Murder among the Stars

by Adam Shankman

  “Nah,” Eleanor said, helping to wring out Lulu’s waterlogged blouse. “It was pretty square of you to tell us—eventually—and give up your advantage.” Then, handing the wet rag back to her, she added, “Hey, don’t look so glum. I’m just ribbing you.”

  “We’ll tell Toshia next time we see her and swear her to secrecy, and that’s it,” declared Boots.

  “Deal,” Lulu said, suddenly noticing a small freestanding marble pillar with a silver tray on top by the door at the other end of the pool. The three actresses hurried over to it and discovered a perfectly stacked pile of envelopes made of the familiar thick cream-colored stock. Lulu peeled open the top envelope and read.

  Dear MGM girls: He’s not your type;

  This handsome killer’s of another stripe.

  Twelve

  Well, that’s pretty obvious,” Lulu said. “I know Hearst’s private menagerie has lions, so why not tigers, too?” The animal enclosures hadn’t been included on their tour, but overnight she’d heard growls and roars that sounded disturbingly like a Tarzan movie, without the appeal of having Tarzan to protect her.

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Boots groused. “I don’t trust wild animals. What if one takes a fancy to my Shalimar perfume and decides they’d like it for their own, even if it means tearing my throat out to get it?”

  “What a lovely imagination you have!” moaned Eleanor.

  As the girls bantered back and forth, Lulu remembered what Ginnie had said about hearing a beast in the shrubbery at night. But if Hearst was guiding them toward the area to find a clue there, the cages would obviously be securely locked. Besides, she recalled seeing a framed photo of Marion feeding a tiger from a bottle of milk. That must be the same animal. And since no one ever mentioned any attacks at the Ranch, everything in the Hearst menagerie was evidently tame.

  “Come on,” she said, linking arms with her friends. “Let’s get this finished.” She mulled over the clue again as they walked, struck by the words “handsome killer.” There was still a real killer on the loose, and here she was playing Hearst’s games. Of course, she did truly want to win the part. It was a chance of a lifetime. But the luster of personal gain faded in the face of Juliette’s death. Lulu was anxious to continue investigating, but she couldn’t just abandon the contest and start questioning people. She had to wait for the right opportunity. Anyway, Freddie was certainly on the case. At least she hoped so.

  They left the main building and headed north, following the sounds, and before long the smells, of animal life. Hearst was proudest of his huge fenced enclosures that housed exotic deer and antelope, zebras, ostriches, and giraffes in fields that approximated their natural habitat and let guests feel they were in a wild area, not a zoo. But the most dangerous animals were kept in more traditional zoo cages.

  The big cats were beautiful, and Lulu paused to marvel at an elegantly splotched jaguar pacing up and down along the length of his cage. At first she thought that was a good sign, because she’d worried a caged hunter would just sit in one place all day and get fat and lazy. She wasn’t so sure when, five minutes later, he still paced in the exact same pattern, turning with ritualistic precision and doing it all over again. His golden eyes were vacant. She had to look away.

  “Well, lookee here. Apparently someone doesn’t think it’s so safe.” Eleanor indicated a glass-encased hutch tucked up against the cement wall containing a small armory of rifles and tranquilizer darts. “There’s enough here to knock out an army of charging rhinoceroses.

  “Mr. Tiger has got to be here somewhere.” Eleanor looked around. “Here, kitty kitty! Do you think we’re the first ones to get this far?”

  “The tiles around the pool were dry when we got there,” Lulu said. “So they hadn’t played the prank on another team yet, unless the staff mopped it up in an awful hurry. Joan Crawford’s duo headed outside, but they probably didn’t figure out the first clue right away, despite their head start. Yes, I think we’re in the lead.”

  “Won’t that tiger be happy to see us!” Boots said, skipping ahead. “I bet he never met three more tender, tasty morsels than . . .”

  And then she squealed, a high-pitched sound that seemed to pierce the vast blue sky above them.

  Lulu froze for an instant, then ran to catch up. She stared at what Boots was fixated on . . . and then exhaled a deep sigh of relief.

  “Have you ever seen anything more adorable in your whole life?” Boots gushed. “They’re absolutely divine!”

