Who Killed the Pinup Queen?

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  Tilda couldn’t help thinking fondly about that first interview as she walked down the corridor toward Miss Barth’s hotel suite. Not just because it had ended well. Doohan had proven to be warm, funny, and patient with an inexperienced interviewer. No, as she looked back she realized that as nervous as she’d been before that first interview, it was nothing compared to how she currently felt. She hadn’t been nearly as worried that Doohan wanted to kill her.

  Miss Barth was waiting for her at the door to her suite. “Hello, Tilda. Please come in.”

  Tilda thanked her and preceded her into the room, hating the feeling of vulnerability from having her back exposed. She turned around as soon as she could, but didn’t sit down on the couch until Miss Barth sat in the armchair.

  Though the suite was a little smaller than the one where the Ambrose brothers had had their meeting, it was still plenty plush by Tilda’s standards, with a full-sized living room and a large picture window with a view only partially veiled by the sheer drapes.

  She said, “Miss Barth, I really appreciate your taking time to talk to me. When I was talking to Cooper today—You remember Cooper, the Entertain Me! copyeditor?”

  Miss Barth nodded.

  “I told him I was coming to see you this morning, and he said that he knew you must be awfully busy. In fact I talked to him again as I was on the way up in the elevator, and he said several of the people at the office know I’m here talking to you, and they all realize how busy you are.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” she said, looking bemused by Tilda’s technique.

  Maybe Tilda hadn’t needed to emphasize that people knew where she was and who she was with quite so much. She took a good look at Miss Barth, with her hair carefully styled to disguise the fact that it was getting thinner, dressed in a perfectly tailored rose-colored suit. She was in her seventies, for God’s sake, and Tilda had never seen anybody who looked less threatening in her whole life, and that included her first glimpses of June’s newborn babies. She was being ridiculous.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Miss Barth asked.

  “No, thank you,” she said quickly. After all, you didn’t have to look threatening to slip something into a drink. She got out her notepad and pen. “Are you ready to start?”

  “Of course,” Miss Barth said, though she was sitting so stiffly that she couldn’t have looked less ready. In fact, Tilda had to admit that the actress looked as uncomfortable as she felt herself.

  An hour later, Tilda was starting to think Miss Barth was sneakier than she thought—maybe the woman was planning to bore her to death. It was her worst interview ever.

  When Tilda asked about Miss Barth’s upbringing, all she got were vague references to a happy childhood in Iowa. Schooling? Fond memories, but nothing specific. Parents? Gone. Brothers and sisters? None. Other family? None. The woman wouldn’t even admit to having had a pet.

  The first honest emotion Miss Barth showed was when Tilda asked her why she went into acting. Unfortunately, it was the all-too-familiar story of going to the theater and becoming completely lost in a fantasy world. Almost every actor told that story, with the only difference being which play or movie it had been. Miss Barth’s inspiration was a local production of As You Like It—Tilda would be able to get a sentence out of that, or with padding, a short paragraph.

  Then it was back to generalities, with Miss Barth’s inevitable realization that Small Town, Iowa, wasn’t big enough for her to grow as an artist, so she packed up to head to the Big Apple. Acting classes, bit parts in forgotten plays, and so on. Tilda wasn’t sure if she should bring up the modeling or not—on one hand, she was curious to see how Miss Barth would react, but on the other hand, she didn’t want that reaction to involve attempted murder. She compromised by asking about any day jobs the actress had held to keep body and soul together as she learned her craft, and when all Miss Barth would admit to was selling dishes at Macy’s, she let it go.

  Next it was on to California, and the dream of a film career. Tilda managed to squeeze a little human interest out of Miss Barth’s train ride across the country. She’d had no money for the dining car, so she’d carried a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, and to this day, couldn’t eat a peanut butter sandwich.

