by Janet Dawson
“I’m ready to leave,” Jerusha said. “As soon as Ted’s finished with training down in San Diego, we’re getting married. And once he ships out... I don’t really want to go back to Jackson and wait out the war. I want to do something useful. Maybe I’ll get a job in a defense plant, start saving money for when he comes back after this war is over.”
They were both silent for a moment. Jerusha thought about Ted’s brother, Tim, still entombed in the wreckage of the Oklahoma at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. She jingled the keys again. “I’m going to stash these in the bedroom. Looks like Pearl will have to get three new roommates before the year is out.”
“I’m going to make cookies,” Anne said. “I feel like making cookies.”
Pearl returned from the studio late that afternoon, accompanied by her cousin Floyd and another strapping young fisherman from San Pedro. They’d picked her up at Paramount in Floyd’s rattletrap old truck. They were followed shortly by Ted’s uncle, Walt Howard, and Mr. Collier with his son Albert and three classmates. They loaded the boxes containing all the Jaspers’ belongings into the truck. Jerusha made another pot of coffee and handed cups around to the assembly who filled the living room to capacity, eating most of the plateful of Anne’s freshly baked oatmeal cookies.
It was nearly six o’clock that evening when Jerusha heard a key in the front door lock. The door didn’t open. Then she heard Sylvia’s voice swearing. “God damn it, they’ve changed the locks.”
Jerusha opened the front door and stepped out onto the front porch. Sylvia stared. Binky was behind her, his face visible in the porch light. “That’s right. Mr. Collier had the locks changed this morning. And we’ve packed your things. They’re in that truck out there at the curb. You no longer live here.”
“You can’t do that,” Sylvia spat out. “You can’t just kick us out.”
“We already have,” Anne said. She and Pearl joined Jerusha on the porch. “I’d advise you to go quietly. We don’t want any more trouble. If you do make trouble, we have some friends here to see that you leave.”
Floyd stepped up behind Pearl. “I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go,” he said, “one-way trip. ’Course, if you act up, me and my buddies will take your stuff out and leave it on the curb.”
Sylvia sputtered in frustration. Binky’s face was a mask of cold anger. He took Sylvia by the elbow and pulled her away. Then he stared at the three young women on the porch. “This isn’t over,” he said. “You may think it is, but it’s not.”
Chapter 22
I left Graton early Monday morning and drove south through Sebastopol and then to Petaluma. Sadie Espinosa had called late Sunday afternoon to let me know that she’d found the business card for the Petaluma detective who’d looked into Roberta Cook’s death. His name was Kevin Harper and he was in the Investigations Unit. A short time later we exchanged handshakes and business cards as I explained why I was there.
“Roberta Cook,” Detective Harper said. “I looked into it. Especially after the neighbor, Mrs. Espinosa, insisted Mrs. Cook was murdered. But the evidence pointed to an accident. I think Mrs. Espinosa fancies herself as Petaluma’s Miss Marple.”
I smiled. “Miss Marple was always right.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said. “I have to say this movie memorabilia thing sounds interesting. If you do find a connection to that homicide up in Healdsburg, let me know.”
“I will, thanks.”
I got on the freeway, heading south toward the Bay Area. Back in Oakland I made a stop at my house and reassured my cats that, despite my many absences lately, I hadn’t abandoned them. Then I drove downtown to my office. I kept a late-morning appointment, returned phone calls, wrote some reports, and then I surfed the Internet. I was looking for the poster from the 1932 movie, Rain, starring Joan Crawford and Walter Huston. According to Mrs. Espinosa, Roberta Cook had a poster from that movie. It was a three-sheet, a larger poster, measuring forty-one by eighty-one inches, and Mrs. Espinosa said Mrs. Cook’s poster was in mint condition, never folded and without any tears. For that reason, Mrs. Cook told her friend the poster was worth a lot of money, ten thousand dollars, which made me think she’d had it appraised.