  Rolling about on the floor of the tiger cage in front of them were two good-natured tiger cubs, happily playing with a women’s beaded shoe, batting it around like overgrown kittens with a sparkling stuffed mouse. Charlie yipped and jumped up and down like a circus dog.

  “Well, aren’t they just heaven!” exclaimed Boots.

  “Yeah, precious . . . until one of them eats your face!” mumbled a less-than-enchanted Eleanor.

  “They certainly are having fun, aren’t they?” Lulu smiled, then shook her head. “That’s an expensive shoe. Now, how on earth would that have gotten in there? What do you think, Charlie?” She noticed the little dog was no longer bouncing by her side. “Girls, have you seen Charlie?”

  “Oh dear!” exclaimed Boots. “I think he’s making new friends! Look!”

  Lulu followed Boots’s eyes and saw that Charlie had gone around the side, squeezed through the bars, and was making his way toward the cubs, who were still cavorting about the cage.

  “Charlie! Get out of there!” Lulu cried out.

  Charlie, ignoring Lulu in the face of this new temptation, tried to get in on the game with the young cats. The cubs, after stopping for a tense few seconds while they all took stock of each other, went back to their entertainment. Charlie tilted his head, then went trotting off behind some potted shrubs inside the cage.

  “Girls . . . what’s that? Please tell me this is just part of another prank!” said Boots in a hoarse whisper, prompting the other two to turn and gasp. The cubs had disappeared through a flap at the other end of the cage, and Charlie was running about now, playing on his own with a very big, very bloody bone. When he saw the abandoned shoe, he ditched the oversized remains in favor of the cubs’ coveted plaything.

  The girls cautiously moved to the end of the bars to peer behind the plants. Eleanor screamed. There were big gnawed bones, gobbets of meat. One piece looked like a haunch of some lean and furless animal. That must be it, Lulu tried to tell herself. The lion had a lamb for dinner. The tiger had something bigger—a pig, maybe—that’s all. The flap in the back of the cage swung open, and a giant mother tiger emerged from the other unseen chamber. She crouched against the far wall, massive and primal and beautiful, her orange eyes fixed on Lulu, her tail swishing. She dragged something big, which she dropped to the floor with a thud. It was a woman’s mangled torso. The tiger flexed paws as big as dinner plates, and the corpse rolled slightly, dark hair falling as if she were tossing it seductively.

  It was Dolores.

  Lulu drew her breath for a scream . . . then stopped, deflating with a sound strangely like a laugh.

  “No,” she said again. “He won’t fool us this time.”

  “We have to get help,” Eleanor said in a very small voice. Boots said nothing, only stood like a pillar of salt.

  “Don’t you see?” Lulu said. “It’s not real. It’s just another one of Hearst’s tests. A sick, terrible test.” Her face burned with anger now. How dare he torment them like this? A drowning man and now a mauled woman? Not just any woman, but an effigy of a fellow actress. What a hideous, childish prank. It was a crass and terrible thing to do at any time, but especially after Juliette’s real murder.

  The likeness to Dolores was startling. Hearst must have used some of the industry’s best prop designers. Was it a wax figure? The skin of the gruesome prop looked flawless, though paler than Dolores’s own sun-kissed complexion. The blood looked real, too. Maybe they had used real animal blood to make the tiger more
enthusiastic. Why, look at that poor tiger, slow and chubby and probably toothless and clawless. Like Boots said, she was likely a harmless old pussycat.

  “I’m not going to be a part of this anymore,” Lulu declared. She was furious. “And I’m not going to let Hearst get away with this. I’m going to tell all the other girls exactly what he’s up to. Oh gosh, I hope Dolores doesn’t see it.”

  “She’s probably in on it,” Eleanor said, recovering slowly from the shock. “That’s why she was missing. She must have been working with whoever set this up to get her look just right. Oh, it’s just too real! How did they do that? It’s astonishing!”

  Lulu leaned closer to the bars, trying to see the plaster, the wires, the wig that would show it was all fake. “Charlie, come back here!” Lulu commanded.

  Charlie was so engaged with his shoe that he didn’t seem to notice the tiger at first.