  Once in Hollywood, things moved quickly. She met the Ambrose brothers at a party during her first week, and when they started casting Cowtown a month later, she was their first choice for Arabella. She’d spent eight years in the role, and her eyes seemed to glow when she talked about it. Unfortunately, her stories did not. Miss Barth remembered every plot and every character from every episode and, for all Tilda knew, she had every script memorized, but knew nothing of the actors’ and backstage workers’ real lives or personalities. Even when Tilda tried to prompt her with stories she’d heard from Cowtown guest stars, she got nothing out of her.

  Tilda pressed on, trying to find out about Miss Barth’s personal life. Marriage? No. Children? A shocked look—the idea of children without marriage was unthinkable. Boyfriends? Only short-term. Partying? Casual dating with dear friends. Still no pets. No hobbies, no causes, and very little work outside Cowtown. The woman seemed to exist only on screen.

  Tilda hinted around at the drinking issue as subtly as she could, but either Miss Barth didn’t get the hints or didn’t care to address the subject. Tilda was just as glad. She didn’t really think the world needed another tale of a celebrity succumbing to addiction, only to regain sobriety after heroic efforts. Not that such stories weren’t genuinely heroic, but they were only important to those involved. The rest of the world was pretty jaded—or maybe it was only Tilda herself who didn’t want to hear about it.

  Finally Tilda was down to her last question, the one that she’d asked several of the guest stars without getting any interest at all. If that didn’t work, she was going to have to go with asking Miss Barth what kind of tree she’d be if she were a tree. “How did you see the Cowtown Code?”

  For the first time, Miss Barth had something to say. “I think the Cowtown Code was the most important thing about Cowtown—it’s what gave us our moral underpinnings. Without it, we would have been just another TV Western.”

  Tilda was afraid to say anything that might stem the sudden flow of words, so she just nodded.

  Miss Barth went on. “You probably don’t realize it, but the voice-overs I did were the hardest part of the scripts to write—sometimes they’d come first, and sometimes not until after the show was shot. One time we realized we didn’t have an appropriate Code for a show, and had to reshoot pieces to make sure we were making a statement.” She looked down modestly. “I’m no writer, but I can honestly say I wrote or rewrote almost every section of the Code. They had to be just right. Some of the outside script writers and directors didn’t understand how important that was. But Tucker and Hoyt understood. Without the Code, a cowboy is nothing more than a colorful character, but with the Code he becomes something noble. Every single episode of Cowtown somehow demonstrated the Code.”

  Tilda said, “I always thought that the best episodes were the ones where the Code didn’t agree with the law. Like when the woman ran away from an abusive husband, and the preacher said she ought to go back to him, but Arabella hid her and helped her escape.”

  “ ‘No true man hits a woman, and no woman should ever be forced to endure the violence of lesser men. That’s the Cowtown Code,’ ” Miss Barth quoted. “The Code always prevailed.”

  “What about murder?” Tilda asked, watching carefully for the woman’s reaction. “Weren’t there a couple of episodes where murder was condoned by the Code?”

  “They weren’t murder, not if the killing was done by the Code,” Miss Barth insisted. “ ‘There are sins that the law cannot punish, but which a true man cannot abide. Some men need killing. That’s the Cowtown Code.’ ”

  “You don’t think that’s a moral problem?”

  “Well, Cowtown was set in a different time, in a very different place.”
>
  Tilda nodded, but she did notice that Miss Barth hadn’t exactly refuted the idea of justifiable homicide. “One last question. Which tenet of the Cowtown Code did you find the most meaningful?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “It was the one from the very first episode, when Arabella opens the saloon. At the end, you hear her voice saying, ‘When you come to Cowtown, it’s as if you never existed before. All your sins are forgotten, and all your virtues as well. The only things that matter are what you do in this time and place. That’s the Cowtown Code.’ ”

  Chapter 28

  There’s more ways to skin a cat than stickin’ his head in a boot jack and jerkin’ on his tail.

