The sound of a car motoring up the road caused Shelby to turn her eyes away from her parents and to the road. She immediately recognized the black Model A coupe stirring up the dust as belonging to Calvin Kelly. They’d graduated high school together and, thanks to the fact that his family owned a couple of the stores in town, the tall, dark-headed young man was attending the University of Oklahoma studying business. In a state filled with sad and suffering people, Kelly was one of the lucky ones.
Pulling up behind the Beckett’s truck, Calvin switched off the four-cylinder motor, swung the door open, jumped out, and quickly covered the thirty feet between him and Shelby. After smoothing his light blue shirt, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and announced, “I had to catch you before you left.”
Shelby forced a smile and nodded as the visitor fidgeted in front of her. Looking over her shoulder, Kelly pushed his hands into the pockets of his black pants and nodded to her parents.
“Good to see you, Calvin,” Mary called out.
The young man politely smiled and then turned to once more face Shelby. “I came out here to tell you, well . . .” He paused, licked his lips, and finally stammered, “I guess I love you.”
Her blue eyes catching the morning sun, Shelby smiled, “Calvin Kelly, you’ve never even kissed me; you have no idea what love is.”
“But,” he argued, “if you’d just stay, we could get married and . . .”
“And you wouldn’t go back to Norman and finish college,” she quickly chimed in. “You’ve only got one year left. You can’t quit now.”
“But . . .”
“No buts,” Shelby announced placing her finger to his lips. “Your world’s not lost. You get to live your dreams. Don’t trade all of that just because you feel sorry for me. I’ll do fine.” She forced a smile and then lied, “It will be kind of fun seeing someplace new for the first time in my life. You know I’ve never even been out of Oklahoma.”
“This isn’t about charity,” he argued, his dark eyes showing a mixture of hope and pain. “I’ve loved you since our first day in grade school. There’s not another girl like you in these parts. I can’t let you get away.”
His offer was tempting. After all, she didn’t want to leave, her whole life was here and her folks would look at her marrying Calvin as a blessing from heaven. But that wasn’t the best thing for Calvin and likely not the best for her either.
“When you get your degree,” she assured him, “if you haven’t found some cute girl at school, you can come look for me. I’ll write and tell you where I am. After all, if you keep your nose to the grindstone that is only a year away. Now, we have to get on the road. We have a long way to go.”
“But . . .”
“Quit that,” she whispered.
“Can I at least have a good-bye kiss?” he begged, his face framed in a hopeful expression usually reserved for small children sitting on Santa’s lap.
Shelby smiled, “You should have asked for that a long time ago, like after the junior dance or during the hayride our sophomore year.”
“Guess I should have,” he admitted. “Guess I should have said and done a lot of things. I just always figured there’d be time.”
She heard her father step into the truck and close the door. This was it, her last moment standing on the soil that had embraced her, defined her, and was now rejecting her. With a million memories fighting for space in her head, she leaned her face toward his until her lips met his. In the brief seconds they touched, Shelby was overcome with a sense of sadness and loss, of things that might have been and now could not be, of the security of the past and the insecurity of what lay ahead. And, even when the gentle kiss ended, those feelings still demanded her attention, tugging at her with the strength of the winter’s north wind.
“That was nice,” he whispered, their faces still close. “I’ll miss you.”
She nodded, stepped back, and moved to the truck. Grabbing hold of the tied-down rocking chair, she pulled herself onto the truck bed’s floor, turned and sat down, her legs dangling over the open tailgate. After taking a final look at Calvin, she moved her eyes once more to the only home she’d ever known. As she studied the house, her father started the motor, the gearbox groaning as he slid the transmission into first gear, and, a moment later, the heavily loaded Ford lurched forward.
“Good-bye, Shelby,” the young man sadly called out.
Pulling her knees up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around the dress that covered her legs and nodded. The truck was heading west, her eyes were looking east and everything that had been was now quickly fading away behind her.
3
June 10, 1936
Galaxy Studios, with more than forty soundstages and a three hundred-acre back lot, was the crown jewel of the movie industry. Headed by Jacob Yates, a small, balding man with a huge ego and an even larger appetite for cash, the studio claimed to have more stars than those in the night sky above Hollywood. And though an exaggeration of the greatest magnitude, there was no doubt Galaxy had the top talent in the industry, headed by the king of the box office, Flynn Sparks.
Sparks, who’d grown up in Gary, Indiana, and migrated to California in his late teens, first found work as a stunt man with the Roach Studios. After a few minor roles at MGM, in which he never spoke a single line, Sparks, who was then using his given name of Hamilton, was spotted by Yates. What everyone but Galaxy’s boss missed was that when the young man strolled through a door every other person in the room disappeared. With his dark, almost black eyes, his wavy brown hair, square jaw, broad shoulders and deep baritone voice, the six-footer was the dream catch of females from ten to ninety and he was made to order for this new era of talking motion pictures. Who cared if he couldn’t act; Galaxy had people who could teach him enough skills to get by.
