Murder among the Stars

by Adam Shankman

  “You killed them so that Marion could have the role?” Lulu asked.

  “Juliette was blackmailing Emerson with that letter he wrote to her, promising to divorce Anita. Juliette was a clever girl, too. She didn’t want marriage from Emerson. She wanted the role of a lifetime. In that argument the maid overheard, he had all but agreed to force Anita to join him in naming Juliette the winner.”

  “Would she have agreed?” Lulu didn’t think the strong-minded Anita could be so easily convinced.

  “Oh, my dear, you still don’t understand what a precarious life we women lead. Even with all of Anita’s fame, do you think the studios take her seriously without a man’s name attached to her? Emerson gets her into the meetings. Even at the peak of her success, no one would read her scripts unless they were a Loos-Emerson affair.” Despite her terrified state, Lulu was indignant on Anita’s behalf.

  “During the fight, Emerson accused Juliette of infidelity. He’d seen the wrapped present on her bed and snatched it up. He thought that scarf—the one all the actresses were supposed to get—was a present from a lover. He threw it at her. They screamed and fought, they made up, and amid tender whispers that the maid couldn’t hear, he promised her the part. I had followed that little tramp, and I heard everything. When he left, it was a simple matter to strangle that insignificant nothing right out of the running.”

  The housekeeper made a twisting motion with her meaty hands.

  “And you dragged her into the dining room? But there were no muddy footprints.”

  Mrs. Mortimer raised her eyebrows and regarded Lulu archly. “When you’ve cleaned floors for a living, you leave your muddy shoes outside. Even if you have others to clean up after you.”

  The motivations beginning to click, Lulu said, “And you must have found out that Sal Benedetto had made a deal with Hearst to give Dolores the role after that.”

  “Those powerful men are always scheming. You’d think Hearst would have insisted Marion have the part. But no. I think he was afraid. He’s kept her in roles that are beneath her all these years. What if she won an Academy Award? Maybe she wouldn’t need him anymore. He’s supremely selfish, but he loves her. That’s the only reason he’s still alive.”

  She’d kill Hearst? Lulu shivered.

  “So you drugged Dolores and . . . and . . .”

  “It was easy pinning the first on Emerson, but he had no real connection to Dolores. I set up the evidence implicating him, but I made sure that at first glance it would look like an accident, a foolish whim of a silly, drunk actress that went horribly wrong. The police would have left it at that, if it weren’t for you.”

  Lulu glanced at the door. “I admire your loyalty, Mrs. Mortimer. I won’t tell. I promise.”

  Mrs. Mortimer chuckled. “Of course you won’t, my dear. Do you think I would have spilled the beans otherwise? You won’t reveal my secrets, and you won’t be Anita’s pick for the role of a lifetime. No, you won’t tell anything to anyone ever again.”

  “You’re . . . you’re going to kill me?” Lulu asked, wondering if she could get to the knives before Mrs. Mortimer, and if she’d have the fortitude to use one.

  The laugh grew wilder. “You poor child, I already have killed you!”

  Lulu felt a sick dread in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “I tried it before, but you spilled the coffee. Oh, that time I only wanted to make you ill. I figured if you were vomiting and fainting, you’d be in no state to continue your investigations.”

  “You poisoned my coffee?”

  “Just a bit,” she said coyly. “This time, though . . .”

  The spoonful of crystals in one cup, but not the other.

  And then Mrs. Mortimer smiled calmly, picked up her cup, and swallowed the rest of her tea. “This time I gave you enough poison to finish things off. Can’t taste it, can you? These deadly crystals are sweet, and dissolve quickly. Though even if it tasted off, you’re such a polite little thing you probably would have drunk it all down just to spare my feelings.”

  With a surge of relief so strong it made her woozy, Lulu thought, I just have to wait. When the poison Mrs. Mortimer accidentally swallowed herself took effect, Lulu would take the keys and . . .

  Then she saw the housekeeper’s face twist in disbelief . . . then rage . . . then pain. She doubled over, clutching her stomach. “You . . . What did you do? How did you know?” She staggered to her feet, shoving the table hard against Lulu, who tumbled backward and hit her head on the floor. Momentarily stunned, she blinked heavily, seeing stars. Dimly, she was aware of Mrs. Mortimer staggering across her office, not toward Lulu, but toward the little kitchen section. The part of the room where the knives were hanging.

