With just a few phone calls, I was speaking to Sonia, a sweet-voiced young woman with a light Spanish accent. She answered my question, telling me what time on Friday would be my best bet.
I timed my trip accordingly. I checked my watch as I drove up Bellagio Road. On either side were estates that would sell today in the two-to-ten range. That’s millions. Hidden behind tall fences and large hedges were the homes that once belonged to Ray Milland and Gene Roddenberry, Franchot Tone and Jim Backus, John Forsythe and Alfred Hitchcock.
On the 11500 block, I pulled my vintage Grand Wagoneer up to a pair of tall, wrought-iron gates. They barred a long brickwork drive that led up to Catherine Hill’s massive property.
I sat there in my car for a while, taking in the sounds and sights of the street. It was quiet, save the ubiquitous on/off hissing of the sprinklers. I pressed the speaker button on the gate and after a minute, a voice greeted me.
“Who is there, please?”
I was startled and thrilled at the voice. Instead of some anonymous employee, the voice that came from the speaker was completely familiar, smooth and girlish, with just a trace of a British accent.
Catherine Hill had starred in so many movies over so many years that a Buddhist priest from Mars might be the only individual in the galaxy not to recognize it instantly.
“Hello, Miss Hill. My name is Madeline Bean. I have a gift to deliver.”
“Yes?” she said sweetly. “From where?”
“My friend just bought Dickey McBride’s home. We found Mr. McBride’s old mah-jongg set. I understand he had wanted you to have it.”
“Dickey’s mah-jongg tiles? What a kick. Can you drive in, Miss Bean? I’ll buzz you.”
The trick, here, in case any of you are going to try to charm your way into a celebrity’s compound is 1) don’t sound like a stalker, and 2) bring something the celebrity really, really wants.
The large automatic gate slowly swung open, and I drove onto Miss Catherine Hill’s property. It was a narrow drive, lined with precisely trimmed hedges. I followed the drive up a gentle grade to the portico, a two-story-high structure with enormous Tara-like white columns, and left my Jeep parked to one side.
The large front door was open when I pulled up and standing in the doorway was Catherine Hill herself. She was dressed in a turquoise green muumuu, and even more interesting, her world-famous head was wrapped in a gold turban. In case you haven’t seen her in the tabloids lately, Ms. Hill has ascended about a half dozen dress sizes since she ran almost naked to the sea in Fiji Princess in 1948. A muumuu covers a multitude of sins.
“Miss Beall, is it? How lovely of you to come over. Did you say you knew Dickey, my dear?” Her brightly colored lips stretched over perfect, white-capped teeth into a brilliant smile. Her face was just as I remembered it from all her many movies. Only older. Much, much older. But even with all her hair tucked up under the gold hair wrap, it was still clear to see why she had once been known as the Big Screen’s most intoxicating beauty.
I walked up two steps and met her on her front landing.
“Miss Hill, it’s a great honor to meet you. I am a huge fan of yours.”
I should point out that this is THE required Hollywood greeting when meeting any form of celebrity. This greeting has no actual meaning whatsoever—just like “hello” in other parts of the country. It’s simply the appropriate polite greeting in this town, no matter whom you might meet, whether it be Jesse “The Body” Ventura, or the woman who years ago played the second Von Trapp daughter in The Sound of Music, or Snoop Doggy Dogg or the guy who does the voices on Pinky and the Brain. Without this greeting, most Hollywood insiders would be put momentarily ill at ease, and wonder how your mother raised you.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call first to set up an appointment, but then I didn’t have your phone number…”
“No, of course not. How could you? It’s impossible to get my phone number. It’s not only unlisted, it practically doesn’t exist.” Her dancing voice dipped and then returned in that pleasant musical way she had. I was mesmerized. The same charming voice that said, “I’ll always love you, Frank, but I can never forgive you,” on-screen to Gary Cooper, was now addressing me.
Catherine Hill smiled. “Finding my house, on the other hand, is never a problem. Just follow any tour bus up the street. They point this place out once every fifteen minutes without fail.”
