful.”

  I sat down, wilting into myself. “Yes, it is. I wasn’t prepared for this.”

  Kate poured the tea. Steam curled upward as she slid the cup to me. “Drink your tea. It will do you good.”

  She reached for a honey cake, which I usually ate with abandon, but my stomach was doing its own thing and I wasn’t going to push it. I held the drink to my lips and drew in the scent of the tea.

  “The tea is tasty,” Kate said. “Peppermint is good for you, or so I hear. Good for your stomach, your sinuses.”

  We sat there for what seemed like forever, drinking tea. The murmurs of the other tea drinkers were present, but in the distance in my mind. The servers bee-bopping around with trays. Music playing softly in the background, which allowed customers to talk.

  “Hey,” Den said as he came up beside me, along with Alfredo.

  I gazed in his direction.

  “You’re in the same exact spot, right?”

  “Yes.” My throat squeezed as I poured more tea.

  “Okay, now you’re here, can you remember anything else odd about the day Justine was killed?”

  After a few moments, I closed my eyes. “It was packed that day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it that crowded. As I came through the crowd, I thought someone grabbed my purse. Then told myself it caught on something.”

  Why hadn’t I recalled that before?

  “Fascinating. Do you remember exactly where that was in the tea room?”

  “Yes.” I nodded in the direction. “It was almost right in the center. You see where the lady dressed in purple and black is? Right there.”

  “Good,” Den said, turning to Alfredo. “Can I get more security footage from you, ones focused on that area?”

  “Absolutely. Shall I send them to your email?”

  Den nodded. “Yeah. The same email address.”

  “Success?” Kate said and lifted her tea cup.

  “Yeah, I hoped this exercise would lead us somewhere,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  I checked myself. My queasiness had disappeared. I reached for a honey cake. My heart raced, but in a good way. “I’m fine. I’m not getting my hopes up. But I feel great about helping out.”

  Twenty-Three

  D en drove us back to L’Ombragé and we said our goodbyes. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Kate asked me after he left.

  “That you’d like to get Den in the sack?” I replied with a twisted grin.

  Kate laughed. “No. Not my type.” She sauntered onto the elevator.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You want to get into Justine’s secret room. But how can we? The front door to her apartment has been bolted by the cops.”

  “What about the back door?”

  “I assume it’s bolted as well.”

  Kate grabbed the keys out of my hands. “Let’s go check.”

  “It’s probably an exercise in folly, but I’m game.”

  We exited the elevator and went down a hallway to Justine’s kitchen door, which had no crime-scene tape across it like her front door. Kate slipped the key in and, voila, we were back inside the apartment.

  “I hope there’s no silent alarm on that thing,” I muttered, out of breath, as we sauntered toward the master bedroom, where the boxes and bags of clothing still sat awaiting their new lives.

  “We were so smart to close up the closet door,” Kate said. “Nobody else knows it’s there.” She walked in the direction of the closet-with-a-closet.

  I grabbed her arm. “Wait. What happens if we find the ring? Then what? What will we do with it?”

  “I say let’s worry about it when the time comes.” Kate forged ahead and I followed.

  We clambered through the first closet, and then she stretched out and pushed open the hidden door, which opened with a long creak and moan. We stepped inside the crowded space and once again, a strange feeling came over me. It wasn’t déjà vu—more like a buzzing or humming beneath my skin. I pulled the string to turn on the light. A covered couch sat under a full shelf. A sheet draped over a group of paintings. Boxes of all sizes were scattered through the room.

  “Where to start?” I said, reaching for a box, opening it to find a collection of old gloves. Some were long, others short. Some had gems on them.

  Kate gasped. “Holly Golightly!” She reached into the box and pulled out long black gloves and a tiara.

  “Surely not,” I said.

  “I’d recognize this tiara anywhere, and look, here’s the cigarette holder.”

  For a moment, beneath her makeup, Kate looked exactly like she had as a kid, her face full of wander and awe. I flashed back to her prancing around my room playing dress-up. It was her favorite thing to do—well, that and play pirate. None of the other kids on the island wanted to play with either one of us——“Karl” and his “sissy” ways, and me and my bookish ways. We didn’t care. We were fine in our own little world.

  “So maybe this is all Hollywood stuff,” I said. “Looks like Justine was a collector.” I tried to let that sink in, but it didn’t make sense. Justine despised collectors. My grandmother was going to love this—Justine had been hoarding valuable Hollywood collectibles in a secret room! Which made me wonder what else she’d been hiding from me. I’d believed I knew almost everything about her. This threw me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is just very weird. Justine claimed she hated collectors.”