  Lulu managed to get to her knees, but her head was ringing, and she felt unsteady and sick. She saw Mrs. Mortimer pull the biggest knife off the hook and then reject it for the long, thin, deadly sharp filleting knife.

  All at once there was a commotion outside the door. Snuffling and barks. A girl’s voice. And then the dearest sound in the world.

  “Lulu!” Freddie called. “Where are you?”

  “No!” the housekeeper shrieked. “They can’t save you. I won’t let you be the hero, the darling who solved the murders.” She lunged unsteadily toward Lulu, who started to crawl under the table. “If you live, your picture will be in all the papers. You’ll be bigger than ever, and my Marion will fade into obscurity. Come out from under there, you insignificant wretch!” She slashed at Lulu, but the poison must have been taking hold, and she fell to her knees too.

  Lulu heard pounding on the door. “Freddie, I’m in here!” she called at the top of her lungs as she desperately tried to scuttle out of the way of the flailing knife.

  She and Mrs. Mortimer were both kneeling now, facing each other. But Lulu, recovering from the blow to her head, was getting stronger. The housekeeper, succumbing to her own poison, was weakening. The door juddered as Freddie threw himself against it again and again.

  “Freddie, help me!” she shrieked as Mrs. Mortimer lunged for her, slashing at her face. She threw herself backward and felt a strange sensation across her chest, as if she’d been struck by an icicle. Then there was a huge crash and the room was a blurry, roaring confusion of snapping dogs and shouting as Freddie hurled himself on top of Mrs. Mortimer so that they both went down with a mighty thud. Lulu crawled backward until the table was between them, so she couldn’t see what happened next. But Freddie was here! He’d saved her!

  The housekeeper shoved Freddie off and somehow managed to stand, breathing hard, clutching her gut with one hand. In the other she still held the knife. It was slick with blood, which dripped down her hand.

  Freddie was on the ground, pale and unmoving, a bloodstain slowly expanding on his chest.

  “Not in the script,” Mrs. Mortimer said, “but I can certainly work with improvisation. I used to be a great actress, you know.” She staggered toward Lulu again, but the frantically yipping dogs wove around her feet, bringing her down to the floor.

  She didn’t get up again. Lulu saw bloody foam bubble from Mrs. Mortimer’s lips as the housekeeper glared malevolently at her. Then, slowly, the hateful glare faded and her eyes were blank and staring.

  Lulu all but threw herself on Freddie. “My darling, my own love,” she said, kissing him. “You saved me!” She pressed at the stab wound. “You need a doctor. Patricia, stay with him!”

  Freddie tried to call her back, but she was desperate to get help. She ran through the Ranch, but it was strangely deserted. Then she remembered—everyone was gathered for the competition, even the staff. She raced toward the theater where the show was taking place. The structure was a massive maze of corridors and doorways, but she was certain the entrance was close. Was that the sound of applause somewhere to her left? She threw open the unfamiliar door in front of her.

  Bursting through, she found herself in a glaring spotlight. She was on the stage, looking out over an audience of all
of her friends and Hearst’s guests.

  “The . . . the murderer! I caught her!”

  But the entire packed theater just sat there, mouths agape.

  “Help! Someone! Anyone . . . Why are you all just sitting there?” she shouted into the darkness, blinded by the searing light, hot tears running down her face.

  “You’ve got to help me! He’s dying!” she pleaded through her sobs to the mute, unmoving mass of bodies. “What’s wrong with you? Have you no compassion or humanity?” She fell to her knees, whimpering. “Why are you just staring at me? Please do something! I’m begging you!”

  And then she stood again, disheveled, frightened, determined, and lovely, blood dripping from a slash across her chest. She looked like every great heroine of stage and screen come dramatically to life.

  The audience, until then silent, suddenly leaped to their feet and erupted in thunderous applause.

