Neon Noir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  I could see dollar signs sinking like the Titanic in the family’s glazed irises. When we got out, Godfrey rang the doorbell with an authoritative pull.

  The 73-year-old widow Robertson opened the door herself, a glitzy hausfrau of forever-forty wearing black Capri pants and silver-sequined white knit top.

  “Ooh,” she said, ogling Godfrey first. “Come on in, Nick Charles, you cutie. You’re a bit old for me but I love your fancy-dress getup and sleuthing ways.”

  “Mom!” Christa popped into view around the CinSim’s dapper figure. “Haven’t you got a welcome word for your abandoned family?”

  “You were never an abandoned sort of woman, dear,” April told her daughter, “that was always your problem. Mike, Stevie! Come in. Oh. Ronnie, is that brunette with the wild sterling silver cuff bracelet your new girlfriend?”

  “Delilah’s a gal pal of mine,” Christa said, using the cover story I’d given her.

  “Quite a spread you’ve got here, April,” Ronnie put in.

  April simpered. “Are you here to see me or my new digs? Come on in. Believe me, I have nothing to hide.”

  She swept the broad door wide and we entered a world like the opening of the 1939 Wizard of Oz film, all in black and white. After the sere desert glare outside it made us blink.

  When I realized that April was as flesh-toned as we were, I realized that the place was decorated totally in black and white and shades of gray

  “This décor sets off Cary best,” April explained. ”We were just breakfasting.”

  “At 11:00 a.m.?” Christa asked, incredulous. ”We were invited for brunch.”

  “Not much reason to rush out of bed,” April snickered. “We nibble all day.”

  Even I was ready to vomit.

  That’s when Cary Grant strolled out from deeper in the house, attired in a gray moiré dressing gown that would be totally swish today, except on Cary’s build one thought of a boxer. Handsome is as handsome does and Cary Grant hadn’t done anything wrong for four film decades. Even the familiar tightened on my wrist, maybe to take my pulse. I studied the famous profile, noting how his dark hairline at the temples echoed the jut of brow bone and jaw. He greeted us with the famous affably suave manner and slight English accent.

  “April, darling, so this is your family. A chipper group, I see.”

  Nothing about any of us was “chipper” and I doubt ever had been.

  His rapid-fired dialogue continued. “I’ve left the Espresso machine set up for coffee on the patio, darling, and will be dressed and down in a jiffy. Tally-ho, all. Make yourselves at home.”

  “Easy enough for him to say,” Ronnie groused behind me.

  The brothers remained gape-jawed as we followed April through a frilly-curtained breakfast room to the house’s distant rear.

  Something about the place rang all my inner alarm buttons. The facades at Sunset Boulevard Estates were old Hollywood mansion, but this interior was all 1940’s satin-and chintz homey-sweet frills. Phony, in other words.

  April served foamy mugs of coffee, black and cream-white to our specifications as we sat around a glass-topped wrought-iron table gazing at a giant aquamarine of pool set into dazzling white paving stones. The view was in Technicolor.

  “What do you think?” April demanded with a coy tilt of her naturally white-haired head. Her jawline, almost as sharp as Cary’s, shouted “cosmetic surgery”.

  “Isn’t Cary to die for?” she prodded her still dazed family.

  “What does this place cost?” Christa asked, gazing around.

  “Nothing,” April answered, “compared to Cary. But he’s worth it,” she added, patting her pale hair. “It is my money, you know.”

  “Father made it,” Mike pointed out.

  “Father died,” April retorted. “I didn’t.”

  Meanwhile, Ronnie had been stewing, his face growing cardiac-attack pink, which actually complemented the décor.

  “April, you’re a foolish old woman,” he said. “You can’t be happy, or even sane, living in a motion picture set with a zombie boyfriend. It’s nuts.”

  “A zombie bridegroom.” April extended her left hand and the very real diamond solitaire and matching band on it. “We were married in the Star Bar Drive-by Wedding Chapel yesterday. I heard you all were coming, so I baked you a cake. Anybody care for a piece? It’s very rich.”

  She gestured to a side table no one had noticed.

  A towering, frosted wedding cake sat atop it like a trophy. It was pure white, or course.