  —DON’T SQUAT WITH YER SPURS ON BY TEXAS BIX BENDER

  IT was nearly noon by the time they finished the interview, and though Miss Barth invited her to lunch, Tilda lied about having another appointment. Though she was no longer as worried that Miss Barth was going to try to kill her, she didn’t think her nerves would stand a meal of guarding her food from poison, let alone the possibility of somebody giving the woman a steak knife.

  As soon as she got to the lobby, Tilda gave Cooper a call to let him know she’d survived the interview. She really had called him on her way up to see Miss Barth, just in case.

  “You don’t really believe that nice old lady would try to kill you, do you?” Cooper scoffed.

  “Cooper, I don’t know what to believe. Sandra was a nice old lady, too, and somebody killed her. Besides, Miss Barth had a motive. Sandra knew who she was.”

  “So what? Sandra must have known for years. Why would Miss Barth suddenly need to get rid of her?”

  “That’s a good question. The timing must mean something. You want to have lunch and talk it out?”

  “Not today. I’m off to get some accessories for my costume.”

  “What costume?”

  “My cowboy costume for the Stickler fund-raiser Saturday night. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that you’ll need a costume.”

  “Oh, that costume. Of course I haven’t forgotten—I took care of mine ages ago. I thought you were talking about something kinky for you and Jean-Paul.”

  “You forgot, didn’t you?”

  She didn’t want to lie to him, so she said, “Cooper, are you there? Cooper? Cooper, if you can hear me, I’m losing the connection.” She tapped the mouthpiece a few times, then hung up. Hanging up was, after all, a way to lose a connection.

  Well, at least she had a plan for the afternoon that didn’t involve brooding over Sandra’s death. Instead she was going to have to find a cowboy costume in Boston in January. How hard could that be?

  Twenty-four hours later, she had her answer: extremely hard. Apparently Western wear wasn’t a big seller in Boston, and apparently whatever outfits would normally be available had been grabbed up by people coming to the fund-raiser. This was encouraging news for the Stickler Syndrome Foundation, but a royal pain for Tilda.

  She called costume shops, theatrical costumers, and even adult novelty companies, trying to find something that she liked, could afford, and that would fit. Normally she would have asked Cooper for help, but since she’d fudged the facts and didn’t want to admit it, she had to look elsewhere. So she called June, who went through her connections: local theater groups, companies that supplied costumes for school plays, and even Kidstock, where Tilda’s niece and nephew took movie-making classes during the summer. Finally June tracked down an old buddy who’d starred in their college production of Annie Get Your Gun and who still had her costume in her attic. It wasn’t precisely what Tilda had had in mind, but by the time she got it, she was in no mood to be picky and she took it with thanks.

  Not that costume hunting was the only thing she did during that interval, of course. She still had time to finish writing up the interviews she’d completed, including the one with Miss Barth, and sent them off to Jillian for her approval. Plus she managed to track down her last two Cowtown guest stars and interview them. One was a Mexican man who’d played a Comanche brave, and the other was a Japanese woman who’d played a Chinese mail-order bride. Cowtown’s casting had been as ethnically accurate as any other show from that era, which is to say not very accurate at all.

  After that, she took a break to straighten up the clutter that always accumulated on her desk during a project, trying to organize her notes. Under one pile she found the folder of the pictures she’d gotten from Bill Hawks, including the shots of the mysterious nameless photographer. She was staring at the best shot of him when Colleen came home from work and stopped by Tilda’s room for her nightly interrogation.

  “How’s it going?” Colleen asked, but before Tilda could answer, she followed up with, “What are you doing? Who’s that in the picture?”

  “The women are pinup models, but it’s the guy I’m interested in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because somebody tried to hide this picture.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out.”

  “Why don’t you ask somebody? That’s what I’d do.”

  Tilda resisted the impulse to comment that Colleen’s reaction was always to ask questions, and instead said, “I’ve got nobody to ask. The man who took the picture didn’t know, the woman dressed as a pirate is dead, and I don’t know where the other woman is.”