  Twenty-Seven

  There are knives to the chest . . . and then there are knives to the chest. When Lulu saw Freddie with blood pouring from his wound, she immediately assumed he’d been stabbed in the heart or lungs and was at death’s door. By the time she’d staggered back to his side, though, the Ranch medics had already tended to what was a rather unpleasant but ultimately minor puncture of Freddie’s surprisingly substantial right pectoral muscle.

  “Good Lord, that woman was determined. That left hook of hers was a killer. Oh, and sorry if I’m, well . . . a little exposed. Sort of comes with the whole being stabbed thing, I guess,” Freddie said with a wince, smiling bravely through the pain. His shirt had been cut away, and his tanned upper body, though bruised and bloody, was on impressive display. Lulu had never seen quite so much of him before, and found herself distracted.

  “I’m not sorry . . . well, I mean except for the stabbing part,” Lulu said, barely pretending to not admire her spectacularly handsome beau as the medic wrapped the bandage. Veronica threw a cashmere blanket over Lulu’s tattered dress.

  “I guess it’s no more off-the-shoulder gowns for you,” Veronica said as the butler dabbed stinging antiseptic on Lulu’s knife slash. It was long, stretching across her chest and shoulder, but shallow, and hurt far more now that it was being treated than it had when she got it.

  “Scars give character,” Freddie said, gently kissing her neck, sending a shiver of longing and comfort through her.

  “And I’ve never seen an actress with more character than you, Lulu Kelly.” William Randolph Hearst had come into the room, his bulk making it decidedly cramped. “You might have had the wrong man for a while, but you and Freddie certainly came through in the end. Truly magnificent work. I never would have imagined old Mrs. Mortimer had it in her.”

  To her surprise, Lulu almost bristled at this. What gave Mr. Hearst the right to call the housekeeper old, or to doubt her strength and resolve? That was the attitude that could drive women in Hollywood to tears, or madness, or pills, or suicide. Mrs. Mortimer’s reaction to her treatment, and to Marion’s, had taken a decidedly psychotic turn, but Lulu still rebelled at the forces of life that drove her to it.

  “I think we should step outside,” Freddie said delicately, and everyone but the medics moved into the hallway.

  Marion came traipsing down the corridor. “Lulu darling! Here you all are! Oh, it was absolutely divine! Your performance silenced the worst chatterboxes on the face of the earth. The other numbers were so deadly dull, just the same old song and dance routines. But then you! Blood! Murder! At first I thought you were doing a bit from Titus Andronicus. Oh, jeepers creepers! I just realized what a field day the press will have with this.” She pouted. “I’d better change into something more conservative before the cameras come. My new Chanel! It will be perfect. Oh, and no one seems to know—who was the murderer after all?”

  Lulu gasped. No one had told her! Oh, poor Marion. Lulu tried to get between her and the doorway, but Hearst whispered in Marion’s ear just as she maneuvered to where she had a clear view of her friend’s corpse.

  Lulu expected hysterics, but Marion only breathed the word “no” very softly and sank to the floor. She pulled Mrs. Mortimer’s head onto her lap and rocked gently, forward and back. “How could I not have known?” she asked no one in particular as her eyes began to pool. “Oh, of course she could hide it from me. She was a better actress than me, always.”

  Lulu crept over beside Marion and put an arm over her shoulder. “She was very, very loyal.”

  Marion’s eyes lit up. “And I am—was—loyal to her. Everything I am, I owe to her. She got me my first part on the stage, gave me guidance. And then . . .” Marion’s face fell, and she looked suddenly older. “Then she got too old, and they pushed her out. I was sixteen and perfect and the world opened up for me. She was forty and the best actress of her generation, and the world crushed her down. We lost track of each other for years, you know, and then just before I came to California I found her. She was scrubbing the front stairs of a dinner club. I couldn’t believe it! An actress like that, falling on such hard times! So I took her with me, and she’s been my most loyal companion ever since. I wanted her to act. I could have gotten her parts, though not the ones she deserved. But she said she was only fit for cleaning now. So I made her head of the whole Ranch.”

  Marion sniffed loudly and smoothed Mrs. Mortimer’s disheveled hair. “She was the only person I ever fully trusted.” Realizing what she had said, she glanced at Hearst. He looked away uncomfortably. “I would have done anything for her!” Marion added staunchly.

