Nine Deadly Lives

by Livia J. Washburn

  “I’m going to kill it! I’m going to kill it right now.”

  Blanche stood up abruptly as Fenton dashed from the room. “Don’t do anything rash, Fenton. You’ve been drinking, and you are not thinking clearly.”

  He returned moments later with the Webley revolver that he had carried on all his expeditions since his days in the British army. He pointed it at Alfonso, who had raised his head and was staring straight at him with unwavering regard. His sapphire blue eyes seemed to enlarge.

  “Damn you, cat!” Fenton called, his hand shaking as he took aim with the revolver.

  He fired and the shot went wide, but still Alfonso simply sat and stared at him.

  “Fenton, stop!” cried Blanche. “You are frightening me.”

  He aimed again, but this time, Alfonso moved, dashing for the door before Fenton could fire. The hunter gave chase, running into the hall, just in time to see the cat leap up and launch itself out through an open window. He fired at the window, shattering it with a great deal of noise.

  Cries of alarm sounded throughout the house as the servants reacted to the noise of gunfire. But Fenton ignored them as he yanked the door open and ran out into the night.

  Two minutes later, there was a shot in the dark, followed by a single, high-pitched animal scream of agony. Then, another thirty seconds later, another shot rang out.

  The servants became increasingly alarmed when Colonel Carlyle failed to return to the house.

  5

  August 28rd, 1927

  Blanche replaced the earpiece on the cradle of the candle telephone and heaved a sigh of relief. The Beverly Hills undertaker that she had been speaking to had drained her energy, partly because he was so obsequious in his manner.

  She sat for a few moments, drumming her fingers on the blotting pad on top of the oak desk. She had begun the arrangements for Fenton’s funeral, but would have to wait until the authorities released the body before she could firmly plan the event. She felt as exhausted as Helen and the other servants had sympathetically said she looked.

  The whole household had, of course, been shocked at the colonel’s suicide down by the gazebo on the far side of the tennis court. Fenton had been a man’s man, a hunter and explorer, a man who tamed wild beasts and who, until days before, had seemed a happily married man with a son and everything to live for.

  Blanche drew the copy of the Hollywood Daily Citizen toward her and stared at the headlines.

  BIG GAME HUNTER’S LAST SHOT

  Colonel Fenton Carlyle, the husband of dearly loved motion picture star Kay du Maurier, who died in a road accident a few days ago, has taken his own life.

  She read the article for the umpteenth time as she reached for the silver cigarette box and carefully fitted a green cocktail cigarette to her amber holder.

  “Poor Fenton,” she mused as she read on.

  The whole of Hollywood shares the grief of Blanche Fleming, the elder sister of Kay du Maurier, who has the sad task of arranging yet another funeral. Her estranged husband, the motion picture producer Fitzroy Fleming, told our reporter that he is planning on taking her away to Europe after the colonel’s funeral, so that they can begin to get their lives back on track. He says that it is his belief that the house is jinxed, and that he needs to get her away from it.

  Blanche blew a contemptuous cloud of smoke from her lips. Fitzroy had taken a lot for granted in issuing that statement. She would have to talk seriously to him, when the time was right.

  There was a knock on the study door and Helen came in upon Blanche’s command.

  “Doctor Kennedy is here to see you again, ma’am.”

  Blanche stubbed her cigarette out and nodded wearily. “Show him in, please, Helen.”

  “Then after he has gone will you be taking some breakfast, ma’am? You must eat, you know. You need to keep your strength up.”

  “I’ll try, Helen. Perhaps a soft-boiled egg and coffee.”

  Helen beamed and disappeared to get the doctor.

  Roger Kennedy looked concerned as he was shown in.

  “Thank you, Helen,” he said. “No need to show me out after I have finished, but I will probably be calling back later this morning to drop off some medicine for Mrs. Fleming.”

  Helen nodded with a smile. “Very good, Doctor. The back door will be unlocked. I’m just relieved to hear that madam is going to try and have some breakfast.”