  “CARY DARLING” CAME DOWN shortly after, attired in a sharp gray pin-striped suit.

  He was mesmerizing, the personification of the phrase “witty and charming,” all patter and polish, and quite a hunk under the suave surface too. He took April’s two “boys,” Godfrey, and Ronnie to the den to play billiards so “we girls” could chat.

  Christa and I took narrow slices of cake with our coffee as she began working on her mother.

  “I can’t believe you’d sleep with a dead man, Mom,” she began.

  It was a rather delicate topic to discuss over desert.

  “What do you know about it, Christa?” her mother answered. “Your boyfriends looked like they’d be dead in bed. You’re just too controlling. Men like to be in the driver’s seat.”

  “He’s bought and paid for. He has to do as you say.”

  “You just don’t understand. Tell her, Miss Street.”

  “CinSims,” I told Christa, “act as they do in their films. Their characters are set. That’s the fascination. Encountering a hotel CinSim is like visiting a living wax museum. Tourists can walk up to the famous and start chatting with them.”

  “And it’s all lovey-dovey?”

  “No, it’s civil and entertaining, like meeting strangers you happen to know something about and admire.”

  “So not all CinSims have sex?” Christa inquired.

  “Most don’t. Not at the main level of big hotels. There are discreetly elegant clubs for that, and some CinSim ‘chicken ranches’ where it’s legal in Nevada. Places like the Star Bar encourage only the illusion of romance. I’ve never heard of anyone human marrying a CinSim, though.”

  I glanced at the beaming April.

  “So my mother is a depraved pioneer!” Christa said.

  April only laughed, airily. “Oh, dear girl. I simply dealt directly with the...er, manufacturer.”

  I understood the implications. She’d paid off the Immortality Mob directly. The lady might act ditsy, but she had moxie and determination.

  “My ‘stepfather’ is a blowup doll?” Christa asked.

  “He’s a nonliving doll, dear. You have no idea how an old-fashioned gentleman will treat a woman. So considerate and romantic. It’s ‘darling’ this, and ‘darling’ that. ‘Would you like this? May I do that?’”

  “Too much information, mother.” Christa’s hands covered her ears. “You’re post-menopausal crazy. Don’t think I can’t get you declared incompetent and your ‘marriage’ annulled so you don’t blow Daddy’s entire estate on your macabre boy toy!”

  “So you do you find him attractive!” April said. “Then I’ll leave him to you in my will. I can change it in the blink of a cursor.”

  “If so, you could be responsible and change it to provide for your children and grandchildren. You are an unnatural woman!”

  Christa stood, then stormed away to find her brothers and the boy toy. I rose to bid April goodbye, even more uneasy than before. This woman was just asking for someone near and supposedly dear to crack...and kill her.

  Ronnie’s machismo, such as it was, had been snubbed. Mike was drinking as if to pump himself up for something, Stevie was too watchful and Christa’s threats were hollow. Their mother’s money was earmarked for Sunset Boulevard Estates and “Cary Darling” for life.

  “Goodbye, Mrs.—?” I said.

  “Robertson will do,” she said quickly. “It’s my not-quite maiden name, but will still do. I wouldn’t have ch
anged my surname for Ronnie if I’d married him either. April Adkins.” She rolled her eyes just like her daughter. “I hate cutesy names.”

  Godfrey met me inside the patio doors just as Ronnie stormed out to confront April.

  “I’ve spent twenty minutes with your new ‘husband,’” he ranted for all to hear, “and a blind woman could spot the smirking phony. He’s a con man, April. He’s taking you for your money. He’d be inhaling cheap perfume and cigarette fumes in that bizarre Star Bar forever if he hadn’t conned you into marrying him and underwriting this pricey freak-show house. You’re gonna grow crazy living in all this black and white. Come home with us to Winnetka. This is the last time I’ll ask.”

  At that moment Cary waltzed in, bearing a fresh steaming latte to his bride. April melted into a fond puddle.

  “Oh, thank you, Darling.” She waved a hand at us without taking her eyes off him and his deeply dimpled chin with the barest sheen of stubble. “Goodbye Ronnie. Goodbye, Miss Street, and do tell Mr. Charles he’s always welcome to visit.”

