by Janet Dawson
It’ll come to me, he’d said that night at the gallery. I never forget a face.
At first I’d thought Mike recognized Chaz. But now it seemed that he’d recognized Henry. But why was that important? I was missing something. There had to be an intersection somewhere. If Henry was, as I suspected, Binky Jasper, was there something in the long-ago past that connected him to Mike Strickland?
* * *
I had just arrived in my office Friday morning when my cell phone rang. The readout told me the call was from Liam Cleary down in Los Angeles. “Well, darlin’, you’ve hit the jackpot.”
“LAPD had something on Hank Calvin or Henry Callan?”
He laughed. “On both. They were roommates back in the late seventies and early eighties. They shared an apartment on the top floor of a building in Hollywood, owned by one Dolores Cirillo.”
“Wallace Simms’s sister,” I said. “A former bit player who later worked in publicity at Metro and Paramount.”
“The very same,” Liam said. “Both Calvin and Callan were making a living any way they could, working off and on as bit players and extras, scouting merchandise for Wallace Simms, even doing odd jobs around the apartment building for reduced rent. It’s a three-story building, old place, built in the twenties. Henry Callan showed up in our files because he died in October of ’eighty-one. Fell down the stairs and hit his head.”
That sounded exactly like the way Roberta Cook had been killed in Petaluma. “Any chance Callan had help falling down the stairs?”
“The question came up, but there was no evidence to support it,” Liam said.
“And Hank Calvin?”
“That’s where the fun begins. Callan was in his sixties and he was collecting social security. He was also getting residual checks from a number of television gigs. He didn’t have any family, so after he died, nobody told the Social Security Administration to stop sending those checks. The checks kept coming, and Hank Calvin, who conveniently had Callan’s driver’s license and social security card, cashed all those checks. He kept cashing them until early in nineteen eighty-three, when someone noticed and called the cops. At which point Calvin disappeared.”
“And resurfaced later as Henry Calhoun,” I said. “But he didn’t go far. He kept working for Wallace Simms, and whenever Wallace’s daughter Raina called him Henry Callan, he just told her she’d made a mistake about his last name.”
From Harry Corwin to Hank Calvin to Henry Callan—then Henry Calhoun. The same man. Binky shed personas like a snake sheds skins.
After my phone call from Liam, I checked my e-mail. I had a message from the private investigator in Mobile, Alabama. He’d sent me some scanned documents to go with it. I opened the files and learned that there had been a fire at the Jasper house in Mobile, early in 1941. Binky was injured, a bad burn on the inner side of his right arm.
What’s more, it appeared that Binky had set the fire.
While I was chewing on this, thinking about Binky and his predilection for setting fires, my cell phone rang again. I looked at the number on the screen as I reached for it. Tory Strickland Ambrose, calling me from Santa Rosa.
“Dad’s neighbors—the Millers—they’re back,” she said. “They got home last night.”
Chapter 33
I met Tory later Friday morning, at her father’s house in Healdsburg. The house next door was about sixty feet away, the property line marked by a four-foot-high row of manzanita bushes with dark red bark and light pink flowers. Tory and I walked through a gap in the bushes to the Millers’ driveway, where two vehicles were parked, one a silver SUV and the other a green sedan. A pop-up tent camper with a trailer hitch had been backed onto a concrete pad next to the open double garage, where a stocky blond man was stowing camping gear on shelves along the garage walls. The sleeping bags were already lined up on one shelf, waiting for the next trip, while a camp stove sat at his feet.
Ryan Miller greeted Tory, then he led the way into the house. His wife Ginny was in the laundry room just off the kitchen, transferring clothes from a washer to a dryer. She was short and plump, with curly brown hair, looking rumpled. She enveloped Tory in a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you. How are you holding up?”
“As well as can be expected,” Tory said. “This is Jeri Howard.”
Ginny smiled at me, then turned her attention back to Tory. “We got back late last night. Just fell into bed, and figured the unpacking and the laundry could wait until this morning. How did you know we were home?”
“Bobby sent David a text message,” Tory said.
