by Janet Dawson
Saturday afternoon they took a break and made the rounds of secondhand stores in the area, looking for a new set of dishes and other kitchen crockery. Mr. Collier returned on Sunday with four chairs that matched and a new rug for the living room.
It was Tuesday before they could get the phone fixed. Late that afternoon, as they arrived home, the phone rang. It was the two policemen who’d taken the report, asking them to come down to the Hollywood station. They piled into the Gasper and Pearl drove the old Model A Ford to the station. Inside the station they were greeted by one of the cops who’d taken the report. “They pawned your jewelry,” he said. “One of the pawnbrokers tipped us off when we put out a list of the stolen items. We figure they sold your clothes to a secondhand dealer.”
“The money they took is long gone,” Pearl said. “But we should be able to get the rest of our stuff back from the pawn shops.”
Anne wrinkled her nose. “If Sylvia’s been wearing my clothes I don’t want them back. But my jewelry, that’s a different story.”
“We’ll lean on them,” the policeman said. “They’ll cough up the pawn tickets. My partner’s got them down the hall.”
They followed the policeman to a dingy interview room, where the second officer waited, a bulky man standing near the door. Binky slouched against the wall on the other side of the room. Sylvia paced the floor, wound tight as a spring in her gray skirt and black sweater, a black leather purse clutched under one arm. She held a cigarette, sucking in smoke and blowing it out through her nostrils. Then she stopped and stared at her former housemates, her blue eyes full of venom.
Jerusha spoke first. “My amethyst locket. You stole it. I want it back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sylvia tossed her head. She ground out the cigarette in a nearby ashtray.
“Don’t give me that bushwa,” Pearl said.
Then Anne chimed in. “You’re a thief, plain and simple. You took all my cash and jewelry. You ought to go to jail.”
“You can’t prove anything,” Sylvia said. She looked at Binky for support, but he shrank back against the wall, his dark eyes narrowing as the bulky policeman loomed closer.
The cop leaned over Sylvia and spoke in a rough voice. “I got a witness says you pawned that amethyst necklace in a shop on Vine. I ought to lock you up, you and your brother both, after what you did to the house. You two and that limey you been running with, I hear you’ve been using hop at a nightclub on Sunset. I’ll forget I heard that story, so long as you give up those pawn tickets. Better do it quick, before I change my mind.”
Sylvia’s mouth tightened. Then she reached into the black leather handbag and took out a handful of pawn tickets. She held them for a moment. Then she hurled them at Jerusha’s face. “Bitch! I hope you choke on them.”
“Get out,” the cop growled.
Sylvia tilted her head back and quickly walked out of the room. Binky moved toward the door, stopped and looked back at Jerusha. A malicious smile teased the corners of his mouth. Then he was gone, followed by the big policeman.
Pearl exhaled in a gusty sigh. “Whew, I’m glad that’s over.”
“I want my locket.” Jerusha picked up the pawn tickets. There were seven of them, from different shops in Hollywood and Los Angeles. “Come on. Let’s find these places and get our things.”
The cop took the pawn tickets from Jerusha. “I’ll take care of this. Call me tomorrow. I should have your stuff.” They thanked him and returned home, getting back most of their belongings the next day.
* * *
Jerusha hoped that the matter was closed, but it wasn’t. She heard about Ralph Tarrant’s murder one rainy Saturday night in February. In the first few days after the story hit the news, there was much talk and speculation making the rounds at Metro. On Wednesday of that week, she completed her bit part in Her Cardboard Lover. She was finished with her Hollywood career, finished with all of it, ready to marry Ted.
But Hollywood wasn’t quite finished with Jerusha. She got a phone call on Thursday, another invitation to the Hollywood police station, this time for questioning about the Tarrant murder. It was a subdued group that made the trek in the Gasper.
The older detective, a stocky, florid man with thinning gray hair, introduced himself as Sergeant Mulvany. His tall, thin partner was Detective Partin. They asked Jerusha what she was doing the evening Ralph Tarrant was killed.
Jerusha took a deep breath and willed herself to stay calm. “I was at home all evening.”
