Murder among the Stars

by Adam Shankman

  “I have no interest in playing games. My business is information. Spreading it to the world via my newspapers and movies, most would think. But also collecting it for my own personal use.” He raised an eyebrow at Freddie. “I collect more than art. I’ve found the most important thing to remember when gathering information is to use a variety of sources. Do you think you and Mr. Waters are the only private investigators I have in my employ? The only ones at the Ranch at this moment? No. You’re just the visible ones. And I’ve been made aware that for some very personal reason, you have disavowed your father and intend to make your own way. Why, is none of my business, but between you and me, I never could stand the fellow. I always found him a bit oily for my tastes, and I just want to tell you that I deeply respect your actions.”

  Freddie, not wanting to give any of his cards away in case Hearst was playing him, simply nodded politely and said, “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’m not finished,” Hearst went on. “You have a theory about the blackmailer that you’ve been keeping to yourself. I can tell by the way you avoid looking at me when we’re talking about the various scenarios. I have no time or interest in withholding. Especially when it’s someone I already suspect.”

  Freddie thought long and hard. He did not want to make an enemy of Hearst. However, blatantly lying to the great newspaperman wasn’t an option.

  “Sir, if you already know . . .”

  “I want to hear it from your lips.”

  “Well, there is a suspect I’ve been considering,” Freddie began.

  “For the murder that’s been solved, and the accidental death?” Hearst asked wryly. “Yes, I’m aware that you think the issues are connected.”

  “You’ve been crystal clear that you don’t believe that they are, sir. But what you are really saying is that you don’t want a thorough investigation. And I want to know why. At the very least, you don’t want Waters and me to be the ones doing it. Maybe your sub rosa team . . .”

  “Enough Latin,” Hearst snapped. “Go on.”

  “I just began to wonder, why wouldn’t you want us to find out the truth? I know you don’t want scandal, but this would be a mere three-day wonder, soon forgotten. It’s not as if you killed the girls. But if you know—or suspect—who did, and you want to protect them . . .”

  “Say it,” Hearst insisted, his voice tight, though strangely he didn’t seem either angry or upset. More resigned, Freddie sensed. “Say the name.”

  Knowing it could mean the end of his budding career—or worse, given the scope of Hearst’s influence and power—Freddie gulped, looked straight at his employer, and spoke. “Miss Davies. She has the access, and, forgive me, sir, but I’ve observed that she seems to have a drinking problem. She’s impulsive, unpredictable, and we both know that all bets are off when an alcoholic is off to the races. I was speaking with her recently, and I don’t know if you’re aware, but she hated Juliette with a passion. In fact, she seemed to harbor an ugly grudge against all of the young actresses here. She could easily be the blackmailer. She’s definitely the most likely candidate by miles, just because of her ability to move about any part of the Ranch without anyone giving it a thought. But more than that, I believe it would be ill advised not to consider her as one of the murder suspects.”

  Freddie felt beads of nervous sweat on his upper lip and was astonished that Hearst had let him go on so long without interruption, but Hearst responded without dropping a beat.

  “It isn’t her,” he said briefly, calmly.

  “But, sir, do you know for a fact? I can’t account for all her movements at the crucial time, but you could. Can you just tell me . . . ?”

  Hearst shook his head. “No. You simply have to take my word for it. Whether I have proof or not doesn’t matter. She is not blackmailing me, and she would never, ever commit such a ghastly crime as murder. She has her moral failings, but they are not so drastic as that.” He spoke with the firm, faithful voice of the true believer. “I know Marion is innocent.”

  “But if you have proof . . .”

  “Proof is not necessary. I know.” There was an almost religious fervor in Hearst’s eyes, and all at once Freddie felt deeply ashamed. Not just because he had accused Marion of a crime. No, his shame was much deeper and more personal.

  With so many indisputable reasons not to trust her, Hearst trusts Marion implicitly. Evidence be damned. He loves her, and knows her heart, and believes with every fiber of his being that she is not capable of that enormity. He’s not just covering for her. He’s sure.

