by Mary Daheim
Joe rested his chin on her shoulder. “Need some
help?”
Judith jerked away from her husband. “Help? Like
what, plugging in the coffeemaker? I already did that.”
“Hey!” Joe sounded offended. “What’s wrong?”
She whirled on him. “What’s wrong? Are you
kidding?”
Joe held up his hands in a defensive gesture.
“Take it easy, Jude-girl. I know you’re upset, but
this morning I’m going to call Dilys at headquarters
and find out what she’s—”
“Dilys!” Judith exploded. “Where’s she been since
Saturday night? Sunbathing? And what have you
been doing except studying Bill’s stupid chart?”
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“That chart’s not a bad idea,” Joe said, still relatively calm. “Woody and I used to put together something like—”
“Woody!” Judith cried in exasperation. “I thought
he was helping you. Has he been kidnapped by Gypsies or did the floating bridge between here and the
Eastside sink again?”
Joe threw up his hands. “Okay, okay! Don’t knock
Woody. He’s been running background checks on
these goofballs all weekend. I expect to hear from him
soon.”
“And he won’t have one single thing that will help
us,” Judith declared, dumping two pounds of bacon
into a skillet. “Toast.” She bit off the word. “That’s it,
toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs. They can take their
weird food cravings someplace else if they don’t like
it.”
“Hey, has Woody ever failed when it comes to being
helpful?” Joe asked, getting two dozen eggs out of the
fridge. Judith started to grab them from him, but he
pulled the cartons out of her reach. “I’ll fix these. I do
a better job of it.”
Judith refused to acknowledge that Joe definitely
had a way with eggs. “I’m not criticizing Woody per
se,” she asserted. “I meant that any information he
comes up with—and I’ll bet there won’t be much—
isn’t going to help us in this particular instance.”
“You don’t know that,” Joe countered. “I don’t see
why you won’t sit back and let the police and the studio’s investigators figure out what happened. They’re
pros.”
“You used to be a pro,” Judith shot back. “I thought
you still were with your private detective jobs. But you
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don’t seem very involved in this whole, horrible situation.”
“That’s because I’m retired from the force,” Joe said
with obvious resentment. “I don’t have the resources
anymore. Once you’ve been a cop, you realize that
most of the time law enforcement personnel know
what they’re doing.”
Judith didn’t respond, but gave him a skeptical look.
Maybe he was right. Maybe he didn’t have faith in his
ability to work without the backup provided by a fullfledged police staff. Maybe, she thought with a pang,
he didn’t care about Hillside Manor as much as she
did. It was even possible that in retirement, he disliked
the constant parade of strangers going in and out of his
home.
The phone rang as Joe was whisking eggs, green
onions, and slivers of red pepper in a big blue bowl. Judith answered, and somewhat sheepishly wished
Woody Price good morning. Without looking at Joe,
she handed over the receiver.
“Good morning!” Eugenia Fleming’s booming
voice and majestic presence filled the kitchen.
Judith pointed to Joe, who had put one finger in his
ear. He immediately began moving down the hall and
out of hearing range.
“Sorry,” the agent apologized, speaking with less
volume. She was already dressed, wearing a tailored
pants suit with a no-nonsense silk shirt.
“You’re up early,” Judith remarked, trying to be polite. “I usually don’t serve breakfast until eight.”
Eugenia checked her watch against the schoolhouse
clock. “Seven-forty on the dot. I’m a morning person,
which can be a disadvantage in Hollywood. Except for
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people who are actually involved in shooting a film,
everyone else tends to work late into the night.”
“The coffee’s ready,” Judith said. “Would you like a
cup?”
“Certainly,” Eugenia replied, surveying the kitchen
with a critical eye. “Black, please.”
Judith poured the coffee into a Moonbeam’s mug
and handed it to her guest. “I’m curious,” she said in a
casual tone. “Why was Morris Mayne’s wife allowed
to go back to L.A. when the rest of you weren’t?”
Eugenia choked on her first swallow of coffee.
“Well . . .” she began, gathering her aplomb, “that situation was different.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” Eugenia cleared her throat. “Different.” She
winked.
Judith gave the other woman a quizzical look. “I
don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.” Eugenia winked again.
Enlightenment dawned. “You mean,” Judith said,
“Morris came here with someone who wasn’t his
wife?”
“Now,” Eugenia said, wagging a finger, “don’t be
too hard on Morris. His wife is a genuine recluse. She
hasn’t left their house in fifteen years. You can hardly
blame the man if he sometimes gets lonely when he
travels. It’s sad, really. I admire him for staying with
her.”
“Yes,” Judith said slowly, “you have a point. So the
woman who came here with him after the premiere
was his . . . ah . . . companion?”
It was Eugenia’s turn to look puzzled. “What
woman?”
