Dangerous to Know

by Renee Patrick

  “That’s a good sign. Maybe they’re out for a walk.” Simon didn’t sound convinced. He hadn’t sold me, either.

  We ventured inside. The cabin felt small, most of the space given over to a fireplace and an upright piano. The sink in the simple kitchen held a few days’ worth of dirty dishes.

  “Looks like someone left in a hurry,” I said.

  Simon mounted a narrow ladder. “Must be the bedroom up here. I’ll go.”

  I moved back into the living room. On an end table was a photograph of a couple I presumed to be the Auerbachs. Felix, of stocky build, balding pate, and imperious gaze, loomed protectively over his blond wife. Marthe was as stunning as advertised, the forthright smile on her face the only decoration the room required.

  “The bed’s not made,” Simon called from the second floor. “I don’t know. Place feels deserted to me.”

  I told him I agreed and stepped onto the balcony. A single chair faced the house, an empty glass on the floor next to it. The view of the canyon, now a patchwork of lush greens and scorched blacks, took my breath away. It truly was an aerie, I thought, running my hands along the wooden railing.

  I felt the scrape first, then leaned over to inspect the small, fresh gouge in the wood. Gripping the rail tightly, I peered over the edge. About a hundred feet down, an object was visible amid the still-verdant brush. My eyes scanned the terrain around it. The strangled cry from my own throat told me that was indeed a shoe far below, the leg it had flown off of extending from the undergrowth.

  Simon insisted on making the descent alone. I watched from on high as he cantered down the slope, wincing with every footfall that brought forth a cascade of rocks and soil. I knew what he would find long before he nodded up at me with grim finality. Jens Lohse had died far from home and nowhere near a piano. The sporadic call of birds would have to be music enough for him.

  11

  “YOU’VE CHOSEN YOUR property well,” Gene announced from the Auerbachs’ balcony, “when you can still admire the view after hell’s paid a visit.”

  Simon had taken me down the hillside to a hamburger stand, where I’d telephoned Gene from a booth beribboned with flyspecked menus. A second call to Paramount sent Rogers homeward. I’d be a while.

  Squad cars arrived at the Auerbachs’ cabin first, several officers trekking down to stand watch over Jens Lohse’s body. Gene and his partner Roy Hansen drove out from downtown. Hansen never entered the house, marching straight to where Jens had fallen. He skirted me without a glance, Hansen not exactly a dues-paying member of the Lillian Frost Fan Club. Gene had greeted me with a curt “Miss Frost” then spoke with Simon, last name Fischer. (“With a ‘C,’” he’d stressed.) After consulting with the uniformed men, Gene escorted me onto the balcony. I hugged the wall of the house. I’d had my fill of panoramic vistas for the time being.

  Gene, having no such compunction, gauged his men’s progress. “It’s going to take time to move the body. He’s been down there a while. You want to tell me what this is about?”

  “I told you the other day. Edith asked me for a favor.”

  “This constitutes a favor? Running all over town, deceiving that driver?” Gene nudged his hat back on his forehead. I’d not only ignored his advice, I’d found the body of a man an LAPD colleague had insisted was in Mexico. Gene’s frustration would not be easily dispelled.

  He glanced into the house at Simon, who stood at sleepy attention. “What’s his story? Fischer?”

  “He drove me here. The end.”

  “Has he taken good care of you?”

  I was happy he wasn’t looking at me when he asked. It meant he didn’t see my eyes moisten at his concern. “Yes. He’s been very considerate.”

  Gene nodded, then signaled Simon to join us. Simon strolled out as if expecting to be dispatched to Bullock’s for a parcel. “It’s early yet,” Gene said, “but suicide’s the best bet. Lohse came to a place he’d been to before and threw himself to his death. Miss Frost, hadn’t you heard Lohse had been behaving oddly of late?”

  “Yes.” His assessment jibed with what Dietrich had said.

  “Only question is how did Lohse get up here? It’s unlikely he walked. There’s no car outside.” Gene inched closer to Simon, crowding him. Simon stared placidly back and didn’t retreat a step. “Somebody drove him. You’re a driver. Was it you?”