After Mrs. Cook’s death last March, Chaz Makellar had purchased her collection. I’d overheard Raina saying he’d made a lowball offer to Mrs. Cook’s son. I wondered how much Chaz had paid, and how much the Makellars were selling the poster for now. I checked the online inventory on the Matinee website, but I didn’t see the poster listed. The movie memorabilia shop was closed on Mondays, so I had to wait until Tuesday to call. However, I did make another call. Lewis Cook, son of the late Roberta Cook, was an insurance broker with an office on El Camino Real in San Mateo. I scheduled an appointment with him on Tuesday afternoon.
As soon as Matinee opened on Tuesday, I called and Raina answered the phone. I went into my spiel. “I collect Crawford memorabilia,” I told her. “I’m particularly interested in pre-Code items from the thirties. If it’s the right item, I’m not concerned about price.”
Raina’s voice perked up at the prospect of reeling in a live one to whom money was no object. “Let me check our inventory,” she said. I turned up my nose at posters for Grand Hotel, which I’d seen, and two movies I’d never heard of: Dance, Fools, Dance and Montana Moon. Then she dangled Rain under my nose. “We have a wonderful three-sheet in mint condition, priced at ten thousand dollars.”
I sniffed. “I’ve already got something from Rain.” I resisted her attempts to get my name and phone number so she could call me with any hot items.
I worked on other matters until noon, when I left to drive to San Mateo for my one o’clock appointment with Lewis Cook, son of Roberta Cook. When the receptionist ushered me into his office, I saw a middle-aged man with thinning hair, a thickening torso, and a florid face. He smiled as he shook my hand. I sat down in the chair in front of his wide desk.
Cook settled into his own chair and tented his hands on the wide, uncluttered surface of his desk, preparing to sell me insurance products I didn’t need. “Now, how can I help you, Ms. Howard?” I took out a business card and handed it to him. His smile disappeared, the corners of his mouth migrating downward to a frown. “You led my assistant to believe that you were here about an insurance matter.”
“I simply made an appointment. Your assistant assumed. My visit concerns your mother, Mrs. Roberta Cook,” I said. “She died recently, at her home in Petaluma.”
“My mother’s death is none of your business,” he snapped. “Private investigator, for God’s sake. I know who sent you. That old biddy next door, Mrs. Espinosa. She told the police some cockamamie story about my mother being murdered. She’s been reading so many mystery books her brain is addled.”
“Mrs. Espinosa did express some concerns about your mother’s death.”
“It was an accident. I’m not surprised she fell down the porch steps. She had osteoporosis and she wasn’t very steady on her feet. And it was raining that day. That house was just too much for her.” Lewis Cook sounded defensive, as though he was trying to convince himself. I wondered if someone else besides the neighbor had raised the issue of the manner of his mother’s death. He had a sister, I recalled from the obituary. But he was his mother’s executor.
“I was after her to sell the house and move into assisted living,” he said. “But no, she didn’t want to leave. Said she wouldn’t have enough room for her collection. Collection! That’s what she called all that movie crap. Clutter is what I call it. The house was crammed full of the stuff, posters, knick-knacks, programs.”
“I’m interested in what happened to the collection, Mr. Cook. Your mother’s collection of movie memorabilia.”
“That junk? It’s gone. I sold it.”
“Can you tell me who bought it?”
“Hell, I don’t remember. That was a couple of months ago. Is that what this is about? You want to buy some of that movie stuff?”
I let him think what he wante
d. “I’ve been told your mother had some Joan Crawford posters that were collectible. Perhaps I could locate the dealer who purchased the collection. I’m wondering if you have his name in your files.”
Lewis Cook thought for a moment. Now that he’d decided I wasn’t here to accuse him of negligence concerning Mrs. Cook’s death, he was a bit more accommodating. “I’d have to check. I think it was Charles something, with a funny spelling on the last name.”
“Could it have been Chaz Makellar? He’s a dealer I’ve heard of, in the East Bay. He has an assistant, an elderly man named Henry Calhoun.”
“Maybe. Makellar sounds about right. He did have an old man with him, but I never caught the old guy’s name. The younger man is the one I dealt with.”
“Did he contact you, or vice versa?”