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“The one dressed as a pioneer,” Judith replied, turning the bacon in the cast-iron skillet.
Eugenia shrugged her broad shoulders. “I’ve no idea
what you’re talking about. Morris’s . . . companion remained at the hotel.”
Joe’s conversation with Woody ended just as Eugenia took her coffee into the front parlor.
“Eat your words, Jude-girl,” Joe said, wielding a
whisk in a bowl of eggs. “Woody came up with some
interesting stuff.”
“Criminal stuff?” Judith asked in surprise.
“If it was, would you stop treating me like I had
bubonic plague?”
So frazzled were Judith’s nerves that she actually
had to think twice before answering. “Yes, sure, go
ahead.” Her attempt to smile wasn’t very successful.
Joe didn’t respond until he’d put a quarter pound of
butter into a huge frying pan. “Nothing on Eugenia,
Morris, or Chips,” he said, keeping his voice down in
case Eugenia was still in hearing range. “Ellie has a
stack of speeding and parking tickets as high as the
Hollywood Hills. Ben got busted a couple of times for
possession.”
“Of what?” Judith asked, getting plates out of the
cupboard.
“Weed.” He shrugged. “Dirk has been arrested four
times for assault, but the charges were always
dropped.”
“Does that include the incident with Bruno at Marina Del Rey?” Judith asked.
Joe nodded. “It seems Mr. Farrar has to prove his
macho image on both sides of the camera.”
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“Unsure of his manhood? Low self-esteem?” Judith
murmured.
“Rotten disposition, no self-discipline.” Almost
forty years as a cop had caused Joe’s patience with
people’s foibles to erode long ago.
Judith placed the silverware settings next to the
plates on the counter. “What about the others?”
“I’m not finished with Dirk,” Joe said, taking a
break from his cook’s duties to refill his coffee mug.
“He was also involved in a messy paternity suit a year
or two ago. He lost, and is paying for the kid’s upbringing.”
“Is Mom anyone we know?”
Joe shook his head. “Dirk was on location in Spain
when he met Mom. She was an extra in a Basque uprising.”
“No help there,” Judith said.
“Only in terms of support payments.” He offered
more coffee to Judith. “Dade’s had a couple of DWIs.
He wiped out a Rolls-Royce on Sunset Boulevard and
ran his Range Rover into a palm tree in Benedict
Canyon. Not recently, though.”
“He doesn’t seem like much of a drinker,” Judith remarked as she set out a dozen juice glasses.
“You never can tell,” Joe said, reaching for a chafing dish high up in the cupboard. “Here’s one you expected—Angela La Belle’s been busted three times for
coke possession. Bruno was arrested twice. On one occasion, they were together.”
“That’s not surprising,” Judith said, “since Bruno
supposedly got Angela hooked in the first place. Did
they do time?”
“No,” Joe replied, reaching for a second chafing
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dish. “Their clever lawyers—Vito, maybe?—got them
off with fines, community service, and promises to go
into rehab.”
“Anything on Vito himself?”
“Nothing criminal,” Joe replied, “though I suspect
that like any successful L.A. attorney, he may have a
few slightly unethical tricks up his sleeve.”
Judith narrowed her eyes at her husband. “You still
look a bit scrofulous to me. Why am I supposed to
heap you with praise and affection?”
Joe held up his index finger. “For one reason, and
one reason only. Ahem.” He paused so long for dramatic effect that Judith was poised to pounce on him.
“In 1979, Winifred Lou Best was arrested twice, once
for possession of cocaine and once for resisting arrest
along with a man named Bartholomew Anthony Riggs,
aka Big Daddy Dumas.”
“Wow!” Judith’s eyes sparkled as she threw her
arms around his neck. “Now that is news!”
“What did I tell you?” He chuckled as she planted
kisses all over his face. “I’m plague-free.”
“More than you know,” Judith said, finally releasing
her husband. “Morris mentioned Big Daddy Dumas
last night at Capri’s. He was a pimp and a drug dealer.
But Morris said Big Daddy was dead. He also said . . .”
She frowned in recollection. “What was it? Oh! To
blame Big Daddy for. . . . Damn, I forget.”
“Sounds like Big Daddy was a bad daddy,” Joe remarked.
“That’s the odd thing,” Judith said. “Bill had heard
about him via a case study. According to Bill, Big
Daddy wasn’t all bad. He was good to his girls, he
treated them like family. But that’s not the point. Now
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we know why Winifred doesn’t want to discuss her
past. It’s possible that Big Daddy helped the Demures
get their start in the music business. Maybe the three
singers were in his stable of hookers. That might explain why the group didn’t have more than one hit.
Their lives couldn’t have been conducive to the discipline required by a serious music career. For all we
know, the other two may have overdosed, gone to
prison, or were murdered in a drug deal gone sour.”
