Sheri Cobb South

by Babes in Tinseltown

  “Clark Gable, huh?” he said, once he had seated her in the passenger seat and taken his place behind the wheel. “I guess you’ve met all the big stars, working in the front office the way you do.”

  “Clark Gable has never come to Monumental, not that I’m aware of. Jimmy Stewart came by once, though. Mr. Cohen—Arthur, that is, not Maurice—was hoping to borrow him from MGM for some picture. Nothing came of it, though, so I never saw him again.” She sighed. “It was a pity, too. He was just as nice in person as he is on the screen.”

  “What about Mr. Cohen’s wife?” Mitch asked with studied nonchalance. “I heard she was pretty famous back in the day.”

  “Yes, she was a big star in the silent pictures.” Martha clearly relished her role as an expert. “She’s still a very attractive woman, but her voice is all wrong for sound. It’s sad, really. The same thing happened to poor John Gilbert, you know, and he was the biggest thing since Valentino.”

  Mitch had no interest whatsoever in John Gilbert and even less in Valentino. “So Mrs. Cohen is still attractive, huh? You say that like you’ve seen her recently.”

  “Oh, Miss Lamont, as she prefers to be called, drops by the studio all the time,” she assured him with an airy wave of her hand. “She’s always been very kind and friendly to me.”

  “Was she there the day her husband died?” He saw Martha regarding him curiously through her ridiculous glasses, and realized his question had been too abrupt for casual interest. “I know she wasn’t on the set at the time, but it would have been nice if they’d had a chance to say their last goodbyes.”

  “I don’t recall seeing her that day, but now that you mention it, I remember she’d been in earlier in the week to have lunch with Mr. Cohen. He was out of the office, though, so she ate lunch with her brother-in-law instead.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Arthur’s loss was Maurice’s gain, if you know what I mean.”

  Mitch’s passenger-side wheels grazed the sidewalk as his gaze slewed around to the woman who sat beside him. “Are you saying Maurice Cohen—and his brother’s wife—?”

  “Nothing ever happened between them, at least not that I know of,” Martha back-pedaled quickly and, Mitch thought, regretfully. “But he’s been in love with her for years. Everyone at the studio knows that.”

  Mitch was willing to bet there was one person at the studio—besides himself—who didn’t know, and wondered what she would make of the information. Maybe he would drop by the Studio Club in the morning and find out.

  “If that’s true,” he said cautiously, “I guess they’re free to marry now that Arthur is out of the way.”

  “After a decent mourning period, anyway,” Martha amended. “It wouldn’t look right to marry too soon after poor Mr. Arthur’s death.”

  Privately Mitch thought that anyone capable of committing murder probably wouldn’t be too squeamish about offending propriety by waiting less than the standard twelve months. Not that he knew for sure that either the brother or the wife had killed Arthur Cohen. Nor, for that matter, could he be certain that Martha wasn’t exaggerating a perfectly innocent relationship; surely it wasn’t unusual for women of a certain age, deprived of romance in their own lives, to make it up out of whole cloth where the lives of others were concerned, particularly when one was surrounded, as Martha Honeycutt was, by the wealthy, famous, and beautiful.

  The rest of the drive passed without incident, and soon they arrived at the theater, where Mitch paid ten cents each for their admission. Once inside, the concessions counter presented a fresh dilemma. Ordinarily, Mitch bought two sodas and one large bag of popcorn for himself and his date to share: besides saving a nickel, this arrangement offered all sorts of opportunities for hands to brush. He had fond memories of one especially imaginative coed who had salvaged an uninteresting newsreel by sucking the butter from his pinky finger. The thought of Martha Honeycutt having any such notions was enough to decide him.

  “Two popcorns,” he told the perky young woman behind the counter, plunking down a quarter.

  The seating arrangements brought problems, as well. Normally Mitch preferred to steer his date toward the darkest seats in the back row, the better for engaging in extracurricular activities should the film turn out to be a dud. Although he didn’t want to give Martha the wrong idea, neither did he want to be seen with her—after all, he did have a certain reputation to uphold where the female of the species was concerned. As he paused in the aisle and scanned the available seats, his date took the decision out of his hands.