  “Because she wanted what they had, evidently.” Aspersion seeped from Kate’s voice.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t sit right with me. Something’s not right here.” I pulled another box toward me as Kate inspected the smaller boxes on the shelves.

  The haunting scent I’d smelled the first time we were here caught my attention as I opened the box, which held several scarves and a bottle of perfume. I picked it up—the deep orange liquid was long past its prime, but the bottle was elegant and artsy looking. Its lid was an upside-down heart, and a gold silky sash wrapped around the bottle. I read the label: Mitsouko. A rush of excitement tore through me. Jean Harlow wore this fragrance. I opened it and sniffed—even as old as it was, the scent was murky with oak moss and citrus, maybe patchouli? It spoke of Eastern mysteries and sensuality.

  “Close that lid please.” Kate’s nose crunch up. “What an odd scent. What is it?”

  “Mitsouko. Very popular in the thirties and forties. It was Jean’s signature scent.” I capped the bottle.


  “Do you think that bottle may have been hers?”

  I shrugged. “There’s no label. But she was the only actress known to wear it. So it would stand to reason.” The scarves in the box were saturated in the scent. Silky and delicate, I ran my fingers through them.

  “The creepy thing about Mitsouko was that Paul Bern’s body was found drenched in it,” I said.

  “He was her second husband, right?” Kate set a box aside. “The one who killed himself.”

  “Yes, even though there was a lot of mystery surrounding it. The first people called to the site were not the police, but the studios, who spun the story how they wanted it. The cops were as corrupt as the studios.”

  Something bobbled around in the box beneath the scarves. I wrapped my fingers around it and untangled it from the silky strands of cloth.

  It was beautiful. And familiar. “Christ!” I said. “This is Harlow’s hand mirror!” I held it up and admired myself in it.

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen photos with her and this. How the hell did Justine get her hands on this?”

  “Looks like there was a lot more to Justine than we appreciated,” Kate said.

  I pulled the scarves from the box. “I wondered if this all was Harlow’s?”

  Kate’s mouth dropped open as she looked at a pink silky scarf. “Uh.”

  What?”

  She pointed to the scarf. “I think there’s a piece of jewelry attached to it.”

  My pulse escalated and my fingers sought purchase. And there it was.

  It resembled a milky-blue marble attached to a ring. And that’s what it was, except that it was a blue star sapphire—and may have been the very thing we’d been seeking.

  “I’ve never seen a stone so huge,” Kate said after she gathered herself.

  “It’s not even that pretty,” I said.

  Turns out that Chad Walters knew what he was talking about. Justine had the ring. Disappointment reeled through me. Why hadn’t she told me? Was Den right when he said she’d been protecting me? Or had she been getting ready to tell me the day she died?

  Even though I’d been completely ignorant that she had the ring, one thing I understood was that if Justine had wanted Chad to have it, she’d have sold it to him already. There was more to this ring than anybody comprehended. Which is what made it so dangerous. Was this bauble what Justine was killed over? What Chad was threatening me about? The ring Justine had gotten countless emails about—some not so friendly? Was this also what the look-alike was after? Why she was stalking me?

  “What do we do with the thing?” Kate asked.

  “I’m already being followed and harassed. Is this why? Can this be the reason Justine died? We need to hide it.” Should I tell Den?

  “You mean like in a secret room?” Kate grinned.

  I considered. “No. Someone is bound to discover this room. We need another place.”

  A noise erupted from the front of the apartment. Kate quickly closed the hidden door. I shut off the light. Someone was inside the apartment. We could only hope it was the police.

  Twenty-Four

  Muffled voices and shifting sounds filled the apartment outside of the tiny room where Kate and I stood, arm in arm, breathing. I wished I could make out what the voices were saying. But all I heard was my blood rushing and my racing heartbeat.

  Were they cops? Management? Criminals revisiting the scene of the crime? In any case, Kate and I were not supposed to be here.

  Kate’s eyes glistened in the dark, wide and frightened. I was no mind reader, but I could guess her thoughts.

  There we stood in a secret room in an apartment we’d been given strict orders to stay out of because it was a crime scene, holding a ring some people would kill for.

  We remained still. Breathing as shallowly as possible while the noise in the other rooms escalated. Then nothing. No sound. A door closing. Were they gone?

  We stood a few more beats, listening. Finally, feeling it was safe, I switched on the light.

  “Christ,” Kate whispered. “We need to get out of here. We’ve got what we came for.”

  “But what are we going to do with it? If we’re right about this, people are getting killed over this thing.”

  “Take it to the cops,” Kate said, opening the door.

  “Are you kidding? Some lackey cop gets their hands on it and we never see it again. Den is too busy to be watching over a priceless ring for me.” The NYPD was the worst at keeping track of valuables.

