Andrews dug a bit deeper, “What was all the other stuff in the drawer?”
“Just like the scrapbooks and matches, they were keepsakes . . . something from all the women who have been to the house.”
“It’s a good story,” Andrews said, “but as there are no witnesses to prove what Flynn Sparks said, it is nothing more than a story. And until proven differently, Sparks was the last person to see Leslie Bryant alive, and that makes him the most likely murder suspect. After all, the mere fact that there was nothing from Miss Bryant in Willard Mace’s collection seems to indicate he didn’t do it.”
Sparks anxiously moved over to where Andrews stood beside the desk and almost pleaded, “Captain, do you have a photo from the murder scene?”
Andrews opened the folder and pulled out one that included the body and the area around it. Sparks studied the shot before handing it back. He looked to Shelby as he announced, “Flynn Sparks had never heard of the other murders. He knew nothing of the other crime scenes. If he had murdered Leslie Bryant, he would not have known to drop the unused, broken kitchen match at the scene.” He turned back to Andrews, “The reason Willard Mace has no souvenirs from Bryant’s killing is because the woman left her purse and the handkerchief in the Packard. So, the only thing he could take from the woman was her bracelet, and he couldn't keep that; he had to use it to frame Flynn. Mace must have been watching the whole time and grabbed the woman as soon as Sparks got her home.”
Staying in character, Andrews looked over to Sparks and nodded. “Barry, I will actually admit that makes sense. And I think, thanks to what you just said, I finally figured out why the match was left at each scene.” Andrews took a deep breath, centered his thoughts, and continued, “Of course, we heard about two things triggering Mace’s rage. One was the color blue and the other was jealousy. I think we will find that Sparks took out each one of the dead women and, while Mace might have had some mental issues, he was still pretty bright. He likely knew Sparks could take him out in a fair fight. So what was the best way to make him pay for stealing the women Mace wanted? It was to leave a clue pointing us to the actor. And when struck, a match sparks. It was almost the perfect frame.”
Andrews got up from the chair and stuck his hand out towards the other actor, “Congratulations, Barry, you helped figure out the last element in this case. Why don’t you go find Flynn Sparks and inform him he is no longer a suspect?”
After shaking hands, a smiling Sparks announced, “I will do that right now.”
“And Jenkins, send in some cops to haul Jacob Yates downtown.” Andrews folded his arms and nodded, “Now all we have to do is find Willard Mace.”
Five seconds later, from somewhere off the set, Melton yelled, “Cut.”
As the cameras stopped, Barrister stood and looked at Jenkins. “Now it’s time to make an arrest. And, like my film counterpart said, it is also time we found Mace. With every cop in town looking for him, he can’t run far.”
81
July 22, 1936
With the avalanche of information that had just landed on the soundstage, Shelby was still reeling. In the course of the morning’s filming, almost everything she thought and believed had been proven false. The man she was sure was guilty was not, a citywide search was going for her co-worker—the man who really was the Hollywood Madman, and the owner of Galaxy Studios was being led away in handcuffs. It seemed that when reality hit a studio, it struck with a knockout punch!
“I guess we need to get back to work,” Betsy Minser noted. “With or without Yates, I figure we will still be making movies. And we’ve got to finish the gowns they need for the country club dance that is being shot next week on soundstage 14.”
Rising from the couch, a still numb Shelby walked slowly off the set. She was just about to the outside door when Bill Barrister put his hand gently on her shoulder and stopped her.
“I want to thank you,” the cop said. “You did some great work.”
“But,” the woman argued, “he was not guilty.”
“And,” Barrister replied, “that’s just as important as finding someone who is guilty. And don’t worry; we’ll track down Willard Mace.”
“I’m not worried,” Shelby assured him. “What concerns me is that I thought of people as things they weren’t.”
The cop smiled, “Miss Beckett, you work in a world where nothing is as it really is. Even a cop like me has problems telling the difference between the reality and fantasy in a place like this. Now, I have a job to do. I hope you will excuse me.”
After stepping out the door, Shelby made the two-block walk back to the wardrobe department. Her mind was still so overwhelmed she failed to notice anything during that short trek. Once inside the finishing room, she sat down at her worktable and glanced up at the clock. How could it be only a quarter past eleven?
A somehow energetic Minser was already in full work mode as she pitched a pattern package to Shelby and rushed over to her own desk to look through the weekly work checklist. “OK, there are some dresses that Willie was supposed to have already taken over to the Western movie. I can see them on the other side of the room. I guess I’ll run them over for the saloon scene. They shoot that later this afternoon. I should be back before lunch. Maybe we can eat together.”
“That sounds good,” she agreed. “Betsy, I never thought it was Willie. How can you work with someone and not know?”
“He is sick,” Minser explained. “Something inside him was just not right. You know, I realized the matches at the scene were meant to frame Flynn, but when I heard about the fact that they were broken in two, it made me think of something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, Shelby, each time Mace killed someone, he snapped, just like those matches.”
“And,” Shelby sadly noted, “none of it had to happen. It was the accident that did it.”
