“Are you all right, Maggie?” he asked, taking the stool next to me.
“Yes.”
He called the bartender over and ordered a brandy.
“Miss Conrad’s been looking at the video. She wants you to buy some of those fashion magazines such as Vogue and Bonton.”
“We should’ve helped Jackie.”
The bartender served Boulton his drink. He waited for the barman to leave before he spoke.
“Even if Miss Conrad had taken the case, Jackie still would’ve walked out of the hotel and been murdered. Nothing could have prevented that, Maggie.” He took a long swallow of brandy.
“I know. But at least she would’ve known that for once somebody had taken her seriously.” I studied the sharp line of his aquiline nose. He studied my lips. “How do you adjust to it?”
“To what?”
“Murder. Death.”
“You learn to separate yourself from it. You become an observer.”
“A spectator?”
“In a way.”
“Like wearing a pair of black-and-white shoes.”
“How many martinis have you had?”
“Only one.”
He smiled. It was a lovely warm smile. I liked him sitting next to me. I had to restrain myself from resting my head on his big broad shoulder.
“Have you ever been in love with a woman, Boulton?”
The smile disappeared. He stared at me for a moment as if he were debating something within himself, then sighed as if he had lost the debate.
“I have had great passion for women. I have had great respect for women. I have even felt passion and respect for the same woman. But I have never been in love.”
“I knew that.”
“You have probably been in love many times.” The watchful brown eyes took me in. “We’re perfect for one another.”
We smiled, knowing we were deeply attracted and that we weren’t perfect for one another. Distance, Maggie. I turned and looked out the window. “Can you read that plaque on the church?”
He walked over to the window. “Something about to raise the lepers, to raise the dead.” He took his place next to me.
“Of course. Raise the dead.”
“That’s the one thing even Miss Conrad will agree she can’t manage,” he said with a slight grin. “But she can find Jackie’s killer.” He tossed off the rest of his brandy. “She’s waiting for those magazines.” The English butler was back. Our intimate moment was over.
I made it down to a little shop off Park that sold magazines and newspapers from as far away as Croatia. I could never find an L.A. Times in the place. I guess that was too far away for New Yorkers. I bought the April editions of Vogue and Bonton and asked the woman behind the counter if she had any left over from a couple of months ago. She went in the back and came out with the February and March issues of Bonton.
I made two other stops. One was to a nearby Catholic church. The great thing about this city is that there is a church of your choice on practically every corner. It’s kind of like gas stations in Los Angeles. I lit a candle for Jackie.
The last time I had lit a candle, I was sixteen years old. It was for my father. I had sat in the back of the church and watched the priest, a Scotsman with gin-colored eyes, snuff my candle out. When I’d confronted him, he informed me that he was saving money. There were only a few candles and so many sorrows, and my father was going to die anyway. My father did. Religion has a practical side to it.
Jackie’s flame was tiny and I could almost feel its warmth.
My last stop was the shoe store. The black and white spectator pumps. I just looked. Observed.
Back in the suite Claire was in her chair, her eyes bright with the intensity of thought. Claire was at her best when she was working on a case, and a murder gave her the kind of glow usually reserved for women in the first stages of a love affair. I handed her the magazines and sat down at my desk. Jackie, in the red dress, was freeze-framed on the screen. Boulton kneeled on one leg before her image, like a man about to propose marriage. Except he had his camera and was taking a picture of her image.
“It’ll be a bit grainy,” he commented, “but serviceable.”
“Fine.” Claire tilted her elegant head toward me and pointed her ebony walking stick at the TV. “What do you see, Miss Hill?”
“Jackie in a red dress.”
“Look again.”
“A red dress that’s a little too large for her.”
“Yes. And?”
“But even not fitting properly, the dress looks great. Expensive.”
“Couture. I would say three or four thousand dollars’ worth. Jackie couldn’t afford such a gown. Where did it come from?”
“The model Sarah Grange?”
“Odd. Very odd.”
“We can move on to the next,” Boulton said.
Claire clicked the remote control. Sarah came into view. Sultry anger showed in her eyes. Claire clicked the remote and Sarah stopped moving. Boulton began taking his pictures.
“Something is disturbing me.” Claire stood and began to pace methodically. “The killer had to have followed Jackie to our hotel. Why not kill her before she’d made contact with you, Miss Hill? Or at least when you left her standing outside the hotel? Why wait until she’d spoken to me?”
“Are you saying you think it was a mugging? She said she was being followed.”
“I’m saying that the killer did not seem concerned with the fact that Jackie had talked to me.”
“Maybe the killer didn’t know you were staying in the hotel.”
“Then why take the newspaper clipping?” Boulton observed.
“Exactly.” Claire leaned one elbow on the top of the Queen Anne, and rested her chin in her hand.
Boulton stood. “I’ll take the film down to one of those fast photo places. They can have it developed in about an hour.”