  “Look, there are two seats right down front,” she declared, pointing down the aisle where the seats were lit by the flickering light from the big screen. “We’ll be able to see so much better there.”

  Heaving a sigh, Mitch followed her down the aisle, consoling himself with the knowledge that he knew hardly anyone in Los Angeles apart from the staff at the studio. With any luck, anyone seeing him and Martha together would assume he’d lost a bet.

  * * * *

  While Mitch sat in a darkened theater, his legs pressed tightly together lest his knee accidentally brush that of his date, Frankie donned her old prom gown and prepared for her shift at the Starlight Ballroom. As she crossed the Studio Club foyer, Kathleen’s clipped British accent hailed her from the common room.

  “Why, Frankie! Don’t you look sweet!”

  Frankie paused in the doorway and saw a cluster of young actresses gathered around the radio. Several of them, Kathleen and Roxie included, darned their silk stockings as they listened to Your Hit Parade. Pauline sat apart from the others, shellacking her fingernails a vivid scarlet.

  “ ‘Sweet’ is the idea.” Frankie plucked at her full skirts. “Fellows are less likely to take liberties with a girl who looks like her daddy is coming to pick her up at ten o’clock.”

  Pauline looked up from her fingernails. “Surely you can’t be referring to Mitchell? Why, I found him to be a perfect gentleman.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Frankie isn’t interested in your leftovers,” Roxie retorted. “It so happens she’s working at the Starlight Ballroom. And I think she looks very nice.”

  “Maybe a bit too nice, darling,” Pauline purred. “You might find the men tip more generously if you look a bit more—well, sophisticated. That dress might do very well in Georgia, but here in Hollywood it looks like something Mickey Rooney’s date might wear to the high school dance.”

  She held out one red-tipped hand for inspection and, apparently satisfied with the result of her labors, jabbed the tiny brush back into the bottle, then rose and sashayed from the room.

  The remaining girls stared at one another in speechless indignation. Roxie, the first to recover, leaped to her feet.

  “You might find the men more generous if you look a bit more sophisticated, dahling,” she cooed, snatching up one filmy stocking and flinging it over her shoulder like a feather boa. In her own voice, she added, “One thing’s for sure, no one ever accused Pauline of being too nice.”

  “She’s right about this dress, though,” Frankie said with a sigh. “I did wear it to the high school dance.”

  “Was Mickey Rooney your date?” Roxie asked, to a chorus of giggles.

  Frankie ignored the interruption. “But I’d rather wear my old prom dress than that black thing she wore, with the front cut down to there, and as for the back—”

  “Pauline does have her uses, though.” Roxie flopped back onto the sofa and picked up her mending. “She found a terrific store on Sunset Boulevard that sells secondhand clothes from the studio wardrobes, or even from the stars themselves. I saw a gown there last week that I’m almost positive Myrna Loy wore to the Oscars last year.”

  Frankie’s eyes widened in mingled admiration and envy. “You got to go to the Oscars last year?”

  “No, but I saw plenty of pictures in the fan magazines.” She snapped her fingers as inspiration dawned. “I just had a great idea! Why don’t we go there tomorrow—to the store, I m
ean, not the Oscars!—and look for you a dress? Surely we can find you something that won’t break the bank. Kathleen can come too, to give us an air of old-world elegance.”

  Kathleen eagerly accepted the invitation, but Frankie shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. I’ve got an appointment in the morning.”

  “Do tell!” Roxie leaned forward. “It isn’t a screen test, is it?”

  “Nothing so glamorous, unfortunately. Just a doctor’s appointment.”

  Kathleen’s English rose features took on a worried expression. “Are you ill?”

  Seeing the concern in her friends’ eyes, Frankie wished she hadn’t volunteered quite so much information. Roxie didn’t know about her suspicions regarding Arthur Cohen’s death, and Kathleen kept urging her to give up playing detective. “No, it’s just a consultation—assuming I can find his office, that is. Do either of you know which bus I should take to get to Dr. Henry Winston’s office on North Vine?”

