Silver Scream : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery

by Mary Daheim

  see Ben Carmody a mere ten feet away.

  “Why isn’t he swilling down Bruno’s expensive

  stash of alcohol at the B&B?” Judith murmured, noticing that some of the other customers were trying not to

  stare at Ben. “Why is he here, alone?”

  “Because,” Renie replied, loading a slice of rye with

  lox, “he wants to be just that—alone. You know, like

  Garbo.”

  “I suppose.” Judith kept her eye on the actor. “He’s

  ordering what looks like straight vodka. Two, in fact.

  Uh-oh. Here comes Ellie Linn. Now what?”

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  “Maybe the second vodka is for her,” Renie suggested.

  Between bites of salad and spoonfuls of chowder,

  Judith watched the couple at the bar, who were now

  being eyeballed by at least a dozen other customers.

  Typical of a city known for its good manners, none of

  the oglers approached the famous pair.

  A glass of white wine was placed before Ellie; Ben

  downed both shots of vodka.

  “They’re having a very serious conversation,” Judith

  said. “I’m trying to read their body language. Oddly

  enough, Ellie seems to be in control. She’s all business.

  That strikes me as peculiar. I figure her for no more

  than twenty or twenty-two at most.”

  Renie had lapped up her chowder and almost finished the lox plate. “The control factor is money,” she

  said. “Her dad, Heathcliffe MacDermott, is the hot-dog

  king, remember? I heard he put money into The Gas-

  man.”

  “Why? To ensure that Ellie got a good part?”

  “I suppose,” Renie replied, breaking up more crackers. “I don’t think she’s made more than two or three

  movies before this.”

  When the cousins had finished their meal and paid

  the bill, Ben and Ellie were still head-to-head. Ben was

  on his third vodka, though Ellie had barely touched her

  wine. Unnoticed, Judith and Renie left T. S. McSnort’s

  and headed back to Hillside Manor.

  Joe met them in the driveway. “Nobody’s home except that writer, Costello. I tried to tell him about your

  mother’s mistake, but he blew me off. I still think that

  it serves them right. A grand for a bunch of mushrooms. Sheesh.”

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  “I know.” Judith started for the back door with

  Renie behind her.

  “Do you need some help?” Joe called after them.

  “Not yet,” Judith replied. “You and Bill and Carl

  Rankers will be waiters at the midnight supper, remember?”

  Joe looked amused. “I remember. I’m dressing as a

  choirboy.”

  “So you are.” Judith sighed. “I’m dressing as a

  Roman slave. It fits my role to a T. Oh,” she added as

  an afterthought, “you’ll have to pick up the costumes

  from Arlecchino’s before four.” Keeping it brief, she

  explained the damage that had been done to Angela’s

  Scarlett O’Hara outfit.

  “Sabotage?” Joe said. “What’s with this bunch?”

  “Jealousy, hatred, malice, hostility,” Renie put in.

  “All the usual Hollywood emotions.”

  Joe shrugged. “I’m glad I never wanted to be a

  movie star. Being a cop seems like a breeze by comparison. Perps aren’t nearly as vicious as people in the

  movie business. Though,” he continued in a musing

  tone, “I suppose a cop’s life is always interesting to

  filmmakers.”

  Judith scowled at Joe. “What are you thinking of?”

  Joe gave Judith an innocent look. “Nothing. Not

  really.”

  “Good,” said Judith, and went into the house.

  For the next hour the cousins worked in the kitchen,

  preparing the supper dishes that could be made ahead.

  Joe finally came in from the garage around three. He

  was carrying a battered FedEx package.

  “The deliveryman just brought this,” he said. “Shall I?”

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  “Go ahead, open it,” Judith replied, wiping her

  hands off on a towel. “It must be more exotic items for

  tonight, though I thought we already had everything on

  hand.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s marked perishable,” Joe said,

  using scissors to cut the strong paper wrapping. “In

  fact, I guess this was supposed to arrive yesterday. The

  driver apologized, but explained that because it came

  from overseas—” He stopped cold as he saw the box.

  “It’s French truffles.”

  Judith stared at the embossed gold lettering. “Périgord truffles. Dare we?” She cut away the tape that

  sealed the box and lifted the lid. “Yuk! No wonder

  Mother threw the other box out!”

  Renie peered around Judith’s arm. “Oh, for heaven’s

  sake, it’s just a bunch of brown truffles! I wouldn’t

  mind tasting one.”

  “Bleah!” Judith stuck out her tongue. “Go right

  ahead. I wouldn’t touch those things with a ten-foot

  pole.” But even as Renie picked up a paring knife, Judith smacked her hand. “No, you don’t! These are for

  the guests, and now that they got here, Joe can pretend

  he found them.”

  “Hey,” Joe cried, “that would be a lie! I’m not accepting a fee on false pretenses.”

  “Ooh . . .” Judith ran an agitated hand through her

  salt-and-pepper hair. “It just seems to me that after all

  the—” She stopped and sighed. “You’re right, we’ll

  tell them the truth. The truffles got held up because

  they came from”—she looked at the mailing label on

  the wrapper—“Bordeaux.”

