“Dalton,” she gently said, “my world has turned upside-down in the past few years. In the past few weeks it has gotten even stranger. I live in a world a million miles away from the girl I was but that change in location hasn’t changed who I really am. I kind of think your name might have changed but you still are the same guy you were.”
“Don’t be like Leslie,” he warned.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t have faith in other people,” Andrews continued. “That kind of innocent thinking opens the gates for you to be taken advantage of.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she assured him. “I can see that in your eyes.”
“Shelby, I’m an actor, my job is to play a character. But this town’s also made me a user and even an abuser. If you give me your trust, I’ll find a way to work it to my advantage. And when I or someone like me does that . . . when we steal your innocence . . . then we make you one of us. You see, misery loves company.” He looked over to the counter, “Just like that menu board, my life can be erased and rewritten in the matter of a few minutes. Today, I played a part to get you to go out with me tonight. It’s what I do. I can’t turn it off. You can’t be sure of who I am, because I can’t be sure of it either.”
“I don’t believe that,” she argued.
“And that’s the first sign to my having played my part to perfection. You see me tonight as charming and sincere, but how do you know that, behind my green eyes and perfectly capped teeth, I might really be hiding an evil so dark you can’t imagine it? You can’t know because even I don’t know who I really am.”
Shelby didn’t know how to respond. She fumbled for words before finally asking something she immediately wished she’d kept to herself. “So did you really have a sister who was murdered?”
He sadly nodded, “That was true, and it really did destroy my mother. But for years Shirley had really been killing Mom a piece at a time with her wild lifestyle. What my sister was I won’t say in front of you, and the censors won’t let me say it on the screen, but I can tell you this . . . I hated her for hurting Mom, and I didn’t cry at her funeral. And even today, when I see a woman using her beauty and her body to get something she wants, it is like Shirley is once more alive and hurting more people. And all the rage comes back again.”
“I’m sorry,” Shelby whispered.
“Hey,” he said with a smile as he looked back toward the kitchen, “our food is on the way. Let’s quit this journey into my sad past and pretend the biography Galaxy Studios wrote for me is really true.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That I’m from North Carolina, raised on a tobacco farm and educated at elite private schools.”
“I’m not buying it,” she announced as the waitress set their food and drinks on the table. “At least, not like you’re dressed right now. And I’m not buying you are what you said you are. I think there’s a lot more good than evil in you.”
“Shelby,” Andrews’s expression and tone were suddenly very serious, “please don’t let your guard down, and don’t give up being the sweet kid you are. If you do either of those things, someone like me will hurt you. Now, enough talk, let’s eat.”
20
June 16, 1936
It was just past nine when Andrews drove Shelby up to the small bungalow her family called home. He didn’t bother turning off the car’s motor, just slid it into neutral, and set the emergency brake. As he fiddled with the radio, she turned sideways in the seat and leaned against the passenger door.
“That’s a nice song,” she said as he adjusted the tuning.
Andrews, his face illuminated by the instrument lights, grinned, “I’ve met the guy who cut that record. His name is Fats Waller and the song is ‘All My Life.’ That tune is on top of half the charts in the nation right now.”
“It’s a great song,” Shelby noted. “I think it should be number one everywhere.”
“Can’t be,” Andrews explained. “Fats is a Negro, and a lot of stations won’t play his music because of the color of his skin.”
“They are the ones who are missing out,” she suggested.
“Guess you’re right,” he agreed. “Fats plays jazz, and I like it almost as much as I like swing music. How about you? What kind of music do you play most?”
She shrugged, “I couldn’t answer that. You see we don’t have a radio in our house, much less our truck. About all I get to hear at home is my mom singing, and she really can’t carry a tune. I guess the only music I know much about is what I’ve heard and sung in church.”
“Well,” he smiled, “that’s something. What was your favorite song from church?”
Her eyes lit up, “There were so many it would be hard to pick just one.”
He turned off the radio and looked her way, “Give it a try. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in church, but I remember a few hymns from my days in Kentucky.”
Shelby leaned her head against the door glass and took an unplanned trip through her memories. She bounced from one song to another, letting them play out in her head, before landing on one that demanded to be clung to like a child’s teddy bear.
She hummed a few lines before saying, “ ‘Love Will Roll the Clouds Away.’ ”
He smiled, “I don’t know that one. Why don’t you sing a few lines?”
“I couldn’t do that,” she shyly answered.
“I know you can sing,” he pointed out, “I just heard you hum. So please sing a verse. I want to know what makes it your favorite.”
She bashfully nodded, took a deep breath and softly sang.
As along life’s way you go,
Clouds may hide the light of day.
Have no fear for well you know,
Love will roll the clouds away.
When the road is rough and long,
And the world is cold and gray.
Lift your voice in happy song,
Love will roll the clouds away.
“Shelby, that was nice. I kind of needed to hear those words too.”
