Murder among the Stars

by Adam Shankman

  “Come on, Charlie,” Lulu said, tugging at the leash. “There’s no point in hanging around here any longer.” She reached through the bars to catch him under the armpits, when her eye caught something shiny.

  It was barely visible, lodged in a crevice between concrete slabs at the very edge of the tiger cage. Lulu felt her stomach tighten and her heart flutter. She knew what it was, and didn’t even care when she broke a fingernail prying it out. With a grin of triumph, she held the tiny golden lion-head tiepin in the air.

  “We’ve got you, John Emerson!”

  Much to Patricia’s vociferously expressed disappointment, Lulu steadfastly refused to let the child join her when she sought out John Emerson later that afternoon. It was the first time Patricia legitimately sounded her age instead of like a sophisticated, jaded teenager. She whined exactly like the ten-year-old she was.

  “If he is a killer, you can’t be anywhere near him,” Lulu said for at least the tenth time.

  Patricia didn’t seem to see the logic. “I’ve read heaps more mysteries than you. I might be able to ferret out his secrets with my evil literary genius. Besides, like I told you, no one suspects a kid.” Her eyes glowed with excitement. “Why, the best thing to do would be to let me go after him myself.” She widened her eyes, looking angelic. “My tender innocence will be his downfall.”

  “Nothing doing. Now, skedaddle,” Lulu said, and sent her away to the safety of her apparently exciting books.

  Patricia did get her thinking that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to be alone with Emerson, even if she wasn’t going to talk directly about the murder. She wished she could ask Freddie to accompany her, but he’d made it rather clear he was occupied with his own—or rather Hearst’s—concerns. Besides, she was still angry with him. She’d forgive him, eventually, once he apologized, but it was up to him to come groveling back to her.

  Who, then? Sal was, in some ways, a natural choice. Lulu had no idea what Sal had actually felt for Dolores, whether she’d been a pleasant diversion or a burgeoning true love, but it was clear that Sal was enraged that his girl had been killed.

  But even though Lulu found that perhaps she didn’t hate Sal quite as much now as she thought she should, she knew that consorting with him would be unwise. At the very least, Freddie would be provoked.

  She had just about resigned herself to approaching Emerson without backup. One of the housemaids had told her that he was alone in the library, and she did her best to calm herself as she walked there. This is stupid, she thought. I can’t ask him about the murder and let him know I’m onto him. If I just make casual conversation, do I really think he’s going to incriminate himself out of the blue?

  Self-doubt made her stop in the middle of the tiled corridor.

  “Lost?” a gentle voice drawled behind her.

  She whirled and smiled with unmitigated relief when she saw Paul Raleigh. Of course! Paul might not be physically imposing, but he was smart and understanding and, most importantly, he would certainly believe her when she told him her suspicions. It occurred to her that maybe as a writer used to parsing human motivations, he could provide some insight. With a relieved smile, she took his arm.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said softly. “Where can we go to talk? Alone.”

  A veil of intrigue crept into his dark eyes as he whispered, “My room is just upstairs.” If he’d been any other man Lulu might have felt uncomfortable about that proposition. She’d have suspected his motives and been worried what Freddie—or anyone else, for that matter—might think if they found her in a man’s bedroom. But instinctively she knew that for the gentlemanly Southern writer, the bedroom was simply a private place to talk—not a room with a bed.

  “Okay,” Lulu said, and took his arm. By the time they got to his door, Paul seemed to be breathing a little heavily. Of course, she thought, a writer has to sit at his typewriter endlessly. He must not get much chance to exercise.

  Inside, she perched on a chair upholstered in ivory and gold brocade and said bluntly, “I think I know who killed Juliette and Dolores.”

  Paul had just settled down on the edge of his bed and was smoothing the coverlet, but when she spoke, his head snapped up. The color seemed to drain visibly from his face.

  “Oh, Paul! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to shock you!” I should have introduced the subject more gently, Lulu thought with chagrin. He’s a sensitive artist. Of course he’ll be more affected than normal people.