  The tiger noticed him, though, and evidently found the live dog much more interesting than the waxworks prop. She heaved her bulk up and padded toward Charlie.

  “Charlie, come here now. Please!” Lulu cried.

  Charlie wheeled and his eyes went wide. He pulled back his lips in an almost silent snarl as the huge tiger paced closer, backing him into a corner. The wall was solid there, and Charlie couldn’t escape except by darting past the tiger. Lulu could see his little body trembling. The tiger might be toothless, but she was still a tiger. One swipe of those massive paws would crush little Charlie.

  Lulu took off her shoe and threw it through the bars at the tiger. She flinched when it hit her flank, but her focus didn’t shift from Charlie. The tiger crouched slightly, the tip of her tail twitching as she began to stalk. Lulu ran around to the back of the cage to find the zookeeper’s access door. It was held closed with a simple latch, and she pulled it open and stepped inside, brandishing her other shoe. “Bad tiger!” she said, and to her relief the tiger cringed in surprise and stepped back a pace.

  “What are you doing? Get out of there!” Boots shouted.

  “It’s okay. She’s not going to hurt me,” Lulu said with complete confidence. Remembering the photo of Marion, Lulu knew that this was a pet tiger and, she told herself, another Hearst exhibition. Another big fake to “test their character.” Well, Lulu had had enough. “Charlie, heel!” she said sharply, and Charlie slunk to her side. She looked down at him affectionately. What a loyal little dog. Anyone else, man or beast, would have run away as soon as the tiger was distracted.

  “And as for you,” she said, turning back to the tiger. But she wasn’t where she was supposed be. While Lulu was looking at Charlie, the tiger had padded silently between her and the door. “Move!” she insisted, as if she were talking to a large, lazy Great Dane. She raised her shoe threateningly.

  She tried not to look at the mangled mess of the Dolores prop. Even close up, it looked far too real. Hearst, she thought, has gone too far.

  She shook her shoe and glared at the tiger. The beast took a step toward her, and another, but still Lulu didn’t get frightened. It was so much bigger than she’d ever imagined a tiger could be. But she was a pet, toothless and clawless and gentle. She was probably just bored and as annoyed as any of them at having to carry on Hearst’s tasteless charades.

  And then she snarled. Lulu’s pulse began to race when she saw the giant teeth, three inches long. Instinctively, Lulu threw her shoe, but the tiger batted it away easily. Lulu saw the deadly daggers of its claws.

  “Oh no,” she breathed.

  Then she screamed . . . which seemed to be the right thing to do, because the high-pitched sound made the tiger wince and step back, shaking her head. Charlie, who had been relatively calm as long as Lulu was, sprang into action, yapping at the tiger’s heels and dancing out of the way as she whirled and struck.

  Lulu backed against the bars, looking desperately at the door. The tiger was still between her and safety.

  The scuffle brought Charlie and the tiger back by the prop corpse, rolling it so that Lulu could see its glassy, staring eyes.

  Her glassy, staring eyes.

  With a shock Lulu realized that it was real. This wasn’t another Hearst setup. That was really Dolores, dead. This was really a man-eating tiger.

  The tiger caught Charlie a blow that sent him flying, and Lulu screamed again, but that only brought the tiger’s attention back to her. The tiger bared her terrible, bloody teeth and crouched, ready to pounce.

  Lulu, nearly deaf from the thunderous pounding of her own heartbeat in her ears, could barely make out the sudden sound of glass shattering in the distance, and then a shot rang out. It was the third Lulu had ever heard in her life, and the only one she was happy to hear.

  There was Sal Benedetto standing outside the cage, looking fiercer than any tiger, dripping wet in a bathing suit, his tan, muscled body in full warrior stance. He had a rifle in his hand. He shot the tiger again, and Lulu saw a dart lodge in the striped shoulder. After a long, terrible moment, the big beast crumpled at Lulu’s feet. Lulu found herself incapable of moving.

  Then somehow Sal was in the cage, and he scooped her up in his arms and carried her out.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” he whispered as she hid her face against his hard, bare chest. “I’ve got you.”

  Dimly, as she curled against Sal’s body, still soaking from the pool, she thought, This jungle does have a Tarzan after all. . . .