“Consider the irony,” Minser suggested. “The man who built this studio and became rich doing it was brought down by driving drunk twenty years ago. And the person who Yates injured back then was the son he didn’t know he had.”
“And,” Shelby sadly replied, “it is all because so many different people—including Yates, Rains, and Flynn—were trying to hide from what was real by creating fantasy, not just on this studio lot, but even in their own lives. And it all built into a storm of deception that took the lives of all those poor women.”
“Almost sounds like a biblical story,” the supervisor noted. “Now, I need to get these costumes delivered.”
Shelby watched her supervisor push a rolling rack of clothes through the door leading outside to the street. As soon as it closed, the young woman pulled the pattern from the envelope and started to lay it out. She didn’t bother looking up when she heard the door open again.
“Did you forget something?” Shelby asked as she picked up a piece of material to begin the dress.
There was no response.
She was holding the fabric while looking from the pattern to the design sketch when instinct finally kicked in. She hesitantly lifted her eyes from her work and found herself staring into the face of Willard Mace. Her suddenly racing heart jumped up into her throat. He was less than five feet from her.
Mace looked confused and upset. His eyes were wild, his clothes dirty and stained. As he stood just on the other side of her table, he rocked from side to side and slowly opened and closed his hands.
Finding a sliver of courage, Shelby gently asked, “Are you all right? We’ve been worried about you. We didn’t know where you were.”
He didn’t answer as his eyes went to her suit. Those almost deranged eyes lingered there as if memorizing every detail and, as the seconds ticked by, Mace’s face twisted into something that somehow mirrored pain, rage, and humor all at the same time. And then she remembered Barrister’s warnings about wearing blue. That was the trigger. Her mouth dried, she swallowed hard, and she silently prayed for a miracle while looking for someplace to run and hide.
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“I loved you,” he whispered as he took a small step to his left. While still closing and opening his hands, inch by inch, he continued to work his way around the table coming closer and closer to where she stood.
“Where did you hide?” she asked while taking a step back.
“I know places,” he assured her. “I know lots of places. I’ll show them to you. We can hide there too. They’ll never find us.”
It would be at least ten minutes before Minser returned. No one was due for an alteration. If she was going to survive, it was going to be up to her. Never taking her eyes off Mace, Shelby took four more backward steps.
“Willie,” she suggested calmly as she moved, “we need to talk.”
“About what?” he asked. He was moving, too, even faster than she was, and now was just three feet away; so close his hands could almost reach her throat.
“You need to get some help,” she said as she took another step backward. There would be no more steps; the wall was now against her back.
He grinned, “I don’t want to go back there. The only thing that was good there was the garden.” He got a faraway look in his eyes before adding, “I worked with the flowers and the rose bushes. Whenever a flower or rose was damaged, they taught me to get rid of it.” Mace took two more steps. He was now close enough that she could feel his breath. “Flynn Sparks damaged you just like he did those others. You were beautiful until you went home with him.”
So that was it. Mace saw Sparks as a parasite that destroyed women just as an insect might damage a flower, and he pruned the damaged women just like he’d once pruned the damaged plants. How paradoxical was it that the very place he was sent to get help accidentally gave him the motive and justification to kill? And, in his mind, she was the next damaged flower he must get rid of. What could she do or say to prove to Mace that she was still pure?
“Flynn never touched me,” Shelby announced, her voice shaking as she pushed out the words.
“I saw him kiss you,” he shot back. “I was hiding by your house, and I saw him put his lips on yours. I watched you a lot. I used to hide and watch as you came home.”
So that was who was in the shadows. Those were the eyes she felt in the darkness.
“Why did you let him kiss you?”
Shelby was trying to think of a response when Mace lunged forward. For a big man, he was quick. Somehow ducking under his arms, she managed to escape and dash around her table toward the outside door. Moving like a wildcat, Mace leapt up on the workstation, knocking the pattern, a bolt of material, and needles and thread in all directions. Then using the table as a launching pad, he bounded at her like a lion would an antelope. As he landed on top of Shelby, his powerful hands grabbed her shoulders and took her to the ground. Her face pinned against the floor, she sensed the end was near. With his knees pinning her body to the floor, she couldn’t breathe and had no chance of moving. Then he did something unexpected and bizarre. Rather than place his powerful hands around her neck, he moved his legs until he straddled Shelby, grabbed her arms and roughly turned her over.
His face was just inches from hers as, with lightning quickness, his hands jumped from her arms to her neck. He then moved his legs just enough to pin her back to the ground. She lashed out with her hands, trying to get to his face and tear at his eyes—those eyes that now wouldn’t release their grip on hers—but his hulking shoulders fended off her wild swinging. She then felt his thumbs push on her throat, and as he began to apply pressure, Mace nodded and smiled.
“Shelby.” He whispered as he squeezed harder. “Just relax, it will all be over very soon. And then you’ll be perfect again. You’ll be just like you were before Flynn Sparks ruined you.”
“No!”