  “Makes sense,” Renie remarked.

  Judith turned to her cousin. “What does?”

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  Renie held out her hands. “That it would take longer

  than if they came from Butte, Montana.”

  Judith blinked at her cousin, then looked at Joe.

  “True,” she said in a distracted voice. “But would they

  send two boxes? I wonder what was in the package that

  Mother flushed down the toilet?”

  Judith offered up a prayer of thanksgiving when Joe

  brought the costumes back from Arlecchino’s at threefifty. The Scarlett O’Hara costume had been mended,

  if not restored. While Judith and Renie were examining it, Angela La Belle wandered into the living room.

  “Oh,” she said in a disinterested voice, “that’s mine,

  isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Judith replied. “I had the costume shop put

  on a different skirt. It looks rather nice, doesn’t it?”

  Angela barely glanced at the costume. “I guess.

  Where’s Dade? Bruno’s looking for him.”

  Judith said she hadn’t seen him, but understood that

  he was the only member of the Zepf party who hadn’t

  gone out that afternoon.

  “Well, he’s not down here, and he’s not in his

  room,” Angela declared. “Maybe he flew back to Malibu.” With a languid toss of her long blond hair, the actress wandered out to the front porch.

  Renie gave Judith an inquiring look. “She doesn’t

  seem very upset about her costume, does she?”

  “No,” Judith said.
“I thought she’d pitch a fit.”

  Renie got up from her kneeling position. “What

  time do they leave for the premiere?”

  “Five,” Judith replied, heading for the kitchen.

  “That doesn’t give them much time to dress,” Renie

  pointed out.

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  “They’re dressing at the hotel with the others,” Judith said, putting a mixture of salmon pâté into the

  food processor. “The movie theater is just a minute’s

  walk from the Cascadia, but they’ll still show up in

  limos, so I suppose they’ll drive around the block a

  couple of times first.”

  “It’ll be a mob scene,” Renie remarked, cutting up

  scallions. Her gaze traveled to the American artists’

  calendar she’d given Judith for Christmas. “Say, how

  much have you learned about twentieth-century

  painters from that? I hoped it would be a teaching

  tool.”

  “I’ve learned there are a lot of them I don’t like,” Judith replied. “I must admit, though, September taught

  me something. I didn’t realize that John Singer Sargent

  painted anything but portraits.”

  Renie went over to the wall and flipped back a page.

  “Ah— Spain. Sunlight and tiled roofs and fat green

  plants in terra-cotta pots. Done with daubs and blobs.

  Very different from Madame X.” She returned to dicing

  vegetables. “How many are coming for the midnight

  supper?”

  “The current guest list,” Judith said, “plus a few others connected with the film.”

  “Not the entire Hollywood crew?”

  Judith shook her head as she went to the pantry to

  get a jar of mayonnaise. “This bunch will mingle with

  the others at the costume ball in the hotel.”

  “I hope they don’t stay late,” Renie called after her

  cousin. “You know how Bill likes to make an early

  evening of it.”

  “He’ll have to tough it out tonight,” Judith said,

  holding the jar of mayo and glancing out the back-door

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  window. “I really appreciate—” She stopped. “There’s

  Dade Costello. He just came out of the toolshed.”

  The screenwriter shambled along the walk, indifferent to the rain that had begun to fall again. Judith

  opened the door for him.

  “Hi,” she said. “Were you visiting my mother?”

  “Mrs. Grover?” Dade nodded. “Interesting woman.”

  “She is?” Judith bit her tongue. “I mean, you found

  her interesting.”

  “Yes.” Dade proceeded down the hall, through the

  kitchen, the dining room, and disappeared.

  “Good grief,” Judith muttered. “I hope Mother

  wasn’t telling Dade a bunch of tales like she did with

  Bruno.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Renie said.

  Half an hour later the limo drivers arrived, along

  with a small van in which the other costumes were

  loaded. The guests straggled downstairs, Bruno and

  Winifred first, then Dirk Farrar, Chips Madigan, and

  Angela La Belle. Ben Carmody came next, apparently none the worse for his three shots of vodka.

  Ellie Linn descended the stairs backward, humming

  to herself. Finally, Dade Costello appeared. As usual,

  he seemed to detach himself from the others as the

  limos filled up.

  Judith and Renie watched from the entry hall. At

  precisely five o’clock, the trio of sleek white cars

  pulled out of the cul-de-sac like so many ghosts floating just above the ground. Blurred by the rain, even the

  headlights seemed ethereal in the gathering darkness.

  “To work!” Renie exclaimed, holding up a finger

  and marching into the kitchen.

  But Judith paused at the foot of the stairs. “Now that

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  they’re gone, I’ll straighten their rooms. Arlene should

  be here to help in about twenty minutes.”