“Of course.” Ginny switched on the dryer and beckoned us into the kitchen. “Come on in. I just made a fresh pot of coffee and there are some banana-nut muffins left over from breakfast.”
“This isn’t really a social call,” Tory said. “We’d like to talk with Bobby.”
Ginny was reaching for the coffee carafe. She stopped and looked up at Tory. “Bobby? Why?”
“I’m a private investigator.” I handed business cards to both the Millers. “Tory has asked me to look into her father’s murder. I’d like to ask Bobby some questions about what he may have seen the Wednesday before, when Tory’s kids were here and Bobby was playing with David and Jason. Two men stopped to visit Mike Strickland that afternoon. I’m wondering if your son saw them or heard any part of their conversation with Mike.”
Husband and wife exchanged glances. Then he nodded. “Certainly, anything to help. We were shocked when Mike was killed. This is normally a safe area. To have something like that happen, it’s just unheard of.”
“Mike was such a good neighbor. I miss him. Neither Ryan nor I was here when it happened. Ryan was at work. I’d gone into town with Bobby. He had a dentist’s appointment. And Carly was off shopping with her friends.” Ginny opened a cupboard and took out some red ceramic mugs. “Sounds like coffee all around.”
The sliding screen door that led to the backyard opened and a teenaged girl came in. She was blond like her father, wearing sandals, khaki shorts and a skimpy yellow tank top that showed off the tan she’d acquired on vacation. “The garden looks okay,” she told her mother. “I deadheaded the roses. We’re gonna have lots of zucchini.”
“We always have lots of zucchini,” Ginny said, pouring coffee. “Jeri, this is our daughter, Carly. Where’s your brother?”
The girl tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Out back, doing something with the recycling. Want me to get him?”
“Yes, if you would, please.” Ginny finished pouring coffee and handed mugs to Tory and me.
“Let’s go into the living room,” Ryan said.
He and Ginny sat side by side on the sofa, while Tory and I took chairs opposite. A moment later Carly returned, accompanied by her younger brother. Bobby Miller was twelve, the same age as Tory’s son David, and he had his mother’s round face and curly dark hair. He looked at the assembled grown-ups and frowned. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, son, you’re not in trouble,” Ryan said. He patted the sofa. “Come and sit by me. This lady would like to ask you some questions.”
Bobby complied and looked at me. Carly perched on the arm of the sofa, next to her mother.
“Bobby, my name is Jeri. I’m a private investigator.”
Bobby gave me the same wide-eyed reaction I’d received from Tory’s sons. “Really? I never met a private eye before.”
“I want you to think back. It’s about three weeks ago, that first Wednesday in June, when David, Jason and Serena were here visiting their grandfather. They went on a picnic to Lake Sonoma that day. When they got back, you and the boys were together.”
Bobby nodded. “They saw an osprey. I have a bird book, so I went and got it. We were looking at pictures of raptors and I was telling them about this bald eagle I saw at Point Reyes. Then I was showing them our camper and telling them all about our trip.”
“Two men came to visit Mr. Strickland that afternoon,” I said.
“I saw them,” he
said. “They were driving a brown SUV. I think it was a Ford but I’m not sure.”
“Where were you when they got there?”
“I climbed up on top of the camper.” Bobby ducked his head and his sidelong glance at his father told me he probably wasn’t supposed to be climbing on the camper. “I was showing David and Jason how it opened up on the top. I saw that brown SUV come up Mr. Strickland’s driveway. I was up high, so I saw them pretty good. One of them was really old. He had white hair. He was on the passenger side. The other guy, the driver, he was, like, Dad’s age or maybe older. He was really tall and skinny.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Those men went to Mr. Strickland’s front door and they rang the bell.” Bobby furrowed his brow. “Mr. Strickland came to the door. He stepped out on the porch and they talked for a while.”
“Did you hear any of the conversation?”
He shook his head. “No. I was too far away. They didn’t stay very long. They were leaving, walking away, toward their SUV. Then Mr. Strickland followed them and said something to the old guy.”