“Oh dear,” I said with a trace of dismay in my voice, bonding a bit with the superstar movie queen of old over the sad lack of privacy one in her position must bear. Well, I mean…I could imagine it would be tough, couldn’t I? I had empathy.
“Please, come in,” she said sweetly. Throughout our little chitchat on the front steps, I knew she had been checking me out. What variety of stranger was I? A mental case who might cause injury? A rabid fan? A souvenir hunter who would dig up a plant or steal one of her little porcelain poodles? An Herbalife saleswoman?
I had dressed in my “good” clothes, ones that have labels people like Catherine Hill would recognize. Thanks to Wesley’s mother I had a small supply of such outfits. Mrs. Westcott is a clotheshorse and just my size. For years she has sent me last season’s wardrobe whether I could use it or not. To make a good impression on Catherine Hill, I wore a St. John knit suit in navy blue and white.
The star opened her front door wider to me. “Oh! Dear child. What have you brought me?”
My hands were full. I had carried from the car Dickey’s old mah-jongg case and I was also rolling a professional food cooler.
“These are for you.”
“Oh, goody,” she squealed, sounding just like a five-year-old girl. “Gifties! Can I get Sonia to help you with any of that?”
“Please don’t bother. I’m fine.” I followed Catherine Hill into the darkened coolness of the house. Although the daytime temperature outside was about eighty-five, Catherine Hill kept her eleven thousand square feet of living space at a permanent sixty-eight degrees. She brought me into her large entry hall, which was a magnificent circular room, painted a deep persimmon pink.
Ms. Hill turned and looked at me brightly, her smile in place.
“It’s so nice of you to invite me in. Actually, I’m a professional chef, but I’m afraid we’ve never met.”
“Ah, yes?”
“My partner and I plan special events and cater parties. We did the breakfast for the pope last year.”
“Oh, yes? Really!” Catherine Hill gushed with a pretty smile.
I detected a bit of real warming up behind the professionally warm exterior.
“You must know Keely Bartolli? She does all my parties. Has for years.”
“Yes, of course I do. She’s wonderful. We’ve done a few parties together.”
“Have you? Isn’t she marvelous?”
One connection made. I was still proving myself.
“And then,” Catherine Hill said, frowning, “poor, poor Vivian Duncan. She did two of my weddings. You must know Vivian.”
“Oh, yes. Sadly, I was actually helping Vivian Duncan with a wedding when…” I didn’t feel I should finish. After all, Catherine Hill and I and everyone knew about Vivian’s unfortunate last party. At the time, it had been impossible to turn on a television set and not hear: “Woman found dead at wedding, film at eleven.” We both shook our heads.
“Yes.” Miss Catherine Hill gave me a rather penetrating look with her deep turquoise eyes. “I thought I recognized your name.” She had known who I was all along. Of course. Fame was the game she played best.
At close range, Catherine Hill looked somewhat better and yet somewhat worse than she had in the bright outdoor light. Age could not be denied. Her famous sharp chin was now only sharpish, and set in a rounder face. The profile of her famous heart-shaped face was still strikingly heart-shaped, only now the silhouette was subtly softened with years. She must have been close to seventy-five, but she looked at least ten years younger than that. In her heyday, in the fifties and sixties, she
was described as having the loveliest lips on the Silver Screen. Now, their strong shape owed much to the curvy outline that was penciled in. In all, her strong beauty was still evident, if paying its dues to time.
“Come into the little parlor,” she said, cheerful as ever, leading the way. “Let’s look at what you brought me.”
Down the hall she turned to the left and we entered a chintz-covered den. The walls were padded and upholstered in an English print featuring big puffy pink hydrangea blooms amid green leaves. In fact, an entire English country garden bursting with flowers of all sorts covered each and every cushion and pad and sofa and window. I set the rosewood case down upon a small black tole tray table, while settling my caterer’s case in a corner beside a love seat.
I hadn’t quite realized how petite Miss Hill would be. On the screen she had seemed tall and slim and in perfect proportion. In the bright chintz room, I realized she might only be five feet tall. And while her figure had filled out over the years, her hands and feet were quite small and dainty. She turned to me, and so naturally I stopped staring.