“He called me,” Cook said. “I just wanted to get rid of that junk so I could put the house on the market. I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay to store it. I was ready to toss it into a Dumpster. Then I got a call from this dealer. He told me he’d seen Mother’s obituary, where it said she collected movie stuff. Said he could probably take it off my hands but he needed to have a look at it first. I told him to come on up to Petaluma. Which he did, him and the old guy. The dealer said it was mostly junk, which is what I figured all along. But he said he thought he could move some of it. He did an inventory and made me an offer I thought was reasonable, so I took it. He wrote me a check. Once it cleared the bank, which it did with no problem, I arranged to meet him at the house. He and the old man showed up in a rental truck, packed up the stuff and hauled it off.”
“Do you still have that inventory? I would like to confirm whether your mother had those Joan Crawford posters.”
“She did have a lot of Joan Crawford stuff. She always did like Joan Crawford.” He swiveled his chair around to face the credenza behind his desk, opened a file drawer and removed a folder. He set the folder on the surface and riffled through some papers. “Here it is,” he said. “I was right about the dealer’s name. It’s Charles Mackellar, in Alameda.” He pulled out several sheets stapled together and turned, handing the inventory to me. “The dealer’s name is on the top.”
“Thanks,” I said. I quickly read through the inventory of Roberta Cook’s movie memorabilia collection. Makellar had listed the items in lots, such as assorted movie posters, lobby cards, and programs. A notation read, “Assorted Joan Crawford posters, eight.” Presumably the poster from the 1932 movie Rain was included in that lot. It wasn’t noted anywhere else. Makellar had estimated the value of Roberta Cook’s entire collection at $5000. A copy of a check for that amount was attached to the inventory.
That was the lowball offer, a pittance compared to what the memorabilia was actually worth on the collectibles market. Lewis Cook, ripe for the taking, was convinced his mother’s collection was junk, and happy to get that sum. I wondered how Cook would react if I told him the Makellars were marketing the poster from Rain for $10,000.
Caveat emptor, I thought. Or rather the other way around. In this case the seller had been taken. I was still left with the question of whether Roberta Cook had help falling down her porch steps.
Chapter 23
I returned to Oakland and spent the rest of Tuesday afternoon completing a report for a client. Then I called the office of Pearl Bishop’s former agent, but got nowhere trying to find contact information for Pearl, at least not from that source. I powered up my laptop and looked at the notes I’d taken while reading Dulcie’s letters from Jerusha.
Pearl Bishop had met her first husband while volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen. Spearheaded by Bette Davis, John Garfield and Jules Stein, the Canteen was a club offering free food and entertainment to men and women in the U.S. and Allied armed forces. It was open from October 1942 through November 1945 and was operated and staffed by volunteers, everyone from stars, directors, producers, writers and technicians to the secretaries who worked in studio offices. Pearl Bishop wasn’t the only volunteer to meet a sweetheart at the Canteen. When I had talked with Mike Strickland at the gallery opening in Healdsburg, he’d told me his sister Molly had met her husband the same way.
Pearl Bishop’s serviceman was a Marine corporal named Edward Galvin, and she married him in 1943, before he shipped out to fight the island war in the Pacific. During 1944 he fought in the Marshalls and the Carolines, and helped liberate Guam. Then in 1945, the corporal made it as far as Iwo Jima, a small volcanic island south of Japan. The hard-won battle for that island ran from mid-February until the end of March 1945, with heavy fighting and casualties on both sides—including Galvin. In a letter dated March first, 1945, Jerusha told Dulcie that Pearl was now a widow. She’d received the dreaded telegram in late February.
In the postwar years, Pearl dated several men but the relationships didn’t last. Then, in 1948, Jerusha wrote to Dulcie with the news that Pearl had married a man named Steve who worked as a grip at Metro. Their son, Carl, was born in 1950. The couple divorced in 1955, with Pearl gaining sole custody of the boy. Unfortunately, Jerusha hadn’t told Dulcie the last name of Pearl’s husband.
By now it was after five. I drove home and fixed myself a salad for dinner. I was just cleaning up the kitchen when my cell phone rang. I looked at the readout and saw an area code I didn’t recognize. I answered the call and heard a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“This is Mildred Roberson,” she said. “I got a call from Noreen Campbell, saying you want to talk with me.”