“Just to the older man, not the driver?”
“Right,” Bobby said. “The driver, he was already around the side of SUV and he had the door open, ready to get inside. Mr. Strickland was talking with the old guy.”
Tory’s daughter had overheard part of that conversation. Mike Strickland told one of the men that he recognized him. I’d thought it was Chaz Makellar, but it appeared Mike’s words were directed at Henry Calhoun. I had the photos of both men with me. I took them from my purse and showed them to Bobby. “Are these the men who visited Mr. Strickland that day?”
He held them in his hands, a serious expression on his young face. Then he nodded. “Yes, those are the men.” He set the pictures on the coffee table.
“Thanks, Bobby. You’ve been a big help.” I took a sip of my coffee.
“Who are these guys?” Ryan asked. He’d been growing restive as I asked his son questions. “Does this have something to do with Mike’s murder?”
“The younger man is a dealer in movie memorabilia,” I said. “The older man works for him. They were asking Mike Strickland if he wanted to sell some of his Hitchcock collection. As to whether it has anything to do with the murder, I’m not sure.”
Carly, the Millers’ daughter, was older than her brother, about sixteen or seventeen. She was sitting on the arm of the sofa, listening with interest to the conversation, and she’d examined the photos that I’d showed her brother. I looked at her now. “Did you see anything that day?” I asked.
“Oh, Carly wasn’t here.” Ginny glanced at her daughter. “You borrowed my car and went into town with your friends. That was the day you packed a lunch and went to the beach on the Russian River. I’m a stay-at-home mom,” she added, turning to me. “But I was in the backyard working in the garden. I didn’t see any of this.”
“But I did see them,” Carly said. “I was just getting home. I’d turned off Dry Creek Road and I was slowing down to make the turn into our driveway when that brown SUV backed out of Mr. Strickland’s drive. So I stopped to let them pass. I saw this older man in the passenger seat. As the SUV backed into the road he was right in front of me.”
She leaned over and picked up the photo of Henry Calhoun that her brother had left on the coffee table. “Then I saw him again, a few days later. The same day Mr. Strickland was killed. He was getting out of a car parked on the other side of the road. A maroon sedan with vanity plates.”
Ginny’s mouth widened into a shocked O. “What? You never said anything about that. Not even when that sergeant came over to ask us questions. I thought you were with your friends.”
“I didn’t think it was important,” Carly said. “At the time it was just a guy parked by the road. I didn’t connect it with Mr. Strickland’s murder. The girls were late picking me up, that’s why I was still here. When we came out of our driveway, I saw that car. It was almost across from Mr. Strickland’s driveway. I did think it was odd to be parked right there. I mean, if he was going to visit someone, why not park in the driveway? I guess that’s why I really looked at it. I saw one of those electronic toll-taking things on the windshield. Then I got a good look at the driver and recognized the man who had been there before. Besides, I don’t know when Mr. Strickland was killed. Tory found his body that night, didn’t she? This must have been around one-thirty in the afternoon, because the girls were supposed to pick me up at one.”
That jibed with the coroner’s estimate of the time of Mike’s death. I steered the focus back to the maroon car. “You said the car had vanity plates. Do you remember what was on the plates?”
Carly shut her eyes, as though trying to visualize the car. “Started with an R,” she said, “and ended with a K.”
Just like Raina Makellar’s car, with the vanity plates that read RNAMAK. I was betting it was the same maroon sedan seen parked near Roberta Cook’s house in Petaluma shortly before she died. A car that was probably driven by Henry Calhoun.
Ginny had been following this conversation, her gaze moving from my face to her daughter’s face, as though she were watching a tennis match. The import of what Carly was saying hit her. “My God, do you mean that old man killed Mike?”
I did, but I hedged my response. “This is circumstantial, of course. But what your daughter just told me places him in the vicinity the same afternoon Mike was killed.”
“But why?” Ryan asked.
“Because Dad recognized him,” Tory said. She had been silent through all my questioning, drinking coffee and watching. “That’s what Serena told us. She was in the tree above the porch and she heard the conversation that Bobby saw. Dad somehow knew that man. But that doesn’t explain why that man would kill Dad.”