“Now this is from Dickey, did you say, darling?” She glinted her turquoise greens up at me.
“Yes. Would you like to hear a strange story?” I asked.
“My dear child, I live for it.” She sat herself down in the center of one hydrangea-covered love seat and I took it for granted she wouldn’t mind if I sat down as well. I chose a feminine-shaped wing chair with a forties feel to it, covered in a riot of violets.
Catherine Hill checked her wrist, on which tinkled a dozen little diamond bracelets and bangles and a small Cartier watch. “Oh, pooh!” She looked up. “I am expecting guests in about fifteen minutes. If they should come early, I’ll have to greet them, you see.”
“Of course.” I only had a short time, and I had many questions.
“So…” Miss Hill looked at me with interest. “You and Dickey were friends. Good friends, I imagine?”
“No. Oh, no. I never actually met Mr. McBride.”
“No?” Catherine Hill let out a loud, boyish laugh. “Well that’s probably a very lucky thing for you, my dear. Dickey was a dirty old man. He was scandalous.”
“Oh, really?”
“Truly. He was quite a rascal, our Dickey. He invented scandal. That man had quite an appetite for young ladies, I’m sure you have heard.”
“Well, yes I have. All those wives and models, of course. But I didn’t ever meet him, and I thought the stories were mostly gossip.”
“You are a very pretty girl, my dear. Very pretty with all that strawberry blond hair and those big hazel eyes and your slim figure. Do you act?”
“Me? No. Never.”
“Good for you.” Catherine Hill showed me her legendary dimples. “You are too smart for that nonsense.”
Now, what was the polite response to that? I simply skipped it and went on.
“Here’s the odd thing…the thing that brings me here today in a way. Through my work, I met Dickey McBride’s wife. I didn’t get to know her very well.”
“Which wife was that?” Catherine Hill pecked at this new topic of gossip like a bird finding a fresh juicy worm. “Was it Emilette? Emilette was a foolish woman, I always thought.”
“No. Her name was Quita.”
Catherine Hill looked at me blankly. The name did not seem to register.
“Quita McBride…” I said, trying to make things clearer, and failing. “…um, I don’t know her other name.”
Catherine Hill did not seem to know her. “I assume this was the girl whom darling Dickey was schtupping at the time he died?”
I looked at her wide-eyed.
“You hadn’t heard that rumor?” Catherine Hill looked extremely happy, just as I’d hoped. She loved to be the one to tell. “Frankly, I believe it. That’s just the way Dickey would have liked to go out. I just don’t remember if I ever met that last girl. They didn’t have a big wedding. That I know. It must have been wedding number five or six for Dickey. I told him, after the fourth, just have something simple. That’s what I did. Otherwise,” she said, confiding in me, “it’s just not in good taste.”
I nodded. Heck, I should have been taking notes. These were the etiquette tips one so rarely finds in the pages of Emily Post.
“If there had been a wedding,” Catherine Hill went on, “I’d have certainly been invited. It was our tradition, you see. We’d known each other for ages. Eons, actually. I like to say I’m the only beautiful woman in Hollywood that Dickey never slept with!” She laughed with glee, truly enjoying herself. I chuckled, too, careful to be polite.
“I attended four of Dickey’s weddings and remember each one. Vivian Duncan planned some of them. Beautiful parties, beautiful. And of course I sent the rascal a disgustingly expensive gift for each one. I didn’t mind, but it was always the girl who kept the gift. After a while, I simply had had enough. I mean, I still own every wedding gift Dickey ever bought for me.”
I remembered that Catherine Hill had been married at least five times herself, and two of those husbands, she’d managed to marry twice. That’s a lot of chatchkas.
“I told him. After that Emilette character took the lovely pair of sterling George II candelabras in the divorce settlement, I told Dickey enough was enough. If he couldn’t resist the urge to marry any more of them, he simply had to make it clear that he would have custody of Cath Hill’s wedding gift!” She laughed loudly.