  “What do you care?”

  We were standing in Justine’s bedroom now. What did I care?

  I mulled over everything I understood about the ring. “There’s something more to this ring than what we know. Justine was keeping it for a reason—or else she’d have sold it to Chad Walters. I need to figure out why.”

  “Why? It’s not your concern. Like, just get rid of it. Then it’s out of your life, along with all of this crazy shit.”

  Kate had a point.

  But then again, I was writing the definitive biography of Jean Harlow.

  The ring was an item that held meaning for Harlow. And it had taken on almost mythic qualities over the years. Who could I trust with it? Who could I trust to even tell about it?

  Den, of course, seemed to be the person. And yet I didn’t feel like I could burden him with it. Shit was going to hit the fan if this news came out. Den needed to stay focused.

  If I was going to include the ring in the biography—and I should—I needed to figure some stuff out about it before I turned it over to the authorities. Once I gave the ring to them, I’d probably never see it again. And who knew what would happen to it? The ring had been so important to Justine that she’d kept it hidden, even from me. What secrets was it keeping, or pointing me toward? If only I could see.

  “I’m going to have to write about the ring in the biography,” I said, almost to myself, as we made our way through the kitchen.

  “You don’t need it on your person to write about it,” Kate pointed out.

  “I just have a feeling about it. Like there’s an important reason Justine kept it. Something very important, yet to be revealed.”

  “She was going to sell it and make a shit-ton of money.”

  I gestured to the apartment we were standing in. “Nah. Money wasn’t a huge motivator for her. I mean, she liked money, but she wasn’t going to do anything risky or illegal for it. She didn’t need to.”

  We walked into the library-office and surmised it was the cops who’d been in the apartment because all the crime scene tape was now taken down.

  “Thank God,” Kate said. “It wasn’t your beautiful stalker. Just the cops.”

  “Wonder what would happen if they caught us here.”

  Kate shrugged. “We better get going. We don’t want to find out, do we?”

  As we walked out the door and stood at the elevator, my attention focused on the ring. The fact that it had been found was big news and most assuredly would need to be in the book. It was a new development in the Harlow story. She hadn’t been buried with it. Justine and I had been certain she was.

  But evidently Mama Jean’s word was the last.

  Mama Jean’s word was the final command on most decisions regarding her daughter. You could say what you wanted about Jean’s mother, but she rightfully swindled William Powell into buying the crypt in Forest Lawn where her daughter’s remains still lie. Jean’s elaborate marble crypt in the Sanctuary of Benediction, inside the Great Mausoleum, Forest Lawn, Glendale, cost William Powell a reported $25,000. Jean’s mother sent him the bill. Jean was buried in the gown she wore in Libeled Lady with a single gardenia in her hands, and a note from William Powell: “Good night my dearest darling.”

  The gesture seemed really sweet until you grasped what a prick he’d been to her—a flower and a n
ote was the least the man could do. Powell probably wouldn’t have paid for Harlow’s crypt, either, had Mama Jean not seized the opportunity.

  What was $25,000 to Powell?

  Nobody ever knew for sure whether Harlow and Powell were officially engaged—their relationship had been on again, off again for a few years. She’d worn the huge star sapphire ring on different fingers at various times. She wanted to be married to Powell—but his failed marriage to Carole Lombard prevented him from going into the relationship full force. He’d been called “Mr. Lombard” one too many times. And, after all, he was a star in his own right.

  Ah, men. Such fragile creatures, I mused. “He could screw her, but he couldn’t marry her. Imagine that,” Justine had said with a snort. And back then, marriage was everything for most women. I wondered about Jean—was it everything for her?

  I’d read about other women divorcing in the 1930s, and it was a big deal. Women were often shunned in small communities. Children sometimes were given to orphanages and mothers shuffled to the poorhouse. Even if the results were not quite so dramatic, a divorced woman in the 1930s dealt with a whole other set of problems—things like women not even being allowed to have their own bank accounts, let alone their own property. Even a married woman would have to get her husband’s permission to do anything official. Yet Jean Harlow, at the age of twenty-six, had been married three times and divorced twice. All accounts agree she was an old-fashioned woman who wanted to settle down with a man and “be happy.”

  Could something as deceptively simple as a good relationship have been all Harlow desired, even as she strutted around on camera?

  But then again, why couldn’t she have had both? Was it possible in the ’30s? I grunted.

  Was it possible today?

  Hunger pangs brought my mind back to the present. “Let’s get something to eat,” I said to Kate as we entered our guest studio.

  “Sounds good to me,” she said.

  While she slipped into the bathroom, I slipped the ring in my purse.