  “No. I never drove Lohse here.”

  “Right. Only to and from the Auerbach apartment, you said. How often did you do that?”

  “Five, six times.”

  “What did you make of him?”

  “I never formed an opinion.”

  “You sat in the car together and had no thoughts on the man?”

  Simon shifted his shoulders, not quite shrugging. “I had to keep my eyes on the road.”

  That wasn’t what Simon had expressed to me—I didn’t like him, he was a touch too slick—but I wasn’t about to point that out to Gene now.

  “You drove Felix Auerbach here,” Gene said. “How often?”

  “Once, maybe twice.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “I’m not sure. End of summer, maybe? That’s when he was spending time here.”

  “And four months later you remembered a route you’d only taken twice? With half the hillside charred?”

  Simon scratched the scarred flesh at his temple. “Yeah. How about that?”

  “I can see why Lodestar hired you. Did you just drive Felix or was his wife there, too? Marthe?”

  “I’ve driven both Mr. and Mrs. Auerbach to their apartment in town. It was only Mr. Auerbach on the trips to the cabin.”

  “Was Mrs. Auerbach already here?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “How about this? Was there a car here?”

  Simon thought briefly, then nodded.

  “There we go. That’s something.” Gene grinned. “Tell me about the Auerbachs. They a happy couple?”

  Now Simon flashed some teeth. “They never argued in the car.”

  “Must’ve made the drive easier. Any idea where they might be?”

  “Not a one.”

  Down below, Hansen uttered an oath. Maybe a coyote or a mountain lion, I hoped.

  Gene flipped pages in his notebook. “It’s my understanding Felix and Marthe Auerbach are not American citizens.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What difference does that make?”

  “I’m wondering if they found Lohse’s body and panicked, given their legal status. It’s obvious someone was here. Food was eaten, bed slept in.”

  “Goldilocks,” Simon suggested.

  “That could have been Jens,” I said. “He didn’t have a fixed residence. He might have known the cabin would be empty.”

  “It’s possible. Your thoughts, Mr. Fischer? The Auerbachs seem the flighty type to you?”

  “I don’t speculate. Lodestar hires writers to do that.” Simon spread his arms wide in a show of helplessness. “I just drive.”

  “It’s good for a man to know his place, I always say.” Gene held Simon’s gaze a long moment, then opened the balcony door. “Miss Frost, would you excuse us? Mr. Fischer and I have to cover this ground again.”

  Inside, I watched Gene and Simon continue sparring, two men competing to see who could give the least away. I was happy to be excluded from the balcony and the temptation to look over the railing at Jens’s body. Forbidden fruit will lead you to a fall, Jens had written in “The Trouble with Sin,” the lyric no longer the least bit amusing. My thoughts took a morbid turn, wondering if when he’d penned those clever words he’d had a premonition he’d plunge to his death on the other side of the world.

  My eyes fell again on the photograph of the Auerbachs, Marthe’s face, at once youthful and cultured, framed by blond locks. I recalled Gretchen’s story of finding blond hairs on Jens’s coat. A doomed romance with the wife of one’s mentor seemed a potent motive for suicide—particularly given the location from which Jens had taken
his final leap.

  If he’d actually taken the leap.

  Gene had to supervise the removal of Jens’s body, so Simon ferried me home. The canyon walls cast shadows making the road more treacherous. Simon drove at a measured, even stately pace, inquiring if it was too fast. He took a silver flask from the glove compartment—“Four Roses bourbon, a nip for those nippy nights”—and offered it to me. I declined, his solicitousness more than I could bear. Here he was being courteous when I was the reason he was involved in this mess, subject to Gene’s badgering. If my first Lodestar driver had stayed with me for the day, odds were I’d never have made my way to Felix Auerbach’s hilltop haven and Jens Lohse would still be lying alone at the bottom of the canyon, his body prey for scavengers.

  “On second thought,” I said, “pass me that flask.”

  The bracer prepared me for the difficult task ahead. “You’ve probably realized by now this wasn’t strictly speaking Lodestar business.”