“You were alone?” Mulvany asked.
Jerusha nodded. “It was raining. It seemed like a good night to stay in.”
“What did you do all evening?” he asked
“I listened to the radio and mended a dress. And I read for a while before going to bed.”
“Can anyone confirm that?” Partin asked.
“Anne and Pearl were out,” she said. “But Mrs. Ellison, our next-door neighbor, came over. About seven, I think it was. Some of our mail, a letter for Anne, wound up in her mailbox, so she brought it over. We talked for a bit. Then she went home.”
The two detectives looked at each other. “How well did you know Ralph Tarrant?” Mulvany asked.
“I didn’t,” Jerusha said. “Well, I knew who he was. We both worked at Metro. But I’ve never made a movie with him.”
Partin leaned closer. “What would you say if we told you we got a phone call from someone telling us you were his girlfriend?”
Jerusha’s eyes flashed. An anonymous phone call, no doubt, and she had a pretty good idea who’d made that call. She squared her shoulders and lifted her head. “I’d say you were badly misled. I met Ralph Tarrant exactly once, last summer, in the commissary at Metro. My friends and I were eating lunch. He sat at our table and introduced himself. That’s all. I saw him from time to time at the studio. I’ve never had a relationship with that man, not even a friendship.” She held up her left hand, where the diamond ring sparkled on her finger. “Besides, I’m engaged to a sailor. His name is Ted Howard and he’s in training down in San Diego. He and I have dated steadily since last June.”
The two detectives exchanged looks again. “That’ll be all for now, Miss Layne. Please wait outside while we talk with Miss Bishop and Miss Hayes.”
She left the room and walked out to the hallway, where Pearl and Anne waited, sitting on the benches. They stood up as Jerusha approached. “You’re as white as a sheet,” Pearl said. “What did they want?”
“They got an anonymous tip that I was involved with Tarrant,” Jerusha said.
“Son of a bitch,” Pearl said.
“Or just bitch,” Anne said. “I know who made that phone call.”
Before Jerusha could answer, the detective appeared and beckoned to Pearl. She walked into the interview room. Sergeant Mulvany took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Pearl. She shook her head. He fired up a smoke and told Pearl they’d gotten a tip that Miss Layne had used Pearl’s car to drive to Ralph Tarrant’s house the night he was murdered.
“Your tip is jive,” Pearl said. “I was driving my car that night. Had a date, dinner and dancing. I left the house at half past six and got home around ten. So my car was parked outside a chop house and a nightclub all evening. The only other person who has a key to the car is my cousin Floyd, out in San Pedro.”
“Who were you with?” Detective Partin asked.
“A soldier. His name is Chuck Ferris. But don’t bother looking for him. He was on leave between duty stations and he shipped out Monday morning, headed for Hawaii. Maybe the parking attendant at the nightclub remembers us, but I doubt it.” She smiled at the two detectives. “Come on, Model A Fords are as thick as flies in this town. Somebody gave you the hooey about Jerusha and my car.”
“You know this guy Tarrant?” Detective Mulvany asked.
“I’m an actress, he was an actor,” Pearl said. “I knew who he was. He introduced himself once, in the commissary at Metro. I don’t even remember w
hen, except it was last summer. I saw him at the studio. That’s about it. I do know he was dating another actress named Sylvia Jasper. She used to live with us, but she moved out in January. I heard a rumor she and her brother, Byron, were staying with Tarrant. Have you talked with them?”
“We heard that rumor, too,” Mulvany said, with a slight smile. “Miss Jasper and her brother are on our list. Why did she move out?”
“We asked her to leave,” Pearl said. “And when she wouldn’t, we made her go. She was pretty angry about it.”
“Why’d you boot her out?” Partin asked.
“She was a lousy roommate,” Pearl said. “Messy, late with the rent, stole things, you know the drill. We got browned off.”
The two detectives exchanged looks, then Mulvany nodded. “I get the picture. You can go now, Miss Bishop.”
Chapter 27
“That locket is mine now,” I said. “Grandma gave it to me several years before she died.”