  Too bad Godfrey’s “roaming” privileges were about to expire like Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.

  SO MY FIRST “CASE” in my new office was a bust. I told Christa the mileage was on me. I drove the Robertsons to their hotel, the Gehenna, and Ronnie Adkins to the Luxor.

  Last, I deposited Godfrey, bound to roam no more, at the main house on Nightwine’s estate.

  “It’s quite all right, Miss,” he said in farewell. “Being Nick Charles was rather wearing on my nerves. No wonder he drinks so much. My thanks for the outing, but I found your clients rather wearing too. I prefer to stay indoors and buttle.”

  The whole affair was an annoying and apparently useless expedition into lust and greed. I no longer cared to crash the mysterious gates of Sunset Boulevard Estates.

  Until I suddenly couldn’t.

  TWO DAYS LATER THOSE exclusive gates were all over the TV news. Found dead? April Robertson. How? No one knew. Not a mark on her. I was frantic to put my oar in the investigation, to get inside and see for myself. No dice.

  I called contacts at the Gehenna and Luxor front desks. The usual suspects had all checked out, only this noon. Talk about a suspicious coincidence.

  Had one of them used me somehow? I was pacing so much Effie peeked in from the front office and wondered if I needed some nice hot chamomile tea. That was an offer Sam Spade would never have gotten and be damned glad of it.

  Then I called the main house.

  “Godfrey! You heard the news? Yes, I know Hector is a media freak. Has he checked your boutonniere sound camera yet? Oh. You didn’t know. I thought the old bugg—” On second thought, the bad word was perfectly appropriate in this instance.. “—bugger had your permission to be wired. Never mind. I’ll be right there. Tell Hector I want lights, camera and action on his six-foot wide-screen by then.”

  Hector Nightwine was a hugely powerful force in Vegas and the media world, but I suspected he secretly liked being bossed. By me. In ten minutes, I sat in his office, the remote clutched in my hand like a gun, running the action forward and back.

  Oh, the things I saw in slo-mo and frame by frame.

  A concealed highly sensitive mini-recorder could have saved the gate’s opening frequency code. Any one of them could have done that.

  Then there was the dainty little pill box of white powder a scowling Christa slipped into one of tall Espressos cups. Sugar substitute? Cocaine?

  A slow-acting poison placed in April’s serving?

  I followed those Espresso mugs through the footage. Like the pieces of a shell game, they’d ended up abandoned on surfaces inside and out of the mansion. Who was to say who’d been served which one?

  There was also the moment Ronnie Adkins stuffed something down a billiard pocket when the other men were applauding one of Cary Grant’s perfect shots.

  A hypodermic needle, planted for a secret return?

  Why had I thought the Robertson clan and Adkins were so venal and annoying they couldn’t also be devious and clever? Murderers don’t advertise and money is a motive everyone can risk a fall for.

  Fall for. You can fall for more than risk.

  “Hector,” I said.

  He’d been sitting at his desk being magisterial for so long I’d forgotten his presence. In fact, he snorted awake.

  “You’re a film buff,” I noted.

  “More than a mere ‘buff’, my dear. I am a cineaste.”

  I had to admit that the word “buff” and Hector’s mountainous bulk weren’t a happy mental association.

  “Right. Cineaste. Fancy word for film fan. Which movie is this Cary Grant from?”

  He glanced at the screen. “Forties-made, obviously, considering the domestic ambiance the victim created. That April-woman was a treasure! I’m as eager as you to identify her killer. She appreciated cinematic quality.”

  “I agree. Cary Grant was first rate, a master screwball comedian who never lost his romantic charisma.”

  “Ah, yes. Remember him as Nick in My Favorite Wife? They were remaking that as Something’s Got to Give when poor Marilyn died.”

  I let him ramble on about his favorite subject. Hector was a talking encyclopedia when it came to film trivia.

  “And he was the playboy, Dexter Haven, in The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. Incredible that Stewart got the girl in that one! Ingrid Bergman almost dies for him as the spy, T. C. Devlin, in Notorious. Those were films! Oh, and he had the title role in Mr. Lucky, as the gambler Joe Adams.”

  “Adams,” I repeated. “What was Mr. Lucky’s plot?”