  Paul crossed to the door purposefully, swaying slightly as he walked, and threw the bolt.

  “But I’m not completely sure,” Lulu demurred, grateful that he’d thoughtfully locked the world out for their meeting. “I believe there’s some evidence that John Emerson might have killed both of the girls.”

  Paul stood there staring at her breathlessly, then very slowly, his eyes softening, shook his head and muttered, “Emerson? But . . . I can’t believe it.”

  “I might be wrong, and I don’t want anyone else to know until I’m completely sure. Promise you won’t tell?”

  Paul nodded earnestly.

  “I can see you’re upset. It’s a serious accusation, I know. Are the two of you friends?”

  He found his voice at last. “Not particularly. I don’t know him very well, though we’ve crossed paths. This is the first I’ve spent any real time with him. Apparently he’s here often, but this is my first visit to the Ranch.” He crossed back to the bed and sat down heavily. “He just doesn’t seem like a murderer.”

  “No,” Lulu admitted, “he doesn’t. But probably most murderers don’t. From what I’ve gathered, most victims trust their killers, at least at first. If killers looked crazy and dangerous, no one would get near them. The killer must be a guest, so he can pass as a sane man.”

  “Or woman,” Paul added.

  She couldn’t help but smile at him. “Of course.”

  “What kind of evidence do you have?” he asked.

  She told him about the lipstick, the overheard argument, and the lion tiepin.

  “Well, it all seems very damning,” Paul said. “But I would hate to accuse a possibly innocent man based on what might also be completely circumstantial evidence. So you really do believe the man they arrested for Juliette’s death is innocent?”

  “Oh yes!” He looked skeptical, and Lulu wished she were free to share her reasons. Without revealing Honey’s secret, she simply sounded delusional. “I’m asking you to trust me. I have my reasons, and, well . . . It isn’t my secret to tell.”

  He turned away from her for a moment, and in the instant he did so, she saw something resembling anxiety on his face. She bit her lip and prayed that there was someone on the property other than a child who empathized with her, and believed her.

  When he turned back, his face was relaxed and composed. “You were about to speak with Emerson, I take it?” She nodded. “I think you and I should talk about this a little more before we do.” He brightened with a sudden inspiration. “I always think better with coffee. Let me go down to the kitchen and get some, and I’ll be right back.” He left her with a smile.

  Lulu was glad she’d decided to confide in Paul. He had no obvious agenda, and treated her with respect. He neither overtly wanted her physically nor demanded anything of her emotionally. He was like a port in a storm, and though he might not be a man of action, she had the unshakable feeling that if she stuck with him, together they would arrive at the truth eventually.

  She swiveled around to face the little writing desk dominated by a typewriter and strewn with papers. The typewriter bore a WR stamp. It was one of Hearst’s new ones with his special typeface. Lulu absently scanned the pages in a jumbled heap next to the typewriter. It was written in manuscript form, not divided into character lines like a screenplay. Still, it might have something to do with the script he and Anita (and Emerson) would craft for the winning actress. Maybe it was an early treatment of the plot.

  “I really shouldn’t,” she whi
spered to herself, and as if that admission of her fault somehow made it more acceptable, she immediately began to read the first page.

  “Oh!” she cried. It was a description of a woman, a jumbled, rambling sketch of character and appearance.

  Hair so pale, yet colored with an inner incandescence so that it becomes light itself, putting golden blondes to shame with its silvery shine . . .

  Her hand reached to touch her own hair. There were not many girls with her color hair, though the bottle had given some the platinum shade she’d had from birth. Could he be writing about her?

  A smile wise and mocking, eyes that dance. But the dance is different each time I see them. At one moment they seem to dance a merry jig, intoxicated on life. At others, they seem to sway solemnly to a funeral dirge, looking backward or inward at some secret sorrow. She is deep, and the deepest waters are dangerous.