  Freddie’s mind drifted back to his own situation and the uncomfortable feeling that his problems with Lulu were of his own making. Why can’t I be just as sure about Lulu? he asked himself.

  Hearst interrupted his musings. “There, that’s settled now, isn’t it?”

  It had to be, Freddie realized.

  “Yes, sir,” Freddie said.

  To his surprise, Hearst then said, “That accounts for the something on your mind, son. Now, what about the thing that’s lying so heavily on your heart?”

  It was astounding how Hearst could transform from an overwhelming authority figure into a man who was almost avuncular. Remarkably, Hearst seemed to be taking a friendly interest in his underling. The cynic in Freddie thought this was a masterwork of manipulation, designed to get as much information about—and thus power over—every person in his sphere. On the other hand, it might be genuine, and the reason a woman like Marion loved him.

  Still, Freddie was reluctant to share.

  “It’s that platinum-blonde peach, isn’t it? It’s obvious that you and Miss Kelly are . . . well . . . close. She’s a lovely girl, but trouble seems to follow her like a stray cat once you’ve given it cream. I’d be very careful with her. Believe me, no one can tell me anything about falling in love with an actress. Fraught with peril, but in good times the rewards are sweeter than any material success I have ever known. So what is it? One of you playing around?”

  Freddie stiffened. “Just a misunderstanding, sir.”

  “Let me tell you, son, you have to decide early on whether there will be—‘misunderstandings,’ as you call them—or whether you are simply willing to love her and all the nonsense that trails behind her. Will you walk away entirely? Or are you prepared to accept the woman you love, not the starlet but the woman, and put her ahead of all of your silly selfishness?”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” Freddie admitted.

  “Look at me, and then look at Marion. Particularly look at her a few years ago. I’m sure you’ve heard the gossip. Charlie Chaplin was just the beginning. The truth is, a girl like her is going to be constantly surrounded by temptation. Maybe she’ll stray, maybe not. That Miss Kelly seems to have a strong will, and a decidedly independent point of view. But she’s an actress by trade, a projection of the public’s fantasy: sometimes luminous and sublime, sometimes sordid and messy. If she’s doing her job well, half of the world is going to believe she’s stepping out on you, because no one wants to believe that a mere mortal could actually ensnare a goddess. Movie stars are gods and goddesses to their fans. Earthly rules don’t apply. So you have to decide early on whether you can live with that.”

  Hearst looked him in the eye. “Decide now whether you do or do not trust her, and once you decide, stand firm, no matter what evidence appears to the contrary. Love her, and trust her . . . or walk away today.”

  Hearst broke away abruptly and shuffled through his papers. “I’m heading out on the horseback riding expedition. Why don’t you take a break from the investigation and find her? Maybe she’d rather not ride today. Give you a chance to talk a spell.” His voice was suddenly folksy, the kind that would appeal to middle-American masses. Freddie wondered which part of the great man was an act. Or was it all an act? Or all real?

  With a lot on his mind, he took Hearst’s advice and went in search of Lulu. Most people seemed to be reporting as ordered to the stables for their trek across Hearst’s mountains, but
finally he opened the door to an isolated sitting room and saw a slender figure with platinum-blonde hair facing away from him, gazing out the window.

  “Hello, darling, what are you looking at?” Freddie asked as he moved up behind her. He was shocked when she turned and he found himself inches away from the mischievous grin of newly minted It Girl Jean Harlow.

  “Darling? Well, hello to you too, handsome! I didn’t know you cared!” she said with a flirty chuckle.

  He’d first met Jean at a party Lulu had taken him to, and since they’d been seated next to each other at dinner, they’d developed a fast friendship. She was a funny girl, smarter than most people probably gave her credit for. And she was certainly easy on the eyes.

  “Sorry, Jean. I was just looking for Lulu.”