  Would you have murdered someone for her? Lulu wondered. Would you have hidden her crimes if you’d found out first?

  But none of that mattered now. She tactfully left Marion alone to grieve.

  The others moved into the Assembly Room, some for a stiff drink, though after her brush with poison Lulu didn’t want to drink anything for a while. Anita came in and made a beeline to Lulu. She reported that Paul was conscious and seemed to be recovering. He claimed he had never intended any threat, and in her calmer state, Lulu admitted to the authorities that this was probably true. Writers, she was starting to notice, were all deranged in their own unique ways. The first thing Paul did when his hands were untied was demand his typewriter. He began furiously documenting his recent experience even while the medics were bandaging his head.

  “I know everyone is saying Freddie is the real investigator and that he caught the killer,” Anita said, “but, Lulu, you seem to be everywhere the action is. Why do I get the feeling you’re at the heart of everything good that’s happened over the last few days?”

  “Yes, isn’t that something,” chirped Veronica archly. “Truly curious.”

  Lulu demurred with a smile.

  “Modest, too,” Anita said. “Hmm . . . You know, I think I’m getting a peach of an idea for the main character of this next screenplay. A girl who is a secret hero. Fingers in every pie, smarter than anyone gives her credit for, and determined to fix the wrongs of the world. But she stays in the shadow of her brilliant, far-too-attractive fella. And because it’s a man’s world, he gets the credit, but it’s the girl who really makes everything happen. Without her, the story would have an unhappy ending. It’s bittersweet, though, because her heroism is unsung.”

  “That sounds good for a story,” Lulu said quietly. “In real life, though, I don’t think the girl would mind very much. A few people would know what she did. The people who mattered.”

  “I can’t speak for the other judges, but as for me, I know which actress has displayed the most inspiring character over the last few days.” Anita lowered her voice and added in a confidential whisper, “Even if you thought my husband was the killer. I can’t say I blame you.”

  Lulu started to laugh, then stopped with a gasp.

  “Where is your husband?” she asked Anita in alarm. She looked at Freddie. “Where’s Sal?”

  “Sal wasn’t in the audience at the performance,” Anita said. “That’s odd. Come to think of it, WR noted
it and asked after him. And my husband was called away just before you came onstage. One of the servants handed him a note summoning him outside to the Neptune Pool. I don’t know what it was about, but I tried to stop him. I suppose I assumed it was one of his girls—though now that I think about it, all the eligible females were in the performance. Lulu, what’s happening?”

  But Lulu was already snaking her way through the crowded room. “Sal still thinks Emerson did it!” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran. “Freddie! He’s going to kill him!”

  Even though his wound wasn’t too serious, pain and blood loss were slowing Freddie down, and by the time he’d cleared the confused crowd, Lulu was far ahead of him and out of sight.

  It was sunset, and the classical statues cast long shadows over the Neptune Pool. “Lulu!” Freddie called.

  And then he saw her, the small, slender girl using her body as a shield. Behind her, Emerson cowered on the tile, begging for mercy. In front of her, Sal stood with his gun held out, pointed straight at the groveling Emerson.

  “I want to hear it from your own mouth before I kill you,” Sal snarled, his rage so raw that he hardly seemed to notice Lulu was there. “Tell me what you did to that poor, sweet, innocent girl, you scum. Confess what you did to Dolores before you die.”

  “Sal, listen to me. It wasn’t Emerson. I made a terrible mistake. It was Mrs. Mortimer.”

  “Who?” Sal asked, clearly puzzled.

  “The housekeeper.”

  “Are you crazy? That stout old lady in black? Come on. You can lie better than that. Now, get out of the way. I have something to finish. For Dolores.”

  Lulu stepped closer to Sal. Freddie edged nearer too, though he didn’t want to make any sudden moves with Lulu in the line of fire.

  “You don’t want to do this, Sal,” Lulu said, holding up her hands.

  “Drop the gun, Sal,” Freddie shouted as he made his way toward the melee.

  “Stay outta this, Frederick,” Sal thundered, glancing over his shoulder.