  No, Lulu decided. She must be mistaken. The idea that she may have inspired this beautiful artist to create a character was too much for her to take in. Paul couldn’t possibly have been writing about her. She placed the sheet on the pile and pushed it away across the desk, a little annoyed at herself for fantasizing. As she did so, the pages pushed a crystal paperweight over the edge and into the rosewood trash can. Luckily it wasn’t broken, because it had been cushioned by torn scraps of paper.

  She retrieved it, and as she was shaking off a piece of paper trapped in her fingers, a word caught her eye. Blonde. Intrigued, she fished out the scrap.

  She squinted at the type on the scrap. It was just a fragment, really, and the only words were . . . up on the blonde who . . . That by itself was gibberish, but—she couldn’t help herself, though her cheeks pinkened in shame—she took out another, a little larger, and read: The silk was smooth in my hands, but it would not feel so soft when it was around . . .

  For a moment the world seemed to stop, and everything, including her own heart, was still. Then it came back in a rush, her heart pounding wildly, her ears filled with sound like a harsh gale wind. She dumped the trash onto the ground and fell to her knees, pawing through the scraps. . . . she made a sound like a kitten, a helpless sound . . . feet kicked as if she were walking on air . . . looked at her dead body and felt . . . nobody missed that trashy blonde actress . . .

  It was a confession. A written confession.

  Paul Raleigh had killed Juliette.

  Seventeen

  Lulu stumbled to her feet, her legs numb from kneeling so long—and from shock. Seconds that felt like hours crept by, frozen in time. Despite the evidence on the typed scraps of paper that were slipping through her fingers, she couldn’t believe it. Not Paul. Never Paul.

  He was gentle, an artist of astounding sensitivity who delved into the human psyche. He wrote works of truly astonishing depth and beauty. She admired him. She trusted him.

  And yet these torn bits of paper, taken together, seemed to offer inarguable proof of his guilt. The pieces she’d read were certainly an admission that he’d killed Juliette. From what the studio psychologist had told her during that movie, killers like to revel in their crimes afterward. Paul must have relished writing down exactly what he’d done . . . and then thought to destroy that evidence.

  Only, he hadn’t really destroyed it. That was the baffling part. He could have easily burned the writing instead of just tearing it up. It made no sense: a man as brilliant as Paul, so meticulous with words, so precise and thorough in his vicious executions, but so sloppy and slapdash in covering his tracks? Perhaps, awash with guilt, he yearned to be caught. But why?

  She could see it as clearly as if it were projected on a movie screen. Paul twisting the silk scarf tight around Juliette’s neck while she gasped and struggled. Paul shoving a bound and gagged Dolores into the tiger cage, a look of maniacal glee on his heretofore gentle face. She could picture those hands, the smooth, soft hands of a writer, with their smudge of ink from the typewriter ribbon, reaching slowly for her own throat . . . squeezing. . . . The room seemed to tilt. And then her sense of survival set in. The only thing she had to do was get these scraps of paper with their damning confession to Freddie. He would know what to do.

  No, she amended. The most important thing was to get out of the murderer’s bedroom.

  But somehow her legs seemed to have forgotten how to move. She remained paralyzed, clutching the desk with white-knuckled fingers.

  Finally, her legs found their power and she ran to the door, shoving the scraps into her pocket as she went. She jerked the door open and hurled herself through . . . and crashed headlong into Paul Raleigh. Scalding coffee flew over her blouse, and she screamed, for the pain and because Paul instantly dropped the porcelain cups and took her by the shoulders, shoving her back inside.

  The streetwise New York slum kid in her wanted to fight. But instinct told her to try talking her way out of this first. He didn’t know she knew.

  “Lulu, are you badly hurt?” Paul asked anxiously. He whipped a handkerchief from his pocket, totally disarming her by handing it over. Any other man, she thought dimly, would have snatched the opportunity to dab at her chest. She was baffled. This was the Paul she had gotten to know and admired so much. Polite. Concerned and well mannered. Caring. Lulu knew she had to play this scene with great care. She didn’t want Paul to be a killer. But the evidence . . .