  “The usual bad-guy romance. Joe Adams is a gambler planning to scam a charity to pay his IOUs until he meets a good girl like you, Delilah.”

  “I’d rather be a good detective right now.”

  “Still down about that April Robertson death? You’re an investigator, not a miracle worker.”

  “And you’re a sneaky voyeuristic mogul with a classic film addiction.” I smiled to soften the description. “I believe I’ve got the answer to April Robertson’s murder.”

  “Here? From my office, not your new one?’

  “Here from your home base, Hector, and from your cheating heart and camera.”

  He watched me focus on the décor, the satin sofa pillows, the filmy window drapes.

  “Yes, yes, Forties froufrou. Definitely in the decade.”

  “Was there a death in Mr. Lucky?”

  “No, no. Cary Grant always played the good guy. Sometimes the reformed rogue, yes, but he was never homicidal.”

  “Never, Hector?”

  “The studios would never let him be.”

  I clicked through an endless library of classic films and pulled one up to the screen.

  “I recall he was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock, the master suspense director. Hitchcock always went for the cool erotic blonde and the edgy male leading man.”

  Hector’s blueberry-size eyes looked even smaller in his widening whites. “You’ve remembered another Hitchcock-Grant classic.”

  “Weren’t they all?” I paused the film. The still showed a darkly handsome Cary leaning over a swooning blonde in a satin and chiffon-draped bed.

  “Joan Fontaine won an Oscar for that role of Lina,” Hector said reverentially. “Nineteen forty-one.”

  “What character did Cary play in this one?”

  “Johnny.”

  “Johnny? Funny, Cary’s real name was Archie Leach, but he doesn’t sound like a film ‘Johnny’.”

  “Names could be simplistic in these films, like Joe Adams. This one had an odd last name. Aysgarth.”

  “Aysgarth!”

  “You know the name?” Hector asked.

  “No, but I see the light. April commented she’d keep her first husband’s surname whichever man she married again because she hated ‘cutesy’ names. If ‘April Adkins’ struck her as ‘cutesy’—”

  “The initials ‘AA,’ as in Alcoholics Ano
nymous,” Hector suggested.

  “Could be. April Aysgarth would have the same effect.”

  “This is the only Cary Grant film besides Mr. Lucky in which he had a surname beginning with A,” Hector said.

  “Any reason for the name Aysgarth?” I asked.

  “Yes. The film was based on a novel and the name has an old Norse feel. Probably it’s after a place in England.”

  “So the film Grant character April evoked in her Sunset Boulevard mansion,” I said, “is from Suspicion.”

  “Yes. The film is a fascinating study of trust. Joan plays an infatuated bride who begins to suspect her groom, Cary, is a con man and thief, and perhaps a murderer after her money. The novel ended with the attentive groom bringing Joan a nightly glass of milk she suspected was poisoned.”

  “That was the ending?” I asked, surprised.

  “It implied her suspicions made her so distraught that she welcomed death and would drink it down. Mental poison was shown to be as effective as physical poison, if Johnny’s villainy may have been only in her own mind.”

  “Grim. But that was how the novel ended. So was she lactose intolerant until death did them part in the movie?”

  Hector shook his head. “No. Cary brought Joan the milk, but that wasn’t the ending. It was much more ambiguous. The milk was shown undrunk on her nightstand the next morning, as if she suspected him. Then she demanded he drive her to her mother’s home that day. He has a chance to push her out of the car on a mountain road, but saves her instead. Hitchcock insisted to his dying day he wanted to film the novel ending. RKO refused. So Lina confronts Johnny and he has answers for all her suspicions. The last scene shows the rear of the car driving on with the couple in it, and the bride possibly still vulnerable to those milky nightcaps.”

  “Why was the ending so ambiguous?”

  “The studio was antsy about Grant being portrayed as a lying cad, and even moreso a murderer.”

  “Can a CinSim commit murder?” I asked.

  “I’m a fan, an aficionado. I know we’re lucky to have the Immortality Mob around to preserve CinSims, amoral as they way they do it might be. Yes, putting CinSims in artificial approximations of their film environments could ‘corrupt’ the characterization and even alter their onscreen actions. Yet I doubt any court would consider a manufactured entity capable of independent action.”