  Once she had gone and drawn the door closed behind her, they waited until her footsteps echoed down the hall.

  Then he took several quick steps and took her in his arms. They kissed passionately and urgently.

  “It will soon all be over, my darling,” she said, when they parted. “Soon everything will be ours, just as we planned. We will just have to maintain a subterfuge for some time, until I get rid of Fitzroy.”

  “I love you Blanche. I love everything about you.”

  “Even my piratical eye patch?” she whispered coquettishly.

  “Everything. I love your body and I love your mind. You worked everything out to perfection.”

  “I have had to manage Kay’s whole life since we were children. I am used to organizing things. I created her success and all she ever did was take me for granted. She never knew just how much I have always hated her.”

  She touched her eye patch. “It was her fault that I lost my eye. The stupid girl distracted me when I was operating a machine all those years ago. It was guilt over that which induced her to make her last will and testament out in my favor, thanks also to some subtle hinting from me. As for Fenton, he just regarded me as an annoying servant.”

  “You were clever, the way you planted all the right thoughts in her mind–after the deed was done.”

  An evil look flashed across her face. “She was a fool to have that affair. It jeopardized everything. Having his baby was idiocy, and she deserved to lose it. Doing it was so simple, and her affair gave us the perfect scapegoat in the shape of Alfonso, that revolting cat that she loved.”

  Her face relaxed and she went on:

  “And you put the right thoughts into Fenton’s head. The right suggestions during the pregnancy that made him doubt that he was the father. You were superb, darling. He became just like Shakespeare’s Othello, eaten up by jealousy. And when he saw Alfonso, he just had to kill him. Then, like Othello, he was wracked with guilt and blew his brains out.”

  They embraced again and kissed until they had taken up as much time as they could afford without arousing suspicion among the servants.

  “I must say, I am starving,” Blanche said. “Yet, I have to make them think I can’t eat.”

  “When we are free, my darling, we will feast to our heart’s content.”

  o0o

  After breakfast, Blanche went through to the drawing room and lay down on the silk cushions on the chaise longue. The intensity and events of the last few days had been draining, and despite the frugal breakfast, she felt in need of rest.

  She dozed and felt herself drifting into a deep sleep. The sort of sleep that unleashed unwanted emotions. Guilt and fear found form in images of her sister, her nephew, Finlay, and of Colonel Fenton Carlyle after he had blown his brains out.

  And then, staring at her, she saw those large sapphire blue eyes of Alfonso the Persian cat.

  She started awake, only to feel that her body would not move. She could not move a single muscle.

  To her horror, the image of those big blue eyes was no figment of her imagination, but was very real. Sitting on her chest, his face mere inches from her face, was Alfonso. The weight of his body upon her chest seemed to be inexplicably increasing and it was hard to breathe.

  But how could it be? Fenton had shot him–hadn’t he?

  “Sh…Shoo!” she gasped.

  Instead, Alfonso very deliberately licked his lips and stared at her with those large, hypnotic eyes. Those eyes that now seemed so reminiscent of that recently deceased motion picture star, Valentino.

  Then, he inched cl
oser and closer until he was lying on her face, covering her mouth and her nose. She panicked as the suffocative sensation increased.

  Yet, she could not move a muscle.

  o0o

  Two hours later, Doctor Kennedy let himself into the mansion by the back door, as arranged with Helen.

  When he let himself into the drawing room, he saw Blanche reclining on the chaise longue. He assumed that she was asleep, like a Sleeping Beauty—and so, with a smile, he laid his bag down and thought he would sneak up on her and surprise her with a kiss.

  The kiss of her very own Prince Charming!

  He knew when he saw her eyes staring at the ceiling with pupils dilated, that she was dead. The telltale tiny petechial hemorrhages around her slightly bulging eyes told him the truth.

  She had been suffocated. She had been murdered!

  Fear gripped him as he realized that the murderer was probably in the room with him at that moment.