  Thirteen

  Long moments seemed to pass, during which Lulu kept her face pressed to Sal’s warm, bare chest. Part of her brain said, I need to do something. But her body didn’t seem inclined to obey. Be the damsel in distress! every muscle and bone seemed to say. Rest here against this powerful man, this protector of yours. Let other people take care of all the big, bad, dangerous things in the world. You’ve done enough.

  Eventually her pounding heart slowed and she became gradually aware of her surroundings. There were women crying, Ranch staff members moving purposefully. She heard a man, his voice as echoing as if he were speaking on an empty soundstage, say wonderingly, “No, that’s simply not possible. I always lock the doors. I always check twice.”

  I can’t be helpless, Lulu thought. I have to do something. She had no idea what that something was, but she would find it and she would do it. She heard the weeping, the hysterics all around her. Maybe she could help simply by comforting others instead of being comforted herself.

  She squirmed in Sal’s arms and he released her, letting her step softly to the floor. She looked up at him gratefully in a way that made his hard face turn tender. Then she was hugging Boots, patting Eleanor on the back, telling Jean Harlow and a few others who, like Sal, had just come from sunbathing at the Neptune Pool, to look away.

  “How did such a terrible accident happen?” Toshia wailed. “Why would she go into a tiger’s cage?”

  Lulu flushed with chagrin. She’d walked in there with hardly a second thought to save Charlie. But where was he?

  “Charlie? Here, boy!” Lulu began frantically calling after her precious dog, but the brave little terrier was nowhere to be seen. “Charlie!” she shrieked.

  She wove through the distressed onlookers until she spotted him, unmoving, crumpled in the bushes beside the cage. “Oh, Charlie!” she gasped as she fell to her knees at the little dog’s side. She stroked his fur gently, and to her amazement felt his chest rise and fall beneath her hand. “Oh, you’re alive! You dreadful, horrible angel!” She buried her face in his soft coat. It was amazing that he could have survived a swipe from the tiger’s paw. He must have been small enough to have been caught by the velvet pads of the huge paw, missing the deadly claws.

  She scooped him into her arms, and his plaintive whine showed he wasn’t entirely unscathed. Cracked ribs, she thought, and hoped it wasn’t anything worse. He licked her chin, and Lulu began to cry silently, her tears falling onto his fur.

  She heard someone speak her name, and looked up to find Freddie standing over her, a peculiar expression on his face.
r />   “Freddie! You’re here!” She moved toward him, still clutching the injured mutt.

  “They told me someone got mauled by the tiger,” Freddie said. “Thank heavens you’re all right! What happened?”

  It suddenly occurred to her that he might have seen her in Sal’s arms. But the gangster had saved her life. And after that, she would have clung to anyone. Freddie couldn’t be upset at that when there was so much else to be upset about.

  She stood, still cradling Charlie, and told him as briefly as she could, wiping the last of the tears from her smudged cheek. But when she looked up into his eyes, she found them flashing with anger. “How could you be so stupid?” Freddie demanded, voice trembling as he gave her a little shake. “Running right into a tiger’s cage? What in the name of all that’s holy were you thinking?”

  “I thought that the cat would be tame! And I had to save Charlie,” she said, bristling.

  “And risk your own life? How can you be so foolishly impulsive, Lulu? You always run right into danger without thinking!”

  “How dare you speak to me like that after everything I’ve been through! I am not a child you can just chastise and punish! I’m a grown woman, and I was just almost killed trying to save the life of the one thing on this earth that truly cares about me, and . . . !”

  By the look on Freddie’s face, Lulu knew she had gone too far, and immediately regretted it.

  “Freddie, I didn’t mean . . . ,” she began weakly, but he didn’t let her get any further.

  “I see how things are. Well. I am so very glad you have Charlie, then,” he said coldly. “If that’s the kind of careless life you want to live, full of stupid risks, maybe you should be with Sal. It’s obvious he can protect you better than I can.”

  Lulu gaped at him for a moment, but Freddie was stone, and there was nothing she could say. She turned on her heel and walked away, her chest feeling oddly hollow, her eyes burning. He’s just upset. Don’t think about that horrible thing he just said, she cautioned herself. Not now. They would work everything out.