  “I’m such a clumsy idiot,” he said, blushing deep red. “And Mrs. Mortimer made your coffee special when I told her who it was for. Said she was adding a spice you’d particularly enjoy. Oh, can you ever forgive me? Shall I call a maid to help you, or to bring you a new shirt?” He reached for the buzzer on the wall that would summon one of the staff to his room.

  Just then Paul’s eyes wandered to the overturned wastebasket, where they lingered for a moment before swiveling to meet hers.

  “So you’ve found me out,” he said carefully.

  She tried to steel herself. He wouldn’t hurt her. She was a moderately famous actress in the most expensive mansion on the West Coast. Most likely, one of the Ranch staff had heard her scream and was already on the way to offer assistance. If not, another scream would surely bring help. Between guests and staff, there were hundreds of people on the property.

  But that hadn’t stopped him from killing two other girls.

  “I read your confession,” she said as calmly as she could. Only her acting coach’s rigorous teaching allowed her to keep her voice steady. “You killed Juliette. You strangled her, and then you couldn’t help yourself: You had to relive it by writing about it. And Dolores—did you drug her before you threw her in the tiger cage? Did you write about her, too?”

  She gingerly stood up and pulled the incriminating scraps of paper out of her pocket. “These tell me everything I need to know about you.”

  She thought he would attack her, or perhaps run away. At the very least, he would deny it.

  “You must be so disappointed in me,” he said in his gentle voice. Then he hung his head and . . . Were those tears? This was not how Lulu imagined the scene playing out.

  “Why did you kill them?” she pressed. It didn’t matter, but Lulu’s insatiable curiosity got the best of her. Had Juliette or Dolores done something to him?

  And then the denial came. “I didn’t kill them.”

  Strangely, her first impulse was to believe him. She wanted to believe him. Confusion began to wash over her, but she stood her ground and gestured with as much certainty as she could muster to the typed scraps. “These say differently.”

  Paul fell to his knees before her so fast she half expected a proposal. Instead he took out a briefcase and removed a large brown envelope. She could see others stacked in the case. He shut and locked it.

  “I never planned to show this to anyone, but too much has happened now. It’s all gotten out of control.” He thrust the envelope into her hands. “Read this. I think you’ll understand.”

  With shaky hands she unwound the coarse twine that held the flap closed and pulled out a sheaf of pages.
There were two packets, each bound with a paper clip. She began to read the first one and became overwhelmed with a growing sense of nausea and horror.

  It was more terrible than she’d imagined. The fragments had been bad enough, letting her fill in the gaps with her own already active imagination. But this . . .

  In the space of four or five pages was every excruciating detail of Juliette’s death. The actress wasn’t named, but from the description, it was clearly Juliette. He described the brassy tint of her hair, the way her dark roots were just barely showing. He wrote of the way her skin was so heavily coated in pancake makeup that her complexion looked corpselike even while she was still alive. He even described her voice with its patina of culture.

  It was unbearable. Maintaining a veneer of calm, Lulu continued to read and tried very hard to not scream and run. The pages went on to describe the way he crept up silently behind his victim and paused, listening to the soft susurrus of her breathing, knowing those hushed sounds represented her final moments, the very last air her body would ever have, or need. How the whisper of the silk as he uncoiled it was almost like a breath itself . . . the feel of her body jerking spasmodically against his as she struggled . . . Paul was still kneeling at her side like a penitent, looking up at her with his head slightly bowed, as if waiting for absolution.

  “I just don’t want you to judge me. You, of all people. You see, when I found out about the murders, I felt like I had to take the opportunity to explore them. As a writer, you understand.” His voice was pained, ragged. “Maybe it sounds perverse, but no matter how painful the experience was to me personally, I needed to. Perhaps it was a mistake, but you’re an artist too! You have to understand! As wrenching as it was, I put myself into the mind of a killer. I studied the scene, imagined how the murderer must have felt at every moment. I stared at poor Juliette’s body, and as if in a trance, found myself describing every moment of her exquisite suffering, of the killer’s twisted pleasure. I sat at that desk and typed detailed descriptions of the murders exactly as if I were the one who committed them. I typed them over and over, adding details each time until I got it perfect.”