If Henry Calhoun was indeed Byron Jasper, as I suspected, he didn’t want anyone to know that Byron was still alive. He’d had the means and the opportunity to kill Mike Strickland. But what was the motive? The fact that Mike had recognized him? But what was the intersection between the lives of Mike Strickland and Byron Jasper?
Then the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. I knew what it was, a twisting trail that led all the way to a movie set—and a dinner table.
I stood up and Tory did the same. “Thanks so much,” I told the Millers. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“What is it?” Tory asked as we walked back to her father’s house. “You’ve thought of something. I can see it on your face.”
“I need to use your father’s computer,” I said.
She unlocked the house and disarmed the security system. We went back to Mike’s office and I switched on the computer. As soon as it powered up, I went to the Internet Movie Database and typed in Byron Jasper’s name. He had worked as an extra and bit player in the movies from late 1941, when he’d arrived in Hollywood, until early January 1943, when he’d reported to Camp Roberts for Army training. His list of credits was short, just a handful of films. I clicked on each title and scrolled through the complete cast list. Byron’s name was at the bottom, as a bit player. Pearl Bishop told me that they had worked together on a film at Metro, in November of 1942. That’s when she overheard him say he’d been drafted. I found the film, a forgettable opus starring nobody in particular. It had been released in 1943. And there was the intersection. In addition to Pearl Bishop and Byron Jasper, the bit players included Molly Strickland, Mike’s older sister.
She’d started working in the movies in 1942, her brother had told me, right out of high school. She lived at home and she would bring her fellow bit players home for dinner. Her eleven-year-old brother Mike remembered them. “We always had a few of them around the table,” he told me. And he’d recognized one of them, after all these years.
I took out my cell phone and called Pearl Bishop. She answered the phone with her characteristic good cheer. “Hey, Jeri, my buddy in publicity found a picture of Ralph Tarrant wearing those cufflinks. He said he’d send it FedEx yeste
rday, so you should have it today.”
“Thanks, Pearl. Listen, do you remember a bit player named Molly Strickland? She was in the movie you were making at Metro in November of ’forty-two.”
“Molly Strickland? Hell, yes, I remember her. We did several movies together. And we both volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, starting when it opened in the fall of ’forty-two. We both met Marines and married ’em. She left Hollywood and I didn’t keep up with her.”
“She’s dead now. Her brother Mike is the man who was killed in Healdsburg.”
“The Hitchcock collector? Oh, my God. I remember her brother, too. Well, she had several, but the youngest, that was Mike. He was a sweet kid, a real movie buff.”
“How did you meet Mike Strickland?”
“Why, Molly took a bunch of us to her house for a home-cooked meal. The bit players, I mean. Molly lived at home, you see, right there in Hollywood. Her uncle was a stuntman, worked on Gone with the Wind. Anyway, Molly’s mom would cook up a batch of spaghetti and meatballs and we’d have a feast. That happened two or three times while we were shooting that movie.”
“Think, Pearl. Did Binky ever go to one of those dinners at Molly’s home?”
“Yes, he did. Twice. I remember him sitting next to Mike at the table. Binky was paying a lot of attention to Mike, including him in the conversation.”
“And Mike never forgot a face,” I said. “That’s what he told me the night of the gallery opening. He recognized Henry Calhoun as Binky Jasper. So Henry came back the following week, and killed him.”
Tory was hovering over me as I ended the call. “What next?” she asked.
“Back to Santa Rosa,” I said. “To pay a call on Sergeant Toland at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.”
Chapter 34
Just after noon on Saturday, I opened the door to Matinee, the movie memorabilia shop, and strolled in, holding the door for the young couple following a few steps behind me. They were casually dressed in khakis, both wearing lightweight jackets over T-shirts, as though they were killing time before the next matinee at the Alameda Theatre across the street. Once inside, the man stopped at a bin containing lobby cards and began flipping through them. The woman headed for the books, pulling a hardback from a shelf.