  “It was going to be whenever that body was discovered. A dead man at the home of a studio employee is studio business.”

  “True, but it’s my fault you’re part of this and I’m sorry.”

  “Better use of an afternoon than driving some producer’s wife to the beauty parlor.” His eyes—a chilly, antiseptic gray—again found mine in the rearview mirror. “I imagine you’re wondering why I didn’t tell your friend what I thought about Jens.”

  Your friend. He’d picked up on our relationship even though Gene and I had been publicly cool to one another. Not much escaped Simon’s attention. Another reason to be impressed with him. “I was curious about that, yes.”

  “Never tell the mucky-mucks a goddamn thing. Learned that in the army and it’s served me in good stead. About the only thing I learned in the Great War, in fact.” He took a pull on the whiskey himself before returning the flask to its nest.

  We reached the main road and motored toward the heart of Los Angeles. The shadows lengthened and I grew drowsy. Blame the bourbon, blame the steady tattoo of tire against road, blame—

  “Miss Frost? Does the car behind us look familiar?”

  I felt like I’d downed several cups of coffee as I spun around. Sure enough, the gray car from earlier was back.

  Simon didn’t require a vocal response. My body language told him enough. “I noticed you noticing it this afternoon.”

  “When it didn’t follow us up the hill to Felix’s cabin, I forgot about it.”

  “It’s tricky trailing somebody up those roads, so they waited for us to come back down. I thought I spotted them when you telephoned the police. They’d already followed us to Mr. Auerbach’s apartment. They probably knew where we were going.” His eyes were once more on mine in the mirror. “Makes you wonder if they knew what we were going to find.”

  Los Angeles Register

  December 6, 1938

  BODY FOUND IN CANYON

  LOS ANGELES, DEC. 5 (AP)—The body of Jens Lohse, 28, was found today in a secluded canyon in the Pacific Palisades. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said the body of Mr. Lohse, a musician, was discovered in a heavily wooded area directly beneath a Pacific Palisades residence by Lodestar Pictures employee Lillian Frost. An autopsy will be conducted by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office to determine the time and cause of death.

  12

  “PREPOSTEROUS. JENS WOULD never take his own life. Never, do you hear?” Marlene Dietrich paraded the length of Edith’s office, every pivot in her black suit showcasing her long legs, the matching shako on her head only adding to the martial air of her movements.

  “We don’t have all the facts yet,” Edith said in her cold-cloth-on-the-forehead voice. “But you did indicate Mr. Lohse had been upset of late. At the very least we must acknowledge the possibility—”

  “No. This is not the Jens I know. If he killed himself, where is the note?” Dietrich spun toward me, her eyebrows thin as rapiers. “There was no note, was there?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “You see? And it was Lillian who found him!” Dietrich triumphantly waved a hand as high as the feather on her hat.

  “Not everyone leaves a note in these circumstances,” Edith said.

  “Jens would have. He always expressed himself.”

  Jumping from the balcony of Felix Auerbach’s cabin would make a pretty strong statement, particularly if he’d been carrying on with Marthe. But I didn’t voice the thought, because the absence of a note troubled me, too.

  Dietrich was back on maneuvers, talking more to herself than us. “No, my poor Jens was murdered. And the Nazis killed him. They denounce me every chance they get. Jens was always mocking them and their attitudes in his songs. We are—this saying I like—peas in a pod, Jens and I. We antagonized people with long memories and apparently long arms, reaching from Berlin nightclubs to sunny balconies in California. Jens and I spoke of this often. He was writing a song about it for me, the guilt of being miles from home amidst such turmoil. The Nazis are to blame for his death.”

  “It seems unlikely,” Edith said, no doubt as prelude to soothing Dietrich’s nerves.

  But now Edith faced the glare of Dietrich’s wide, knowing eyes. “Years ago I hired bodyguards when hooligans threatened to kidnap my Maria. Should I do so again? Will every German who is not a friend of the Reich require bodyguards? Few Americans understand what a menace Hitler is. I’d kill him if I had the chance. I know how I would do it. He fancies me, you know, this … Führer.”