“You,” I said, staring at her with admiration, “have led an amazing life.”
She beamed.
“I know you don’t have a lot of time…”
“Nonsense. We’re having such fun.”
“I want to tell you about what I brought for you.”
She looked at the mah-jongg case with some interest, opening one of the latches and pulling a drawer. “Yes, Dickey’s maj set. I remember it. Now how did you get it, again? From this new wife person?”
“I have a partner. His name is Wesley Westcott.”
“In your catering company?”
“Yes. But he also buys houses and restores them. He just bought Dickey’s old house, as a matter of act. The one up on Wetherbee.”
“Wetherbee. Yes. Marvelous house up in the hills. Dickey had it for years. It was rather a wreck, actually, so I’m sure your friend is having a jolly time cleaning it all up.” Her eyes twinkled. “And so?”
Cut to the chase, she was telling me. I cut. “He found this mah-jongg set as he was renovating. We heard that Dickey had wanted you to have it.”
“Ah, Dickey, Dickey, Dickey. He was a sentimental old fool, you know. But he was also a ferocious gambler. He taught me to play mah-jongg—did you know that? We were doing a picture together in Hong Kong. Flower of Love. There was simply nothing to do there, and we were all dying of boredom. I was married to Todd Stiller, then, and Todd insisted on staying home and working, so I was all alone. Dickey was married to Dee Dee, I think, and she wasn’t there either. So we were bored. Dickey found a little friend, of course. He was incorrigible…is that the word I mean? You know Dickey.”
I felt at this point I did.
“She taught him to play mah-jongg, and he came back to the set and taught me and the crew. We played every break. I couldn’t even remember my lines half the time. Watch that film and see if I’m not stumbling all over the words. We were much too happy sitting around playing maj.”
She smiled at the sweet memory of how truly difficult she once had been. I could only imagine some poor beleaguered director on a foreign location shoot with his prima donna of a leading lady refusing to come to the set because she wanted to finish her mah-jongg hand.
“The game is simply everywhere over there. They gamble in the streets. They gamble in those mah-jongg parlors, filled with smoke and Chinese men and drugs I wouldn’t wonder. It can be very addictive. Do you play?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, you really should. It is too much fun. It really is.”
“It’s comi
ng back into style,” I said. “I’m trying to learn, but I don’t have much time to play.”
“Oh, I’ll teach you. But don’t bet big money, okay? Over the past forty years, I’ve lost more money to that old scalawag McBride. He was a cheat, I always said. But we couldn’t catch him.”
“He cheated at mah-jongg?” I had to laugh. It was hard enough for me to imagine this big-time movie star lothario playing mah-jongg with the girls, but cheating? That was funny.
“You know, dear one, your timing couldn’t be better. All the maj girls are coming over in a few minutes. It’s our old group—Dickey was a regular until a few years ago. They’ll be tickled to find out that Dickey wanted us to have his old set of tiles.”
“You’re playing today?” I asked, sounding genuinely surprised. Hey, maybe I should consider acting. “So, you do recognize the set?”
“Oh, of course, sweetie.” She pulled open the little drawers and opened the top of the box. “It was Dickey’s pride and joy, this set. We always figured he used these tiles to put a hex on us. We could never win. But it’s almost impossible to cheat at mah-jongg, you know. The Chinese invented the game back when Confucius was a pup, and they know how to prevent cheaters, dear.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She smiled. “So we couldn’t imagine how Dickey was winning all the time.”
“I wonder if you would mind signing a letter? It just states that I turned this mah-jongg set over to you, see—right here? In case there is ever any question.”
She smiled her biggest smile. “Want an autograph, do you? This is a treat. I’d be happy to sign, honey. Do you have a pen?”
“Oh, dear. You know? I changed purses and I don’t think…” Which wasn’t exactly true, but I wanted to ask some more questions and I needed a little more time to build up to it. In fact, I’d brought the letter in case I needed to stall.
The doorbell rang.
“That must be my maj buddies. And I’m sure you’re too busy to stay today.”
Dim Sum Dead Page 15