Hamilton jumped at Yates’s offer of seventy-five dollars a week, and with the young man under contract, the studio’s publicity team rewrote his history. Bill Hamilton disappeared as Yates invented Flynn Sparks. With a biography that included growing up in Montana and time spent looking for gold in South Africa, Hollywood introduced a new actor to the world who was an adventurer living for thrills and excitement. Above all other American males, Sparks was a man who grabbed life and squeezed every moment of pleasure from it. He lived on the edge and had no fear of death. It was an image Sparks loved almost as much as he did his new name.
First cast opposite Dalton Andrews, who was then Galaxy’s top draw, in a crime picture, Sparks charmed fans even as he was panned by critics as nothing more than an empty package with a nice face used as wrapping. His acting improved marginally when he played a New York lawyer who spent as much time captivating his costar, Betty Foster, as he did working on a capital case. In the next three years, Sparks made a dozen more films and his image graced more magazine covers than any actor in the world. While critics still wrote him off as nothing more than set decoration, Sparks made millions for Galaxy, and Yates rewarded the actor with a series of raises and showered him with tens of thousands of dollars in gifts.
As hot as he was at the theaters, the young man was even more combustible off the set. Because of his fame, money, and charm, scores of women constantly hovered in his shadow and he took full advantage of everything they offered. His nightlife, complete with parties, drinking, and even fistfights, was written about in every newspaper in the country. And rather than hurt his career, it enhanced it. Soon known as Hollywood’s Rogue, Sparks’s popularity was only exceeded by his thirst for life. And while his fans loved his smug confidence, his ever-growing arrogance soon turned off most of the film community.
On the set of Born To Lead, a formula picture with Sparks playing a young officer in World War I, the actor smoked a cigarette and impatiently waited for director Charles Holcomb to call the crew back into action. Leaning against a long bar, built as a part of a set representing a café in Paris, the actor studied a nervous but beautiful brunette sitting at a table about twenty feet in front of him.
With her huge brown eyes, full lips and nice figure, she appeared to have everything needed to make a big splash in Tinseltown. And none of that was lost on the actor now on the prowl for a new conquest.
“She’s a real doll,” Dalton Andrews announced as he took his place beside Sparks. “I understand she’s from Missouri.”
“The Show Me State,” Sparks laughed as he turned to face the tall, thin, blond actor.
“Yates just signed her,” Andrews continued, “She’s eighteen, green, and innocent. I doubt if alcohol has ever touched her lips.”
“What’s her name?” Sparks asked, his eyes moving once more to the woman on the far side of the soundstage.
“Don’t know what it was when she was born,” Andrews said with a shrug, “but it’s Leslie Bryant now.”
“Miss Bryant,” Sparks announced. “I like that. It suits her. I wonder what she’ll think of the view from my new home?”
“Your ten-room shack up in the hills?”
“Yeah,” Sparks laughed. “And it’s fifteen.”
“She’ll never see it,” Andrews quipped. “I spent some time with her yesterday and she is as cold as a January wind in Canada. She’s not the kind of girl who would give you the time of day. She has something foreign to you. It’s called morals.”
Sparks looked back to the studio’s second highest-paid actor and said, “Want to bet?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“How about my blue Auburn against your Packard? I know you love my car.”
“How do we determine the winner?” Andrews asked.
“Miss Bryant takes in the view from my house on our first date and spends the night.”
“That’s like taking candy from a baby,” Andrews laughed. “She’s straighter than the arrows the Indians shot at Custer. You’re on.”
As the two actors shook hands, a short, stout man, about forty, waved his arms and announced, “Let’s film this fight scene and wrap things up for the day.”
“Looks like Holcomb is ready for you,” Andrews noted. “I just stopped by to see if you wanted to go with me to Santa Catalina this weekend, but it appears you have something else on your mind.” He paused and gazed back at the actress before adding, “You have one week. If, you’ve not worked your magic by then, the Auburn is mine.”
“Too easy,” Sparks shot back. “Let’s make it four days.”
“My word, you are sure of yourself.”
“I’ve got nothing to doubt,” Sparks laughed. “I’m completely irresistible.”
“Mr. Sparks,” the director called out. “Are you ready?”
“And willing,” the actor assured Holcomb and moved quickly toward the center of the stage.
It was time for action, and hopefully that action would set in motion a way for him to be introduced to Leslie Bryant. He was sure that once they met, he would have her under his control.
4
June 10, 1936
It was just past five in the afternoon when Ellen Rains waltzed into the office of Jacob Yates. Rains was in her fifties, plump but stylish, and wore a dark blue suit, large matching hat and carried a handbag that could have doubled for a suitcase. Though she called herself a journalist, she was in truth nothing more than a gossip scribe. She got the dope on the stars and splashed the information to the world via daily columns in newspapers, monthly stories in magazines, and her own radio show. With a single word, she could make or break an actor or actress and, like a heavy club, she held that power over men like Yates.
“Jacob,” Rains sang the man’s name as if getting ready to launch into an opera.
Looking up from his desk, Yates forced a smile. “Ellen, to what do I owe this extreme pleasure? It always makes my day to have you come into my office.”