“Take the photo of Jackie to Bergdorf Goodman,” Claire instructed me. “Go to the designer section. See if they recognize the dress, if they know who the designer is.”
“All right.”
“Tonight, Boulton, I want you to take the photographs to Peep Thrills. See what you can find out about Jackie.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “He gets Peep Thrills and I get Bergdorf’s? That is the most sexist delegation of work I’ve ever encountered.”
“Sexist? Miss Hill, you know I detest such words. They clutter the language. They impede any rational thinking. Why do you persist in using them?”
I knew she detested words ending with ist and ism, except the word elitist, of course, but it was my only weapon against her. I didn’t want to stay here running errands and writing. I wanted in on this one. I had a candle burning.
“I use those words because you persist in making reactionary decisions,” I said pompously, then leaned back in my chair for an even more obnoxious affect. I got a grimace.
“My decision is not based on any reactionary polemics, Miss Hill. It is based on reality. You will not be accepted at Peep Thrills.”
“I’ll be accepted because I’m a woman. The girls there will talk to me. They’ll identify with me. You think they trust men?”
Claire stalked my desk. “Miss Hill, the women performing at Peep Thrills will not identify with you. Quite the contrary, you will be the only woman there who isn’t being manipulated by male sexual fantasies. Therefore, you will be a threat to both the men and the women, hardly conducive to obtaining information.”
I turned on Boulton. “I suppose you agree?”
“I do. Except I’m not so sure who is manipulating whom.”
“Look, we all feel guilty about Jackie’s death,” I said.
“Guilty?” Claire spoke the word as if she’d never heard it before. “I expose the guilty, Miss Hill. I don’t feel guilty.”
“All right, I feel some kind of responsibility. And running around picking up gloves and magazines and going to Bergdorf’s is not helping you solve thi
s murder. The women at Peep Thrills will accept me.”
Claire and Boulton shared a knowing look. Claire spoke: “You have this middle-class fantasy that it is your God-given right to be accepted by anybody and everybody. Life, Miss Hill…”
“Now we’re making class distinctions,” I said doggedly. I knew I had her.
She sighed, then looked at Boulton. “The thought of an evening with her in this suite as she rages on about feminism, sexism, elitism, guilt, and class distinctions fills me with dread. Take her with you.”
“But, madam, I don’t think that’s wise.”
“Alas, my decision is based on selfpreservation, not wisdom, Boulton.”
“Quite. I’ll have these developed,” he said stiffly, and walked out of the room. Claire slouched into her chair.
“It is times such as this that I wonder how I could have possibly hired you, Miss Hill. Was it an unguarded moment of compassion for all those future employers you would torture? Or just a moment of insanity?”
“It was my charm.” I smiled.
“All the charm of a cobra in a basket.”
“Sexism and feminism aside, I’m surprised you’re not going yourself.”
Her dark blue eyes came to rest on mine. The lapis shimmered. “I have never liked the smell of Lysol mixed with the smell of sex. It lacks humanity.”
THE MOTHER SHADOW
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1989 by Melodie Johnson Howe
Cover design by Tash Webber
EPUB: 978-1-78396-127-6
MOBI: 978-1-78396-128-3
This ebook edition published 2014 by Elliott & Thompson Ltd
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CITY OF MIRRORS
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SHOOTING HOLLYWOOD
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CHAPTER ONE
Mother never owned a house. If she was living in one for any length of time, it meant she wasn’t making a movie. It meant she was out of work. My early life consisted of boarding schools and, depending on where mother was shooting her latest film, rented houses. On my vacations I would join her in these strange impersonal places. Sometimes there was a strange impersonal man living there, too.
When I was fifteen she was stuck with me for Christmas vacation in one of those houses. She pointed to the indoor swimming pool. “You can swim when it rains!” she beamed.
I would paddle around in the giant pool while the raindrops and the acorns dropping from the oaks pounded the glass ceiling. In a corner of the room stood a white-flocked tree tilting precariously and shimmering with yuletide decorations. Next to it Brent or Burt or Bart—I never quite got his name—wearing an early version of a Speedo sat in a deck chair, watching me.
On the wet hard floor I offered up my virginity, and he took it with brutal efficiency. After Christmas he got tossed out with the tree, and Mother viewed me as a competitor from that moment on.
Maybe that’s what I had wanted, I thought now, stripping off my clothes and walking down the steps into the water. It was as warm as I remembered. Outside the oak trees spread their branches over the glass ceiling, dropping their acorns on the roof. Plonk. Plonk. I smiled and began to swim.
Twenty-five years later, I had come back to this place that was never ours, to say good-bye to Mother.
Taking long easy strokes back to the shallow end, I came up for air, blinking chlorine from my eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Diana, you’re naked.” Stunned, Celia Dario stood on the deck above me in five-inch heels, calves tight, black chiffon blouse tucked into a short tangerine-colored skirt. Her long raven hair was twisted into a chignon, making her look professional and chic. A man in a black jacket, white dress shirt, and jeans, stood next to her staring at me with deep brown solemn eyes.