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought Dietrich spat on the floor of Edith’s office as she said Hitler’s title.

  “He wants me to return to Germany,” Dietrich continued. “Work at UFA again, be the Fatherland’s great star. Goebbels has made overtures.”

  “You wouldn’t do it,” I said in a near whisper.

  “If it placed me in the same room as that monster, I would.” Dietrich tilted her head upward, absorbed in the action flickering on some inner movie screen. “I would present myself to Hitler as a fawn helpless before the might of his charisma. He would accept this as truth, I think, and that vanity would prove his undoing. I would offer myself to him. I would be naked, of course. Except for a single … poisoned … hairpin. An idea from a mystery novel. A technician from the studios can make one for me. Edith, perhaps you know someone. Armed only with that weapon, I would finish him. With great pleasure.”

  Edith swallowed. “That would be quite a sacrifice.”

  “Yes. Although perhaps I could escape. I dress myself as his body cools. I ease the door to his bedchamber shut. I tell his lackeys I have exhausted the great leader with my lovemaking and need the night air to settle my nerves. Who would deny me that? I might make it to safety before the dogs were set on me. And if not … it would be a better death than any written for me in a picture, don’t you agree?”

  She smiled at that phantom screen in her mind. Edith and I exchanged a look, struck dumb by the potency of this fantasy.

  Dietrich clapped her gloved hands together, story time over. “No one comprehends the nature of the world we are entering. We need strength from our leaders and instead receive only capitulation and appeasement. What hope is there for civilization when an English monarch abdicates his throne for a flat-chested American? I should have seduced that poor man when I had the opportunity.”

  I wondered what kind of hairpin might have accompanied Dietrich on her assignation with King Edward VIII. Edith wisely steered the discourse back to terra firma. “It’s a curious world indeed, but we’re doing all we can to make sense of it. You did right by Mr. Lohse. His death is now being investigated by the authorities. What you need is a distraction. You should think about your costumes for the role of George Sand in Mr. Capra’s production, how you’d like the transition from masculine to feminine to be played out, if you want elements from one in the design of the other. I’m always available to discuss ideas.” Edith tried to throw her last line away, but put too much English on it and came off sounding a touc
h needy.

  “If God and Mr. Capra are willing.” Dietrich planted herself in front of me. “I thank you, Lillian, for all you have done for me and for Jens. I cannot hope to repay you, but you must permit me to try.” She pulled me to her, holding me several seconds longer than was necessary, resting her head on my shoulder like a weary child being carried home. I was enjoying the experience until it occurred to me she might have a hairpin under her hat, and then I started to fear for my life.

  With an embrace of Edith, she was gone, pulling the air out of the room with her. It was as if a tempest had blown through, the pressure slow to normalize in its aftermath.

  I exhaled and sank into a chair. “Does talking to Marlene cause the bends?”

  Edith polished her glasses and smiled without displaying a single tooth. “One gets used to it.”

  “I’m relieved this Jens business is over. I finally get my name in the newspaper and it’s because of this. Thank God they got my job wrong and didn’t mention Addison. I hope Lodestar goes easy on Simon, that poor driver.”

  “I hope I haven’t caused any problems for you. But are you sure it’s over?”

  “Don’t start.” I paused. “All right, you can start, but let’s finish quickly. Gene still wants to know how Jens got to the Auerbachs’ cabin. And Marlene raised a valid question about the lack of a suicide note.”

  “Does Detective Morrow have any notions on the subject?”

  “He thinks Jens didn’t write one. He also suggested the Auerbachs may have found the body and fled in a panic, taking the note with them.”

  “Quite possible,” Edith said, her skeptical tone at odds with her words. “Of greater interest is the absence of something else.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Lohse’s music book. In which he wrote down every song he encountered in an effort to improve his English, his musicianship, and his employability. By all accounts, Mr. Lohse took it everywhere. But it wasn’t at the cabin, was it?”

  I shut my eyes and pictured the Auerbachs’ living room, specifically the piano. On which there wasn’t a scrap of sheet music to be found.