“You know you don’t mean that,” she snapped. “My being hit by a train would give you more reason to celebrate than having a best picture winner. You likely pray for my death and look forward to the day you can dance on my grave.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he quickly replied.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” she grinned as she took a seat in front of his massive walnut desk, “but I know that’s what you are thinking. Now, let’s forget this pretending we still like each other—those days passed a long time ago—and let’s get down to brass tacks.”
Yates frowned, “Who did you catch doing what and how much is it going to cost me?”
“I have several things on my list,” she admitted, and, after slipping off her hat and setting it on the studio boss’s desk, she continued, “but those will keep. Today, my inside information comes from a contact down at the DA’s office. Did you hear about the woman they found last week by the Hollywoodland sign?”
Yates nodded as he opened up the wooden box on his desk and pulled out a cigar. Leaning back in his chair, he propped his feet on his desk, retrieved a match from his pocket, struck it against the arm of his chair, and lit up.
Rains frowned, “Must you smoke those things? Everyone in town knows when I’ve come to your office, because for the rest of the day I smell like the inside of a men’s club.”
Yates blew smoke towards the woman and smiled, “My wife spends my money as if I was richer than William Randolph Hearst. My three adult children refuse to get real jobs and still live at my house. I have distant relatives that come and visit me for weeks at a time and every actor and actress in this studio thinks they are not making enough money. The cigars are about the only pleasure I have left.”
“I’m so sorry for your horrible life,” she groaned. “Anyway, back to the reason I came. Did you know the dead girl was one of the young women Galaxy signed to a contract last month?”
Yanking his feet from the desk, Yates rolled his chair forward, leaned over the desk and barked, “What?”
“Her name was Linda Watkins,” Rains announced in a deliberate and emotionless manner. “She appeared in a couple of your recent films. She even had a line in the Flynn Sparks’ movie that’s shooting now. What’s that one called again?”
“Born To Lead,” Yates said.
“Well, she’s the one who took her swan song at the sign we all love. Who knows, Sparks might have been the last man she kissed.”
“I didn’t see anything in the paper about her being identified,” the studio boss noted as he dropped his still-burning cigar into a large ashtray. “Last thing I read, she was an unknown.”
“It hasn’t been released yet,” she explained. “Unable to dig up anything on their own, the cops played a hunch . . . a smart one even if I do say so myself . . . that she might be a starlet. So naturally they called me in to see if I recognized the body. Just last week your public relations people sent me photos of the young woman along with her biography. I believe, according to what I read, she was a former Miss Alabama.”
“You know we make that stuff up,” Yates answered.
“Of course I know that,” Rains replied. “I also know that you were the reason she was signed. A certain source informed me that you personally auditioned her.”
“So how are you going to play this in the press?” the studio head demanded. “I’ve got a marriage to protect and a name that means something in the community. I don’t need any press linking me to a dead girl. Especially a young, attractive dead girl.”
“I’m not out to hurt you or the studio,” she assured him. “If I’d wanted to reveal the person you really are, I could have done it years ago. You and I need each other, so all your skeletons will remain in the closet.”
His dark eyes glowing, Yates leaned forward and growled, “Ellen, you always have an angle. If you didn’t want to hold my feet over the fire, you wouldn’t be here. So what hoop do you want me to jump through?”
“No hoops,” Rains answered. Crossing her legs and letting her high heel dangle from her right foot, she continued, “And no fires either. Here is the story you need to hear and we need to discuss. The homicide chief, Bill Barrister, seems to think this murder is tied to three
other murders. At least one of those other victims had appeared as an extra in a Galaxy film as well. Her name was Maggie Reason. Per chance did you also get to know her too well?”
“I don’t remember the name,” he admitted. “What did she look like?”
“She was brunette, well-built, and about five-five.”
“We have dozens on the lot who fit that description,” Yates noted.
“She never got an actual credit on a film at Galaxy,” Rains explained. “So her connection won’t be obvious. She was also a freelancer who did work at Columbia and a couple of the poverty row studios as well. Unlike Watkins, Reason shouldn’t haunt you. But the truth is, the latest victim might.”
“I can see you playing this for a while,” he grumbled. “What’s it going to cost us to bury the connection?”
“Nothing,” she assured him. “The police don’t want to sensationalize this story. They are not even officially connecting the cases. They’re afraid that once the word gets out it might cause a panic and the press would go into a frenzy playing it for all it’s worth and more. That would make solving the case almost impossible. But that is why I’m here. If we play this the right way, it can be dynamite for us.”
“What are you talking about?” Yates asked. “We need to stay as far away from this as possible. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”
“Listen, Jacob, I have a source who can give me all the evidence in this case as it comes in. In other words, I will know about the details almost as soon as Barrister. And best of all, the cops will never know I have it.”
“Until you go to press,” Yates barked as he picked up his cigar. “Then my studio gets hit with more black eyes than you see in a Three Stooges film.”
“The story’s not worth that much,” Rains assured him. “Starlets get killed all the time. But this thing does have box office potential written all over it.”
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