Oh, hell. I crouched low in the water, trying to cover myself.
“This is my client, Mr. Ward,” she said, trying to regain her equilibrium.
“Sorry, I thought you said he wasn’t going to be here for another half hour. That I had time to . . .”
“Not to take all your clothes off! Just to look at the house where you lived for fifteen minutes of your life.” Taking a deep breath, she turned to her client. “I’m sorry . . . for all this.” She waved manicured fingernails in my direction; her client still hadn’t taken his eyes off me.
He was about six feet tall, firm body but not heavily muscled. His bent nose seemed to have taken a few punches. His dark brown hair, graying at the temples, waved back from his lean face. He had a matter-of-fact self-possession that was beginning to irritate me.
“You could turn your back,” I told him.
“Why? I’ve seen everything there is to see.” His somber lips slid into a smile. And suddenly he was charming, which was even more irritating.
I pushed my determinedly blond hair back from my face. “Do you have a towel?” I asked Celia.
“No, I don’t have a towel,” she snapped.
“You look familiar,” the man said.
“Which part of me?”
Celia shifted into her best realtor mode. “This is the actress, Diana Poole,” she continued, sensing an unexpected sale point. “Her mother, Nora Poole, the famous movie star, just died last week. She rented Bella Casa.” Yes, the house had a name.
“She died here?” he asked.
In most house sales, death is not a selling point. But in Hollywood it’s important for homes to have a lurid history of the famous living badly and dying even more badly in their mansions.
“Not exactly in Bella Casa, but . . . nearby.” Celia shot me a glance, wanting my help.
“She died in bed in a room at the Bel Air Hotel with a shot glass in her hand and a half-empty bottle of bourbon on the nightstand.”
“My father died like that.” He paused, rubbing his index finger over the bump in his nose. “But not in the Bel Air Hotel. More like Motel Six.”
“I’m getting cold, I’d like to get out of this pool,” I announced.
He turned to Celia. “Why don’t I see the living room again?”
She started to guide him back to the white louver doors that led to the main house, but he stopped her. “Help your friend. I can wander around on my own.” He tossed me a lopsided smile as he took one last look.
After he left, Celia scooped my bra up off the deck and shook it at me. “Do you know how hard it is to sell a twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion that needs a total remodel in this market?” Her dangling gold earrings swayed erratically.
I climbed out of the pool. “I’m sorry.” I grabbed my jeans and tried to dry myself off with them.
“Forget it, he’s not interested.”
I took my bra from her and put it on. “How do you know?” I stepped into my panties.
“I can tell.” Her violet-colored eyes darted to the door where Mr. Ward had disappeared. “He is handsome, though.”
“Almost handsome.” I picked up my jeans.
“Even better. I can tel
l he liked you.”
“I was stark naked. He’s a man. What’s not to like? Stop trying to fix me up.” My jeans stuck to me as I wiggled into them. “Are you okay?” I’d noticed her face was drawn.
“Why?”
“You seem worried. I mean, beyond my taking a swim.”
“I’m fine. Aren’t you working today?” She handed me my blouse.
“One o’clock call.” I ran my hand through my wet hair. “Thank God, I wear a wig.” I managed to button myself up.
“Say hello to Robert for me.”
“I will.” Robert Zaitlin was Celia’s lover and the producer of the movie in which I had a small but important role. He was married to an old girlfriend of ours.
“He told me he’s having problems with a young actress,” she said.
“Jenny Parson. She can’t get through a scene without forgetting her lines.”
She nodded. “I’d better go see what Mr. Ward is up to. Want to have dinner tonight?”
“Great.” I paused. “Celia, I just want to thank you for helping me get this part.”
“You gave a great reading. Besides, Robert has always had your best interest at heart, you know that.”
Only a woman in love with a movie producer could say that and mean it. But I wasn’t worried about Robert Zaitlin; it was the young actress, Jenny Parson, who troubled me.
In my Jaguar, so old it had five ashtrays and no airbags, I headed east on Sunset Boulevard then turned down to Santa Monica Boulevard toward the old Warner Bros. sister studio, which was once the old Samuel Goldwyn studio and is now called The Lot. But what’s in a name?
The heater, which never turned off, blew hot against my wet jeans. My silk blouse clung to my damp body like an unwanted lover. I began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation I’d just created, and then suddenly I burst into tears. Mourning for a dead mother I didn’t like and a dead husband I loved can do that to you.
Colin Hudson, my husband, died a year ago of a heart attack. We had been married for eight years—an eternity in this business. He left me with what is euphemistically called a teardown in Malibu, the old Jag, two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay, a bank account in the red, and an emptiness I couldn’t fill.
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