  Yet, before he could react, he felt a heavy thump in the back of his neck that almost made him fall over Blanche’s dead body. He felt a lancinating pain on the right side of his face and his neck as a furry shape jumped down from his shoulder and started slashing razor sharp claws over his hand.

  Blood flowed freely down his neck and dripped all over Blanche’s hands.

  It was a cat. That cat!

  He struggled to free himself of it, dripping blood over Blanche as he did so.

  Then, suddenly, Alfonso jumped clear and darted through the door.

  He was about to cry for help, when the sight of his dead lover, covered in his blood made him realize his situation. He needed to get away, dress his wounds and think.

  He picked up his bag and ran from the house to his car, then drove straight away to his office.

  o0o

  Hollywood Daily Citizen

  August 29th, 1927

  DOCTOR TO THE STARS ARRESTED

  Shock after shock has struck at the home of deceased motion picture star Kay du Maurier, who died tragically following the death of her infant son. Her husband, Colonel Fenton Carlyle apparently shot himself, but now Doctor Roger Kennedy, the doctor to half of the Hollywood motion picture industry’s elite, has been arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blanche Fleming, the sister of Kay du Maurier.

  Lieutenant Nathanial Crosby of the Beverly Hills Police Department arrested the doctor at his office as he attempted to dress wounds he sustained during his murder of Mrs. Fleming. The accused claims that he had found Mrs. Fleming dead, and that he was attacked by the family cat.

  The statement of one of the maids, Miss Helen Bordeaux, countered this. She said that she had witnessed the doctor rushing covertly away from the mansion with blood dripping from his wounds. It is believed that these were inflicted upon him as Mrs. Fleming fought for her life as he suffocated her with a silk cushion.

  A lynx fur coat was found in the bedroom at the doctor’s house. It has been identified as belonging to Kay du Maurier, although the doctor claims that Mrs. Blanche Fleming, whom he alleged was his lover, had worn it and left it when she made one of many visits to his home.

  Miss Helen Bordeaux was scornful of the story of a cat attacking the doctor. She told our reporter that Kay du Maurier had owned a Persian cat, but that Colonel Carlyle had shot it before taking his own life, clearly when distraught over the tragic deaths of his wife and infant son.

  o0o

  Kay du Maurier had purchased a family crypt in the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard a month after Rudolph Valentino died, and her lawyer and executor of her will arranged for her and her son to be interred together in it. Atop the crypt, a marble block from Apulia, Italy, was sculpted into the semblance of a silk cushion, on which was inscribed the message:

  For Rudolph and Alfonso, my secret gardener and eternal friend, always welcome.

  Rudolph had once told her that the finest marble was quarried in Apulia, near his birthplace of Castellaneta.

  o0o

  Giovanni Batista, the chief cemetery caretaker, noticed things that others failed to see over his forty years at the cemetery. He did not exactly see spirits of the rich and famous, but he often felt their presence.

  Except for the cat. He never knew if it was a spirit, or just an exceptionally long-lived and very fit Persian cat that seemed to spend its time resting by the crypt of Rudolph Valentino, or sprawling on the marble cushion on the du Maurier crypt. He had been a young man of twenty when the great Latin Lover died so tragically and had been interred in the beautiful crypt surrounded by roses. And, like everyone else in the Hollywood area, he had followed the tragedies that befell Kay du Maurier and her family. He had personally prepared her crypt.

  He liked to imagine that only he knew about some secret tryst between the great Valentino and the famous Kay du Maurier.

  He thought it would make a wonderful tale.

  But he was not the sort to tell tales. He would be as quiet as the stars of the silent screen.

  About the Author—Clay More

  CLAY MORE is the western pen name of Keith Souter, a part-time doctor, medical writer and novelist. He has written about fifty books, some of which have been translated into ten languages. His novels cover four genres, including westerns, crime, historical and young adult. He also writes short stories and has won a couple of prizes, including a Fish Award.