  Roxie’s stocking slipped through her fingers and fell unnoticed on her lap. Kathleen jabbed her finger with her needle, and instinctively raised the abused digit to her mouth.

  “Frankie, honey,” Roxie said, suddenly serious, “are you—in trouble?”

  “No, but I will be if The Virgin Queen doesn’t resume production soon. The Starlight Ballroom pays the bills, but it’s not the sort of work a girl wants to do all her life.”

  “Sit down and tell Aunt Roxie all about it,” the redhead urged, patting the sofa cushion beside her.

  “I’d love to, but I can’t afford to be late. If I don’t see you before tomorrow, enjoy your shopping trip.”

  Frankie, headed for the door, didn’t see the worried look the two girls exchanged behind her back.

  * * * *

  Frankie’s partners that night found her a very poor bargain, as she was so distracted with thoughts of what she might learn from Dr. Winston that she paid very little attention to any of the men who paid for the privilege of dancing the tango or foxtrot with her. One enterprising fellow, seeing her mind was elsewhere, seized the opportunity to slide his hand down from her waist and pinch her on the backside. Had Mitch been present to witness this piece of impertinence, the young man would no doubt have ended the evening with fewer teeth than he had begun it. But Mitch was busy fending off unwanted advances on his own account, and so Frankie was forced to act in her own defense—which she did by grinding her high heel into her partner’s instep.

  “Oh, did I do that?” she asked with exaggerated sweetness as her partner clutched his injured foot. “I’m so sorry!”

  It was not a good night for tips, for which Frankie had only herself to blame. Even those of her partners who escaped physical damage soon abandoned her for more accommodating females. But in spite of her meager haul, Frankie decided to splurge on a taxi to Dr. Winston’s office, since she was unsure of the bus route.

  And so the following morning she rose, dressed in the blue suit she’d worn on the train west, and flagged down a taxi to take her to 864 North Vine. A short time later, the cab lurched to a stop in front of what appeared to be a private residence set back at a discreet distance from the road.

  “Is nice place, no?” he asked in the broken English of the recent immigrant.

  Reluctant to leave the cab until she was sure of her location, Frankie looked out the window at the stucco walls and clay roof tiles that seemed to adorn half the houses in California. “It’s supposed to be a doctor’s office. Doctor?” she added uncertainly, wondering if her accent was as foreign to his ear as his was to her. “Medico?”

  He grinned, teeth flashing white against his brown face. “Ah, Doctor Winston.” He pronounced it “Weenston.” “He fix you up pronto.” He bounded out of the cab and opened the back door with a flourish.

  “Oh, thank you!” Frankie was so relieved to know she’d come to the right place, she didn’t bother to correct his assumption that she was one of Dr. Winston’s patients. “You’ve been very kind.”

  She paid her fare along with as generous a tip as she could spare, then turned and walked up the sidewalk to the green-painted door.

  Her first impression upon entering Dr. Winston’s waiting room was that it was the gloomiest place she had ever seen. Not that the furnishings were unwelcoming; in fact, the colorful rag rugs and floral chintz upholstered sofas had more in common with a cozy living room than a doctor’s office. There were none of the institutional whitewashed walls and bare linoleum floors usually found in medical establishments, and only the faintest odor of Lysol to betray the building’s true purpose.

  The doctor’s patients, however, were another thing entirely. Exclusively female, they ranged in age from the late teens to the middle thirties, and while none of them looked precisely ill, neither did any of them look happy to be there. One, an ethereal blonde who didn’t look a day over sixteen, appeared to be puffy-eyed from crying. Another, this one a beautiful brunette, plucked at the folds of her skirt and stared fixedly at the floor. A tight-lipped redhead was apparently seeing the doctor for a stomach ailment, for she kept her hand pressed tightly to her abdomen. In the far corner of the room, a long-legged blonde wore dark glasses even though the curtains at the windows were tightly drawn. Something about her looked vaguely familiar, although Frankie couldn’t place her.