  “Can’t you Google her or something?”

  “Yeah, I could, but—” Tilda stopped.

  “But what?”

  “But—” Damned if Colleen wasn’t actually making sense. Tilda was caught up with her work, she had her costume, and if she wanted to piss away some of her own time hunting down an elderly former pinup, why shouldn’t she? She was still a freelancer, and what was the use of being a freelancer if she didn’t do exactly what she wanted to. “But nothing. I’m going to hit the Web and see what I can find. Thanks, Colleen.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said doubtfully, not quite sure what she’d said. “Do you want to get some dinner?”

  “Why don’t you call for pizza? My treat.” To stave off the inevitable she added, “Pepperoni, and I don’t care which place you call.”

  Tilda found the pad with her notes from that last interview with Sandra, which gave her the distressed damsel’s real name: Esther Marie Martin. She paired that with “Virginia Pure,” and “pinup” and Googled it, but got nothing.

  Next she hunted around various pinup sites for references to Virginia Pure, hoping for some clues about the model’s life, but again, there was nothing. No pinup model’s career lasted forever—Bettie Page herself had only modeled for six years, and that had been considered a long run. Virginia’s tenure had been considerably shorter. Other than pictures of the pirate session with Sandra, Tilda only found two other pictures of her.

  She decided to give up on that approach just as the pizza arrived, and she went to pay the delivery man. Under the circumstances, she thought it would only be polite to join Colleen for dinner, and even answered a few more of her roommate’s questions before running out of patience. Then she asked Colleen about her day, and zoned out while Colleen answered in painful detail, paying just enough attention to nod and make appropriate noises of ersatz interest. As soon as the pizza was gone, she went back to the computer.

  Tilda decided that if she couldn’t find Virginia Pure, she’d focus on Esther Marie Martin. Entering the name into Google gave her over three hundred thousand hits, which was far too much to wade through, but putting it in quotes only gave her about a hundred and fifty, and she started visiting links. Unfortunately, none of them got her further along.

  Another look at her notepad got her the tidbit that Esther had been from Virginia. So she plugged that into her search string—one hundred and fifty thousand links. If she could have limited by the town, that might have helped, but Sandra hadn’t mentioned it by name.

  What next? There were sites that had phone listi
ngs by year, but poring through a New York phone book for any year did not appeal. Besides, what if Esther hadn’t had a phone?

  She needed a new approach. Sandra had told her that Esther had gone to New York to be an actress. Maybe Esther had managed to get a part or two, and if so, she might be listed on IMDb. A quick visit there gave her one makeup artist, four actresses, and a director, but none of them were in the right age range. Of course, Esther could have gone in for the theater instead of either the big or small screen, so Tilda repeated the process on the IMDb analog for Broadway. More Esther Marie Martins, but not the right one. For good measure, she searched various actor’s organizations and unions, but got nowhere.

  She drummed her fingers on the desk, wishing Esther Marie’s parents had given the poor child an easier name to search for. There were just too many women named Esther Marie Martin, Esther Martin, and Esther M. Martin, and if Esther had gotten married, she could be Esther Rabinowitz for all Tilda knew. She almost searched for that name before being overcome by common sense.

  Of course, the Martins hadn’t been thinking about the Web when they named their little girl, since it hadn’t even been a gleam in Al Gore’s eye back then. Maybe they thought it was unique—she could well have been the only Esther Marie Martin in her hometown. If she just knew which town she’d been from!

  Tilda stomped to the kitchen for a glass of Dr Pepper. Colleen must have heard her—she zoomed in.

  “How’s it going? Did you figure out who the guy is?”

  “No.”

  “What about the woman? Did you find her?”

  “Nope, I can’t find her either.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  What she wanted to do was pour the Dr Pepper over Colleen’s head, but that was against their signed and notarized roommate agreement. So she just shrugged.

  “You can’t give up now!”