  “Well, you got close. I do love the color of her hair.” She pointed out the window. Freddie peered out. Beyond the manicured part of the property, he could see the stables. The figures were distant and small, but some of the more distinctive ones stood out. There was the recognizable bulk of Hearst, astride a hefty horse. There was Louella in an outlandish purple outfit, a magenta marabou capelet around her shoulders. He noted a starlet with dyed red hair. And there, her pale silver-gold head glowing like a halo, was none other than Lulu.

  So much for his plan for talking things over. In a way, he was relieved. Hearst’s words were still playing on an endless loop in his mind. He loved Lulu. That was beyond a doubt. But was that love strong enough to weather the gossip that would undoubtedly dog their relationship? He knew some of it would be orchestrated by the studio. That, he thought, he could just about live with, because it would be a creation, obviously (he hoped) fake. But he had already spent enough time in the Hollywood system to know that she would be endlessly surrounded by actors, producers, moguls, and fans, and that was in itself enough to make even the most stalwart and confident man gravely insecure.

  “Don’t you like riding?” Jean asked, managing to make that simple sentence unbelievably provocative.

  “I . . . Well, I . . .” Freddie choked, but Jean dissolved into laughter, her entire demeanor changing in an instant. One moment she was a seductive starlet who could have any man she wanted; the next she was like a sister, or the kid next door. Her face relaxed, she stopped holding her stomach in and her bosom out, and she was a real person again.

  “Sorry, chum. Force of habit. Lord, I get sick of keeping all of this nonsense up on these godforsaken work trips. There really is a limit to how long a girl can play the happy-go-lucky siren, laughing gaily at terrible jokes, stroking the egos of this executive and that director, and holding in her stomach before she feels like she’s going to explode! Oh, come on, Freddie, join me for a good gossip huddle about all of our friends down there.” The way she said the word “friends” made him sure some of them were anything but. And yet Jean Harlow was known to be among the less catty young actresses.

  “I don’t listen to much gossip,” Freddie admitted.

  She feigned shock. “And you a private eye? Or whatever you may be. Don’t look at me like I’m nuts! There’s more to you than meets the eye or my hair color is real! Hey, don’t worry. I won’t pry. But I have to admit, I haven’t heard any really juicy gossip about you. Maybe I’ll have to invent some. Anyway, Freddie, you won’t survive in this town without listening to the rumors. Even if half of ’em are false, there’s at the very least a grain of truth in the other half.”

  “Can’t I just read Louella Parsons’s column for that?” Freddie asked.

  Jean scoffed. “That’s entertainment, not real, valuable dirt. Especially given that the best dirt is about her . . . and her husband.”

  “Louella has a husband?” This was shocking news to Freddie. She was often seen in the company of good-looking younger men serving some quasi-official role in her work: photographers, personal secretaries. Had she married one of them?

  She shook her head, laughing. “Pity the poor beaten puppy who had to shack up with that jackal! Didn’t you know? Docky Martin is her husband.”

  It took Freddie a moment to register what Jean was telling him. “You mean the medical director for Lux Studios? How did I not know this?”

  Jean shrugged. “It’s a well-kept, very public secret. She married him a year or two ago, but for some reason we all pretend not to know. We all figure they killed someone together, and the only way they won’t have to testify against each other when they’re caught is if they’re married.” She winked at him. “Of course, that’s just gossip!”

  Why would Louella and Docky keep their marriage under wraps? What possible harm could come from people knowing? Freddie felt a tingling of suspicion. If it was such a closely guarded secret, clearly, it followed, there was some reason to keep it so. But why?

  “Is that the dirt you were talking about?” he asked Jean.

  “That’s just the tip of a very big, dirty iceberg . . . if the gossip is even partly true.”

  “Do tell.”

  And she did. She was a lively and entertaining storyteller, but the tales she told so lightly were dark indeed. If even a fraction of them were true . . .