She dipped her head and looked out the windshield. He wasn’t the only one who needed to be reminded of those words from time to time. They were often a crutch for her. In fact, she’d sung them a hundred times as she rode in their old truck along Route 66 heading west. At times, it was singing old hymns that kept her from crying.
“You know,” Andrews said softly, “I’d go crazy without music in my life. Whenever I’m depressed or really angry, if I turn on the radio or play a record it calms me down.”
Her grandmother had told Shelby many times that music healed more wounds than any medicine ever invented, and time had proven her right. And, after listening to Andrews, she now figured music worked the same way for the rich as it did for the poor. But along with music, there was something else the rich and poor needed equally and that was sleep. It was late and she had a long day ahead of her tomorrow. She still had a lot to prove to Betsy Minser.
“Dalton,” Shelby noted, “I want you to know this has been my best evening since we got to California, but I really need to go in now.”
“Of course,” he answered, “and as the rain has stopped you won’t have to worry about getting wet. Let me walk you to the door.”
“You don’t have to,” she insisted, “I’m a big girl.”
“And Dalton Andrews might just take you up on that and drop you off and drive away. But you’ve been out with Jasper Rooks, and he’s kind of old-fashioned. You wait there, and I’ll run around and open your door.”
Shelby watched him slide out from behind the wheel and walk in front of the car. She smiled at him through the glass as he came up to her door and twisted the handle. As it opened, she stepped out and led him up to the bungalow’s front door. A bit embarrassed and unsure of what to do next, she demurely looked into his eyes, hoping he’d make the next move.
“May I?” he asked.
She nodded. An instant later, his lips were on hers. It lasted only a sec
ond, but in that time her body warmed and her head seemed to float. She stood frozen in the damp night air as he wordlessly turned and walked back to his car. She watched him get in, put the Hudson sedan into first, and drive away. Shelby didn’t go inside until the taillights disappeared into the night. If only the kids back home could somehow find out that a real movie star had kissed her.
21
June 16, 1936
With his hands clasped behind him, Bill Barrister looked out his second floor window at the morning traffic and marveled at the strange nature of the city he called home. Rumbling by his windows were beat-up Model T Fords and ancient, dented, and rusting Chevrolets, and right next to them were two Lincoln K limousines and a block-long supercharged Duesenberg J cabriolet. The destitute and the elite, the poor and the rich, all sharing the same street equally while living lives that were barely connected. In the movie capital of the world perhaps the incongruity of what was Los Angeles was somehow lost on seemingly everyone but the police. But the fact was the hidden class structure in the city influenced every element of life including where people lived, their social opportunities, and even the way justice was dealt out. In each of those situations, the rich seemed to get all the breaks. A knock turned the man’s attention to the frosted-glass door separating him from the noise of a police station at work.
“Come in!”
“Cap,” Barry Jenkins announced as he opened the door and quickly moved toward his partner, “what are we doing about the Bryant case?”
“Very little,” came the honest reply.
“But we have tied Sparks to the woman,” the younger cop argued. “He couldn’t give any reason for us not to believe he might be guilty. We likely have a case. We should at least be searching his home, cars, and dressing room.”
“Barry, you are exactly right. We should be searching his house right now.”
“Then why aren’t we?”
The older man frowned, “Because unwritten laws are often much more powerful than the written ones.”
“I don’t get it,” Jenkins replied.
“Sit down,” Barrister suggested. “Smoke if you want, and I’ll explain how working in the City of Angels is much different than being a cop in Chicago or Cleveland.” Only after both men were seated did the captain continue. “If Flynn Sparks was a banker, teacher, or garbage truck driver, we would have been all over him the moment we found the connection between Leslie Bryant and him. But Sparks is an actor—and not just any actor—he’s the country’s top box office draw. And he works for a studio that employs more people than any other business in this city. For those reasons and a few dozen more, no judge will give us a search warrant in this case. And that is the way it is.”
“But. . . ” With a wave of the hand, Barrister cut his partner off.
“Barry, the movie business is really a newcomer to this area. It has only been here a generation, but it has more power to impede law enforcement than Al Capone during his days of dominating Chicago. Why do you suppose no one ever was tried for the deaths of William Desmond Taylor or Thelma Todd? In both cases, we were blocked from doing the kind of investigation we would have normally done. And how many actors, directors, and producers in this town have been charged for anything from drunken driving to fatal car accidents to rape?”
“I can remember only a couple,” Jenkins admitted.
“And how many have been convicted once charged?” Barrister asked.
“I can’t name any,” the younger man admitted.
“It is hard for me to think of anyone either,” he announced while pointing to a stack of newspapers on the corner of his desk. “Have you read the news today?”
“No, I haven’t had time.”
“Well, at the same time the police chief and the district attorney are calling me and telling me to lay off Sparks, the Times and other rags are demanding I do something about Leslie Bryant’s tragic death. It seems I am caught between a rock and hard place, and I’ve got no wiggle room at all.”