“Yes, I do. I’m Jerusha Layne’s granddaughter, Jeri Howard.” And Mildred Peretti Roberson was the roommate whose departure had resulted in Sylvia Jasper’s moving into the house.
“Hi, Jeri,” Mildred said. “Nice to talk to you. Your grandmother wrote me that you’re a private investigator. I’m sorry I haven’t called you sooner. I wrote your number on a piece of paper when Noreen called, and then that note promptly got buried under some other papers. I unearthed it this afternoon and figured I’d better call. So what is it you want to know?”
“Tell me about your years in Hollywood.”
“Oh, yes, Hollywood. I was going to be a big star.” Mildred laughed, sounding wheezy over the telephone line. “We all felt that way. We were sure the next break was just around the corner. I was in some good movies, made enough to support myself and to send money home to my folks.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked.
“Real life,” she said. “More important than making movies and me wanting to be an actress. The war was coming. Anyone who could read a newspaper could see that. And we were still struggling out of the Depression. My dad was a farmer near Lamar, in Prowers County down in the southeastern corner of Colorado. We were hit hard by the Dust Bowl. It would have made a lot more sense for me to stay in Lamar and work. But I won a talent contest, back in ’thirty-six. My prize was a ticket to Los Angeles and a bit part in a movie. So that’s why I left. Me and a lot of other girls.”
“Like my grandmother,” I said. “Just one year later, in nineteen thirty-seven.”
Mildred laughed again. “There were flocks of us, like pretty little birds with stars in our eyes. We lived in rooming houses and apartments, made the rounds of the studios, worked as extras and bit players. I worked steadily, but I never got past playing bits. People can make a living at it. Lord knows Pearl did, for a long time, and she eventually got bigger roles. But I’m a practical sort. When I got to Hollywood I gave myself a time line—five years.”
“And the five years were up in nineteen forty-one.” I thought of Jerusha’s five years, from 1937 to 1942.
“That’s right. I went back to Lamar in September of ’forty-one, lived at home, and clerked in a store until early in ’forty-two. I knew I could make more money in war work in Denver. So I moved up there, lived with my aunt, and found a job at Buckley Field. In ’forty-three Anne and Lem got married and later Anne came to Denver. She got a job at Buckley and we shared a tiny little apartment near the base. That’s wh
ere I met my husband, Jack. He was in the Army Air Corps. We got married in ’forty-four.”
I steered the conversation back to Pearl Bishop. “What can you tell me about Pearl? I know you moved into the bungalow in January of ’forty.”
Mildred laughed. “Oh, that drafty old back porch bedroom. I wasn’t sorry to see the last of that.”
“Did you keep in touch with Pearl or my grandmother, after you left Hollywood, and after the war?”
“Your grandmother, definitely,” she said. “Jerusha was quite the correspondent. I so enjoyed her letters. Pearl didn’t hold a patch to Jerusha, but she did write now and again. All four of us had something in common, besides being bit players in Hollywood. We were from small Western towns. The Colorado contingent, me from Lamar and Anne from Alamosa. Jerusha and Pearl were the Californians. Your grandmother was born and raised in a little town in the Gold Rush part of the state. She said it was right in the heart of the Mother Lode and her brother worked in a gold mine, the deepest gold mine in the country.”
“Jackson. It’s on the western side of the Sierra Nevada. Uncle Woodrow worked at the Kennedy Mine until the federal government closed down all gold mining operations in nineteen forty-two. Then he joined the Army.”
“Yes, that’s right. Her older brother. She had a picture of him. Nice-looking fella. Well, anyway, Pearl was from the other side of the mountains. I remember now, that town that was used as a location in so many movies.”
“Lone Pine,” I said. The town is at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada, on the eastern side, near Mount Whitney and the Owens Valley. Ever since the Silent Era, Lone Pine had been a favorite movie location. Generations of filmmakers shot movies in the nearby Alabama Hills, from Westerns featuring John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, to classics like Humphrey Bogart’s High Sierra and Spencer Tracy’s Bad Day at Black Rock. The area even subbed for frontier India in Gunga Din.