  Docky, it seems, was whispered to be the man an actress could go to when she was in trouble. If she committed an indiscretion and caught a disease or fell pregnant, Docky could take care of it quickly, quietly, and without possibility of discovery. Of course, his price was high, and lately part of the price was that Louella would inevitably know all about it. She wouldn’t use the information—otherwise Docky’s business would dry up pretty fast—but she’d save it up and use it as a kind of currency. She had the goods on nearly every actress who had gotten in trouble over the past few years. If they crossed her, or if she needed information or a favor from them, she only had to remind them about their abortion or their clap, and she’d get whatever she wanted from them. Docky and Louella were business partners, and their stock in trade was Hollywood scandal.

  “And of course there’s the pills,” Jean added. “Plenty of girls here this weekend could tell you all about that. You wouldn’t believe his list of customers. Not me. Tried ’em once and they made my heart go all stupid. I’d rather skip a meal than bounce off the walls like a maniac. But whenever a girl gets a little plump, he’ll give her a bottle of pills that will knock the weight off. Or if she’s feeling a little high, or a little low, he has a pill for that, too. You should see some of those girls after he’s had at ’em. He can get ’em cocaine, opium, anything they want.”

  In other words, Freddie thought, Docky was a mobile pharmacy and easily had the resources to drug a tall, strong girl like Dolores to the point where she was unable to resist being fed to a tiger.

  “Do you know which girls were using any of his services?”

  “Oh, the girls talk about that pretty openly. Joan Crawford takes a little something from Docky that she says helps her focus. Bette Davis has trouble sleeping and says the stuff Docky gives her will put her out for an entire day.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Jean tapped a finger to her cheek, considering. “Well, there was Dolores.”

  “What was she taking?”

  “Diet pills, of course. At least, she was taking them for a while, until she ran out of money. She told me Docky wouldn’t front her any more unless she had cash. I would have loaned her some, but I didn’t like to see her take that garbage. Then later she told me she’d worked out a way to make him keep giving her the pills.”

  “Do you know what she meant by that?” Freddie asked. Jean shook her head. “Do you think you could find out?” She told him she’d try.

  “Poor Dolores,” Jean said. “She is—was—so beautiful, wasn’t she? Such a strong, curvy, glamorous figure. I always wished I was built like that, instead of being a scrawny little midget. But, of course, this being Hollywood, she wasn’t happy with herself and had a hundred people telling her to lose weight. Oh, she could keep the big bosom, but not the rest of it.” She shook her head ruefully. “It’s not a ver
y nice place, is it? Every little girl dreams of coming here, but if they only knew what was in store for them, they’d run away screaming.”

  Twenty

  Lulu and Anita got back to the Ranch long before the rest of the riders. Anita went inside to, in her words, have a liquid pick-me-up. Lulu, though, lingered outside the main entrance, torn between impulses. She wanted to find Freddie and tell him everything she’d learned. But he had made very clear his position on her investigating, and frankly, she wasn’t sure where she stood with him at this moment. Neither of them was making any clear move to apologize or reconcile, and though she believed in her heart they were fine, they had to be fine, she found herself in new and uncertain waters here. She understood that justifiably or not, he was angry and hurt. He was a proud man, which was one of the things she loved so very much about him, and it would take some time. Still, time was not something she felt she had the luxury of. Not as long as there was a murderer roaming freely.

  Maybe she could tell Veronica? No, she thought. The publicist would tell Lulu that she was paranoid and overwhelmed and just needed a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep. Boots? Eleanor? Toshia? They had pretty much proven their capacity for hysteria in the menagerie, and hysteria was never a good thing in a murder investigation.

  While she was hesitating, a police car pulled up in the driveway. Lulu scooted to the side, assuming the officer who stepped out of the big black-and-white car would have pressing business inside. But to her surprise he walked up to her. He looked like he was in a hurry.

  “Pardon me, ma’am. Can you take this?” he asked without preamble, thrusting a package into her hands. “No one else was available to deliver it, and I was just told to hand it off here on my way home. I’d be much obliged if you could get it to the appropriate person. My wife will rip me limb from limb if I miss dinner while the mother-in-law is visiting.”