A man’s voice coming from the back of the room caused Mace to relax just enough for the woman to grab his wrists and dig her sharp fingernails into his flesh. The unexpected pain caused him to rise up off the ground just enough for her to roll over and scramble under his arms and away from his grip. As she pushed off the floor, she saw a shocked Flynn Sparks standing just two feet inside the doorway. Mace, responding now like a cornered animal, rushed the intruder, catching him with a shoulder in the chest and driving him into the wall. Sparks’s head struck a shelf holding hundreds of hats. Scores of the bonnets, fedoras, and Stetsons crashed to the floor along with the actor. Not fully unconscious but obviously stunned, Sparks’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he struggled to stand. Like a boxer who’d just taken a right to the jaw, he rose to one knee and then, when Mace delivered a hook, the actor collapsed.
With Sparks taken care of, a now even more enraged Mace turned back to Shelby. He studied her momentarily before racing forward. A frantic Shelby glanced to a seemingly helpless Sparks before turning and running back toward her workstation. When she arrived at her workstation she did the unthinkable and turned to face her attacker.
“Don’t come any closer,” she warned.
Mace, likely stunned by her boldness, stopped. He stood there panting like a wild beast as his eyes locked once more onto hers, then with no warning, he leapt forward. Reaching back to the table, she grabbed her cutting shears in her right hand and pushed them forward. Her attacker’s hands were just inches from her neck when Shelby drove the large, sharp scissors into her attacker’s stomach. Stepping quickly to her left, she watched him stagger for a moment and then fall to his knees. Running over to the phone, she called the switchboard. As soon as the operator answered, a breathless Shelby screamed into the receiver, “Willard Mace, the man the police are looking for, is in the finishing room in the wardrobe department. Send the cops and also the studio doctor.”
Sparks, his senses now beginning to return, pushed off the floor and wobbled more than walked to her side. “Are you OK?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “your timing was perfect.”
After rubbing his head, Sparks looked down at Mace, now face down on the floor, and noted, “I guess this case is a wrap.”
“I prayed for a hero,” she announced as her hand went to his shoulder.
“And you got a heel,” he quickly acknowledged. “In truth, it looks like you saved me.”
She nodded, “Seems like you’ve been saved a couple of times this morning. About the only thing left to save is your soul. Maybe we can save that another time.”
The outside door burst open, and Barrister and Jenkins, guns drawn, marched in. The pair rushed over to Mace, rolled the man onto his back and carefully studied the strangler that Shelby had somehow taken down.
“He’s alive,” the captain announced.
“Good,” Shelby replied, relief obvious in her tone.
“Good?” Sparks shot back. “He’s killed a half dozen or more women, and you’re glad that he’s not dead?”
“He’s not all there,” she explained. “His mind is injured, and he can’t always reason.”
“But he kills people,” Sparks argued.
Shelby shrugged, “In his mind, he is just getting rid of those who are damaged to make room for those who are perfect.”
Barrister looked up from where he knelt beside Mace. “But no one is perfect.”
“And that’s Willie’s problem. In his mind some are, but when they fall from grace, he gives them no second chances.”
“I sense a sermon coming on,” Sparks complained.
She smiled and looked at the actor, “Flynn, I forgive you for being a jerk and a host of other things. And I think God is willing to do that too.” Her eyes turned back to the madman she’d stopped, “And I forgive him too. He simply did not have the ability to realize what he was doing.”
Her eyes went from Mace back to Sparks, “Now, why did you come down here today?”
“To apologize,” he admitted. “But don’t confuse this one act as a sign of a complete change of character. Besides, I have a date with a script girl. I got to talking to her after we wrapped today, and she finds me a flawed but interesting character.”
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nbsp; Shelby smiled, reached up, and kissed Sparks on the cheek.
“Excuse me,” he announced, “that’s no way to say thanks to the guy who walked in, tried, and miserably failed to save your life.” Pulling her mouth to his, he gave her what many would call a movie kiss. Just as they were about to break their embrace, Dalton Andrews strolled in, followed by the studio doctor. As the physician moved to treat Mace, Andrews looked at Shelby, shook his head, turned, and stormed out.
“Whoops,” Sparks said.
82
July 22, 1936
Shelby finished work at seven. As her father had already gone home and as she was going to have to call a cab, she opted to spend a bit of time by herself trying to put things into perspective. So, with time on her hands, she strolled over to New York Street, down the New Orleans set, and through Western town. At the end of the block, she walked up to the church and tried the door. Surprisingly, it was open. She made her way inside, stopped, looked at the cross hanging on the wall, and then took a seat in the back pew. She was lost somewhere between prayer and sleep when the door opened and Dalton Andrews walked in.
He undid the button on his suit coat, pushed his hands into his pockets, and looked at the floor. She watched him fidget for a few moments before she finally broke the silence.
“Have you ever wondered,” she asked, “why the back pew is closest to the church’s front door? And did you ever stop to consider that the front of the sanctuary is actually the most distant point from the front door? I wonder what the logic behind that is?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “In fact, I’m not sure I know much of anything anymore. I mean, this morning I was sure Flynn was a killer, and now I realize he’s just a jerk.”
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