“Your grandpa gave it to her the fall of ’forty-one. It was really special to her. That’s why she was so upset when it turned up missing.”
I took a folder from my overnight bag and removed the photographs I’d taken of Henry Calhoun and Chaz Makellar the day I’d seen them unloading merchandise from the SUV. My cell phone’s digital camera wasn’t the best, and not wanting to be seen, I hadn’t been close to either man. But I did have two decent shots of the old man, one in profile and the other revealing three-quarters of his face. I showed the photos to Pearl, pointing at the image of the man I knew as Henry Calhoun.
“Could this be Binky Jasper?” I asked.
Pearl took the photos from me and stared at them. Then she sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s been a lot of years since I saw him. I sure don’t look the same as I did in ’forty-two, and he probably doesn’t either. Binky was a chameleon. He could take on the coloration of his surroundings. He looked like everyone, and no one. I can’t even remember what color his hair was, or his eyes.”
“The way I figure it, Henry Calhoun must be Binky Jasper. How else would he know that Grandma was questioned by the police in connection with Ralph Tarrant’s murder?”
“Good point.” Pearl riffled the edges of the photos with her fingers. “Tarrant wasn’t famous. He wasn’t even well known. He was just another British expat actor holing up in Hollywood for the duration. Oh, there was plenty of newspaper coverage right after the murder, because of the way it happened, him getting shot and the house set on fire. But the war shoved everything else off the front page. And Sylvia’s murder, well, she dropped out of sight that spring. Binky reported her missing in May. She must have been killed right around then. When they found her body in August, she’d been dead awhile. That cop who handled the vandalism situation back in January, he came around again after Sylvia was reported missing. He wanted to know if we’d had any contact with her since then. Jerusha and Anne had left Hollywood by then. I told him that I’d seen Sylvia, from a distance at whatever studio we were working at, but not to speak to, not close up. Not since that day in the police station when she threw those pawn tickets in your grandma’s face.”
“I wonder if the two murders were connected.”
“So did I,” Pearl said. “I still do.”
I speculated about what could have happened. “Sylvia and Binky are at Tarrant’s house, one of them shoots Tarrant and sets the house on fire to cover their tracks. Then they call the police and tell them Jerusha was at the house, that she was dating Tarrant, when it was really Sylvia he was involved with.”
“I think Binky was what we called swish, a homosexual,” Pearl said. “And I’m betting Tarrant swung both ways, for all that he was dating Sylvia. I saw Tarrant with Binky one night, at that nightclub the cop was talking about. It was a place where people used hop, and by that we meant all kinds of drugs, cocaine and reefer. I didn’t like the place, but the sailor I was with that night wanted to stop there. I was heading for the ladies’ room at the back and saw Binky and Tarrant coming in the back entrance. I’m just going on body language, but those two didn’t look like a couple of buddies out for a drink, if you know what I mean.”
“I get the picture,” I said. “More like a tryst in the parking lot. So Tarrant’s relationship with Sylvia was just camouflage?”
“For all I know, Tarrant was involved with both of them,” Pearl said. “He certainly came on to every female he met. He tried to put the moves on Jerusha that day at the commissary. Then Sylvia came along, twitching around like the bimbo she was, and Tarrant took the bait. He was practically drooling. Maybe he was covering the bases, putting on a front for public consumption. That was the Hollywood Code era and contracts had morals clauses in those days. There’s something else, though. Jerusha saw Tarrant and Binky together, too, coming out of a hotel. She was naïve about things like that and she told me about it when she got back to the bungalow. She was bothered by it, because Binky saw her. He looked right at her with a nasty expression on his face.”
“When was this?” I asked.
Pearl thought for a moment. “It was a few weeks after the scene in the cop shop, and just a week or so before Tarrant was murdered.”
“So maybe Binky was the anonymous tipster, getting back at Jerusha.”
“Could have been either Sylvia or Binky,” Pearl said. “Retaliating for us kicking them out and then calling the cops. What a pair. There was something unsavory about their relationship.”
“In what way?”