  He is a member of the Crime Writer’s Association, Western Writers of America and is vice president of Western Fictioneers. He is married to Rachel and lives in England within arrowshot of the ruins of a medieval castle.

  Dream Weaver

  C. A. Jamison

  Mary’s cat makes California dreams come true in three extraordinary romance novels.

  Chapter One

  Working Girl

  My story began in sunny California. For me, the fresh start after college came with the excitement of a new job and a challenge this small town girl wasn’t quite ready to face. I raised my printed directions to the pouring rain. Yes, I said sunny California, but nothing I do ever goes as planned.

  “Hey, cab guy, over here.” Puddle slush sprayed on the curb as the cab pulled up. I opened the door, tucked my skirt, and slid across the back seat.

  The cabby adjusted his yellow ball-cap and turned his head. “Where to, lady?”

  “Umm.” The flimsy paper sagged from the rain. I shook the wet map and pulled back on the hood of my raincoat. “Well, it’s a…” The ink ran in the corner. The address smudged. “The building is past North Rossmore.” I tilted my head. “Toward Fourth and Vine.” I turned the paper upside-down. “I think.”

  “You mind if I take a look?” The cabby held out his hand and, with a quick glance said, “I know the place.” He handed the directions back and two seconds later, we were off.

  Hollywood, where dreams come true. Palm leaves waved their hello in the wind. A long way from Indiana, but my Uncle Chris had said the job was mine if I applied. His friend, the screenplay writer, looked for fast typing skills and a creative mind. The typing skills—I had. Creative thinking? I couldn’t paint or write music, but my thoughts were open to the infinite possibilities of the written word. Would that count? I wasn’t sure.

  The cabby stopped in front of an old high-rise building where concrete steps surrounded a bubbling fountain.

  I reached over the seat and handed him his fare. “Keep the change.” I smiled.

  I gripped the edge of my skirt, prepared to exit, when a handsome stranger’s face peered down at me through the glass. The dark-haired man opened the cab door and held out a courteous hand.

  I hesitated, then reached out. His smooth guidance held a gentle touch, as I stepped onto the curb. Under his big, black umbrella, our hands remained clasped. We stood close, and his scent made me want to take a deep breath. His beautiful blue-eyed gaze held me frozen in time.

  He uncoiled his fingers and raised the hood of my raincoat. The simple movement had Hollywood sex appeal, and my heart drummed.

&
nbsp; “Have a good day.” He winked.

  “You…you too.” Like a backward country girl, I gawked—as if he were an A-list celebrity, but he only waited his turn with the cab. A quiet exhale escaped, as I headed for the building. When I reached the top step, I glanced back and caught him watching me through the drizzle of the cab window.

  My phone displayed the time, and I hurried to room 211. Stained glass blocked my view, so I knocked before entering.

  A middle-aged woman, with a pencil stuck in her hair and bright red lipstick, sat behind a desk. Her blue shirt matched mine, only her blouse fit much tighter.

  Without a glance in my direction, she removed her pencil and used it as a pointer. Her nasal voice blurted the words, “Have a seat.”

  Three plastic chairs lined the wall. I chose the middle one. After my rush to be on time, I waited for this woman to catch up on her reading.

  “I’m the new secretary for—”

  She held the pencil in the air and continued to read.

  Her paperback book didn’t look like an important document, but okay, I’d wait. What choice did I have?

  A Writers Guild of America award hung on the wall of the small office, and the door across from me had Mark Randle’s name on a gold plate. Mr. Randle—my new boss. I’d never met him in person. Our only link came from e-mail correspondence.

  The lady at the desk giggled at something in her book. She placed a marker and looked over her glasses. “Are you Mary Lynn Price?”

  “Yes.” I stood and held out my hand to greet her. “Mr. Randle is expecting me.”

  The woman sashayed around the small desk and shoved three paperback books into my outstretched fingers. I steadied the books as the tiny female smiled up at me.

  “Mr. Randle had an emergency. He’s left for Alabama to see his mother.” She opened the door that held his name and motioned me forward.