  The state of the guest rooms was no better and no

  worse than when they were used by more ordinary

  mortals. Indeed, Dade Costello’s small quarters looked

  as if it had never been occupied. The bed was made,

  the bureau was bare, and no clothes had been hung in

  the closet. Everything that Dade had brought with him

  appeared to be contained in a suitcase and a briefcase.

  Both were locked.

  Though it showed signs of human habitation,

  Winifred’s room was also orderly; so was that of Chips

  Madigan. The bathroom that Chips shared with Ellie

  and Angela was another matter. Hairdryers, curling

  irons, magnifying mirrors, and at least two dozen

  beauty products were strewn everywhere. Judith

  looked around the sink for any signs of what Joe had

  deemed to be cocaine. There were none.

  Room Six, where the two actresses were bunking

  together, was as untidy as the bathroom. Clothes were

  everywhere, all casual, all bearing designer labels. At

  least ten pairs of shoes littered the floor. Upon closer

  scrutiny, Judith saw that except for some size-four

  cross-trainers and strappy sandals, the rest belonged to

  Angela’s size-seven feet.

  In Room Four, Dirk and Ben’s movie stardom was

  made known by a pile of scripts and a file folder

  marked projects. Judith glanced at the script on top

  of the stack. All the Way to Utah, by Amy Lee Wong.

  Flipping through the script, she saw severe editing

  marks on almost every page as well as derogatory

  comments, some of them obscene. She replaced the

  script, then dared to look inside the project file,

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  which contained loose newspaper and magazine clippings.

  Judith extracted one of the clippings, which was

  printed on slick paper. The headline read, MUCHO

  MACHO COSTS FARRAR A GAUCHO.

  Hunkster Dirk Farrar’s two-fisted attack on Mighty

  Mogul Bruno Zepf has cost the actor the lead role

  in Zepf’s Argentine epic, El Gaucho Loco O No.

  The brouhaha occurred outside a restaurant last

  week in Marina Del Rey when producer and actor

  got into an argument over who would star in All the

  Way to Utah, a project Zepf has temporarily put on

  the back burner.

  Judith slipped the clipping back into the file. She

  shouldn’t be wasting her time snooping. There was

  work to be done. Briskly, she went into Bruno Zepf’s

  room. On the nightstand were at least ten pill bottles

  along with a couple of tubes of ointment, an inhaler,

  and two small brown-paper packets that felt as if they

  held some kind of tablets. A tiny scrap of paper that

  looked like part of a prescription lay on the floor. Judith picked it up, but could only make out the words

  pharmacy and thalidomide. She looked at the medications on the nightstand, but their labels were intact.

  With a shrug, she put the little scrap in the wastebasket, then returned to her tasks.

  Straightening the bed, Judith noticed a thick book

  with a tattered cover and frayed pages slipped under

  one of the shammed pillows. She picked it u
p, barely

  making out the sunken lettering on the cover.

  The Gasman.

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  Opening the book, she noted the author’s name—C.

  Douglas Carp. The copyright was 1929. The publisher,

  Conkling & Stern of St. Louis, was unfamiliar to her.

  What struck Judith was not the density of the prose but

  the well-fingered pages. It reminded her of an aged,

  much-loved, well-thumbed family Bible. Fragile

  pieces of leaves and flowers, brittle with age, had been

  placed between some of the pages. There was a small

  lock of hair so fine it could have belonged to a baby.

  Then, as she riffled through the last chapters of the

  nine-hundred-page novel, a photograph fell out onto

  the bedspread. It was a wallet-size picture of a young

  woman, perhaps still in her teens. Like the book, the

  photo was well-worn, but the girl’s face was fresh, innocent, pretty. Judith thought it might be a high-school

  yearbook picture. She flipped it over, but nothing was

  written on the back. The blond bouffant hairstyle indicated the sixties. Judith stared at the photo in fascination. She’d seen that face somewhere else, not so

  young and definitely not so innocent.

  But she couldn’t remember where. Or who.

  SIX

  WHEN JUDITH GOT back downstairs, five early young

  trick-or-treaters came to the front door. While Renie

  doled out candy to the zebra, the gorilla, the fairy

  princess, and two wizards, Judith welcomed Arlene,

  who had just reported for duty.

  “I watched everyone leave for the premiere,” Arlene said, rolling up her sleeves to pitch in with the

  cooking. “I hope Ben Carmody will like Cathy. I’ve

  asked her to stop by for the midnight supper.”

  Judith’s mouth fell open. “You have? But it’s supposed to be strictly for the movie people.”

  “That’s all right,” Arlene replied. “Cathy’s going

  to tend bar. She’s dressing as a panda.”

  “Surely,” Renie remarked, “that costume will

  conceal her charms.”

  “And hide her flaws,” Arlene replied. “Mystery,

  that’s what intrigues men. Ben will be able to see

  her very attractive hands. She can’t wear paws if

  she’s going to mix drinks.”

  Judith didn’t contest Arlene’s decision. If Cathy

  Rankers played bartender, Judith and Joe would not

  have to share her duties. For the next few hours the

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  women worked side by side until eleven o’clock when