“But,” Jenkins argued, “Why isn’t Galaxy Studios shutting the newspapers up? Why are they allowing them to put this thing all over the front pages?”
“Because,” Barrister explained, “even bad publicity is good publicity when it comes to a man like Sparks. Simply by his being linked to the dead actress, the public’s fascination with him will grow and the studio will make even more money off his films. In her column today, Ellen Rains even suggested that Bryant was the true love Sparks had been looking for. She hinted they were about to be engaged. I would bet money that is nothing but hogwash, but as Mark Twain said, lies, told over and over again, will become the truth.”
Jenkins shifted uncomfortably in his chair, “So the five girls who’ve been strangled will be pushed aside just so Hollywood can continue to make movies about men who murder women?”
“Ironic isn’t it?” The captain grinned, “but rather than fight a battle I can’t win, I’m going to pull a few pages from a Hollywood script.”
“What do you mean?”
“I still have some things to work out,” Barrister confessed, “but let’s just say I’m going to use a Model T to stop a Cadillac. For the time being, I need you to find out what matches were left at the scene. I want to know who made them and where they were sold.”
“There are a lot of match companies out there,” Jenkins argued. “How can I narrow it down?”
“Work with the lab boys,” Barrister suggested. “And time doesn’t matter. With our path to potential evidence blocked, about all we have is time.”
As Jenkins got up and left, closing the door behind him, the homicide captain returned to the window and studied the traffic. If Sparks wasn’t the killer then someone out there was. How was he going to find him with the power of Galaxy Studio blocking his every move?
22
June 18, 1936
The news of Leslie Bryant’s death drained all the energy and life of everyone from the maintenance crews to the top-of-the-line actors. As work started, no one even exchanged greetings. It was as if the clock had been turned back to the days of silent film. During the day, except for the noise of the sewing machines, even the wardrobe department was quieter than an Ivy League classroom during final exams. When time came to leave, a few folks mumbled words, but most just silently walked to their cars and drove off the lot.
It was the same with Shelby and her father. They were mute on the short ride home and stayed that way until they arrived at their rented home. After the young woman took a deep breath and sighed, John finally spoke.
“What are you thinking about?”
“This is a strange place, Dad. Every day at that studio where we work, a few hundred people die. They are taken down by bullets, arrows, and even poison. People stand over them and say words that are supposed to evoke some kind of explanation as to why what happened happened. And then someone calls cut and those dead folks get up, laugh, and walk away. Then today one of those that probably spent her whole life hoping to act out a death scene on that lot gets killed and reality moves into the place fantasy calls home. Suddenly there is no cut and the dead person stays dead. And no one knows what to say or do.”
“It hasn’t taken me long,” the man sighed, “to get lost in that world. Sometimes I even forget what’s real and what’s not.”
“Not today,” she sighed. “Today it wasn’t hard to separate the two.” She shook her head, “It was easy back home. Everything in life was real. We quit pretending about the age we started school.”
“Let’s go inside,” he suggested, “Mom’s probably got supper ready.”
Shelby stepped out of the truck, closed the door, and wearily walked to the door. She was about to twist the knob when she noted something that didn’t make any sense. “Dad, do you hear that?”
He pulled his hat back and scratched his head, “Sounds like music.”
“And it’s coming from our house,” she pointed out.
Pushing the door open, she looked across
the room to where her mother sat by a large wooden cabinet with a round black dial located in the center. The box sported a half a dozen different types of wood inlays and was at least three feet tall. And the Benny Goodman music floating from its speaker sounded like it had been recorded in heaven.
“What’s this all about?” John asked.
“It came today,” Mary explained. “I was doing some mending about two and a truck pulled up. Two men got out and brought this thing up to the door. I tried to tell them they’d made some kind of mistake and that we couldn’t afford a radio, and they just told me it was already paid for. They set it up, plugged it in, made sure it worked, and then left. I’ve been listening to it ever since.”
He ambled over to the radio and nodded, “If that’s not the strangest thing. Are you sure it was meant for us?”
Mary nodded, “I asked them if the radio was intended for the Beckett family, and they assured me it was. Even gave me a piece of paper proving it. It’s amazing, Pa. It gets all kinds of stations, and I’ve listened to everything from quiz shows to something they call soap operas and even to the news and weather. And the music that comes out of this thing makes it sound like you are right there on the first row of a concert.”
John twisted the center button and switched to a station playing some kind of comedy program. He listened to a joke about a man trying to please his mother-in-law and laughed out loud.
“I didn’t think it was that funny,” his wife scolded him. “My mom was always pretty good to you.”
He grinned, “She’s an even better mother-in-law now than ever.”
“Why, thank you,” Mary said.
“Yep, with her in Oklahoma and us in California, I’ve become quite fond of her.”
“Pa!”
He wiped the grin from his face and looked back at the radio. “It’s a Zenith! That’s a real high-dollar brand. How did we end up with it?”
A still mystified Shelby walked across the room. She reached down to the tuning knob and looked to her dad, “Can I?”
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