“Anything’s possible,” Joe allowed. “What happened to Big Daddy?”
“A dissatisfied hooker/would-be singer killed him,”
Judith replied. “Not one of the Demures, but a Latino
girl.”
“So maybe,” Joe conjectured, “Big Daddy was the
muscle who got Win and the other two started in the
music business. When he got whacked, the Demures
lost their leverage.”
He picked up the plates and silverware from the
counter. “Here, let me set up the dining-room table.”
“What?” Judith was lost in thought. “Oh, thanks. I’ll
cook Mother’s breakfast now. I feel bad, I’ve hardly
seen her lately.”
“Don’t worry,” Joe called from the dining room.
“She hasn’t improved.”
As Judith prepared Gertrude’s meal and set it on a
tray, the house seemed very quiet. Typical for early
November, she thought, with the fog not only isolating
but insulating Hillside Manor from the rest of the
world. The calm, however, was not reassuring.
As usual Gertrude was up and dressed before eight
o’clock, She sat behind the card table, not bothering to
look up when her daughter arrived with breakfast.
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More surprisingly, the old lady was humming in an
off-key manner.
“Hmm-dee-dee-hmm.”
“Good morning,” Judith said, forcing a bright smile.
“You seem cheerful this morning.”
“Hmm-mm-hmm-mm.” Gertrude picked up her TV
Guide and riffled through the pages. “Hmm-dee-deehm-hm.”
Judith wasn’t in the mood to play games with her
mother. She placed the tray on the card table. Gertrude
ignored it. “What is it?” Judith asked. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Dee-dee-mm-hmm.”
“Mother!” Judith’s patience fled. “Stop that humming! What’s going on?”
Slyly, Gertrude looked up from the TV Guide. “Oh,
it’s you. I suppose you expect a tip now that I’m going
to be rich. Forget it, I’m spending every dime on satin
bloomers, lace hankies, and a walker with a motor on
it.”
Puzzled, Judith sat down on the arm of Gertrude’s
Davano. “What’s going on? Did you win the lottery?”
“That’s for suckers,” Gertrude declared, even
though she frequently conned Judith into buying lottery and scratch-card tickets for her. “You’ll find out
when the armored car pulls up with my loot.”
Judith fought an urge to shake her mother until the
old girl’s dentures rattled. “What then?”
Gertrude shot her a contemptuous look. “How do
you think, dummy? By selling my life story to the
movies. That nice young Southun gentleman is writin’
the script,” she went on, her speech suddenly tinged
with a drawl straight out of th
e cotton fields. “He’s
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promised me a piece. Up front, too, but no points. Ah
couldn’t expect that for my first story, could Ah?”
Judith didn’t know whether she was more amazed
by Dade’s offer or her mother’s use of movie jargon,
which, judging from the drawl, was straight from the
writer’s mouth. “Are you sure he’s not kidding you?”
“He’s not the kind to spoof,” Gertrude replied
smugly, the drawl gone. “He’s on the up-and-up. He
says I’m great. In fact, I’m part of the Greatest Generation. I’ve lived through a bunch of wars, a big Depression, a whole slew of newfangled gadgets, going to the
moon, riots, earthquakes, volcanoes, and bathtub gin.
Not to mention your two lunkhead husbands and listening to Aunt Deb talk my ear off on the telephone.”
It almost made sense. It was, in fact, not unlike the
concept of the simple gasman viewing the history of
the world. Judith was speechless.
“So what have you got to say for yourself now,
Toots?” Gertrude demanded, finally picking up a fork
and studying her meal.
“I think it’s . . . terrific,” Judith said at last. “If it all
works out.”
“That nice Southern boy says it will,” Gertrude
replied glibly. “What did he call it? ‘An intimate portrait of the twentieth century.’ See here?” She tapped a
small piece of paper. “I wrote it down so I wouldn’t
forget.”
Judith still had some reservations. “Have you signed
a contract?”
“Nope,” Gertrude said. “But some guy named Vito or
Zito or Tito is writing it up. Still, I figure I’d better get
an agent first. I can’t read all that fine print. Literally.”
Standing up, Judith reached out to hug her mother.
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“It sounds promising. I hope everything turns out the
way you hope it will.”
“It will,” Gertrude said complacently. Then she
frowned. “I just hope they hurry.”
“You mean because the Hollywood people may be
leaving soon?”
Gertrude shook her head. “No. Because I may be
leaving soon. Even the Greatest Generation can’t live
forever.”
By the time Judith got back to the house, she was
surprised to see that several guests were sitting down
to breakfast. In the kitchen, Joe was hustling eggs,
bacon, and toast.
“The estimated time of departure is ten-thirty,” he
informed her in a low voice.