  Frankie signed in at the desk, then sank into one of the overstuffed sofas and picked up a magazine from the low table. A few moments later, an inner door opened and a nurse in a starched white dress consulted the chart in her hand.

  “Mary Smith.”

  A movement in the far corner of the room caught Frankie’s eye as the woman in the dark glasses rose in answer to the nurse’s summons. Suddenly Frankie realized where she had seen the woman before. She had starred as Marie Antoinette in Worldwide Picture’s remake of their silent film Madame Guillotine. The set of her jaw and her resolute tread as she crossed the doctor’s waiting room was exactly the same as that of her royal persona as she approached the guillotine on screen. And while Frankie couldn’t quite recall the actress’s name, she was quite certain it was not Mary Smith.

  As the women were called one by one, Frankie gradually became aware that there seemed to be a preponderance of Smiths, Joneses, and even one Jane Doe. She also became aware that none of the young women came back. She supposed there must be a rear door and wondered if this arrangement, like the false names and Marie Antoinette’s dark glasses, was an effort to protect the actresses from the gossip columnists. After all, if Hedda Hopper saw a young starlet entering or leaving a doctor’s office, the next installment of “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood” might have her dying of cancer.

  Eventually Frankie’s name was called, and she followed the nurse down a hallway to a small examining room furnished with a padded table, a single straight chair, and a glass-fronted cabinet containing an assortment of ominous-looking metal instruments. She was puzzling over the lack of diplomas on the wall—in her admittedly limited experience, doctors seemed to take great pride in the number of framed diplomas adorning the walls—when the door opened to admit the doctor. Doctor Winston was a well-fed man with an ingratiating smile that showed too many teeth. Frankie found herself uncomfortable in his presence without quite knowing why. Certainly there was nothing inherently frightening in his comportment; in fact, the man practically oozed bedside manner.

  “Miss Foster, is it?” he asked, taking her hand and pressing it warmly. “Such a pretty young thing! Never fear, my dear, we’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

  “Oh, I’m not here as a patient,” Frankie objected, gently but firmly withdrawing her hand from his clasp. “I would just like to ask you a few questions about—”

  “Of course, of course.” Nodding reassuringly, he motioned her toward the chair. “I’ll be glad to tell you anything you need to know. Although you must be aware that time is of the essence in these cases.”

  “Oh, I quite agree!” Frankie exclaimed in some surprise, wondering how much he had gue
ssed about the purpose of her visit.

  “Now, when did you first realize you were,” he paused significantly, “in trouble?”

  “As soon as I saw Mr. Cohen keel over dead,” Frankie said, shuddering at the memory.

  “Then he had not as yet referred you to me?” the doctor asked, jotting noted on a pad as he spoke.

  “No. I got your telephone number from his office, and his wife had mentioned your name.”

  “Had she, now? Well, that’s very generous of her, but then I suppose she’s used to it by this time. Whatever his faults—and I’m sure they were inevitable, surrounded as he was by beautiful and ambitious young women such as yourself—he always took care of his girls. He has referred numerous young women to me over the years, and I have always done what I can to offer them a way out of their difficulties. His death has not changed that. The bill for my services will be sent to the studio, as usual, so the matter of money need not concern you.”

  Frankie’s eyes had grown steadily wider during this speech. Suddenly it all made a horrible sort of sense: the discreet location, the unseen back entrance, and, worst of all, the frightened, desperate women in the waiting room.

  “Then you are not—” Frankie groped for words, unwilling to accept the evidence of her own eyes. “—Not Mr. Cohen’s personal physician?”

  Dr. Winston chuckled, his belly shaking beneath his white lab coat. “My dear girl, Mr. Cohen must have found your innocence charming! No, my clientele is limited to young women with certain—” again that significant pause, “—female problems. Now, if you will lie down on the table, I will attempt to determine how much time we have until you begin to show. Beyond that point, I’m afraid the procedure is considerably more difficult.”

  Frankie’s worse fears were confirmed. This was no ordinary doctor’s office, but a terrible place, a place where unspeakable things happened. She leaped up from the chair and ran from the room, through the waiting room and out the door into the brilliant sunlight.

  Chapter 13