Pearl shook her head. “Sometimes the Jaspers’ behavior toward each other was what I’d call inappropriate for siblings. There was a sexual undertone that made me uncomfortable. Binky came to see Sylvia one night after he got to Hollywood, and the way he kissed her hello, it sure didn’t look like a brotherly greeting. But I know Sylvia was crazy about Tarrant. She bought him some expensive presents, a tie and a scarf. I always figured it was the fella who should buy presents for the girl, not the other way around. And her working only as a bit player. He was on contracts, so he was definitely making more money. Later she turned up wearing his ring on a chain around her neck. She said he gave it to her, like it was some kind of engagement present. But knowing how light-fingered she was, I figured she’d stolen it from him. That ring was gold, must have been valuable. Tarrant was wearing that ring the day we met him. There was an inscription inside. Sylvia showed it to me, to prove it was his. RT from EO 9/1/39. I remember the date because that’s the day the Nazis invaded Poland.”
“I’m guessing Sylvia was the same age as you and Grandma, early twenties.” Pearl nodded. “How old was Binky?”
“When he showed up at the end of ’forty-one, he claimed he was eighteen. Had to be, to get jobs. But I think he was younger. In years, anyway. At times he seemed really wet behind the ears. But there were other times when he was way too grown-up and cynical. A chameleon, like I said.”
“So maybe he was sixteen or seventeen. He’d be in his eighties now.” Like Henry Calhoun, I thought. Tarrant, Sylvia, and Binky—that was one strange threesome.
“Think back to nineteen forty-two, later that year after Sylvia disappeared. You said you had seen Sylvia from time to time at the studios. Did you see Binky at all?”
Pearl nodded. “Binky was working as a bit player and extra, all that year. In fact, we were both in a movie at Metro, shot in November and December of ’forty-two. I ran into him on the set shortly after we started shooting. I told him I’d heard about Sylvia’s death. He didn’t say much about her. After that I spoke with him a time or two, nothing much, just hello.”
“What about nineteen forty-three?”
She frowned, and then she brightened. “I remember something. It was right before Christmas in ’forty-two. I overheard Binky talking with someone on the set. He said he’d been drafted, had to report in January. He was going to training at Camp Roberts. I remember the name of the camp, because that’s where Anne’s husband, Lem, was stationed before he shipped out to the Pacif
ic.”
Camp Roberts was a California Army National Guard base now, located a dozen miles or so north of Paso Robles, in the Salinas Valley. I knew that during World War II it had been a big training camp. There was something else about Camp Roberts, I thought, that lingered in the periphery of my mind, something more recent. Maybe I’d read a news article about it. If that were the case, I couldn’t remember the substance. It’ll come to me, I thought, turning back to the matter at hand.
“If Binky was in the Army, I should be able to find something in the military archives. Maybe the trail’s not so cold after all.”
Pearl yawned and got to her feet. “I’m all in. Time to hit the hay. I’ll see you in the morning.”
* * *
I woke to sunshine streaming through the white curtains on Pearl’s living room window and the smell of coffee. Pearl was at the kitchenette counter, filling a mug from a coffeemaker.
“Good morning.” I stretched my arms over my head and sat up, looking at my watch on the side table. It was almost seven.
“Same to you,” Pearl said. “Hope you had a good sleep.” She reached for another mug and filled it. I got out of bed, put on my robe, and crossed the living room as she turned and proffered the mug. I took a sip. The brew was hot, strong and black, just the way I like my coffee.
“I slept very well, thanks.”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” Pearl said. “One of the perils of getting older. I’ve had my shower and I’m on my second cup. Loretta tapped on the door just a little while ago. She’s making waffles if you’re interested.”
“I’m always up for waffles.”
I took another sip of coffee and grabbed a change of clothes from my overnight bag. One quick shower later, I was dressed. Pearl and I went to the kitchen, where Carl, in his ranger uniform, was frying bacon in a cast-iron skillet. Loretta dipped batter from a bowl into a waffle iron. We sat at the kitchen table and ate waffles as fast as they came out of the iron, crisp and brown, with plenty of butter and maple syrup.